Self-Absorbed Boomer

"[A] delightfully named blog", (Sewell Chan, New York Times). "[R]elentlessly eclectic", (Gary, Iowa City). Taxing your attention span since 2005.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

TBT: The Flamin Groovies, "Shake Some Action", a tonic for the Mets.

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All right, my Mets, time to get serious. Get back to Citi and show those Royals what you're made of. This 1976 hit, which I first hear...

A weekend in the Boston area for two reunions.

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Last Thursday my wife and I went to the Boston area for two reunions: mine for the Harvard Law School class of 1970 in Cambridge and my ...
Thursday, October 22, 2015

TBT: Jackie Wilson, "Higher and Higher"

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I'm off to my 45th yer law school reunion tomorrow, so I'm in a nostalgic mood, thinking about the songs I heard on Boston's W...
Saturday, October 17, 2015

Mets vs. Cubs: is it 1969 again?

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The Mets didn't play the Cubs in the 1969 National League Championship Series; that lot fell to the Atlanta Braves, then in the NL Wes...
Wednesday, October 14, 2015

TBT: Frankie Ford, "Sea Cruise".

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Vincent Francis Guzzo, Jr., better known as Frankie Ford , died September 29 at the age of 76. He was long active in the New Orleans R...
Wednesday, October 07, 2015

TBT: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, "Autumn in New York."

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"Autumn in New York" , a song that seems to epitomize the word "wistful", has been a favorite of mine since childhood....
Sunday, October 04, 2015

The Cosmic American Music Festival at the Derry Down.

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I first heard of the Derry Down in 1966, when I was friends with some fellow University of South Florida students who were from Winter Hav...
Thursday, October 01, 2015

TBT: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Breathless."

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Jerry Lee Lewis turned eighty on Tuesday. This is testimony to the wonders of medical science, or divine grace, or both. It reminds me of ...
Monday, September 28, 2015

The Mets face a dilemma.

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It has little to do with Matt Harvey's (photo) pitch or inning count. It has to do with whether to go all out to win their remaining r...
Sunday, September 27, 2015

Winter Haven, Florida revisited after 48 years.

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Winter Haven is a small city--population about 36,000--in central Florida. It's a little south and west of Orlando, east of Tampa, an...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015

TBT: Leonard Cohen, "Bird on a Wire."

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Leonard Cohen, the Bard of Montreal, turned 81 this week. He is a poet, songwriter, singer, and novelist ( Beautiful Losers ). I first kne...

Yogi Berra, 1925-2015

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While he'll always, and rightly, mostly be remembered as a Yankee. the photo shows him as I like to remember him, as one of my beloved...
Wednesday, September 16, 2015

TBT: Gram Parsons, with Emmylou Harris, "We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning."

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I'm off to the Cosmic American Music Festival in Winter Haven, Florida this weekend. Winter Haven was the home town of the late Gram P...
Wednesday, September 09, 2015

TBT: Frank Sinatra, "September Song."

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Yes, it's that month of cooling temperatures. We had a couple of days this week that saw thermometers registering in the low 90s, but ...
Monday, September 07, 2015

Clothes in pop music, part 2, the Sixties.

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Just over a year ago, inspired by Moira Redmond's Clothes in Books , I posted "Clothes in pop music, part 1, 1955-63" . Sin...
Sunday, September 06, 2015

Some scenes from Cape Cod

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The Bourne Bridge, our entryway to the Cape. There are two other bridges that cross the Cape Cod Canal onto the Cape proper. To the north ...
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About Me

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I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor, Altoona Pennsylvania. My dad was in the military, so we moved many times in my childhood. We lived in rural England from the time I was five until I was eight, and I began my formal education in a county council school, where my being American is likely all that saved me from having my bottom caned. When I was eleven my father retired from the Air Force, and we settled in Tampa.I graduated from the University of South Florida and Harvard Law School. Since then, apart from two years' active Army duty, I have lived in New York City; and have lived in the Borough of Brooklyn for many years. I'm married to Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We are proud of our daughter, Elizabeth, and our granddaughters, Ada and Sigrid.
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