Heartbreaker

I am 13 years old and riding in the back of a beat-up relic somewhere in Eastern Maryland.  I am in the middle seat, on either side of me are Ronnie Schwartz and Eric Nederlander, my roommates at nearby Don Budge Tennis Camp.  I am holding a Mickey's Wide Mouth, my first beer.  The bottle is green and in the shape of a barrel.and feels like a grenade in my hand.  We are headed to the Merriweather Post Paviliion, July, 1981, on our way to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  Our counselors are in the front seat pounding their hands on the dashboard in rhythm to the cassette playing "You don't have to live like a refugee.."


It's 30+ years later and my 12 year old jumps out of a cab in London to meet her middle-aged father at the Royal Albert Hall to see Tom Petty on his first European tour in 20 years. The place is populated by aging rockers wearing concert t-shirts that are older than she is:  the Rolling Stones 1982, the Who 1980, Tom Petty 1981.  Instead of a Mickey's Wide Mouth we sit in a small bar in the basement of the hall eating popcorn and drinking sparkling water.  Surrounded by diehard fans, mostly American, she asks in a loud sweet voice, "Who are we seeing again?  Tim Perry?"  This gets more than a passing glance from the rest.

To my disappointment there is a warm up band who isn't even introduced.  I only learn their names because they are selling Jonathan Wilson t-shirts at the stand.  I thought we'd be home by 9, but the Heartbreakers don't come on until then, Petty in a three piece suit moving in cowboy boots like he's walking across an icy lake, but the voice and the guitar riffs don't disappoint.  At least they don't disappoint me.


At 10:30 we are home eating chicken wings over the kitchen sink and she tells me she thinks it will be fun bringing her kids to a Justin Bieber concert one day.  "I think it would be fun to bring them to see who I liked as a kid.  Maybe I'll take them to Usher too.  Well, no, he's already 40, by the time I have kids he'll be dead." 

434,880 Minutes

Sixty percent of the family headed home for summer planning, camp and far off teen-tours.  They left 302 days after arrival.  There was symmetry, there was arc, there were tears.

On August 19th I found a middle child who hated the blank walls of her room, crying on her bed next to a pile of un-opened duffel bags.

On June 15th I found that child sitting on her bed beneath a wall of paper butterflies, the room stripped bare, a pile of fully-baked suitcases in the corner, crying alone about how hard it was to leave.

I found the son who wanted two years from the start, wanting more.  He was standing alone in his room, stuff everywhere, as if not packing would make the clock stop.

And the wife who couldn't bother with emotion when we arrived, her only concern her children, their school, their adjustments, their activities.  I found her behind large sunglasses and without mascara having solved her tear duct defect as she said goodbye to her London life.

Il Capo in Firenze

My friend has been to more Bruce Springsteen concerts this year than I have been in my whole life.  I'm a fan mind you, been to a dozen concerts, but I've never been to the Stone Pony, I've never driven more than a couple hours to see him, and I can't remember the first time I heard Rosalita.

I asked him what he loves about the shows, why he still goes and he said it's no longer just about the concert "it's about who I'm with."

Springsteen has been around long enough to be generational.  People can trace their life along the tours they've seen. Everything from the bootleg their older brother introduced them to, the first time they brought their wife, assuming they didn't meet at a concert, to the time they dragged their kids to the insanity.

But for me it's still about the selection of those 30 or so songs he plays and where they take me.  Yes, I'll remember Florence and Stadio Artemio Franchi and the way the Italians sang words they didn't know, the way most Jews chant prayers on the high holidays.

And I'll remember the rain and the sprint to the car, and the aborted McDonalds' run, and the three pizzas Joe found for us at midnight and how we ate them as they closed the hotel bar and the sauce spilled out of the slices, which I ate Tony Manero-style, onto my new Wrecking Ball t-shirt just above the Born to Run album cover.

It isn't because it was Italy, or even Florence a place where I have only good memories.  Or that we went with friends on the spur of the moment on a weekend when we had a million other obligations, but in the end it was because of Bruce.  When I am at a Bruce Springsteen concert I am an 8th grader at Birney Middle School the week The River album came out.  I am a freshman in the Markley Dorm at Michigan listening to Born in the USA.  I am at the Sammy house singing Jungleland at midnight with 20 sweaty guys and girls who I'd give anything to have a night out with again.  I am a senior in college trying to convince my poetry teacher that No Surrender is poetry.  I am newly married and shopping for our first house when Ghost of Tom Joad came on the radio.  I am on the train coming home from New York listening to the Seeger Sessions.  I am driving home from Deep Creek with three sleeping kids in the back seat listening to E Street Radio when Bruce explains the origins of the song Freehold.

