1. When she left for work this morning, Debbie already knew she'd want to stay home after work, not go uptown. She asked me to cook something for dinner with ground beef. I decided to prepare one of the most comforting and tasty ground beef dinners of all: Paula Deen's goulash. There's nothing to it. All I had to do was brown some salt and peppered ground beef, added chopped onion and garlic to the beef and let that cook for five minutes or so. I then added water, diced fire roasted tomatoes, tomato sauce, oregano, thyme, basil, garlic powder, umami, a couple bay leaves and about eight ounces or so of macaroni.
All these ingredients simmered in a covered pot for about a half an hour.
I let it cool down some.
We filled our bowls and lo and behold
It worked!
2. Debbie and I settled into a relaxed evening of television viewing. We'd watched about half of All the President's Men the other night and finished it tonight, reciting different lines before the actors got them out and, once again, marveling at what a superb piece of filmmaking this movie is.
Next, for reasons unclear to me, I went to the PBS app on our smarty pants tv and looked at past seasons of American Masters.
Then, for reasons really unclear to me, I clicked on the PBS documentary, Never Too Late: The Doc Severinsen Story.
Am I ever glad I did!
Doc Severinsen hadn't crossed my mind since Johnny Carson retired from The Tonight Show.
Well, that's not quite true.
Every time I've either gone by Arlington, OR on I-84, or stopped there for fuel or a burger, I've marveled at how this is the town Severinsen grew up in, where he first learned to play the trumpet.
But I didn't know a thing about him as a performer, conductor, and teacher in the years after he left The Tonight Show.
It turns out that Severinsen never really slowed down, even as he entered his early nineties.
This documentary focuses a lot on Doc Severinsen's obsession with staying fit, playing the trumpet at an elite level, passing on his knowledge, exploring new areas of music beyond big band jazz, and continuing to be a vital force in the world of academic music and in the world of staged performances into his nineties. (This documentary was released in April, 2021. In preparing to write this blog post, I read that in September of 2021, Doc Severinsen performed for the last time -- he had turned 94 in July of 2021. He lives on today at 96 years old.)
It's an inspiring documentary and, at the same time, an examination of the costs Severinsen's devotion to his trumpet exacted on his personal life and his relationships, especially his marriages.
I had no idea when I clicked on the link to this episode of American Masters that Debbie and I would find ourselves enthralled by Doc Severinsen's trumpet playing, his devotion to teaching, and his complicated private life.
3. Watching Doc Severinsen play at such an elite level and with such vigor into his nineties and watching him, at the end of his playing career, become the trumpet player in a Mexican ensemble, the San Miguel 5, triggered memories of the movie, Buena Vista Social Club.
It, too, is a documentary. It tells the story of Ry Cooder going to Havana and finding an ensemble of aging Cuban musicians who had been virtually forgotten following Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba.
The performances in this movie are extraordinary, as are the stories of the musicians. I saw this movie in Eugene at the Bijou when it came out in 1999 and I've had the movie soundtrack cd for just as long.
Debbie and Gibbs needed to hit the hay before the movie ended, but the forty minutes or so we watched tonight was exhilarating, moving, and inspiring.
Maybe we'll finish it Saturday evening.
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