Who put the bomp?

Back in the days when doo-wop was a national phenomenon, and you were probably still in diapers then, songwriters didn't need an Oxford dictionary to write lyrics for hit songs. There was an epidemic of repetitive word syndrome during that era but never a shortage of talented artists to translate the simple compositions into good sounding music.

What these older groups were noted for were their showmanship, the variations of made-up words for their back-ups, the ranges in their voices, the perfect vocal harmonizing, the baritone and the bass with the falsetto. It was amazing how they made beautiful music out of meaningless syllables such as sha na na, oop shoop, shang-a lang, aah-ooh-ooh, shoo bop, da dip dip.

There is the group called Larry Chance and the Earls whose big hit song Remember Then goes like:

Re-mem-mem, re-mem-mem-mem-ber, oop-shoop

followed by a series of whoa-ooh.

Then The Skyliners' song Since I Don't Have You which ends in the word You repeated twelve times. What about Barry Mann's Who Put the Bomp which runs like:

Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?

Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?

Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?

That sure opened up the world for The Beatles to use the same style of repetitiveness as in Love Me Do. And the rest of the music world followed suit.

So what's the picture of a mansion doing in this doo-wop entry you might ask? It certainly is not a venue fit for the Woodstock Revival but rather a backdrop for the Picnic at the Pops in Old Westbury Gardens. This is the Westbury House, former home of the Phipps family and now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Its 200-acre landscaped grounds makes it one of the finest English gardens in the US and the perfect setting for an evening under the stars with music by none other than Larry Chance and the Earls. Well, maybe minus the stars, but some other night there could be.

The lawn in front of the mansion was lined with blankets, lawn chairs, picnic tables, baskets of wine and cheese and boxed dinners, some elaborate and complete with candles, white linens and fine cutlery. Below the stage was a makeshift dance floor where every summer we watched this lovely couple in their late 70's lead the crowd of teens and seniors to the beat of the music. Good with the lindy, swing, fox trot and what have you, it was fun to watch them.

Until last night, this couple was unbeatable. The new kids on the block were a younger couple in their 50's that wowed the crowd. She was so elegant and graceful, and she wore the proper dancing outfit too - black leotards topped with a fire-engine red flare mini-skirt which exposed her shapely legs as she twirled and twisted. The couple was a hit.

I'm surprised that I recognized most of the songs sung by the Earls. Of course, Remember Then.

Shimmy, bump or rhumba? My father was generous enough to hire a dance instructor to teach me when I was in college, but nothing came of it. Singing? I get paid to not sing!

I wonder if that lady in the red skirt could break -dance.

Happy birthday Inang

Isn't she lovely?

Happy birthday Inang. She's 102.

This time it was a quiet celebration with the grandchildren. Chinese take out and mango cake and lots of bonding with the family.

Simple and the best celebration ever, as Ped said, just like Lola herself.

We love you Inang.

Good to the last dropping

So what's brewing? Think coffee.
It's a staple in our household. I first got hooked on coffee when I was in grade school thanks to my permissive grandparents who didn't know any better but to always keep a fresh pot of the intoxicating liqour all day; pure black almost syrupy, mind you. We roasted and ground our own coffee beans and extracted the stimulant by brewing the grounds to death in boiling water. An insult to the grounds.

The coffee was then filtered through a homemade filter made from flannel or cheese cloth cut in the shape of a cone and sewn around a wire holder ring similar to a butterfly net. The coffee was kept warm in an enamel pot, sat on the dining table all day so that every colicky little boy and little girl could get high on coffee. It is a daily ritual for us - coffee throughout the day but hey, look I grew up quite normal and my faculties still intact at past 60.

Coffee enthusiasts couldn't agree on how to best brew a good cup. There's the French press - I've used mine once, it was just okay and I couldn't tell the difference in taste. Then there's the cone drip filter not like my grandmother's gadget, but made either of paper or gold? Whatever method you employ, the secret is in the water. New York tap water is believed to be ideal for brewing but others would go to the extent of using distilled water.

