Magic Meryle Cohen on the Rosie Show

Remember the exciting news about Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen, Cohen the Violinist, being filmed by the Rosie Show's crew? Be prepared for more excitement!

We set our DVR to record each episode of the Rosie Show so we'd be sure to see Magic Meryle. The show runs each weeknight. I had a bunch of the shows recorded and finally decided that I needed to free up the DVR's disk space. So I started playing the shows. I'd start the playback then hit the fast forward button a couple of times. Each episode would fly by in just about two minutes. I'd go through a couple of weeks of shows each evening.

Last Friday night I was coming to the end of what we had recorded. I was flying through the show recorded the night before and there she was! Magic Meryle Cohen! On coast-to-coast television.

Meryle had sent me a note before Labor Day asking if I knew anyone who could record the Oprah channel. She didn't say why she wanted to know but a Google search filled me in. I told her that my friend Ray gets that cable channel and has a DVD recorder. Meryle didn't get a message from Rosie telling her when her segment was going to be shown. Neither did I. So I hadn't known to ask Ray to record that episode. I thought that we were going to have to get our DVR and Ray's DVD recorder together.

I sent Meryle a note saying that I had recorded her episode and I would need to arrange to get it recorded when I could get our DVR over to Ray's DVD recorder.

Then it occurred to me that the Rosie Show was probably repeated. Sure enough, the Thursday episode was reaired three or four times on Friday. But that was too late. Well, lordy, it was aired one last time Saturday at noon!

I discovered this too late to make phone calls to see if Ray could record it for me so I sent emails and text messages. Fortunately, Ray was able to set up his DVD recorder to record the Magic Meryle episode before he left town for the afternoon. Thanks, Ray!

I made a couple of copies of the show for Meryle.

This evening Jerry and I took the DVDs over to the Oceanside Sunset Market. Today is the first Thursday of the month, the day that Meryle said she plays there. I had sent an email asking if she would be playing there tonight but I hadn't gotten a reply. We went up and down all the streets of the market, DVDs in hand, looking for her but Magic Meryle was not to be found.

I didn't want to lug the DVDs around so we took them back to the car then went back to look at the booths of the market. Jerry bought something that might show up some Tuesday.

After we had seen everything a couple of times we gave up hope and were about to leave. We decided to make one more loop around the market.

As we passed by one booth Jerry grabbed my sleeve and said "There she is!" She saw me and excitedly introduced me to the vendor she was visiting. She hadn't been playing yet because the tips aren't too good for the first couple of hours of the market.

We learned that the day they filmed her was a really nice day. They filmed several hours of her day. It was edited down to four minutes or so. They thought that some of what was recorded that didn't make it to the show would be posted on the Rosie Show's web site. But, alas, that doesn't seem to have happened.

Magic Meryle was amazed that they would send a crew out to California to film her. Apparently Rosie is going to do this with other of her pen-pals. Oprah must have deep pockets.

We went back to the car to retrieve the DVDs. Magic Meryle was thrilled to get them. She hadn't yet seen her network television debut. I hope she's happy with the result.

Here's the Magic Meryle Cohen segment of the Rosie Show.



I thought the tune she plays at the end was an odd choice. Magic Meryle explained it. Now it makes sense.

A-TEN-shun!

I usually don't pay attention to ads on web sites. I especially try to ignore the ones that have annoying animations going on. A year or so ago, there were some ads on the New York Times site for Design Within Reach. Their ads were simply their name on a red background. For some reason I checked them out. And spent hours looking through their products. I've gone back to drool over and over again.

I want a second house that we can decorate with contemporary furnishings.

One of the stops of our trip last month was Penzeys Spices in Santa Monica. Just across the street from Penzeys happened to be a DWR store. Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!

One of the things I wanted to see was a miniature of a molded plywood elephant designed by Charles and Ray Eames. The only one they had was in their display case. Jerry bought it for me!

I hadn't heard of Charles Eames and the Eames Chair until Charles Eames gave the commencement address at my college graduation.

I wish I could remember the address. I'm sure it was full of wonderful ideas to help us to do great things with our lives. The one thing I remember is that he showed us his film "The Powers of Ten." My friend Walter Kubilius was excited that we were going to see Mr. Eames and his movie. If it hadn't been for his excitement, I might have let the whole experience pass as just another inspirational speech. Sadly, Charles Eames died just three months after that address.

