Lintilla and I were lucky enough to be able to attend Friday night’s performance by “Rain” at TPAC.  The Beatles tribute band was, unbeknownst to me, something Lintilla had been dying to see.  She is a huge Beatles fan, especially the pre-1968 version of the band. 

Thanks to Ford Prefect and family, we got out hands on a last-minute pair of tickets.  (I’ll just skip over the fact that it was way too last-minute to find a sitter.  But the whole “when are kids old enough to be left alone for the evening” discussion would be interesting to have at another time).

Anyway, Lintilla and I headed for TPAC Friday (Lintilla has never, believe it or not, been to a performance there).  We got there in plenty of time, and loitered in the lobby till they opened the doors to Andrew Jackson Hall.

They played music from the 50’s over the PA (this was all part of the wonderful narrative of the evening), while showing Beatles trivia slides on the big screens.  Then, the lights dimmed.  After an hilarious announcement (”We ask that you refrain from smoking…ANYTHING…), the show began. We hear Rock Around the Clock while a fast-edited montage of scenes from the 50’s and early 60’s played in black and white on the big screen.  The montage got faster and faster, as they played other 50’s songs like Johnny B Goode. 

The music stopped, and there was Ed Sullivan on the screen (well, an actor playing Ed Sullivan).  He introduced Rain, and the show began in earnest.

My heart skipped a beat.

Our seats were near the back of the orchestra section, so I’m sure that helped with the illusion.  But, I couldn’t help but think, “It’s 1964, and I’m watching the Beatles play on Ed Sullivan”.  They had the set designed perfectly, including “Applause” signs. 

Rain started with I Want To Hold Your Hand.  It was perfect.  I watched “Paul” (for shorthand purposes, I’ll call the members of Rain by their Beatles counterparts) most of the time during that song (because it has an awesome bass line), and he nailed it.  I’ve seen the original performance a gazillion times, and this Paul had the original’s every move mapped.  There were a couple of differences: this Paul was right-handed, and he wore his bass a little lower than the original, but his playing was right on.

Ringo was also perfect.  He had the hunched over, head bobbing motions down perfectly.  John and George also had the movements and vocals down pat.

They did 4 or 5 songs from the early days (including a rousing version of I Saw Her Standing There that had the entire theater on its feet, dancing).  It was during this time that I realized it was a parallel universe.  They made no pretense that they were the Beatles (several times between songs, they referred to this or that Beatle in the 3rd person).  It was not an impersonation, at least not in the Elvis tradition.  This was, instead, a celebration.  Once I got the hang of that, the show was incredibly enjoyable.

Paul, on Yesterday, and later Blackbird, sounded so much like the original, members of the audience would sometimes just scream out in appreciation.  He was, as impressions go, the best vocalist.  The John was probably the”least best”, but he was still pretty darned good.

After Yesterday, the curtain came down, and they ingeniously showed commercials from the early 60’s (get it? We just watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, now it’s time to hear from our sponsors.  They showed the funniest commercials, including a Flintstones cigarette ad), and then showed scenes from the preparations for the Beatles famous concert at Shea Stadium.   

Then, the curtain came up, and Rain did a set of songs from mid-1965 through 1966 or so.  They did everything from In My Life to Eleanor Rigby.  It was in this latter number that we first saw the 5th member or the group, who played all orchestral parts on the keyboard, along with Billy Preston’s keyboard parts.  Once again, it took a minute to get used to having someone else on the stage, but after a few minutes of Eleanor Rigby, it seemed perfectly natural.

After a really sharp Shea set came an intermission. Now, I should probably mention that Lintilla and I aren’t as crazy about the post-1967 Beatles as the pre-1967 Beatles.  However, we very much enjoyed Rain’s second act, which, started with a 60’s news footage montage on the big screen, culminating in the curtain coming up to the band dressed as the Beatles on Sgt Pepper’s album cover.  They did the title cut, completely as it was on the record, which is no small feat with three distinct movements.  Ringo was right on - if I closed my eyes I could swear I was listening to the record.

