I take it as a given that the thing humans do least well is communicate. Nowhere is this more evident than when one person who knows how to do something but is not an expert wants to explain, without props, to someone who is a complete novice how to do it.
My first piece of advice to the novice is if the teacher says - nay, insists - "It's easy," then you must say immediately that your mother is dying, your manslaughter trial begins in twenty minutes, or that you have recently contracted a loathsome social disease. Say anything that will allow you to make your escape.
Throughout my adult life, the topic regarding which I have been most frequently - that is to say, always - victimized is cooking. Not one peson has ever tried to explain to me how to make a particular dish without saying "It's easy."
Unhappily, they clandestinely share a dictionary with uncommon definitions for common words, and once they begin their cooking explanations it becomes obvious that their version of "easy" means "So complex that several days into the preparation of this dish you will eat the raw ingredients with your bare hands in order to stave off starvation."
One evening each week, or as close to that schedule as we can manage, I visit my old junk mail friend, Bobby, previously mentioned in this blog. Our arrangement is that we alternate cooking responsibilities. Bobby can cook. I, on the other hand, . . . .
Given my limitations, the variety of meals that I cook for us is limited, and it recently occurred to me that it *is* the twenty-first century after all and perhaps Google really is my friend. I began a search for "easy meals."
This is the absolute truth: I clicked on the first results link and at that site I clicked on a "100 Easy Dinners" link. I then clicked on the link to the first dinner title that caught my interest: Chicken Marsala.
Keep in mind that to me, "easy" means "Start a stove burner and dump everything on top of it." I'd even include putting the food into a pot or a pan first. OK? Now, forget the process, just look at the list of ingredients:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon Essence, recipe follows
2 (6 to 8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in halves and pounded thin
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
3 cups sliced mushrooms (cremini, oyster, shiitake)
3/4 cup Marsala
1 cup chicken stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chopped chives, for garnish
Recipe for "Essence" (required above)
2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme
Now here is a list of the above ingredients which I do *not* have on hand:
all-purpose flour
boneless, skinless chicken breasts
olive oil
sliced mushrooms
Marsala
chicken stock
freshly ground black pepper
chopped chives
paprika
garlic powder
onion powder
dried leaf oregano
dried thyme
And a list of the ingredients that I *do* have on hand is:
butter
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper
Now one *expects* to have to buy the chicken, and perhaps one or two ingredients, but you see what I mean, right?
Perhaps I should mention that I *do* have a tablespoon too. No, don't be so cynical. I also have a measuring cup.
Which of you will volunteer to contact the usage panels of the various Webster's dictionaries, the American Heritage dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, and numerous others, in order to inform them that they omitted a definition of the word "easy?"
I threw the word "bachelors" into my search and things look more promising. One conclusion reached in short order, however, is that if credit is given for a recipe and that credit goes to a woman, I'll just move along, thank you very much, 'preciate it, my mother is dying, I gotta go. When it comes to "easy" we don't speak the same language.
As an aside, the *best* single instruction regarding a recipe that I ever heard was at a back yard party in Maryland. The hostess and another woman, both thirtyish, were talking about the recipe for something the hostess had prepared. The latter was reciting ingredients and when she got to vanilla extract, the guest asked "How much?"
"Oh, 'bout a mouthful."
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
How Things Get Done . . .
. . . or at least how things are occasionally done.
These events occurred in the early 1980's, and the main characters were: Bill, a former mentor mentioned previously in this blog; Bryce, once moderately prominent in health care during the Carter administration, and at the time dealt with here a senior vice-president with Blue Cross Association/National Association of Blue Shield Plans (BCA/NABSP), an organization that was half supportive, half management of the individual Blue plans throughout the country; Otis, a director reporting to Bryce; and yours truly.
I was a vice-president at the Chicago Blue plan when I was asked to have lunch with Bryce, whom I knew of but had never met. I accepted, of course, although I had no idea what he might want. He, Otis, and I met at Le Perroquet in downtown Chicago. The amenities lasted through perhaps the first half of the meal, at which point Bryce spoke of what was on his mind.
