McCartney Sweats it out in Milwaukee

It’s a little bizarre that a man only four years younger than my father is able to transfix an audience in sweltering heat for just short of three hours.  On Tuesday night at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Paul McCartney, forty-nine years after taking the U.S. by storm with The Beatles, played his heart out, shirt soaked with sweat, and gave a performance that fans are sure to remember for another forty-nine years.  Just as with Springsteen’s recent concerts, last night’s show begged the question: why don’t all performers work as hard and show as much appreciation as this guy does?  If a seventy-one year old McCartney can do it, why not (fill in the blank of some of the lame performances you’ve seen lately)?

After seeing McCartney in 2005, I decided that I wasn’t going to attend any more of his shows.  I’d noticed he’d aged in the two years since I’d seen him last, and I didn’t want to see this iconic singer/songwriter continue to degrade before my eyes.  But allowing my son to see him this time around changed my mind, and eight years later, McCartney almost seems to have become younger, withstanding the blistering heat and deftly managing a set list that didn’t once take him out of the spotlight.

Of particular note last night was the setlist, offering surprises that left many of the die-hard fans elated.  For me, the inclusion of “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” was worth the price of admission alone, but he surprised with other songs: “Junior’s Farm,” “Hi, Hi, Hi,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and several songs never performed live before this tour, including “Lovely Rita,” “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” “Another Day,” and “Your Mother Should Know.”  One of the most effective songs of the evening was another unexpected song, “Mrs. Vanderbilt” from his largely represented Band on the Run album, as even the unfamiliar in the crowd willingly shouted out the “Ho, Hey Ho” refrain. 

McCartney’s skipping of thirty years of repertoire between Tug of War’s “Here Today” and last year’s “My Valentine” is about the only criticism I could possibly make of the show.  It would have been cool if Paul had at least made a gentle nod to his compositions of the 80s and 90s, substituting a couple of the lesser interesting Beatles tunes for “Stranglehold,” “My Brave Face,” “Off the Ground” or “The World Tonight.”  But this is quibbling.  Backed my his proficient band of the last decade, the performances were uniformly fantastic, almost to a fault at times as keyboardist Paul Wickens recreated nearly note for note the brass and saxophone parts from McCartney’s repertoire, though his strings were a nice addition on songs like “Eleanor Rigby,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Yesterday.”  Band members Rusty Anderson, Brian Ray and the particularly entertaining drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., supported McCartney throughout, and their impeccable backing vocals helped to mask McCartney’s weakening upper register.  Paul’s falsetto, however, required no masking, as showcased on songs like “Something” and “Maybe I’m Amazed.”  That he still has such brilliant falsetto at seventy-one is amazing to me, and it’s a skill that, if lost, would perhaps cause him to call it a day on live performing.

Ending the show with “Helter Skelter” and the last of the Abbey Road medley, McCartney completed a sampling of what is likely the most impressive repertoire of a live performer today.  There were audience members in attendance who had seen McCartney play in Milwaukee in 1964 with The Beatles.  I doubt they saw as good a show then as they did last night.

An Oprah Nightmare

(To help promote Sucker Literary Magazine, I'm guest blogger this week at Lisa Voisin's wonderful webiste, where I discuss a reoccuring nightmare and offer an excerpt from my short story, "The Missing Ingredient."  Be sure to check it out, and pick up a copy of Sucker Literary Magazine volumes 1 and 2!)

In my dream, I’m either on Oprah or on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, but it could just as easily be The View or The Ellen DeGeneres Show or The Tonight Show.  In this alternate universe, authors are treated with esteem and appear regularly on talk shows, so right off the bat there’s a sense that reality has been suspended, and since I’m actually being interviewed, I appear to have had some success as a writer, hence pushing the dream towards the realm of fantasy.

But the next part is far too realistic.

I’m asked a question.  Oprah, having apparently come out of talk-show retirement, asks “Are there authors out there, successful ones, whose work you find prosaic?”

Prosaic.  Prosaic.  A word I should know.  Do know.  Sort of.  I mean, if I read it in a book, I’d probably be able to deduce its meaning.  But to actually have to respond to it in front of millions of people who are only watching me because the next guest is Tom Cruise?  Well, that’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

Not knowing the meaning of a word is a reoccurring theme in my dreams, for vocabulary has never been my forte.  Sure, I can string together words to create an effective sentence, but if you ask me to use demur and demure correctly in a sentence, I’m going to be in trouble.

I take some solace in that the average educated English-speaking person knows an average of 17,200 base words, a mere percentage of the total number of entries in the Oxford American Dictionary (over 180,000) and the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (over 600,000).  (Base words are “word families.”  So the base word “love” might extend to words like lovely, lovable, lover, etc.).  There are words I clearly know, like the ones I’ve written thus far in this blog.  There are words I clearly do not know, like rehoboam.  This I can accept.  What kills me are the words I kinda sorta know but would be hard-pressed to define or use in conversation.  My kids have exposed this gaping hole in my chest of knowledge numerous times when asking me the meaning of a word that I thought I knew, but couldn’t for the life of me explain.  (“Well, capricious means…um…why don’t you look it up?”)  And even when I sort of know a word, like bereft (meaning: void of), I would never use it in conversation for fear of making a fool of myself in case I used it incorrectly.  I once used the word “indoctrinate” when I actually meant to say “inoculate,” which is sad an embarrassing, but I DO happen to know the word that describes the misuse of another word – malapropism.  I should have that word tattooed on my forehead.

In an effort to reinvigorate my quest for knowledge that took a major detour about fifteen years ago (two daughters), I’ve reintroduced an old custom of mine of looking up words unknown to me while reading novels.  If it’s a word I feel I can use in my own writing, I jot it down and later transfer it to an Excel spreadsheet of vocabulary words.  I find this much more useful than, say, following the word of the day at Dictionary.com, because so often these words are obscure to the point of uselessness.  I’m not sure I’m going to impress my readers by using a word like tergiversate.  When I see a word in a book I’m reading, I at least have some assurance that it’s known and in use.

