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I hope that is the link to the “live” radio interview I did with CUTV on July 31st at 1 p.m. (CDT) 2 pm. EDT.
If so, have a listen.
If not, I will have to try to type the link for you, when you let me know it didn’t “work.”
“The Christmas Cats Flee the Bee,” 6th book in the Christmas Cats series (www.TheXmasCats.com).
Bee Gone: A Political Parable is up on Amazon Kindle (Kindle only, at this point) in a pre-sale due to go “live” on July 31st for $2.99. If you order early from the link at the bottom of this article, it will automatically be delivered to your Kindle that day. If you DO order this amusing book, please leave a review on Amazon. (Thank you!)
July 31st was selected because Connie will be interviewed “live” for 30 minutes that day by New York radio station CUTV’s Jim Masters. Connie is the author representative for their current female empowerment series of programs.
Anyone wanting to ask a question on July 31st (Wednesday) can phone in at 347-996-3389 at 1 p.m. CDT (2 p.m. EDT)
“The Christmas Cats Flee the Bee,” sixth book in the Christmas Cats series (www.TheXmasCats.com).
Connie will be talking about her new illustrated rhyming book “Bee Gone: A Political Parable” and the sixth book in her Christmas Cats series, entitled “The Christmas Cats Flee the Bee,” scheduled for release closer to Christmas. “Bee Gone: A Political Parable” is available in e-book only, but the Christmas Cats book will be available in paperback, hard cover and e-book. (www.TheXmasCats.com).
Bee Gone: A Political Parable is a rhyming, illustrated short e-book that examines the thought (articulated by Barack Obama), “Elections have consequences.” Given its timing, perhaps it will encourage those who did not vote in 2016 to go to the polls and vote in 2020.
In a very short story about a disgruntled drone in a bee hive who wants to take over the hive from the queen bee, the key take-away can be described (in the words of the book) this way: “So, the hive lost its honey, its Queen, and its money. It was really a mess, and that isn’t funny.”
The outstanding illustrations by illustrator Gary McCluskey are spot-on. They are both amusing and illustrative of today’s political situation. (Gary says, “It’s the most fun I ever had at work.”)
No matter what your political affiliation, no matter how divided in our individual beliefs, we all agree that citizens in a democracy must exercise their right to vote in order to insure that our democracy continues to function properly. Elections must be fair. Citizens must participate. Elections must be supervised to assure that they are not influenced illegally by outside forces.
If you’re a Democratic or Independent voter, you will probably chuckle all the way through this book.
If you’re a die-hard Trump supporter, maybe not so much.
Whatever your political leanings, enjoy the excellent illustrations and let’s try to remember that, so far, in this country, we all are allowed to express our opinion(s) under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Let’s hope we never lose that.
Lighten up and enjoy Bee Gone: A Political Parable! Order your copy today.
The second “sleeper” film of the summer, after “Late Night,” is “Yesterday,” an upbeat story of love and the Beatles.
Helmed by Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “Shallow Grave,” “Trainspotting”) from a script by Richard Curtis (“Notting Hill,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Love Actually”) “Yesterday” has an improbable plot that presents as fact the idea that everyone in the world has forgotten about the Beatles, except for Jack Malik (Himesh Patel of the BBC’s “Eastenders”).
Don’t get hung up on why the knowledge of the Beatles and their song catalogue has disappeared. It’s not just their music, as Oasis (the band) has disappeared, as well, along with Coca Cola, Harry Potter and cigarettes. It all seems to have happened during a 12-second world-wide blackout, during which our hero is on his bicycle and gets hit by a bus that cannot see him because its headlights have gone dark.
Starring alongside new-comer Himesh Patel as Jack is Lily James as Ellie, his first manager and long-time admirer. Lily is recognizable from “Baby Driver” and her appearance in “Mama Mia.” She has just the right combination of fresh-faced admiration and loyalty to make her the perfect grade school teacher (which she is) and, eventually—although he is slow to recognize this fact—the girl of Jack’s dreams.
Along the way we are treated to a small appearance by Ed Sheeran as himself, a part he got after Chris Martin of “Cold Play” turned it down. Sheeran hears Jack sing a Beatles song on television and pops around to his Suffolk home to give him a shot at stardom (Sheeran really is from Suffolk). The scene with Jack’s father in the kitchen is pure Curtis and very realistic, as are Jack’s parents’ reactions throughout his climb from unknown to world-famous singer of Beatles songs.
