Here in Michigan, we really haven’t had much to cheer about when it comes to professional football. The Detroit Lions have been the butt of many jokes. Late night hosts had a field day (pun intended) when they went 0-16 in 2008. Even Jeopardy poked fun at them once:
For years Facebook posts about their games included the tag “Same Old Lions.” It actually looked like that was the way it might be again. In October, the team’s record sat at 1-6. People were starting to bash Coach Dan Campbell because this start was actually worse than his predecessor (Matt Patricia).
WDIV Local 4’s website states:
The subsequent turnaround was stunning, culminating in Sunday night’s 20-16 takedown of the Packers on national TV and on a freezing night at Lambeau Field. The Lions won eight of their final 10 games to finish 9-8, and even though Seattle’s win over the Rams had eliminated their remaining playoff hopes, the Lions played with impressive energy and confidence.
The win doused the Packers’ playoff bid, one that the experts had all but conceded to Aaron Rodgers’ team. Campbell was asked on the field at halftime why his team seemed so passionately motivated. He barked, “We don’t want them to go.”
The Lions have gone 65 years without a championship and 31 years without a play off win. We really haven’t had a lot to cheer about – until now.
How does Dan Campbell feel about the phrase “same old Lions?” He was very clear:
“I don’t want to hear that anymore, ‘the same old Lions,'” Campbell said. “That’s what all of this is about. There are so many things, but it all comes with winning. Yeah. I wanted to be a part of building a brand new brand. I like that. I also know. You want to do that, man, you really got to get in the dance. You’ve got to get in the tournament. You’ve got to make some waves in the tournament. That’s the next step.”
Win or lose, I’ve always worn my Lions gear. I’ve always rooted for the home team in good seasons and in bad. I’m proud of the team and what t hey accomplished this year. How about a few stats –
Goff was impressive!!
VERY impressive!
Unheard of in past years!
Rookie Sacks!
This is HUGE!!! Barry Sanders was amazing and he even sent out a personal video to Jamaal after he broke his record!
“Hey Jamaal, Barry Sanders here. And I just wanted to congratulate you on an awesome year, and for breaking my record, which was the most rushing touchdowns by a Detroit Lion in a single season. Awesome job, man. You’ve been a big part of the success this year, and I know you’re just getting started. Great job.”
It’s neat to watch the coach’s post game talks. The one Sunday night after eliminating the Packers may just have give us a new “tag”:
ALL ROADS GO THROUGH DETROIT! I love that.
I am very excited to see what the team does next year and beyond! WDIV said on their website:
For the first time since 1957, it feels like the future truly is now, and dreaming about a Lions championship is no longer a shared Detroit delusion.
I truly hope so!
Thank you to the Detroit Lions for giving me and all the fans something to cheer about!!
I have been asked again to be a part of Dave from A Sound Day’s feature Turntable Talk. Each month, Dave offers up a topic for us to discuss. This time around, we’re focusing on great song lyrics. In his instructional e-mail to us, Dave writes:
Not too long ago I covered how Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize in literature, which made me think of great song lyrics. I know Max has done a few columns listing favorite lines or verses of songs he loves. So, seems like a good topic would be – They’re a Poet, don’t you know it. There are thousands of great song lyrics, but for this post I just want you to pick one song that you think has fantastic lyrics, or one you like because of the lyrics, and say a bit about why you love it.
As with other topics, one song (and in this case, lyric) popped into my head immediately. I wasn’t sure, however, if it was the song I wanted to write about. That one line of the song kept swirling around in my head, however, and so I will go with that song.
I have to admit that I am a bit worried that I get to be the first one to post my song, especially since mine is so … old. I hope it’s not so old that it won’t be interesting or relatable to you.
Cole Porter
“The Great American Songbook” (as it is often referred to) consists of the most influential and most important American popular songs and jazz standards. While it isn’t a physical “book” it is the collection of songs written in the early 20th century and have stood the test of time. These songs were often featured in musical on stage and on screen.
When you look at the list of the songwriters responsible for these standards, you will find many familiar names. They include Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the great Cole Porter.
Cole Porter was born in 1891 to a very wealthy family in Indiana. His family wanted him to study law, but he chose music as a career instead. He was classically trained and he began to achieve success in the 1920s. By the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, he wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. One of those songs was “Night and Day.”
Cole Porter wrote Night and Day for the 1932 musical Gay Divorce. It was first recorded in 1933 by Fred Astaire. Hundreds of artists have recorded this song, including most recently Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett. The song would become the number 1 song of 1933. Astaire would perform it again in the 1934 film adaptation of the show, which was renamed the Gay Divorcee.
