My Birthday Week started with a quick trip to New York on Monday and Tuesday – being sure to be back in time for the big day on Wednesday. Diana has often commented on how heavy my suitcase is when I travel with an extra pair of shoes and keep the shoe trees in them. She attempted to remedy that with my first gift on Sunday night – lightweight shoe trees and a start of the week card.
When I opened my work bag on the plane on Monday morning I found that an interloper had snuck another card and gift inside. A perfect snack was nicely wrapped – caramel filled M&Ms.
On the flight I watched the movie “Breathe” and really enjoyed it. The story is of Robin Cavendish (played by Andrew Garfield) and his wife Diana (played by Claire Foy of “The Queen” fame) and their refusal to give up in the face of Robin being stricken with polio at the age of 28. Robin is confined to a wheel chair and given months to live and not permitted to leave the hospital ward. With the help of an inventor friend they develop a wheelchair with a portable breathing apparatus and spend many happy years traveling abroad, raising their child, and helping other patients.
The work dinner that I had arranged for Monday evening was canceled and so I made a trip up to the Jazz Standard where the Mingus Orchestra was playing. As I was walking from the subway stop to the club, I noticed that I was close to the Flatiron building. This is a well known New York landmark that I hadn’t seen yet – so a quick detour seemed in order.
Upon completion in 1902, it was one of the tallest buildings in the city at 20 floors high. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street. The name “Flatiron” comes from its resemblance to a cast-iron clothes iron.
The Mingus Big Band has won several Grammy awards for their live recordings at the Standard and so I had high hopes for the sister orchestra. Unfortunately, the show was very disappointing. The sound was great as usual but the musicians appeared to have come together minutes before the show and seemed to be sight reading music for the first time. There were clearly several very talented musicians in the orchestra – particularly the guitar player and French horn player – but the overall effect was very underwhelming. Oh well, it passed the time on a Monday evening just fine.
I was staying at a new hotel this time called the Downtown Association. This is an old private club in the Wall Street area that recently added 20 guest rooms. The bar/clubhouse is like walking into an old style, private club and I enjoyed it very much. I was entertained to find a picture of the Flatiron building on the wall just outside my hotel room.
Tuesday was a full work day – breakfast meeting, long sessions, and a late flight that got me home just in time to celebrate my birthday and find some nice treats waiting beside the bed.
I had work meetings most of my birthday but did hear a lot of early morning activity in the kitchen and then caught sight of the start of a pavlova in the oven.
After work finished, I was relaxing on the couch and listening to music when some surprise guests showed up for dinner – Patty and Brent. They brought one of their typically humorous cards.
McD, with an assist from Brent, put together a delicious birthday dinner – steak, scallops, mushroom medley (featuring an array of very interesting varieties), and Wahba risotto. All followed by the delicious pavlova birthday cake.
The observant amongst you may have noticed the “Keith’s Spirit Concoctions” barrel lurking in a few of these pictures – that was one of my excellent gifts from Diana. It was accompanied by a book of recipes for barrel aging cocktails. I’m priming the barrel now before experimenting with my first recipe – thinking that’ll be barrel aged negroni.
On Thursday I finished watching a movie on Netflix that had caught my attention. “The King of New Orleans” follows a taxi driver, Larry Shirt, whose passengers are the city’s tourists, socialites, musicians, housekeepers, bizarre characters and reporters. One of those passengers is Bobby Cohn, a Harvard student home from school and in the midst of a personal crisis. Larry and Bobby develop a bond that ultimately survives Hurricane Katrina and is strongly based on a love for the city that they both call home. This was one of those quiet and unassuming movies with a big heart that I enjoy.
The other big news this week arrived on Thursday. Diana is most likely going back to work – the details are all being finalized.
McD had a great idea on Friday afternoon – why don’t we go up to Adriatica and try out the happy hour at Gregory’s restaurant (there are only a few more Fridays before she’ll be back to work)? Who could argue with that suggestion? Gregory was relaxing when we arrived and we quickly put him to work cooking up some of his excellent mussels and a side of lobster risotto. Joe (our waiter at Gregory’s for years) took great care of us and we learned that Lydia (Gregory’s wife) shares the same birthday as I do.
