Old Age Wasteland

Did anyone else see the Who, performing last night for the Super Bowl? I did not watch the Super Bowl, I have to be honest. You know me, I was listening to Leonard Pennario instead.

But the Who, we just watched their Super Bowl performance on YouTube.

They seem so old! And you know what, Roger Daltry is just 65. This rock 'n roll, it is not kind to the aging. It is hard to be a rocker and age well. Those words might have sounded OK coming out of the mouths of 20-ish slackers, but coming out of the mouths of people in their 60s, it just sounds ridiculous.

"Teenage Wasteland." Come on.

"Old Age Wasteland" is more like it.

Ha, ha! It is like that spoof on Kiss I ran across somewhere. "I used to rock and roll all night, and party every day!" Just that one word makes all the difference. "I used to" instead of "I'm gonna."

There is a rumor flying around the Internet that Keith Richards has given up booze.

You know what, I feel affectionate toward and sorry for these rock goofs. When they invented themselves years ago ...

... they did not allow for the possibility that they would ever get old.

What is scary though, as Howard says, is that he can remember when the Who was young. I personally cannot remember that. You know me, I was listening to Schubert.

But I can relate when it comes to actors and actresses. Here is what is scary to me. I remember when I was a kid, and my parents would get all misty seeing actors they remembered from their youth. Wendy Hiller or Greer Garson or Cyd Charisse or someone would come out of hiding and play someone's grandmother or something. And my parents would go on the alert, rejoicing and discussing. My dad would be cooing. He and Pennario were in love with exactly the same actresses, I have often thought about that. Well, they were born the same year.

Now Howard and I are thinking, we will be like that one day. And that day is coming! Clint Eastwood is already 80 and he was this he-man when we were growing up. It is terrible to imagine Clint Eastwood being 80. It is contrary to nature.

One day they will trot out Gwyneth Paltrow or Demi Moore to play someone's grandmother. And we will say: "Oh, look at Demi Moore. She is holding up well."

Hmmmm. I wonder if she will hold up well.

She's got to do better than Roger Daltry.

Score!!!!

Over the river and through the woods, to the estate sales we go! Today I spent about $100.

The greatest sale was on South Huxley Drive in Cheektowaga. Which served me right because all the way there I was mocking it out. "We won't find anything," I said. Though I was laughing and everything. It was not as if I minded going.

Well!

I got a round table for the front sun room for $20. That is because I am married to Howard and because of all his high-minded ideas it is like being married to King Arthur.

I also bought the lamp on top of it for another $9. And a green tablecloth for my back room with a scalloped edge. I also bought a railroad calendar for Howard for $6. The railroad calendars were not actually part of the estate sale. These duffers were just selling them. They looked at me with new approval when I said, "And I would like one of the railroad calendars, too."

Why yes, little lady!

I bought another lamp for $2.50 and then it was on to the next estate sale.

This one was fun! That is where I bought... this is a goodie ... a Talking Proud pin! With a cloisonne buffalo! Sort of like this.

That was a score, I will say that. Not a Leonard Pennario record but certainly the next best thing.

I also got four runners for my table, a total of 11 placemats (three different designs), eight napkins and seven T-shirts with beautiful colors and snobby labels. What else? This beautiful never-used Hawaiian purse, that was a score. And I bought a present for my friend Lizzie. She is always buying me presents from sales and now I have one for her. And I bought red wool socks. That is for when I go Nordic skiing.

Then I almost shoplifted a Crock-Pot Cookbook. I stuck it in my purse so as not to have to carry it and I only remembered it when I was checking out.

"That's OK," the guy told me. "Go ahead and shoplift that."

So now I am the order of a free Crock-Pot cookbook.

I cannot possibly top this next week.

Fire and ice

I gave in and bought two more Candle-Lite candles. Remember them? My friend Ryan knows how to do the trademark sign but I do not. Otherwise I would write Candle-Lite (TM) candles

The new candles are those three-tone candles. I did not think I would buy them but they went on sale at CVS and I could not resist. One of them smells especially good.