As the press kit for the film put it, “Ultimately, this film is a great example of the power of song…To reconnect with the power of music is a fantastic treat.” One of the amusing points made by the film is the difficulty of remembering all the lyrics to a favorite song. In this film, that song is “Eleanor Rigby.” It proves to be one of the most difficult to re-construct from memory, after all Beatles tunes have disappeared from the globe.
Jack has been struggling to make his name as a singer/songwriter for years, but his own composition, “Summer Song,” just isn’t up to Beatles standards. As the villainess of the piece (Kate McKinnon of “Saturday Night Live”) put it, “I hated it, but I wasn’t interested enough in it to listen to it again to figure out why.”
Now that Jack has pinned down his failure to thrive to his songs, but not his singing, armed with the Biggest Hits of the Sixties and beyond, he completely blows the competition out of the water. There is even an impromptu song-writing competition with Sheeran where Jack’s contribution of “The Long and Winding Road” is judged the winner. He seems to compose it in 10 or 15 minutes. (An interesting side note: the song that Sheeran wanted to contribute at that point was initially received with great enthusiasm—until his record company stepped in and said they needed it for his next album, at which point Sheeran composed another original work that runs at film’s end.)
Another role in the film is that of Jack’s roadie, Nick (Harry Michell). As the plot put it, “Nick is famously a world-class moron.” In real life, Michell was initially considered for the lead role of Jack because of his musical ability. When he auditioned he was ill and barely able to sing, but he was good enough that the part of Nick—comic relief—was his.
In part, the film is a hymn to the power of marketing. The scene where Jack is meeting in a board room with the marketing team that will decide how to present “his” songs to the world featured a dynamite monologue from the actor playing the lead marketer, who is, in reality, a well-known comedian. LaMorne Morris, the marketing guru, knocked it out of the park in shooting down such esoteric titles as “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in favor of “One Man Only.” The room used was loaned to Boyle for one day’s shoot because of his affiliation with WME and Cooper Wave Louise in L.A. and the W Hotel also makes an appearance. The rooftop scene of Jack performing at the Pier Hotel (a real Suffolk hotel) conjures up images of the real Beatles performing “Get Back” and “Don’t Let Me Down” on the roof of Apple Records.
Patel does all his own singing and glowing references to his audition, when he sang “Back in the U.S.S.R.” were made, with the comment that “Danny’s approach is all about the performance; that’s what we were there to catch.” In other words, no lip-syncing.
One small criticism. The film is a bit over-long. As it goes on past 2 hours we meet John Lennon. I wondered if removing the John Lennon meet might have brought the film in at 120 minutes or less, because that would have improved it, and the meeting with the doppelganger for John is not really that central to the plot until they give him this line: “Tell the girl that you love that you love her and tell the truth to everyone whenever you can.”
In other words, not a good movie choice for Donald J. Trump.
Joe Biden in Independence, Iowa, on the Fourth of July, 2019.
I’m from a little town in northeast Iowa called Independence. It is 38 miles north of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and 20 miles to the east of Waterloo/Cedar Falls,at the junction of Highways 150 and 218. It is the Fourth of July and it is an election year.
The last line of the paragraph above reminds me of the famous line from “The Blues Brothers” that laid out the situation for Belushi and Ackroyd in that film. Elwood: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark out, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
Joliet Jake: “Hit it!”
Beto O’Rourke in Independence, Iowa, for the Fourth of July parade.
[It should be noted right about now that the Blues Brothers were traveling to Chicago from Rock Island, Illinois, which is where I’ve lived the last 52 years of my life, in the Illinois Quad Cities.]
So, for today, the operative line goes like this.
Woman on the far left is gaining on the candidate in Independence (Iowa).
Future President of the United States?
Go, Joe, Go!!!
Joe Biden: “It’s 38 miles from Cedar Rapids, we’ve got me, Beto O’Rourke, a street full of voters in lawn chairs (plus one woman huffing and puffing alongside me like she’s running in the Boston marathon), Beto’s got a kid on his shoulders, and we’re both wearing sunscreen.”
Beto O’Rourke and unidentified child in Independence, Iowa, Fourth of July parade.
Beto O’Rourke: “Hit it!”