I loaded my birthday CDs (an excellent annual tradition by McD) into Penelope for the drive to our workout on Saturday morning. Diana did a fabulous job of selecting songs to remind us of the concerts we enjoyed in the last year. Check out the retro vinyl record looking CD.
Apparently my 54 year old brain hasn’t deteriorated too much yet as I was able to set a new crossword record at our coffee break after our workouts – much to Diana’s frustration.
I transitioned birthday week privileges over to Alicia on Friday evening. She’s 18 this Sunday! Diana took us to dinner at Perry’s steak house on Saturday evening to celebrate since there are plans to attend the local McKinney Memorial Day concert on Sunday night. Alicia enjoyed being pampered with a candle and rose petals, tuna tartare, a special steak and desert trio.
Poor Diana has been very busy this week trying to accommodate all the birthday plans and as usual she rose beautifully to the challenge.
Here’s a Ray Charles instrumental that I found this week when looking for Humble Pie’s “Black Coffee” and enjoyed:
And here’s some excellent John Coltrane to round out the birthday week post:
routine activity was dinner with Patty and Brent on Friday night. The food was amazing as usual with smoked pork and chicken and an excellent sauce for the pork. They were celebrating their wedding anniversary on Saturday and so we picked up some funny gifts at the Groovy Coop in downtown McKinney after coffee on Friday. Patty loves cats and so this towel seemed appropriate.
This week started in Nashville and finished up with Campbell’s graduation in San Diego – a very busy and proud week indeed.
The group activity on Tuesday night was a pool tournament in a hall just off the main Broadway strip. My partner and I won our first two games and were in good position for the playoffs but quickly lost to some real hustlers.
We landed in San Diego in the early afternoon, checked into the hotel, freshened up and headed out for dinner. I chose a place called the Wine Vault and Bistro on India St from some online research and we were both very happy with the choice. The restaurant is only open Thursday through Sunday and has a very inexpensively priced three course dinner and wine pairings on Thursdays. I started with a sausage and black lentil appetizer, then a roasted cauliflower dish (keeping the vegetarian theme going), and finished with a mille-feuille dessert. Each of the nine choices had a separate wine pairing and so we selected based as much on the wine as the dishes. We learned that most of the regular customers were on a wine tour of Italy and so signed up for the tour mailing list.
Starlite had great cocktails and food in a beautifully designed retro atmosphere. I enjoyed a buratta and ratatouille dish to keep the veggie theme going.
Campbell and Molly met us for dinner at Craft and Commerce in Little Italy – just across the street from Harbor where we had met them for brunch on our previous visit with Kris and Cat. We sat outside and were warmed up by a small fire pit in the center of the table which seemed like a bit of a liability. Again the food and cocktails were very good. I had a mushroom and buratta tart to finish out my vegetarian weekend. My Dad would not have appreciated the very crispy carrots and other vegetables.
On Wednesday night I tried out a new jazz club that I heard about from a gentleman at the table next to me at Dizzy’s a few weeks ago for the Christian McBride Big Band show. The Jazz Standard is located at 28th and Park Avenue and an easy subway ride from the Wall Street area. It’s in the basement beneath the Blue Smoke barbeque restaurant and is structured as a supper club similar to Birdland. They had a number of my favourite whiskey drinks on the menu and I paired that with a yummy shrimp etoufee.
pianists since the bebop era. He taught piano and keyboard harmony at Rutgers University for over 25 years and now teaches at Juilliard. Some of his best albums were recorded with Stan Getz in the late 1980s and I highly recommend “Bossas and Ballads – The Lost Sessions”. I was very fortunate to have decided to investigate the Jazz Standard on the week when Barron was playing. Here’s a Brazilian themed song he played – I really wasn’t in that bad a seat but recording is highly discouraged and I needed to be stealthy with my phone resting on the table.
her trip there with us. This was a funny experience – after two complete tours around the store and asking artists manning booths about the stand Anne had been at and getting no help at all I caught sight of one of the items in a display case with a name on it. Consulting the website told me that the stall had been a one week only “pop-up” store. I was able to order online – what a lot of detective work for what I thought would be a simple purchase.