Prior to moving to Chicago, I had acquired a good reputation in the field of federal procurement, and had provided services to Blue plans involved in such efforts - the Jacksonville, Little Rock, Seattle, Kansas City, and Chicago plans. Several years prior to this lunch Otis had sought my advice when BCA/NABSP decided to set up a department to provide those same services to Blue plans, which advice I gave him only to see it ignored, whether by Otis or his superiors I don't know. I suspect the latter.
The Blue plans weren't very enthusiastic about the new department and continued to use the consulting services of the division I had left in Boston rather than those of BCA/NABSP.
Bryce was looking for a way to enhance the popularity of his group. He was in the process of forming a steering committee comprising executives from some of the individual plans. He invited me to join the committee, which would oversee and advise the department.
I saw immediately what was up. It must be confessed that I was a little rough around the edges and I replied that "If the steering committee is actually going to be involved, actually do something, I'd be happy to be part of it, but if all you want is the use of my name in order to say that I recommend it, I wouldn't be interested."
The rest of the lunch was cordial, we exchanged "Glad to meetcha's," and I never heard any more about it.
Flash forward several years. I had left the Blues, was making six figures working at my first love, mainframe assembler programming, and had found a fascinating industry in which to work: junk mail. No, really.
Out of a clear Blue sky there came a phone call from Bill, my former mentor, still Executive Vice-President at Blue Shield of Massachusetts. He told me that "the Blues" - BCA/NABSP - were going to form a company to deal with federal procurements on behalf of Blue plans and to provide data processing services to plans that won contracts.
He thought *eye* would be perfect in the role of president of that company, reporting to a Board of Directors consisting of Blue plan presidents, and he wanted me to call Bryce, who would either make the decision or influence the decision substantially.
Well.
I would have dipped my arm in boiling oil before leaving what I was doing and going back to the Blues, but I couldn't just say that to Bill. He had been a mentor to me and very helpful over the years. I agreed to call Bryce.
I did so, his secretary put him on the line, and the conversation went exactly like this:
Donnie: "Bill has called me regarding the company you are forming to deal with federal procurements and subsequent processing. He wants me to be president of that company. Now I don't want to be president of that company and you don't want me to be president of that company, but we have to do something to keep Bill happy, so how about this: I'll call Bill and tell him that we talked and that if there's any movement in that direction you will call me."
Bryce: "Fine."
Donnie: "Thank you."
And that script was followed. Not long thereafter Bill died of a heart attack - he was only fiftyish - and I don't know to this day whether that company was ever formed.
These events occurred in the early 1980's, and the main characters were: Bill, a former mentor mentioned previously in this blog; Bryce, once moderately prominent in health care during the Carter administration, and at the time dealt with here a senior vice-president with Blue Cross Association/National Association of Blue Shield Plans (BCA/NABSP), an organization that was half supportive, half management of the individual Blue plans throughout the country; Otis, a director reporting to Bryce; and yours truly.
I was a vice-president at the Chicago Blue plan when I was asked to have lunch with Bryce, whom I knew of but had never met. I accepted, of course, although I had no idea what he might want. He, Otis, and I met at Le Perroquet in downtown Chicago. The amenities lasted through perhaps the first half of the meal, at which point Bryce spoke of what was on his mind.
Prior to moving to Chicago, I had acquired a good reputation in the field of federal procurement, and had provided services to Blue plans involved in such efforts - the Jacksonville, Little Rock, Seattle, Kansas City, and Chicago plans. Several years prior to this lunch Otis had sought my advice when BCA/NABSP decided to set up a department to provide those same services to Blue plans, which advice I gave him only to see it ignored, whether by Otis or his superiors I don't know. I suspect the latter.
The Blue plans weren't very enthusiastic about the new department and continued to use the consulting services of the division I had left in Boston rather than those of BCA/NABSP.
Bryce was looking for a way to enhance the popularity of his group. He was in the process of forming a steering committee comprising executives from some of the individual plans. He invited me to join the committee, which would oversee and advise the department.
I saw immediately what was up. It must be confessed that I was a little rough around the edges and I replied that "If the steering committee is actually going to be involved, actually do something, I'd be happy to be part of it, but if all you want is the use of my name in order to say that I recommend it, I wouldn't be interested."
The rest of the lunch was cordial, we exchanged "Glad to meetcha's," and I never heard any more about it.
