Orel Family

Earlier today, Bruce Springsteen's latest album, High Hopes leaked far and wide across the interwebs. The official release isn't due until January 14th of the new year. The album is a hodgepodge of "our best unreleased material from the past decade," as Springsteen explains in the liner notes (already published at brucespringsteen.net ), where he adds, "I felt they all deserved a home and a hearing." Bruce previously wrote liner notes for Devils & Dust , which perhaps not coincidentally was also an album mainly of older unreleased material. As with the notes to that album, there are some poignant notes here: The Wall, a song that Bruce premiered in concert in 2003, was inspired by Walter Cichon, a member of a '60s Jersey Shore band called "Motifs." This is the best part of the liner notes, and arguably the best of the previously unreleased songs on the album. Much of the album has been heard before. Springsteen recorded  High Hopes,  w...

The first thing I noticed, when launching in to the introduction for Debra Rothenberg's book Bruce Springsteen in Focus 1980-2012 was the instant potential for a good old game of Jewish geography. Ms. Rothenberg and I were born less than 10 weeks apart and grew up a few miles from each other in suburban Northern New Jersey. Her school friends were my camp friends. Her college acquaintances were my relatives. We each saw out first major concerts at the Garden States Arts Center in the mid-70s, were turned on to Bruce Springsteen's music by mentors who preached the Springsteen gospel and knew not to let up, and saw Southside Johnny at the same shows near our homes before finally seeing Bruce perform for the first time during The River tour. Rothenberg's first published photo: September 1981 issue of New Jersey Monthly magazine Rothenberg combined her love for Bruce Springsteen with her dream to become a great photographer, and over the course of 3 decades has chro...

Hanukkiah on the Thanksgiving table! Right next to the... mashed potatoes! Did we? No. I wanted to. What better than to replace yams -- I don't like yams, anyway -- with good old fashioned latkes? But this was an over-the-river-and-through-the-snow year, and grandma was already making the yams and mashed potatoes. Who could argue? The mashed potatoes were really good. Much has been written about the coincidence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah this year. It has been given the lame name Thanksgivukkah  (what did they call it when Hanukkah coincided with Black Friday, just 11 years ago? Shopukah?). Some sites have proclaimed that it has never happened before won't happen again until the year 79811, due to how the two calendars work. That's not quite true, as an excellent recap by the calendar-heads at Chabad shows. Mostly, it was cool to have a menorah on the Thanksgiving table, and to give out gelt after the pies. As for the latkes, we stopped off at friends in...

How many of the first tier rock bands from the '60's are still rocking around? With all members alive, and able to perform? And of those, how many actually are  performing? And of those, how many are bringing  it, in major halls with first rate production? I'm pretty sure there's only one: The Rascals . Felix Cavaliere Gene Cornish and Eddie Brigati That's not the only reason to see their show, Once Upon a Dream ,  but it's a good place to start. The Rascals weren't simply any  band, though; they were a substantial portion of my childhood soundtrack. Their hits played on the AM radio on my way to day camp, and can still be heard regularly on various radio outlets including XM/Sirius Radio's Underground Garage .  Their biggest hit, Good Lovin',  remains one of the most instantly identifiable -- and urgently danceable -- songs of the rock era. And, of course, they were from New Jersey. Not down the shore, where I never went, but in Garfi...

Gone too soon? Jim Leyland pulls Max Scherzer from ALCS Game 6 (photo: Matt Slocum / Associated Press) Last Saturday night, the Boston Red Sox defeated the Detroit Tigers 5-2 in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series  to advance to the 2013 World Series. In what seemed like an eerie bit of déjà vu from Game 2 of the same series, Tigers starter Max Scherzer left the game while the Tigers were ahead, only to see a parade of relievers struggle and ultimately give up a grand slam home run. Scherzer went 21-3 during the regular season. He will win this year's AL Cy Young Award. In Game 2 he was dominating, and departed after throwing 108 pitches over 7 innings. In several other outings this year, Scherzer had often thrown more pitches; he had averaged over 120 pitches in his prior two starts. The Tigers led, 5-1. But when three relievers combined to get just 2 outs while loading the bases in the bottom of the 8th, manager Jim Leyland called on closer Joaquin Beno...

