The life and times of an uncertain blogger

When I wrote yesterday’s post about Paul Potts singing Puccini’s Nessun Dorme, I had no idea that the great tenor, Luciano Pavarotti would pass away later that evening from pancreatic cancer.

It’s hard to believe that someone like Pavarotti could be gone. He’s been an icon for as long as I can remember, appearing on shows like Johnnie Carson’s Tonight Show and on the world’s greatest stages. His voice was amazing — so resonant, clear and strong — and his spirit seemed just as strong.

Nessun Dorma was Pavarotti’s signature piece, and no one performed it better or with more feeling. Here is his amazing rendition:

Though Nessun Dorma was his favorite, my favorite recording of him is him singing Schubert’s Ave Maria. I’ve got this one in my 6 CD group of my favorite songs of all time and listen to it all the time. No one sung it like Luciano Pavarotti.

He will be greatly missed.

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We’ve all seen this video by now; it’s been forwarded in office emails so often that I’ve received it at least 10 times. And, unlike most things I receive numerous times in email, I’ve watched this one again and again.

Why is it so appealing? Besides the beauty of the piece itself (it’s one of my favorites), it gives me extreme satisfaction to see the way the crowd’s and the judges’ reaction changes as he sings.

When he first walks out on stage, you can see that the audience expects to laugh at him. Here’s this car phone salesman with a pot belly and crooked teeth. He looks a little like a geek. When he says he’s going to sing opera, Piers Morgan looks over at Simon Cowell as if to say, “Oh, great. Here comes another loser.” Even Simon looks weary. But then he starts singing, and it’s so amazing that halfway through he’s got ladies in the audience weeping. By the time he reaches his last note, everyone is on their feet in thunderous applause.

Then, when it’s over, you can tell that he doesn’t quite know how to take the wonderful reaction he got. He’s so bowled over that he can hardly talk to the hosts without blushing. You just know that he’s gone through is whole life thinking he’s good but believing he’s just another one of those guys who thinks he’s good but really isn’t. To get such immediate validation must have been overwhelming.

I’m so glad Paul won the contest. Now, he gets to do the thing he’s always wanted to do and was meant to do. Having the courage to go on that show has changed his life, and he’ll never be a car phone salesman again.

If you’re one of the very few people who haven’t seen this video, grab a Kleenex and get ready for an amazing performance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Paul Potts.

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You can’t tell me that people don’t have different body clocks.  Some people pop out of bed at 5am and feel good about it. To me, 5am should only come at the end of the night.

Each time I’m left to my own devises for a few weeks, my body reverts to form, and I start staying up later and later each night.  I’ve been off a little over a week, and already, it’s 3am and I’m not sleepy.  A couple of weeks ago, I’d have been getting up in three hours.

The world is slowly accepting us night people.  Thirty years ago, you couldn’t find a restaurant or a grocery store open at this time of night, but today, there are plenty. Still, the world is set up for the early birds. You can’t go to the doctor or the dentist after 5pm. You can’t go to the bank in the evenings.
In a perfect world, we’d be able to check a box somewhere, telling of our preferences. I’d check the box for “sometimes sleeps till 10am” and another one for “stays up till at least 3am.” Then all of us who have similar sleep cycles could have our own businesses that open and close to meet our needs. All our jobs would start at 11am, and we’d get off at 7pm or 8pm. We could go to the bank at midnight.

Just think of the economic boon such a plan would cause!  The very late night people could have their own businesses, we late nighters would have ours, and the early birds would have theirs. Who knows…there might even be some cross-overs. People who believed they were day people their whole lives could suddenly realize that they prefer sleeping in.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see which group we’d all end up in?  I wonder if we’d be evenly split across the clock. It would be cool to find out.

In the meantime, I’m forcing myself to go to bed. I feel better if I stay up late, but I’m going to hate myself in a week when I have to start getting up at 6am.

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Since my Irish friend, Frank, reads my blog from the other side of the world, I thought it might be fun to share a little bit about what it means to be a Southerner in the United States. Some might argue that an Oklahoman is not a Southerner, but those folks have never been to Oklahoma. In my opinion, you can define a Southerner in one of two ways:

1. He or she lives in a state that is south of the Mason Dixon line, or
2. He or she knows how to cook and/or eat Southern cooking.

