December 2010 – Barry Friedman's Blankets

(Alas, the links in this entry are no longer active).

Last month I mentioned I had written an article about basketball star Steve Nash and would be making the acquaintance of singer Gary Brooker. Here’s the update on both scintillating stories!
My article said that Nash, a Canadian citizen, would be leaving the Phoenix Suns to run for mayor of Victoria, British Columbia. I’ll be darned – turns out I made the whole thing up!

Chaos ensued. This is the link to the local CBS-TV piece on the hijinks and includes a telephone interview with me. http://www.kpho.com/local-video/index.html?rabnetworks_video_id=4402958 Their reporter asked for a picture of yours truly to accompany his report and didn’t I send him one of my oldest son?

As a bonus I am throwing in a link to a National Public Radio interview I did. http://kjzz.org/news/arizona/archives/201011/hn_fakenewtimes I discuss this hoax and a few other little white lies I may have told in the past.

I met Procol Harum lead singer Gary Brooker after a magnificent performance in Los Angeles and it went splendidly. He was slowly sipping a glass of red wine when we began conversing and my sparkling banter must have really put him in a celebratory mood because he was chugging the bottle within three minutes. That the guy totally loved me was obvious during the concert when he clearly looked right at me and sang, that’s right, “A Whiter Shade Of Pal”.

It’s debatable whether this month’s blanket is an Indian blanket. A couple puny lines of geometric pattern do not an Indian blanket normally make, but this blanket belonged to an Indian fighter. Major General David S. Stanley won the Medal Of Honor for his valor in the Union Army and after the Civil War headed the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873.

Stanley and his regiment were dispatched to stop Indian raids in west Texas in 1879. He went to Santa Fe in 1882 as commander of the District of New Mexico. In March 1884, he assumed command of the Department of Texas. He died in 1902 and this blanket dates from 1890-1900. I find it astounding that I know what this guy did all those years and yet don’t have a clue where I was or what I was doing from 1965 through 1980.

And with that, this month’s entry is history!