It is Vanilla Sugar/Toasted Coconut/Hazelnut Toffee!

What about Vanilla Ice?

After my book on Leonard Pennario is a best-seller he will beg me to write his biography and I will say no. Gently but firmly. Even though I did always kind of admire his name. Vanilla Ice, that is pretty funny.

It is funny but this has become the winter of the Candle-Lite candles. They have influenced  my winter! They have been in the background of all kinds of dramatic occasions in my life. All these things have been happening and there these Candle-Lite candles have been, in their glass jars, burning. Howard lets me burn Candle-Lite candles, that is another thing. Because they are in glass jars and they will not catch the curtains or the newspapers on fire.

"I'm allowed."

Remember that from when you were a kid?

Here is another thing I was remembering from when I was a kid. I was listening to Tom Bauerle this morning on the way into work. I could listen to only a couple of minutes because commercials came on, but one thing he said brought back a flood of memories. He said he was reading fortune cookie messages followed by the words "in bed." It was a joke he had picked up somewhere.

Say your fortune cookie says: "You will be heroic." You add: "In bed."

Ahahahahahahaaa!!

We used to do that when I was a teenager. Except for we used to say not "in bed" but "between the sheets." Plus, we did not use fortune cookie messages. We used hymn titles.

"How Great Thou Art (Between The Sheets)."

"Be Not Afraid (Between The Sheets)."

Hahahahaha!! We thought that was hilarious. There was one time when a group of us was at Mass somewhere and I thought we were going to die. You had the hymn book on your lap and someone was always poking you and pointing at the hymn title and you knew what it meant.

Such lives we lead!

(Between the sheets.)

A night at the opera

Lastnight I went to "Carmen," the Metropolitan Opera broadcast, out at the Transit Regal Cinema. I went because my mom wanted to go.

Four and a half hours I sat on my butt! That is a record, even for me.

Even when it was intermission and everyone else got up and stretched I did not!

I sat there with my tub of popcorn. And it was a tub!

The opera was fun. Carmen, pictured above, was great. But I have to say this, these movie operas are for the birds because there are too many chatty Cathys. Everyone has something to say. Everyone is whispering to his or her neighbor. Even at the height of the drama. I mean, Don Jose is stabbing Carmen and still the dopes behind me are whispering.

What in the world is so important, you know?

Can't it wait?

Every once in a while like anyone else I get the impetus to whisper something. But I always ask myself if it can wait. So I do not go and whisper. Which, some people were not even whispering. They were just talking out loud.

It reminds me of going to the library yesterday. Yesterday I stopped in the downtown library. I have been wanting to look up Leonard Pennario's Buffalo addresses which, believe it or not, I could not remember writing down. Anyway, the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library is now just like every place else. They have completely lost control.

There I am in the music department looking over books on pianists and 10 feet away is this table full of guys, all of them talking and laughing as if they're in a coffee shop. With electronic devices and everything. And four-letter words. The "F" bomb, everything.

No one does a thing! What happened to those crabby old librarians?

What about Conan the Librarian?

Can't we go anywhere without being bugged by schufts and oiks?

Medical miracles

Ay yi yi, the dentist yesterday! This is the second week in a row I have had to go to the dentist. My normal dentist is out of town, or perhaps he is fleeing me. So I have this alternate dentist who shares his office.

Last week this alternate dentist was full of the blues as she looked at my teeth. There were two cavities. Things did not look good. A root canal might be needed.

But it was not! Two cavities, two fillings, I was out of there and shopping at Aldi's before I knew it. And everything seems fine to this day in that corner of my mouth.

However, yesterday I drive to the dentist, la de da, feeling good, listening to Leonard Pennario playing the Debussy preludes, when zut alors, as Debussy would say. I am in danger again of a root canal!

