SJFS 2023 Night 2 recap May 18, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Animation, Anime, City Pop, Comedy, Health, Internet, Jazz, Music, Personal, Photography, Technology, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
Saturday, April 29, concluded with the second night of Jay Rowe‘s 20th anniversary edition of Smooth Jazz for Scholars, benefiting the Milford Public Schools music department. As usual, I have a long preamble listing how my day went before the show itself.
Upon waking up in my second floor Hampton Inn hotel room that faced the parking lot, I went through the rest of the photos from Friday night and removed the blurry ones. Following a workout (and shower), I headed down to the common area with my laptop for breakfast and mingling as I began editing. I didn’t edit as much as I talked with fellow jazz fans that went to the first night. They were fascinated with what I do and what my interests are, including my newfound Japanophilia and fascination with music and pop culture. (Read about my first week as a city pop fan.) In addition to meeting up with Mark and Phyllis Abrams, Estella and her friend Norma were eating breakfast at a table behind me. I always set up on the elevated center table because it has outlets for plugging in devices. Then, I met Owen Lomax who showed me his photos and videos from other shows he’s attended. After that, Mark and Phyllis’s friends Rob and Mel came down. Rob was most fascinated with me and we spoke a long time. He was even nice enough to get ice from the second floor machine so I could chill hot water. I’d poured it from a container before noticing there weren’t any hot cocoa packets to mix in. As noon approached and the common area quieted down, I decided to head back to my second floor room.
I bought three 50/50 raffle tickets for $10 on way into the Veterans Memorial Auditorium at Parsons Complex Friday night, inadvertently knocking my keys out of my coat’s right pocket when reaching for the wallet. I didn’t know what happened until Saturday afternoon before a trip to ShopRite. I thought I might have left the keys at CVS when checking out my stenographer pad and sleep mask purchase. However, when I stopped there on the way to ShopRite, an employee working Friday night said she didn’t see keys left in the checkout area. After ShopRite, my parents dropped me back at the hotel, and went to Home Depot to duplicate the house and office keys. That left the auditorium as the only place I could have lost them. I’d find out come evening.
In my room, I sat at my laptop and ate homemade trail mix that I did remember to bring (lightly salted peanuts and almonds, and raisins) as I watched the rest of an Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode on Disney+. I was halfway through an English dubbed episode of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear on CrunchyRoll when I’d finished the trail mix. Then, back to editing while listening to Casiopea and part two of the Hollywood and Levine podcast interview with author/screenwriter Nicholas Meyer.
My editing process for Canon EOS R7 photos in Adobe Photoshop Elements (again, I also have regular Photoshop) is cropping out excess and tweaking brightness, contrast, color, and/or levels. Somewhere along the way, I apply a dust and scratches filter to tamp down the grain. If I have to sharpen a photo, I use despeckle before dust and scratches. (Read about my initial experience with the R7.)
I cut myself off from editing at 3:45, having only reached photo 120 out of 294 taken during the show.
My parents and I opted to drive up Boston Post Road (U.S. 1) for dinner at Olive Garden in Orange. It was rainy and windy most of the weekend, and that’s what we encountered Saturday afternoon and evening. I planned on wearing my LIU Post polo during SJFS night two (to complement the WCWP polo on Friday), but an accidental stain while eating meant I’d have to change into a spare long-sleeve polo I brought when I got back to the hotel.
On the way back, we stopped at Cumberland Farms so I could get a pint of ice cream (not just bars this time) and Dad could refuel the Ford Explorer. I watched more Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear and finished eating the ice cream right before my girlfriend Kelly arrived from Wallingford. Then, off to Parsons Complex. It was still raining heavily, so Kelly dropped me off by the auditorium side entrance to limit the rainfall on my gear.
Inside, I asked around about my lost keys, and was eventually referred to the light and sound engineer. He handed them to me before I finished asking! Thank goodness! At least I have spare keys now.
I set up my equipment in the same left-center portion of the orchestra pit, took $10 out of wallet, and went back to the lobby to buy another three 50/50 raffle tickets. Before and after retrieving the wallet from my right coat pocket, I made certain that the keys were still in there. Now that it’s warmer, I do that with my right pants pocket.
While I’d spoken to my photography mates Katherine Gilraine and Ron Hancox on Friday, I didn’t get to meet the fourth photographer, Andrew James, until Saturday before the show. I’ve made so many friends since my first time at Smooth Jazz for Scholars in 2007 (with my first recap in ’08), including Paul, one of the ushers. I saw Lisa Arpin again, along with fellow Jay Rowe Tito Tuesdays livestream alumni Judy Raphael and Robin Morin Stewart.
8:00 arrived, as it always does, and Kevin McCabe walked to a stage mic for his introduction.
For the first time since 2019, a night of SJFS opened with a performance by Milford Public Schools music students: the Foran High School Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Jessica Turner:
Ms. Turner did not cite song titles, but the first song featured alto and tenor sax solos.
The second was led by a baritone sax solo:
The spirit of Ronnie Cuber was alive and well. 
I didn’t take photos during the third song, which had tenor sax and trumpet solos.
Jay Rowe came out afterward to compliment the ensemble and their director, Ms. Turner:
Then, they left the stage…
…and the house band made their way out. Kevin returned to introduce them and Jay Rowe welcomed the audience:
It was Jay leading the way on keyboards…
…with Andy Abel on guitar:
Dave Anderson on bass:
Trever Somerville on drums:
…and the great Steve Scales with percussion:
Headlining on Saturday night were the lively JJ Sansaverino:
The energetic Paul Taylor:
The sweet and saxy Kim Waters:
…and saxophonista Jessy J:
Lots of Js on the stage this night.
Coincidentally, Friday night, I heard a song by similarly-spelled pop singer Jessie J while shopping in Cumberland Farms.
