Rob's Blog

El Kabong at Mike's Party

A sample of El Kabong's performance in the backyard of drummer Mike Trullinger

Morry's Story

After 23 years in the news biz, Morry Alter is retiring. WCBS-TV story The inspired creator of Morry's Stories is not only a great reporter and person, but a wonderful friend as well. He, Joan and Lulu will be sorely missed by their friends and neighbors in Monclair and New York, and by Starbucks! We were lucky enough to have Morry and friends over at our house last night to celebrate his retirement and wish him and his wife Joan, the very best.

MORRY AND PETER

MORRY AND BEAUTY

MORRY AND "MARTIN" -- A new career?!

JOAN (right) AND BARBARA LEWIS, real estate agent -- who sold almost everyone at the party a house -- or two!!

Al Emer Memorial

Watch the video
Download Sail_stream.wmv

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my friend and colleague Allen Emer, who suffered an untimely death while camping in Round Valley State Park in New Jersey. He was on a kayacking trip, and went to sleep in a tent hammock overlooking the resevoir. Tragically, lightning struck the tree where Allen had attached his hammock, but his final resting place was one which he loved -- the outdoors. Allen was an avid sailor and loved boating and kayacking in Spermaceti Cove at Sandy Hook in New Jersey. On an early and beautiful morning at the end of June scores of friends and famiy arrived at Spermaceti Cove to celebrate Allen's life, love and friendship.

Talking Chimp

Among other things, this weekend we visited my brother Jim, and sister-in-law Nora, up in Narrowsburg, NY at their beautiful home on the Delaware. No flooding, but it did rain a bit. Inisde the kids were entranced by a "talking" chimp, a prized posession of my genius 62 year-old brother, who seems to have interests more along the lines of a 12 year-old! In fact Jimmy wasn't even there. He was at a Buddhist retreat somewhere. The chimp was pretty funny though.

NARROWSBURG, NEW YORK

THE TALKING CHIMP

Al Emer

Allen Emer was tragically killed last Friday when lightning struck his hammock at Round Valley State Park Star Ledger article, June 26 Al was a gentle, caring, outgoing, enthusiastic person who always seemed to be smiling. He loved his sailboat, his balloons, his job, and most of all his lovely wife Sue, and son Sean. Al was a great cameraman and I worked with him many times as a producer. He was always tirelessly committed to working and getting the best "moments", as he put it, no matter how long it took. I remember on one of our first jobs together, being exhausted at the end of the day and begging Al to stop shooting. He turned to me and said: "You'll thank me for it tomorrow!" And he was right. We had a lot of other adventures, like when we were shooting Dean Kamen, the inventor, up in New Hampshire, and I started fooling around with this ball-bearing "thingy" in Dean's office. It of course started to fall apart and I went into a major panic trying to reconstitute it before Dean came back. Al, of course, thought it was hysterical and likened me then, as well as a few other times, to the Leslie Nielsen character in the Naked Gun series. We did a lot of shoots together, including a sweltering couple of days in Jacksonville in the middle of July. I remember one night, after having a couple of beers, Al lying on top of our rental car and looking up at the stars, trying to find some comet or something that was supposed to be visible. I was ready to give up, and told Al I wanted to get going, but he insisted on waiting to see if the cloud cover would lift so he might be able to see the comet. So we hung out a little while longer. He said: "You'll thank me for it tomorrow."  We never did see the comet, but he was right anyway. Al, you'll be sorely missed.