anniversary Archives - Page 13 of 13

100 years of Chevy: music

Here’s a couple versions of the famous See the USA in Your Chevrolet commercial.

Chevrolet, the car company, is 100 years old this month. In honor of that milestone, there’s a dedicated Chevy station on Pandora.com, with 100 songs mentioning the Chevy; they are listed below.

But two fairly obvious choices are left off:

409 by the Beach Boys and Little Red Corvette by Prince. Little Red Corvette [listen] might have been left off because the Purple One can be fussy when it comes to licensing. But the exclusion of 409 [listen] is surprising.

Here are a couple of versions of the famous See the USA in Your Chevrolet commercial:
Dinah Shore – 1952
Glee – Super Bowl 2011

Here’s that list on Pandora:

99 In The Shade, Bon Jovi
All The Best, John Prine
American Pie, Don McLean [here’s The Grand Rapids, Michigan LipDub version]
Amy’s Back In Austin, Little Texas
Ball And Chain, Social Distortion
Blitz, Audio Adrenaline
Blue (Da Ba Dee) (Remix), Eiffel 65
Blue Jeans, Silvertide
Captain Jack, Billy Joel
Chattahoochee, Alan Jackson
Chevrolet, ZZ Top
Chevy Van, Sammy Johns
Chrome, Trace Adkins
Contact, Citizen Cope
Crazy About Her, Rod Stewart
Crocodile Rock, Elton John
Dare To Be Stupid, “Weird Al” Yankovic
Don’t Forget To Remember Me, Carrie Underwood
Dr. Feelgood (Live), Motley Crue
Drive South, John Hiatt
El Camino, Ween
El Tejano, Cowboy Troy
Everytime It Rains, George Strait
Fall In Love, Kenny Chesney
Family Reserve, Lyle Lovett
Fightin’ Words, Trace Adkins
Girls With Guitars, Wynonna Judd
Go ‘Head, Mystikal
Go Lil’ Camaro Go, The Ramones
Going Back To Cali, LL Cool J
Here I Am, Lyle Lovett
Here’s To You, Rascal Flatts
How Bizarre, OMC
Hustlin’, Rick Ross
I Can Only Think Of One, Dierks Bentley
I Go Back, Kenny Chesney
I Got You, Dwight Yoakam
I Learned That From You, Sara Evans
I Won All The Battles, Tracy Lawrence
I’ll Be Your Johnny On The Spot, Ween
I’m Customized, The Cramps
I’m Just A Girl, Deana Carter
I’ve Got A Rock N’ Roll Heart, Eric Clapton
If I Stay, Tracy Byrd
Jesse Went To War, Marcy Playground
Joe Rey, Fountains of Wayne
Keeping The Faith, Billy Joel
Less Than Zero, Elvis Costello
Let You Go, The Clarks
Metropolis, Trace Adkins
Miss Popularity, Jordan Pruitt
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), Billy Joel
Mud On The Tires, Brad Paisley
Natural Beauty, Neil Young
Neutron Dance, The Pointer Sisters [listen]
Night Moves, Bob Seger
One Bud Wiser, Gretchen Wilson
Paint The Town Redneck, J.M. Montgomery
Pickin’ Wildflowers, Keith Anderson
Picture Perfect, Nelly Furtado
Putting The Damage On, Tori Amos
Racing In The Street, Bruce Springsteen
Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy), Jim Croce
Real Gone, Sheryl Crow
Renegade, Tim McGraw
Repetition, David Bowie
Ridin’ In My Chevy, Snoop Dogg
Riding With Private Malone, David Ball
Right Time Of The Night, Jennifer Warnes
She’s In Love With The Boy, Trisha Yearwood
Small Town Girl, Kellie Pickler
Something On, The Tragically Hip
Song Of The South, Alabama
Still Love You, Rod Stewart
Superstar, Sheryl Crow
Suzy And Jeffrey, Blondie
Tannin Bed Song, Shawn Mullins
The Greeting Song, Red Hot Chili Peppers
Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man, Rolling Stones
Three Marlenas, The Wallflowers
Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen
Thundering Hearts, John Mellencamp
Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift
Twentieth Century Fox, 38 Special
Unappreciated, Cherish
Uneasy Rider, Charlie Daniels
Union Sundown, Bob Dylan
Water, The Who
West Texas Highway, Lyle Lovett
When I Think About Leaving, Kenny Chesney
When You Close Your Eyes, Night Ranger
Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?, Paula Cole [listen]
Why Do We Want What We Know We Can’t Have?, Reba McEntire
You Never Know Just How Good You’ve Got It, Tracy Byrd
You Win My Love, Shania Twain
Young Blood, Rickie Lee Jones

A dozen years

She also has considerable assets of her own. She manages money well. She’s not a religious zealot, but she has a moral center that I trust.