(Updated with videos on 5/31)
SET LIST
1. East Coast West Coast (Jay Rowe)
Originally heard on: Red, Hot & Smooth (2006)
Featured musicians: Jay Rowe (keyboards), Andy Abel (guitar)
2. Midnight Dance (Jay Rowe) (yes, both nights)
Single
Featured musician: Jay Rowe (keyboards)
3. Ride With Me (JJ Sansaverino)
Originally heard on: Soul Energy (2022)
Featured musician: JJ Sansaverino (guitar)
4. Set It Off (JJ Sansaverino)
Originally heard on: Cocktails & Jazz (2021)
Featured musician: JJ Sansaverino (guitar)
5. And Now This (Paul Taylor)
Originally heard on: And Now This (2021)
Featured musician: Paul Taylor (alto sax)
6. Pleasure Seeker (Paul Taylor)
Originally heard on: Pleasure Seeker (1997)
Featured musicians: Paul Taylor (soprano sax)
7. In the House (Kim Waters)
Originally heard on: From the Heart (2001)
Featured musician: Kim Waters (alto sax)
8. Love Don’t Live Here Anymore (Kim Waters; Rose Royce cover)
Originally heard on: Love Stories (2010)
Featured musician: Kim Waters (alto sax)
9. Tequila Moon (Jessy J)
Originally heard on: Tequila Moon (2008)
Featured musicians: Jessy J (tenor sax), Jay Rowe (keyboards)
10. Tropical Rain/Hot Sauce (Jessy J)
Originally heard on: True Love (2009)/Hot Sauce (2011)
Featured musicians: Jessy J (tenor sax), Andy Abel (guitar)
11. Waterfall (Kim Waters)
Originally heard on: Someone to Love You (2002)
Featured musicians: Kim Waters (alto sax), Jay Rowe (keyboards)
12. Europa (JJ Sansaverino; Santana cover)
Featured musician: JJ Sansaverino (guitar)
13. Blue (Jessy J)
Originally heard on: Blue (2022)
Featured musicians: Jessy J (tenor sax), Andy Abel (guitar)
14. Exotica
Originally heard on: On the Horn (1995)
Featured musician: Paul Taylor (soprano sax)
15 (Finale). Ladies’ Choice (Paul Taylor)
Originally heard on: Ladies’ Choice (2007)
Featured musicians: Everyone, plus women from the audience!
JJ Sansaverino leads off the headliner photo galleries:
Next, Paul Taylor on alto sax:
Paul on soprano sax:
Kim Waters was solely on alto sax:
…and Jessy J played tenor sax:
Photo galleries of the house band start with Jay Rowe during his intense “Waterfall” solo:
Andy Abel’s “East Coast West Coast” solo:
Regrettably, I only took two more photos of Dave Anderson:
Here are nine of Trever Somerville:
…and the 11 best of Steve Scales:
Medium shots, starting with Kim, Dave and Jay:
JJ and Jay:
End of “Set It Off”
Jessy J and Jay:
Dancing along (no pun intended) to Jay’s “Tequila Moon” solo 
Jessy and Andy during his “Blue” solo:
Wide shots:
Between “Europa” and “Blue,” the raffle winners were announced from a bag held by Kevin McCabe. Jessy gave Jay the winning 50/50 raffle ticket (I lost again):
That brings us to the finale: “Ladies’ Choice.” Paul Taylor’s custom for live performances of this song is to invite ten ladies to dance on stage. As you’ll see, Kelly was one of the ten! Feeling ambitious, I started walking to the stage, but turned back before reaching the rope on the left end of the orchestra pit. Now, the photos:
I packed my equipment and headed for the lobby, putting it all on a table in the corner. Then, I began meeting and greeting, catching up with Kim Waters first:
If I knew he was pointing at me, I’d have pointed back, like I’ve done in other photos.
Kim paid tribute to Chuck Loeb after playing “In the House,” a song they wrote and played on. They produced and recorded many albums together in the 1990s and 2000s. I told Kim I hadn’t seen him play live since he and Chuck did the first night of SJFS in 2014.
I said I still have the business card Chuck gave me for his online guitar school, which I scanned for posterity at home Sunday evening:
To Kim’s right at the meet-and-greet table was Paul Taylor:
Then, Jessy J:
Jessy thanked me for my positive review of Blue when it was released last April, and we also reflected on the loss of Dancing with the Stars judge Len Goodman the week before. Jessy is in Ray Chew Live, the DWTS house band, and she was highly complimentary of Len. I had thought he retired as judge because of his cancer diagnosis, but Jessy said that came after. Len and his tens will live on in our hearts.
Coincidentally, the shirt I wore instead of the LIU Post polo is the same one I wore the first time I saw Jessy live at The Iridium in Feburary 2012:
Last but not least, JJ Sansaverino:
JJ was very happy to see me, admitting he’s enjoyed my Facebook posts and was grateful that I’ve played his music on Instrumental Invasion. I hadn’t seen JJ since he played guitar at saxophonist Steve Cole‘s Houndstooth Pub show in November 2011.
Turning the tables, Jessy took a photo of me and my good friend Steve Lewis, another yearly SJFS volunteer:
I took a photo of Kim with Jay Rowe’s mother, Mia DiStasi:
…and a selfie with Mia:
Kelly and I gathered my equipment and we said goodbye to our friends in the lobby. A lighter rain awaited us outside Parsons on our walk to the parking lot. When we got back to the hotel, I gave Kelly a good night kiss and took the elevator back to my room, bantering with the desk clerk until the doors opened.
In my room, like the night before, I moved photos and videos to my laptop (while watching a Twitch stream), imported the RAW photos into Lightroom, exported them as JPGs, deleted the RAWs, edited the meet-and-greet shots for posting to Facebook, and edited another 15 from Friday’s set. Then, sleep…for another few hours. Back to the laptop to curate my roll. I was left with 70 more photos than Friday. I edited a little, then met Diane and Richard in the common area. They, too, were at both nights of Smooth Jazz for Scholars and we agreed to meet for breakfast Sunday morning. I had my laptop with me, but never opened it. I just talked to them, and Paul Taylor (it was his birthday!) once he came down for breakfast. After a little more editing in my room, I packed up and checked out with my parents.
The ride home took two hours. It was an average time, though longer than I’m used to on Sundays. I spent the entire ride watching YouTube videos, including an episode of the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour in which a four-day champion won $30,000 in one day!
I put off further editing until Monday (May 1). The rest of Sunday (April 30) was for unwinding after a long weekend. I vowed to take my time editing the photos and working on this recap.
Editing was completed May 7, immediately followed by watermarking all photos. On May 9 and 10, I picked the best of the best from each night, which was still a lot, then saved lower resolution versions in Photoshop Elements. May 10 is also when I started drafting the written portions of these blog posts, which I incorporated into posts on the 12th and 13th, and fleshed out on the 15th and 16th.
