Finally..."Geaux Tigers!"

Two years after I announced I'd do it, I got it done at last. Had to take care of two years' worth of life issues...but I got this project done, once and for all.

I'm talking about the 2019 edition of the "shoulda/coulda/woulda" NCAA Division 1-A football playoffs.

Using Dave Koch Sports' Action! PC Football, here's how the 24-team field fared:

FIRST ROUND (seeding in parentheses): Oregon (9) 37, Miami (OH) (24) 14/Alabama (17) 38, Air Force (16) 14/Penn State (13) 38, Cincinnati (20) 17/Wisconsin (21) 24, Notre Dame (12) 10/Florida (19) 39, SMU (14) 14/Utah (11) 35, Florida Atlantic (22) 6/Minnesota (18) 38, Navy (15) 17/Louisiana-Lafayette (23) 32, Baylor (10) 13

SECOND ROUND: Ohio State (1) 47, Oregon 14/Alabama 31, Georgia (8) 20/Memphis (5) 52, Penn State 48/Wisconsin 24, Boise State (4) 10/Florida 31, Oklahoma (6) 13/Clemson (3) 28, Utah 7/Minnesota 38, Appalachian State (7) 10/Louisiana State (2) 52, Louisiana-Lafayette 31

QUARTERFINAL ROUND: Ohio State 26, Alabama 14/Wisconsin 28, Memphis 17/Florida 30, Clemson 27 (1 OT)/Louisiana State 38, Minnesota 35

SEMIFINAL ROUND: Wisconsin 33, Ohio State 21/Louisiana State 31, Florida 28

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: Louisiana State 41, Wisconsin 17

Playoff MVP: LSU quarterback Joe Burrow.

Hey! We've been here before!

Have you been following either or both of this season's NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments?

I was disappointed at both Iowa basketball teams, pleased at how far both Iowa State hoops squads did, but...I wasn't surprised at how the season ended for Nebraska's women, Creighton's men, and Creighton's women.

Now each tourney is down to four clubs...and here's how I think it'll all end:

WOMEN: South Carolina over Louisville, Stanford over Connecticut (although I smell a win for the Huskies against the Cardinal), and South Carolina ending Stanford's reign.

MEN: Villanova over Kansas, Duke over North Carolina, and Duke sending Mike Krzyzewski into retirement in style by stopping Villanova.

There you are: Eight teams that've already been to the Final Four before...seven of them have won it all before. (Only Louisville's women have yet to be the last to cut down the nets.)

Well, let's just sit back this weekend and see what REALLY happens.

The countdown is over

I needed to let you know that, due to a bunch of personal issues (most of them job-related, some related to finances, some even church-related), I've decided to stop holding the Ragtime to Riches Festival. The continuing pandemic sure hasn't helped, as it wiped out what would've been the 2020 and 2021 R to R events. Still...I'm thankful for everyone who attended the festival since its 2005 inception, and I'm thankful for every performer who did the festival. Haven't dropped music for good, because I'm still going to the Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, IA to perform on the last Sunday of the month. (Hope to see you there!)

He helped make theater organ fun!

He passed away at age eighty on 12-30-2021...and he was the very first person I saw play a theater pipe organ in person.

His name was Jack Moelmann. In November 1984, he did a concert at Nebraska's Bellevue Little Theater, a playhouse that, at the time, had a two-manual, five-rank Wurlitzer theater organ. After the concert, I was invited to what turned out to be an organizational meeting of the River City Theatre Organ Society. I've been a member of RCTOS ever since. And Jack was one of the biggest reasons I joined the club.

At the time I met Jack, he was an Air Force colonel who was stationed at Bellevue's Offutt Air Force Base. He'd been in the Air Force since 1965, the year he received his Bachelor of Science degree from Bradley University.

Chicago-born Jack got started in music in 1949, the year he turned eight years old (he not only took to the piano, he also sang in the church choir). He was hooked for the rest of his life, thanks to the many gigs he played in high school and college. Theater organ fans around here were very fortunate that Jack lived here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area during 1984-85, a time when RCTOS was in its infancy. This highly-accomplished (both in the Air Force and in the world's concert halls and movie palaces) man helped make those early meetings fun, due to his vast repertoire AND his trademark humor.