Flash forward several years. I had left the Blues, was making six figures working at my first love, mainframe assembler programming, and had found a fascinating industry in which to work: junk mail. No, really.
Out of a clear Blue sky there came a phone call from Bill, my former mentor, still Executive Vice-President at Blue Shield of Massachusetts. He told me that "the Blues" - BCA/NABSP - were going to form a company to deal with federal procurements on behalf of Blue plans and to provide data processing services to plans that won contracts.
He thought *eye* would be perfect in the role of president of that company, reporting to a Board of Directors consisting of Blue plan presidents, and he wanted me to call Bryce, who would either make the decision or influence the decision substantially.
Well.
I would have dipped my arm in boiling oil before leaving what I was doing and going back to the Blues, but I couldn't just say that to Bill. He had been a mentor to me and very helpful over the years. I agreed to call Bryce.
I did so, his secretary put him on the line, and the conversation went exactly like this:
Donnie: "Bill has called me regarding the company you are forming to deal with federal procurements and subsequent processing. He wants me to be president of that company. Now I don't want to be president of that company and you don't want me to be president of that company, but we have to do something to keep Bill happy, so how about this: I'll call Bill and tell him that we talked and that if there's any movement in that direction you will call me."
Bryce: "Fine."
Donnie: "Thank you."
And that script was followed. Not long thereafter Bill died of a heart attack - he was only fiftyish - and I don't know to this day whether that company was ever formed.
Monday, August 29, 2011
South Boston Misses Whitey Bulger
This is my third post about Southie. I really don't mean to pick on its residents, but what can I do? They make it a) almost mandatory, and b) irresistible for someone with as little self-restraint as I have.
It is reported here that a prospective bank robber has failed his apprenticeship. Readers of this blog will recall Broadway, the main drag in Southie, as the street onto which one of the local young men would wander when he'd had a few drinks and desired to go mano a mano with a moving automobile. He had no wins and two losses when last we saw him.
Our latest hero entered a bank on Broadway, walked up to a teller, and handed her a note reading, "Give me all your money." The teller declined, saying that her window was closed.
He then cut into the front of the line at the next window, where he was told by the teller and a customer that he had to get in line and wait his turn. On being told to remove his hoodie, he simply left the bank and was last seen headed toward F Street on his getaway feet.
Whitey would have had him spanked.
It is reported here that a prospective bank robber has failed his apprenticeship. Readers of this blog will recall Broadway, the main drag in Southie, as the street onto which one of the local young men would wander when he'd had a few drinks and desired to go mano a mano with a moving automobile. He had no wins and two losses when last we saw him.
Our latest hero entered a bank on Broadway, walked up to a teller, and handed her a note reading, "Give me all your money." The teller declined, saying that her window was closed.
He then cut into the front of the line at the next window, where he was told by the teller and a customer that he had to get in line and wait his turn. On being told to remove his hoodie, he simply left the bank and was last seen headed toward F Street on his getaway feet.
Whitey would have had him spanked.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Really, They're All Undesirable
Around the end of 1999 I found myself driving from Chicago to New Mexico. My employer had told me I had to use nine vacation days by the end of the year or lose them. On a whim I settled on visiting Anne, a woman I knew only from an eBay chat board, to "take her to dinner."
She was an eBay seller (which I had not yet become), mostly of books, and her house and garage were jam packed with books and other merchandise she was listing for sale online.
I spent several days in Alamogordo and had a great time, then headed home.
Soon thereafter she complained on the chat board that she had a lot of chores she needed to do but just kept putting them off. The conversation turned briefly to husbands and wives and job jars. A thought popped into my mind and I emailed Anne, offering to send her a job jar program. She could just install it on her hard drive and enter a list of chores. She could then run the program daily and it would randomly select one of the jobs, conceptually similar to pulling a slip of paper with a written task out of a jar.
She was quite enthusiastic about it, sure that this would get her off the dime. I wrote a simple program in BASIC and emailed her, attaching a BASIC compiler, the program I had written, and instructions regarding installing the program and entering the list of chores.
She had no problem with the installation, and the next day she ran the program for the first time. Up popped "Clean the garage."
She decided the program hated her and never used it again.