Thank you for reading one or both of my 20th anniversary Smooth Jazz for Scholars blog posts. I will be back next year! See you around.
Instrumental Invasion, 3/29/23: Third Anniversary March 30, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Weather.add a comment
The March 29 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP marked three years since my Wednesday night premiere! The show was recorded entirely on February 1. Pickups were recorded on the 1st, 2nd, and 9th (after learning Burt Bacharach had died). Thus, I’d recorded three shows in four days, my fastest output since recording the first six shows on consecutive days in March 2020.
The playlist was created on January 21, a day after the two prior shows (March 15, March 22), and annotated on January 25 and 26. The talk break script was drafted January 28.
I padded out the last talk break of the show with more information regarding the midnight sun while back-selling the Ahmad Jamal version of “Midnight Sun.” With 33 seconds left to fill, I redid the third segment’s talk breaks at a slower pace and swapped the short Jeff Kroll liner in the first segment for the longer “smile, Mike!” liner. I reinstated the short liner a week later to compensate for the Burt Bacharach acknowledgment.
Following in the tradition of anniversary shows past (first, second), the hour 1 format was 1984 and earlier – with songs from 1967 to ’83 – and hour 2’s format was ’85 to ’97 – with songs running the gamut, just like last year.
The underlying theme was songs with April in the title, seeing how the Wednesday night premiere aired April 1, 2020. It was the second week in a row with a version of “April Fools” by John Favicchia.
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
8:35 AM UPDATE: Whoops! I left in an error. April 1 is Saturday, not Friday.
Instrumental Invasion, 3/15/23 March 16, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Comedy, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, TV, Video, Weather.add a comment
The March 15 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded one hour per day on January 29 and 30, with pickups on the 30th. After hearing the filtered audio over the air on January 25, I abandoned the technique. The two locations I record at have unique audio quality, and there’s no point in trying for a uniform sound.
The playlists for this week and next were created on January 20. This week’s annotations came on the 24th and 25th, and the talk break script was drafted on the 26th and 27th.
I led the show with Quincy Jones’s “Killer Joe” arrangement to make up for my blunder on January 18. I superstitiously neglected to acknowledge Q’s 90th birthday on Tuesday; the perils of recording in advance. I did, however, acknowledge the January blunder while back-selling “Chicken Joe” by Joe McBride. The talk-up for that song referenced Chicken Boo from Animaniacs. (I had no idea season three of the Hulu reboot was to launch on February 17.) My cluck for the tease was inspired by Jay Sherman’s (Jon Lovitz) cluck in The Critic series finale.
I’d been meaning to play “Free” by Beth Michaels ever since TWC Classics posted its appearance in a [glitchy] November 27, 1994, local forecast:
During the annotation process, “Metro Blue” by Richard Elliot replaced Kenny G‘s cover of “The Way We Were.” Wikipedia’s entry for the album it appears on lacked concise credits, as did all other online resources. Forgetting I had the CD at home, I hastily searched for a replacement, settling on “Metro Blue.” The Metro Blue record label tidbit I had in mind for “Coastline” next week was moved up a week.
I took an educated guess on Herb Alpert‘s “Rotation” personnel.
The playlist included three retreads:
- “Lake Shore Drive” by Brian Simpson (April 8, 2020)
- “Space-Time” by The Jeff Lorber Fusion (August 25, 2021)
- “Nightingales & Fairy Tales” by Lisa Hilton (September 29, 2021)
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
My city pop discovery (and reacquaintance with Garfield and Friends) March 5, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Animation, City Pop, Comedy, Comics, Film, Game Shows, Health, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Phone, Pop, Radio, Technology, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.2 comments
NOTE 1: This is also a Garfield and Friends story with several montages among the city pop material. Those montages led me to city pop.
NOTE 2: I consulted my computer audio recordings of the Garfield and Friends DVDs to ensure the video embed caption quotes are verbatim.
NOTE 3: I even spend a paragraph on The Weather Channel tribute site TWC Classics, a simulator that re-creates the old local forecasts, and recently departed announcer Dan Chandler who lent his narration to the sim.
Nearly 50 years ago, Japan’s economy was booming and a new leisure class developed. That leisure class begat a new Japanese pop music genre, borrowing elements of various Western music genres. They called it city pop. What began in the 1970s, peaked in popularity in the ’80s, then fell out of the Japanese mainstream.
City pop found a new Western audience in the 2010s thanks to blog posts like mine (but earlier), Japanese reissues of the genre’s albums, and YouTube uploads of the albums’ tracks. From a 2023 perspective, I give YouTube most of the credit. Today, it is the best city pop recruitment tool.
The rest of this post is about how I discovered city pop and recounts my first nine days as a fan. If you want to read more about the genre and its resurgence, I recommend Cat Zhang’s 2021 Pitchfork article and Wikipedia’s city pop entry.
On February 19, YouTube recommended a video with random clips from my favorite cartoon series, Garfield and Friends:
Jim Davis created the Garfield comic strip and CBS TV specials, but Mark Evanier (with Sharman DiVono for three seasons) spun comedy gold on CBS Saturday mornings from 1988 to 1994 (the last rerun aired in ’95). I can quote parts of episodes or even whole episodes. So, when watching the above clips, I knew what happened next.
The next Garfield and Friends clip in my recommendations came on February 20:
The evening of February 21 was my city pop entry point, but we’re not there yet. The prelude to the entry was this:
Full disclosure: I met Jim Davis at a signing in March 1995, but I was too shy and just had him sign a sketch. And I interviewed Jon Arbuckle voice actor Thom Huge (HUE-ghee) three times for The Mike Chimeri Show. (In retrospect, I would have held off on the first interview until his voice was back to normal.)
The Jon Arbuckle montage led YouTube to recommend this:
Whoa! What is that song that sounds vaguely like “Burnin’ Up the Carnival” by Joe Sample (from Voices in the Rain)? I scrolled down and saw the song was “4:00 A.M.” by Taeko Onuki (or Ohnuki). I searched Google on my iPhone and the Taeko’s Wikipedia entry (linked in the previous sentence) and found the song. That prompted the YouTube app where I heard the whole thing:
Whoa again, it appeared on an album with the last name of a few of my friends, but with an extra N. Lyrics are here.
