The World According to Keitho

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Oh it’s on!

Posted by keithosaunders on January 22, 2012

Here is a last-minute NFC championship game post.  The New York Giant Bay Area outpost is open for business in Albany, California, consisting entirely of my family.  I don’t dare venture out into the streets until after the Giants have destroyed the 49ers, reaping revenge for the last time these two teams met in the post season in 2002; a wild-card game in which the Giants blew a 24 point lead only to lose 39-38.

Have I mentioned that these west coasters are out of their minds?!  They were already printing their Super Bowl tickets even before they beat the Saints.  Then last Saturday’s mass jubilation after their improbably victory — carrying on like it was the final scene from Hoosiers.  (my world war two metaphor was better, I know.  Sue me!)

The sports radio guys, as usual, were out of control, going on about east coast bias, and the ghosts of Candlestick Park.  

First of all…east coast bias?!  The last time I looked it’s the same no-neck guys who play on both coasts.  Also, as my friend and co-blogging blogger, Jeff Mazzei pointed out, the western teams, with the exception of this year’s 49ers squad, basically suck.

And…the ghosts of Candlestick?!  What ghosts?  John Brodie?!  All those guys from the ’80s are still alive!   Is it possible that Joe Montana has a ghost that we don’t know about?  That guy truly is amazing.

Go Giants!

 

Is it the real Joe Montana, or his ghost?

 

Posted in football | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Of the Saints, 49ers, and Joe Carter.

Posted by keithosaunders on January 16, 2012

It’s been a great playoff season.  Who could have predicted that when the smoke cleared there would be two coaches named Harbaugh in the Championship game, as well as a Giants team who on December 4th had lost four in a row, and at 6-6 looked like an afterthought.  The Patriots success could have been predicted, but on the other hand, they have one of the more porous defenses in NFL history to have advanced this deep into the playoffs.

On Saturday I settled into my living room to watch the 49ers/Saints game.  Living in the Bay Area and being a sports talk-radio devotee, I had spent the previous week being hyped into a frenzy, and by midday Saturday I was frothing at the mouth awaiting the game.

The radio hosts and the callers had confounded me with their near unanimous confidence in the 49ers ability to take down the scoring machine that is the Saints offense.  To me it seemed like homer-ism run amok.  Their team has a mediocre quarterback and had played a soft schedule.

In New York, even when the Giants have great teams, this kind of blanket cockiness never exists.  There is always a healthy dose of skepticism and people more or less expect the worst to happen.

I have a theory about this.  New York has largest Jewish population of any metropolitan area in the world.  Nobody knows suffering like the Jews do, and the feeling of facing insurmountable hardships seeps into the collective psyche of the city.  Every gentile in New York knows a little Yiddish.

The Hebraically challenged Bay Area does not know from such suffering, ergo they are blithely spared such bouts of negative thinking.  They can’t imagine anything bad happening.

Contrarian that I am, I was quietly savoring watching the ‘Friscans being served a generous helping of humble pie.  The game began and you could see immediately that the 49ers defense was all that it was advertised.  Still the Saints defense held their own, shutting down the Niners offense for most of the second and third quarter.

By the fourth quarter two things were painfully apparent:  First, it was going to be a great ending, and second, because of my Saturday night gig, I would have to leave sometime during the fourth quarter.

I left with the 49ers ahead with six minutes to go in the fourth quarter.  By the time I had reached the Bay Bridge the Saints had taken their first lead of the game.  Midway across the bridge the 49ers grabbed the lead back with a brilliant Harbaugh call of an Alex Smith bootleg.

By now I was beginning to do the slow burn, grinding my teeth and muttering the name, Joe Carter under my breath.  (In 1993 I missed the one of the greatest World Series ending of all time — a Joe Carter walk-off home run)

I was over the bridge and driving south on Folsom when the Saints retook the lead on a 66 yard Drew Brees pass to tight end, Jimmy Graham.

“Shit!”

By now I was desperately searching for a bar where I could pull over and watch the final minute and a half of the game.  The sports gods rewarded me with a bar and a parking spot, and I ran in to see the winning 49er drive.  At least I can say I saw the end of what will surely be remembered as one of the greatest playoff games of all time.

I was unprepared for what would happen next.  It was more of a delayed reaction, really, as if the city was on seven second delay.  It was as if the city took a collective deep breath and held it for five minutes.

Then bedlam.  People began streaming out of bars shouting with delight, cars were honking and drunk girls were screaming like banshees.  This went on for two hours.  It was like V-J day.  I realize it was a game for the ages, but come on,  San Francisco, act like you’ve been there before.  It’s not even the championship game!

The thing is, they have been there — THEY’VE WON FIVE SUPER BOWLS!