She was an eBay seller (which I had not yet become), mostly of books, and her house and garage were jam packed with books and other merchandise she was listing for sale online.
I spent several days in Alamogordo and had a great time, then headed home.
Soon thereafter she complained on the chat board that she had a lot of chores she needed to do but just kept putting them off. The conversation turned briefly to husbands and wives and job jars. A thought popped into my mind and I emailed Anne, offering to send her a job jar program. She could just install it on her hard drive and enter a list of chores. She could then run the program daily and it would randomly select one of the jobs, conceptually similar to pulling a slip of paper with a written task out of a jar.
She was quite enthusiastic about it, sure that this would get her off the dime. I wrote a simple program in BASIC and emailed her, attaching a BASIC compiler, the program I had written, and instructions regarding installing the program and entering the list of chores.
She had no problem with the installation, and the next day she ran the program for the first time. Up popped "Clean the garage."
She decided the program hated her and never used it again.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished - (1) Amy Persich and (2) Sam
Well, I guess I'm not really that much of a cynic, but there are ingrates in the world and here are a couple of examples of the types of things that caused the sentiment to gain popularity.
- Amy Persich
If you've read earlier entries in this blog, you know that I sell various things online. One thing I sell a lot of is high school yearbooks.
Amy Persich attended Pelham High School in Pelham, Alabama, in the early 1990's. At some point I acquired all four of her high school yearbooks and a seniors' "Memories" book.
I had the yearbooks listed on a particular site for $39.99 apiece and she tripped over them one day. She contacted me through the site and asked me how much I would charge for all four of them.
Now you might not know that some sellers, and I confess to being one, are enthusiastic about their items going "where they belong." I informed her that I also had her "Memories" book and that I would send the whole lot along for $75 plus $10 for shipping. I know you've done the math and realize that $75 was a little less than half price for the yearbooks, but let me add that I also knew that $10 was an inadequate amount for shipping. In for a penny, in for a pound.
After a couple of false starts she finally did send a check for $85.00.
Now I have sold several thousand items online, have always accepted personal checks as a form of payment, and have always shipped on receipt of the check rather than waiting ten days or so to be certain that the check cleared. Guess who was the very first person to burn me.
Ms. Persich now has her yearbooks and "Memories" book, I now have a Post Office receipt for shipping and a $20 fee assessed by my bank for the bounced ("Not Suffiient Funds") check. And apparently she is not interested in having an email conversation about the bounced check or making good on the payment.
I'll keep you posted if there are further developments, but in the meantime, for those of you in the Kimberly, Alabama area, if you have her over for dinner, count your spoons before she leaves. - Sam
At a small business, a friend and colleague, Brian, told me confidentially that another employee, Sam, was about to be let go. The impression I got was that I was to pass the information along to Sam without revealing my source, and this I did when I saw him the next day.
Donnie: "I have heard that they are about to let you go."
Sam: "Who told you that?"
Donnie: "Let's just say that it's probably true."
Now Sam knew that Brian and I were friends and made the not very difficult leap to the conclusion that my source was probably Brian. The next day, when he ran into Brian and I wasn't around, he said "Donnie says you told him I'm going to be let go."
Now that is the behavior of a swine - putting my relationship with Brian at risk for the sake of satisfying his own curiosity about my source of information. He was in fact let go soon after and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Dug in and Not Budging
For some reason a bit of junk mail history has popped into my mind. It's not very interesting except in that it illustrates how people can get out on a limb with an obviously bogus position and cling to it for dear life.
At a company I worked for in Virginia in the 1990's, a client had sent us a master file of records on magnetic tape. The records comprised a history of donors to political organizations and had been copied from a disk file elsewhere.
The record format included dates and amounts of the most recent ten donations, with a YYMMDD format for the date and a seven digit field for donations, cents implied. Perhaps the last 25 or 30 records on the tape consisted of (presumably) genuine names and addresses, but each date was 222222 and each amount was 2222222. In addition, there were twos in the fields for identifying the political organizations that received the money and in the two-digit codes associated with the donations.
We'd had the file a couple of days, had run a conversion on it and examined the results, corrected a few things after looking at the output, and run a second conversion, when the owner of the client company called for me.
Client: "How's the conversion going?"
