an early Christmas

Merry, merry, merry Christmas

It's Christmas in my heart

Merry, merry, merry Christmas

I hope all year
I play the part

Merry Christmas baby

This song is living in my heart

Merry, merry, merry Christmas

You're my holiday candle in the cold wintry dark

Merry Christmas, baby,
 and on New Year's Eve
you're the one
I'm kissing for a brand new start

Merry, merry, merry Christmas
3x

This song is living in my heart

Merry, merry, merry Christmas
Merry Christmas baby
Merry, merry, merry Christmas





Good Wishes, John A. Conte Jr.
mystrawhat.com
&
the new everyday media

(so maybe soon I'll find myself with a rented mcmansion in a gated community for a week with nothing to do but hang out by the pool and hot tub with the dog and a Fender Strat and an MacBookAir with Garage Band & maybe some sleigh bells to record this song for my wife Deanna from her everyday Joe 6pack husband for an early Christmas present where I email her the YouTube link with this song on her December bday?)

Deanna Conte Port Royal Plantation Planters Row Hilton Head Island, S.C. 1998
I had been going to this home here every year since I was 12 in 1982 and I used to daydream at the pool on the beach how when I was older I'd drive in from somewhere cool in a fancy car and have a good respectable wife and we'd visit with the family but we'd be staying on our own at the South Beach Marina Inn in Sea Pines Plantation near the Salty Dog and Calibogue Sound where my Uncle Tony & Aunt Jo Jo lived.
So this was pretty cool that in 1998 I was at the World Headquarters of
The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta doing business and  I had rented a Mustang convertible and my wife and I stopped in to see the family on Planters Row in Port Royal before heading on down the road to our place I booked at the South Beach Marina Inn 1998 (been married a year) 

Rusted Root "live" L.A. House of Blues SunsetStrip 7 full songs from photo pit + special bonus ...

7 links to mystrawhat.com productions YouTube page New Everyday Media where there are full video clips / songs listed here-there I recorded in photo pit at L.A. House of Blues SunsetStrip 2007

+ some photos here I'd taken there & mementos from then 

(just click on youtube links listed for each full song)

Michael Glabicki '07 john conte mystrawhat.com productions L.A. HOB

1.     

     everyone got off. ..filmed an extended Rusted Root "Ecstasy" on Sunset Strip in House of Blues photo pit #WeHo July2007 = a worldly, spacey, bluesy, jammy version. ..So glad to have had the opportunity be-ing there in California hanging with you '06, '07 & '08 #roadtrip #tour …

Rusted Root "Ecstasy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ0YoEwhnmQ

2.     

Ffeaturing DAVY KNOWLES on lead guitar w/ Rusted Root = 

filmed "Dance in the Middle" Rusted Root on #SunsetStrip in House of Blues photo pit #WeHo Los Angeles Times Relix Magazine Rolling Stone ... glad I was there by happenstance filming & successfully captured Davy Knowles pure ecstatic joy on stage here & well rather as RR's Patrick Norman says, "a brilliant English blues guitar player. And great guyy too." 
#DanceintheMiddle

"Dance in the Middle" Rusted Root
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbJPcL1bNmw

3.     

 ffilmed Animals Love Touch Rusted Root on Sunset Strip in House of Blues photo pit #WeHo July2007

Animals Love Touch Rusted Root  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSKYo0TaWvQ

                                    Liz Berlin '07 john conte mystrawhat.com productions L.A. HOB

4.     

f    

    filmed Stereo Rodeo Rusted Root on Sunset Strip in House of Blues photo pit#WeHo What a pretty & interesting song this is ... So glad to have had the opportunity be-ing there in California hanging with you 
'06, '07 & '08 #roadtrip #tour … Dirk Miller Preach Freedom Patrick NormanLiz Berlin Michael Glabicki

Stereo Rodeo Rusted Root

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zilFUjBZXL4

                           Michael Glabicki '07 john conte mystrawhat.com productions L.A. HOB

5.     

f  

    filmed Scattered Rusted Root on Sunset Strip in House of Blues photo pit#WeHo 
Can feel the California King Snakes out in the California desert during this one .... Michael Glabicki & Patrick Norman of Rusted Root & the loving participatory L.A. crowd

Scattered Rusted Root

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqO5GiRdr6I

6.       

    

  filmed Cat Turned Blue / Superstitious Rusted Root #SunsetStrip in House of Blues photo pit #WeHo

Cat Turned Blue / Superstitious Rusted Root
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfQ5gLNA39g

                                  Liz Berlin '07 john conte mystrawhat.com productions L.A. HOB

7.     

