OH WHAT A FRIDAY NIGHT

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        280

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          30       369     4182         398       960          47
Sept     3     1094     5886          830     1083       174
            4     1033     5814          855     1066       115      

Summary:  Well, not so good.

I went through my wellness center exercises late in the afternoon.  However, they now require us to wear a mask.  Do you know how difficult this is?  

Anyway, I had to reduce the usual strenuousness, but still found myself at the lowest weight all year.  Plus, my birthday is this weekend, so I splurged on a Costco blue plate rib eye.  American beef, so I went western, with mashed potatoes, corn and other veggies.  Opened one of my more expensive Stanford wine, a Haywood Estate Cabernet Sauvignon.  Wow, 15.4% ethanol.

Tried something different.  I first fried some garlic with small pieces of steak fat, tossed in the contents from a small can of corn with some Carnation cream, and then the mashed potatoes.  Absolutely gastronomical:

Tonight it was TCM.  Started with Elvis, That's the Way It Is.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 91/92.  He made this triumphant return to the concert stage in almost a decade.  After a few minutes, it hit me.  My wife and I were there.  This was then the International Hotel in Las Vegas.  I remember slipping a $20 bill on check-in and we were taken to one of those long tables right next to the stage in the middle.  I recall that white suit, his kissing women, walking around the audience, Sammy Davis Jr. in the audience, backed up by the Imperials and Sweet Inspirations.  This was August of 1970.  Watch this documentary, you might see me.

There are various versions of this concert.  This was the new version, released in 2001 and made a debut on Turner Classic Movies, now TCM.

That was incredible as it was, but I then watched The T.A.M.I. Show, a 1964 concert film where the audience of 3000 from high schools came in for free.  You too can see it, just click that link for the whole 1 hour 52 minute movie.  The T is for teenage, and the audience was 99% them, and 99% white.

Hosted by Jan and Dean before that accident, they were the ones who had the first surf song hit, in 1963, Surf City.  Introduced Chuck Berry, who started with Good Golly Miss Molly.  Whoa...  This is the song which came blasting on at the beginning of THREADS:  The Most Frightening Film I Have Ever Seen, my posting of September 1.  All these coincidencies last night.

Then, I thought back to my life.  This is the show that gave me the idea in 1967 to put on in Naalehu the first outdoor rock concert, featuring bands from around the Big Island.  Click on that, for the poster to the right announced this fair.  Woodstock came two years after us.

But back to TAMI, the whole effort was amazing and well orchestrated.  Each performer sang four or five songs, shortened.  No lip-syncing.  They needed a critical mass of hits to get invited.  A whole bunch of bands came from the UK, melding with those surfer groups in California, like the Beach Boys, and the roots of R&R with Chuck and James Brown.  The go-go dancers were enticing and I wondered why the censors did not cut those out.  

It was like PBS in 1964, for they all came on at the end to surround the Rolling Stones, before Satisfaction, which was released in 1965.  Interesting that the Body Mass Indices of those performers were really low.  This was the Miracles before Smoky Robinson became famous, and the Supremes before Diana Ross pulled out.

By the way, Season 15 of America's Got Talent is down to 20 semi-finalists.  Tune in Tuesday night.  

I can't believe I'm saying this, but my favorite is a poet, Brandon Leake.  I've avoided poetry all my life, although, I actually had a poem accepted into a national high school anthology when I was a senior in high school.  Simon Cowell was like me...he said he doesn't understand poetry.  Oh, he fell at home and broke his back.  I also like Archie Williams, who got exonerated after spending 37 years in prison, and 9-year old Roberta Battaglia.

Winner last year was Kodie Lee:

As this has been partly a steak posting, let me end with Japanese wagyu beef:

Haishen is now a super typhoon at 155 MPH, with gusts of 190 MPH.  Southern Japan will be sideswiped today, and Amami Island, with a population of 73,000, especially in danger, then on to South Korea tomorrow, their third typhoon in a couple of weeks.

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