So it was in my small hometown this day—the day that DJT chose to threaten the infrastructure of Washington, D.C., with both tanks and planes for his politically themed Fourth of July celebration in our nation’s capitol, a departure from hundreds of years of decorum. (When asked, DJT said, “Decorum? What’s that?”)
I called my partner in political gate-crashing, Sue Ann Raymond, who also involved Dorothy Malek, I believe, in securing images of the Independence (Iowa) parade this fine July day. Sue Ann and I once crashed a “W” rally in Denver, Colorado, and she took a photo of an elderly man being dragged away by the Secret Service (after he held up a sign that read: “You lied and my son died”) She appeared on the evening television news, much to the dismay of her friends in the community. [It isn’t every day that an Episcopalian minister ends up on the evening news as the photographer of the day, but Sue Ann, now the pastor of St. James Episcopalian Church, is just that good!]
Watching the scene in downtown Independence took me back to the many times my dad—the town banker—would load us into the car and drive us out towards the Mental Health Institute (or the dump, it varied) to watch the fireworks in Buchanan County, Iowa. Dad spent 4 terms as the Democratic County Treasurer before starting the Security State Bank on the corner of the downtown (right across from the Farmers’ State Bank and, in my day, Infelt’s Drug Store, which is long gone)
Go, Joe, Go!!!
Dad would have enjoyed the parade today, which consisted of more photographers than marchers, from the looks of it, and was well-attended. I still remember Dad driving a team of Clydesdale horses down the street and throwing out wooden nickels to the crowd from the Security State Bank when Independence had its sesqui-centennial many years ago. (We sat on top of the bank and, when the Blue Angels flew over, we were so startled that we nearly fell off!) Robert Ray was the Governor and all was right in the state—then.
Let it be known, for purposes of figuring out whether Donald J. Trump’s parade cost taxpayers $2.5 million—stolen from national parks moneys—or $92 million, as reported elsewhere, that running an F135 jet for an hour costs $140,000 and a Blue Angel plane costs $10,000 per hour to run. No Blue Angel planes in Independence this day.
Happy Fourth of July, America! Happy Moment in the Sun, Independence. “Our fame IS in our name!”
Hotel one block from the Old Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Attending the National Federation of Press Women conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was an informational experience. We were treated to a keynote address from Peter Kovacs, editor of The Advocate, Baton Rouge’s local newspaper, and a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Walt Handelsman. Also featured as speakers were Jeff Cowart of San Antonio, who talked about Creative Story telling, and Scott Sternberg, an attorney and First Amendment expert who talked about attacks on First Amendment freedoms.
Scott Sternberg readies his presentation about attacks on the First Amendment (freedom of speech).
A panel of book authors featured Stanley Nelson, editor of the Concordia (La) Sentinel and author of “Devils Walking: Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s,” Rachel Emanuel, author of “A More Noble Cause: A.P. Tureaud and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Louisiana,” and Leo Honeycutt, former television journalist and author of several books including “Edwin Edwards: Governor of Louisiana: An Authorized Biography.”
National Federation of Press Women attendees (approximately 80) in the Old Capitol Senate chamber.
Peter Kovacs, who started off the convention on Thursday, June 27 shared with us that his father, then 25 years old, was in Baton Rouge staying at this very hotel when Huey Long was shot. Why was he there? He was a traveling condom salesman. Kovacs went on from that shared glimpse into Louisiana history to talk about the Pulitzer his paper won for a series on jury law in Louisiana that allowed the accused to be sent to prison even if the jury could not find them guilty. It had to do with a now-outlawed law that allowed juries to find someone guilty with only 9 or 10 of 12 jurors agreeing on the guilt, a hold-over from the Jim Crow years.
Old Capitol. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
On Friday, the noon luncheon at the Old Senate building one block away yielded many interesting and amusing stories conveyed by Jay Dardenne. The building, itself, is a National Historic Landmark and received an Excellence for Architectural Award. According to Dardenne, the building was more than adequate to serve as the Capitol building but Huey Long wanted the tallest Senate building and decreed that a new Capitol building must be built, which it was. (Huey Long is buried in the front lawn).
Voted 11th best stained glass window in a recent poll.