1:30 PM UPDATE: A member of the My Life in Gaming Discord server told me the album title was part of Taeko’s fascination with French media, which I confirmed after a Google Search yielded this 2017 interview. Still, Mignonne is one letter off from my friends of Italian descent.
3:10 PM UPDATE: I just finished reading the interview linked in the prior update. It was an interesting read, but I was disappointed to learn Taeko did not like Mignonne because of what transpired during production. The resulting disenchantment, and poor sales, made her take a two-year hiatus from the music industry. Anyway, back to the good stuff.
Taeko’s Wikipedia entry led me to the one on city pop. That’s what I heard and I wanted more.
I could not stop listening to “4:00 A.M.” Ironically, it kept me up past midnight, but not as late as 4AM. I was up at 4AM on March 4 when I drafted this blog post thanks to a period of strong easterly winds that buffeted my bedroom window. The song’s refrain may sound vaguely like the later “Burnin’ Up the Carnival,” but the song otherwise had more in common with the works of Bob James and Grover Washington Jr. The line “ima o” was phrased like “that’s the time” in “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Roberta Flack, which Bob played on and then covered. The guitar solo on the ending breakdown sounded like it came from Eric Gale‘s hands. (It was from Tsunehide Matsuki‘s hands.) I have repeatedly imagined Grover Washington himself covering “4:00 A.M.” on alto saxophone, soloing (improvising) from the last refrain, through the breakdown, all the way to the end.
I should probably acknowledge that I am on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, formerly known as Asperger Syndrome. That probably explains my intense focus on one thing or another, and attention to detail.
I was busy with radio show production on February 22, but “4:00 A.M.” was in the back of my mind and I was intent on extracting the audio and assigning the WAV file to a vintage Weather Channel local forecast flavor in my WeatherStar 4000 simulator. Now, I could hear all but the last 36 seconds with the current conditions and forecast, peppered with Dan Chandler’s re-created narrations. (I was in touch with Dan for a few weeks midway through my tenure at WGBB, and he even called in while I was playing a song. I didn’t put him on, but relayed what we talked about, including “reading the sports pages” as he listened to the live stream. After writing that sentence, I’m sorry to learn that he passed away on February 7 [obituary].) The simulator was already populated by music cues from The Price is Right and adjacent Goodson–Todman game shows. See the February 15 Instrumental Invasion recap for more on that obsession.
While my “4:00 A.M.” obsession continued, YouTube had more city pop recommendations, including a modern music video for Mariya Takeuchi‘s “Plastic Love“:
Oh, and another Jon Arbuckle montage:
As the “Plastic Love” video wound down, I pretended to be Dan Ingram back-selling the song, quipping that it was better than polyurethane love.
My vocal city pop discoveries halted for the next few days when I found a city pop creation befitting my love of instrumental music: jazz fusion supergroup Casiopea!
First, I found “Midnight Rendezvous“:
Then, “Eyes of the Mind” before the “the” was added:
Groups like Casiopea and T-Square (formerly The Square) have influenced generations of video game music composers.
I woke up on February 23 after a full night’s sleep and was greeted with two more Jon Arbuckle videos:
As I listened to my radio show aircheck from the night before, I began extracting audio from whatever Casiopea albums were on YouTube (mostly via their “topics” channel), provided the cover art available online was clear and at least 1500×1500 pixels. If AI upscaling in Adobe Photoshop yielded poor results, I’d buy the CD myself and scan the artwork. That’s what I did for Flowers (1996), but I bought Euphony (1988) because it wasn’t on YouTube. I will eventually buy the actual CDs, but given the inflated import prices, collection take a while. Here’s what I do have:
- Casiopea (5/25/79) (Alfa)
- Super Flight (11/25/79) (Alfa)
- Thunder Live (4/21/80) (Alfa)
- Make Up City (11/21/80) (Alfa)
- Eyes of the Mind (4/21/81) (Alfa) – featuring the aforementioned Bob James
- Cross Point (10/21/81) (Alfa)
- Mint Jams (5/21/82) (Alfa)
- 4×4 Four by Four (12/16/82) (Alfa)
- Photographs (4/23/83) (Alfa)
- Jive Jive (11/30/83) (Alfa)
- The Soundgraphy (4/25/84) (compilation album) (Alfa) – I have the title track, the lone original recording
- Down Upbeat (10/25/84) (Alfa)
- Halle (9/10/85) (Alfa)
- Casiopea Live (9/25/85) (Alfa)
- Sun Sun (9/10/86) (Alfa)
- Euphony (4/25/88) (Polydor/Aura) – the CD reissue I have includes “Halle” from Casiopea Perfect Live II (7/10/87) as a bonus track
- Full Colors (5/25/91) (Pioneer)
- Dramatic (5/21/93) (Alfa)
- Answers (5/25/94) (Alfa)
- Asian Dreamer (12/16/94) (Pony Canyon)
- Freshness (5/19/95) (Pony Canyon)
- Flowers (9/20/96) (Pony Canyon)
- Light and Shadows (9/3/97) (Pony Canyon)
- Material (5/19/99) (Pony Canyon)
- Ta•Ma•Te Box (11/20/13) (Hats Unlimited) (CD tracks only)
- A•So•Bo (4/22/15) (Hats Unlimited) (CD tracks only)
- New Topics (10/12/22) (Hats Unlimited)
I’m still working my way through the albums chronologically in my spare time. Flowers is gradually on its way from a Japan Discogs markeplace seller, so I jumped from Freshness to Light and Shadows. That’s where I am as of publication on March 5. (I got in eight hours of sleep the night before.)
The last item in this post’s Casiopea segment is T2norway‘s video profile of them, preceded by his city pop story:
The night of February 23, YouTube recommended two more Garfield and Friends videos. One was yet another montage:
And the other was a series review by Nostalgia Critic, played by Doug Walker (who was born the same day as me!):
I was let down by his critiques of certain characters and the animation style, not to mention his disdain for U.S. Acres. Nonetheless, I respect his dissent.