Now the 49ers will face my team, the Giants.  I have no doubt that every Bay Area resident is rubbing his or her palms together in glee, thinking, “Oh baby, it’s in the bag!”  But unless I miss my guess, I think they’re in for a rude awakening come Sunday.  Talmud, after all, is a dish best served cold.

 

 

Posted in football | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

The genuflecting

Posted by keithosaunders on January 11, 2012

Someone posted this as a wall photo on my Facebook:

Don’t forget to pray today, because God didn’t forget to wake you up this morning.

I’ll say this about Jews and Muslims:  They do not proselytize.  Even if I was receptive to religion, the last thing I would want is for some righteous fanatic to shove it in my face.  I suspect that these are the people who are most repressed.  What are they trying to hide? 

Tim Tebow finally had a good game last Sunday against the Steelers.  I have to admit that he is clutch.  I’ll also say this:  You could have driven a Mac truck through those Pittsburgh safetys.  Even I would have scored with those holes.

Now we’ve got another week of hearing about how Tebow does nothing but win.  Until the Patriots send him a one-way ticket to heathen-town.

I love it when Christians get all huffy about being tamped down due to political correctness.  There’s only 224 million of them in the U.S. — I think they have a voice. 

Would Tebow be a household name if he didn’t interject God into every other sentence?  He’s a mediocre quarterback who had one good game and a bunch of lucky ones.  America loves sanctimony, and Tebow has it in spades.    

Can you imagine the outrage if Tebow was a Muslim and he used his post game interviews to thank Allah?  He would be tarred and feathered faster than you could say war on Christmas. 

I get nervous around devout people.  When I think about devout Christians the first word that comes to mind is intolerance.  Intolerance of gays and minorities and a myopic world view.  I think about their propensity for supporting capital punishment, as well as their love of guns and their narrow view of civil rights.   

That’s religion to me.

Posted in football | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

A Bronx Christmas, Pelham Parkway style.

Posted by keithosaunders on January 6, 2012

 Back in July I posted about a house in the Bronx on the service road of Pelham Parkway that goes crazy during the Christmas season utilizing every square inch of its lawn with Christmas decorations.  Hence its nickname:  The crazy house.   
 
I was in New York last week and I decided to revisit the crazy house and take some photos to put alongside the summer edition. 

These photos were taken a couple of days after New Years which is why the plastic was already on the figurines, but you’ll still see a good example of the lunacy that goes on for six weeks at the end each year.  Note the addition of Liberace at the piano.  He goes into hibernation during the summer months, but his piano remains on display.

July, 2011

January, 2012

July, 2011

    

January, 2012

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And with this display of pageantry we bid a fond adieu to Christmas, 2012.

Posted in New York City | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

New Years in New York

Posted by keithosaunders on December 31, 2011

I have mixed feelings about being back in New York.  I am here for a week to play my New Years gig, which is a gig that pays enough to make it worth my while to fly out.  

The best part of being here is staying with my best friend, and occasional guest-blogger, Jeff Mazzei.  We get a chance to catch up on life, as well as watch sports with impunity.  This year we will get to experience the final Sunday of the NFL, which will feature much more meaningful games than usual, with the Giants v Cowboys topping the list.

To me New York represents my past, and with it, the unrealized dreams and potential of my youth.  It’s difficult to pass a street without its associated memory  and I find this both fascinating and disconcerting.  I am proud that I was able to thrive in this hyper-competitive city, but always regret that I was not able to accomplish more.  I’m sad to call myself a former New Yorker, and sheepish about being back.

I spent two months here this past summer and I find it amusing that the earth has managed to travel halfway around our solar system in my absence.  When last I was here the temperature was in the high 90s with humidity.  Now, with the trees bare of leaves, the temperature is a comfortable and unseasonably warm 45 degrees.  

Manhattan is rotten with tourists, and much to my chagrin and consternation, I am one of them.  The city smells like fear to me.  There are cops on every corner — who knows, perhaps we went to crimson-red on the terror color scheme – and midtown seems tense and joyless. 

I was verbally assaulted by a security guard at the big library on 5th avenue and 42nd st.  She took me for an out-of-town rube and to that end forced me to open my backpack, delaying my exit.  When I glared at her, asking if she would like to look at my [Daily] News, she raised the ante, screaming at me to get out and advising me not to have a happy new year. 

I remember this New York.  In the old days I thrived on such confrontations.  These days I’m out of practice – they not only feel annoying to this re-transplanted Californian, but unnecessary.  I know — I should have my head examined for walking around midtown on December 30th.  Maybe I am a rube…

The best part of New York is the Italian food.  (not the Italians!)  On two consecutive evenings, in the Bronx and the Village respectively, I have had spectacular linguine, first with red clam sauce, and then with white, along with my favorite vegetable, brocoli rabe.  You can’t get that in California.