For those of us who have seen Sean Penn play Huey “Catfish” Long in the movies, we may not have realized that he was a very real threat as a Presidential candidate to FDR in the election of 1936, but was assassinated on September 10, 1942, at age 42 in Baton Rouge before his 8 million followers in many other states could band together to put him in office. In his first year in office, Huey Long
Outside the convention center hotel.
paved 8,000 miles of formerly dirt roads, provided for free text books for all Louisiana students, and had placed 23 members on the family payroll. Each employee was required to contribute 10% of his or her pay check to a fund known as the Deduc fund, which was used to support Huey’s chosen candidates in their races. When told this was not kosher, Huey said, “I’ve made them pay it momentarily.”
Jay Dardenne, Commissioner of Administration for Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards. He oversees the state budget and general government operations and served for 8 years as Louisiana’s Lt. Gov. 4 years as Secretary of State, 15 years as a state senator, and 3 years as a Baton Rouge metro Councilman. (Speaker on 6/28 inside the Old Capitol).
Ultimately, Huey’s domineering very Trump-like ways caused a move to impeach him. The Senators met in the very room where we had lunch, but they had all been placed in office by Huey and, after deliberating for one hour, refused to impeach him (“We will not vote to impeach.”). They all signed in a circle, so that no one could see who had signed first, forming the famous “Round Robin Signature.” Chief Justice O’Neal of the Louisiana Supreme Court, when asked about the prospect of impeachment for Huey Long, said, “Don’t you think I’d give the thieving son-of-a-bitch a fair trial?”
The 6/28 luncheon was held within the very Senate room where Senators met to vote on whether to impeach then-Governor Huey Long.
When Huey was finally gunned down, he was no longer the Governor, but was serving as Senator. On September 8, 1935, Long was at the State Capitol attempting to oust a long-time opponent, Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy. At 9:20 p.m., just after passage of the bill effectively removing Pavy, Pavy’s son-in-law Carl Weiss, a physician from Baton Rouge, approached Long, and, according to the generally accepted version of events, shot him in the torso 
with a handgun from four feet (1.2 m) away. Long’s bodyguards responded by firing at Weiss with their own pistols, killing him; an autopsy found that Weiss had been shot more than sixty times by Long’s bodyguards. Long died on September 10 at 4:10 a.m.[109] According to different sources, his last words were either, “I wonder what will happen to my poor university boys,” or “I have so much to do.”
Speaker Dardenne shared details of another Louisiana politician, Cat Dusett, who spoke Parisian French and did not speak English well. He once declared he would “win by a landscape” and said, “I talk out of my head.” When asked about his policy on juvenile delinquency, he said, “If it’s good for the kids, I’m for it.” Asked about Civil Rights, his response was, “If we owe it, we ought to pay it.”
Incoming President Gwen Larson.
Dardenne moved on to humorous stories of a snake oil remedy called Hadacall. (When asked why it was named Hadacall, the entrepreneur and patent medicine salesman inventor said, “I hadda call it something!”) In addition to advertising that the potion could cure cancer and insomnia, it was eventually marketed as an aphrodisiac and Jerry Lee Lewis even composed a chorus in one song, which went like this: “It takes a knock-kneed woman and a bow-legged man to do the Hadacall boogie on a sardine can.”
Walt Handelsman, who has won 3 Pulitzer Prizes for his cartooning and his animated drawings, delighted the crowd with a presentation featuring some of his better-known cartoons. Some cartoons we were not allowed to photograph, but this one, featuring Bill Clinton, earned a second laugh when Handelsman told us that the next day he got a phone call from an elderly woman who wanted to know, “Who is Bill 
talking to? Is it Monica?”
The caption on the cartoon, (for those who cannot enlarge it on their screens) shows (Bill) Clinton saying, “Well, this is ANOTHER fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
Inside the Museum.
Thursday, June 27th activities at the National Federation of Press Women began with a memorial service to former presidents of state organizations who had died in the past year. Candles were lit and and passed from member to member representing that state. We sang “Amazing Grace” (lyrics were passed out) and, since it was the day of friend Nelson Peterson’s funeral, which I was missing to be here, it was particularly poignant for me.
Leaving for the evening reception of June 27 at the Capitol Museum.