Only time will tell. Then the dentist starts explaining everything to me. I was reading People magazine with all this dirt about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and I just could not be bothered. "It's OK," I said. "I don't need it explained. I will just do as you say."

She patted me and said, "You are a model patient."

I am that!

Speaking of which, the good news about my dentist appointment being yesterday is that I am free today to go to Mass for the Feast of St. Blaise and get my throat blessed. I have enough tooth problems. I do not need throat problems! That is for sure.

This is funny, the whole time I was growing up, I do not remember having to go to church exactly on St. Blaise's Day. They would bless our throats after the Sunday Mass that was closest, is what I recall.

I kind of like now that they are sticking it to us. Here I was at two Masses on Sunday, and at neither one did they give us the St. Blaise blessing. You have go to Mass on the Feast of St. Blaise. That is today. There are no shortcuts.

My mother on the other hand went to cushy Christ the King out in Snyder and they not only blessed their throats but they did it en masse, so to speak. Meaning, I guess, that the priest raised his hands and gave the crowd the blessing from the altar all at once. As they used to say in Monty Python, oh, you're no fun any more!

The city is more fun. We have to show up in person on the appointed day and then it is individually done. They put the candles in the V around your neck. Here is a picture of the powerful and ancient ceremony. Tomorrow this will be me!

Too bad they do not light the candles any more. It was great in grade school when people's hair would catch fire. "Per intercessionem St. Blasii liberet to Deus a malo gutteris et a quovis alio malo." That means "Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God protect you from all ailments of the throat, and all other evils." "Gutteris" is a great word. It must mean throat. Hence the word "guttural."

Then you walk away and ponder what just transpired.

And that guttural pain in the neck...

...it is gone!

St. Blaise is one of the 14 Holy Helpers. He is not to be confused with our friend Chuck Mancuso's Uncle Blaise. Chuck is making a movie about him called "Seven Days With Blaise." It tracks his uncle to the OTB and I forget where else. Perhaps to Fourteen Holy Helpers Church!

I should really go there tomorrow.

It's a slice

 

It is the slice-of-lime table that I saw at an estate sale on Saturday! Finally I figured how to get it out of my camera.

The lime table was $650 and came with four green chairs, one of which is visible above. It was the crowning glory of a house that also included two great rooms papered in yellow and green and a sun room with wallpaper that had green ferns on a silver reflective background.

Another shopper said, "You can see yourself in this wallpaper!"

It was true! There were no Leonard Pennario records but you cannot have it all in a house like that.

That was quite a discussion we had going the other day about estate sales and whether or not we feel good going to them. I feel fine, I can tell you that.

Now I am catching up running a few pictures I was not able to run because I could not figure how to get them onto my Web log. Here is Father Anzelm, at left with bouquet, leaving his farewell Mass on Sunday at Corpus Christi, after his sermon in which he dissed Darwin.

 

His vestments match the lime table!

Here is Airborne Eddy in our pew during the sermon, attentively video-ing the blue hat on the woman in front of him. That was one classic hat! It can hold its own in the post about the slice-of-lime table.

 

There was a neat-looking sunset the other night so I snapped this picture.

Sunrise, sunset.

Quickly fly the days!

Towers of power

Yesterday what with all the excitement I forgot to mention that I flagrantly stole the photo of the Corpus Christi church towers from my friend Christopher Byrd. It is from his most excellent Web site, Broadway Fillmore Alive. Chris belongs to Corpus Christi. I remember when he joined up because it was right around then that we got to be friends.

I am not repentant about stealing the picture. As a matter of fact, here it is again because I love it.

You know what, I do think I want to look at it one more time.

And up at the top is another picture Chris took of Father Anzelm saying Mass yesterday. Father Anzelm is third from the left, or second from the right, depending on your political preference.

One thing, Chris writes in his comment yesterday how much he loves Corpus Christi and then he writes, "I hate to equate my faith with buildings."