A Bruce concert doesn't take me someplace new, it brings me back to all the places I've loved.

"Well, we busted out of class,

Had to get away from those fools

We learned more from a 3-minute record, baby

Than we ever learned in school."

The Queen's Jersey

Jerry Seinfeld had a joke about modern sports.  He used to say that with all the players changing teams, "You're actually rooting for the clothes, when we get right down to it.  You're standing and cheering for your clothes to beat the clothes of another city."

It is only slightly broader than that.  Often you are rooting for your town, your home town, your roots, your sense of place.  That is why we cheer for our home town team long after we left.  In England your football team is chosen before you are born.  It's generational, it's human, it's mythic.

We saw two displays of it this weekend.  The first lasted four days, the second lasted four hours.

The four day weekend of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee had everything British, from the Royals, the weather and the wave.

"Proud to be British" screamed the Telegraph, "All for one" cried the Metro, the television anchors were criticized for their giddiness,  the Daily Mail could be converted into a souvenir tea towel.

The four days were filled with pouring rain, cold temperatures, impenetrable crowds, concerts on the Mall, parties on a every street and one million people came out to see the Queen wave from her balcony.  Why do they do it? Country pride. It's their Queen, their heritage, their country, their team. And some day it will be another Royal, same jersey, different person.

Taking the Eurostar two and a half hours East and we found ourselves at Stade Roland Garros for the best match of the French Open.  But it didn't start out that way. At first the world's number one Novak Djokovic made quick work of hometown favorite and Frenchman Jo Wilfried Tsonga, who lost the first set six to one.  But then something happened that gave Tsonga the strength to push on until he had the world's number one down to his last point.  And that was the crowd.  They cheered every time Tsonga won a point, every time he took a drink, every time he got a serve in, every time Djok hit the ball wide.  On that day and that court everyone was French.

The enthusiasm for Tsonga was no different than that for the Queen.  They were rooting for their flag, for their colors, indeed, for their jersey.

Diamonds for the Queen

Amidst a double dip recession and with the Olympics a mere two months away, the entire city of London, in fact the whole country and the ones they own, will shut down for a long holiday weekend. Not a Memorial Day three-dayer, but a full-on four day, Friday-Tuesday weekend to celebrate a symbol as much as a woman, the Queen.

Is the Monarchy the story of a dysfunctional family, a cold Queen, a dunce Prince, a beautiful princess killed by a sinister plot.  The only thing I know for sure is, they LOVE their Queen. The Royal Family, the cost, the castles, the embarrassing anachronistic displays may put some people off, but this is their Queen, for many this was their parents' Queen and for most this is their children's Queen and she will be celebrated.

Imagine a figure in America that you'd put on Mount Rushmore.  Whose image might be printed on our money.  Whose birthday we celebrate with a National Holiday.  Now imagine if that person were still alive, walking the streets, making news and impacting the world.

The Queen is a part of England and this Queen in particular, who took the thrown at the young age of 25 and has been a centerpiece of the country since the 1950's.  No other public figure in the world has been around for anywhere near that length.  And even as a Royal, she is only the second to have a Diamond Jubilee, the last one being Queen Victoria during the time of Lincoln.

This week-end there will be Jubilee Parties (Our street is having a Block Fayre of Pimms and Pastries), there are television specials, concerts, horse races and everything British.  Sales of Pimms, bunting and Royal gnomes have gone through the roof, as stores reported selling 1000 miles of bunting and more than 200,000 teacakes.

The high point of the festivities is the Jubilee Pageant when more than 1000 boats will assemble and the Queen and Duke will travel in a Royal Barge down the Thames.  And then on to St. Pauls with a final carriage ride to Buckingham Palace where the Royal Family will appear on the Balcony.

One of the most famous photos of this well-traveled Queen was during her Silver Jubilee in 1977.  That celebration is being remembered with a 100 metre-wide photograph of the Queen and her family on the Buckingham Palace balcony.  (You can see the amazing set up online).  The family looks happy, smiling and waving, and altogether regal.

The picture includes a very young-looking Prince Charles who was just months away from a first meeting with a 16 year-old Diana Spencer.  In the photo Mark Phillips, the Queen's son in law at the time, seems to have just told a joke to his wife.  It would be another eight years before he fathered a child out of wedlock with a New Zealand art teacher.  And prominently displayed in the middle is Earl Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Phillip, who took a strong interest in Prince Charles, affectionately calling him an "honorary grandson."  Within two years Mountbatten would be assassinated when the Irish Republican Army planted a bomb in his fishing boat.

The Queen is 86 and while it feels like she has been around forever, Churchill was still Prime Minister when her reign began, they know that her day will come.  And so they will celebrate everybody's favorite "granny," because they know their history, not their future.