I'm as guilty as anyone in drinking tons of instant Nescafe during those study periods and college all nighters but I'm not proud of it. The coffee war seems endless. There's Illy, Peet's, Starbucks, Seattle's Best, Gevalia and so forth and I've tried them all. Coffee-of-the-month clubs, coffee houses, bars, shops are all part of the coffee culture we all grew up in. Perks of sorts are popular, as in complimentary Wi-Fi at Borders or Barnes & Noble's Starbucks where people sit for hours sipping one cup of coffee and not spending much. Latte this and frappe that, this is not going to last for long since most coffee shops are pulling the plug on the cheapskate laptop users.

Did you know that there is this coffee produced only in Indonesia extremely rare and the most expensive to boot? Asking price is $600 per pound and averages $30 per brewed cup. It's called Kopi Luwak. Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee and Luwak is the cat that eat the raw coffee cherries as part of their regular diet. The animals eat a mixed diet of insects, small mammals and fruits along with the outer meat of the coffee but do not digest the inner coffee beans. Instead it is excreted still covered with some layers of the cherry. The robust taste is intensified through the process of digesting the beans. So now you know!

I kid you not - they say it is the purr-fect cuppa Joe, this cat poop coffee. I'll need a mask to try it. If I didn't know what coffee cherries look like, I wouldn't have any idea what these people are talking about. My sister who lives in the mountains in the North ( Mountain Province) happens to grow coffee plants. The cool climate in the region is perfect for that. Imagine if the feral cats in the mountains eat my sister's choicest cherries and excrete them the way these mongooses or weasels do? She'll make a fortune from the turd!

So much poop-la over this Kopi Luwak but I'm not that crazy to spend that kind of money for this strange coffee. The best part of waking up is definitely not crap in my cup!

Pete Seeger at 90

Yes, I'm a folkie. No matter what I do I can never reverse this aging process, so at the risk of dating myself (over and over again, but who cares), let me say I got a healthy dose of folk music and by the best ever.

For those of us who remember, Pete Seeger is a living legend, folk singer par excellence, peace activist, environmentalist and a cool as a cucumber fellow who became an inspiration to generations. With his sloop Clearwater, he led the movement to clean the Hudson River of weeds, debris and trash of sorts. It was remarkable.

Pete's 90th birthday celebration at the Madison Square Garden, later broadcast as a Great Performances Special, was an all-star cast of no one but the best. No extravagant sets, it was staged on the deck of a "boat" and the most moving performance of musicians making political statements with their compositions. All smart stuff and fun.

There's a whole list of musical numbers but the most powerful of all is "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Joan Baez herself, then "Turn, Turn, Turn" led by former Byrds singer Jim or Roger whatever McGuinn. Dave Matthews injected a bit of humor with his "Rye Whiskey" and with Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp and Richie Havens in the mix, who could ask for anything more. There was Tom Chapin and Oscar the Grouch singing "Garbage, Garbage, Garbage"... what a gold mine!

Known for his great 5-string banjo playing, Pete Seeger is an icon and a hero. And with a stage full of sounds of feels-so-good-music from my favorites, I was blown away.

How about that gleefull rendition of the circular song "There's a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza (Liesl)", by Kris Kristofferson and Ani Di Franco? Not just for kids, it was entertaining.

When you reach my age, you get these nostalgic feelings quite often but this time it was self-inflicted. I watched the show three times, three rounds felt so addicting and drove me to this trip to nostalgia lane. Good music, where have they all gone?

Happy birthday, Pete. Your music and flannel shirt will remain fashionable anytime. Thanks for the memories, y'all!

Sustainable this, sustainable that

As far as I'm concerned there are no rules when it comes to lasting friendships.

Get it right and you have a friend for life.

The concept of sustainability is so ubiquitous in the literature - sustainable this and sustainable that - so why not sustainable friendship? That's the way it is with Phyllis and Chantal, who remain such sweet friends even after saying our hasta la vistas at the end of our travel. Chantal visits us from her home in Texas, reads my blog like it's her morning paper (I think), and doesn't dissolve into tears over her e-mails to us that go unanswered for several days. She must have a lovely home as she is always working on something; if she isn't painting the outside (mind you using a tall ladder but without a harness), she's tending to her garden, one time nearly losing her digits to a voracious lawnmower.

Phyllis lives on the West End of Manhattan busy as any scientist doing her research work at Mount Sinai but finds time between lab work and teaching to reconnect with us. She's working on a grant involving her work on gene expression to reduce amyloid plaques in the brain gross amounts of which are found in Alzheimer's disease. The techniques and concept are so complex the way she described them, that they left so many tangles in my neurons. Do we see us getting closer to a significant breakthrough? Keep up the good work Dr. Phyllis.

