To Absent Friends: Patty Andrews

I am going to skew really old here by noting the death this week of singer Patty Andrews at the age of 94.  Before the great "girls groups" of the 1950's and 1960's like the Shirelles, Marvellettes, and the Supremes, there was the Andrews Sisters, and in the middle part of the 20th century, especially during the WW II years, there was no bigger musical act than the Andrews Sisters, Patty, Maxine, and LaVerne.  It is estimated that they sold over 75 million records during their career.

Modern day artists like Bette Midler revered the Andrews Sisters, and if you search YouTube you can find a clip of the Andrews Sisters and The Supremes performing each others hits together on some long forgotten TV show..

Here is one of their most famous ones which had a revival in the 1970's thanks to Bette Midler.




RIP Patty Andrews.

New Exhibit at the Heinz History Center

Okay, this post is nothing more than a bold and unabashed commercial for one of my volunteer activities, the John Heinz History Center.  A new temporary exhibit will be opening this weekend and will run through Mother's Day.  The exhibit is called  "1968: The Year That Rocked America".  I had a chance to take a preview tour today, and it is a fantastic exhibit, one of the best I've seen since in the three plus years I have been at the History Center.  !968 was the year of my junior and senior years in high school, and so many of the events chronicled in this exhibit are vivid in my mind and important in my own personal history and memories.

Here are just a few of the people and events that are touched upon in this exhibit:

TET...Martin Luther King....Janis Joplin....Laugh-In....Viet Nam....My Lai....Eugene McCarthy.....Robert Kennedy....The White Album....Chicago Democratic Convention.....Richard Nixon....Apollo 8.

Trust me, I'm not even scratching the surface of all that is in this exhibit.

If you were alive in 1968 and can recall these events, you need to see this exhibit, and even if you were not and 1968 seems like ancient history to you, maybe especially if it seems like ancient history to you, you should really make it a point to visit this exhibit.

Another Big Night for "Argo"

As it did two weeks ago at the Golden Globe Awards, Ben Affleck's "Argo" was the big winner at the Screen Actors Guild Awards last night.  At the Globes, "Argo" won best picture and, more significantly, Affleck was chosen Best Director, after his snub by the Motion Picture Academy.  Last night at the SAG awards, "Argo" was awarded the "Best Ensemble Acting" award, the SAG equivalent of Best Picture.

And make no mistake, Affleck was definitely snubbed by the Academy.  Last week I heard an interview with Stephen Hunter, former movie critic for the Washington Post.  His thought was that Affleck is generally perceived as a lightweight "pretty boy" actor by many in the Hollywood community, who decided to try his hand at directing, and, lo and behold, he is very good at it and it seems that this is where his true talent lies.  When it came time to nominate for Best Director, many of those directors who struggled through film schools and working their way up via numerous low level behind-the-camera jobs, obviously decided to take it out on Affleck, who they have decreed has had it too easy in his path to being a premier film director.  Makes sense to me.

What does this portend for the Oscars in a few weeks?  My own hunch is that "Lincoln" will win for Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, Supporting Actor, Tommy Lee Jones, and that Steven Spielberg will nail the Best Director prize, but my guess is that the Best Picture award is now a horse race between "Argo" and "Lincoln".  Hey, I loved both movies, but if I had to vote, I would ask myself this question:  which movie am I most likely to watch again and again over the next ten years or so?  If that's the criterion, then I'd have to say "Argo".

Movie Review: "Hyde Park on Hudson"

We went and saw the movie "Hyde Park on Hudson" this afternoon.  The movie stars Bill Murray - yep, Bill Murray of Saturday Night Live and Caddyshack fame - as President Franklin Roosevelt.  Hard to imagine that the guy who can play Carl Spackler can also play the aristocratic FDR, but Murray pulls it off.  In fact, early on, there had been some buzz that Murray might earn an Oscar nomination for the role, but timing is everything, I suppose.  If you want to garner critical acclaim and awards for playing a former President, don't do it in the same year that Daniel Day-Lewis is playing Abe Lincoln.

The movie is really two stories, FDR's relationship, purportedly an "intimate" one, with a distant cousin, Daisy Suckley (played by Laura Linney) and the visit to America by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the President's Hyde Park, NY estate in 1939 to try to gain American support for England in the war in Europe that was sure to come later that year.

This is the third time in recent years that Queen Elizabeth (the current queen's mother) has been portrayed in movies.  First there was "The Queen", followed by "The King's Speech" and now this one.  Each movie presents a different picture of the woman.  Interesting.

The movie also talks about a time "when we were still allowed to have secrets".  One scene I found to be very striking.  With reporters and news photographers gathered around the President's car, FDR is carried, literally, to his car by an aide, lifted into the back seat of the car, and shifted into place. Only then does a staffer give the okay, and only then do the photographers snap their pictures of the President.

Try imagining a scene like that today.

Anyway, a thumbs up for "Hudson on Hyde Park".

