Friday, January 22, 2010

All about pain and obsession.

Just so you know, I’ve practically been a shut-in for the last couple of weeks. My plantar fasciitis is driving me crazy again, this time just in my right heel. The pain is overwhelming (like I’m walking on broken glass) but it’s still better than the flare-up about a year ago when BOTH heels were so bad I couldn’t even stand. That’s when my doctor recommended SAS corrective shoes designed for this condition, and I haven’t worn anything else since. They look terrific with my cane.

Since I never go out any more I’ve had time to hang around the house and become obsessed with Johnny Mercer, the well-known American songwriter. Please don’t ask me to explain this, because I can’t. It all started a couple of months ago when I watched a documentary about him on TV in honor of his 100th birthday, and from that day on I was hooked. Seriously, I never knew he’d written anything besides “Moon River.” So I started reading about him, found several websites devoted to his life and work, and had fun discovering that Mercer wrote hundreds of extremely famous songs (“That Old Black Magic,” “Autumn Leaves,” “The Days of Wine and Roses”) ... and he recorded many of them as well. I even bought one of his CDs from Amazon.com. And so, to round out this extremely nerd-like post you can click here to take a look at Mercer’s impressive 34-page song list and here’s a rare Johnny Mercer video clip from an old Rosemary Clooney TV show back in the 1950s. Thank you for reading this. You can sing along if you want to.

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