There were 1,900 people who became teenagers again Friday night at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.
Well, teenagers for 90 minutes anyway.
Frankie Valli can still do that to us.
The 70-something singer has still got the pipes many in Van Wezel's capacity crowd remember when we were in high school.
Or younger.
Backed up by four talented fellows -- the current Four Seasons -- who can sing and dance, Valli took us all back to the '60s with hits that were the soundtrack of our lives back in the day.
Days of innocence.
Who can forget "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Candy Girl," "Let's Hang On," "Rag Doll," "Sherry," and "Walk Like A Man"?
Valli also wowed the crowd with 70s hits, "December '63 (Oh, What A Night)," "Grease," "My Eyes Adored You," and "Swearin' To God" among others.
Everybody sang along, too. Not very well, either, but nobody cared.
It was a blast.
Oh, what a night, indeed.
Thank you, Frankie Valli.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
A mountain, a Valentine to treasure
After two days of rain, the sun was shining on Benbulben at last.
‘Twas a beautiful Irish morning, a momentous one for me and my sweetheart.
Sherri Manring just didn’t know it yet.
We had come to Benbulben, a fabled mountain in County Sligo, to scatter my mother’s ashes last August.
Sligo is her ancestral home and we had journeyed there six times before she passed in 2008.
We loved Benbulben, gazing at it for hours and taking pictures.
It is the resting place of W.B. Yeats, the beloved Irish poet, buried in nearby Drumcliffe.
It is also the haunt, legend has it, of Celtic spirits like the giant Finn McCool.
Read more in Sunday's Mannix About Manatee.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Will real Florida winter please come home?
Is it ever going to be sunny and warm again for more than two days in a row?
This winter has been the pits.
A run of rotten, cold, rainy weather since before the Christmas holidays.
Just when we get a taste for a day, maybe two, of the Florida winter we love -- clear blue skies and a crisp 70 degrees -- we're back to dreary weather like we're in Toledo.
OK, maybe not that bad.
I guess this is the price we pay for having El Nino save our necks during the last hurricane season, only to turn around and do this to us now.
Leave it to one of our Canadian snowbirds to put this lousy weather in perspective.
Oscar Champagne was enjoying a cup of coffee at Starbucks on Cortez and U.S. 41 the other day while it was raining.
He said when he last checked the temperature here was a damp 66.
Back home in Ontario, it was 6.
"I'll take a 60-degree difference like this anytime," he said.
Easy for him to say.
This winter has been the pits.
A run of rotten, cold, rainy weather since before the Christmas holidays.
Just when we get a taste for a day, maybe two, of the Florida winter we love -- clear blue skies and a crisp 70 degrees -- we're back to dreary weather like we're in Toledo.
OK, maybe not that bad.
I guess this is the price we pay for having El Nino save our necks during the last hurricane season, only to turn around and do this to us now.
Leave it to one of our Canadian snowbirds to put this lousy weather in perspective.
Oscar Champagne was enjoying a cup of coffee at Starbucks on Cortez and U.S. 41 the other day while it was raining.
He said when he last checked the temperature here was a damp 66.
Back home in Ontario, it was 6.
"I'll take a 60-degree difference like this anytime," he said.
Easy for him to say.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Game was super. Commercials? Eh
The Super Bowl was just that.
Its commercials? Not so super.
Here's my two cents during what was a great game:
LeBron James and Dwight Howard playing for a sack of McDonald's. Then Larry Bird steals their lunch. Loved it.
Bud Light's commercials left me cold. I don't mean that in a good way, either. Especially the one with bottles as microphones. Hated it. The one with the "Lost" theme was the best of a forgettable lot.
The Tebow spot? This is what the fuss was over? It was well done.
The texting ad with the old Chicago Bears reprising their Super Bowl shuffle was weak. I liked the original 35 years ago.
Of all the Doritos commercials, I loved the one with the boy, the single mom and her new suitor the best. Pow! Keep your hands off my mama. And keep your hands off my Doritos.
Those Go Daddy.com spots with Danica Commercial were nowhere.
Monster.com's fiddling beavers? Cute.
Budweiser's human bridge? Hmmm. Dug the one with the Clydesdales and the longhorn steer, though.
And what was with careerbuilder.com and the pants commercial after it? Bad bodies in underwear? Ugh.
The VW commercial with people punching each other in the arm after spotting a VW in a different color was clever. Took a second to understand what they were saying. But clever.
Enough with Denny's and the screaming chickens. The first time was funny. Then it got old.
The e-trade spots with the toddlers has gotten old, too. Way old.
The Coke commercial with the guy sleepwalking through perilous terrain to "Bolero" was good.
Please tell me our tax dollars didn't pay for that incomprehensible spot about the U.S. Census.
Taco Bell and Charles Barkley? Eh.
Its commercials? Not so super.
Here's my two cents during what was a great game:
LeBron James and Dwight Howard playing for a sack of McDonald's. Then Larry Bird steals their lunch. Loved it.
Bud Light's commercials left me cold. I don't mean that in a good way, either. Especially the one with bottles as microphones. Hated it. The one with the "Lost" theme was the best of a forgettable lot.
The Tebow spot? This is what the fuss was over? It was well done.
The texting ad with the old Chicago Bears reprising their Super Bowl shuffle was weak. I liked the original 35 years ago.
Of all the Doritos commercials, I loved the one with the boy, the single mom and her new suitor the best. Pow! Keep your hands off my mama. And keep your hands off my Doritos.
Those Go Daddy.com spots with Danica Commercial were nowhere.
Monster.com's fiddling beavers? Cute.