Carol and I have been married 12 years. Not a tremendously long time, but longer than any two other relationships I’ve ever had, so that’s something.

I submit that of course, it’s partly that she is a very good woman. But it’s also the case that I’ve probably learned better relationship skills, probably due to trial and error.

It’s not that the little stuff – you know, discussions of where to store the garbage cans, or her reading my blog in draft form, or me regularly having to clear the kitchen counter of (usually her) non-cooking/non-food stuff – doesn’t bug me. It’s that it just bugs me considerably less than it might have 20 or 30 years ago. Have I mellowed? ~~Maybe~~Probably.

Still, she also has considerable assets of her own. She manages money well. She’s not a religious zealot, but she has a moral center that I trust. Also, and I’m afraid I’ve been a bad influence with this, she’s not nearly as believing of the things that people in authority say as she was when I first met her almost 19 years ago.

So happy anniversary, honey.

Six years

Sometime before the end of the year, I’ll be on a two-week trip. My Internet connectivity will be sporadic. Even if I were to be that many days ahead, I find that writing is a function of inertia; the longer I’m off, the harder it is to get restarted, my February experience notwithstanding.

One must be dedicated, or demented, to blog every day for six years – your call.

It helps a lot that one can post ahead of time. I might write a couple of blog pieces on a Thursday night or a Saturday afternoon, which makes up for those days that I don’t get a chance to blog at all. This is why I almost never post more than once a day. It is better to blog daily than thrice in a day, then not at all for three days, it seems to me.

I may have said this last year at this time, but I find it difficult to see me posting every day this coming year. I managed to get through the first 11 days of my sojourn to Charlotte, NC around my mother’s death writing only three blog posts, and two of those being my mom’s obit and funeral program, because I was actually about 10 posts ahead; a cold January helped. Then, the night before we were going to take the train home, I wrote five posts while trying to stay awake to make my wife, daughter, and driver/sister were awake in time to catch a 2 a.m. train back to Albany.

Finding content to write about has seldom been an issue. Time, though, can be a beast. Generally, during the week, I write between whenever I wake up (5 a.m., optimally) and the time I have to get the daughter up (6:30 a.m), with detours to check my e-mail and visit other blogs. The latter is especially true on (ABC) Wednesday morning.

One of the great emotional points I’ve gotten to is that I don’t worry anymore about the number of hits I get in a day. If I did, I’d be a whole lot better promoting my posts on Twitter and Facebook, which I do currently only when it happens to occur to me.

Another factor is the fact, while this is my first love, blog-wise, I probably should spend more time and effort with my other blogs. I did get encouraging news on that front, BTW, when Pew Research, in this article, under Sites and Sources, linked to one of my other blogs! A bit of a coup, that, so I suppose I should keep it up.

Well, as the great philosopher Doris Day once said, “The future’s not ours to see.”

Anniversary

“I may be a headache, but never a bore.”

My parents were married on March 12, 1950, in Binghamton, NY. I always found that very convenient to remember; I would often say that I was their early third-anniversary present.

When their 50th anniversary was coming up – in 2000 (easy math!) – my sisters and I were trying to plan a surprise party at my parents’ church in Charlotte, NC. The only trouble was that there was an occasional conflict with the date, which was a Sunday. It turns out that my father was ALSO planning a surprise anniversary party at the church, for my mother. Once we were apprised of that fact, we gave up trying to surprise them both and concentrated on her.

So my sister flew in from San Diego, and my parents-in-law, my wife and I drove down from upstate New York, staying at a local hotel. My father did most of the decorations of the room at the church. my father needed to rest more often than he did just months before when he was primarily in charge of decorating the church for Carol’s and my wedding in May of 1999.

The family did meet before that Sunday morning; I suspect my mother figured something was up even before that. But we managed to keep her away from the decorated room.

