Tabishland

Hey- I'm going to go see the man hisself this Friday night thanks to Nell's ticket buying prowess- six tickets left for Friday night and she snagged us some!!

I might just sing along to Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat.

right.

Instead of Ellicott City in June, how about Session C as a group activity?

not as brilliant as it might be but funny

The DeFabos lived in Shadowood and were the TRUE Italian family growing up. Francis' father was the head carpooler for the Saturday morning swimming lessons at the Memorial Field House. He would drives us (Hulberts, DeFabos, Gallattis and a smattering of others) home every week, soggy and red- eyed from the excessive chlorine, and give us Latin lessons. What I remember most was his lesson on Heart/Core and what the many differences were, but the most important was he said the love of our family. We all scoffed and made fun of each other as siblings often do, Francis said it's easy to remember the word for sister because they are always "sore and roaring"

He was a wonderful, jovial man, who adored his family and really loved being with us kids. His wife Gloria made the most awesome food. Going to the Defabo's for dinner was a sensual experience. And yes, Francis' Uncle ran one of the two famous Italian restaurants in Crabtree, not Carbonne's but the other one, and I can't remember the name. The hints at Mafioso, though intriguing, were more then likely false, but wouldn't it be cool nonetheless...

From early days as an actor at Indiana High School, he dazzled audiences and squeezed the life out of teen-age girls.












As an adult, he imparted wisdom as a party guest, and dutifully logged the shenanigans of his fellow former classmates, all of which were clearly so embarrassing this video has never been seen (don’t think we hadn’t noticed, Joe).









Finally, immortalized as a puppet and a fake deer, he achieves the lofty status of Blogmaster, answerer of stupid questions, entertainer for slackers.

Joe….many happy returns! Many more years as our dear, dear friend.

I might need to start a Kubalaland blog!

(By the way, do you guys remember Barb Kubala, the high school art teacher? I thought she was great- gave me a lot of freedom to, well... screw around and just try and figure out what it was I wanted to try and do- key word try. She was my second favorite ISHS teacher)

Anyway, today, out of the blue, I heard from Brook Duer- the coolest guy I knew in High School- well, tied with Noker anyway.

He was a bass player in a kinda successful Pittsburgh rock/Reggae band for awhile in the early 1980's . I don't remember their name (Emann? Do you recall?), but they opened up for Elvis Costello once at the Stanley (I think).

Then, he became an attorney. I'll need to catch up- I'll report back.

He had a really interesting family. His Dad owned S&D books- oh God- S&D Books- how come we've never waxed nostalgia about that place? Anyone got any good S&D stories? Peen, you gotta have a good S&D story!

Anyway, his Mom used to be a travel agent at Aztec Travel- she did a lot of stuff with the Indiana Players and was really, really sweet and hip.

Brook's brother Fred was a costume/set designer and designed sets for the Carol Burnett show for awhile. His older brother Jack once took care of the four Gallanar kids for a week while my parents went to some conference in New Orleans. I don't know how he survived.

Brook was cool. Very, very cool. We used to hang out in the art room with Robb Kip, Jim Moss, Stuart (where are you?!!!!) Reitz and Lisa B. Brook somehow had an import cassette of Never Mind The Bollocks: Here's the Sex Pistols in December, 1977- I estimate the first copy of it in Indiana. He played it for me. I thought it was going to be a lot more outrageous. I was kind of disappointed at first. I lent him my copy of Talking Heads 77 that I got for Christmas and absolutely loved.

...that the ten most generous nations are all in Europe?*

Here's an interesting website to bookmark for long on-call weekends or never-ending tech rehearsals. It may seem boring at first, although not if you are a statistician, but it's chock full of interesting minutiae that promises to suck your time like few things can. (It's crammed with so much info that it may take a while to download.)

*They are in order of donor per capita:
1. Luxembourg
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. Netherlands
5. Sweden
6. Ireland
7. Switzerland
8. United Kingdom
9. Belgium
10. France

I just checked the IHS wiki and someone took out all the additions to the "famous alums of IAHS". I don't think they know who they are screwing with.

