Here’s a photo from my friend John’s 60th birthday celebration back in March:
The folks in the photo (L to R: Art, Sheila, Patty, BD Boy John, Suzanne, Phil, and yours truly) all went to Xavier waaay back in the 80s. (Hence the “X” poses.) It’s where we met – and in the case of Patty & John and Suzanne & Phil, it’s where they fell in love. (Art and Sheila both went to X at the same time, but didn’t connect until after we graduated.)
Hard to believe we’ve been friends for more than 40 years now. And in those 40 years, I think I’ve called John by his real name only a handful of times. An upperclassman dubbed him “Loew Junior” because he looked like another Muskie named Loew (or Lowe… not sure… it’s been a minute) and that quickly morphed into “LJ” and that nickname stuck, as college nicknames tend to do. Heck, at this point, when someone calls him “John” it throws me for a loop.
Here’s a photo from a very different celebration for LJ yesterday:
He just finished 30 rounds of radiation for brain cancer. Patty invited his friends — including his XU buddies who served as his “Uber drivers” to get him to several of the appointments (Art, Phil, Tom, Brian and me) — to be there when he rang the bell to mark the completion of treatment.
Here’s what we know:
LJ had a tumor in his left frontal lobe. He was diagnosed in May when it started impacting his speech. Doctors removed the tumor.
The form of cancer he has is aggressive.
They’ll do another MRI in a month, and map out next steps based on results.
Cancer sucks!
Here’s what we don’t know:
What the future holds.
Here’s what else we know:
LJ is in great shape.
He has a positive attitude.
He has a family that loves him… and grandkids who adore him.
His faith is strong.
His support network is deep and wide — relatives, neighborhood friends, church friends, even a bunch of knuckleheads from college.
[Phil, LJ, Brian, Dubbatrubba, and Art – Uber driver Tom wasn’t able to attend, but his wife Jodi was there.]
LJ’s world was turned upside-down between his birthday party in March and his diagnosis in May. The blink of an eye for someone who is 60. The best of times; the worst of times.
If anyone can beat the odds — and people DO beat the odds — it’s LJ.
We hope. We pray. We believe in miracles. And we cherish the time we get to spend with him.
We don’t know what the future holds. That’s not just true for LJ. It’s true for all of us.
I love live music, but I’m not really a stadium tour kinda guy. I’ve really only been to two stadium concerts in my life – the first was in 1986 (I think) at Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium to see The Who on the first of their gazillion “farewell” tours. The second was two nights ago – Foo Fighters at the Reds stadium. The opening acts were Mammoth – the band led by Wolfie Van Halen, son of Eddie and Valerie Bertinelli – and the Pretenders, a band I adore.
I wasn’t planning to attend – the ticket prices for those big shows are waaay too high to suit me. I’d rather spend $200 on eight $25 club shows. But my friend Paul had an extra ticket. And I’d always wanted to see the Foo Fighters live. How could I refuse?
Photo credit: Sam Greene, The Cincinnati Enquirer
I’m really glad I went. I see what all the Foo fuss is about. Dave Grohl is incredibly energetic and charismatic, his band mates are extremely talented, and they put on a heck of a show. Their song catalog is perfect for stadiums too – a lot of singalong anthems. I don’t know how Grohl is able to scream his way through two-and-a-half-hour shows on a regular basis. My vocal cords would be shredded into sawdust.
Photo credit: Sam Greene, The Cincinnati Enquirer
I have some high-fidelity noise-reducing earplugs (as a regular concert goer, I highly recommend them – here’s my brand) but didn’t bring them because I didn’t think I’d need them in an open-air stadium. I was wrong. It was LOUD.
The Foos hit the stage at 8 p.m. and wrapped up their main set at around 10:15, then came back for an encore. As my friend Paul said, “Now there’s a guy (Dave Grohl) who loves his job!”
Photo credit: Sam Greene, The Cincinnati Enquirer
It was really cool to see a show like that where 38,000 fans were singing along. But after the sun set, I found it hard to keep my eyes from straying from the band on stage to the giant TV screens to the left and right of the stage. It’s hard to not look… but then you’re essentially watching a show on TV vs. seeing a concert.
Net-net: I loved it and I’m really glad I got a chance to see them live. But I think I’ll go back to my club shows. Stadiums are cool, but I’m a “small ball” music dude at heart.
Bob Newhart passed away Thursday at the ripe old age of 94. His humor, on the other hand, will never grow old and never leave us.
There are very few other comedians — if any — who could get laughs out of just one side of pretend phone conversations.
Bob did more with the pregnant pause than most comedians could do with 20 lines of dialogue. He was perfectly content to play the “normal” guy surrounded by wacky characters. And he crushed it for decades, starting with a best selling comedy album in the 60s, then The Bob Newhart Show in the 70s, Newhart in the 80s (with one of the best show finales ever).
Papa Elf in Elf in 2003, a guest actor Emmy in 2013 on The Big Bang Theory… He guest-hosted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show 87 times, and always told great stories on the late-night talk shows, especially the ones about his bestie Don Rickles.