World's Greatest Programmer: "The conversion is complete. It all looks pretty good except that we had to drop a few records at the end that contained garbage data."
Client: "WHAT? Those represent money. You can't drop any records."
WGP: "Well, once you get by the name and address on the input, the rest of each record is filled with twos."
Client: "That's money! You can't drop records! I can't believe you dropped those records!"
WGP, losing patience and counting to one: "Ohhhh, I'll bet you'll believe that before you'll believe that on the 22nd day of the 22nd month of 1922 each of those people made ten donations of $22,222.22."
Silence, followed by
Client: "Let me speak to Walter."
Walter was my boss and the owner of the company. I put the client on hold, walked over to Walter's office, and explained the situation. Walter picked up the phone and I hung around just long enough to learn that he was going to have exactly the same conversation with the client that I had just had. Well, with a little more tact on our end, perhaps.
We had our wicked way in the end, of course. Garbage is garbage and there's not much to be done with it. For you mainframe techies, the twos came from unused index records on the disk originally containing the file.
Once in a while it can be productive to get out on a limb about something, and sometimes it can be fun, even if the limb gets sawed off behind you. Stubbornness for the sake of sheer stubbornness is something else. I can't imagine what the client thought about the origin of donations made in the 22nd month of a year six decades before the existence of his company.
At a company I worked for in Virginia in the 1990's, a client had sent us a master file of records on magnetic tape. The records comprised a history of donors to political organizations and had been copied from a disk file elsewhere.
The record format included dates and amounts of the most recent ten donations, with a YYMMDD format for the date and a seven digit field for donations, cents implied. Perhaps the last 25 or 30 records on the tape consisted of (presumably) genuine names and addresses, but each date was 222222 and each amount was 2222222. In addition, there were twos in the fields for identifying the political organizations that received the money and in the two-digit codes associated with the donations.
We'd had the file a couple of days, had run a conversion on it and examined the results, corrected a few things after looking at the output, and run a second conversion, when the owner of the client company called for me.
Client: "How's the conversion going?"
World's Greatest Programmer: "The conversion is complete. It all looks pretty good except that we had to drop a few records at the end that contained garbage data."
Client: "WHAT? Those represent money. You can't drop any records."
WGP: "Well, once you get by the name and address on the input, the rest of each record is filled with twos."
Client: "That's money! You can't drop records! I can't believe you dropped those records!"
WGP, losing patience and counting to one: "Ohhhh, I'll bet you'll believe that before you'll believe that on the 22nd day of the 22nd month of 1922 each of those people made ten donations of $22,222.22."
Silence, followed by
Client: "Let me speak to Walter."
Walter was my boss and the owner of the company. I put the client on hold, walked over to Walter's office, and explained the situation. Walter picked up the phone and I hung around just long enough to learn that he was going to have exactly the same conversation with the client that I had just had. Well, with a little more tact on our end, perhaps.
We had our wicked way in the end, of course. Garbage is garbage and there's not much to be done with it. For you mainframe techies, the twos came from unused index records on the disk originally containing the file.
Once in a while it can be productive to get out on a limb about something, and sometimes it can be fun, even if the limb gets sawed off behind you. Stubbornness for the sake of sheer stubbornness is something else. I can't imagine what the client thought about the origin of donations made in the 22nd month of a year six decades before the existence of his company.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Early Rock and Roll
Many polls and surveys have been taken in attempts to determine the "first" rock and roll song. Fairly predictably, they have reached a number of different conclusions. One poll resulted in a song from the 1920's.
Safe to say, however, is that rock and roll took off with the 1955 success of "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. They had released it a year or so earlier and it had gone nowhere. Then it was used as the theme song for a movie about an inner city school, "Blackboard Jungle," and whoosh! Over the years it has sold more than 25 million copies.
Rock and roll was on its way, and soon there were road shows - "concerts" today - made up of a few different artists and groups. Traveling by bus, they hit all the major cities. When I was 15, one arrived in Boston.
Mechanics Hall, razed several years later, was then a 75 year old building that might today be called a "convention center." It was host to conventions, shows, exhibitions, and gatherings of all kinds. It was, however, on its last
legs.
