Goodnight is right!!! Oh dear God, hurricane fever has been here for days and NOW, Irene is almost here.
It all started for me on Thursday. Peter arrived late in the afternoon and I was still at the Tea Room finishing up and we decided to go to the store and pick up a few Finley items such as whole milk and orange juice without pulp. Once I arrived at Wegman’s two things became instantly apparent; Finley probably wasn’t coming to the Jersey Shore and Hurricane Irene was on her way – have you ever been in a major grocery store and seen all the bread shelves EMPTY?? I mean EMPTY! We did get milk because after all, milk is PERISHABLE and everyone knows you are supposed to stock up on non-perishable foods. I think all of Monmouth County is planning on eating Pb & J’s all weekend!!!
And so it began….no news except hurricane news, talk, talk, talk, only about the impending storm and plans A, B, and C formulated in each household. Who was staying and who was going, that was the really BIG QUESTION. My thoughts immediately were to stay and I think at that point I wasn’t really comprehending the breadth and depth of what was to come. I said, “well the apartment is safe and the cottage is vulnerable, so I need to be here to protect it.” Peter thought about this and agreed. We really didn’t think we would be in real danger, just that house might be in some and perhaps if we were here, we could prevent and/or protect. The thought of being in NYC and watching the happenings and wondering what was happening to my sweet La Vie en Rose was quite disconcerting, so I said, “We’re staying”. Thursday night seems much like any other night. Peter even went to get me ice cream.
Friday dawned sunny and bright and the buzz was everywhere. Some neighbors immediately started hauling in porch furniture and tying down everything else. Mmmmm should we go after all? Several conversations later, it was decided that Finley would be better off in NYC with her Daddy and her baby sister. Chiara HAD to go to the middle of New Jersey to attend a wedding on Saturday; she is a Bridesmaid. I thought she would never get off “the Island” which was probably evacuating itself westward to the City. But she made it, dropped them off and kept on going. I hope for the bride’s sake some people come to this wedding.
I don’t hold out much hope though because the NEWS which was now broadcasting 24/7 alternated between Governor Christie declaring a State of Emergency on THURSDAY and Mayor Bloomberg saying the City was in the cross hairs of the storm and therefore, the subway and bus systems would be shut down, the news just got more dire by the hour.
By Friday afternoon, Peter and I had packed up the back yard furniture, put away the umbrella, turned the glass top table upside down, removed bird feeders, and with bungee cords anchored the trash cans and some chairs. I moved the upstairs porch furniture into the guest room making my tiny cottage just that much more smaller. Things were beginning to feel weird!
Beach is CLOSED
Let’s go to the beach! It was 4:00 the sun was still somewhat high in the sky so we took off to get a good long look-see at our beach not knowing when we would see it next or in what condition it would be. There was police tape across the entrances to the beach so we walked a ways to Bradley Beach and got onto the beach there. We took our chairs and our books and sat down near the water’s edge for about an hour or so enjoying the last of the sunshine, sharing the experience with about 5 other people as far as the eye could see. The tide was extraordinarily high which was the result of new moon. Well clearly we were illegal and I heard later on that if you got caught going into the water, you could get a $500 fine. Of course Peter had to push the envelope a bit and get his bathing suit wet which caused the young ticket taker on the boardwalk to come rushing down to inform us that the “main lifeguard” sent him down to tell us we could NOT be in the water. Why didn’t someone tell the surfers that? As we left the beach, two young surfer dudes, boards under arms and a young girl passed us on their way to the shore. The young girl looked at Peter and shook her head and rolled her eyes. Governor Christie told everybody to get off the beach in Asbury Park, they had enough tan, now get out!
Christie says "Get Off The Beach"
From Here to Asbury Park
Friday night we had dinner out because it would probably be our last good meal once the power went out and surely it will, they say. And in New York City, Broadway was shut down, the subways system cut back and Battery Park City under mandatory evacuation! We received numerous calls imploring us to return to NYC and truly we vacillated so many times I couldn’t tell you what the number was, but something has kept us here. It didn’t help that the beach town north of us and two towns to the south of us were under mandatory evacuation, and the Governor reversed the highways so you could only leave and not come, they even made the tolls free. There is a bit of foolhardy adventurism at play, the swagger that comes from having toughed it out and not the least, the need to be here to protect the homestead. At 11:30pm an email alert came through from Neptune Township informing us that Broadway from Ocean to Pilgrim Pathway was under mandatory evacuation: WOW we are two houses in from Pilgrim Pathway. I sure hope the storm surge knows where it is supposed to stop. Tomorrow is another day and Irene is expected to hit the Jersey Shore in the early evening.