Jack joined the American Theatre Organ Society in 1967; in 1983, he launched a 23-year period where he served on the ATOS board of directors in one capacity or another. From 1985 to 1988, he ran ATOS...then became its secretary in 1993, keeping that gig until 2006. Two years before becoming ATOS secretary, Jack retired from the US Armed Forces. All the time he was in the USAF, Jack earned hardware such as the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Air Force Meritorious Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit. Jack eventually left the Omaha Metro and moved to the St. Louis area...where he turned everything up a bunch of notches. He became a lifetime member of ATOS in 1994, an inductee into the organization's Hall of Fame in 2008, and ATOS Organist of the Year in 2018.

The crowning touch (well, I like to think so!) came in August 2008...when he headlined at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. (If I can find that on YouTube, well...)

Jack, I'm glad to have been a part of your life.

I'm glad you were a part of mine.

To John

One day late last month, I looked in the obituaries section of the Omaha World Herald. And I was shocked to find John F. McIntyre's name in there.

When wife Laura Vranes and parents Dan and Barbara McIntyre were listed among John's survivors, it hit me: I met John and Laura on Labor Day 2013 (9-2-2013) at Omaha's Tree of Life Sculpture. The occasion was the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area's "Play Me, I'm Yours" street piano art project. By contributing Barbara's old Richardson upright piano to the local exhibit (and enabling Bill Hoover to paint the piano), and with Barb's okay to the contribution in the first place, Laura and John helped make the Omaha Metro's stop on Luke Jerram's "PMIY" tour a tremendous success. The "Boston's Blog" post about the Tree of Life experience ("Monday, September 2, 2013: M-A-G-I-C!") is still up. (Check it out!) John, you, Laura, and Barb enabled so many of us in the Omaha area to have so much fun during "Play Me's" time in the local spotlight. Thank you so much for all the great things you've contributed.

Sorry I've been away so long...

It's been a year since I last posted anything here on "Boston's Blog." And I apologize. Just didn't know what to make of the new format...at the time the Blogger format changed, you couldn't add photos. (And adding pics is one thing I like to do with a blog.) Still trying to ride out the coronavirus pandemic...and I've been devoting more time to writing screenplays and trying to break into screenwriting. Well, that's enough of me. How are YOU doing?

Good enough for me...and then some!

He'd double the tax rate for nonworking millionaires, eliminate the lower rates on dividends and capital gains for those Americans who annually make a million bucks or more, and boost the top tax rate to almost 40%. He'll continue to champion America's constantly-marginalized people. Once in the driver's seat, he'll start a pandemic testing board to scale up and allocate nationwide testing. He also wants to launch a state-and-local-government emergency fund to provide medical supplies, hire more health-care workers, give certain essential workers overtime pay, end cost sharing for COVID-19 testing and treatment, and start up a national public health jobs corps. (Who knows? Maybe these moves could mean 100,000 people doing contract tracing.) Scientists would be taken seriously. Period. His housing plan would cut child poverty by 33%, reduce racial opportunity gaps, and would even help with middle-income housing affordability, especially in cities on the two coasts. And then there's his economic plan: In it, $400 billion over a four-year period would go to American-made materials and services. At the same time, the plan would earmark $300 billion more for US-based research and development...like electric cars, artificial intelligence, etc. The plan also boasts a 100-day "supply chain review" to get federal agencies to choose American-made medical goods and supplies. It'd close up all the loopholes in the government's "Buy American" clauses. And his economic plan would restore the jobs that the coronavirus pandemic has taken away. In addition, the plan would fire up an additional five million gigs. He'd build on the Affordable Care Act and on the Violence Against Women Act...and these moves would help level the playing field for America's physically-challenged people. And earlier this week, he found his runningmate: US Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). Well, there you are: A ticket whose members have been fighting for years for America's rank-and-file citizens. On 11-3-2020 (better yet, earlier than that as long as I can vote by mail), I'll be more than happy to cast my ballot for former Vice President Joe Biden and his pick for vice president, Harris. How about you?