Both birthdays are behind us and now it’s time for a Memorial Day celebration! We started with a late afternoon snack at The Keeper, one of our favourite local restaurants with the best calamari we think we’ve tasted. I chuckled at the mermaid handles on the door as one of my funny birthday gifts from the Ogans involved a picture of Diana’s head on top of a mermaid body purchased on Denny’s birthday trip to San Miguel de Allende. The lobster sliders are quite yummy as well.
Later in the evening, Diana and I walked up to the charity concert at Adriatica that happens every year and stayed to watch the fireworks after the show. The concert was held in an open piece of land behind the new developments that is shaped like an amphitheater. The sound was not very amphitheater like and McD commented that the sound crew needed to go and take lessons from the folks at the New Orleans jazzfest. Very true.
The musical headliner was Joe Nichols, a country artist that I’m not familiar with but Diana knew a couple of his songs. Pleasant background music for enjoying a nice early summer evening but nothing memorable at all. The fireworks after the show were set up on a raft in the middle of the manmade lake beside Harry’s restaurant and were quite impressive. In previous years, we’ve watched from Alicia’s balcony while she attended the festivities – this was the first year we’d been up close and Alicia decided to stay at home.
The magnolia trees in our back garden seem to be quite happy this year and celebrating Memorial Day in style with larger flowers than we remember and some good new growth.
It was back to New York again for me on Tuesday and an opportunity to meet up with my boss on Tuesday evening. We were headed to Barbounia at 20th and Park for dinner (a place that caught my eye on a walk back to the subway from the Jazz Standard) but made a quick stop at the “Library of Distilled Spirits” beforehand. This was a lovely new find with a great cocktail list and beautiful surroundings.
Barbounia is a Mediterranean restaurant with an Israeli/Middle Eastern concentration. We liked everything about it – the appetizers and mains were delicious with great ambience. So many things sounded good that it was really hard to choose. I ended up having duck “Shawarma” which was served over black rice, wild mushrooms, pearl onions, tahini and pine nuts – I loved the dish! My boss had short ribs Tajine that I sampled and they were equally delicious. I’m looking forward to visiting Barbounia again the next time Diana is with me.
It wasn’t too late when we finished dinner and so I suggested a stop at the Jazz Standard which is just a few blocks from the restaurant. We saw the Sachal Vasandani quintet. Sachal is a young jazz singer and a favourite of Wynton Marsalis. His voice and style have a little bit too much of the Michael Franks smooth approach for me but the band was excellent. James 
Francies was the stand out on piano – his sound, touch and improvisation were beautiful. Francies grew up in Houston and moved to New York in 2013. He’s in his early twenties, has won numerous awards and appears regularly on the Tonight Show playing with the Roots. He has composed music and movie soundtracks with Questlove. I had a brief chat with James after the show and found him to be very humble and charming. Here’s a video from the show. Obed Calvaire on the drums was also excellent and another up and coming young New York based jazz musician.
I met up with my friend Andrew (used to work with me at EDS/HP as a sales executive) on Wednesday night for dinner. He had suggested one of the fancy Wall Street steak houses but I was easily able to divert him to the Jazz Standard for barbecue and music. We enjoyed the same band and James Francies was even more impressive on the piano the second time around. Here’s a video of Francies with his own band and composition.
A pleasant schedule change at work allowed me to get back to Dallas in the early afternoon rather than close to midnight. Patty and Brent were planning to bring over Thai food to celebrate Diana’s employment before I got home and so I was able to crash that party and enjoy some yummy food.
I enjoyed the movie “Lucky”, starring Harry Dean Stanton as Lucky, on the flight to New York. Another quiet, unassuming movie about a retired man who lives alone in a very rural desert town. Much of the movie follows Lucky as he goes about his daily routine in a somewhat lackadaisical manner. About half way through he meets a new friend and the movie very cleverly shows his mood improving through subtle changes in his routine. I’m hoping for some new movies on the American Airlines system in June as I’ve now definitely watched everything that interests me at all.
The music channel on the plane surprised me with Blue Spirits by the jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard as a “new release”. This music was recorded in 1967 and has been re-mastered and released a few more times since. One of the interesting aspects of the recording is that there are three different pianists on the various tracks – Harold Mabern, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. The rhythm piano playing on the first song, Soul Surge, caught my attention (it’s Harold Mabern) and I was surprised when the style changed a lot on the next track – now I understand why.
Friday evening and a portion of Saturday were spent working my way through my “Honey Do List” which has become a bit lengthy with the upcoming visitors and graduation party. I’m happy to report that the bed relocation project has been completed since this picture was snapped. “Fix up misters” is the only remaining task and is awaiting some mounting hardware. Patty wondered if this was some fixing up I was doing on myself – Mister Robertson. The “feels like” temperature (adjusted for humidity impact) was 104 degrees on Friday which made for an ideal time to replace the filters in the attic – good exercise.
I finally finished John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” this week and don’t remember a book that took quite as long to complete. I enjoyed the book but wasn’t dragged back into it whenever I had some spare time. This is apparently Irving’s novel that is most often referred to as “an American classic”, ahead of his better know novels “The World According to Garp” and “The Cider House Rules”. The story portrays the enduring friendship between the narrator and Owen Meany during the time when the Vietnam War was having its most divisive effect on the United States. English teachers apparently often reference the first sentence of this book as one of the best – mainly because it contains the essence of the entire story. Here it is: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
As I write this post the Miles Davis recording of “It Never Entered My Mind” is playing and I think this may be the best and fullest trumpet sound I’ve heard on any of his recordings.