I remember the first high school football game I attended. It was 1967. I was 5. My grandfather insisted to my parents, "you gotta see my boy play." My grandfather -- the kids called him Doc Keller but we called him "Boppy" -- was the team doctor at Rippowam High School in Stamford, Connecticut. He was a general practitioner and ENT man who made old-fashioned home visits and had an office in his house. His office wall was adorned with dozens of game balls and trophies, signed by players of many victorious contests. I never quite understood how the team doctor ended up with all those game balls, but there they were. High School Football, Michigan-style. Boppy was my mother's father, but he had a sports bond with my father. They were both originally from Boston, just 17 years apart. Boppy was old enough to remember the Red Sox winning World Series, and he'd tell stories of how the kids who couldn't afford to go to the games would gather in Kenmore Sq...

I have a pretty quiet blog. I'm the only author, I don't maintain a subscriber list or have a large "following," and I don't blog on a single targeted subject. My blog carries a single banner ad for amazon.com, from which I use modest commissions to fund charitable donations. Google analytics says my pages have a combined value of $0.00, and while I see mine as worth a few multiples of that figure, I expect that my number is fairly typical of personal blog valuations. That's not to say that nobody reads the blog. According to my blogger dashboard, nearly 24,000 "views" have been logged by my blog since I moved it to the blogger site in early 2010; during 2012 the blog logged about 35 views per day. Now, when we say "views," the inference would be that the page is actually... well... viewed.  And, as many -- maybe even most -- of the reported views were generated by friends who clicked links I posted to facebook or google plus , the page...

My first visiting day: 1973. The nest is empty again: The kids are off at camp. As it was last year , Elianna is off to Camp Ramah in Canada , and Aaron is off to Ramah Outdoor Adventure in Colorado. The house is quiet. The food goes more slowly. The days seem longer... and yet they go by too quickly. Arriving at her 2nd home: Camp Ramah. I was a Ramah camper too, at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires . For me, Ramah was a transformative experience. " From  what to  what?," I might ask in a less cheerful moment; but there are still things from that first summer that I keep with me. A feeling of warmth and belonging that I'd never quite had before. The sound of birkhat hamazon -- the grace after meals -- being sung by 600 kids in unison at the first camp meal, giving me the impression of massive bells ringing. Getting ready for shabbat on Friday afternoon, when we'd wear all white. The singing at the Friday evening services, where I could sing and not feel self-...

ok, forgiven. The fan-sourced movie project Springsteen and I had its one and... almost only showing this evening. Culled from several thousand fan submissions, the film intends to tell the story of what Bruce means to his fans, interspersed with rare concert footage that bring to the big screen the magic, mystery and ministry of his rock and roll. Why "forgiven"? For mangling the grammar in the title? Nah, Bruce did the same thing in Streets Of Philadelphia , and if it was good enough for him then I'm ok with it. Maybe for not using or even responding to my submission; which for at least 48 hours was the best video I'd ever done. The only emails I got from the Springsteen and I  crew were instructions on how best to pay an inflated price -- $15 -- for a movie ticket. Sure, there were soundbytes, but I wasn't sure if a line like "I lost my virginity to Thunder Road" was worth a laugh or a groan... or both. As I sat through the first half hour of the...

We bought a house with a swimming pool. I don't think I'd do it again, but what's done is done, and the pool has water, and ducks like to swim in water, and every spring before we open the pool ducks come and try to swim in it. This sometimes prompts a most curious scene as Lori or Aaron try to chase them away... though they always come back, at least until the water warms up. In some years ducks have started nests in spots near the pool. One time was a duck war, all the eggs were smashed, and a male duck with a very broken neck ended up in the pool. Another time, a duck abandoned its last egg. The children tried to hatch it , but nothing ever happened. June 19: 9 ducklings, unable to make it over a bubble in the cover. On June 19th, our history changed. Lori suspected we had another duck with a nest, and its nearby male partner, but on this chilly morning we found out. Ducks in the pool! Or, since we had covered the pool the previous night, it was ducks on  the pool...

For the ninth consecutive year, Aaron and I rode in the annual Tour de Cure  ride to help support the American Diabetes Association (ADA).  It was the 5th ride for Elianna and Lori. First things first:  We are still accepting donations through the end of June.  The link is:   http://main.diabetes.org/goto/teamorel We may have a date conflict next year, so this ride may be our last for a while. So I am posting some pictures of our rides over these past 9 years... Aaron during the first ride, in 2005 At a rest stop in 2006. Elianna was still using the bike in 2012. On the ride, in 2007 2008: Prepared to leave 2009: The first full family ride, and the last at Island Lake. 2010: Aaron and Elianna at Brighton High School before the ride Lori and Elianna during the 2011 ride. Before the start of the 2012 Tour de Cure 2013: At a rest stop. Aaron says he wants to go 62 miles next year. 2013: After the ride. We've gone from 7 mile rides to 15 to 25, ...