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My close friend for the last 18 years, Ali, graduated from Duke with a triple major in four years, while working two jobs. Last year he had to walk in two different ceremonies at Penn on the same day, one for his MBA and one for his M.D.


Jon

I worked in a kitchen with a newly immigrated Chinese gentleman who had been the chief heart and lung surgeon for Nanjing City hospital. He pioneered the use of acupuncture as the sole anaesthetic in open heart surgeries when traditional general anaesthesia would have been risky. He received a national medal of honor from the Chinese government for this work.

His duty in the kitchen was as a pot washer, a sweaty, greasy, unappreciated job. He would often pull out a small notebook and inquire about the use of some English word or phrase, scribbling notes in Chinese and English during my attempted explanations. He always seemed genuinely happy doing this shitty pot-washing work.

Salut Dr Xiu!

My friend banged Englebert Humperdink's daughter. She didn't know he was her father at the time. We saw it on the news. Sting had this same guy thrown out of a concert backstage because he called him Gordon.

My friend tried out for the Ramones. He properly counted off "Commando" in German at the tryout. He would have been J.J. Ramone.

my mother arrived at her first year of college on a voice scholarship unable to read. Due the poor quality of post-Reconstruction southern schools and her ability to handle people, even adults, she had successfully faked her way through school up to that point. This was probably also due, in part, to some sort of undiagnosed learning disability, as well.

She was the newest soprano in the University opera company, but she was unable to read much beyond the most basic words. (This ability to bullshit one's way through complex situations while handling the massive amounts of stress this creates has passed on to my brother but not so much to me.) After nearly flunking out of college her freshman year, she returned to her hometown of Eden, NC for the summer and quietly and obsessively taught herself to read at college level.

Some years later, she received her Doctorate of Education.

My father has recently run his seventh marathon. He is 66 years old.

My grandfather never bought a single thing on credit, including the land his house was on. He built the house with the help of his brothers, and he helped them build theirs. He paid cash for every automobile he ever owned.

My wife has been a working actress since she was 17 years old, supporting herself the entire time.

That is incredible.

Uplifting.

My grandfather, Bruno, owned his own recording studio, Bee-Vee Sound, in New York for over thirty years. Before that, he worked at RCA and either before or after, for a man named Dick at Ohmstead Sound. He has worked with a ton of celebrities. I've told a few of his stories on here. I also still have to digitize the masters he gave me of a few things no one has ever heard anywhere ever except for him and the artist. Sendspace sooner or later. He was nominated for a Grammy in the '60s for Bob Prescott's "Cartoons in Stereo." A note on the record itself which I find pretty interesting from a site on the web:

Cartoons in Stereo was the brainchild of Bob Prescott, a prominent sound effects artist from the (g)olden days of network radio (Cavalcade of America, Lux Radio Theater, etc.). On this record, Mr. Prescott and friends make the many and varied noises, while veteran voice artist and commercial pitchman Cy Harrice (pronounced "Harris") provides the spoken parts for a series of 23 short, minimalistic comic vignettes punctuated by some hyperactive player-piano music (I suppose you could call these 'blackout skits' but for the fact that this is a record and you can't see the lights go down). The idea was apparently to create a sort of aural equivalent to the pithy, stylized single-panel cartoons you would have seen in The New Yorker, Playboy, and other popular magazines of the time. Some of the bits work, and some don't, but you cannot deny that Mr. Prescott made good use of what the swell reveiwers call the 'stereo soundstage.' So, put on your headphones for this one. I have removed some pops and carefully carved away some vicious surface noise to make this clip more listenable.

A note on the disc itself: it was released on Audio Fidelity records, an independent label (founded by Sidney Frey) that catered to the hi-fi nuts of the day. The cover features a scary-looking old-fashioned hypodermic syringe, which marks this as one of the releases in AF's "Doctored for Super-Stereo" series (presumably for the hyper-sepration between the two channels). Portions of the record (such as the gun-passing in "Russian Roulette") appear to have been binaurally recorded, a rare sonic treat. As with most of the AF discs I've seen, this one is pressed on hard, heavy-gauge, unwarpable vinyl, and has a handy strobe ring on the label to enable you (with the further aid of a 60Hz neon light) to adjust your turntable to the proper speed.

His brother in law, Dario, who was killed by his wife as he slept (yeah, I know, Felix Pappalardi/Phil Hartman shit) was a mechanical genius. He built all kinds of audio equipment, owned a few patents on a couple of things too but I never found out what. He build lathes, all kinds of machines, built his own preamps, mixers, tape machines, etc. He made his own watch, fishing rod, all this other stuff some of which I still have and still works. This coming from a man who never went to school a day after 10th grade and spoke basically no English. He was somewhat of an eccentric, but was a genius when it came to fixing/building.

My great-grandfather, Siro, was a bootlegger during Prohibition, once blew up a bathtub and got mustard-gassed during WWI. He worked in New Milford, Connecticut upon arrival in America in 1920 after going through Ellis Island (port of entry). He worked in a brickyard with other Italians for a group of Irish who busted their balls mercilessly. Siro, a hot-tempered and brutal man, killed a cop with a brick when a scuffle broke out between the men and they came to stop it. He left for New York City when the cops (mostly Irish too) in New Milford came to the communal housing and started arresting every Italian they found. Siro met my great grandmother, Teresa Cossavella, some time very soon after. That event basically had a big hand in my family forming the way it did. He was never apprehended for the crime.

Rocky Marciano visited my grandparents in the hospital when my father was born. He was a friend, in some capacity, with my grandfather.

They were also both lifelong Teamsters.

My mother's father, whom I never met, was supposedly one of General George Patton's right-hand-men.

My father is a former parole officer-turned-insurance salesman. Not sure what that means really, but he's a self made man who tried a few things on a whim and became successful at them.

My ex girlfriend's mom boned Mickey Rourke.

All of my friends have done some extraordinary things that I admire. Mostly just being them.

My great uncle was Michael Collin's bodyguard, though he quit before Collins got shot which looked better on his CV. Same guy was arrested for IRA membership and imprisoned in Mountjoy. He tunneled out. I now live just outside the walls of this very prison.

My friend's father booked the newly formed band Thin Lizzy to play his school class' end of year dance.

Different friend's mother slept with Liam Neeson. FYI Neeson's light sabre is of epic proportions.

My grandfather pitched a couple of seasons for the A's when they were Philadelphia. He was in the American League in the mid-30s, which would've put him up against some of the original Murderer's Row hitters, like Gehrig and Lazzeri, but I don't for sure if he ever faced them.

His numbers, unfortunately, look like a lot of pitchers' numbers in their first couple of American League seasons:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/u/upchuwo01.shtml

He injured his wrist in a car accident and that effectively ended his career. By all accounts, he had the potential to be a regular in the Major Leagues and could throw a particularly nasty curve. He died just 2 weeks after I was born, so I never knew him. I saw a picture of him once, on the mound and in the follow-through after a pitch. Broad-shoulders, keen eyes, square jaw, perfect balance. Like so many players from the sepia photos of that era, he looked like an original American god.

Barbo wrote:My close friend for the last 18 years, Ali, graduated from Duke with a triple major in four years, while working two jobs. Last year he had to walk in two different ceremonies at Penn on the same day, one for his MBA and one for his M.D.

Damn! That's really impressive. For those who may not know, it's worth pointing out that Penn's MBA program is the esteemed Wharton School.