My city pop discoveries resumed on the night of February 25, related to “Plastic Love.” Leading off, a Super Famicom/Nintendo rendition:
That was followed by the infamous long version of the Mariya Takeuchi original (lyrics):
(As of March 13, the video was taken down. In the long version, one verse repeated and the ending chorus was extended, exemplified below.)
Since I was watching in a web browser, I saw recommendations on the right side of the tab. The one that caught me eye was an English version of “Plastic Love”:
The singer-songwriter was Caitlin Myers, also a voice actress with a focus in anime and video games. She has two YouTube channels: one in her name and one called Interlunium. I was unaware of the scope of her work as I watched this first video. (3/31 UPDATE 1: Interlunium is a virtual idol group where Caitlin portrays Junko.) (3/31 UPDATE 2: Caitlin’s version of “Plastic Love” was reworked with original instrumentation and new vocals for her 2021 compilation, City Poppin’.)
More city pop discoveries came way on February 26. Figuratively waiting at the door to this new day was “Mayonaka no Door* (Stay with Me)” by the late Miki Matsubara, recorded when she was just 19 (lyrics):
*”Door” is lyrically transliterated “doa.” The full term means “midnight’s door (literally, door of midnight).” In another ironic twist, there were nights after discovering this song when I’d be awake around midnight as the refrain bounced around in my head. Sometimes, I imagined a fast tempo, “Spain“-esque Chick Corea version with a Minimoog solo. Others, I thought of McCoy Tyner.
Sure enough, Caitlin Myers wrote an English version of this, too:
Incidentally, I added both versions of “Plastic Love” and “Mayonaka no Door (Stay with Me)” to the WS4000 simulator, again using the five-minute local forecast flavor.
Knocking on afternoon’s door was the biggest discovery yet: Caitlin covered “4:00 A.M.”!
My city pop journey had seemingly come full circle. Now, I had English versions of the first three vocal city pop songs I discovered to complement the originals.
The Garfield and Friends video journey definitely came to end on the morning of February 28 with this video showing one second of each episode from show (or rather from each cartoon in each episode):
However, there was more city pop to be had that afternoon. Other Caitlin Myers English adaptations were in my YouTube feed, and I felt I had to hear the originals before listening to hers.
“Do You Remember Love?” was adapted from its directly-translated Japanese title, “Ai Oboete Imasu ka.” Sung by Mari Iijima, it underscored the intense climax to the 1984 film, Macross: Do You Remember Love? I foolishly watched that sequence on YouTube instead of a straight recording of the song, unable to unsee or unhear any of it. (And I thought Disney villain deaths were rough.)
Lucky for you, the reader, I found a straight recording (lyrics):
And the Caitlin Myers version:
3/13/23 UPDATE: “Do You Remember Love?” was J-pop rather than city pop, illustrating how songs from the subgenre led me to ones from the main genre.
“Dance in the Memories” was next, written and performed by Meiko Nakahara (lyrics):
Caitlin’s turn:
Closing out my first week in city pop, “Telephone Number” by Junko Ohashi (lyrics):
I had to make a 3-minute, 30-second local forecast flavor to accommodate the song’s 3:58 run time (3:59 for Caitlin).
As a suburban New Yorker, I like Magical‘s cover art of Lower Manhattan featuring the original World Trade Center. I passed by One World Trade Center in 2014 while running the Tunnel to Towers 5K.
The hook – “ah-uu, 5-6-7-oh-9” – brought two things to mind:
- “Ah-uu”: “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon – of course, that’s “a-hoo,” not “ah-uu.”
- “5-6-7-oh-9” (56709): Foreshadowing SMS!
Musically, Caitlin did a masterful job replicating the sound of each song she adapted into English. On behalf of city pop fans everywhere, thank you, Caitlin, for your efforts.
Thank you to the many city pop artists whose works inspired by our (the West’s) music have boomeranged back to us.
And thank you, the reader, for making it to the end of this post. Wish me luck on the rest of my city pop journey. Be sure to catch Instrumental Invasion April 26 at 9PM Eastern (April 27 at 11AM in Japan) on WCWP. It’ll be the first show with music by Casiopea, and about ten minutes into the last segment, I allude to some of what I laid out in this post because I play Scott Wilkie‘s cover of “Burnin’ Up the Carnival.” (5/2 UPDATE: Here is that show’s recap, along with my journey since writing this post.)
I’ll leave you with Caitlin Myers’ Japanese versions (lyrics by Datenkou) of “Never Gonna Give You Up“…
…and “September“:
Instrumental Invasion, 1/11/23 January 12, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Books, DVD, Internet, Jazz, Laserdisc, Media, Music, New Age, Personal, Photography, Radio, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
The January 11 edition of Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded one hour per day between November 24* and 25. This show brought me back to a comfortable seven-week buffer.
*Thanksgiving, my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary, the 30th anniversary of Sonic 2sDay (release day for Sonic the Hedgehog 2)
The playlist was created on November 21, annotated on the 22nd, and the talk break script was drafted on the 23rd when not working on last week’s show.
Speaking of Sonic 2, I referred to video games and video game consoles again this week: the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Virtual Boy. Jeremy Parish’s Virtual Boy Works video series can be viewed here and you can buy his book here. (Yes, my story about trying out the Shapp cousins’ Virtual Boy was true.)
I played another cut from the compilation True North, starting the show with “One More River Passing” by James Reynolds. Hear it in a Weather Channel local forecast at this link. Click here for a local forecast featuring “Down Hill Racer” by Patrick O’Hearn.
With only two new albums left that hadn’t met my requisite six tracks to play, I added a second 1996-2006 segment and moved the remaining 2017-present segment to the middle of hour 2. That allowed me to make up for not ending hour 1 with the live 2002 version of “Kukuc” (“koo-kooch”) by John Favicchia, the second week in a row with a version of “Kukuc,” both from Tangible. The second segment of hour 1 and first of hour 2 only had two talk breaks thanks to “Spain” by Return to Forever and “Kukuc.”