They did a wonderful version of When I’m Sixty Four, dedicated to two adorable preteen girls in the second row.  They also did an ambitious version of A Day In The Life.  There is a temptation during the noisy orchestral transitions to cut it short, but Rain went measure for measure.  The discordance hurt the ears, but it was right. 

Then came a moment of brilliance.  All the members left the stage but Paul, and he did the aforementioned Blackbird.  This started an acoustic set, with John  joining to play an “oldie”, Girl.  John was now the long haired, bespectacled late 60’s John (Lintilla thought his mannerisms were kind of like Ozzy Osborne’s) .  Then George came out, the only one to wear a beard (Lintilla had visions of ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’), and started an acoustic version on While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  Halfway through the song, they transitioned to a full electric version, and it was the highlight of the show.  George did the familiar heavily chorused solo, and ended with a flourish that wasn’t in the original record, but was just awesome.  He got a standing ovation.

They then did some latter songs like Come Together (this was Ringo’s best moment), Get Back, and others, ending with Revolution. 

The audience demanded an encore, and they came back and started with Imagine.  They followed that with Let It Be.  It should be noted that the crowd was crazy about the latter, and warmly receptive of the former.  This is highly religious, conservative Tennessee, after all.  Then, they brought the house down with Hey Jude (complete with 5 minute sing-along at the end).

We left feeling like we had seen a show. 

The only criticism I have is about something that’s unavoidable, I guess.  During some of the more complex songs, guitar techs would actually come on stage to help the performers trade guitars.  I guess there’s really no way around it (maybe that’s why the Beatles didn’t tour in the latter days), but it was somewhat distracting.

Altogether, though, it was a great performance.  Part show, part concert, completely a celebration.

I’m quite thankful I got to see it.

If you don’t cook a lot, you might not realize how important it is to have the right tools. I have been suffering for almost two years now with bad graters, and it’s about to kill me. Here’s the one I want: the Microplane Extra-Coarse Grater. If you don’t own any Microplane, you are cooking without gas, so to speak. I have one, and I love it dearly. Mine is fine — good for zest, nutmeg and parmesan. But ever since my other favorite grater was lost in a Bermuda-triangle incident, I’ve struggled with one box grater after another, and I hate them all.

Here’s another piece of inferior equipment: A wire-loop pastry blender. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but when you’re blending butter into the dry ingredients for pastry, you need blades, not loops. Try telling that to your local big-box retailer. You’ll be lucky to find any pastry blender at Target, never mind one with blades.

Just added both those items to my wish list. The dumb thing is, they’re both really cheap on Amazon. Cheaper even than some of the inferior substitutes. I don’t understand why you’d sell something that’s more expensive, but more likely to break or not do the job, than the cheap, effective version. Oh wait. It’s a profit deal, isn’t it?

I’ve thought long and hard, and I’ve come up with the only 3 good things about winter.

• Thanksgiving
• Christmas
• Fleece

Seriously, can you really come up with any more?

Guess who I’m going to go see tonight at TPAC?

This is probably the first real date night Lintilla and I have had in a year or more.

Woot.

Tomorrow’s it. Tomorrow’s high is 71 degrees. And then we’re down into the 40s. Yikes. Actually, when I read that forecast out loud a moment ago, with a tone of horror in my own voice, Ashby practically yelled, “Sweet!” He’s the most warm-natured person I’ve ever met. With the possible exception of the 9yo and her dad. Really, it’s a close call between the 3 of them.

It’s hard to say right now about the 3yo. He thinks it’s fun to put a coat on, except when he doesn’t. I guess he hasn’t chosen his team — coats or no coats — yet.

Me? I’ll be at the park for a nice walk in the morning before the rain comes in, and then I’ll be back home turning up the heat and getting out all the fleece blankets. [Haha, I'm kidding. I got the fleece blankets out two weeks ago.]

You know we don’t do anything small around here. I was just telling the MIL that the other day — she’ll be joining us for the first time for Thanksgiving this year. And she was so nice, saying, hey, please don’t go to any trouble, etc. I just laughed when I read her email — I wrote back and said, Oh, it’s no trouble. And I really don’t think I could do Thanksgiving small. I’ve tried. One year, it was just the 9yo and me for Thanksgiving. So she was probably 4 or 5. And for 2 people, I made enough food for a party of 6-8. I even did a turkey breast instead of a turkey. But still, we had leftovers for days.

