Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Ludwig and Stuff

December 14th . . . two days until Beethoven’s birthday. That was, as we all know, in the year 1770. A giant of a year that was. So what else occurred in that amazing year?
Well, let’s see . . . we have the Boston massacre on March 5th. That was a biggie, huh? A bunch of royalist goons in uniform decided to test their funky muzzle loaders on a bunch of Bostonians. Who knew they could actually shoot? Bummer.
And then James Cook (known to his buds in the hood as Jimmie) dropped anchor during April in what would be called Botany Bay, because of all the stuff, ya’know plants and thingies, discovered there. Yeah, that was big . . . and then Jimmie and his guys went on and discovered . . . are you ready . . . Australia! So, it turns out they named a town in Oz “1770” because of that biggie.
And Marie Antoinette of “let’m eat cake” fame arrived in France and married that guy soon to be King Louis XVI (who unfortunately lost his head . .heh heh heh). Marie baby . . . wow, dudes . . .and we think Carly and Justin are big. And then later that same month, they went and hosted a humongous fireworks display and killed 132 people . . . talk about a downer.
July 1st . . . a dazzling comet, Lexell by name, passed the earth, just barely missing –man, it was only 2,184,129 kilometers from us . . . we were almost toast.
And then, as the year was fading into oblivion, along comes Ludwig to dazzle us all. Every time I consider complaining about some “getting older” ailment, I think about Ludwig, conducting his ninth and last symphony, while he was so deaf he not only couldn't hear the orchestra, but he couldn’t even hear the audience applauding at the end. Someone kindly turned the not so old (poor guy was only 57 when he caught a cold and proceeded to die) guy around, so he could be properly and thunderously applauded.
Yeah . . . Ludwig, I salute you babe. You were a real mensch.

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