      

   filmed this L.A. Rusted Root "VooDoo" on the Sunset Strip in the House of Blues photo pit #WeHo 
#voodoo 
w/ Preach Freedom 

Rusted Root "VooDoo"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM6cGmrUL7U

in addition to these fine video clips / songs i filmed at L.A. House of Blues on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California I am working on editing special bonus "all access" backstage dressing rooms, VIP aftershow party + beyond that "all accces" never before seen on-the-road in L.A. footage

Best of the Roses,

john a. conte` jr.

mystrawhat.com

&

the new everyday media

Intercession: mystrawhat.com productions short handheld film fieldtrip by John Alan Conte Jr

A groundskeeper told me I could enter the tomb of the Prince-Priest Father Gallitzin and place my hands on the box that contains his body and say a prayer. Something compelled me to visit this official Vatican approved Basilica of St. Michael the Arch Angel which the Prince-Priest Father Gallitzin founded in pioneer Pennsylvania. It drew me like a magnet. I was curious to see the scope and scale of the land & property the Prince-Priest Father Gallitzin whom my private Catholic grade school I attended from K-8 was all about and then and capture and the physicality of time & space here and the body, mind, spirit & soul. For this meager effort as if a boy on a field trip doing an iMovie for his mother I believe a was granted intercession 

August 15, 2014

Best of the Roses, John

mystrawhat.com & the new everyday media

 JohnConte Aug 2014  photo credit Brian Franks AE, House 15143 taken at Industry in Lawrenceville (acorss the bridge from Millvale)

                         

Intercession 

mystrawhat.com productions short handheld film fieldtrip by John Alan Conte Jr

The composers appropriately applied are Julius Rontgen and Beethoven.

(watch here on my New Everyday Media YouTube channel)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2R5_8mnHq4  

Heinz Hall: my Bill Maher + Butcher & Rye review #summer2014

Heinz Hall: my Bill Maher + Butcher & Rye review #summer2014

                    video = Heinz Hall: my Bill Maher + Butcher & Rye review #summer2014

                                               SEE note from Georgetown #DC #summer2014

                                                           COMING SOON to mystrawhat.com ...
                                         In This Place: A Book of the Nineties by John Alan Conte` Jr.

(my 1st book of poems published in 1992. this book opened a lot of doors for me on many different levels. i recall my father reading the poems i had written & collected before he agreed to helping me publish and he thoughtfully said, "Johnny, you are either a genius or insane. ..because i don't understand this." However, thankfully & gratefully my father's acquaintance who was Chair of Department of Communications at the University of Pittsburgh, Ted Windt, having published and teaching courses on Presidential Rhetoric was strongly supportive of me not only towards my father but making connections for me with those poets & cast of characters of the Beat Generation. They got it.

I intuitively knew mainstream consumption was not ready for such new serious poetry and I kept along a grass roots path of doing random poetry readings across the country and in pockets of Milwaukee and used these poems as lyrics = Was doing a gig with Deerfield Beach's house punk band Post Face and I did a couple songs with them as a singer in Little Haiti Miami area in front of a fantastic crowd

But yeah I lost a game of pool to a local in which I had to do push-ups.

Push ups with the pool stick on the floor my nose had to touch.

#goodtimes 
mystrawhat.com

&

the new everyday media)

                                                              me: 1989

   

Slow Country Love

Slow Country Love.

I saw you gettin' up in your boyfriends truck
And I was wondering would you like to
 forget about your plans
Roll those tinted windows down 
Grab a beer with our toes in some sand looking at cool waters 
I'll lose my tie - say goodbye to your boyfriend he'll be there when you get home - believe me - not much hotter
I'll call you Courtney & you call me, hey man, & remember
today is the only day there is for now until tomorrow & that's 
what we make of it with any slow country love that's left out there 

Written on the spot in the parking lot 3rd person point of view daydreaming I was RYan Adams.
mystrawhat.com
& the new everyday media

                                                                  #summertime

Bill Murray Crashes Billy Gardell's Kennywood Days _(short film title "Caddying for The Lama")

Bill Murray Crashes Billy Gardell's Kennywood Days _(short film title "Caddying for The Lama")

Last summer I worked on a short story published on my blog that received a decent amount of traffic about a giant rubber duck in the 3 Rivers (confluence) of Pittsburgh, Billy Gardell (star of Mike & Molly), Wiz Khalifa (just busted in San Antonio, TX for weed just like Willie Nelson was and has his own strain of marijuana named after him), and the mayor of Pittsburgh (#ThereIsPedutoAgain).

Well given that the New Yorker has a current piece in its Culture Desk section describing Bill Murray as an "internet jester" as he magically appears across the country and in a world of the web desperate for clicks, unique views & #newmediabuzz he inserts himself in everyday occurrences people post on social media sites and makes these things extra special = I am having a little fun writing this piece.
#BillMurray Crashes Billy Gardell's #KennywoodDays _(short film titled "Caddying for The Lama" promises to be funny)

Bill Murray is even more famous for this latest brilliant intuitive use of new media and everybody who has enjoyed "Where's Waldo?!" is anticipating where this internet jester new media star will pop up next!