We Tabishlanders have always represented a variety of tastes, styles and opinions. As schmaltzy as this may seem to some, I'd like to wish each of you a most Happy Valentine's Day. If we were together, I'd probably pass out goofy kid valentines with comic sayings just to be silly. Have a great day! It's fun to blog with all of you.

The scary thing is, I remember all of these episodes.

Hey-

I had the distinct please of seeing Nell "Nell" Coleman and Eric "Eric" Hansmann in just a 18 hour period this weekend. Eric was just passing through, but I did get to go out to eat and have a good visit with Nell.

I didn't get any pictures, so I tried to render it from memory.

Ya'll jealous?

My brother Scott was in a number of Tabish-directed shows in the early 80s, including playing Joe in Damn Yankees his senior year. Yesterday he was the featured speaker at an all-day strings teaching event at IUP. In one of his lectures (I heard it first last spring in Kansas City), he refers to his theater teacher, who gave him a verbal "kick in the pants" to get serious about his work. That advice served him well, as he is now a nationally renowned string pedagogue and a darned nice guy. Thought you'd be interested...and incidentally, that is my sister Stephanie in the violin section.

I've always loved this. "One of the most celebrated paradoxes in quantum theory," handled by The Straight Dope.

I was thinking last night (something I do on occasion when the kids aren't around) about different either/or situations. One of my thoughts was another "which would you rather" question, this time my own creation. And it is: If you had your choice, would you rather relive any day of your life thus far, or would you rather live to be 150 years old with no health issues? If you're reliving any day, which would it be/why?

Karl recently found out about this web musician, a man who is bypassing the record industry and becoming well known just by selling (and in some cases, giving away) songs over the internet. Jonathan Coulton. He's very talented - and he does everything himself, writing, recording, instrumentation. Karl loves the humor and quirkiness (go to the web site and listen to Code Monkey), and sometimes sentiment of the songs, I like the actual music very much. The modulations in this song are just great. Some of the songs are pretty inappropriate, too, which thrills my 13 year old. Everyone wins. Ten points to anyone who knows who Soterios Johnson actually is.

Here's one of Zobmondo's "Would You Rather?" questions. It seems apropos given all the time we spend talking about aging.

Here goes:
"Would you rather be able to live 400 years but be physically aged at 70 for the last 330 years or live 150 years but look and feel reasonably young throughout?"

I know that some of you now living in more temperate climes (Kim, among others) miss the good, old-fashioned winters of our youth. And since Indiana is experiencing the coldest weather in at least two years, I thought I'd fill you in on the Indiana weather. Today when I awoke, the outside temp was -3. It's now climbed all the way to 8. The wind chill is reported to be -25 and I have to believe that it's darn close to that. We have about 6 or 7" of snow on the ground and the roads are clear, except for icy patches. Tomorrow figures to be pretty much the same as today.

The fun thing for me was that when I hopped into the car this morning, I could see my breath. This continued for about the next 15 minutes. Even though it was pretty much a frigid ride, I enjoyed the frosty breath thing. The kids had a scheduled day off school today because we didn't need today as a snow make-up day! To their delight and amusement, I took Lizzie and Sean ice-skating. Unfortunately, ice-skating isn't nearly as popular an activity as when we were kids. I am happy to report that it is still as much fun. We'll be having comfort food for dinner tonight. Stay warm!

Okay, this one's down to me because Nell is currently on the New Jersey Turnpike, and while we are very progressive here in NJ, we don't yet have turnpike internet access.

Question 8: If you could do one show again from High School (or Jr. High, Mealy), what would it be? And what did you love about it when you did it the first time?

Let's see how we do with these:

What is the one technological advancement (other than your computer or cell phone), unavailable to us as kids, that you could not do without today?

What are some non-tech--or "low tech"--items you find indispensible?