DOuG of Arabia

I’m watching Lawrence of Arabia on TCM. One of the most memorable movie experiences of my life was seeing the 1989 reissue in a downtown Boston theater.

http://youtu.be/RQA_ldX0VI0

What made it so memorable, besides the fact it’s a great movie, was that only days before I had returned from Arabia myself. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I spent a month there on business, and it was a very busy, unusual month. I turned down an invitation to see a public beheading, from an American who had been working there for ten years. He told me the single most important issue confronting the Kingdom, and in turn America, over the next 20 years would be the Islamic Revolution that had begun ten years before in Iran. He wasn’t wrong.

Milk spilled backwards

A week or so ago I added a link over on the right for singer-songwriter Kate Klim. As Kate pointed out last night at the Off the Common Coffeehouse in Bridgewater, MA, her name is, yes, milk spelled backwards. Now based in Nashville, Kate Klim is originally from Illinois, and she attended Berklee in Boston to study music. I sent some money to Kate about a year ago when she was working on her new CD, Kamikaze Love, and that’s why my name is printed on the case.

This is Kate performing the title track. (I need to get a more light-sensitive camera with a lens stronger than 3x zoom!)

[media id=236 width=512 height=404]

Appearing with Kate was Susan Levine, whose most recent CD is Atlas. (Her Atlas didn’t shrug.) 😉 After their solo sets, which were both great, Susan finished the evening with Kate singing harmony. Wonderful!

[media id=237 width=512 height=404]

I think Carol and I were strangers in an audience of old friends, but we were made to feel welcome and we enjoyed the concert very much. It was nice being able to chat with Kate and Susan, and Kate demonstrated something cool that I’d read about on the tech sites, but hadn’t seen before — an iPhone with a credit card swiper!