All of the world’s information in your pocket

Having trouble keeping up with the latest technology? Just look back at the changes in computers over the years.

—Grand monstrosities:  My first introduction to computers came in college when an engineering friend took me to a huge building that housed an enormous mainframe computer. I’ll bet my phone has more power today than that contraption.

—IBM Cards: As a reservist trainee in an Army supply terminal, I worked with a big machine sorting the paper into slots for some very simple application like listing names alphabetically.

—Desktop computers. In the 1980s. I remember a K-Pro in which you had to type a full command at the bottom of the screen just to insert a word. In one job we were allowed to take a baseball bat to our clunky Q-office-powered computers when they were replaced by personal computers.

Computer networks:  When I worked at The Associated Press in Washington, our computers often crashed when there was a power failure in New York.

—Dial-up online services. America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe allowed you to connect on the Internet. But they were terribly s-l-o-w! You tied up the family’s phone line for hours.

—Search engines. Yahoo classified everything by category but soon it learned: People don’t all think alike. Google seemed like the kind, simple service to help the world until it became a greedy monopoly.

—Smart phones: Who would have thought you could take a photo or see a movie  with a phone you could put in your pocket?

—Social media:  You can stay friends forever with people you left behind years ago. You can also fight with them over politics and live to regret what you said.

—Artificial Intelligence: All of the world’s information is at your fingertips. How tall is the Eiffel tower? Who won the 1933 World Series? That is, when it’s not wrong.

   What’s next? Brains interconnected over thousands of miles?  Computers that can repair themselves? How about one you don’t have to plug in? Wait and see!

 

 

“Beautiful: Carole King’s Music Lives

 When I went-to a James Taylor concert in 1971, I was blown away by the opening act. I had never heard of Carole King, but I felt that she had stolen the show.

The next day I went to the record store in Oakland and bought her album, “Tapestry.” The lady standing in line behind me bought the same record. “Going to be a hit,” I thought. I was right.

I bought a piano score of the music and struggled over 4 sharps and 3 flats, but I persisted. I loved the music Twenty years later, I saw her again in Washington, a big star with a large cast on stage.

I thought I saw Carole King again on Sunday at the fantastic show, “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” put on by the Halifax County Little Theatre.

I figured it would be impossible to find someone to play this wonderful singer in a small town like this.

But HCLT did, with Jessica Camp, who sang beautifully in a cast of 28 at The Prizery in South Boston. The mother of three is a licensed professional counselor, but you would think she was a professional singer and actress as well.

 The show brought back memories

of the terrific Prizery Summer Theater shows in the 2010s, in which I appeared six times. They attracted great paid talent from all over the Southeast, brilliant sets and costumes. It all happened again on stage in “Beautiful,” but this time all of the singers were local, and there was an 11-piece live orchestra to boot—no pre-recorded tapes to sing off of.

Well, the show had to be good. Director Victoria Thomasson has been drilling the cast since May, an enormous time commitment. The detailed work also showed in the singing, the costumes, the sets and choreography. The dancing and singing of the Drifters, Shirelles and Chiffons ensembles were marvelous.

Along with Camp, the leading players are Rich Galowitch as Gerry Goffin, Kirk Compton as Barry Mann and Jessica Rose as Cynthia Weil. I give special compliments to Ernelle Bellamy’s sound system because I could understand about every word sung or spoken.

The timing of this play was excellent as The Prizery changes management at the end of the year. It showed that great theater can be performed in a region loaded with hidden talent.

One thing I like especially about Prizery performances: When you are inside, you are in New York. When you walk outside, you get South Boston traffic.

The show continues until Nov. 17.  Check out https://hclt.org/.

 

 

 

What happened to my team? Oh, here irt is!

 As an East Coast resident, I have mercifully been spared the tragic disappointments of over half a century of University of California football. The last time the Golden Bears had been to the Rose Bowl was in 1959, the year I became a student. TV executives wisely spared us the pain of watching a a perpetually losing West Coast team.

 

But there I was Friday night watching Cal play a conference game against Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., nowhere near California.

 

 That’s because Cal is now in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and I am surrounded by four teams just over the Virginia border in North Carolina and two others in Virginia. Their games are even on the ACC TV network, which I get. How crazy to dump the  traditional Cal-UCLA rivalry to play the likes of Pittsburgh and North Carolina State. But the Pac 12 folded, and Cal had to find new competitors.

 

I decided to take advantage of this anomaly when my friend, David Glass, suggested that we see one of these games. David, also a Cal alum, drove down from Washington,D.C.,  picked me up in South Boston (VA)  and took me to the Allegacy Federal Credit Union Stadium in Winston-Salem, two hours from my home.

 

Was I blown away by this place! Since its renovation in 2005, the arena fits in well with the new money-grubbing professionalism of today’s college sports.

 

Would they sell alcohol when most of the students were under drinking age? Silly question! Right at the entrance there was a rum vendor. Beer everywhere! Food? Anything you want. What’s next? A betting window?

 

I had only been to two two college football games in 63 years, one in the Ivy League (that should not really count) and one when Cal played North Carolina in Chapel Hill 10 years ago. But it was nothing like this.