The Great 2013 Hamburger Quest, Part 3 - BZ Bar and Grill

The Quest for the Best Hamburger in Pittsburgh took me to the BZ Bar and Grill on the North Shore yesterday afternoon.  This is the newly opened sports bar across from PNC Park in the space that had been occupied by Firewater's for many years.

Operating on the theory that if can't say something nice about something, don't say anything, this post will be brief.  The interior of the place is rather stark, the service was slow, and the hamburger.... well, if it was a college football team, it would be in the category of "not receiving votes" in the weekly polls.  It has caused me to list a new category in my Burger Rankings that I will be posting after trying the burgers.

To be fair, BZ is new, and it is no doubt unfair to come to a conclusion after only one visit to a brand new place.  That said, nothing about my experience yesterday is making me long for a return trip.

The current rankings:

1. Tessaro's (Bloomfield)
2. The Tilted Kilt (North Shore)

Unranked:

• BZ Bar & Grill (North Shore)

From This Week's Sports Illustrated

The newest Sports Illustrated arrived today (John and Jim Harbaugh on the cover), and so far, it is proving to be an good issue, and I haven't even gotten to the Super Bowl stuff yet.  However, more than any story I've read thus far, I was most struck by the full page ad placed by Budweiser which I have scanned and shown above.  Well done, Budweiser.  And the story on Stan the Man by Richard Hoffer is a good one.

Also, in appreciation for Earl Weaver by Tom Verducci, there were two great quotes.  The first was by umpire Bill Haller who once said of Weaver, "When he dies, his family is going to have to pay for pallbearers."  The other - and I know my SABR and Facebook friend Father John Hissrich will like this one - concerned one of his "born again" outfielders, Pat Kelly.  After striking out with the bases loaded late in a game, Kelly said "Earl, I hope that you will walk with the Lord one day", to which Weaver replied, "Pat, I hope that you will walk with the bases loaded one day."

Chances are neither of those stories are true, but if they aren't, they should be!

Another great line  came in a story about the travails last week of Manti Te'o and the Cheating, Lying, Bullying Bicycle Rider, whose name I'd rather not mention.  Anyway, in describing the Oprah Winfrey interview with the C.L.B.B.R. and the moment when he confessed to all of his cheating, lying, and bullying, author S.L. Price writes "It was a classic TV takedown. Throw in a trail of cigarette smoke, and Edward R. Murrow would have felt right at home."

That's good writing!

I was interested to see how SI would right about the whole Te'o affair and and the Fall From Grace of the C.L.B.B.R., considering how they went all in on Te'o with a cover story in October and how no publication was more in the tank for the Bicycle Rider (was any lapdog ever more loyal to his owner than columnist Rick Reilly was to this guy?) over the years.  To the magazine's credit, Price pulls no punches in describing how the magazine (and every other news outlet) was duped by the Te'o story and the Bicycle Guy. 

Good issue, and now it's on to the Super Bowl Preview stuff.

We Succumb to Downton Abbey

So, let me tell you what Marilyn and I have been doing over the last five days.

We spent much of that time - more than is probably good for any human being - sitting in front of the TV plowing through Seasons One and Two of the hoity-toity PBS Masterpiece Theater British soap opera, Downton Abbey.  Today, thanks to the magic of the PBS iPad app and the DVR, we will watch episodes one through three of Season Three and then we will plant ourselves in front of the TV on Sunday night to catch up with the travails of the Grantham family, and their loyal and scheming servants in real time.  No longer will we be the outcasts when discussions of this insanely popular show arise, and make no mistake, such discussions are ALWAYS arising!

It was a conversation with Marilyn's brothers and their wives last week that tipped the scales and made us hit Target and scoop up the Season One DVD set to see just what in the hell everyone was talking about.  It didn't take long to be hooked and finish that set, and then head out to Target to snap up Season Two, which we finished with a five episode marathon last night.  Lest you think we are completely crazy, we did take a break for dinner.

It is a well made, nicely acted, and beautifully photographed show, and it is, as our behaviour described above indicates, very compelling.  I like the fact that much of the action takes place off-camera.  By that I mean, if Character A needs to tell Character B about a development that we, the viewers, have already seen or been made aware of, we, the viewers, are not forced to see the conversation between A and B.  This avoids the usual glacial pace of most soap operas, and makes for a fast paced series.  Hey, they got through the entirety of World War I in just seven episodes!

And I just love Maggie Smith!!!  If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a Dowager Countess.

I now anxiously await each episode of Season III, but I fear that at some point something in me will snap and I will say, "Hey, I'm tired of Lady Mary and her back-and-forth affairs of the heart;  just marry SOMEONE for God's sake, or I'm going to quit watching!"  That jump-the-shark moment hasn't arrived yet, but, as I say, I fear it's approach.

In the meantime, I shall don my boiled collar and white tie and prepare myself for dinner, whilst reading the numerous messages that arrive in the post each day.