19'96 More Lessons for Grandson from Son's Lives

"Michael's band, "Circus Guy", has been asked back o Manhattan's Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston Street in Greenwich Village for its third gig on Jnuary 4, 1997 -- and its first in the coveted 8 o'clock Saturday night slot! [Anbody got a photo of that gig?] So we're going to have a Happy New Year, 1997, and want you to have one, too. Michael and Amy bought a loft in the next village, Hastings-on-Hudson,and that loft is ideal for rehearsing nd writing. Hind and I helped move them from our village, Dobbs Ferry, for their firsr Christmas there.
T.H., in addition to being best man and playing and singing at his older brother's wedding to Amy, sang a duet with the Metropolitan Opera's legendary Marily Horne, called "the greatest singer in the world by 'Opera News', when his jazz,-rock band in California entertained at her daugher's wedding. Music has kept him sane during the five years he spent teaching science and technology in South Central L.A., first at Crenshaw, notorious from the film "Boys in the Hood"d, then at Hispanic Jefferson High, now with students at risk at Hollywood High School -- helping save the children through the riots after Rodney KIng's beating by Los Angeles police and in the famous earthquake At school, he obtains grants for expanding Hollywood High's technology lab. At night, hhe and fellow Harvard alunmi Larry O'Keefe, son of my Reader's Digest colleague, Dan O'Keefe, got scrreen credit for scoring the 50's feature film, "Sisy Q?
(Who do you suppose, Baby Culhane, taught your Dad, born in 1962, that there was a 50's --
Sha-boom, Sha-boom! And he has his on Internet Web Site, innoventor@wwwd, eutopia-innoventions.com. On last summer's vacation, he rejoined his beloved Harvard Krokodiloes A Capella group and toured Europe: Berlin, Dusseldorf, a castle in Lichtenstein, Prague, London -- ending up in Tangier, Morocco, where the Harvard singers entertained at a hotel that happened to be owned by an old Bagdadi family that knew Hind's family. In the audience was the American expatriate novelist, PAUL BOWLES, author of the novel, The Sheltering Sky", which Bernardo Bertolucci made into the 1990 movie that offered acting opportunities to DEBRA WINGER and JOHN MALKOVICH, as well as to Bowles himself, who served as narrator and a man at the bar. Also in the audience was the world's leading oud player, the Iraqi master MUNIR BASHIR, with whose son T.H> played at the Sheraton Ishtar, while Iranian missiles rained down on Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War. Now, of course, Hind' s family is in exil, but nothing could stop her father, once put in a prison cel by Saddam, from being at his grandson Michael's wedding.
My next book, on the making of "FANTASIA 99" by Walt Disny's nephew, Roy Disneyf, is coming well. The newe segments that ill be combined with some of the old are all recording by the NEW STOKOWSKI, JAMES LEVINE OF THE METROPOLITAN OPERAF ORCHESTRA, recording with the NEW PHILADELPHIA, THE CHICAGO SYMPONY ORCHESTRA. I was there most recently for a suprlative recording of the finale, STRAVINSKY'S FIREBIRD.
\ In addition to writing comic books, Amy just published three story-history books publishd by Macmillan's school division. Hind wroe the articles on Arab film for Columbia Universiy's new Encyclopedia of the Middle East. I have been asked by the University of the Arts in Philadelphia to teach for them a course in the history of animation that I was the first in the world to teach for college credit, at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 1972. So there is a lot of writing going on in OUR TOWN and their BEDFORD FALLSF, from whixch this Merry Christmas and Happy New Year comes!
(This entry is meant to illustrate for BABY CULHANE the Joys of Music, of Singing, of Teaching, of Writing, of Traveling, and of Meeting New People, that gave his father and uncle and grandfather and grandfather so much pleasure in 1996. With Love, John and Hind.