Oklahomans qualify on both counts, so considering it might be boring discussing the significance of the Mason Dixon line, I thought I’d talk a little bit about Southern cooking.

Southern cooking is significantly different than food you’ll find anywhere else in the country, or, really, anywhere else in the world. For a food to qualify as Southern, it must have a high fat content, involve frying, gravy and bacon grease, not in any particular order. My favorite Southern meal contains all four.

Chicken fried steak and gravy , mashed potatoes or home fries, and a mess o’ greens is pure heaven as far as I’m concerned. It’s my favorite meal to cook and my favorite to eat, and I’ve been told I make it better than just about anybody.

Here’s how I do it:

Chicken Fried Steak

• 2 Cube Steaks (These are thin round steaks, pounded until the meat is tenderized to the point where it’s almost falling apart.)
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons (or more, to taste) garlic salt
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 inch oil in a frying pan

Mix the egg and milk together in a bowl. Mix the garlic salt and flour together in a shallow pan or paper sack. Salt and pepper the steak and then dip in the egg/milk mixture, then coat the meat with flour. (You can do this by putting it in the shallow pan and then turning it over, or you can put it in the bag, close up the top and shake the bag.) I like to return it to the egg/milk mixture and then cover with flour again; this just makes a thicker crust.

Heat the oil over medium heat. When a small amount of batter begins to sizzle when dropped in the oil, put the steaks in. (Don’t worry if you get batter in the oil - that just adds good stuff to the gravy.) Fry about three minutes (or until the coating begins to brown) and then turn over. (Watch the heat - don’t let the oil start smoking.) Poke the crispy top with a fork; this allows the meat to cook more evenly. Cook the other side about three minutes and turn again. Poke the other side of the meat with the fork. Repeat this process (except for the poking - you only do that once per side) until both sides are crisp and brown. Remove from the pan and place on paper towels to drain. Do not toss the oil; you’ll use this and the remaining flour for the gravy.

Gravy

• leftover, used cooking oil
• 1/4 cup flour/garlic salt mixture
• equal parts milk and water, about 3 cups combined

Pour off about half of the oil and return the pan to the stove, which should be turned down to low heat. Scrape the good stuff off the bottom of the pan and add the flour/garlic salt mixture. Stir to form a roux (a smooth mixture of flour and cooking oil). Continue stirring for up to two or three minutes to remove the raw flour taste. Add the water/milk mixture about a cup at a time, stirring constantly. (You want to add it slowly, because you don’t want it too thin.) Keep adding the water/milk mixture until the gravy starts bubbling up and is a nice, thick consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Next, I make either mashed potatoes or home fries, depending on the family’s mood.

Mashed Potatoes

• 4-6 potatoes, depending on how big they are
• 1/2 stick of salted butter
• 1/3 cup milk or cream

Peel potatoes and cut into 1-2 inch pieces. Put cut potatoes in a pot of cold water. (It’s important that it’s cold, so the outside and inside of the potatoes gets done at the same time.) Boil, checking often to ensure you don’t overcook. When potatoes are done, drain them and put them in a mixing bowl. Add the milk and butter and whip until the lumps are gone. (Do not overwhip. Overwhipping releases glutens and makes the potatoes rubbery.)

*Sometimes, to make the mashed potatoes a little fancier, I use the butter to saute some onion slices (usually about half an onion, sliced into bite-sized pieces). When the onions are translucent and soft, I add the entire pan of butter and onions to the potatoes before I start the whipping process. You can add garlic to the onions while they’re sauteing and have onion garlic mashed potatoes. Some people add cheese or sour cream. My mom always added a raw egg when the potatoes were being whipped. The heat of the potatoes cooks the egg as it mixes in, and the potatoes are very rich. So add what you like! It’s up to you!

Home Fries

These are my family’s favorite. They’re much more trouble than mashed potatoes but it’s worth the trouble.

