The Wrongologist

Today is Wrongo’s birthday! We will spend the evening with close friends, great food, champagne and music. We will talk about how as 2016 draws to a close, America is a deeply unsettled nation.

We can’t decide about our national priorities. We hear from the pols and pundits that it should be jobs and the economy, but they also say it should be national security, or it must be to repeal Obamacare and lower the tax burden on the faux job creators. But they also say that we should remain the world’s policeman, so why weren’t we at the table for the Syrian cease-fire?

Tomorrow we are offered the “fresh slate” that the Universe sends our way each year, so here’s to pretending we’re going to be completely changed men and women in 2017!

Let’s get to some New Year’s music:

First, a snippet of the 2014 Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert, “The Radetzky March” by Johann Strauss. Daniel Barenboim conducts, but he mostly walks around the orchestra shaking hands with the players. He conducts the audience once or twice. Note the audience’s enthusiastic clapping. The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert is broadcast live around the world to an audience of 50 million in 90 countries. The demand for tickets is so high that people pre-register one year in advance in order to participate in a drawing of tickets for seats the following year:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Second, it wouldn’t be New Year’s at the Mansion of Wrong without playing “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” This year, we will be listening to the version by The Orioles from 1949. Formed in the late 1940s, The Orioles are generally acknowledged as R&B’s first vocal group. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lgtk79GQlA

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

The final tune for New Year’s is about sentimentality and hope for the future. It’s Barry Manilow’s “It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve” from the 1977 “Live” album.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Blogging will resume on January 2, 2017.