“The Tartan Army heads home”
We began the week with a walk in the park on Monday morning. We had a couple of celebrity sightings during the outing – Kenny passed on his bike with a “Hey, Hey, Hey,” and then we passed Cooper Manning with his very recognizable gait. I also got a thumbs up for my Gleason t-shirt from another guy wearing a similar tribute.
I watched some World Cup in the afternoon and it was almost a replay of last Monday – Messi and Mbappe with multiple excellent goals. Messi’s goal gave him the lead with the most goals ever scored in World Cups. The France game in Philadelphia had a long weather delay as a major thunderstorm moved through. Ronaldo had yet to score and has a lot of catching up to do. I really am enjoying the early games and looking forward to the elimination rounds, which may well include Scotland for the first time ever.
We hung the new jazz stars that Diana gave me for my birthday in the evening. Bill Evans and Dizzie Gillespie are now playing with Miles. I love looking at this band and enjoy that they all came from that wonderful little store in San Sebastian. The artist really captures all three so well.
Here’s some background if you’re not familiar with the three players – their careers are very much linked:
“Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and Dizzy Gillespie are connected through the evolution of modern jazz, though they played different roles and belonged to slightly different generations.
Direct connections
- Miles Davis and Bill Evans
- Bill Evans was a key member of Miles Davis’s late-1950s groups.
- Evans’s harmonic style and impressionistic piano playing strongly influenced Davis’s landmark album Kind of Blue.
- Evans played on most of the tracks on Kind of Blue, one of the most influential jazz recordings ever made.
- Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie
- Both were trumpet virtuosos and major innovators.
- Early in his career, Miles Davis was influenced by Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop revolution.
- In the 1940s, Davis played alongside bebop pioneers including Charlie Parker, who was Gillespie’s close collaborator.
- Davis later moved away from the fast, complex bebop style associated with Gillespie and helped develop cool jazz, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.
Musical lineage
You can think of their relationship as a chain of influence:
Dizzy Gillespie → Miles Davis ← Bill Evans
- Dizzy Gillespie helped create bebop, the modern jazz language that shaped the young Miles Davis.
- Miles Davis became one of jazz’s greatest innovators, building on and reacting to bebop.
- Bill Evans collaborated with Davis and helped shape Davis’s modal jazz period, particularly on Kind of Blue.
Shared importance
Together, they represent major stages in jazz history:
- Dizzy Gillespie — Bebop pioneer (1940s).
- Miles Davis — Innovator across multiple jazz movements (1940s–1980s).
- Bill Evans — Influential pianist whose harmonic concepts helped define modal and modern jazz (1950s–1970s).
In short, Dizzy Gillespie influenced the jazz world that shaped Miles Davis, while Bill Evans was a close collaborator who helped Miles Davis create some of the most important music in jazz history.”
We watched the new Netflix rom-com “Voicemails for Isabelle” on Monday evening.
We both enjoyed the movie, although one of us fell asleep and missed the last few minutes. Interestingly the settings oscillated between Austin and San Francisco and so we were able to comment on how unlikely it was that scenes would take place where they would – e.g. the main character sitting on a bench by the lookout on the far side of the Golden Gate bridge – that would have been a several hours walk up a very steep hill from where she worked.
Diana had her usual pickleball on Tuesday morning and I went for a workout at the New Orleans Athletic Club (it’s getting too hot for me to do too much outside.) I listened to an audio book of “Just Kids” by Patti Smith as I exercised.
After the NOAC, I relaxed by watching the Portugal game. Ronaldo redeemed himself with two nice goals in the first half, and Portugal finished with a commanding victory.
We had a larger group than anticipated for trivia in the evening. Jack, Alex and Aidan came just a few hours after returning home from Iceland. By all accounts they had a fabulous trip. Mason came as well, after a hard day at work. That was a good thing as he knew several answers that nobody else had a clue about. We were in the lead going into the final question with 90 points, and three teams tied for second with 86 points.
Here’s a disturbing picture from inside Dat Dog:
Jack Nicholson from “The Shining” in an Edvard Munch “Scream” style hot dog. Quite unique and disturbing. I know quite a bit about the “Scream” painting, having “helped” Will with a paper about it.
The final question was not something any of us new anything about – so we bet zero out of a possible 20 and won by 4 points – most of the other teams deploying the same strategy. We were quite proud of our win – a true team effort.
Diana had her first walk in the park with Julia in a while on Wednesday morning – summer’s get busy with kids and travel.
Anticipation had been building all day for the Scotland vs Brazil World Cup match in the evening. I enjoyed watching the interactions between the two groups of fans on TV – Brazilians teaching the Tartan Army to Samba. The commentators noted that they had not heard such levels of participation in the national anthems at any other games.
Unfortunately, Scotland made several silly mistakes that cost them goals – the first at 7 min into the game, ultimately losing 3-0. I really hope one or two of those silly goals don’t end up being the difference in advancing to the elimination round, and I have a nasty feeling they will. It is pleasant to hear World Cup updates on the national news where the presenters biggest concern is if Scotland will make it to the next round – wasn’t even on their minds prior to the start of the tournament and their introduction to the Tartan Army.
I enjoyed this LinkedIn post from Matthew Ricks, one of my Sun Microsystems customers when we ran their data centers.
I enjoyed this clever cartoon in the newspaper on Thursday morning:
The temperatures in Europe continued to break records and I laughed at this article about the “gritters” being out in Scotland to spread sand over the main roads to try and reflect heat and cool the surface.
Gritters out in Scotland in Heatwave
It was 88 degrees in Dumfries (my birthplace) and that’s what prompted the “gritting.” I would be quite happy with 88 this week, but it’s all what you’re used to and equipped for.
