Youth Brigade – "It's Not My Fault" (1996)

I can't say who's fault it was 

But I'm sure that it's not me 

Mickey Rivers was the centerfielder and leadoff hitter for the “Bronx Zoo” Yankees teams that won the 1977 and 1978 World Series.  

Here’s a quote that’s attributed to Mickey, who was a real character:

Ain't no sense worrying.  If you have no control over something, ain't no sense worrying about it – you have no control over it anyway.  If you do have control, why worry?  So either way, there ain't no sense worrying."

That actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it . . . doesn't it?

Unlike Mickey Rivers, I worry a lot.  I worry mostly about things I have no control over.  That’s why I prefer to take care of things myself instead of relying on other people to take care of them.  

Just because something isn’t your fault is no guarantee that you won’t get blamed for it.  You often have to pay the price when someone else screws up.  I figure if I’m going to be held responsible for how something turns out, I’d rather do it myself than trust it to someone else.  

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My daughter Sarah works as an event planner for a large company that puts on trade shows and technical conferences at convention centers or large hotels around the country.

I can’t imagine doing her job.  The amount of planning required to put on a successful trade show is mind-boggling.  No matter how good a job the event planner does, there are always last-minute snafus that have to be handled on the fly.  

Those snafus usually aren’t the event planner’s fault . . . but they are always the event planner’s responsibility.  The buck usually stops there.

The last show that Sarah handled took place at a large and well-known Las Vegas hotel – the kind of place that hosts dozens of big trade shows each year.

Sarah got up at the crack of dawn the day before the event opened to meet with a dozen or so of the hotel’s department heads and make sure that everything was good to go for the conference.

But in the middle of that meeting she got a panicked text from a young woman who worked for her.

I’ll let Sarah tell the story:

In case you were wondering what being a conference planner really is like, here is the adventure I had at my last conference.  

One of the biggest exhibits at that conference was housed in a 70-foot-long trailer.  It was basically an enormous mobile kitchen that could be used to put on cooking demonstrations at trade shows and outdoor events.  

I spent hours confirming the measurements of the truck with the exhibitor and with the hotel to make sure it would fit into the hotel’s exhibit hall.  

The truck had to be the first thing into our exhibition space on Sunday, so we scheduled it to move in at 6 A.M.  But it broke down on its way to the hotel, and arrived three hours late.  

When the truck finally showed up at the hotel, I got some very bad news . . . the truck would NOT fit through the exhibit hall entrance.  

I had confirmed the exact dimensions of the truck and trailer and the hotel doors several times, and we should have had plenty of space.  But the CAD (“computer-aided design”) drawings the hotel had provided were wrong – the door opening was six inches narrower than the drawings indicated.

Also, the truck dimensions I had been given were off – the trailer was actually seven inches wider than I had been told.  The bottom line was that it wouldn’t fit through the doors.

I had to tell the owner of the truck, who had spent $30,000 on a sponsorship plus thousands more to get the truck driven across the country, that we might not be able to get it into the exhibit space.  

He freaked out, and started yelling: "YOU NEED TO GET THIS TRUCK IN HERE!  IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM, IT’S NOT THE HOTEL'S PROBLEM, IT’S YOUR PROBLEM!  YOU HAVE ONE HOUR TO FIGURE OUT A SOLUTION AND GET THE TRUCK IN HERE!” 

He wasn’t the only one who was upset.  All of our other exhibitors were waiting to move in and set up, and they were getting unhappy, too. 

One of the hotel employees pulled out a laser measuring tape, and we started making measurement.  It looked like that if we removed the exhibit hall doors, we could get the truck in – with clearance of about half an inch on either side.

The doors weighed about 600 pounds each.  Because it was Sunday, none of the hotel staff who might have been able to take the doors off were working.  Finally, I called the general manager of the hotel, who was at his wife's 50th birthday party.  I insisted that he call in his people and get the doors taken off.  

After a lot of discussion, the hotel finally removed the doors and we got the truck in.  There was a large  crowd watching by that time, and they all clapped and cheered when the driver managed to squeeze through the opening.  

*     *     *     *     *

Don’t you just love a happy ending?

I'm in awe of the way Sarah was able to take care of this situation.  And I was struck by how cool, calm, and collected she was when she told me the story – she made it sound like it was all in a day's work.  (I'll never complain to her about my job again.)

*     *     *     *     *  

Youth Brigade is a Los Angeles punk band that was formed by brothers Mark, Adam, and Shawn Stern in 1980.  (Don’t confuse that Youth Brigade with the Washington, DC Youth Brigade, a “harDCore” punk band that formed at about the same time.)  

Click here to listen to “It’s Not My Fault,” which is the first track on their 1996 album, To Sell the Truth.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Frank Sinatra -- "The Way You Look Tonight" (1964)

There is nothing for me but to love you

And the way you look tonight

Seven weeks ago, 2 or 3 lines featured "Summer Wind," a Frank Sinatra classic that was the song that my daughter Caroline and I danced to at her September 28 wedding reception.

