Orel Family

Just before the New Year, Stewart Francke released his latest top-notch album, Love Implied . As with its superb predecessor, Heartless World , the album was funded by a kickstarter campaign; this one to be slightly more ambitious as it will eventually result in a DVD companion to the album. Love Implied is a softer album than Francke's most recent prior releases. Listening to it, I needed more time to find my place in it; where Heartless World had me hooked by the 2nd song, it took until the 2nd spin this time. The first song that really grabbed me was one I saw by title first: Big Man . Being a longtime Springsteen fan, of course I immediately thought of Clarence Clemons, who died in 2011. But Big Man was also the nickname for Stew's dad; the former Saginaw mayor who passed away in 2010 . The song is a goofy homage to the strain of big band music the elder Francke loved; presented almost as a throw-away, its joyous hook and shouted one-line lyric brought an instant smi...

One month ago, I took a business trip to Austin, Texas. I turned on the radio in the rental car, and first thing I heard was a weather report. "Cover your plants, we may have Austin's first frost of the season tonight," came the warning. I laughed; after all, our first frost in Michigan this year was in September, and it was currently December 11. After the weather report, the station's scheduled programming came on. It was  Rush Limbaugh . Over the next 6 minutes, he managed to tie "global warming" in to a liberal agenda that included everything from taxing the wealthy to policies on illegal immigration to gun control to calls to ban NFL kickoffs . "That's how the left does it," he explained. "They guilt you in to accepting their global warming belief." As I write, it is 57 degrees Fahrenheit here in West Bloomfield. The normal high temperature for January 12th is 32 degrees. It is the 7th day of our warm-up. Local ski areas ...

Pud Galvin. Cap Anson. Ty Cobb. Tris Speaker. These are some of the most famous men ever to play major league baseball. All of them have been inducted into the  National Baseball Hall of Fame . All of them had superb career accomplishments: Galvin won 365 major league baseball games. He was the first pitcher to win 300 games, and was the all-time leader in wins when he retired. He still ranks 5th on the all-time list. He also  took steroids  during the 1889 season. Anson played an astounding 27 seasons -- the first  27 seasons of major league baseball. He was the first player to collect 3000 major league hits, and was the all-time leader in hits when he retired. He still ranks 6th on the all-time list. He was also a  racist  whose refusal to take the field against a team with black players in 1887 led to the establishment of baseball's notorious color barrier. Cobb was baseball's greatest hitter. He was the first player to collect 4000 hits....

Lori and I saw David Chase's new romanticized semi-autobiographical movie Not Fade Away  last night. It's a new release with a spectacular soundtrack (Little Steven was its executive producer), but it was a private showing: we were the only ones in the theater at 9:30. That begs the question of whether something can fade away if it was never really there at all. Not Fade Away is not the first "Beatles era coming of age in New Jersey" movie;  I Wanna Hold Your Hand covered that ground way back in 1978. That movie was also more "down home" to me, as it started within walking distance of my childhood home. Not Fade Away's New Jersey feels more ersatz: It sure looks  like New Jersey, and is full of the types of artifacts and references that one might have found there in the '60's. It doesn't take more than a minute in to the opening scene for the "We're in New Jersey!" announcement with a name check of Delbarton Academy (a p...