High School Classmates at Hotel Cafe Stage
Trust, Running Goose, Jill Andrews, Tom Izzo, Postal Perp
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This week’s issue includes Tom Izzo’s five greatest players, a novel made up of four sub-books, a cafe across from a cafe, a singer-songwriter who performed in our back yard at the start of the pandemic, the Hall of Fame basketball coach who just won his 700th game, and a male mail blocker. I hope you like the picks and pics.
For the second Saturday in a row, Barb and I drove to Los Angeles to attend a concert. Last week we were joined by Cheyenne Wilbur, who attended Tenafly Junior High and Tenafly High School (THS) with me. He was with us again to see Jill Andrews perform at Hotel Cafe, and this time, we were also joined by our Clayton High School (CHS) classmate, Tom Marcus, and his wife, Susan Jarolim.
This was the first time that classmates from both high schools I attended were with me at the same time. I was at THS from 1967-70 and graduated from CHS with Barb and Tom in 1971. My two worlds collided, and everyone hit it off very well together.
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Fave Five 70: High School Classmates at Hotel Cafe Stage
Fine Financial Fiction (Trust), Cahuenga Corridor Cafe (Running Goose), East Tennessee Troubadour (Jill Andrews), Iron Mountain Icon (Tom Izzo), and a Postal Perp.
Fave Five List: Greatest Players for Tom Izzo
On his birthday last night, Tom Izzo won his 700th game as the coach of the Michigan State Spartans by beating archrival Michigan, 81-62. He has had many great players over the past 29 years. Here are five of the best, with their positions in the Michigan State career stats leaders.
Mateen Cleaves (1st in steals, 2nd in assists, leader of 2000 National Champions)
Draymond Green (1st in rebounds, 2nd in steals, 8th in blocks)
Cassius Winston (1st in assists, 6th in points)
Kalin Lucas (5th in points, 8th in assists)
Denzel Valentine (4th in assists, 9th in rebounds)
Book Best Bet
Trust by Hernan Diaz
My sister Joan recommended this one to me. I was intrigued by the format of four books within a book. I had fun connecting the dots scattered through the four sub-books. Figuring out the financial details in the book will be easier if you understand the workings of the stock market and short selling. But that is not essential.
Trust won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. It was named one of the top ten books of 2022 by The New York Times.
Here are comments about the meaning of the titles of the book and the first sub-book:
Michael Gorra: Trust: both a moral quality and a financial arrangement, as though virtue and money were synonymous. The term also has a literary bearing: Can we trust this tale? Is this narrator reliable?
Dennis Haritou: The first “book” Bonds, is a novel by a “Harold Vanner”. The title “Bonds” is as double-valent as “Trust”, the name of the book you are reading, is overall. For “Bonds” can refer to human relations but can also connote a financial instrument. The same for “Trust”. Yes, it can refer to the confidence we may have in others, but it can also mean a financial instrument or represent a financial institution that manipulates money.
From Amazon: Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Hernan Diaz’s Trust elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
From Wikipedia: Hernan Diaz (born 1973) is a writer. His 2017 novel In the Distance was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also received a Whiting Award. For his second novel Trust, he was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Diaz was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When he was two, his family moved to Sweden. His family returned to Argentina after democracy was restored. After obtaining a BA in Literature at the University of Buenos Aires, he moved to London for an MA degree at King's College. Diaz moved to New York in 1999 and received his PhD from New York University.
Restaurant Recommendation
Running Goose 1620 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028
Before the Jill Andrews show we planned to meet Tom and Susan for dinner. I wanted a good restaurant not far from the venue, and I found one that happened to be right across the street. It was a very pleasant setting, and the food was very good.
Barb ordered fettuccine with mushrooms, grilled asparagus, basil, roasted garlic cream, parmesan, and salmon. I had roasted half chicken with broken potato, olive tapenade, sunny dried tomato onion relish, and lemon sauce:
For dessert, each couple shared bread pudding with coconut, ice cream, and caramel:
From the restaurant: We jokingly refer to the Running Goose as “Hollywood’s intermezzo” because when you’re on our patio, either next to the fire pit or overlooking the garden, it’s easy to be refreshed from the hustle, bustle, and noise of Hollywood Boulevard.
Our dream is to serve you cuisine that genuinely reflects Los Angeles. We start with a base note of Central American influence then feather in culinary stylings from across the globe. All of these cultural influences work together to offer you something truly beautiful.
Marvelous Musician
When I learned that Jill would be doing a show on January 27, 2024 in Los Angeles, I suggested to my friends that they attend with us. I asked Jill to reserve seats for us, and when we arrived at the Second Stage of Hotel Cafe in Hollywood, there were five seats for us, front row center. Her performance was wonderful.