Widening one’s lexicon is something all writers should do, so that when the moment arises we can tap into the perfect word for the perfect situation instead of using five words that don’t do nearly as good a job.  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with writing directly and plainly if it’s done well and if that’s your style.  But sometimes a word can really enhance one’s message.  Consider the following two sentences:

The man walked in, clothes soaked and dirty, and plopped down on the bench with a saturated slap.

The bedraggled man walked in and plopped down on the bench with a saturated slap.

Neither sentence will win me any awards, but bedraggled is the perfect word for this situation, and one I wouldn’t have even known existed if I hadn’t written it down some years ago in my Excel spreadsheet of words I’ve come across.

The book I’m reading now, Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, is a fairly accessible read, but that didn’t stop me from not knowing the meaning of the following words (how many of these could you use in conversation?):

Imprecation.  Praxis.  Ranunculus.  Filigreed.  Exhortatory.  Incipient.

And this is from a mainstream writer!  Give me a copy of Ulysses and I’d be toast.

Sure.  Some words, even after I catalogue them, don’t sink into my list of usable words, but over the years a few have managed to squeeze into my lexicon (so if I’m average, I now know 17,202 words).  I can now successfully use the word nonplussed (completely perplexed) in a sentence, and I’ve recently added aplomb (self-confidence).  I’m still waiting to come across the word that means, “Ineptitude at expanding one’s vocabulary.”

And yes, I now know what prosaic means.   Do you?  If not, here’s a hint: for some of you, it might describe your opinion of this blog.

July 2012: What a difference a year makes

A year ago this week the brittle grass had all but given up.  Vegetables that had flourished briefly in the spring clung to life only because of daily watering sessions that both my wife and I were already tired of providing.  Normally, we’d hit a wall by early August, but this year, after having reached the 80s eight days in March, after breaking high temperature records twice in May, and after enduring the sixth warmest and fifth driest June on record, we’d already had it.  And it was just beginning.  Patience was wearing thin.  Tempers were short.

On July 1, I road home on my bike from my Sunday morning gig at Elmhurst Presbyterian Church, and on the way noticed a distinct line of foreboding clouds to the west.  As I neared home, I saw people watering their flowers and I shouted out, “There’s rain coming.”  I made it home, and my son and I took out lawn chairs in the back yard to watch the approaching storm, a welcome sight after such a dry June.

We lasted about thirty seconds.

The violence of our annual Storm of the Century forced my family and me inside and into the basement, where we could hear from outside the cracking of tree limbs, followed by the all-too-familiar sound of our electricity shutting off, as our smoke alarms yelped out a short, high-pitched siren of protest before falling silent.

A half an hour later, the sun was out, and our neighborhood spent that afternoon surveying the destruction, comparing stories and pulling branches to the curbs, careful to avoid those areas that had downed power lines (my house was one such area).  The destruction outside was far short of the images we’ve seen recently from Missouri and Oklahoma, but for the residence of north Elmhurst, this was close enough.  My poor tree in the back yard had shed yet another limb (one a year for the past three years), striking my neighbor's newly installed roof and gutters.  Neighbors across the street had a new hole in their roof, and down the street stood an invisible SUV, fully-encased in the branches of a downed limb.

And then the heat came.  The whir of generators could be heard all around us, a constant drone that only added to our frustration, because none of the sound was to our benefit.  We emptied our freezer and refrigerator and took the contents to our neighbors who still had electricity a block away, and as we put the last of our groceries into their freezer, their electricity went out.  It seemed that saving the chicken we’d purchased at Costco was not to be.

Our son was leaving for camp the next morning, and we’d planned on making a meat loaf for his “Last Supper,” but now we had to improvise.  We got in the car, heading down Roosevelt, expecting to find a restaurant open somewhere.  There was.  One.  Almost seven miles away.  Boston Market experienced what was probably its busiest Sunday evening ever.  From miles around, people had flocked for roasted chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn, as the storm had shut down power as far west as Wheaton, through Glen Ellyn and Lombard and into Villa Park and Elmhurst. 

I summarized the mayhem in a text to my brother who was out of town…

Lines down. Transformer on fire.  Poles off kilter.  The works.  No flooding though.  If it weren’t for the heat I wouldn’t really care.

Ah, but there was heat.  That evening our second floor reached 94 degrees, as temperatures outside his 98.  On Tuesday we hit 96 with a low of 77 and still no electricity, and my wife, who was enjoying a day working in air conditioned bliss, texted me at home…

Any progress?

I texted back…

If u consider nothing as progress, then yes.  There’s progress.

That evening I decided to get the hell out of my hell-like home and go to York High School for a community band rehearsal, where we practiced in air conditioning and shared stories of the storm.  I was one of the few left without power.  Then I received the most welcome text ever from my wife…

Power is on!!!!!

I arrived home, and we aborted our temporary sleeping quarters in our relatively cool basement, and returned to our bedroom with the air cranked.  The next morning we took off for New York to see my sister-in-law, and here’s what we left behind:

July 4^th, 102 degrees

July 5^th, 103 degrees

July 6^th, 103 degrees

All three days were records.  We’d go on to have our third hottest July on record, with not one day offering a high temperature of less than 80 degrees. 

Today, July 2^nd, 2013, we expect a high temperature of 73.  Our grass is lush and green.  Our vegetables our flowering.  Our power is on.  True, we haven’t really had to use our band new air conditioner much this year, but that was to be expected.  And really, if we could have the summer we’re currently having every year from here on out, I’d be happy to never use our air conditioner again.