Orel Family

I love Love. That’s the short version of my review of the latest album to be labeled as “The Beatles.” And since the two living Beatles as well as the widows of the other two actually consented to this project, I suppose the label has some legitimacy. I love “Love.” I want to go to Las Vegas and see Cirque du Soleil perform “Love,” to see how the music and show weave together. Music has always been a vital part of the Cirque du Soleil experience, going back to 1992’s Saltimbanco and beyond. So I imagine the stage production of “Love,” as a lifelong Beatles fan and a longtime Cirque du Soleil fan, and hope that eventually I’ll see it. Listening to “Love” is almost like a test for a longtime Beatles fan. It’s not just the 26 tracks on the listing, or the 37 original Beatles songs listed on those track titles. There are quite a few that are unlisted, enough so that for my 2nd listen I took notes. I’m sure I’ll recognize passages in future listens that I haven’t yet identified, ...

On December 6, I received a credit on a credit card statement: For "SHEA CLASS ACTION LIT. SETTLEMENT AWARD": -$0.05. Five cents! For what, I don't know, but I am 5 cents richer for being a member of the class. What class? After much searching, I have finally found out: It is for something called "Shea, et al. v. Household Bank (SB), National Association, OCSC Case No. OOCC12585." A settlement for $16 million against the company that issues the GM MasterCard. I had to go to Snopes to find it. Another blogger (scroll down to "Windfall") had already reported getting the refund. Now I feel really rich -- the blogger got only one cent in their settlement. One cent! I got a full nickel. HA! Today, my luck with classes continues: I received my check from the WorldCom Settlement Fund . This one is big, big, big! For defrauding millions of investors, the remnants of WorldCom, Citigroup, and Andersen had to shell out over $6 billion in damag...

Eleven days ago at this hour it was 63 degrees here in Southern Michigan. I got on my shorts, went outside, and picked broccoli. The plants are hearty, and they'd made it through the early frosts. The side shoots may not be much at the end of November, but... it's broccoli at the end of November. Even the few ounces that I picked were miraculous to me. I picked broccoli again yesterday. Pulling off two layers of covering to do it, and putting it right back on when completed. The plants are wilting now, but holding on. May be the last time, but who knows? Today... first day of ski school for Aaron, with dad as a parent supervisor. Which means helping kids with wickets, and flashback memories of every field trip bus ride I ever took, just with a different perspective. These kids were so much more polite than I ever remember my peers being. The worst behavior was probably the young boys who got a tactile sensation out of touching the wickets, and then wanted to smell th...

Mail programs are better, filters are better. At places such as gmail, I can open my mail relatively free from spam risk. Maybe not quite the same on my home account, but not too bad. So now the spammers are coming for the blogs. Seemingly out of nowhere, I'm now getting 3, 4 spam "comments" per day to various old blog posts. Invariably the ones about Barry Bonds and website traffic are the ones attacked in this manner. I don't post for comments, don't ask for them. The blog has no particular theme, and I don't advertise it. It just is. Whoever finds the blog will find it, and if someone finds it interesting I suppose a comment or two may come (I think I'm at a grand total of 2 now, in just over a year). And yet, now my comments are moderated, as a spam defense. Tonight, the most awful horror yet: I logged in to get rid of the collected spam, and instead of hitting the "Delete" button, I accidentally hit the "Publish" button in...