A friend, I no longer remember which one, learned that a rock and roll show was coming to Boston and Mechanics Hall. We lived about 18 miles north of Boston, and one Saturday afternoon five of us, all boys, took the train into Boston. We haggled with a cab driver, who agreed to take us from North Station to Mechanics Hall for a flat fee a little less than his meter would run, and sure enough he had to turn the meter off a couple of blocks from the hall.
On the card were Fats Domino, Bill Haley and His Comets, Chuck Berry, Shirley and Lee, and the G-Clefs. Tickets were $5.00 apiece. At a guess, most of you over 40 have heard of the first three, and possibly the fouth.
The G-Clefs were a local group (Roxbury, a suburb of Boston) ranging in age from one to five years older than the five of us, at that time enjoying the success of the first of their two top 40 hits, an upbeat number called "Ka-Ding Dong." (On the recording, Freddy Cannon played lead guitar.) The song ultimately reached #24 on the pop charts.
(If this link goes bad - it would probably be from the video being removed from YouTube - please post a comment about that. The comment will trigger an email to me and I'll replace the video.)
Ka-Ding Dong
At the beginning of the show the MC mentioned the age of the building and asked that our enthusiasm be limited to clapping and cheering lest we bring the roof and walls down on our heads.
I no longer recall the order in which the artists performed. We thought they were all great, and I recall being much taken with Shirley of Shirley and Lee. But the G-Clefs stole the show, of course.
Not only did they have the advantage of being a home town group, but they were the *first* artists from the Boston area to have a rock and roll hit. When they left the stage everyone wanted an encore. We cheered and clapped and whistled to no avail. Then we remembered the MC's warning and began stamping our feet, roof and walls be damned. The MC came out in a panic and claimed that the G-Clefs had left the building. We'll never know whether that was true, but we calmed down and eventually made it home alive.
Safe to say, however, is that rock and roll took off with the 1955 success of "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. They had released it a year or so earlier and it had gone nowhere. Then it was used as the theme song for a movie about an inner city school, "Blackboard Jungle," and whoosh! Over the years it has sold more than 25 million copies.
Rock and roll was on its way, and soon there were road shows - "concerts" today - made up of a few different artists and groups. Traveling by bus, they hit all the major cities. When I was 15, one arrived in Boston.
Mechanics Hall, razed several years later, was then a 75 year old building that might today be called a "convention center." It was host to conventions, shows, exhibitions, and gatherings of all kinds. It was, however, on its last
legs.
A friend, I no longer remember which one, learned that a rock and roll show was coming to Boston and Mechanics Hall. We lived about 18 miles north of Boston, and one Saturday afternoon five of us, all boys, took the train into Boston. We haggled with a cab driver, who agreed to take us from North Station to Mechanics Hall for a flat fee a little less than his meter would run, and sure enough he had to turn the meter off a couple of blocks from the hall.
On the card were Fats Domino, Bill Haley and His Comets, Chuck Berry, Shirley and Lee, and the G-Clefs. Tickets were $5.00 apiece. At a guess, most of you over 40 have heard of the first three, and possibly the fouth.
The G-Clefs were a local group (Roxbury, a suburb of Boston) ranging in age from one to five years older than the five of us, at that time enjoying the success of the first of their two top 40 hits, an upbeat number called "Ka-Ding Dong." (On the recording, Freddy Cannon played lead guitar.) The song ultimately reached #24 on the pop charts.
(If this link goes bad - it would probably be from the video being removed from YouTube - please post a comment about that. The comment will trigger an email to me and I'll replace the video.)
Ka-Ding Dong
At the beginning of the show the MC mentioned the age of the building and asked that our enthusiasm be limited to clapping and cheering lest we bring the roof and walls down on our heads.
I no longer recall the order in which the artists performed. We thought they were all great, and I recall being much taken with Shirley of Shirley and Lee. But the G-Clefs stole the show, of course.
Not only did they have the advantage of being a home town group, but they were the *first* artists from the Boston area to have a rock and roll hit. When they left the stage everyone wanted an encore. We cheered and clapped and whistled to no avail. Then we remembered the MC's warning and began stamping our feet, roof and walls be damned. The MC came out in a panic and claimed that the G-Clefs had left the building. We'll never know whether that was true, but we calmed down and eventually made it home alive.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