• 6 potatoes, peeled or unpeeled or a little of both, and sliced about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick
• 2 large onions, sliced thick
• 1/4 cup chopped red and/or green bell pepper (optional)
• 1/2 inch oil in a frying pan

Heat the oil over high heat. Put the potatoes and onions in when a piece of potato in the oil just begins to sizzle. (I know this seems like a lot of potatoes, but they cook way down.) Cover the pan and let potatoes fry for about 5 minutes. Take the lid off and turn the potatoes. Leave the lid off and continue to turn potatoes until all of them are golden brown and onions are cooked through, crispy and/or brown.* This usually takes 30-40 minutes. Drain on paper towels and salt immediately, so the salt sticks.

*The trick with home fries (also known as country fries, by the way) is not to overcook. The inside of the potatoes has to be soft like the inside of a French fry. The outside isn’t the same for all the potatoes. Some will be soft, some will be very brown, some will be light brown but crispy. To get it right, you want 80-90% to be light brown and crispy with the rest split between soft and very brown.

Greens

These can be collard greens, mustard greens, dandelion greens, turnip greens, spinach or kale.

• 3-4 lbs of greens
• 1/2 lb raw bacon, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups julienned onions
• 1 Tablespoon garlic
• salt and pepper to taste

Rinse the greens thoroughly to remove all the dirt or sand. Put the greens in a large pot, and just cover them with water. (Again, it seems like a lot of greens, but they cook way down.) Turn heat to medium. In a frying pan, fry the bacon and onion. When bacon and onion are almost done, add the garlic and continue frying for a few more seconds. Add the entire pan, including grease, to the greens. Cover the greens, reduce heat to low and cook for about 2 hours or until the greens are soft. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Of course, the trick to all this is timing. You have to know when to start the various dishes in order to have them all come together at the same time. After you’ve done this a few times, it’s almost as if your body can feel the right time to put things on. I rarely get the timing wrong anymore.

When it’s all done, I like to serve the greens and the gravy in bowls. This keeps the meat from getting soggy from the greens and allows for greater gravy coverage when the meat bites are dipped in the gravy bowl one at a time.

Put it all together and it looks like this. Trust me when I tell you that if you cook this right, you’ll get addicted pretty fast. It’s just that good. And, leftover greens are great with hot, buttered cornbread the next day. Yummy!

So try it for yourself. Sit down and open the top button of your pants, because once you start, you won’t stop until your plate is clean. Be sure to try the gravy on both the meat and the potatoes!

Enjoy!

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Consider the history of human civilization. For the first few thousands of years, we had almost no technological movement at all. We had wheels, simple farming tools and fire, and we made the most out of them to subsist. It was only in the last 300 years or so that our world has begun to make huge advances in technology. And the greatest of our advances have happened in only the last 100 years. How lucky we are as a people to be living in these times!

Just think of it. We could have been living in the middle ages, when people were drawn and quartered for suggesting that the Earth rotated the Sun and not the other way around. We could have been living in the early ages when life was all about survival and conquest. In those times, comfort was something saved for kings and queens, and even then, comfort was relative.

Instead, we have seen amazing advances during our lifetimes! When I was born, televisions were brand new and all were black and white. Just a few years before, people had only had radios. In my lifetime, we broke the speed of sound, left the confines of Earth for the first time, walked on the Moon for the first time.

In my lifetime, LPs became 8 tracks, then cassettes, and then CDs. We went from board games, dominos and cards to the Wii, MMORPGs and PSPs. In my lifetime, we moved from manual typewriters to electric typewriters, to Selectrics, to computers. We still use the same keyboard configuration, but now it’s often split down the middle for ergonomic reasons.

In my lifetime, we’ve landed on Mars, we’ve flown to Saturn and Neptune, we’ve discovered a planet and decommissioned a planet. In my lifetime, we’ve mapped the human genome, we’ve cloned sheep and cats and dogs. We’ve gone from AM mono to FM stereo. We’ve invented surround sound and iMax theater.