The band was the Eric Reed quintet and I enjoyed them very much. The music was quite similar to Kenny Barron the night before but with more slower, lyrical and emotional content. I really enjoyed one of Reed’s compositions named “Wish” that he wrote after the death of his father about all the things he wished he could still discuss with him.
On Friday morning I headed out for a leisurely breakfast (trying to follow the Jazz Standard coaster advice) and was amazed at the backwardness of the trash bags stacked up on the sidewalks – apparently Friday is trash day in the Wall Street area. It’s also interesting that it’s acceptable to dispose of small appliances with regular trash.
Detectives bookstore. All of the books that we picked up seemed either a bit too out there or too depressing. The only one I found that sounded appealing was one that Diana reminded me we had bought on our last visit and I haven’t read yet. We moseyed across the street to Boulevardier and watched the Kentucky Derby (neither of our picks won) and enjoyed their amazing tartare (complete with quail egg).
crossword, and pool time. I put a new tablet stand that Amazon had just delivered to good use in watching the New Orleans Pelicans versus Golden State Warriors basketball playoff game by the pool.
The visit started on Wednesday afternoon with the girls making their regular happy hour visit to Pascal’s Manale for oysters and bubbly. This restaurant has been open for over 100 years and is the originator of barbecue shrimp. I heard the comedian Amy Shumer interviewed recently and when asked about her favorite place to eat she said that if she ever had a couple of days free she flew to New Orleans and had barbecue shrimp and bread pudding at Pascal’s.
It was a pleasant saunter through the French Quarter on Ursuline Street from Effervescence to our dinner destination, Trinity on Decatur Street. This was another new place for us that Denny and Anne had really enjoyed on a recent visit. The food, decor, open kitchen and service were all outstanding. I can’t wait to return.
From Trinity Denny led us to Gasa Gasa music club on Freret Street to listen to the Rayo Brothers band. I really enjoyed this club – great sound and space. The band was a cross between the Avett Brothers and the Band of Heathens and we all enjoyed them very much. They play at Jazzfest next weekend.
Friday was Jazzfest day and we got a nice early start to get set up at the Gentilly stage for the day. The stage has a new logo on top since this is Fats Domino year. After an opening set from The Deslondes, a local Americana band, we enjoyed a strong set from Eric Lindell. The initial 30 minutes were a bit sleepy but picked up with a cover of Cinnamon Girl and several more strong songs.
Denny had to drive the boys to a soccer tournament on Saturday early. The rest of us got to sleep in and then enjoy a great brunch at the Canal Street Bistro. The lobster crepe and particularly the sauce was delicious.
a beautiful courtyard and at the Michalopoulos (checked the spelling on that one too) gallery to see if there were any new paintings that D had to have. We finished up at a new place named Curio which had delicious small bar snacks. Now it was time to head back to Webster Street to relax before heading to the airport for our flight back home. I got this picture of the sun setting over the Mississippi which seemed like an appropriate closing picture for another amazing New Orleans visit.
After the enjoyable stop at EO I was ready for a coffee before heading to a jazz show at the Village Vanguard. Fortunately, New York has a locally owned coffee shop on every corner – something I really miss in the Dallas area – that and being able to walk to so many great spots.
