Thursday, September 20, 2012

ong-Wray eggy-Pay

Now we know what would motivate Stephen to become a runner - a throng of people behind him chanting "Stephen. Stephen. Stephen."

In political news, sadly, Stephen disagreed with fellow conservative Peggy Noonan, when she wrote, "It's time to admit the Romney Campaign is an incompetent one."

 "WRONG, Peggy!" shouted Stephen. "That time was six months ago." He went on to explain what redistribution means. "You pay taxes into a single federal agency that pools it and redistributes it across the country to build roads and bridges, sometimes in states you don't live in."

It's been too long since we've been treated to The Word, so it was with gladness that I listened to Stephen talk about "Ask Not." What we learned is that Mitt Romney will continue to tell crowds what he won't do, e.g. he won't take God off our coins. Whew - that would take forever. Do you know how many coins are in circulation? Have you ever tried to scratch God off even one penny? It takes a long time. But back to The Word. Once Mitt Romney has told us everything he won't do, we will finally be able to figure out what he will do. I like that because I like puzzles. You know, sort of like having crossword puzzles and word searches for his supporters to figure out what his policies will be.

Guess who just got married! Wait, that's misleading. Guess who we are just finding out may have been married. Stephen's good friend Jesus. Stephen is happy that JC is married, but a little bit sad that his buddy is no longer a carefree single guy who can do whatever he wants. Stephen expects things will change, including whether he goes to church on Sunday or watches the game with JC. You can almost figure out which one Mrs. Christ will insist on.

World class violinist Itzhak Perlman joined Stephen as the guest. Stephen was excited to meet with a fellow "master of his craft." He played on Ed Sullivan when he was 13. He has Grammys, Emmys, has been at Carnegie Hall and Sesame Street. Next week he will perform at the opening gala of New York Philharmonic's 171st season. (And yes, Stephen did a great job of reading from his notes.) Itzhak Perlman apologized to Stephen for the wrong notes, about three, that he has played in his career. Interestingly enough, Itzhak Perlman got his first violin at about age three, threw it away because it didn't sound like the violins he was used to hearing, and then got another at age four and started playing then. So, quite young. Stephen asked when people started realizing his great musical talent. "Oh, about a year ago," was the quick response.

Stephen got a little bit "concerned" about the state of classical music in the world and country today, but Itzhak Perlman calmed his down. After performing on the "The Colbert Report," Stephen said that violins will get the "Colbert Bump." (That's a relief. After turning the Bump off a few days ago, apparently Stephen, or somebody, must have rebooted it.) At first Itzhak Perlman declined to play, but that was just for one or two seconds before he agreed to play for the studio audience and the larger TV and internet audience.

We did get to hear a performance by Itzhak Perlman. It was wonderful. I watched closely to see how it's done. Now I am going to go out and buy a violin and play the same song. It sure looked pretty easy. Only four strings. Just move the bow back and forth over the strings with the right hand while holding down the strings with the left hand. So, piece of cake. Nothing to it. Yeah, right.

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