Not to mention the music.  I heard a great piano trio last night, and after my gig tonight I will end up at my favorite jazz club, Small’s.  In the end there is no denying the greatness of this town.   

Being here in the Christmas season is no bonus.

Posted in life, New York City | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Give me that old time religion

Posted by keithosaunders on December 20, 2011

I played at a Sunday church service in Oakland.  It was a jazz-loving church and we interspersed a few songs amidst the Sunday sermon. 

I am a non-observant Jew, and someon who disdains most religions.  I have to admit, however, that sitting in that church listening to the reverend’s sermon, I found some facets of religion that are positive.  The sermon largely dealt with the virgin Mary, but the main crux of it was that Jesus is most interested in the downtrodden — the underdogs, so to speak.  That part of religion appeals to me — that there should be empathy for the less fortunate, and a spirit of brotherhood among all people.

But this is Oakland, where most folks empathize with the poor.  Where is this empathy in the mega churches of the South?  Where is it in the Catholic Church?  Where is it in Hasidic community, and in Israel where atrocities are committed against Palestinians?  And where is it in the Islamic community?

The problem, as usual, stems from ignorance.  A population whose mind is numbed by adherence to superstition and myth, is a pliant population.  You can do anything in the name of religion. 

 You would think, given my feelings of antipathy towards religion, that I would have found a kindred spirit in the late Christopher Hitchens, who began as a left-wing columnist, and became an outspoken critic of organized religion. 

Hitchens championed the Iraq war, long after it had proven to be a debacle of the highest order.  He was an avid supporter of murder, as long as the victim was Moslem.  Here he is celebrating American’s use of cluster bombs:

…those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words.      

He wrote that  his reaction to the 9/11 attack was exhilaration because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came to call “Islamofascism”

With those words he has my utmost contempt.  What is the difference between him and the Moslem radicals that he rails against —  or Pope Innocent III instituting the Inquisition?

Hitchens was another in a long line of right-wing hacks — the only difference between him and garbage like Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck is that he possessed more intelligence.  He was a good writer and a glib speaker, but that does not diffuse the fact that he was as morally bankrupt as the Islamic radicals he wrote about.

It comes down to this:  Are you willing to condone or commit murder to further your own gains?  You can be a pope, an Ayatollah, or a writer – ultimately you’re an abomination.

Posted in Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Tebow time and Gingrich slime

Posted by keithosaunders on December 14, 2011

Few will be surprised that I am not a fan of the Denver Bronco’s second year quarterback, and pain-in-the-ass evangelist, Tim Tebow, but I must admit to a certain how does he do it fascination.  He’s a terrible quarterback.  Sure he’s a good runner, and that’s a handy tool to have, but everybody knows that the successful NFL QBs thrive in the pocket.  Don’t they?

Tebow ranks 27th in yards per pass and 14th in total yards, but somehow, due to a combination of his legs, a brilliant Bronco defense, and good old-fashioned luck, Tebow finds himself poised to take the Broncos to the playoffs.  Last Sunday, rather than the thanking the lord, Tebow should have thanked Marion Barber for not running out-of-bounds, thereby giving the Broncos time to march down the field for a game tying field goal against the Bears.

Tebow is all the rage.  I wonder if he would be so beloved were his name Tim Tebowitz and his post game pressers consisted of long lectures on Talmud.  I take that back — I’m not wondering.  

A Denver defensive lineman had the right idea:   After a pre-season game in which Tebow, then a rookie, suggested the team pray, the defensive lineman responded, “why don’t you shut the fuck up?!”

Yeah!  Who care’s what God thinks about football?  I’m sure he’s got more important things on his mind.  Anyway we all know he’s a Giants fan.

Then there’s the faltering campaign of Mitt Romney, who belong to the religion of which he dare not speak its name.  Much to my amusement the Republican electorate cannot bring themselves to get behind their only viable candidate, thus giving Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul their turn at relevancy.

Newt, who to his credit is trying to run a smear-free campaign, was forced to fire an aide who had suggested that evangelicals were ”poised to expose the cult of Mormon.”  While I’m happy to see turmoil in the Gingrich campaign, this puts me in the uncomfortable position of being aligned with evangelicals.  

Of course Mormonism is a cult.  Let  me get this straight:  Christ appeard in upstate New York after the resurrection?!  What, was he appearing in the Catskills at Kutsher’s opening for Shecky Greene? 

Then there’s the proselytizing, the multiple wives, the prohibition of caffeine and alchoh…wait a minute, back up…multiple wives?

Sign me up!       

Posted in football, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Casual

Posted by keithosaunders on December 12, 2011

I played a casual last night.  Here on the west coast gigs that are affairs — weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, corporate parties — are referred to as casuals.  Why they are called casuals I don’t know.  They are anything but casual.  In fact, you often have to wear  a tuxedo, although last night was not one of those nights.  In New York such gigs are referred to as club dates, yet another misnomer.  Canadians call it jobbing. 