This week’s version of “Kukuc” was performed at Backstreet Blues in Rockville Centre, the venue where I was introduced to Fav and his Dharma All-Stars on July 13, 2005. Here are the photos I took that night:
Brad Mason (trumpet), Mark Gatz (tenor sax) (RIP), Mike Nunno (bass), Chieli Minucci (guitar) 
Frederic Las Fargeas (keyboards), Brad Mason (trumpet), Mark Gatz (tenor sax) 
The mostly-clear view from table: Frederic Las Fargeas, Brad Mason, Mark Gatz, John Favicchia, Mike Nunno, Chieli Minucci 
A close-up of Chieli 
This time, with the flash during “Kukuc” (the closer) 
A wide shot with the flash: Frederic Las Fargeas, Brad Mason, Mark Gatz, John Favicchia (out of view), Mike Nunno, Chieli Minucci 
Chieli and I after the set; it was his idea for me to attend; I’m forever grateful to him for that
Backstreet Blues is now known as The New Vibe Lounge.
Click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Instrumental Invasion, 1/4/23 January 4, 2023
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, DVD, History, Internet, Jazz, Laserdisc, Media, Music, New Age, New Year, Personal, Radio, TV, VHS, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
The January 4 edition of Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was the first show of 2023 and the second show in the last three to be recorded and mixed in one day. Fittingly, that one day was the 23rd of November, 2022, and thankfully, recording talk breaks wasn’t as physically taxing as the Christmas show.
The playlist was created on November 20, with annotations starting on the 21st and continuing into the 22nd, followed by the talk break script draft. As you can see, I went way over with the first segment and spent the rest of the show compensating. Ironically, I had to make that first segment even longer due to a surplus after principal recording.
“Just Like That” by Dan Siegel was first played on October 14, 2020, but I included it again as a prelude to Ken Navarro‘s “Just Like That.”
The video version of True North was on LaserDisc and VHS, then reissued on DVD in 1998. I bought a DVD copy for posterity, but haven’t watched it yet. “Whispers of Light” by James Reynolds was the latest in a long line of Weather Channel local forecast staples, as demonstrated here.
Not only did I play Mario Kart 64 back in the day, but I received the official soundtrack on CD for free through my Nintendo Power magazine subscription. I led off the January 25, 2002, edition of The Mike Chimeri Show with the game’s title screen cue, proclaiming I was back for another semester.
Norman Caruso, The Gaming Historian, chronicled the story of Super Mario Kart, the N64 game’s predecessor, in a video last month:
I ended the show with “Kukuc (koo-kooch) 2020″ the first track on drummer John Favicchia‘s new compilation CD Tangible. It coincided with the debut of a liner I had Fav record for the show. I neglected to tell him how to pronounce my last name, so I took the “sh” sound from Tom Schuman‘s liner and slowed down the “im” part. Here’s the end result:
And here are recaps of the last nine Dharma gigs I attended:
September 7, 2008 (preceded by Alan Bates)
Next week’s show recap will have photos from the first gig I attended on July 13, 2005.
For now, click here to download this week’s scoped aircheck or listen below:
Bonus: the “Kukuc 2020” video:
Instrumental Invasion, 12/28/22 December 29, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Christmas, Computer, Football, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, New Age, New Year, News, Personal, Radio, Sports, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
The December 28 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded one hour per day on November 17, my 41st birthday, and 18, followed by pickups and remixing. An additional pickup was recorded on the 19th.
The playlist was the third of three created between November 7 and 9. I created it solely on November 9, started annotating on the 9th and finished on the 12th, with the talk break script drafted on the 15th and 16th.
For the second year in a row, I played Christmas-adjacent songs the week after the Christmas show. “December Dream” by Fourplay was originally in mind for last week, but I replaced it to allow for a longer third song in its intended segment.
For the second show in a row, I played two versions of the same song, ending each hour with “Auld Lang Syne“; first by Kenny G, then by Jessy J. Yes, I know J is technically not her last initial, but for poetic license, it was in this show.
All of the last three shows have had segment gaps filled by songs less than three minutes long. And speaking of last initials, I searched my blazers for a suitable (no pun intended) nickname to go with “Armani B” by Brian Simpson. Jos. A. Bank made the most sense; ergo, “Joseph A. Bank M.” By the way, I bought a CD copy of Closer Still just before publishing this post.
“Busta Move” by Julian Vaughn was originally played on August 17.
I’m still not finished listening to my iTunes Christmas music playlist, which I’ve been listening to incrementally since early November. I got through big portions of it during a Christmas Eve party and then on Christmas Day at home, but there were over a hundred songs left. I’ll update this paragraph once I finish. 1/2/23 UPDATE: I finished this morning.
Mid-November Mike (another nickname) could not have foreseen a historic winter storm, an explosive cyclogenesis (“bomb cyclone” in media hype lingo), when he included “Black Frost” by Grover Washington, Jr. to fill out the first segment. Crazy as the storm and aftermath were here on Long Island – southwest winds ushering in cold air?! – it was much worse elsewhere, particularly in Buffalo! Here, temperatures plummeted from the mid 50s (Fahrenheit) to the single digits! That meant there was black frost ice on the roads, and patches of ice on the sidewalks, from floodwaters brought on by rain and coastal flooding. I haven’t talked to Ryan “A Ripping Good Time” Grabow since the storm, but I know from its Wikipedia entry (first link) that Central Florida – where he lives and works for the Orlando Fox affiliate – had a period of sleet and snow flurries in on Christmas morning! (Okay, enough exclamations.) Christmas also marked record cold highs for Fort Lauderdale and Miami: 49° and 50°F, respectively. Reading that took me back to similarly cold Christmastimes in 1989 and ’90 in Crystal Beach, Florida, in the Tampa Bay area; not to mention how cold it was outside LaGuardia Airport before flying to Tampa in ’90. Maybe weather conditions are cyclical.
I’m further reminded of a video I watched on YouTube five years ago that exemplified the cold Christmastime in ’89: the start of NBC Sports coverage of the Miami Dolphins’ Christmas Eve regular season finale against the Kansas City Chiefs at then-Joe Robbie Stadium in not-yet-incorporated Miami Gardens. As you’ll see in the video below, the game time temperature was 39° with gusty northwest winds. No wonder it was dubbed The Miami Ice Bowl.
Yes, that was “Carol of the Bells” by Mannheim Steamroller (from A Fresh Aire Christmas); yes, that was Charles McCord announcing (“NBC Sports presents…”); and yes, John Tesh‘s “Gridiron Dreams” was the NFL on NBC theme song.
Anyway, click here to download the last scoped Instrumental Invasion aircheck of 2022, or listen below:
See you in 2023!