Not me. I have no problem with that, I will tell you that right now.

We have had to swallow a lot of bull here in Buffalo over the last couple of years from people telling us how the church is not buildings. Blah, blah, blah. That is my articulate Monday morning assessment of that!

The church is technically not buildings and it is not music or art but that does not mean they stand for nothing.

Even if you do not realize it something clicks in your head when you see a place like Corpus Christi. Here were these immigrants and they had no money and yet they made it their top priority to put up these wonders like Corpus Christi and St. Gerard's. The poor Sicilian immigrants, including Leonard Pennario's parents, their faith meant enough to them that they managed to come up with St. Anthony's.

Think of the effort! This was before drywall and modern construction and OSHA and whatever. The churches' pillars were hauled in on the Erie Canal and horses and oxen pulled them through the streets.

It is like a blues song. Baby, if that ain't love, what is?

So that is what is clicking in the Byrd brain when my friend Chris looks up at the glorious spires of Corpus Christi. What did that picture look like again, Chris?

The Byrd brain is Chris' joke and I love it. Chris is always talking on his Web log about the Byrd house and the Byrd brain.

I feel no shame in my faith being inspired by buildings. Or by music and art. You hear Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus" or you look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and what, that's not supposed to get us?


Here is "Ave Verum Corpus." The best part is the look on Leonard Bernstein's face at the beginning and at the end. He really puts himself into the moment! It is sweet too how Bernstein sings the Latin words along with the chorus. Great conductors are great conductors for a reason.

What about the "Ave Verum Corpus" by Byrd? There is that too.

This one goes out to Chris Byrd!

Afternoon on the East Side

 

Today I went with my friend Jane to Corpus Christi Church to catch the last Mass of the priest there, Father Anzelm Chalupka, aka Father What-A-Waste. Note to non-Catholic Leonard Pennario fans: That is an old Catholic joke, Father What-A-Waste. Every time it is applied it is new again!

Father Anzelm is being sent to Yonkers.

Yikes!

The church was packed which was the objective. The Facebook group hyping the event was called "Father Anzelm's Last Mass: Let's Pack The Church." Here is a picture of the interior of Corpus Christi.

 

All the news media were there. TV cameras were following Father Anzelm's every move and he took advantage of that situation to give the greatest sermon. The first part was about how Darwin was not necessarily right and the jury is still out. Father Anzelm pronounced Darwin's name "Darvin." He is from Poland! He said that history may well prove Darwin wrong. He said that back before we knew the world was round, everyone thought the world was flat and there were very wise people who professed that.

You have to admit, he has a point!

I personally enjoy throwing rocks at Darwin...

... even though I grew up just two streets away from Darwin Drive in Snyder, how about that? And I drove down Darwin just the other day. Well, after that the sermon moved on to how even if what we believe what Darwin says, it gives us no reason to behave like animals and subscribe to this survival-of-the-fittest theory. Meaning, the strong should not kill the weak, i.e., the aged and the unborn.

Tell 'em, Father!

You go!

Jane and I got to hug and kiss Father Anzelm on the way out. Father Anzelm thanked us because both of us have interviewed him for the paper during his time here. Our friend Airborne Eddy was with us. Eddy was hoping we would be able to get Father Anzelm to go out for a beer. I said, "Eddy, I don't think we will be able to get him today."

The line went on forever! Plus the TV news people were in our way.

So, an exciting day. And before that I went to my usual Latin Mass. That reminds me, it is Septuagesima Sunday! That means pre-Lent. I remember when I was in California, that was my first Septuagesima Sunday. Pennario and I discussed it. Today it was funny because I went to two Masses and they were different. At Corpus Christi it was just a normal Sunday with green vestments. But at St. Anthony the vestments are purple and there is no Gloria or Alleluia and boom, for all intents and purposes it is Lent.

I am leading a double life!

Ringtone dreams

I got a new iPhone and it has been fun figuring it out.

