Bruce Slutsky was born in New York City in 1949. I retired 8 years ago after working as a Science/Engineering Librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark for 25 years. I was married to Karen until she passed away in February 2021. I have a son Lee who is now 38 years old. I am very much interested in the popular music of the 1960s, especially Bob Dylan and the Beatles. I am interested in rock and roll radio. I am an enthusiastic fan of the New York Mets.
These are the radio stations AM, FM, SiriusXM, and internet that I listened to today with a few comments:
6:30 AM - WINS - about 22 minutes of the news
6:50 AM - WCBS-FM with Ross Britain - I listened for old time sake for about an hour, It is just not the same. They don't want old farts like me anyway.
8:00 AM - The Elvis Channel on SiriusXM in the car. My son Lee is a big fan of the King.
9:30 AM - The 50s on 5 on SiriusXM - you can't hear that stuff anywhere else
10 AM - WBGO - The Rhythm Revue with Felix Hernandez, He plays good stuff I used to hear on WCBS-FM
4 PM - Pop Gold Radio with Tom Natoli starting to play the top 1500 hits of the 1960s derived from WABC Surveys
5 PM - WFUV - Mixed Bag with Don McGee
8 PM - The 60s on 6 with Cousin Brucie
As of 9:20 PM, the only TV I've watched today was The Three Stooges on MeTV. I guess I'll check out the TV news at 11 PM.
In October I bought a new laptop since my old one was running very slowly. Until very recently it was running just fine, but all of a sudden it just didn't boot up. Thankfully, I bought a 2-year warranty, so later today I will bring it back to the store and have them work on it. Right now I am working on my older laptop which still works, albeit slowly. I also have my cell phone and Kindle Fire as backups.
We don't realize how much we rely on computers until we have to do without one. It is only a machine, so life goes on.
Last night Baseball Across America held a trivia night at Ainswoth Social, a sports bar and restaurant at 9th Avenue and 45th Street in Manhattan. This organization seeks to give under-represented youth an opportunity at-bat by engaging, motivating, and inspiring them to graduate college and become leaders in their communities. The event served as a fundraiser for this organization.
About 25 people were organized into 6 teams who answered questions which were divided into 9 categories representing the innings of a baseball game. Some of the categories were:
Stadiums
Teams
Records
Post Season
Records
I didn't take notes so I only remember a few of the questions that were given. Some were very easy while others were quite difficult. The trivia questions at the NYC SABR chapter meetings every year were much much more challenging:
What was the first stadium to use artificial turf?
What 4 people managed the Mets and Yankees?
Who was the last shortstop before Derek Jeter to make the Hall of Fame?
What players hit home runs before age 20 and after age 40?
In 1904 the New York Giants refused to play in the world series. What team would have been their opponent?
There was also a raffle where I won a baseball from the 2015 World Series that was autographed by George Brett and John Wathan.
Back in the Fall, I read in the Bob Dylan fanzine Isis that a documentary about the Band was going to be released. In November, it was shown once at a film festival in NYC, but finally yesterday it was released to limited theaters. We went to Greenwich Village and saw it at the IFC Center. For my readers who are not familiar with the group the members were:
Robbie Robertson
Levon Helm (deceased)
Rick Danko (deceased)
Richard Manuel (deceased)
Garth Hudson
The film is loosely based on Testimony, an autobiography of Robbie. He did acknowledge the contributions of the other members, he was the protagonist of the film. He talked about his family history including how he found out the John Robertson was not his real father and that his biological father was Jewish. He traced the history of the group as it started out as the Hawks who were the background of Ronnie Hawkins who was interviewed in the film. Other musicians who were interviewed included:
Eric Clapton
George Harrison
Van Morrison
Taj Mahal
Bruce Springsteen
Jann Wenner
Much time was devoted to their backing of Bob Dylan in 1966 when they were booed as Dylan's folk music fans rebelled against his conversion to rock. After this tour, Dylan and the group moved to Woodstock, NY where they recorded numerous hours of music in a house called Big Pink. The Band then recorded several successful albums on their own. In 1974 they backed Dylan in a very successful tour.
The seminal concert "The Last Waltz" the subject of an earlier documentary was also considered in the current film. At that point, the group split up as they felt that 16 years together was enough.
I felt the film was too "Robbie centric". His wife Dominique was interviewed during several segments, but relatives of the deceased members were not. There were no current interviews with Garth Hudson. Did he refuse to participate?
There was no mention that the group reformed in the 1980s without Robbie. I did see the reconstituted group c1987 at the Westbury Music Fair. During a tour in 1986, Richard Manuel committed suicide in a hotel room.
I enjoyed the film and highly recommend it to Bob Dylan fans as there were still photos and videos of him in this film that I never saw.
I received an email from the Mets today stating that until Monday at midnight tickets can be purchased online without fees which add a substantial amount to the cost. I jumped at the opportunity to save money so I purchased tickets for 11 games. I could always buy tickets at the last minute for other games. I thought about buying a 20 game package, but decided not to for 2 reasons:
20 games is a little too much with the high cost of tickets
The team chooses the 20 games in each of the packages it offers. I picked the games that I wanted to see.
It averaged to about $33/ticket for the 11 games. I remember back in the 1960s when tickets in the entire upper deck at Shea Stadium was $1.30. Somebody has to pay for the players' multimillion-dollar salaries.
