Look, mom! My first animated video!

There’s a great story behind Nat “King” Cole, the beloved entertainer famous for “The Christmas Song,” “Nature Boy” and other classics. Funny thing: he didn’t start out as a singer; he began as a pianist and a very fine one at that. His trio was renowned for its low-key sophistication long before Miles Davis made “cool jazz” a phenomenon.

One night, Cole and his trio were playing a swank bar frequented by gangsters. One of them approached Cole and asked for a song. “I’m sorry,” Cole allegedly replied. “I don’t sing.”

“You do now,” said the gangster. The rest is history.

Now, I’m not Nat Cole, I don’t expect to achieve equal fame and my client certainly isn’t a gangster, but . . . when Elsevier first asked me to script a Flash video, I declined; scripting was out of my area of experience, I said. But they insisted — and I’m glad they did. Here is my first animated, Flash video project. I hope you like it.

Kudos to Xplane for the excellent animation!