This year, we’re having 18 at last count. Respectable, but nowhere as big as we used to have growing up — all my mom’s brothers and their kids would come to our house. And most years, we had a few “extras” as well — other friends or family we’d pick up along the way. [Nowhere to go on turkey day? Let me know. I just warn you, we can be rather overwhelming. And loud. And the after-dinner Scrabble is a match to the death.]

The guest list to date:

• Ashby, me, the 3yo [the 9yo will be with her dad this year]
• Ashby’s mom
• My parents
• Nashville sister and her husband
• Nashville aunt and uncle
• Nashville cousin C and her fiance
• Nashville cousin N and her son
• Murfreesboro cousin [I think.]
• Jackson aunt and uncle
• Whiteville uncle

The menu to date:

• Fried turkey [From the men's group at church.]
• Roast [Me. I haven't decided what recipe yet, though I really loved the one I did last year and apparently failed to blog about. I have no idea how I'll find that recipe again. And you thought I was blogging for you.]
• Homemade rolls [Nashville aunt]
• Broccoli casserole [Nashville aunt]
• Cornbread dressing [Nashville aunt]
• Green bean casserole [Nashville sister]
• Golden Baked Potatoes [Nashville sister]
• Chocolate chess pie [My mom]
• Mincemeat pie [My mom]
• Cheesecake [Me. I blame Twitter.]
• Some other stuff — possibly salad or hors d’oeuvres [Jackson aunt. She and I have to get together.]

Still to be figured out:

• How to sneak a healthy item or two onto the menu
• Who’s bringing the wine besides Nashville aunt [Volunteers for white? We already have lots of red.]
• What we’re having Wednesday night [Odds say it will be spaghetti, though.]
• Who’s cleaning up after dinner while I go for a walk [Don't be the one to point out how little I'm cooking on that menu.]

Well I may rant and rave, but at least I’m in good company. Thomas Friedman proposes a great idea for fixing the auto industry.

I may never buy another Toyota product again.

No, this isn’t going to be a rant about how my water pump went out and I couldn’t get decent customer service.  I mean, come on - it’s Toyota.  I have a Scion xB (really, a quirky Camry), and I couldn’t be happier with it.

No, my ire is reserved for the guy who thought it would be a good idea to make promotional ads for Toyota dealers using the song by the Fixx, “Saved By Zero”, and the schedule it to play in EVERY local break in EVERY broadcast.

I hate that song.

Don’t get me wrong, I loves the Fixx.  Especially the song they recorded with Tina Turner, Better Be Good To Me.  In fact, I pretty much love everything they ever released.  Except for Saved By Zero.  I’m so over the melancholy 80’s vibe, with airy pad keyboards, whiny, oh-so introspective vocals, and heavily chorused guitar.

Every band I love does it.  They record a clunker that doesn’t live up to the standards of their other music, and of course, some studio honcho thinks he hears a single and releases the clunker into heavy rotation.

Emotional Rescue, anyone?  Or maybe All You Zombies?

Anyway, I watch a LOT of TV (much of it sports, but who’s counting).  Even with a DVR, it’s impossible to escape this stupid commercial.  And now, it’s become a family earworm.  My kids know only the second line of the chorus “…saved by zeeerrroooo…”  And they sing it constantly.

And, of course, I got the earworm too.

The only thing that’s saved me is that I intentionally changed the lyrics to “saved by Leroy” to make it bearable.  Now, I go around singing, “Saved by Leroy” all the time, and it’s driving my wife crazy.  My kids have picked it up, too.

We now have a love-hate relationship with Leroy.

I’m going to hunt down the Madison Avenue idiot who thought this was a good idea, strap him to a chair, and make him listen to Do You Think I’m Sexy.

I’ll let him go after maybe 15,000 plays.