LOS ANGELES – MAY 31: Legendary comedians and their wives (L-R) Don Rickles, Barbara Rickles, Ginnie Newhart, and Bob Newhart pose for a portrait backstage at the Las Vegas Convention Center at the AARP convention in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 31, 2013. (Photo by Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
And he was a lovable off-camera as he was on it.
“He was as kind and nice as he was funny. “
Carol Burnett
Oh, and he was married to his wife “Ginny” for 60+ years until she passed last year.
Not bad for a failed accountant.
Bye, Bob… the world misses your warmth and humor already.
Steven Pressfield is a great writer. And a fantastic motivator of other writers. That may seem strange to say about someone who has written a book called Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. (Trust me, it’s great!)
His advice is geared toward writers/artists/creators, but this nugget from a recent blog post of his applies to people from all walks of life:
Unlearning. Losing the baggage. Shedding the expectations and labels that others put on us. It sounds so simple… but it’s super-tough, and it can take us years to even come close.
In the end, it’s YOUR voice. No one else’s. Dropping your baggage can free you up to find it.
My buddy Rob does PR for the Hamilton Joes — “Ohio’s Premier College Summer Baseball Team.”
He likes to have a bit of fun with the press releases. His most recent one is a prime example:
It’s smart. “I’ll take ‘Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution’ for $200 please, Ken.” (BTW, today I learned that Button Gwinnett has the first signature in the upper left corner of the Declaration of Independence.)
The press release is funny. Especially the line about “crumpet-nibbling fancy-boys.”
And it gets your attention. Which is exactly the point. Rob could’ve played it straight and just mentioned the game and the fireworks. But adding a bit of flair and frivolity makes the release a heck of a lot more interesting.
It’s a kids’ game, for crying out loud.
Oh, that’s right, there’s no crying in baseball. But laughing is always allowed.
This past weekend, Mrs. Dubbatrubba and I took a trip that was short in duration but long on connections.
We drove to Saint Louis Friday afternoon and met up with my high school friend John “Frez” Fresneda and his wife Kim.
John and I made up more than 10% of our graduating class at Sacred Heart HS in Morrilton, Arkansas (2 of 19) but it’d been many moons since we caught up in person. And our spouses had never met. But at our high school reunion seven years ago, we talked about meeting in “the Lou” for a Reds-Cardinals game (he’s a huge Cards fan). This year, we finally made it happen. And I’m so glad we did. John and Kim couldn’t be nicer, and we had a great time exploring the city a bit. (For the record, the Reds won the game we attended!)
On Saturday morning, I caught up with Alicia, who was a Miami University student co-op waaaay back in the early 90s when I worked at 97X radio in Oxford, OH. I hadn’t seen Alicia since our mutual friend Joe’s wedding 20+ years ago. (She and Joe co-hosted a show on the student radio station called “Night on Disco Mountain.”) She’s now the GM of the NBC TV station in St. Louis (her hometown). I wish I could say that her radio station mentors (my morning show partner “Rictile” and I) taught her everything she needed to succeed in media, but the reality is we probably taught her everything NOT to do!
Despite the fact that she’s now a captain of industry, Alicia carved out some time to meet us at a coffee shop. Because in addition to being a captain of industry, she’s also one of the nicest folks you could ever meet.
On Sunday morning, after we parted ways with Frez and Kim, we had brunch with Mrs. Dubbatrubba’s niece, Libby (our goddaughter) who works as a nurse in St. Louis. We’ve spent a lot of time with “Libbo” over the years, mostly on shared summer vacations as she and her siblings and our kids were growing up. It’s great to hear more about her life now that she’s “adulting.”
[Yes, we put Libby in charge of taking the selfie – she’s a pro.]
Since our route back to Cincinnati would take us through Louisville, I texted my college friend Walter early last week to see if we could pop in on Sunday afternoon. Walter and I text quite a bit and talk on the phone occasionally, but despite the fact that Louisville is a mere 90 miles from Cincinnati, somehow it’d been seven years since we saw each other in person. And despite the fact that Wally is a movie star (he was one of the kids in the cab in Stripes) he and his wife Blakey welcomed us into their home on Sunday afternoon.
Here’s Wally’s scene in Stripes:
It’s a lot easier to say “we should get together” than to actually do it. But honestly, it just took a few texts to set up a wonderful weekend of rekindling connections.
Go through your list of contacts. Who can you carve out some time for? Give ’em a text or a call. Make it happen. You’ll be so glad you did.
When I was growing up in Arkansas (back in the Mesozoic era), we’d see TV commercials for a grocery chain called The Mad Butcher. Every commercial ended with a caricature of “the Mad Butcher” accompanied by some maniacal laughter, straight out of the Vincent Price bag of tricks:
My dad could imitate that laugh perfectly – it cracked us up as kids.
We’re not laughing anymore.