In the evening, we boarded a bus and were ferried over to the Museum associated with the Old Capitol. We were met by waiters with drinks—rose mixed with rum, pink with a raspberry in it. (“Packs quite a punch if you drink enough,” the wait staff told me, so I took it easy.) The wait staff was cordial and friendly and, in the background, a string quartet played popular music of a certain genre. (“Stairway to Heaven,” “All of Me”).
Waiters with drinks met us at the Museum.
The Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, Billie Nungesser welcomed us to the state and the open bar and wonderful seafood buffet was sponsored by Visit Baton Rouge and Louisiana Seafood. The food, itself, was to die for, as they say. There was even a separate “oyster tent” where oysters had been cooked and were served on the half-shell in a delicious sauce. During the dining experience, you could opt to hold a baby alligator or shop with local artisans who made jewelry, paintings or woodworking.
After dining, we were free to browse the interior of the museum, which was a fascinating place. It was a little too dark to get good shots of the exhibits, but the information was interesting and well-presented. Plus, a scavenger hunt had been set up for party goers to find a specific display, take a selfie with it, and send it in for a $100 prize.
Artist.
Prize-winning woodworker.
A good time was had by all!
Prize-winning woodworker.
Capitol Museum veranda.
Plantation woodworking.
Illinois outgoing NFPW President Maranne Wolf-Astrauskas and socializers enjoy the veranda.
Local artisan display.
Inside the Museum.
Baby alligator.
Alligator fun!
Oyster tent.
My best in-town friend, Nelson G. Peterson, age 95—almost 96—died today (June 24th) at 9:10 a.m. I was planning on popping into Heartland (nursing home and rehabilitation center) to visit him before leaving for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to take pictures at the National Federation of Press Women Conference, but another good friend of 50 years’ standing (one of our foursome) unexpectedly showed up in town from the Des Moines area, called me wanting to get together, and I didn’t stop on Wednesday. I left town on Thursday.
Today is Monday. Nelson died 5 days after my visit with Judy, another fellow teacher and bridge player (whom I also taught to play the game). In May, when we returned from Texas and I went to visit Nelson for the first time in 4 months, he hugged me and cried, “Oh, Con! It’s been so long!” (No one had ever been so glad to see me that they cried.)
He went on to apologize for his emotional outburst and said, “I’ve outlived everyone.” He answered this way when I asked him about his Swedish relatives, saying he had outlived them all, too. I remember my own mother, who lived to be almost 95, saying much the same thing to me during her final days.
I had been trying to find a pair of slippers to replace Nelson’s heavily worn slippers and showed up with a “normal” pair, only to find that his feet and legs were “extra wide.” They were, in fact, wrapped in heavy white constricting bandage-like garments. This may have been a sign of the sepsis that, they say, took his life after less than 24 hours in the hospital.
Nelson was a veteran of World War II. He had been involved in the Battle of the Bulge. Even more remarkably, his father was a veteran of World War I and my daughter once took Nelson’s dad’s little WWI diary with “Kilroy Was Here” cartoons to history class when in high school.
Nelson and me.
I met Nelson in 1969-1970 when I began teaching Language Arts at Silvis Junior High School. He had begun teaching history there after another career and he put in 25 years. Prior to that, Nelson worked at the Arsenal, tasked with tracking the delivery of Arsenal products to their destination. He didn’t like pushing paper clips around, he said, and went back to school to retrain to become a history teacher of 7th and 8th graders. He never bothered to learn any of his students’ first names, preferring to call them “Miss or Mr._______.”
Every morning, Nelson would leave the door to his classroom open. Through the door, before school started, would come the strains of Edith Piaf from a recording on a turntable. His mother, a Swedish immigrant, worked as a maid in the wealthier homes of Moline, and Nelson spoke fluent Swedish. In his eighties, he still corresponded with relatives in Sweden. He is, to this day, the only person I know who installed a walk-in tub in his home. [A forward-thinker, even then.]
In 1986 Nelson had cancer surgery on the very same day that my father had colon cancer surgery. (I was warned NOT to call Nelson to report on my dad, because now he was hospitalized with the same ailment.) My father only lived six months after the discovery of his condition in the spring (March). Nelson lived, with a colostomy bag, for an additional 33 years and even traveled with that inconvenience to Sweden at least once.