 

The big-screen TV could have been in a pro stadium. But then, it is a pro stadium now, I guess.  There were close-ups of fans, contests, fireworks, ear-splitting music, everything.

 

The stadium, which holds 31,000, was only about half full, but there were an amazing number of Cal fans in our section for a school so far away. Hey, why would anybody want to leave California? Oh, I’d better not answer that.

 

Gee, this would have been a better column if Cal lost, especially after the team frittered away a 15-point lead. But the Bears’ quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, passed for 385 yards,  including an awesome 40 passes in the first half. The Bears won 46-36. And amazingly, kicker Ryan Coe made two 54-yard field goals, redeeming himself after missed short kicks forced Cal to lose two recent games.

 

So there is hope, and I might as well enjoy college football’s greed and lopsided geography that are here to stay.

“I hope I get it…..I hope I get it.”

 Most singers hate auditions. I love them!

Maybe it’s because I overcame my failed audition in sixth grade! The teacher walked around the room while we sang a song, listening for people to join her chorus. I wasn’t one.

My dad, who sang in the San Francisco Opera chorus, was furious. He met with the teacher and got me in.

I didn’t take up choral singing seriously until I was in my 60s, inspired by my daughter’s high school chorus. During voice lessons, I was amazed at the sound the teacher uncovered. I thought I was a bass. He insisted I was a tenor, just like my dad.

So I went auditioning. At one prestigious chorus, I was given a copy of “My country ‘Tis of Thee” to sing. Really? I can handle that one.

Later, I really impressed the director of one of the top choruses in a very big city with a solo while he played. But when he gave me a sight-singing test, I was terrible. “You are a follower,” he said. I got in on a conditional bassis. I have heard that “tenors get a pass.” I thought better of it and bowed out.

I failed an audition for a musical, but I joined the diector’s church chorus for the summer. He got to like me. Next year, he gave me a prized role in a great musical.

The oddest audition came at another big chorus.  The director stopped playing a couple of times while I sang. “This isn’t quite right,” he said. Really? I thought I was singing the right notes on a sheet handed me earlier by his assistant.

“Let me look at your music,” I said. “We aren’t working on the same song!” The director was embarrassed.  I got in.

Not all was smooth sailing. I had driven 200 miles to return home for the second re-audition of another chorus. I got a speeding ticket on the way. Traffic was backed up near the audition site. I got frantic.

I bombed the audition. They kicked me out! Well, I did blame the police stop and the fact that I was not planning to stay in that chorus anyway. But I was devastated.

So I found another prestigious chorus holding auditions that same week. I wasn’t sure I wanted this one, but I thought it would make me feel better if I tried it out.

It was a stormy night. The director gave me a song that I had just sung in church the previous week. I nailed it. After a stroke of lightning, the lights went out. When they came back on, the director looked confused. “You seem to know what you are doing,” he said. God wanted me there! I joined.

Childhood trauma from shrieking high notes

 

My friends know that I love jazz. Few know that I am really an opera child.

During World War II, the San Francisco Opera had trouble finding men for its chorus. So my  dad, Philip Doan, got one of the positions, partly because he had a deferment for working at Standard Oil.

He loved singing the great music of Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, but he was awfully loud around the house. He would swear when he missed a high note, unnerving us all.

As a baby, my parents played opera music around the house, hoping it would stick with me. I thought they said they did that in utero too, but that sounds ridiculous.

Opera didn’t really click with me, but I loved the pop tunes of the early 1950s. This was too early for rock ‘n’ roll. This was Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney and Mitch Miller. That irritated my father, no end. My youthful rebellion.

My biggest exposure to opera came on several train trips to follow my dad and the opera on tour. I’ve told this before: the great baritone Salvatore  Baccalone sat me on his lap and asked if I would be a tenor like my father when I grew up. “Nobody’s gonna make a tenor outta me!” I said (Wrong!)

 The opera company traveled to the unsophisticated sticks: Seattle, Portland, Sacramento. And oh—the sleepy hamlet of Los Angeles, which did not have an opera company!

In L.A., we always stayed at the Figueroa Hotel, which would serve Carmen Salad, Figaro roast beef and Faust potatoes for the whole opera company. I ca’t believe it—I actually sang my pop songs to the old ladies in the lobby.

Once, when I was 10, in 1952, the Long Beach Boys’ Choir did not have enough kids for La Boehme, and my father enlisted me to perform without singing.

Wow, what an adventure that was! They had huge doors at the Shrine Auditorium to  let in horses ocasionally. Really? On stage? I looked off the stage and realized that performers can’t see the audience because of the lights.

The role of a street urchin was a lot of fun, but I was jealous when I found out that the other kids had stolen real food off the pretend food carts (or was it backstage?)   Why didn’t I get any?

Though I was now a skilled, experienced opera performer, my next gig didn’t come for another 60 years. After I took voice lessons, I talked a singer I knew into getting me into a little opera company’s shows in Washington. It put on performances at embassies, inviting 100 or so wealthy guests to feast on dinner and see their costly shows. I found it challenging to learn the music for La Forza del Destino and Tosca, and I sort of tagged along with the professionals around me in the chorus. Best of all, they gave us free food at the end of the show.