Years ago I had a sax player buddy who nick named me Captain Casual, not because I played that many casuals, but because I was really bad at them.  I didn’t know that many standards, and I knew very few pop tunes.  I didn’t even know what a cha-cha was, let alone have one in my repertoire.  Not that this is anything to be proud of.  It’s just that over the years, from necessity, you learn enough of these tunes to get by. 

These jobs are a necessary evil of the music business.  Why?  Because they’re the only gigs that pay any damn money!  Especially with today’s economy — few of us are in a position to turn down these gigs.  And if you are lucky enough to play them with good musicians, under the right circumstance they can be enjoyable, or at least painless.

On Saturday I played a casual in San Mateo; a large-scale corporate party for Virgin American.  For some reason these parties often have a theme.  Why they feel compelled to have these themes I’ll never know.  It’s corny.  Why can’t people simply eat, drink, dance, and go home?  Is that asking too much?

Saturday’s theme was chocolate.  Or was it candy?  It was never really clear to me.  Somehow there is an invention that can pump various scents into a room.  Our room smelled like chocolate, while another room smelled like peppermint.

In our room there were a half a dozen TVs showing the old film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory  — the one staring Gene Wilder — not the soulless Tim Burton/Johnny Depp monstrosity.

The move kept playing on a loop, and since it was a long gig it was on several times.  For some reason I wanted to see the part where Charlie finds the golden ticket, but I kept missing it.  I don’t know why it was so important for me to see this scene, but the more I kept missing it the more I wanted to see it. 

That’s basically it.  I made my money and drove home.  Just one more thing, though.  The San Mateo bridge is the longest bridge I’ve ever been on — it’s eight miles long.  That’s one long-ass bridge.

Posted in music | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Blow taps on the Reyes era

Posted by keithosaunders on December 7, 2011

The inevitable has finally happened — Jose Reyes is no longer a New York Met.  The Marlins, doing their best impression of the Miami Heat, offered Reyes a boatload of money — something that is in short supply in Met-land these days.

A lot of Mets fans are outraged at the loss of their homegrown star.  I think it’s a shame they couldn’t keep him, but I am not devastated by this move.  Even with Reyes in the lineup the Mets are not close to contending.  Let’s face it, that ship sailed long ago. 

The Mets had great shots in ’06, ’07, and ’08.  A Yadier Moliona game 7 homer, followed by consecutive September collapses, followed by a myriad of injuries slammed that window shut. 

Even if they signed Reyes, who’s to say he would stay healthy?  You’ve got a player, now in his thirties, with a history of leg troubles.  I’d rather start over and build something from the bottom up.  The Mets couldn’t win with Reyes, Wright, and Santana in their prime.  I say back up the truck!

Posted in baseball | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Cut

Posted by keithosaunders on December 1, 2011

When you’re a musician you’re always balancing your ego with your talent.  You’re thinking about the music — how can I make it sound as good as possible, how best to interact with the rhythm section, and, as a pianist and accompanist, how can I best compliment the soloist. 

Yet you crave validation and acceptance from the audience, as well as your peers.  It’s natural to do so, I suppose, but there are times when this need can play havoc with your head.

The other day I had finished the first set of my Sunday gig when one of the audience members introduced himself as a fellow pianist.  He complimented me, but only tepidly, and years of being in the jazz trenches had me realizing that he was sizing me up — taking my measure. 

He asked who I had played with when I had lived in New York.  I could have dropped some names – notable people who I had come into contact with during my 26 years there — but I preferred to mention those with whom I had played the most steadily — great players in their own right, yet not as widely known to people outside of the New York area.

I could tell he was unimpressed and he proceeded to give me a little of his background.  Somehow this morphed into a didactic lecture on the jazz schools that were Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Betty Carter group.  (not that they were real schools, just that playing with these masters was like being in school) 

He was going on and on, and suddenly I realized that this guy was talking down to me.  and he began to irk me.  Of course I knew about Art Blakey and Betty Carter – any jazz novice, let alone a veteran, would know this.  I began to lose patience with him and rather than have a blowup I decided to remove myself from the situation, excused myself, and went over to talk to another pianist.

I realized that I had walked into a trap.  This guy may have been a west coast musician, but he had the vibing acumen of a seasoned New Yorker.  

The punchline is that he sat in and brought down the house with a great solo on a blues.  I felt it was gimmicky, yet I couldn’t deny that he had talent.  Let’s face it, he cut me.   

I have to give it up to this guy, though.  It’s possible he woke me out of a stupor, because the next set, and the next night, I played with renewed intensity and fire.  I’ll be ready for this guy the next time I see him, if only to avoid talking to him.

Posted in jazz | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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