There are many stories behind the origins of the song. One fantastic story says that when Cole Porter first played the music for “Night and Day” for his friend Monty Wooly, Wooly sniffed, `I don’t know what this is you are trying to do, but whatever it is, throw it away. It’s terrible.’ Luckily for us, he didn’t.
Cole Porter gave various accounts of how he came to write “Night and Day.” He once said the music was influenced by an Islamic call to worship he’d heard while traveling in Morocco. Porter also said he began the tune on a Saturday night at New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and wrote the lyrics the next day while lying on a beach in Newport, Rhode Island. However it came to be, it has always had a line or two in it that sticks in my head. More on that in a minute.
While almost everyone has recorded the song, I feel like Frank Sinatra recorded the most recognizable version of it. He did that in 1957. When he re-recorded it in 1962, he included the original intro that Cole Porter had written. The 1962 version is more laid back and sultry, while the 1957 version is a bit more … swingin’.
Here is the 1957 version first –
Before you listen to the 1962 version, keep in mind that over the first eight bars of the song, just one relentless note is repeated 35 times. To great effect, says singer and pianist Steve Ross.
“There is a slight maddening quality to these repeated notes I think that sets you up for the obsession that is in the song. I never really thought about that. I think that’s true.”
“And that’s how it is: dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun; him, him, him, him, him, him, him. I can’t stand it. I’m going crazy here. It makes you feel really alive to sing that song,” says Singer Susannah McCorkle. “Cole Porter was the sexiest songwriter. And his songs are infused with this sexual passion and longing that no other great songwriter captured, which is one reason he’s very close to my heart. It’s like having a new love affair all over again to sing a Cole Porter song.”
NPR writes, “Cole Porter was 41 years old when he wrote “Night and Day.” He’d been living in splendor in Europe for more than a decade with his wife, Linda Lee Thomas, who was considered one of the world’s great beauties, and who was, as Porter might say, not just rich, but rich rich. Life with the Porters meant summers bronzing on the Lido or the Riviera, costume balls and the grand Venetian palaces they rented, private trains and around the world cruises. It was the highest society, and Cole Porter’s songs glittering with references to Whitneys and Rockefellers, champagne and oysters, reflected his world.”
By the time he wrote “Night and Day,” Porter had overcome a series of Broadway flops and had hit his stride. This song would become an international sensation. Soon after “Gay Divorce” opened, Porter received a letter at his home in Paris from his friend and supporter – Irving Berlin.
“‘Dear Cole, I am mad about ‘Night and Day,'” Berlin writes. “And I think it is your high spot. You probably know it is being played all over. And all the orchestra leaders think it is the best tune of the year, and I agree with them. Really, Cole, it is great. And I could not resist the temptation of writing you about it. As ever, Irving.'”
They say that there is no greater praise than praise that is given from your peers. To have received a letter from the great Irving Berlin praising your work had to be a wonderful boost to Cole’s ego.
For me personally, I love the passion found in the song. I love the way the subject of the song is all the singer thinks about – day and night, no matter where they are, whether they are apart or together. There is a love. This person fills the thoughts of the singer at all times. It is infatuation. It is obsession. It is love. The singer is ALWAYS thinking of them.
Lyrically, the way Porter describes this passion gets me every time. Take for example the feelings of the singer as they desire to be with the subject of the song:
There’s an oh, such a hungry yearning, burning inside of me And its torment won’t be through ‘Til you let me spend my life making love to you
Those words are powerful words – a yearning, a burning, it is tormenting to a degree. But the lines of the song that have always stuck out to me are maybe the oddest of the entire song:
In the roaring traffic’s boom In the silence of my lonely room I think of you
Who would write a love song and talk about the loudness of traffic?! But it works. It is the great contrast to the silence of a lonely room. It totally works. I have always loved that line and this song. It has certainly stood the test of time and, in my opinion, one of the greatest passionate love songs ever written.
Cole Porter probably wrote many songs that were poetically and lyrically better than Night and Day, but the song remains one of his best known songs. Robert Kimball, artistic adviser to the Cole Porter estate, says wherever Cole Porter’s travels took him in years to come, he’d hear “Night and Day.”
In 1937, five years after he wrote “Night and Day,” Cole Porter was thrown from a horse, which fell on him and crushed both of his legs. For the rest of his life, he’d be in constant, often crippling pain. He endured more than 30 operations, but through his suffering, Porter maintained his prodigious output. That ended when one of his legs was finally amputated in 1958. Robert Kimball says, “When that occurred, he lost the desire to write and never wrote another song; never wrote again. Lost the desire. Lost the will. It just crushed him.” He passed away in 1964.
