Election Fatigue

I got up this morning and wrote four paragraphs with my latest take on the upcoming elections... and quickly found that I'm bored with both Obama and McCain... as I imagine much of America is. Short of a major scandal (which America doesn't need), you should know by now who you'll be voting for three weeks from today.

So let's talk about something of much more import to the American people. I am, of course, speaking about football. PRO football in general, and the NFC East to be specific. How much better can it get than this? Just as it seemed like the division was going to be anointed as the greatest ever, three of the four teams lost in week six - and to teams they were heavily favored to beat, to boot! The only team that won in week 6 were the last-place Eagles, which means all four teams are in position to beat the crap out of each other for the rest of the season!

Can life get any better than this? Yes. It's the Ides of October, for chrissakes (well, almost - it's Ides Eve)! God did not intend for football fans to be watching games when it's 85 degrees outside, except in Miami, where God did not intend any teams that wear Aqua and Orange to be taken seriously, anyway.

I prematurely made my first pot of chili of the season last week, and now it's taking up space in my freezer because God also did not intend any self-respecting chili to be consumed in weather like this.

One more football-related note in this rather scatter-brained entry (which is still more interesting by far than any election related blog I might have written)... I am dying to get to the theater to see "The Express", the movie based on Ernie Davis, the first black to win the Heisman Trophy. Davis went to Syracuse, and was set to follow his idol and fellow Orangeman Jim Brown to the Cleveland Browns, but he died of Leukemia before he ever got the chance to go to the NFL.

The film is getting mixed reviews for its accuracy, but it does include several scenes shot on the Syracuse campus that I want to see, including one in front of Hendricks Chapel, where I sang in choir. I'm especially interested to see the depiction of Syracuse's Archbold stadium, which was torn down before my freshman year to make way for the Carrier Dome. You can see the dome behind the chapel in the picture above. In the film, the old stadium has been digitally inserted to replace the Dome, and it'll be interesting to see what that looked like!

What's Getting Better Reviews Than Indiana Jones?

A few days ago, I told you I was working on a new project - an alumni webpage for my college chapel choir. I worried that maybe I was just being sentimental - That perhaps my old classmates had better things to do than stroll down memory lane. My sister, Julie, who creates websites for a living, predicted the site would be a hit because people never think to do webpages like this. Well, I put the site online on Sunday, and I'm relieved to say the early reviews are quite positive. I put out an e-mail blast to as many former choir members as I could find. I've received several responses similar to this one, from a classmate whom I have not seen in more than 25 years:

Dear John,

Yes, you have found another HCC alum! Thanks for e-mailing me and letting me know about the web site. I visited, and the memories came flooding back. I wanted to send you a quick message to let you know how much I enjoyed the site and how much I appreciate all your hard work to put it together. What a great idea!

And this one from our choir director. Winston, who was around 30 when I was in the choir, reminded me with great clarity that even through our nostalgic haze, time does not stand still!

John,

You blew me away!! First, I was very surprised to hear from you and, second, the website gave me cold chills. Seeing those pix brought back surprisingly strong memories. Wow do I miss that whole scene...we really had it nice, didn't we? I'm still happily married to Shery, with 4 children and 2 grandsons. I weigh more, have less hair but still get to make music every day....I'm grateful.

Finally - lest you think being in a Chapel Choir made us all little choir boys and choir girls, remember - this was STILL college! From the one-and-only Diana:

Oh My God!
Yes. I am an HCC alum. 2nd Soprano, 1st Alto 79-82. Tenor when I drank too much on Saturday night.

LOL! Reflections like that one are the reason I built that website!

It Doesn't Beat Working, But It Beats LOOKING For Work!

For the past week or so, between beating my head against the wall and poring through endless job search engines, I took a couple of days to build a new website - one that I could have only imagined being able to have done just a couple of months ago, when I had neither the time nor the skills to do so. Unlike my original site, which was all business, this site is a welcome avocation - a search for college friends and for the choir music that at one time bound us together. Combining my recently acquired web skills and video editing skills, I have assembled a simple video trailer for the new site, hendrickschapelchoiralumni.com. The song you'll hear is "The Lord Bless You And Keep You" by Peter Lutkin, then and now the de facto anthem of the Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel Choir. This version was recorded at the Washington Cathedral in May of 1981, and yes, I am in the recording. Enjoy!

Nine Hours, Four Beers, One Fish. (And A Song!)