I'm glad I know a little about the Eameses. And I now have my own little Eames-designed piece. Now I'll have to go back and get a chair.

"The Powers of Ten" is a very interesting little movie. I hope you watch and enjoy it.

Happy Powers of Ten day!

Ai, Chihuahua!

In January, 1971, the family (minus Poss, who had gotten far too many demerits to deserve the opportunity to join us) took to the road and visited the capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. I told a story of this trip earlier.

Here are the pictures from that trip.

I am completely bummed because there are no pictures of Pancho Villa's widow nor his death car. I was looking forward to seeing our photos of them.

The things we get to see are:

• Outside Pancho Villa's house
• An aqueduct (featured on the state's Coat of Arms)
• Murals by Aarón Piña Mora in the Government Palace of Chihuahua
• A statue of Pancho Villa
• The Mines of Santa Eulalia (this Harper's article by Lew Wallace makes it sound like this is a place we wanted to see)
• Scenery around the city

Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico

Here is a better picture of the execution of Hidalgo.

Anybody know anything about the unidentified scenery around town?

Over the Rainbow

The Saturday, March 15, 2008, New York Times Crossword puzzle started off with:

1A: Judy Garland or Liza Minnelli

The answer had 7 letters. I had a hunch but, doing the puzzle in ink (on a Saturday!), worked my way back to the spot. Sure enough the answer was "Gay Icon."

Judy Garland died 40 years ago today.

I was in the back seat of the '55 Chevy being driven somewhere downtown by one of my big sisters and the radio was playing a Rock and Roll station from Santa Fe. The DJ told us that Judy Garland had died then played "Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead." I thought that that was rather rude, celebrating the death of the wonderful "Wizard of Oz" star.

Grandma told me a story about the last episode of Judy's television show. She told me that Judy was told that her show was being canceled and that Judy went out and threw her all into that final show (with no guests?), then, at the end, threw down the microphone in disgust and stormed off the set. I don't know if that is indeed what happened (it should be easy enough to find out but I'll just live with this memory of my Grandmother). I guess Grandma was a fan.

I've tried to be a fan. I've bought a bunch of her CDs. I got some videos of her television show. 142 songs of hers on my jPod. Often, when a song of hers get played (it's always in shuffle mode), it sounds to me like I'm hearing a cruel parody of Judy. I just can't get terribly excited by a lot of her performances (at least the live performances of the '60s). I hope this doesn't mean that I have to turn in my Gay Card.

I'll turn off shuffle mode for the day and devote my iPod time to Judy. Then I'll watch "The Wizard of Oz." Maybe I'll come around.

Poor Judy. I hope her troubles melted like lemon drops.

Where were you when you heard that Judy had died?

Speaking of Gay Icons, here's a part of one of the episodes of the Judy Garland Show I recorded when it was played on Showtime:

Here's Lance!

A recent water bill had a note enclosed telling us that the intersection just to the north of our house was going to be closed today for an hour because the Amgen Tour of California was going to be passing through. Lance Armstrong was going to be in it!

Since it was just a two minute walk to the intersection we decided that we'd watch. It turned out to be a fairly popular spot to watch the racers. We watched from a little way up the hill so we had a view of the racers' approach and turn up Bear Valley Parkway. We just saw the mass of bikers so we couldn't pick out Lance from the rest of the main pack.

There's not much to see but I made a movie of the event. After all, how many times does a major bike race pass through your neighborhood?




Here's the line of cars leaving our little street (and some parked ones).

And here are the cars parked in front of our house. Notice the pickup parked beyond our mailbox.
The driver of the pickup is the person on the phone in front of the SUV on the left. He's asking somebody for help getting unstuck from the mud. He decided that the spot where our water pipes were replaced would be a great place to park. Unfortunately, it wasn't. He sank into the mud.

He got out of the mud. We have new depressions for water to fill when it rains again.


Here's a Google Map of the part of the race we saw.  We watched from the red pointer and the bikes travelled along the blue line (in the direction of the arrows).

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