I first saw Jill on the Cayamo music cruise in 2015 and 2020, and loved her songwriting, singing, and performing. On the 2020 cruise, she also appeared with Peter Groenwald as the duo Hush Kids. During the pandemic, all indoor shows, including Garfield House Concerts, were cancelled or postponed. When Jill offered to perform safely outdoors, I jumped at the chance to book her. On August 2, 2020, she performed in our back yard in Northville, Michigan as part of her Open Spaces & Covered Faces Tour. Our audience loved her, and one attendee booked her to perform at 20 Front Street in Lake Orion, Michigan on February 24, 2024. Michigan readers, take note!
From Wikipedia: Jill Andrews is an American singer-songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee. She co-founded the indie folk/alt-country band the everybodyfields, leaving in 2009 to pursue a solo career and then to co-found duo Hush Kids with Peter Groenwald in 2018. Born in Normal, Illinois and brought up in Johnson City, Tennessee, she is an alumna of East Tennessee State University. Jill has two children: son Nico, and daughter Falcon. Her songs have been featured in several television series, among them: "Tell That Devil" was performed by Hayden Panettiere in Nashville and is the theme song for Wynonna Earp, "Lost It All" was included in Teen Wolf and The Originals, and "Rust or Gold" was used in Grey's Anatomy and Beauty & the Beast.
From her site: On Saturday mornings in a small bedroom in East Tennessee, ten-year-old Jill Andrews would slide Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation into her tape deck, jump up onto the bed, knot her t- shirt at the waist, and start jamming. She sang in front of the mirror, played all the invisible instruments, and wondered over and over about a future that would take her beyond the checkerboard lawns and fresh blacktop of the suburbs. She wasn’t left wondering for long. Just a few years later, Andrews was on tour, singing, writing, and playing with one the nation’s fastest rising Americana groups.
From her years in the everybodyfields, to her critically acclaimed solo career, to her latest collaboration, Hush Kids, which she co-founded with Nashville songwriter and producer, Peter Groenwald, Andrews has delivered irresistibly melodic, genre-bending music for nearly two decades. Anchored by frank songwriting but continuously and unapologetically evolving, Andrews’ tape deck currently hosts a range of influences from Joni Mitchell to Diana Ross to Wilco to contemporaries, Brandi Carlile and Phoebe Bridgers. The result is bold, infectious, introspective music that has served as the backdrop to some of America’s most beloved television series including Grey’s Anatomy, This Is Us, Nashville, and Wynnona Earp, to which she composed the theme.
Better Life
Back Together
Falling For
River Swimming
My Playlist
Sports Star
I have been a Spartan fan since 1999, when I was in St. Louis for their regional championship, leading to their first Final Four appearance in 20 years. I didn’t make it to St. Petersburg, Florida for that one, but I have been to all seven subsequent Final Fours under Tom (2000, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2015, and 2019). I admire him as a coach, leader, and father.
His team has had a disappointing season so far, currently at 13-8 overall and 5-5 in the Big Ten. They will need to win most of their remaining games to extend their current streak of 25 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. Their schedule is favorable, and Tom’s teams have usually peaked later in the season and done what is needed to make the field of 68. I hope this year will be no different.
Last night’s win over Michigan was the 700th of his career, good for 27th on the all-time coaching list. It was a proud moment for Tom, as was the recent game when his son Steven scored for the first time in his career:
Links
Tom Izzo notches 700th career win, on birthday, 81-62 over Michigan
Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo's milestone path to 700 wins
'We're not dead yet': Tom Izzo logs 700th career win with birthday victory over Michigan
Tom Izzo - Men's Basketball Coach - Michigan State University Athletics
From Wikipedia: Thomas Michael Izzo (born January 30, 1955 in Iron Mountain, Michigan) is an American college basketball coach who has been the head coach at Michigan State University since 1995. On April 4, 2016, Izzo was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Izzo has led the Spartans to eight Final Fours in the NCAA Tournament, which include the NCAA National Championship in 2000 and a Runner-Up finish in 2009. His teams have won ten Big Ten regular season titles and six Big Ten tournament titles in his 28 years at Michigan State. Izzo has the most wins in school history and has appeared in 25 consecutive NCAA tournaments, the longest streak of tournament appearances all-time in men's college basketball. He has never had a losing season as a head coach. In addition, MSU set the Big Ten record for the longest home court winning streak between 1998 and 2002. Several of these accomplishments led former ESPN analyst Andy Katz to deem Michigan State the top college basketball program for the decade of 1998 to 2007.
Izzo is currently the longest-tenured coach in the Big Ten Conference and his teams are often recognized for their rebounding prowess and defensive tenacity. He has won four national coach of the year awards and maintains a considerable coaching tree—several of his former assistants are currently head coaches at other Division I schools. Izzo has won 10 regular-season conference titles, the third most in conference history. He has also won the most Big Ten tourney titles (six) in conference history.
On March 6, 2022, Izzo surpassed Bob Knight for the most wins by a men's basketball coach at a Big Ten school with 663.[6] On January 30, 2024, Izzo earned his 700th career win.
Emotional Tom Izzo reflects on meaningful 700th win at Michigan State
Picture Pun
Just before I was hauled off by the USPS for disrupting the flow of mail.