Gardell who reigns from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  is proud to have such blue collar rusted roots from the big Steel City whose football team the Pittsburgh Steelers have won more Super Bowls than any other team in the NFL and for the hit star of Chuck Lorre's CBS Primetime Show Mike & Molly to have his DVE Morning Show buddies at WDVE Pittsburgh and 50 carefully selected "yinzers" from the loyally faithful WDVE audience have their own Kennywood Days at the iconic Kennywood Amuzement Park in Pittsburgh = is like Billy Gardell's Super Bowl being played in front of his own hometown crowd in his hometown city.

But Gardell is actually nervous this #newmedia Bill Murray may upstage him by actually showing up at Kennywood Park July 11th 2014 and photo-bomb him during Billy's big photo-op in the park with the average everyday DVE listener.

"Look O'Connell, this is how you handle it, OK. When you meet with Murray let him see you're relaxed, not nervous, not intimidated because if he senses that we'er done. Done! You hear me, O'Connell!! You know how important this is to me, right?! OK, so just play a Belushi and ask if you can order room service and you deliver what I told and just as the room service arrives with its armies of wait staff and trays you finish my message and get up and bolt out the door like you're Dave Matthews who just took a shady shit on Rusted Root's tour bus and your leg of the tour with them has ended.

Now let's go over it one more time. Look Mr. Murray here's what Billy wants me to relay, ""You are hilarious with those gopher faces & killed it in What About Bob but don't make this photo-bomb during my Kennywood Days your Rushmore. Listen, Pittsburgh is my city. My city! For Father's Day I got 4 new Steeler tee shirts & 4 pair of sweat pants and I opened each one of them up like I'd never seen Steeler gear in my life. Oh, look at this one! Oh, look at this one! Yeah, you go up to Punxsutawney!""


Stay Tuned-In ...


Best of the Roses, mystrawhat.com 

#TheNewMedia #BillMurray "Internet Jester" says #TheNewYorker ... & We keep hoping for another Pittsburgh Bill Murray event @NewEdayMedia: @NewYorker like when he was here for GroundHogDay & KingPin & Pittsburgh loves him for those stories but now we want #NewMedia#BillMurrayGroundHogDay

Bill Murray, Internet Jester

nyr.kr

It would not overstate the matter to call Bill Murray beloved, but will we ever grow tired of his persona?

Cyril Wecht Letter to My Mother Is Humbling to Read Regarding My Dad's Passing

Under normal circumstances I would never publish a letter from Cyril Wecht to my mother however the passing of my Dad has affected many of you whether you called him 

Attny Conte, Mr. Conte, John, Uncle John, GranDad or dad.

Attorney & Mrs. John A. Conte

Best of the Roses

(both of my grandmothers on mom & dad sides were named Rose),

Johnny

mystrawhat.com

John Alan Conte, Jr. Endless Tour Project Interview #GratefulDead (Pittsburgh, PA) YouTube

©1995 robbi cohn/dead images...Jerry Garcia 6-30-95 Pittsburgh, PA
Grateful Dead 3 Rivers Stadium 

Here is a few minutes of the couple hours I spent with the Endless Tour Project a couple weeks ago on a Monday evening in Point State Park #GoldenTriangle

Thanks to Joanna for trucking to Pittsburgh to interview me Monday and Liz Berlin via Skype Tuesday on the big monitor at the Creative Life Support offices inside Mr. Small's Theatre in Millvale (across the bridge from Lawrenceville).

This is a very Grateful Dead family sponsored project and I am honored to be a part of it.

John Alan Conte, Jr. Endless Tour Project Interview (Pittsburgh, PA)

Published on May 24, 2014

John Conte remembers rain pouring down during the Grateful Dead's final Pittsburgh performance in 1995 as part of the Endless Tour Project. www.endlesstourproject.com.

click on this YouTube link to watch here on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14unOb0kLcc&feature=youtu.be

Jerry Garcia's RoseBud (played 6-30-95)

John Alan Conte, Jr. Endless Tour Project Interview (Pittsburgh, PA)

Best of the Roses, John
mystrawhat.com
     &
BIGnewEdayMedia2014

Piece in PittsburghPostGazette Today on Dad: Obituary: John A. Conte / Prominent Beaver County lawyer consulted on Jack Ruby’s defense

The reporter who wrote this piece on my father commented to my father's law partners Attorneys Scott Melton & Dan D'Antonio what an immigration success story Attorney John Alan Conte really is. .. Scott shared those words at my father's funeral today. Both Dan & Scott honored my father in a big big way today and we are thankful & grateful. 