I’d like to thank Dave again for asking me to take part in Turntable Talk. Feel free to check out his site here:
I’m looking forward to reading his entry and the entries of the other music lovers who are taking part in this edition. I’m also looking forward to what he comes up with for us next month.
Thanks for reading!
Night and Day – Cole Porter
Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom When the jungle shadows fall Like the tick, tick-tock of the stately clock As it stands against the wall
Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom When the jungle shadows fall Like the tick, tick-tock of the stately clock As it stands against the wall
Like the drip, drip, drip of the raindrops When the summer shower is through So a voice within me keeps repeating you, you, you
Night and day, you are the one Only you beneath the moon and under the sun Whether near to me or far It’s no matter darling where you are I think of you
Night and say, day and night, why is it so That this longing for you follows wherever I go? In the roaring traffic’s boom In the silence of my lonely room I think of you
Night and day, night and day Under the hide of me There’s an oh, such a hungry yearning, burning inside of me And its torment won’t be through ‘Til you let me spend my life making love to you Day and night, night and day
This torment would never be through ‘Til you let me spend my life making love to you Day and night, night and day Day and night, night and day Day and night, night and day Day and night, day and night Day and night, night and day
Remember those ads they used to show on TV for the Book of Home Remedies? It was a book full of “hacks” to fix things, cure things, etc…. My folks had it.
Today, of course, we don’t need that book. We can pretty much find answers to questions, recipes, and remedies all over the Internet. That’s exactly where my wife found what I am about to share.
I am sure that your grocery bill has gone up as much as mine. So when things go bad quickly, it makes me angry. Case in point: fruit!
My kids love blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. The issue is that two to three days after buying them, they would start to go bad. It was so annoying.
Whether she found it on Pinterest or TikTok, I don’t know, but the last batch of berries we bought was two weeks ago and they are still good! This is nothing short of a miracle.
The “hack?” Mason Jars! Yep. My wife put a folded piece of paper towel in the bottom of the jar, placed the fruit in it and sealed it up. They have been in the fridge and still look and taste fresh!
With a lack of motivation to write tonight, I was scrolling Facebook and found an interesting story a friend had posted. I thought it was worth sharing here.
I’m not 100% on the source, but from what I was able to find, the story was shared from someone named John Perricone. It seems that the story was shared on a website called Upworthy, which shares many positive stories. Here is the story:
Several years ago I invited a Buddhist monk to speak to my Senior elective class, and quite interestingly, as he entered the room, he didn’t say a word (that caught everyone’s attention). He just walked to the board and wrote this: “EVERYONE WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD, BUT NO ONE WANTS TO HELP MOM DO THE DISHES.” We all laughed. But then he went on to say this to my students:
“Statistically, it’s highly unlikely that any of you will ever have the opportunity to run into a burning orphanage and rescue an infant. But, in the smallest gesture of kindness — a warm smile, holding the door for the person behind you, shoveling the driveway of the elderly person next door — you have committed an act of immeasurable profundity, because to each of us, our life is our universe.”
This is my hope for you for the New Year — that by your smallest acts of kindness, you will save an other’s world.
As we wrap up the first week of 2023, this is something we should all strive to do. I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions this year, but I do hope to take advantage of the opportunity to be kind to others and perform more random acts of kindness.
You have no doubt heard it before, but it really is the perfect quote to end with ….
The above picture is a poop emoji. For those who have never seen it before, it is part of our pop culture now. You can literally type “poop” in a text message and this emoji becomes an option for you to insert into your conversation.
I suppose I understand certain scenarios where this emoji would be what some people deem a necessity for their messages. I don’t think I have ever used it.
Poop. Let’s talk about it for a minute. We all do it. Animals do it. But does it need to be in a kid’s game? I really don’t think so. Let me explain.
Remember back in the day they had those digital pets that you were supposed to take care of? You have to feed it, give it water, put it to bed, etc…. I never had one, but many of my friends did. Personally, I don’t remember if you had to let your pet go to the bathroom. Maybe you did. If you did, however, I doubt they showed you the poop.
Today, I guess it doesn’t matter. Ella has a game on her kid Kindle Fire where you have a dog. You feed it, pet it, play with it, dress it up for pictures and such, and you let it outside. The first dog she had would find a batch of flowers and roll it them. Then it would dig a hole revealing something it had buried before.
I guess I should have expected that the dog would do its business out on the lawn. I was not surprised when the dog assumed the position to pee or poop, but when it left a pile of poop behind, I couldn’t believe it.
