Must have

So I am sitting home getting over this cold and what do I do, I start looking at eBay. Bad business! Step away from the computer!

Too late.

I am looking at all the Pennario stuff which is what I do at the end of the night when I am too tired to do anything else. And there was this cool, cool picture of Leonard Pennario with the German conductor Eugen Jochum, rehearsing a concerto.

I had never seen this picture before in my life! Most pictures of Pennario, even if I do not have them, I am aware of them. This picture, I could not get over it. I imagine it was taken at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Jochum conducted there a lot and Pennario played there multiple times.

Here is a picture I love of people at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw admiring a portrait of Eugen Jochum.

Here is Eugen Jochum on a stamp.

If you are wondering how to pronounce Jochum you say it the same as you say the country singer Dwight Yoakam.

Darn, the picture I bought of Pennario and Jochum is no longer pictured on eBay because I already bought it, so I cannot lift it and put a picture of it here. Even with the seller's watermark splashed all over it, you could get the idea of why I could not resist it.

This picture will be SO COOL in the book. And, I mean, there were other great pictures, like this one...

... which I like, because you can see his hands, what great hands. But I already have that one.

This shot with Eugen Jochum cost me over $20. I do not like to spend money like this but you know what, God knows when this picture would surface again. Plus you go out for drinks with your friends after work and you spend $25 without blinking. I spend that much when I go with my mom to the Wehrle Restaurant.

Plus at the rate the economy is going none of our money is going to be worth anything anyway in the long run, you know?

Eugen Jochum is looking intense and cadaver-like, leaning over Pennario's shoulder. Pennario is at the piano and has one hand resting on the piano desk. And he looks great. Plus he looks as if he does not have a worry in the world. Here I am, playing the Concertgebouw, with this conductor breathing down my neck, who cares, what me worry.

There was never a pianist like Leonard!

Yesterday I was reading an article about the Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin. And I am thinking, Pennario could do everything he did with one hand tied behind his back. Kissin played both Chopin concertos when he was 12, big deal. Pennario played the Grieg Concerto at 12 and he learned it in a week. And he didn't grow up coddled in some special school with some special teacher, either.

OK, Mary, time to take your medicine and go to bed.

Cybershopping and Nyquil.

A perfect evening!