This was a week ago. In Fordyce, Arkansas, a town of 3,000.
Normally the folks roaming the aisles of a small-town grocery store are called “shoppers.” In the blink of an eye, they became “targets of opportunity” and “victims.”
The perpetrator didn’t really have a criminal record. It’s doubtful tighter gun restrictions would’ve prevented this tragedy. Meanwhile, closer to home last weekend:
This one could’ve been prevented.
A bottle of water. Kids arguing. It should’ve been nothing more than a petty squabble. But add a gun to the equation and it ends with a teenager dead. Yet the story gets even sadder:
[Full story from the Cincinnati Enquirer is here.]
Three generations of gun violence. We can do more to stop the cycle. We should do more to stop the cycle. We must do more to stop the cycle.
Our grandkids aren’t old enough to know better. What’s our excuse?
Chances are, 99 out of every 100 people won’t recognize those names. Heck, it might be more like 999 out of 1,000. And that’s a shame. Because those are the dudes that have been together in the band Los Lobos for more than 50 years. They were joined by the “newbie” Steve Berlin in 1982, and have been a fantastic five-some ever since.
Los Lobos’ new album, Gates Of Gold, comes out Sept. 25.
If you’ve never heard of Los Lobos, that’s a shame. If you’ve only heard their cover of “La Bamba” that’s OK, but you’re still missing out on so much great music.
They are a self-proclaimed “Just another band from East L.A.” But they’re so much more than that. This paragraph from their bio really sums them up nicely:
Los Lobos has sold millions of records, won prestigious awards and made fans around the world. But perhaps its most lasting impact will be how well its music embodies the idea of America as a cultural melting pot. In it, styles like son jarocho, norteño, Tejano, folk, country, doo-wop, soul, R&B, rock ’n’ roll and punk all come together to create a new sound that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Amen to that! You could rightfully argue that they are the quintessential American band. Children of immigrants (Conrad, Louie, David) or immigrants themselves (Cesar), joined by a kid from the East Coast (Philly) who had moved to the West Coast to pursue his music dreams.
Last night I saw Los Lobos in concert. I’ve seen them many times and they always crush it.
They opened for Little Feat, a band that has only one original member left. If it were up to me, the roles would be reversed. But I get the sense that the members of Los Lobos don’t really care about “headliner” status. They’ve come a long way from being a wedding band.
“If you were married between 1973 and 1980 in East L.A., we probably played your wedding.”
Louie Pérez
They’re not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Now there’s a real shame.
While regarded as highly influential and deserving by many, the iconic East L.A. band Los Lobos has surprisingly not yet been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after being eligible for almost 20 years
They haven’t gotten what they deserve – but that’s out of their hands. Instead, they use their hands, hearts and voices to always give the fans what they deserve: a stellar set of music.
Will the Wolf survive? Heck yeah! Not just survive, but thrive!
The “Heat Dome” has descended upon the Midwest. Welcome to the Terror Dome.
Meanwhile, Southern Florida got flooded last week.
We have only ourselves to blame, really. By ignoring the warnings from scientists. By turning a blind eye to alternative energy sources instead of incentivizing them at scale.
“Given that we’ve seen an unprecedented jump in global warmth over the last 11 months, it is not surprising to see worsening climate extremes so early in the year,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck. “If this record pace of warming continues, 2024 will likely be a record year of climate disasters and human suffering.”
And the ones who suffer the most are the poor and elderly.
Help is on the way. It just needs to get here sooner. Here’s an excerpt from the 6/1 post on Bill McKibben’s excellent — and aptly named — Substack called “The Crucial Years”:
But here’s the thing: At the exact same moment—the same string of months—that the planet is beginning to unravel, human beings are finally accelerating the only real response we have: the rapid rollout of sun, wind, and batteries. The rate at which we’re adding renewable energy capacity jumped fifty percent last year. A new report this week found that wind and sun aren’t just growing faster than fossil fuels—they’re growing faster than any electricity source in history.
The rise of wind and solar has been stemming the growth of fossil fuel power, which would have been 22% higher in 2023 without them, Ember says. This would have added around 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) to annual global emissions.
Nevertheless, the growth of clean electricity sources needs to accelerate to meet the global goal of tripling renewables by 2030, Ember says.
Meeting this goal would almost halve power sector emissions by the end of the decade, and put the world on a pathway aligned with the 1.5C climate target set in the Paris Agreement.
Even in India, the share of electricity generated by coal dropped below 50 percent for the first time since 1966. There’s every sign that, globally, 2023 saw the peak in global emissions; all those solar panels are not just accounting for growth in energy demand any more, but beginning to cut into the actual consumption of fossil fuels. Now the job is to make the decline so steep that we build enough momentum to begin catching up with the physics of global warming.
It is a terrible story, almost unbearably tragic. But its ending hasn’t been written yet.
The more we harness the sun, the fewer unbearable heat waves we’ll have to endure. The more we lasso the wind, the fewer destructive hurricanes we’ll have to witness.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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