songbird's crazy world

 Seen around the neighborhood 

  1. How young is young? In the past, according to various organizations who decide these things, age 60 was the 'border age' to old. The World Health Organization has done new research recently and divided up the categories as-0-17 (underage), 18-65 (youth or young people), 66-79 (middle-aged), 80-99 (elderly senior), 100+ (long-lived elderly). Your thoughts on this particular breakdown, and also your thoughts as to where you land? Hmm. I think there should be more categories.  Specifically a 40-65 category, there's a huge difference between18 and 65.    2. TIME magazine has declared Elon Musk  person of the year in 2021 . What say you? If you want to know more about how they choose you'll find that info in  the link here . If you were choosing, who would be your person of the year?  I'd pick Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik; in the competition to replace Alex Trebek, they came out on top. 3. I read  here  ten habits of extremely likable pe...

 So this is embarrassing.  Yesterday I posted my tribute to Mike Nesmith.  And I mentioned how Nesmith did a performance via Skype when Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork performed at Town Hall in NYC on June 1, 2016.  I posted a video of the Skype performance, something I found on YouTube, and said I would never forget that performance. I don’t think I mentioned it yesterday, but Drew and I were in the audience for that concert. And I completely forgot that I also took video of the Skype performance. You can find my post about that concert  here .   Let me play my video, which I think is better than the one I posted yesterday.    You can actually hear me laughing when Micky suggests calling Mike on the phone. Yes, Drew and I are real Monkees fans, we’ve seen them many times. About a week or so before Mike died, Drew mentioned that Micky Dolenz has scheduled a concert for NYC in January, a double bill with Felix Cavalieri of The Rascals.   Drew wasn...

 And we are asked to play holiday music.  But I am sad today... In 1966 there was a TV show based on a band.  Four young men known as The Monkees. Back in October, I wrote about  The Monkees Farewell Tour .  It was bittersweet knowing that the show, starring Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz, would be the last time the surviving members of the Monkees would perform together. During the show there were memorials to past members Davy Jones (who died in 2012) and Peter Tork (died in 2019). That night, Drew said to me "Mike doesn't look well."  I had to agree.  Back in 2018 the Monkees had to cancel four tour dates because Nesmith was ill and needed a quadruple bypass.   And on Friday Mike Nesmith passed away. Mike wasn't just an actor/singer, he also wrote songs, and later produced videos.   He had a solo career, but is best remembered as one of  the Monkees.      I'll never forget when Mike Skyped it in...   ...

Back in the 1950’s, four men (Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim) decided to do a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet.   Initially the four — all Jewish — thought to make the conflict about Jewish and non Jewish gangs on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Eventually, though, they went for a more modern, more socially relevant conflict — the influx of Puerto Ricans into Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the rivalry between the immigrants and the white residents who were being displaced. West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957.  Four years later, the movie premiered.  There were some changes  — the lyrics for “America” were rewritten, the order of the songs was changed, and the ballet sequence was dropped — but the movie was faithful to the Broadway version. It’s been revived on Broadway multiple times.  It’s a staple of high school drama clubs (including mine — I was in the chorus, one of the Jet girls). You know the plot.   ...

  Drivers License Welcome to  Saturday 9 . What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme! Saturday 9: Drivers License (2021) Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it  here . 1) This song is about a girl who just got her drivers license. Who taught you to drive? Primarily my mother, but I also took Driver's Ed in school. 2) Do you like your drivers license/state ID photo? Meh. 3) Think back to the first ticket you received. How old were you, and what was it for? I was a adult.  It was the day of my daughter Becca's bat mitzvah, in September 2005.  I was very stressed, more so than I ...

Something’s coming’, I don’t know what it is But it is gonna be great… Did you recognize those Sondheim lyrics?  Are you now singing along? Then you must be as excited as I am for Spielberg’s new movie, opening today. Yes, 60 years after the original movie made history, West Side Story  will open today. Timeless story, unforgettable music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Sondheim.   Can't wait.