Shell shocked at the Summitt

Pat Summitt, the all everything, all world coach of the Tennessee Vols Women's basketball program went viral today and announced that she has been diagnosed with early onset of dementia, Alzheimer's type by physicians at the Mayo clinic. I was at lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant just on the outskirts of China town with my friend Jane, discussing the microcosm of our lives when Jane dropped the news of Coach Summitt's irreversible brain disease. I almost choked on my clay pot. WTF? Pat Summitt is 59 years old. She is the all time winning coach in NCAA history. Think about that fact for a second. She has coached and won more games than any man or woman at the college Division 1 level. Ever. After experiencing cognitive lapses of team practices and meeting times, lost keys, tardiness, and on several occasions inability to recollect schemes or set plays during games, Coach Summitt suspected something was wrong. Years ago, I remember watching a video of the Tennessee Vols filmed in a season after they had won the NCAA title. 96-97? The documentary was a ferocious profile of Summitt and her players battling through losses, injuries, adversity and inter squad conflicts. Summitt was relentless, jawing with players who screwed up, or cutting them down with her infamous'withering' stare, which was far worse than a stone cold tongue lashing and a slap upside the head. At the end of the season, suffering through ten excruciating losses to teams like ODU, FLA and LATech, the team dug deep, found a load of grit, and rose up to beat UConn and then ODU for another NCAA title. Back to back, baby. Slowly, the boys at Sports Illustrated woke up and took notice. In 1998 Pat Summitt, featured on the front cover of SI, is not holding a trophy or a basketball. Those who have seen her on the sidelines through the decades recognized the simplicity and the ferocity of the cover photograph. In a nod to the legend, the cover is vintage Summitt with the 'stare.' The one that launched a 1,000 wins, y'all. And something I'll always remember. Especially this season as she defies the odds and continues to coach.

Friday Fish Wrap

1. I have my own personal 'Idaho' of stockpiled phobias. One of those jewels is being trapped underground on a public trans system. Irrational? To each her own. Whenever I embark for a jaunt on the lovely BART rail network which connects a web of metropolitan destinations in the San Francisco bay area I never step onto the platform without a mini flashlight, a bottle of water, ipod, and a charged cell phone (I was caught in a 24 hour power outage in Honolulu with my wallet locked in the hotel room safe and my cell phone battery level hovering at 40%). Fool me once. Uh-huh. Fool me twice. No. No. So when BART snapped this week and halted all trains for 3 hours due to a phantom glitch, I loved that spin, I dialed up some croc tears and sobbed with relief that, thank the goddess, I had been spared. Then again, Mama didn't raise no fool.

2. Have to give that old warhorse, Diana Nyad props for attempting to swim the 103 miles between Cuba and the Florida keys without a shark cage. Nyad 61 and thwarted once in a previous attempt, succumbed to intense shoulder pain, asthma and choppy currents after 29 hours in the water at the half way point. Nyad an endurance swimmer, and record holder, who had trained 2 years for this 2nd attempt said it was unlikely she would try the swim again.

3. The Perseids are baaaack. Showering the summer night sky. Best times to check out the light show are on Friday and Saturday night. And lucky you, if you're somewhere outside of the city. Full moon flooded windows the last 48 hours; not really optimum for the display. The Perseids in their magnificence, however, cannot hold a candle to the Leonids. One of the most spectacular displays I've seen was in either 2001 or 2002. Backyard bundled up against the cold. Sitting in a lawn chair with my next door neighbor. Drinking tea and coffee (where were those cross hatched benes from my youth?), we waited. Mitchel smoked. I was tempted. And then around 2am the Leonids arrived. It was cool. Super cool...streaking across the night sky, hundreds of meteors, the trailing dust of the comet, Tempel-Tuttle, showered the horizon for several hours. Spectacular. Silent. For more than a nano second, I longed to be sprawled on the desert floor.

Covers

Today was the day for uploading some new tunes into the pod. An album which had been on my radar for quite awhile was the Byrds 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo'...a 1968 vinyl which didn't sit well with Nashville or the rock world when it arrived on the scene. And since I was going to be mining for some new musical notes relatively close to the genre, why not load up on those two good ol' boys, Bob Wills and Hank Williams too. But, what triggered all of this, sometimes it's a relatively small yearning, what I really coveted more than anything was the cover of Bob Dylan's song, 'You ain't going Nowhere,' the lead track on the 'Sweetheart' album. Then I got to thinking. Hmm. What makes a good cover great? Is it the singer(s) or the song?

Which dispatched me to a song perched close to the summit of my top ten list of covers: 'I only have eyes for you.' Composed in 1934 by Harry Warren and Al Dublin and floated off the silver screen by Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, the song became an instant hit. Throughout the decades 'I only have eyes for you,' has been covered by Frank, Ella, Billie, The Temptations, Bette, Carly, and geezuz, even Doris Day. But the definitive cover is The Flamencos rendition which echoed hauntingly throughout the great 1973 film, American Graffiti. To this day, I can close my eyes and see the line of cruising cars along the boulevard and hear those beautiful melodic notes conveyed by the Flamencos. Sitting comfortably on a pedestal right next to the Flamencos is Art Garfunkel's 1975 cover which the Brits adored, showing Art the love, by making it #1 on their billboard charts. A smidge lower, but definitely hanging with the big boys is Peggy Lee's cover, a fabulous video catching a youthful Lee in a simple but lavish rendition of this quintessential song. Slow weekend? Killing time before lunch or dinner? You tube any one of these covers. And tuck into the passion.