Festival of Games 2022 recap December 16, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Animation, Aviation, Christmas, Game Shows, History, Internet, Media, Military, Personal, Photography, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
Last year’s Festival of Games (the first)
Last Saturday, the second annual Festival of Games was held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum along Museum Row in East Garden City. The so-far one-day spinoff of Long Island Retro Gaming Expo (read about the 2022 LI Retro here) was my latest chance to walk and snap photos in as many sections as possible. Then, back to the vendor halls to add video games to my multi-console, multi-generation collection.
Thanks to my past recaps, I have made friends with the organizers, volunteers, and a week before this Festival of Games, the museum’s director of marketing and community relations, Jerelyn Zontini. I’m honored to know them and to promote special events like this.
I did not think to check the Festival of Games website for this year’s schedule, so I missed out on the panels in the main stage (planetarium) and classes in the classroom, but I saw everything else on offer, and was surprised to meet legendary collector, YouTuber, and streamer Pete Dorr at his vending table. More on that later.
To photograph the event, I brought my Canon EOS R7 with RF-S 18-150mm lens and Speedlite 430EX III-RT. When writing about my initial experience with the mirrorless camera, I did not lower the resolution on test photos. Considering the camera’s higher native max resolution (6984×4660) with the same 3:2 aspect ratio as my previous camera, it made sense while editing Saturday’s photos to increase my default blog post/social media resolution. Thus, going forward, photos will be no lower than 2000 pixels vertically, stepping up from my max horizontal resolution of 2600 pixels.
Again planning on a two-hour stay, my mother dropped me off at 12:43 PM:
Once inside (and having my bag searched), I presented my e-ticket printout to a box office attendant who stamped my left hand.
A promotional banner for Cradle-Con:
Each section I walked through at Festival of Games has a dedicated photo gallery. We start with the vendor hall gallery:
The board game section:
In all the years I’ve been inside the Cradle of Aviation Museum, I never observed its exhibits. I rectified that after passing the board games section.
MY ANSWER: Most of them, thanks to my proximity to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The planes are either on final approach or just took off. I also see general aviation aircraft coming to or from Republic Airport in Farmingdale, which is even closer to my house.
Back to video games in the free play area:
Tournaments:
On to the second floor:
Of course, most of the arcade games were housed on the Air & Space hall sky walk:
I chose not to play any of the arcade games or free play console games. I just wanted to buy games, and where better to start than at Pete Dorr’s table? I didn’t introduce myself to him right away, but he approached me after a few minutes of rummaging. That’s when I complimented him on his work. I ended up buying five Sega Genesis games from Pete’s table, which he gave me a great discount on. Then, we posed for a photo:
An hour of vendor-hopping yielded 42 games in all, including seven imports! Four games were for the Family Computer (Famicom) and three were for the Super Famicom. Final Fantasy V was a timely get as GTV Japan posted a retrospective the day before (last Friday).
Satisfied, I proceeded to the parking lot for my mom to pick me up.
Back at home, I spent nearly two hours photographing my pickups, removing price stickers, and cataloging the games.
Now, photos of all pickups by console, starting with Family Computer (Famicom):
- F1 Race
- Pac-Land (the first home port of the game)
- Super Mario Bros.
- Tetris (variant after Nintendo acquired the rights; thanks to Leonard Herman for bringing that to my attention)
Super Famicom:
- Final Fantasy IV (localized for SNES [Super Nintendo] as Final Fantasy II)
- Final Fantasy V (never ported to SNES)
- Super Mario Kart (champagne!) – This was timely, too, with a Gaming Historian retrospective posted on December 2)
Nintendo Entertainment System:
- Captain Skyhawk
- Goal!
- Gotcha! The Sport! (shown before Goal!)
- Ninja Gaiden
- Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
- Nintendo World Cup – This and Goal! are still more timely gets as the 2022 FIFA World Cup was in the quarterfinal stage last Saturday. The final is this Sunday.
- Operation Wolf
- Ring King
- Skate or Die!
- Tiger-Heli
- Wizards & Warriors
- Xevious
Yes, I passed on Deadly Towers again.
- Best of the Best: Championship Karate
- Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (Bubsy for short) (complete in box!)
- Cliffhanger
- George Foreman’s KO Boxing
- The Jungle Book
- NHL Stanley Cup
- Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally
- Super Black Bass
- Tecmo Super NBA Basketball
I didn’t notice a crack on the upper left of Tecmo Super NBA Basketball until cataloging later. I bought a better condition cart on eBay Tuesday night and put in an offer for another Looney Tunes game, Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos. I bought that on Wednesday when my offer was accepted.
Sega Master System:
Now, I have the original Zillion to go along with the sequel I bought last year.
Sega Genesis (Mega Drive outside North America):
- Bubsy – I bought this before the CIB SNES port
- Chi Chi’s Pro Challenge Golf (featuring golfer Chi-Chi Rodriguez) – This game always makes me think of Dave White’s [intentionally] mangled pronunciation during a Game Sack end skit (“Chy-Chy Rah-drigwez’s Pro Challenge Golf!”).
- Eternal Champions
- Space Harrier II
- Strider
- Super Hang-On
- Taz-Mania (I bought the SNES version last year)
- Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster’s Hidden Treasure
- ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron (maybe I’ll find the original next year)
- Virtua Racing
And one Nintendo Wii game: The Price is Right: 2010 Edition:
That last pickup was the culmination of all the time that I spent this year watching various winning pricing games and showcases from the Bob Barker era of The Price is Right, and with my resulting renewed obsession with Barker era music cues, many of which can be found on this YouTube channel.
It was another successful and enjoyable Festival of Games. Thank you to Pete Dorr and all the vendors I bought from, to the LI Retro staff including George Portugal (who I saw on Saturday), and to Jerelyn Zontini. It was great to meet her in person after she connected with me on LinkedIn a few weeks ago.
Photos from Dutchess County trip, drive back home October 28, 2022
Posted by Mike C. in Aviation, Baseball, Biking, Comedy, Film, Fire, Health, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Photography, Politics, Radio, Running, Sci-Fi, Sports, Technology, Travel, Video, Video Games, Weather.add a comment
In two of my Homecoming Weekend posts (live show, main post), I referenced a family trip to Dutchess County the prior weekend. This post is about that trip.
