Armstrong described the lunar surface as ‘beautiful.’ I thought to myself, ‘It’s not really beautiful. It’s magnificent that we’re here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.’
When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I’m doing now, that’s a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.
Coinbase is ‘the’ brand in the Bitcoin space. Their founder Brian Armstrong was amongst the first good entrepreneurs to emerge in this space. While others championed ideological or underground/illicit interests, Brian saw an opportunity to change the world for the better and build a big business out of it.
I have always loved creating and entertaining. It started with music, singing. I grew up in a household filled with music – not pop but old-school stuff, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.
Few of us boggle – though we should – at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists.
Admittedly, it would take industrial-grade chutzpah and a massive dose of malevolence for anyone to bulldoze the spot where Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle lander. But even innocent visits could be damaging.
I’ve always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.
I don’t doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong’s spirit is still with us: that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.
Lance Armstrong has joined the legion of the lost, the great athletes who were barred or exiled for sins admitted or charged or suspected.
I watched the first moon landing at a bar in Paducah, Kentucky, a fact worth mentioning only because I still remember how suddenly silence descended on this raucous place when Neil Armstrong started coming down that ladder.
Lance Armstrong has a 17th-century, 15-foot Spanish fresco of the crucifixion hanging on the wall of his Austin mansion. This doesn’t mean – and some of you Armstrong acolytes might want to sit down for this – that Lance is Jesus.
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