After a full day of meetings with 200 of my IT friends on Wednesday, I took my boss and buddy Mike to Bobo in Greenwich Village to try some more of the menu before the trio arrived for the weekend. We did a good job of sampling the dinner menu and I chose scallops on a bed of pureed celery root as my entree – there’s something very delicious about that combination. I was able to make a Saturday brunch reservation and a plan was coming together.
would like – she didn’t have to think about it – rhubarb or bread pudding in the description and I’m sold.
music was very improvisational and we were amazed when the two would join each other in perfect unison out of what seemed to be a completely free form improvisational journey. Caine is a classically trained pianist and has released 16 relatively well known classical recordings. I would not have guessed this from the free form abandon he brought to his jazz playing.
activity – we assembled bikes for foster children. A representative from the organization “Together We Rise” gave a quick talk on the challenges of foster care before we began building. The statistics he quoted were pretty staggering – only 3% of foster children attend college and it gets more disturbing from there. The usual amazing view from our office is being encroached upon by the continuing explosion in new construction. Speaking of construction – I was impressed by the quality of the graphics as I tracked Diana’s arrival at La Guardia airport which is severely under construction just now and for the next 3 years.
Stigers at Birdland (conveniently directly across the street from our hotel). Stigers is an American jazz vocalist, saxophonist, guitarist, and songwriter. He achieved a number of hits in the early 1990s, most notably international 1991 hit, “I Wonder Why”, which reached No. 5 in the UK and No. 9 in the US. Diana and I both commented that this was probably the best show that we’ve seen this year. The first song he played was Randy Newman’s “I’ll be Home” and he had us hooked in the first few bars.
We enjoyed the show so much that we opted to stay for the late show which featured quite a different selection of music and finished up with the song that captured us at the start, “I’ll be Home”. Diana had a good chat with Curtis after the show.
From Fig and Olive we walked to the Chelsea Market where the ladies did some quick shopping while we enjoyed coffees. Then more walking through the village – down Bleeker Street, through Washington Square park and ultimately back over to Employees Only for dinner (with a brief stop in a sports bar to see how the New Orleans Pelicans were doing in the NBA playoffs). Along the way we snapped a picture of the birthday boy at Cafe Wha? where Bob Dylan played his first concert and tried to recreate the classic Bob Dylan album cover – we needed some vintage cars to finish it off correctly.
On the walk back to the hotel (subway wait was too long) we experienced a classic Denny and Anne occurrence – Denny looks into the window of an establishment and they both agree they have to go in. In this case it was a Cuban restaurant, Guantanamera NYC, with live music. The music was excellent and we had a good late night snack while the ladies danced. Nicely done Denny! I first heard this song on the excellent “Buena Vista Social Club” recording by Ry Cooder – highly recommended listening.
We attended our latest concert at the Kessler on Thursday night and the artist was The James Hunter Six – Hunter on vocals and guitar, along with double bass, drums, keyboards, tenor sax and baritone sax. James Hunter is an English R&B and soul singer who spent decades playing in small pubs and clubs around London before 
catching the ear of Van Morrison who appeared on his first album, “Believe What I Say”. Hunter toured with Van in the early 90s and sang backup on one of my favorite albums, “A Night in San Francisco”, in 1994. Hunter’s first album was released in the US in 2006 and he’s been touring regularly since. He’s one of those rare musicians who has success later in life – now 55.
this time of year. Around 6pm a strong hail storm erupted, managing to block one of the drains on the patio. I got the joyous task of going out in the storm to brush the water into the pool before it entered the house. Just when we thought the flood was over, it would start back up again. The good news is that Penelope was in the garage and no damage was sustained to our new roof (replaced after a hail storm right around this time last year that happened while we were attending a show at the Kessler). Here’s a video of the hail storm in progress:
I finished the book “Every Note Played” by Lisa Genova earlier this week and absolutely loved it. For the first time in a while I’m going to do a separate post on this novel as I have quite a bit to say on it. I came across a TED talk from Genova about “What you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s” that is worth a quick watch. The message I took away is that you have to build up a reserve of synapses by reading and engaging in mentally stimulating exercises so that if some stop to function correctly you still have backups.
I’ve started the new book from John Irving, “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, but am only 50 pages into the 700 page tome and so don’t have much to report yet. It is shaping up like a classic Irving novel so far and so I’m sure I’ll enjoy the remaining time reading.