During the service itself, much to my surprise, and definitely to my mother’s, there was a renewal of my parents’ wedding vows. (Whether my father knew, I was never able to ascertain.) I’m positive that when the pastor brought her up and ask her whether she’d marry him all over again, she did think about it for a few seconds before saying, “Yes.” Undoubtedly, what ran through her mind is a quote she attributed to my father, which I heard him say once or twice, but which she repeated regularly: “I may be a headache, but never a bore.”

After the church service, we had a lovely party, and we kids DID manage to surprise both of them with a video of some still photos, put together with music. Interestingly, we never got a family photo taken, as we had in 1995 and in 1990, maybe because the process was too fraught with drama – a tale for another time. In any case, that was my parents’ last anniversary together – until now, if you believe in an afterlife – because my father died on August 10 of that year from prostate cancer.

This is what their joint headstone reads:
Leslie Harold Green
9-26-1926 8-10-2000
(Military Info…)
Les
Renaissance Man

Gertrude Elizabeth Green
11-17-1927 2-2-2011
Trudy
Wind Beneath Our Wings

The Anniversary Meme

Photo by Lydia Green

SamuraiFrog used this on Valentine’s Day. Thought I’d wheel it out for Carol’s & my our 11th anniversary.

Where did the two of you meet?
At church in 1992. I was in the choir, she was in the congregation.

What was the first thought that went through your head when you first met her?
Well, first, since the average demographic of the church was older than I was then, that she was so relatively young. And tall.

Do you remember what she was wearing?
Goodness, no.

Where did you go for your first date?
Well, it wasn’t until a couple years later. It was to the movies to see the movie Speed.

Where was the first time you kissed?
At her house.

When was the first time you realized you liked her?
Do you mean “like” or “like-like” her? I liked her right away as a person. We became pretty good friends I didn’t realize I was interested in her romantically until some time later, when my then-relationship was falling off the tracks.

How long did you know her before you became a couple?
Maybe 2.5 years. Then we broke up after a year and a half. Then we were off and on (mostly off) for a couple years. Finally, I made one massively concerted effort to find out whether we were going to be a couple or not – tricky because her job kept her out of town a lot. Finally, in mid-November, 1998, it was clear we were a couple again.

How was the proposal?
After talking for a few weeks, it was obvious to both of us that we had procrastinated long enough and that we should just get married. But her brother Mark had gotten engaged to his girlfriend Leanne and had set a January 1, 1999 wedding date. So we didn’t want to upstage them, even in our own minds. So we went to a restaurant in Albany called Justin’s in mid-January 1999 (the 16th or 17th). I proposed, she knew I was going to propose, I knew she was going to say yes.

Do you have kids together?
Well, we decided we wanted to have a kid about the beginning of 2000, but for reasons we never quite ascertained, it just wasn’t happening. Then in March 2004, we did, though the methodology hadn’t changed.

Have you ever broken the law together?
I seriously doubt it.

Do you trust her?
Implicitly. More than I trust myself, I think. She s FAR more rational and level-headed than I, she’s better with money, she’s almost painfully honest.

Do you see her as your partner in your future?
Assuming she can put up with me.

What is the best gift she gave you?
Giving me the Beatles’ mono box set for Christmas 2009. It was expensive, and therefore out of her comfort zone, but i had a pretty short list. It wasn’t so much the music, it was that she DID get out of her comfort zone, and I appreciated that.

What is one thing she does that gets on your nerves?
She STILL can’t load the dishwasher correctly – she even saw a segment on CBS Sunday Morning once – but to her credit, she lets me redo it. Sometimes she’s totally oblivious to what’s going on in the world – I’m not talking a one-day story, I’m talking an ongoing issue – and I’m talking to her about it, and she has no idea what I’m saying. Still, this happens WAY less than it did when we first went out AND it bothers me WAY less than it used to.

Where do you see each other 15 years from now?
Theoretically, I’ll retire and she will do so soon after so we can travel.

What causes the most arguments?
Seriously, I can’t remember the last argument. It used to be over money, and even those weren’t real arguments, but even those are gone.

How long have you been together?
See above. September 1994-March 1996 then November 1998-now.

Holding our youngest wedding guest, the daughter of friends.
***
Honey, Do You Have to … ?

“For Better”: The science of marital unhappiness