I’ll always hear Nelson’s chipper voice saying things like “If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time,” (an old joke). He used to tell us that his job when in WWII was to teach the soldiers about sexually transmitted diseases. I never knew if that was true or not, but it always got a chuckle. I’ll never forget the many diets we tried together. (Nelson was the darling of the Weight Watchers set). I finally quit after HE got a cookbook, and I got bubbkas. Each of the 3 others of us was to bring lunch to school one day of the week. Nelson’s idea of “lunch” was to open a cold can of tuna fish and a cold can of green beans, while we were preparing warm sandwiches in the Home Economics room oven and thinking up tasty recipes.
I taught Nelson to play bridge. I must say, he was the worst bridge player I’ve ever seen. He would lead with a King, no matter what. It got so bad that we made up our own rules of the game. One of them was that we dealt the cards face-down, and the four of us (Nelson, Judy, Linda and me) had to bid without looking at them. If this sounds like far from serious bridge, you’re absolutely right.
I will always think of Nelson in his little house in Moline, with his baby grand piano and his small room full of books. I will always remember the time I went over to show Nelson my new snakeskin shoes and scared his elderly mother, who didn’t see well enough to know what I was wearing on my feet. (“I’m scared!” she said in a quavering voice).
Nelson took care of his mom at home until the day she died. He never married. He was engaged a few times, but the romance with Kay (and others) never bore fruit. He had no children. The nursing home staff thought I was either his daughter or his granddaughter.
Nelson was a World Class Sweetie, and he was my friend through thick and thin. He never excluded me from his life for any reason. I was “good enough” for Nelson just the way I am. I wish I had been invited to his 93rd birthday party at the Cellar in Geneseo, but at least I have these pictures from his 94th birthday, when my husband and I took him out to eat at Short Hills Country Club. He dressed up in his suit and wore his patriotic pins and we tottered on down to the dining area in style. And on his 95th, I took a large cake to his nursing home dining room.
I am too sad to write more. “Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.”
I love you, Nelson. Rest in Peace.
The Rolling Stones on June 21st, 2019 at Soldier Field.
The Rolling Stones played for the 8th time at Soldier Field on Friday night, June 21st, beginning at 7:30 p.m. with the lead-in act, St. Paul and the Broken Bones from Alabama.
Before arriving at the venue, we were told not to bring large purses. Specific dimensions were sent and a suggestion was made that we use quart-sized plastic bags. All metal objects had to be placed in trays as we went through metal detectors up front. I was able to get my plastic bag contents down to cash, one credit card, my cell phone, my small camera,
We were waaay up in the stadium and these were taken with a Canon PowerShot with a 40 zoom.
and opera glasses (that turned out to be useless). Tickets in the nosebleed section were $69.50 and we climbed a long time. (I told my husband, “I’ll just keep climbing until I pass out.”)
The booths selling shirts and the like ($45 for a regular tee shirt; $85 for a hooded sweatshirt) were set up in a particularly problematic way. You could barely walk through to get to your section because of the presence of several tables selling merchandise.
Mick Jagger.
Finally, we climbed to the 18th row in the highest section. The night was cool and rain threatened, but the four things that amazed me most about the concert this night were as follows: (1) Mick Jagger definitely is in amazing shape for someone his age (75, born July 26, 1943) (2) Jagger is back from the heart surgery that had originally postponed this concert date, but was re-programmed for the original date shortly after he had stents placed in his heart (3) my new small camera (Canon Powershot) with a 40 zoom did a pretty fair job of getting pictures from this far away and (4) how far other concert-
Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood.
goers had come to hear the Rolling Stones. We heard Germany, England, New York, Cleveland, Minneapolis and St. Louis and everyone around us was from out-of-town. In fact, following the concert, we had to provide directions to a gentleman who was to meet his friends at Scout bar on Wabash and Michigan and had little idea how to get back there.
Mick shared that the Stones had played Soldier Field 8 times and Chicago 38 times over the years since 1964. Only 2 of the songs were from later than 1981. Which, as the Chicago Tribune noted, is exactly what the vast majority of fans paid to see.
Other musicians assisting the band included keyboardist Charlie Leavell and Chicago born bassist Darryl Jones ably backing the Stones (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood).
The Rolling Stones, June 21, 2019.