Budweiser's human bridge? Hmmm. Dug the one with the Clydesdales and the longhorn steer, though.
And what was with careerbuilder.com and the pants commercial after it? Bad bodies in underwear? Ugh.
The VW commercial with people punching each other in the arm after spotting a VW in a different color was clever. Took a second to understand what they were saying. But clever.
Enough with Denny's and the screaming chickens. The first time was funny. Then it got old.
The e-trade spots with the toddlers has gotten old, too. Way old.
The Coke commercial with the guy sleepwalking through perilous terrain to "Bolero" was good.
Please tell me our tax dollars didn't pay for that incomprehensible spot about the U.S. Census.
Taco Bell and Charles Barkley? Eh.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Let NFL take its bloated ball home
So who are you rooting for today?
Me? Saints.
After what New Orleans has been through since Hurricane Katrina, I believe most NFL fans feel the same way.
Yet here it is, the high holy day of Football Americana, and what looms over Super Bowl 44?
A lockout in 2011.
The likelihood has been described in apocalyptic terms.
A national calamity.
An American sporting disaster.
Give me a break.
Read more Sunday in Mannix About Manatee
Me? Saints.
After what New Orleans has been through since Hurricane Katrina, I believe most NFL fans feel the same way.
Yet here it is, the high holy day of Football Americana, and what looms over Super Bowl 44?
A lockout in 2011.
The likelihood has been described in apocalyptic terms.
A national calamity.
An American sporting disaster.
Give me a break.
Read more Sunday in Mannix About Manatee
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Peter Warrick: Bowden made me a man
After Bobby Bowden was done speaking Thursday morning at Bradenton Auditorium, the legendary coach received a number of gifts and shows of gratitude for coming to the Third Annual Leadership Prayer Breakfast for Take Stock in Children of Manatee County.
One of them was a hug from Peter Warrick.
The former Southeast High School star helped Bowden win FSU's second national championship in 1999 with an MVP performance.
The better part of Warrick's football career is behind him now.
So, too, its travails like the foolish Dillard's shopping scam.
Yet a decade later, after six years in the NFL and brief stints in Canada, Arena League, United Football League and Indoor Football League, the former first-round draft choice has never forgotten the coach who stood by his side, helped him get back on track as an impact player and, more importantly, as a young man.
Their long embrace behind the podium spoke volumes Thursday morning.
Later, after signing autographs and posing for pictures with FSU fans and folks who remember the excitement he generated at Southeast, Warrick paid Bowden the highest of compliments.
"He made me a man," the former Seminole said. "He was my father away from home."
One of them was a hug from Peter Warrick.
The former Southeast High School star helped Bowden win FSU's second national championship in 1999 with an MVP performance.
The better part of Warrick's football career is behind him now.
So, too, its travails like the foolish Dillard's shopping scam.
Yet a decade later, after six years in the NFL and brief stints in Canada, Arena League, United Football League and Indoor Football League, the former first-round draft choice has never forgotten the coach who stood by his side, helped him get back on track as an impact player and, more importantly, as a young man.
Their long embrace behind the podium spoke volumes Thursday morning.
Later, after signing autographs and posing for pictures with FSU fans and folks who remember the excitement he generated at Southeast, Warrick paid Bowden the highest of compliments.
"He made me a man," the former Seminole said. "He was my father away from home."
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Hurricanes going to Jersey? Yo!
The Manatee Hurricanes going to New Jersey?
Yo!
That coach Joe Kinnan's team is close to a deal to play Don Bosco Prep is wonderful and I'm proud Manatee will make that trip.
I'm a Jersey Boy, who graduated from DePaul Catholic H.S., in Wayne, N.J., not far from where the 'Canes will play the 2009 national champs in Ramsey.
The DePaul Spartans were pretty good themselves, losing only once in the two years I went there, but that was w-a-a-a-y back in the day.
Try 45 years ago.
The 'Canes planned trip evokes some wonderful memories.
Going to the Pequannock-DePaul game, a good rivalry
Hanging out at the Milk Barn in Pompton Lakes, N.J., afterward.
Following the duel between Fairlawn High's Bruce Jankowski and DePaul halfback Tommy Zampetti for the state scoring lead.
Jankowski went to Ohio State.
Zampetti went to Vietnam.
He was wounded but came back, thank goodness.
A good guy.
Those are the kind of kids and times that come to mind, thinking about Manatee's trip to North Jersey in September.
Not the morons in "Jersey Shore," who, with one exception, are all from New York.
Where the 'Canes are headed is my New Jersey.
Yo!
That coach Joe Kinnan's team is close to a deal to play Don Bosco Prep is wonderful and I'm proud Manatee will make that trip.
I'm a Jersey Boy, who graduated from DePaul Catholic H.S., in Wayne, N.J., not far from where the 'Canes will play the 2009 national champs in Ramsey.
The DePaul Spartans were pretty good themselves, losing only once in the two years I went there, but that was w-a-a-a-y back in the day.
Try 45 years ago.
The 'Canes planned trip evokes some wonderful memories.
Going to the Pequannock-DePaul game, a good rivalry
Hanging out at the Milk Barn in Pompton Lakes, N.J., afterward.
Following the duel between Fairlawn High's Bruce Jankowski and DePaul halfback Tommy Zampetti for the state scoring lead.
Jankowski went to Ohio State.
Zampetti went to Vietnam.
He was wounded but came back, thank goodness.
A good guy.
Those are the kind of kids and times that come to mind, thinking about Manatee's trip to North Jersey in September.
Not the morons in "Jersey Shore," who, with one exception, are all from New York.
Where the 'Canes are headed is my New Jersey.
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