And it was said: John as a young child found an injured crow and took it home and nursed him back to health. He named the crow "Jimmy" and taught him to sit on his shoulder. John would even walk to school with Jimmy the crow on his shoulder and when he went into the school in the morning Jimmy the crow would wait for him and be there when he got out of school in the afternoon and get back up on John's shoulder and walk on home with him. John figured if he could teach a crow all this he could teach a jury.

Obituary: John A. Conte / Prominent Beaver County lawyer consulted on Jack Ruby’s defense

Sept. 19, 1927 - May 25, 2014

May 30, 2014 11:40 PM

• 

Attorney John Conte

By Torsten Ove / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

John Conte, a lawyer who once served as a consultant for the defense of Jack Ruby and won several record malpractice awards in Beaver County, diedSunday.

He was 86 and lived in Conway, where his family had settled after emigrating from Italy when he was 7.

Mr. Conte practiced law in Conway for nearly five decades and made a name for himself early.

It was his handling of a local murder case that landed him on the Jack Ruby defense team.

In 1963, he represented Walter Hlista Jr., who was accused of killing his father, Walter Hlista Sr., the police chief in Harmony.

Hlista confessed to shooting his father five times after being ordered to turn off the TV and go to bed.

In a novel defense for the time, he pleaded not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, saying he snapped after enduring years of abuse.

Mr. Conte argued that the beatings and mistreatment had so altered Walter Jr.’s mind that he could not form the intent to kill.

“It would be a barbarous thing to inflict punishment on someone who did not intend to do evil,” Mr. Conte told the jury.

After a sensational trial, the jury acquitted Walter Jr., who 20 years later killed himself and his 2-year-old daughter in the state of Indiana.

Two months after the acquittal, John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, after which Jack Ruby shot Oswald.

Mr. Conte’s work on the Hlista case generated considerable publicity around the country and attracted the attention of Melvin Belli, who represented Ruby.

Belli flew Mr. Conte and his partner, Paul Courtney, to Dallas, where they consulted for several weeks about defense strategies.

News accounts of the time mention Mr. Conte but not his specific role, although his former law partners and his daughter said Belli rejected his suggestion to use a similar defense as the one he had used in the Hlista case.

The idea was that Ruby wasn’t in his right mind when he killed Oswald because he was overcome with grief for JFK, like almost everyone else in America.

“Dad told him to use the temporary insanity defense, and he didn’t do that,” said Mr. Conte’s daughter, Alane Scheider of Conway. “He later called my dad up and told him he should have done that.”

Ruby was convicted and sentenced to death. He appealed and won a new trial but died before it happened.

Back home, Mr. Conte’s career progressed. He handled criminal cases early on, served as an assistant district attorney and a special condemnation prosecutor for PennDOT in the 1960s and ’70s and later specialized in medical malpractice and personal injury.

One 1980s malpractice case he handled with partner Scott Melton resulted in the largest verdict in Beaver County — more than $2 million — up to that time, a record that lasted 19 years, according to his former law partners.

A $900,000 award he and Mr. Melton won in a 1980s defamation case against the owners of the New Castle News was one of the largest paid defamation verdicts in the country.

Mr. Conte’s partners said he had the common touch necessary to connect with juries.

“He really knew how to pitch a case in a way that people related themselves to our clients,” said one, Dan D’Antonio.

Mr. Conte was born in Italy in 1927 and came to America with his mother, Rosina, and brother, Anthony, in the 1930s. His father, Giuseppe, was already here and working on the railroad at Conway Yard.

Mr. Conte spoke no English but learned quickly. He graduated from Freedom High School and served in the U.S. Navy at the end of World War II aboard a rescue tug in the Pacific. Anthony, who later became an anesthesiologist, served in the Army.

When Mr. Conte came home, he attended Geneva College, finishing at the top of his class, and earned his law degree from Boston College in 1952.

He was admitted to practice law in 1953, initially working out of a storefront office in the Northern Lights Shopping Center. He continued taking cases until 2000, when he suffered a stroke.

He and his wife, Joan, married in 1955 and raised six children in Conway. She still lives there, as do three of the children: Cheryl, Joe and Alane. Another, Cynthia, lives in nearby Baden, and John lives in Sewickley. A fourth daughter, Maureen, lives in Boston.

A Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. today at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Conway.

Torsten Ove: tove@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1510.

left to right grandchilden: Loke (w/ Kohl & Max), the late Thomas John "Tommy" (w/ Parka) & John "Bubbs"

Add caption

Me wearing Dad's fedora, top coat, suit jacket & sunglasses with one of his cigars.

Dad, I will miss you always and relish in the memory of the days when you would walk through the door from the office for dinner and in your lovingly boisterous voice say, "hello everybody!" ... Love, Johnny for now & forever.