Or not figuring it out, as has been more the case. This week has been jammed and so I have been paying rent on this thing without actually using it. I do want to master it sooner or later because one thing I want to do is download Leonard Pennario ringtones. Searching around the 'Net for this and that, I have encountered them. An ad will bounce up saying: "GET YOUR LEONARD PENNARIO RINGTONE!" Which I love. I love that!

Just as a feeler I did a search to see if I could find Gary Graffman or Leon Fleisher ringtones. They are contemporaries of Pennario's and maybe I could get their ringtones too. I could assign them to my friends! The phone would ring and I could say, "Oh, that is Gary Graffman, so that must be my friend Gary." But I could not find any Fleisher or Graffman ringtones.

Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher should get on the stick!

Back to my difficulties with my iPhone.

It is so pathetic that I have had to rely on my mother to figure it out!

I was at my mom's and my mother has a cell phone which she is disgusted with because she cannot even be bothered to get to square one with it. She has given the number to only one person and it is not me. It is my brother George. In my mom's electronic phone book, which has two numbers, he appears as "georges."

That is stylish! It is like Georges Bizet who wrote "Carmen." We saw his grave in Paris.

When I figure out how to do ringtones I will assign my brother Georges the "Seguidilla" which is my favorite part of "Carmen."

Or perhaps I should go with the "Toreador Song" which might suit Georges' personality more.

My mom's cell phone was beeping for some reason -- burping, was the word my mother used. From time to time it goes, "Burp." So we were trying to figure that out. Meanwhile my iPhone made a noise and it was a text message. It was Howard asking me to come down to Jocko's for a glass of wine. Welcome news! A welcome invitation and of course I wanted to text him back immediately and accept.

But that was not that easy. When I tried to text back all I got was a blank screen and no instructions.

"Ha, ha!" my mother laughed appreciatively.

I was waving my fingers all over the screen because I knew there was some way to make a typewriter keyboard appear. Finally my mother made a suggestion.

"I think if all you do is sit and wait, the keyboard will come up," she said.

This morning I tried that, and she was right!

That is the secret!

I would never have figured that out on my own. I remembered my mother's suggestion and that is why I tried it. So, one thing mastered.

The Leonard Pennario ring tones are next!

J.D. Salinger and me

When I saw that J.D. Salinger had died, all I could think was, this is a big one.

With J.D. Salinger's death the presses are going to stop.

There are going to be buckets of ink. Miles of columns! Millions of gigabytes, or however you measure literature on the Internet.

There is nothing that gets journalists fired up like the death of a writer. Most journalists, whatever their media, were English majors and so the attention paid to writers is gigantic and often, I suspect, disproportionate to the general public's interest in these people. There were a few newspapers where, I was lucky to get Leonard Pennario mentioned when he died. But oh, if he were a writer, things would be different.

I read "The Catcher in the Rye," and I know how influential it is, and sure, everyone has to read it in school, whereas no one has to listen to Chopin. But being into music as I am, this situation gets me sometimes. Sort of the way it gets me that so many novels are about college professors, anthropologists, researchers, grant recipients, other assorted eggheads. That is what writers know about so that is what we read.

My mother and I were discussing J.D. Salinger's death and here is how our conversation went.

Mom: "I heard J.D.Salinger died."

Me (pouring wine): "Yeah, what was he, 92? I didn't know he was that old."

Mom: "Oh, I remember meeting a Salinger. Someone introduced me to a Salinger. Tom Salinger." (Editor's note: I am not sure I remember the first name right. It might have been something else. But it was not J.D.)

Me: "Really?"

Mom: "Oh, he was handsome. This was before I met your father. This Tom Salinger, he was handsome. I remember liking him."

Under different stars, my name could have been Salinger! That is something to think about. I would have been Mary Salinger Goldman. Luckily that did not happen because then I would be MSG.

Well, enough about J.D. Salinger.

Trust me, we are going to be hearing enough about him!