Ella was laughing and saying, “Daddy! That dog pooped!!” She found it to be hilarious. There it sat on her screen for like 5 minutes because I didn’t know what the next step was. I eventually figured out that the black doohickey at the bottom of the screen was actually a pooper scooper. Once you clean it up, you can make the dog continue to walk around the yard again.
It did bring a big silly laugh from Ella. Andrew laughed too because Ella was laughing so hard. Both of them laughing led to me laughing. I can only hope that when we eventually get a dog that this game will remind them of the importance of cleaning up after it!
Yesterday I posted a quick review and recommendation for the latest James Patterson book I read. After I did that, I was reminded of another book I wanted to recommend to you. It is a book that can be read over and over and comes from a guy I write about often.
Every month, I talk about Dave from the blog A Sound Day. In the time we have been following each other and e-mailing each other, I discovered that he not only has a fantastic musical blog, he is also a published author!
Around Thanksgiving I had posted a blog about things that I am thankful for. Dave said that he had written a book that was about the same thing. He sent me an autographed copy of it and it is really fantastic.
As I read this book (which I did in one sitting), I found that Dave and I have a lot more in common than just music. The story behind the book is that Dave began writing a list. Every day he would write down something he was thankful for. He went through his list and pulled out 101 of his favorite things.
On the scribd.com website, a description of the book reads:
“Thank Goodness – 101 Things To Be Grateful For Today” offers readers a chance to reflect on all the good in life and challenges them to not only look for good in their own lives but offers ways to do so. A collection of wonders the author is thankful for is accompanied by questions for the reader to ponder , such as how they last showed compassion for somebody else and how that made them feel , or what the most meaningful holiday on the calendar is to them. Selected sketches and cartoons illustrate some of the points. The book can be read even in a single sitting, or as a daily ritual designed to make each day brighter.
I love that there is a question posed after each thing. You and I know that those questions can be answered differently at any given time, which really makes this a book that can be read over and over again.
A few of my favorites from the book:
Living in the golden age of communication
My love of music
Coffee to greet the new day
Sleep, too often taken for granted
My ability to not only read, but enjoy doing so
Funny commercials making a minor inconvenience fun
Prayer
Anytime I can brighten someone’s day
Being in love with my best friend
After each thing, Dave offers up a personal story that connects him to it. This is where I realized just how similar we are. When talking about music for example, he mentions a plastic turntable, 8 track tapes, and buying vinyl albums. Each one of those things were things I connect to my love of music, too.
Here’s the thing – you can always find something to be grateful for each day (even on the bad days!). These 101 things in Dave’s book are great reminders and thought starters. It is a perfect book for the start of the New Year, but really is good for any time of the year.
I’m grateful to have connected with Dave through the world of blogging (The Blogiverse? Blogmosphere?) and his book reminding me to always be aware of those things to be grateful for!
Speaking of Dave …
His next round of Turntable Talk will begin on January 10th! I was drawn randomly to be the first one to kick off the topic. Watch for it here and on his website, especially if you like “poetry.”
I’m not sure why I don’t read more of James Patterson’s books. Every time I have, I have really enjoyed them. The last book I read of his was The Shadow. I read it back in May and reviewed it here:
I had seen a Facebook post from Patterson talking about this book, and a friend actually had just finished it. She loved it and loaned it to me. Much like The Shadow, it didn’t take me long to finish it. It was a fast paced book that required very little thinking. It was a simple story that got crazier as it went on and was a nice feel good story at the end.
I enjoyed it a lot, but in preparation for this blog, I searched for other reviews. I found that people either loved it or hated it. The first page introduces you to the Sullivan family. It also let’s you know right from the start that the matriarch of the family has died. Perhaps this is why so many people hated it, I’m not sure.
One of the advertisements for the book reads: “Move over, Dickens—America’s favorite storyteller has written a modern Christmas story for the ages.” This is obviously a reference to his classic, A Christmas Carol. To be fair, the first words of Dickens’ story are, “Marley was dead, to being with.” He then goes on to explain how important that is to the story. In the same way, the death mentioned at the start of Patterson’s book is also important to THIS story. Because of her passing, Christmas doesn’t happen anymore at the Sullivan house.
The synopsis from Goodreads states:
Every year at Christmastime, Will and Ella Sullivan, and their father, Henry, come to a family agreement: Christmas is a holiday for other people.
At their brownstone in Harlem, stockings go unstuffed, tinsel unstrewn, gifts unbought, mistletoe unhung, chestnuts unroasted, carols unplayed, cookies uncooked, a tree un-visible, and guests uninvited.