Since 1998, the stones have produced only 2 studio albums, yet they play their hits differently each night. I can vouch for this, having seen them for the first time in 1982 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, at Northern Iowa University and, after that, during the Steel Wheels tour, the Bridges to Babylon tour (2x), the VooDoo Lounge tour, the Tattoo You tour, twice inside the United Center (one of them the No Security tour) and at the Indianapolis Speedway in 2015, as well as tonight’s No Filter tour. Mick had never danced more and I had never seen Charlie Watts AND Keith Richards smile more onstage.
Mick Jagger.
To me, tracking the band in person for 37 years, Keith Richards looked the most changed. Something about the expanse of forehead looked very different. The joke about Keith is that he has looked like he is at death’s door for at least 40 years. He really did look different to me, tonight, and his comment when he spoke was, “I’m happy to be anywhere.”
Keith (Richards) and Mick Jagger onstage.
The Stones have weathered sixties drug busts, seventies heroin addictions, the Jagger/Richards split during the eighties, Keith’s brain surgery after he fell out of a tree in 2006 and, now, Mick’s heart surgery (stents) in March. They sound as good as ever, and Mick danced more, if possible, than I’ve ever seen him, in a “Look! I’m still standing!” move. It was a great show! Even the weather cooperated. The downside was that it took us a full hour to walk across the street from the stadium.
Their play list this night was as follows:
1) Street Fighting Man
2) Let’s Spend the Night Together
3) Tumbling Dice
4) Sad Sad Sad
“Brown Sugar,” Mick Jagger.
5) You Got Me Rocking
6) You Can’t Always Get What You Want
7) Angie
8) Dead Flowers
9) Sympathy for the Devil
Charlie Watts.
10) Honky Tonk Woman
11) You Got the Silver
12) Before They Make Me Run
13) Miss You
14) Paint it Black
15) Midnight Rambler
Mick Jagger.
16) Start Me Up
17) Jumpin’ Jack Flash
18) Brown Sugar
Encores
19) Gimme Shelter
Ronnie Wood.
20) I Can’t Get No Satisfaction
Mick, center stage.
Keith Richards
Mick, far left.
An Irish illustrator, John Rooney, sent me his work on “The Films of Bill Murray.” Since I just took myself to see “The Dead Don’t Die” in Chicago at the AMC Theater, I told him I’d run his artwork with a few observations about the film. It’s not really a “review,” but simply some observations after my viewing of same.
The Dead Don’t Die film was exactly what I had anticipated: an oddball display of Bill Murray at his hipster best, playing a small town Sheriff with a deputy, played by Adam Driver of “Star Wars” and “BlackKlansman.” Zombie fare has been hot for a while now and this is a bit like “The Walking Dead” in that the principal characters (Murray, Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton) are told to “aim for the head.” Carol Kane also has a brief bit as a corpse who “changes” while in police custody.
Steve Buscemi plays a racist who is not mourned when he bites the dust (or, more accurately, when the zombies bite him). He is featured at a local diner drinking coffee while wearing a hat that resembles the Trump red hat with the words “Make America White Again.” Seated next to him is Danny Glover, who, at almost 73 years of age, seems to be taking just any old role these days. I saw him in a movie about the Ebola virus at the Chicago International Film Festival of 2017. It was pretty bad. Here, he only has a few lines, but the one that Buscemi speaks to him about the coffee is something along the lines of, “That’s too black for me,” which he immediately doubles back on, saying, “I was talking about the coffee.”
At one point, when Murray and Driver are trapped in their car in a cemetery and Adam Driver keeps saying, “This will not end well,” Murray freaks out and tells him to stop saying that. Murray then demands to know WHY Driver keeps repeating the line, and Driver says, “I read the script.” Murray has a momentary outburst of outrage over the fact that Writer/Director Jim Jarmusch (renowned for his “quirky” films) didn’t share the entire script with him. It’s that kind of “inside joke” film.
Tilda Swinton plays a very strange mortician. Her finale in the film is the kind that cannot be predicted, because it is fairly illogical. But, then, this is a Jim Jarmusch film. It really plays like a long commercial for the song of the same name, which is pretty good, but an entire film about the song? Really?
The horrible ending to the film, for me, was when I was charged $39 to park for 2 hours in the AMC parking lot under the theater. I was supposed to have had my ticket validated, at which point my charge would have been a mere $17. I spent 4 days trying to reach Tiara, who oversees 6 different parking lots, they told me. I did finally reach her, only to be told that she could not put the $22 differential back on my charge card. (Sigh)
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