And so much more…

How lucky we are to be here to experience this! Think of all you’ve seen in your lifetime and just imagine what it might be like in the future. The next 50 years are sure to be as exciting as the last 50. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

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I was born to be an OU football fan. Crimson and Cream is in my blood. From the time I can remember, game day was an event that brought our family together, and even after I’d moved away from home, it was OU football that kept us in touch. Most of my phone calls to Dad were made on Saturday just after another amazing play, and because OU’s team has always been pretty spectacular, those calls were usually made at least once a week.

When Barry Switzer left in 1989, the Sooner nation moaned in unison. As one of the winningest football coaches in American history, he led our team to 12 conference championships and three national championships, and we knew that it was his coaching that had taken us to such heights.

For the next several years, OU’s team floundered, and it was obvious to fans that it was because of a lack of leadership. Switzer’s first replacement was Gary Gibbs, a nice guy who had a decent record at OU (44-23-2), but who had zero charisma. We called him the Dan Quayle of football - he just wasn’t comfortable with the fans, the media and most of all, his team. It was obvious that the team didn’t give him the same respect they had given Coach Switzer.
Next was Howard Schnellenberger. Besides being a poor spokesman for the team we loved (He once ordered that OU records were thrown away, but they were secretly archived instead.), Schnellenberger was cocky and overconfident. He was even quoted as saying that movies would be made about his time at OU. In the end, his record was 5-5-1. Yawn. We were so glad when he left.

Coach John Blake was next. Another nice guy who wasn’t able to get the team to play. After three years, his record was only 16-22, and he moved on to a collective sigh of relief from all of Oklahoma. Those were dark times for OU fans, and we were ready for a change. We knew we couldn’t have Switzer back, but we wanted someone like him who would make the players want to play hard again. After ten dismal years, we were ready for a winner.

In came Bob Stoops. A 38 year old defensive coordinator at Florida, Stoops looked like your average Joe…a husband and father from the midwest who didn’t seem bigger than life at all. Still, when he spoke, it was easy to tell that there was more to him than just a pretty face. Obviously driven by a passion for the game and a need to win, he took the mediocre team the Sooners had become and immediately began turning them around. With him at the helm and his brother Mike as the defensive coordinator, the team began playing as if they cared again. His winning attitude became their winning attitude, and by the time his second year ended, OU was national football champion.

Over the years, Bob has fought as hard as his players. As a national powerhouse, OU is used to having a target on its back, and Bob is the first to defend his team against inequity and unfairness. The 2006 game against the University of Oregon is a case in point. During the game, officials awarded an onside kick to the Ducks when it should have been Oklahoma’s ball. Though we ultimately lost the decision, and consequently the game, Bob fought during and after the game to have the bad call overturned. Once the decision was made, he was gracious about it, but we all knew where he stood. All the officials were suspended for one game, and one left officiating for a year. The world knew that Bob had been right to defend the team.

The rest of the year was punctuated with hard knocks. Rhett Bomar, the team’s starting quarterback, and another player were kicked off the team for violating NCAA rules, and our star running back, Adrian Peterson, broke his collarbone, taking him out for the remainder of the regular season. Still, the team excelled and went on to win the conference championship.

Last night, the 2007 season began with OU playing against North Texas State University. Known more for their music program than for football, North Texas was completely outplayed, its players left standing in amazement as OU barreled over them to end with a score of 79 to 10. (The score after the first half - when the first string was still playing - was 56 to 0, which means our second string beat them 23 to 10 in the second half.) So, it looks like we’ve got a pretty good team again this year, though next week’s game against Miami will tell the tale.

No matter what happens, Bob Stoops will always be my hero. Strong, loyal and respectable; he has become beloved by an entire state. He gives our kids someone to look up to and emulate. He shows us all what it means to be passionate about your calling. No matter what the scoreboard shows, Bob Stoops is a winner, and I’m proud to be one of his biggest fans.

Championships:

• 2000 National Championship,
• 2000/2002/2004/2006 Big 12 Championship

Awards:

• 2000 Walter Camp Nat’l Coach of the Year
• 2000 Paul “Bear” Bryant Award
  
• 2000 Home Depot Coach of the Year
• 2000 AP Nat’l Coach of the Year
• 2003 Walter Camp Nat’l Coach of the Year

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