For five years, I did publicity for Opera Nova, a small Arlington group that put on one-hour condensed operas for school children. Why would they like opera? Because the plots are ridiculous, there is sword-fighting and screaming. I loved interviewing the children afterward to get their reactions.

Do I follow opera now? Well, not really. I did go to some Metropolitan Opera performances in the movies but I always nodded off by the second act. And I fell asleep during my one visit to the real Metropolitan Opera 10 years ago during Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

But I do still sing, mostly choral music and old standards with my piano.  Now I am the one shrieking high notes at home, irritating those around me.

A Chip off the old British block

 

Sometimes I think I belong in England. “Cheerio, old chap.” “Stiff upper lip, mate”. No hugging. No smiles.

 

Since I was a child, I have felt at a disadvantage in the free-wheeling, back-slapping U.S., where I was born.

 

British understatement works wonderfully in an old man’s column, but not on the school yard, where kids know no limits. Or in the work-a-day American business world, where it’s dog eat dog, no holds barred.

 

 

I’ll blame (or credit) my grandfather, Fred W. Gee, who was born in the West Yorkshire section of England in 1875. Fred arrived here at age 17 without telling his mother he was leaving. No tearful farewells for him.

 

He settled in the Sierra foothills of California, opening a tailor shop, for which he had been well trained. In later years, suffering from dizzy spells after his wife died, he lived with my parents and our family in San Francisco’s East Bay.

 

I was definitely the best dressed kid in school, with custom tailored British tweed coats he made for me.

 

My mother, his daughter, was as Tory as they come in this country. “We never should have broken off from England,” she said repeatedly, almost 200 years too late. She idolized the British monarchy and followed the Queen’s every move. She was saddened by Prince Charles’ dalliances away from Lady Diana.

 

As a reporter, I wondered how I would have done in Fleet Street’s news madness, so contrary to the genteel way of life I had envisioned as British. It came as a shock to me when English journalists were so rowdy as they questioned our Treasury secretary and their Chancellor of the Exchequer at a news conference I attended with them in Washington. And did British journalists really bug Prince William’s phone? My mother would not be amused!

 

I have enjoyed a number of BBC television shows but need subtitles. I worry about being the grumpy Doc Martin myself.

 

I visited cousins in England several times. My uncle took me to a British soccer game in Newcastle, where the final score was 0-0. Sorry, I didn’t become a convert. And our baseball is speedy compared to their cricket. On a street in Edinburgh, I had a sudden flashback that I had been there in a previous incarnation. Ridiculous, or was it?

 

Would I have been a Scottish street urchin or a wealthy gentleman at the club, holding a gin & tonic and toasting Queen Victoria. I do think I might have fit better in the 19th century, even if they didn’t have the internet.

 

 

 As my grandfather grew older and frailer, we took him out of his nursing home at age 93 to visit us at Christmas in 1968. One of the gifts for me under the tree was a Beatles’ album. “They were from Liverpool,” my mother said. He was utterly fascinated.

That was the last I ever saw of my grandfather other than at his funeral. A true Brit. And so am I, I guess.

 

 

 

People who let you down…and some who don;t

 How many times have you been greatly disappointed by someone you respected and admired?

Public figures come to mind: Lance Armstrong, who admitted doping after winning the Tour de France seven times. Woody Allen, a great film maker who married his former partner’s adopted child. Bill Cosby, the family man on TV who molested women.

Then there are the people in your own life:

—The revered editor who blamed me after inserting errors into my articles.

—The Sunday school teacher who muttered  during a Billy Graham crusade that greedy investors funded his activities.

 —The finance reporter, a good friend, convicted of insider trading.

For me, the worst was a highly respected editor in one of the big-city bureaus I worked in. His son was even an NFL quarterback.

This man had been so nice when I applied for a job, and he kept tabs on me for years, finally hiring me after I was seasoned and ready.

Several weeks into the job, there was a shakeup in the office. Suddenly, I was his boss, at least for part of the day.

I gave him work to do. He was so fast, he finished it in little time. So I gave him more.

Twice, he stood up in an office full of about a dozen colleagues. He screamed and hollered at me, using profanity, telling me that I was running a sweat shop. Who, mild-mannered me? I said nothing in return. What could I say to a legend?

Finally, a colleague went to the top boss and the boss got him to stop.

Wait. This column is getting too depressing. I only write uplifting and happy stuff.

So let’s look at others who did the reverse in life, people you could look up to after they beat long odds,

— Michael Milken, the disgraced junk bond king who turned his life around, funding cancer research after getting out of jail.  

-Charles Colson, a key figure in the Watergate scandal, who became a Christian minister and founded Prison Fellowship, to help reform the prison system.

—An alcoholic friend who overcame his addiction to be a beacon of light with Alcoholics Anonymous.

—Our difficult foster child who earned a psychology degree and raised a happy family.

—And best of all, my own daughter, who I never suspected of having business acumen, eventually running a successful business as a dog groomer!