Hey Maria, doesn't your friend Sally screen grant applications for the National Science Foundation? This may be one for her. You think you may be able to pull a few strings?

Chantal is in town and today we all met for lunch at Carmine's. Been there many times and counting, Italian cuisine family style servings and the wait is usually one and a half hours. Tip for the tourist: go to the Upper West Side location instead of the midtown branch to avoid the long wait and the loud atmosphere. At Carmine's, food is consistently delicious, bread uber-garlicky, we love that and this time the place is empty until a pack of about forty summer camp kids ambushed the quiet ambiance.

What were we thinking? We're four petite ladies with super-size appetites, now being served with portions large enough for four days of dinner - a huge platter of house salad to die for, seafood pasta, delicioso. Definitely worth the trek to the UWS. And we finished all the food! I've always vowed to leave room for dessert but have yet to get there. Although, we had cappuccino, at five bucks a piece, not nearly as good as Caffe' Sant' Eustachio, but let's save that for another blog. Coffee divine!

It's always good to see good friends, I just wish the visits could be more often. Enjoy your cruise and maybe we could plan a trip together again. I promise not to make you eat those black sesame seed candies ever. Remember the ride to Gibraltar with Jan and Greg and their lovely blackened-with-sesame-seed-teeth grin? And we won't embarrass you at the airport by unpacking our luggage overloaded with manchego and olives of all things. Thank goodness they weren't stinky! Those Spaniards at the check-in counter were so mean, a few kilos overweight and they couldn't just look the other way?

I'll probably be ready to travel again when this swine flu scare dies down.

No matter what, we'll always pick up where we left off.

Odds and ends

Ever since I was old enough to feed myself I have been peeling bananas just one way. Some call it the monkey way others the upside down method. I peel the banana from the tip while I hold the banana by its handle.

You might think I've lost it or perhaps I'm high.

This topic has triggered a lot of heated debates among my friends at the old workplace. They believe that it's so dysfunctional the way I peel my banana and that no one else does it my way, until one day there it was, all yellow and right smack in the middle of Broadway. And guess what - the banana was split from the tip and peeled my way! There you go, follow my lead!

Call it the monkey way but since they are the undisputed experts in this department I don't mind being associated with them. I did a little digging and the good people at Wikipedia referred to the song Mellow Yellow by Donovan as rumored to have been about smoking dried banana skins believed to be hallucinogenic. Of the many drugs with unpronounceable names, right under our nose is bananadine, can you imagine? Tripping on bananas? Or did they just make this up?

Another odd practice of mine is reading the last page first.

I have to admit to reading any magazine backwards because I like the last page best but I'm not exactly an end -reader and I don't read the last page of a book first. It just seems natural for me. I pick and choose what I read first in a newspaper or magazine, I read piecemeal and I hop all over the place.

Check out this advice column by Jeffrey Goldberg found in the last page of The Atlantic, "What's Your Problem?" and tell me if that isn't hilarious. Read about the troubled sperm donor in the July/August issue, I think it's a riot.

Other noteworthy last pages that aim at humor:
The Awesome Column by Joel Stein (Time )

The Last Page (Smithsonian)

Findings (Harper's Magazine)

I bet you there's a few more out there and I leave it up to you to find out.

I love the 60's but no I have not been doping myself with banana peels. This is my natural state of mind - bizarre.

Live and Let Die

What are you talking about?

Paul who?

McCartney?

Get out! Are you serious?
How come I didn't hear about it?

So I heard it was a blast of a christening for The Mets' new stadium Citi Field. Paul McCartney did it again. 1965, I was fresh out of college, when The Beatles made history by playing at the former Shea Stadium.

I didn't see them then; I didn't see him yesterday either.

What's wrong with me? Where's my brain?

And I'm only a stone's throw away from the stadium. Bummer.
Somebody, just shoot me please and end this misery.

Part of Setlist : Drive my Car/Jet/I Saw Her Standing There/Let It Be/Yesterday/Get Back/Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band/Paperback Writer/Hey Jude/Day Tripper/Eleanor Rigby/Lady Madonna/Jet/Band on the Run etc....