Monday, May 31, 2010

What's on your list?

As I type, my wife and daughter are on a little cruise in Miami. Before leaving, my daughter commented that swimming with dolphins (a plan on the trip) is something on her bucket list. Cool - she'll cross that off.

Now, there are the standard items that people put on their lists, from vacations to certain locales, owning this or this, meeting so-and-so.... tons of items on thousands of lists. Allow me to suggest a couple that may seem out of the normal, but something everyone should experience.

1) The National Anthem at a Chicago Backhawks game. If you are watching any of the Cup playoffs this year, you are seeing Frank Pellico and Jim Cornelison performing the National Anthem prior to the puck drop. And to put it simply....the crowd goes crazy. Trust me - what you see on the small screen in NOTHING compared to being there and experiencing it from a seat in the UC. YouTube has plenty of user uploads of the anthem. It a tradition for greater than 25 years. And if you are not pumped for hockey at the end, you must be dead.



2) The organ before a flick at the Tivoli. I remember finding the Tivoli years ago. When I took my wife and kids to a show there, I can still recall the looks on their faces when they walked in to a theater unlike anything they build nowadays. And if the theater isn't enough of a reason to catch a movie at the Tivoli, we happened to go on a night with the organ playing. You really should make sure you arrive 30 minutes or so prior to a show on any Friday or Saturday night and listen to the music while watching the standard pre-movie slide show. The organ is played with the fine musical stylings of a member of the CATOE. It's always a pleasure to hear some older songs in an area with nice acoustics. The movie previews always begin with with a rousing version of a fine patriot song, and the crowd shows their appreciation of the organist. While no United Center, it's always a great time.

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