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Pbenjay's Blog 
I Left My Heart in Row B
Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books, Ha-P 2 B in OG, tagged I Left My Heart in San Francisco, I Wanna Be Around, Jersey Shore, Music, Ocean Grove New Jersey, San Francisco, Tony Bennett, Very Thought of You, Way You Look Tonight on August 18, 2011| 2 Comments »
Tony Bennett
I expected to be thrilled, impressed and entertained last Saturday night; We went to see and hear Tony Bennett in concert in the Great Auditorium. I didn’t expect to cry…
The show opened with Tony’s daughter, Antonia, who sang several songs to warm up the audience. This audience did not need warming up. The auditorium holds about 6,000 people and my guess would be that there weren’t more than 600 empty seats and that includes a wraparound balcony! Antonia is sweet looking and sounding, but certainly lacks real depth to her voice. She doesn’t have the timbre and resonance of a singer with a strong voice. Unable to sustain or project, Antonia manipulated the microphone by pulling it away from her mouth as she trailed the last notes of a line. Oh well, this is not about her anyway.
Tony walked on stage to a very long and loud standing ovation. He was clearly thrilled to receive it and to be on stage. He appears to love performing; He plays to the crowd, he sings and he relates bits of his career and who he sang and worked with along the way to stardom. He ends almost every song with either his arms raised up as if in “ta dah” and “there you have it” or salutes the audience with two thumbs up. I don’t remember (that far back) if these gestures were always part of his performance or not, but then again, who cares? He has the pipes and a magical velvety-all-in-the-right-places voice.
He sang song after song, sometimes really belting it out and you wonder how does a man his age still maintain that voice and the ability to sustain such high notes for so long. Yes, he was quite surprising in that regard. We were regaled with the likes of Smile, I Wanna Be Around, Fly Me to the Moon, and The Best is Yet to Come. And then he charmed us all with what he referred to as his hits; The Way You Look Tonight, Because of You, The Very Thought of You, As Time Goes By, Once Upon A Time, Because of You and of course, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Just AMAZING! Really freaking amazing! The entire audience leapt to their feet at the end of I Left My Heart in San Fransisco and it was truly one of the longest standing ovations I ever witnessed. Of course he was perfect for the Auditorium crowd, 95% of whom listened to his soft crooning voice during their teen-age and twenty-something years. Oh and how those memories flood back to you!
A summer night on the Jersey Shore, in a remarkable venue – an enormous wooden structure that is well over a hundred years old, and Tony Bennett singing love songs to you. I have never ever sat in the front row of a concert; Last Saturday night, Peter and I had front row seats and I sat there mesmerized by his performance. Was it that he sang so well? No, of course not; He was a great singer, now he is a legend who still can hit some of those high notes, and sing a love song to every woman in the room at the same time.
I’m not sure exactly what song put me over the edge; The first tear rolled down my cheek somewhere between The Very Thought of You and Once Upon A Time. Yes, the words are beautiful. Yes, Tony crooned the words beautifully but I don’t think those two things brought on the tears. Well at least not completely. When you are my age and you know you are closer to the end of your life than the beginning and you see someone 20 years older than yourself doing something he not only does so well but also loves doing it, you, well at least I, was really emotionally moved. In a way, this consumate artist who makes every song his own and has been doing so for 60 years of his life and mine, creates a level of comfort that makes him seem like an old friend. The tears are the good-byes to my youth, the days when I heard Tony Bennett sing so many of these songs. Listening to songs that you probably made out to, danced to and day-dreamed over what seems like another lifetime ago, it dawns on you that it was a lifetime ago!
Tony sang his last song, blew kisses to the audience and left the stage. The crowd would have none of it. They stood up, clapped and clapped and clapped some more. The musicians stayed on stage so I thought maybe he would come back and he did! He sang one more and still they wanted more. He tried to leave the stage and the audience applauded longer and louder than before. So he brought Antonia out and they sang a duet and then he was gone.
There was one other special moment during the concert and this had more to do with where we were than just with this great singer. Tony Bennett, like every other single performer I’ve seen at the Auditorium said that this building, this great venue is a magnificent structure in which to sing. To prove that they don’t build them like this anymore, he asked that the entire sound system be turned off and then he sang; his words washing over the audience much like the shore a couple of hundred feet away! Clearly he was heard at the back of the room and top of the balcony, proving the mastery of his own talent and that of the craftsmen who built the Great Auditorium 140years ago.
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