Back in the spring, my mom sprung the trip on me: a few of my relatives were going to run a race – The Fall Foliage Half Marathon and 5K – in Rhinebeck on the Sunday of Columbus Day Weekend and we would all be put up in a nearby AirBNB. I initially panicked, worried that it would conflict with Homecoming Weekend (henceforth, HCW), but one of my alumni friends assured me the LIU Sharks‘ Homecoming football game would likely be the following weekend. And in recent years, it has been held on the third Saturday of October. My conscience was clear and I was prepared for the trip.
I assumed the AirBNB would be in Rhinebeck and my parents, sister, and I would leave for there on the morning of Friday, October 7. Instead, we were to leave in the mid-afternoon and the house was in Staatsburg. I had an extra day to prepare since I decided not to go to New York Comic Con this year, or ever again, due to my disenchantment with the event and a need to save money for paying off my PC build. (And then, a week later, I went and bought a new camera and related equipment, which I’m still trying to get the hang of.)
I have a mixed record when it comes to time management. More often than not, I mismanage my time, and that’s what I did prior to departure on Friday afternoon. In the days leading up to the weekend, I tried to get as many radio shows recorded as possible to allow for a sizable buffer of weeks ahead. I only managed to produce and record the HCW prerecord and one regular show (November 16). I finished creating the playlist for the live HCW show with only an hour to spare before leaving the house.
Annotations for the live show and next regular show (November 23) were done from my laptop during downtime at the AirBNB. It was not an easy task with constant action at breakfast time or with babies occasionally crying indefinitely, all amplified by the hardwood floors on the main floor. Most of the regular show annotations were done on Sunday evening when I had the house to myself and then in my bedroom with white noise blaring in my earbuds.
Don’t chalk this up to disdain for the experience that weekend. Overall, I had a great time seeing the sights and catching up with relatives.
My parents and I left at 3:15 Friday afternoon and drove five minutes east to pick up my sister at her apartment. Four hours of traffic and spotty cell service later, we arrived at the AirBNB on Connelly Drive in Staatsburg.
For privacy’s sake, I won’t include photos of the house’s interior or of my family, but here are two exterior shots I took Saturday afternoon:
The rest of the post is dedicated to scenery photos taken from Saturday, October 8, to the ride home on Monday, October 10.
First, two more negatives:
- The Mets completed their unraveling by losing their National League Wild Card Series to the Padres. I found out about their game 1 loss Saturday morning, game 2 win Sunday morning, and game 3 loss seconds after it happened Sunday night. It was extremely demoralizing. I spent five months of my life believing this was the year the Mets would win their third World Series, allowing me not to care if they’d win a fourth in my lifetime. Five months of my life were wasted for nothing, including hours spent editing photos from the two games I attended. Obviously, I won’t make a slideshow of photos from that second game, which turned out to be the apex of the Mets’ season; all downhill from there. I hadn’t thrown away so many months expecting an outcome that didn’t happen since the 2012 presidential election. And I was away from home that night, too, at a family friend’s house in Rockville Centre, waiting for power to be restored back at my Wantagh home. (It was the next afternoon.) (11/1 UPDATE: Whoops, forgot to note power was lost during Sandy. I wrote about my experience here.) Incidentally, that family friend now lives an hour north of where we were and she met up with us Sunday in downtown(village) Rhinebeck.
- In another case of time mismanagement, I hurriedly and anxiously shaved my face and neck on Saturday and Sunday, making everyone wait before we could drive to wherever we were going. I cut myself in multiple places, and contemplated going back to an electric razor after nearly 20 years of a manual razor with five-blade cartridges. My dad generously bought one for me as an early birthday present on Monday morning. As of publication, I’m still mastering it. Most of my face is easy to shave, but I can’t get all the hairs off my neck, above my chin, or below my sideburns.
Now for the photos. Saturday morning, October 8, included a trip to the Kesicke Farm Fall Festival (more alliteration) in Rhinebeck. One day after warm and slightly humid conditions, conditions were sunny and breezy with temperatures in the 50s. I brought a winter hat and light gloves on the trip, but only needed the gloves.
Returning to the AirBNB:
Sunday, October 9, brought us back to Rhinebeck. I packed my camcorder and tripod on Friday because I thought we’d be watching the end of the races Sunday. I thought wrong. I did use the camcorder Saturday afternoon to record soccer practice with my sister and our cousin. We did, however, walk up and down Market Street in Rhinebeck. That made me think of a song bearing that name by Yellowjackets from the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home soundtrack. Of course, the film was based in San Francisco, not Rhinebeck, but Rhinebeck was the location of Spyro Gyra‘s last album of original music to date, The Rhinebeck Sessions.
A recent episode of Sound Sack included misheard lyrics Joe Redifer imagined for music in Tengai Makyō: Fuun Kabuki Den for PC Engine (making me laugh real hard) and Sega Rally 2 for Dreamcast. Misheard lyrics for a cue from Sega Rally 2 included “because your fear of Daryl’s pager.” It may have an extra R, but this clothing store on Market Street made me think of Joe’s lyric. 
For my dad, a Freeport firefighter, I photographed this firehouse. 
Notice the lens flare? 
I walked through the Rhinebeck Farmers’ Market with my mom, aunt, and their high school friend (the aforementioned family friend). 
The folk stylings of Eric Erickson 
A selfie (with the blemishes and shaving cuts edited out) 
Another pair of road signs on the way back to Staatsburg:
While I was walking through Rhinebeck, my dad biked to and from the Ashokan Reservoir via the Ashokan Rail Trail. Those are the first two photos below. He took the third Sunday evening while everyone but me traveled to the Walkway Over the Hudson. (I stayed in Staatsburg.)
Monday morning, October 10, I spotted three wild turkeys walking through the AirBNB’s backyard. I went outside to take photos with my phone, and ended up following them several yards into the woods.
Trembling from excitement and anxiety (I wanted to go home), I shot this shaky video:
We left for Wantagh at around 10:30 AM. These photos were taken on the way to the Taconic State Parkway:
On the parkway:
“Lucky” by Ken Navarro was playing on SiriusXM’s Watercolors. 
A rest stop 
I-84:
I-684 (briefly in Connecticut):