This is a fish tale that is not about "the one that got away", but about ALL the ones that got away! Some of my WBAL buddies took me out to the Chesapeake Bay over the weekend for a little sport fishing... The way they figured it, we'd get on the boat by 6 am Saturday, motor on out into the bay, fill our bellies with beer, fill the cooler with fish, and be back on shore by 11 am.

Well, for the first time since college, I WAS sipping a Corona by 6 am, but pretty much nothing else went according to plan. We had 17 lines cast to catch fish, and two hours into the trip, we finally had some action. Larry Roberts reeled in a 35-inch Rockfish - it was promising to be one hell of a day. The actual fish-catching interrupted our breakfast, so we were soon back to our sandwiches and beer. It turns out we didn't have to hurry to finish our food, because that would turn out to be the ONLY fish we'd catch all day!

Our captain felt bad about the lack of action, so he continued to drive in large sweeping circles for another SEVEN hours. We did not get back to the dock until 3 pm, which was exactly one hour AFTER the start of a wedding that one of our party was supposed to be attending.

The host for this whole shindig was Dan, a really nice financial planner for one America's leading brokerage firms, who would like to make me a client, despite the fact that I currently have no discernable source of income. All I can say (with a smile) is that I surely hope Dan draws a better yield on his client's money than he does with fish!

On a somewhat more successful note, one of my fellow non-fishermen was John Patti, who DID deliver a digital copy of that nearly 30-year-old vinyl record of my college choir that I discussed a few weeks back. Now, for the first time in decades, I can once again hear myself singing as a young man! Check out this rockin version of Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho, performed by Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel Choir at Washington's National Cathedral in May of 1981. I'm in the back row, fifth guy from the left in the picture below...

Let's Go, Orange!

Please humor your blogger just long enough to send a shout out of congratulations to Rachel R. ! Rachel is the oldest daughter of our good friends, Dan and Lisa, and was the youngest person to attend my wedding... gestating away in her mother's belly! I am pleased to announce that Rachel will be starting college in the fall, and she has chosen my alma mater, Syracuse University! I will spare Rachel's Mom and Dad all of my college drinking horror stories (you could drink legally in New York at 18 back then anyway, so it's apples and oranges, Dan and Lisa!) , and instead present the Syracuse Fight Song, "Down, Down The Field", as performed by the Syracuse University Marching Band:


Rachel - Please be sure to have a slice or two at the Varsity for me!

Friday Odds and Ends (Mostly Odds!)

If you have school age children, you know there's nothing more "fun" than "helping" your kid finish up a major school project. Our 10-year-old son, Spencer, had a social studies project due today - the class is doing biographies, so who do you think he chose? You get one guess, and here's a clue. It's a Matthews family obsession. OK. So we (sorry, I meant HE) had to make a lifesize representation of Walt... Most kids pulled out the crayons and went to work. Mrs. Matthews, being the perfectionist uberMom she is, pulled out the construction paper, and together we (HE) cut a suit for Walt... I tied one of my Disney ties, and scanned it at real size for the chest, and Robin gave him suit pockets and cuffs for the pants... Oh, and his "shirt" was real fabric, too. We spent the entire night constructing it on the island in the kitchen. So, what do you think of our creation? We (HE) better get an "A", that's all I've gotta say!

After more than a year of being pestered by me, my friend and former work associate Jen Richer, has joined the TiVo universe. As readers of my new website already know, I consider TiVo to be one of the great turn of the century inventions. Note, I endorsed TiVo, not your generic cable company DVRs... TiVo is simply more user-friendly and has better search functions than brand X, and those enlightened enough to have it connected through wifi also have access to a full array of nifty features, including the ability to send and receive home movies, view snapshots on your TV, download movie rentals, listen to internet radio and a bunch of other stuff you can't do with other DVRs. If this sounds like a paid endorsement for TiVo, unfortunately it isn't. It is an endorsement, but I wasn't paid!

Finally... When we moved into our current house four years ago, I made Robin get rid of all of our old record albums, because we had not played a single one of them in the 13 years we lived in our old house, and we had long ago replaced most of them with compact discs. However, I did save ONE album... a 1981 recording of Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel Choir (Hear a clip of the 2007 version of the choir here). If you look at the liner notes on the album, you will see my name in the choir directory, along with that of Jonathan Greene, one of my best friends and the guy who introduced me to my wife! My friend, John Patti of WBAL has one of those turntables that can hook up directly to a computer, and he has agreed to transfer that old album to digital music files for me, so I can annoy the family by playing 18th century music on road trips. And I'm sure you'll soon be able to hear some old clips here at Life on The Beach as well! Lucky you!