Here’s the aforementioned Tina Turner / Fixx song, to make us all feel better:

I need someone to explain to me why we should be bailing out the perpetually failing U.S. auto industry. I am only mildly informed about the state of the industry, so I’m willing to say I might not get it. But here’s what I do know:

For decades, the domestic auto industry has been in a self-inflicted death spiral. It’s made bad deals with unions, agreed to overly generous pension and health care plans for both employees and retirees, and it’s (perhaps most critically) lagged far behind foreign manufacturers in both innovation and management practices.

While elements of the Wall Street bailout bother me, Wall Street is not a failing industry. It got into some risky practices that it didn’t understand — a lot of them — but I have no doubt that capitalism isn’t failing.

But I can’t figure out how there would be a long-term negative impact if GM, Chrysler and Ford all went belly-up. Or got bought in pieces/parts by foreign manufacturers. Short-term hell? Absolutely. Even if they were purchased, not closed, there’d be a lot of upheaval nationwide — everyone knows someone who works in a business related to the domestic auto industry. My half-informed suspicion is that part of the problem in the industry is simply bloat — not working as efficiently as it should. But, despite our energy idiocy, I don’t think the domestic demand for cars is just going away. So someone will need to make them. We’ll need more from Toyota and Nissan if Ford dies. It will still make sense to build a lot of those cars here, no matter who owns the means of production.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a couple of years ago. I said, I don’t get agricultural subsidies. It can’t make economic sense to produce corn or cotton or any number of other things here, unless you’re doing it on a massive agribusiness scale. Why should we keep spending tax dollars on subsidizing farmers? He argued that, while the subsidy programs might be larger than needed, part of it was based on a historical sense of national security — that subsidies had gained a real foothold during World War II, to ensure we produced enough cotton for the military’s needs. But we’re exporting about half the cotton we produce today, so the level of the subsidy doesn’t necessarily make sense to me anymore.

So, I would potentially buy it if you said there’s a national security element to ensuring the survival of some of the domestic auto industry. But I don’t see why we should throw money at an industry that hasn’t figured out how to manage itself. Please help me see.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Prop 8 in California:

I actually don’t think I do have a death obsession. But I noticed a couple of years ago that almost all the songs I like to sing to the kids are about death. I hadn’t thought about it in quite some time because the 3yo is your dream child at bedtime. We put him in bed, kiss him goodnight and he freakin’ goes to sleep.

This is still bizarre to me, based on my experience with the 9yo until, well, check back with me in a couple of months, OK? Let’s just say that when she was the age of the 3yo, I had to lie down with her and rub her back for 45 min every night.

Tonight, the 3yo wasn’t feeling well. He’s had a little cough for a couple days and didn’t really feel like eating dinner. Just kinda puny all around. So I rocked him tonight and sang to him.

A couple of old favorites popped up in the rotation — Swing Low Sweet Chariot and I’ll Fly Away. I also love to sing I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before. The Far Side Banks of Jordan. There’s more. Most good gospel songs are about death, really.

My repertoire is a lot more religious than I am, but hey, I go where the good songs are.

Really, I’m flattered. You continue to send me catalogs like clockwork, though my most recent order from any of you was probably two years ago. I could have papered my house with what you’ve sent me in the past year. And even though I live in a hip, urban neighborhood [thus hitting your target demos square on the nose], I have a fairly large-sized house.

But here’s the thing. Every model in your catalogs is oh, say, 5′10″ and willowy. I’m sure some are taller. And even before I got pregnant, I was 5′2″ and what we like to call “curvy.” [That's happy-talk for what my doctor more bluntly terms "could stand to lose 20 pounds."] Back in the day, pre-that-20-pounds, I still wasn’t the 5′2″ version of willowy. The curvy moniker frankly works pretty well for me.

So as much as I’d like to think I’m going to look just as awesome in your clothes as your catalog models do, it ain’t gonna happen, my friends. Please, send your catalogs to my sister [who, bless her heart, is the 5'1" version of willowy] or some other skinny soul.

As for me, I feel sure there is a catalog out there for someone like me, who would love to look hip, as long as it requires no effort on my part, and does involve comfortable clothes that fit, but who will otherwise continue to shop at Lands’ End and Eddie Bauer until that day comes.