Until guests start arriving anyway. In pairs and sixes, in sevens and tens—they keep coming. And they stay. For twelve long, hard, topsy-turvy, very messy days. That’s when the Sullivans discover that those moments in life that defy hope, expectation, or even imagination, might be the best gifts of all.
In a bit of holiday magic, Christmas invites itself to their home. If you remember the song “The 12 Days of Christmas,” then you already know what to expect over the 12 days. With Day 1, the arrival of a partridge in a pear tree starts the ball rolling. You can only imagine the chaos that each gift brings!
There were times that I laughed out loud, times that I was almost brought to tears, and times I was crying from laughing so hard. I tried to explain the plot to my wife and she said, “It sounds like a Hallmark Movie!” I wouldn’t go that far, as those stories are more of a romance based plot that all their movies follow. To a point, there is a romantic factor to it, as the Sullivan kids think that if they can find a woman on a dating site for their dad, Christmas will return to their house. However, there is really no “love” story, other than the love of family.
It was an easy read. The whole time I was reading it, I could see it easily being a Christmas movie. I don’t think that there was a sexual situation or profane word in it. It was a fun story that I can easily see myself reading every Christmas. I enjoyed it and I think you will, too.
If you still have your Christmas tree up, get it at your local library or off Amazon. Turn the Christmas lights on, get a fire going in the fireplace, grab a blanket and curl up on the couch and enjoy this fun holiday story.
I was googling something the other day and the answer I was looking for was on a newspaper website. It wasn’t the New York Times or Washington Post, but it was a site for a big city newspaper.
The article loaded on my screen for about 5 seconds. Then a pop-up came on the screen saying that the article was for paid subscribers only. What?!
This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. I’m not going to lie, it makes me angry. Why can’t I read your article online for free?!?
If this trend continues, I am guessing CNN and MSN will have you paying for use, too. This is ridiculous.
Before I go on, let me say that I have bought the newspaper, and continue to do so on occasion. I’m not against paying for that, but an article online?! Why?!?!
I don’t even remember what I was searching for now, but it certainly wasn’t something I was going to pay for. I also don’t do enough surfing of one particular newspaper site to warrant me paying for a yearly subscription.
So am I to start charging YOU for reading my blog?! Of course not! I’m not out to make money off of my readers. (I did see where you can gift a blogger their yearly fee, which I would never ask anyone to do.). I guess that’s where I am different from the newspaper.
Maybe I am in the minority here. How do you feel about this?
As we welcome 2023, let me pause to thank each of you for reading my blog. Since I started this blog, I have come to know many of you as friends.
For those of you who have followed from the beginning, you’ve been with me through good and bad times. Your kind words of support through it all will never be forgotten.
I never anticipated having even 50 followers, so the fact that I have like 6 tines that baffles me. My silly ramblings, my musical opinions, my reading and television favorites, and constant bragging about my wonderful wife and family are things that YOU actually find worth reading. Thank you.
There was a time when I would go out to ring in the new year. It has been a long time since I’ve done that. I joked on Facebook last night that I had “counted down to 9pm” and I was off to bed. Sam and I were up talking for a bit, but we were both asleep by 10:30pm. I slept so soundly that the normal barrage of midnight fireworks didn’t even wake me up.
I woke up this morning to about 15 “Happy New Year” texts, many Facebook comments, and a few Snapchat wishes. It was almost 7 hours into the new year before I woke up.
As I have done in the past, this morning I looked at my yearly stats for my blog. Honestly, I was surprised. The most read blog of the year has consistently been in my top 3 since it was written. I’m not sure why, but I love that it is.
Comedian Red Buttons was a hit at many roasts with his “Never Got A Dinner” bit. The jokes are so dates, but they still make me (and obviously others) laugh. It was my #1 blog. Here it is if you missed it:
The second most read blog was simply a list. As a music guy, I found a list of most “hated” and “overplayed” songs to be interesting. I know many other music folks read the blog, so I posted the list. Here is that blog:
The most surprising blog to appear in the Top 3 speaks volumes of an amazing man. Just after Christmas, one of my radio mentors passed away. I wrote a small tribute to him and shared it on Facebook. I tagged him in it, which meant any of his friends and family would see it, too.
The fact that this blog is barely a week old and shot past one of my Top 3 Year End staples (A Year Without a Santa Claus), shows just how many people loved Richard D. Now I wish I had spent more time on it. Here is that blog:
As 2022 fades into a memory, I’d like to thank you for following my blog and reading my ramblings. At some point, I’d like to look back at the year and reflect, but for now I thought I would look ahead. Here are some great quotes (some of which I may have posted in the past) to kick start the new year.
May the new year present us with wonderful memories, blessings, and lots to explore. May our days be filled with happiness and love.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 