Oh man, I feel bad for the guy who sang the Star Spangled Banner at the opening of the Obama inauguration and messed up the last entrance on the word “brave”. I thought a couple entrances before that seemed a bit tentative, but then thought no, that was just my imagination – they must practice this a thousand times.

Then at the very end the band stopped silent and he came in with “B” for brave – just his “b” hanging all by it’s little lonesome with so many millions of people watching. Ouch! That’s one that would have me waking up in the middle of the night in a sweat for years.

You can listen to it at 1:24 in this video clip.

UPDATE: Mmmm…..I haven’t seen this posted anywhere else and no comments. Maybe there was no mistake, and it was just an audio bug in the time delay?

*Someone just wrote me and said “this could’ve been a C-flat”. Ouch, that’s bad!*

I finally got to ride the elephants! That was one of the things I wanted to do while visiting Thailand. This was my first full vacation since relocating to China with Cirque Du Soleil. We spent three days in Bangkok and four days in Phuket, Thailand.

In the picture above I am getting a massage from a baby elephant. Believe it or not – he actually cracked my back for me and it felt great. A true Thai massage!

This was a really great touristy ghylo tour – complete with elephant rides, ox rides, Thai cooking class, elephant show, monkey show, rice farming tutorial and demonstration of rubber tree harvesting – and an exhibition of Thai Boxing. Very fun stuff. This was my favorite tour that we took.

My friend Olivier was not very excited about riding the elephants and went along just because he knew I was looking forward to it. But he was amazed to watch the driver control the elephant with his feet movements and Thai verbal instructions.