Next was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 performed by the 25 year old English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor who first performed in a fish and chip shop by the seaside and won the BBC Young Musician competition at age 11. I loved the precision of the string section in this piece – absolute unison from lead violin through double bass in the very quiet pizzicato sections. Grosvenor shone brightest in the cadenza at the end of the first movement which I found very creative. Here’s Glen Gould performing the same piece:
The final piece of the evening was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Back to that crossword clue – did you figure it out? The answer is “Eroica”, the name Beethoven ultimately gave to the symphony. I take umbrage with the clue as the Playbill for the concert says that Beethoven says of Napoleon after he declared himself Emperor, “Is even he nothing but an ordinary man! Now he will also trample upon human rights and become a slave to his own ambition; now he will set himself above all other men and become a tyrant”. He went to the table, grabbed the top of the title page of the score and tore it in half. The first page was rewritten and the symphony was given the name Sinfonia eroica. The symphony was very familiar to me as I heard my Mum play it in our home many times growing up.
Thursday night was jazz night. I took the subway down to the West Village and caught the early set at Small’s jazz club. This is an aptly named tiny cellar club where the first few rows of seats are right on stage with the band. The first show was a sextet with tenor and alto saxes, piano, guitar, drums and bass and fully occupied the small stage. I appreciated the mirrors angled above the piano and drums that let you see exactly what the musicians were up to.
My main book this week was “The Names” by Don DeLillo. This was recommended by Suzy Hansen in her book that I finished last week as a good tour of expat life in Greece. I read DeLillo’s most famous novel,”White Noise”, a few years ago and was disappointed but decided to give him another try with “The Names”. Portions of the book were compelling and enjoyable but the deep discussion on the origins of alphabets and language were too involved for my taste.
Saturday was an on and off sunny day and I was able to sit outside and finish my long running book “Notes on a Foreign Country” by Suzy Hansen. The book chronicles Hansen’s changing views on American foreign policy as she lives in Turkey and visits Greece, Afghanistan, and Iran. One of the hardest hitting passages is when Hansen returns to New York and is admitted to a Brooklyn hospital for what is ultimately diagnosed as pneumonia. She tells of her American friends saying she was so lucky to be home when it happened. However, her story of misdiagnosis and the conditions in the Brooklyn hospital as compared to the Turkish hospitals she had visited is pretty scary. The book is fairly dense and intellectual but worth reading for a differing view on America’s role on the world stage.
Don’t think you would ever guess correctly. After an all day work meeting, Mc D and I were invited to attend WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) Monday Night Raw. I remember my Grampa watching wrestling on TV on the weekends and have briefly watched some WWE on TV but never imagined being one of the 
rowdy nuts that watches it in an arena. It honestly seemed even more fake live and there were long periods of downtime between bouts for the adverts on the live TV broadcast. That being said, it was good, silly Monday night entertainment. The highlight was John Cena making a speech about how disappointed he was that the Undertaker hadn’t answered his challenge for a fight at WrestleMania.
I felt sorry for the folks queuing up for the late show in the cold and snow outside the Blue Note. We hadn’t quite had enough music for the night and so headed around the corner to Bleeker Street and the Red Lion pub which has had good live music each time I’ve visited. There was a duo of guitar/singer and drummer playing classic rock songs very well that we enjoyed for a while. Things picked up when one of the bar tenders joined to cover a couple of Janis Joplin songs.
Flying home on Friday afforded me a 40 degree temperature change by leaving New York at 40 degrees and arriving to 80 degree plus in Dallas. You can see by this picture from the plane leaving New York that most of the snow had melted and it was a nice sunny day.
book, “A Visit from the Goon Squad”. This held my attention much more effectively and I read the full book out by the pool on Saturday. The book is centered around the music business and the change in the economic and distribution methods over the last decade. I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in music – the story telling is innovative, interesting and creative.
Vinyl Matters” by Jennifer Bickerdike. This is a coffee table style book that I received as a Christmas gift from Diana and has chapters from musicians and people involved in the music business relating why they love and appreciate vinyl records. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Nick Hornby who wrote “High Fidelity” that was the basis for the John Cusack film.