Today is my daughter Sarah's wedding, which will take place at St. John's Episcopal Church/Lafayette Square, in Washington, DC.  St. John's is often called "The Church of the Presidents" because every sitting president since James Madison has attended services there.

More important to me is the fact that St. John's is the church where Sarah and her siblings were baptized.  (Sarah's late grandfather was the rector there for 30-plus years.)

St. John's/Lafayette Square

Later tonight, Sarah and I will be dancing to "The Way You Look Tonight," an Academy Award-winning song song that was originally sung by Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers in Swing Time, the 1936 musical comedy that most critics believe is the best of the Astaire-Rogers movies.

Here's the scene where Fred sings "The Way You Look Tonight" to Ginger:

No one will mistake me for Fred Astaire when I take the dance floor at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in downtown Washington, DC, for the traditional father-daughter dance.

National Museum of 
Women in the Arts

And to be honest, no one will mistake Sarah for Ginger Rogers.  But it goes without saying that there's no one I'd rather dance with tonight than her.

I settled on "The Way You Look Tonight" for our dance pretty quickly.  It would have been nice to dance to a song with her name in the title, of course, but none of the "Sarah" songs I'm familiar with really tempted me.

Inside the museum

They don't write songs like "The Way You Look Tonight" any more.  

The music for "The Way You Look Tonight" was composed by Jerome Kern, who is best remembered as the composer of the musical Show Boat and the oft-recorded song, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

The lyrics were written by Dorothy Fields, one of the first successful female Tin Pan Alley songwriters.  Her hits include "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love."

Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields

I almost began this post by quoting these lines from the first verse of "The Way You Look Tonight":

Some day, when I'm awfully low

When the world is cold

I will feel a glow just thinking of you

I think every father who is fortunate enough to have been blessed with one or more daughters would agree with that sentiment.  No matter how bad things get in my life, thinking of my daughters always brings me joy.

Sarah and Caroline (age 9)

But I couldn't resist leading with this line from the song's second verse: 

There is nothing for me but to love you  

Ever since Sarah was born, there was nothing for me but to love her.

Sarah (in 2009)

Sarah is and always has been beautiful.  But the way she looks is just the icing on the cake.

The way she looks tonight is so much less important than the way she is inside.  That's why there is nothing for me but to love her. 

We'll dance to Rod Stewart's recording of "The Way You Look Tonight":

I like the Sinatra version better, but its tempo is a little too fast for us to dance to:

Click below to buy that version of the song from Amazon:

The Brothers Four -- "Turn Around" (1965)

Turn around and you're two 

Turn around and you're four 

Turn around and you're a young girl 

Going out of the door

Today is the 26th birthday of my twin daughters, Sarah and Caroline.

When I posted this picture of the three of us on Facebook a few days ago, I prefaced it with this question:  "How did they get to be 26 -- and how did I get to be 60?"

A friend answered my rhetorical question with a reference to the memorable Kodak television commercial from the 1960s that featured the song, "Turn Around."  I remember the commercial vividly, but hadn't thought about it in many years.

If you're a parent, you don't need me to explain what that song is about -- you already get it.

Most people think that the version of "Turn Around" that was used for that commercial was sung by Ed Ames, who was a well-known television actor before he became a recording artist.  (Ames's parents were Ukranian Jews, but he was often cast as a Native American.  His best-known role was as Fess Parker's Native American sidekick, Mingo, on the Daniel Boone TV series.)  Other sources insist that Paul Arnold was the singer.

Harry Belafonte was the first singer to record "Turn Around."  The song was co-written by Alan Greene and Malvina Reynolds (she also recorded it), but Belafonte suggested some changes to the lyrics and ended up with a writing credit as well.

Others who have recorded the song include the Kingston Trio, Perry Como, and Kenny Loggins.  The only version of the song that made the top 40 was Dick and Dee Dee's version.

Here's a video of Dick and Dee Dee lip-synching to their record on a Dick Clark television special.  (This may be the worst lip-synching job in history -- Dick is clearly not ready when his spoken introduction begins.)

I think my favorite version of "Turn Around" is the one the Brothers Four did for their 1965 album, The Honey Wind Blows.  Here it is:

This photo of Sarah and Caroline was taken with a camera that was not much more sophisticated than the one shown at the end of that Kodak commercial.  (No, I have no idea which girl is which.  And no, I have no idea why it took me another eight years to realize I needed to get rid of that mustache.)

Here they are a few years later, at a friend's birthday party.  I do know which girl is which in this picture because Sarah is left-handed and Caroline is right-handed.

Here they are with their brothers a few years ago:

And here they are just a few days ago:

That's a beautiful photograph, but it really doesn't do them justice.