Denny was experiencing some very nice cool temperatures in Colorado. Doesn’t he look a bit like Julie Andrews? “The Hills are Alive.”
We watched the movie “The Sheep Detectives” on Thursday afternoon and night. Highly recommended. I have no idea how they make these AI generated sheep so loveable and believable, but they do.
In between movie sessions, we tried a new place for dinner and music. I had heard a song from Dex Daley on WWOZ (local radio station) that featured steel drums – they are a favourite of McD’s after she watched a show about how they are made. The song is not available on Spotify and so I had looked across the internet and found an article saying he was playing at Afrodisiac (intentional spelling change) in Gentilly on Thursday evening. This is a Jamaican themed restaurant and I had been wanting to visit for a while to try their jerk chicken. I missed the Gentlemen Out At Lunch (GOAL) lunch there a few months ago.
The food and drinks were delicious. We tried the jerk chicken and shrimp nachos, a salad with pineapple, cucumber and avocado with a lemon vinaigrette dressing, a hibiscus lemonade and a pain killer (D doing her best to teleport to an island beach.)
I highly recommend the food and drinks and just caution you that it seemed to take the better part of an hour for them to arrive, and the place wasn’t overly busy. Fortunately, we had the music of Dex Daley to enjoy. Such positive energy and sound.
Here’s a link to a lot more detail about Daley’s interesting history and background:
Friday began with another walk in the park – seemed a wee bit cooler than earlier in the week.
Diana played pickleball in the afternoon with some friends and came back quite pumped about the session. I enjoyed some World Cup.
In the evening we watched the “Somebody Feed Phil” episode about Montreal and made note of a couple of potential places to visit for local fare.
I also watched a bit of a very silly movie called “Little Brother” starring John Cena.
They seen to have more elections in New Orleans than I’ve seen anywhere else. On Saturday you voted to decide if we should keep paying for the Garden District security patrol (hope so) and for the run off candidates for Senate. There’s an initial election and if nobody gets enough votes (above 50% I think), then there’s a run off between the top two candidates (the case in this one), and then there will be the final vote in November.
I walked down to the fire station on Magazine Street with Diana on Saturday morning so that she could vote and I could get us coffee from the French Truck. She was finishing voting by the time I picked up our coffees – very efficient.
After that, we made a trip to the NOAC for some exercise in the air conditioning. Then a trip to Trader Joe’s for needed groceries and supplies. Saturday morning is most certainly the prime time to go there – as confirmed by our checkout guy. Apparently Sunday morning is a quite different proposition. We gathered the ingredients to make buffalo chickpea wraps – what appears to be a healthy version of Taco Bell’s crunchwrap supreme. For the first time that I remember we divided up the ingredients and set out to different sections of the store. Such good teamwork! This is what they should look like:
Diana also treated herself to some peonies, one of her favourite flowers.
As the group matches ended, Scotland’s fate was sealed by that 3-0 loss to Brazil, and the Tartan Army began the journey home.
We made the chickpea wraps for a late lunch/early dinner on Sunday. They were tasty and the recipe created way more filling than could fit in four large tortillas – we easily filled six. After eating, we drove over to the Constantinople porch stage to see Dave Jordan and Rurik Nunan perform. We’ve heard them both separately at the Broadside and enjoyed their individual sounds. Together they blended very pleasantly.
Can you believe Jack has hosted 281 shows on his front porch? That’s some staying power.
Kenny and Kara attended a music festival curated by Wilco in Massachusetts over the weekend. I’ve always wanted to visit Morocco and so was intrigued by this photo:
I finished “Contrapposto” by Dave Eggers this week. I always enjoy Eggers writing and was not disappointed. The detail of the art world was a whole new thing for me – at a much deeper level than that from “The Fine Art of Lying” from a few weeks ago. I’m not sure this is for everyone but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Here’s an online summary of the story:
“Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school—an experience of dubious value—and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart.
Contrapposto is a moving and very funny novel about allies and art, and what it means to be an artist. All through their lives, Cricket sees Olympia as his soulmate and destiny, and while she is always his champion, romantically her eyes are always seeking something—and someone—else. Their love changes over the decades, but their commitment to each other, and their search for meaning in the making of art, never wanes. The novel spans the globe, from New York to Thailand, Indiana to Paris, and follows Cricket and Olympia through sickness and health, war and death.
The novel is a wild and beautiful examination of the rules and market forces of the art world, but chiefly it’s about two friends who believe they can change that world, and bring new meaning to it, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals, and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.”
My next book was “The Man Who Came Uptown” by George Pelecanos. I don’t think I’ve read any of his books before and picked it up online while waiting in the queue for several other books. It was a quick, easy and relatively entertaining read. Nothing special.
“In bestselling and Emmy-nominated writer George Pelecanos’ novel, one of the best mysteries of 2018 (Publishers Weekly), an ex-offender must choose between the man who got him out and the woman who showed him another path.
Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison’s librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael’s trial.
Outside, Michael encounters a Washington, D.C. that has changed a lot during his time locked up. Once shady storefronts are now trendy beer gardens and flower shops. But what hasn’t changed is the hard choice between the temptation of crime and doing what’s right. Trying to balance his new job, his love of reading, and the debt he owes to the man who got him released, Michael struggles to figure out his place in this new world before he loses control.
Smart and fast-paced, The Man Who Came Uptown brings Washington, D.C. to life in a high-stakes story of tough choices.”
There were second line tributes this week for Ronell Johnson, a multi-instrumentalist with the Preservation Hall band for many years. I love this picture with the band members on the balcony above the Hall.
Offbeat article on Ronell Johnson
“Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House has been a long time favourite of mine, and so I was intrigued when I heard local hero, Deacon John, playing a cover on WWOZ. He does a great job. I love the “Crowded Shotgun House” name for the EP.
