And There You Have It

Grandma was the organist and music director at St. Joseph's Church in Olney, Illinois for... 30 years? 40? 50?--a very long time, in any event, before finally giving it up a few years ago--and was a stickler for precise performance. She insisted on playing the organ for one son's wedding and two grandchildren's weddings, for a great-grandchild's baptism, and for countless other weddings and funerals besides a million or so regular Sunday masses.

The choir sang at her funeral mass this past Monday, of course, but the current organist was out of town, leaving them without an accompanist. But--but!--back in 2004-2006, the current music director had spent many sessions making digital recordings of Grandma playing the choir's entire repertoire on an electronic clavinova in case they ever found themselves without a backup organist...

And that's how Grandma managed to pull off the exceptionally rare trick of playing at her own funeral. WIN.

Do You Need Another Reason to Love Bao?

Not that you really do need another reason to love steamed buns, but if you do, here are three: (1) they dance, (2) they bust wicked nunchuk moves, and (3) they are adorable when they do it.

Dragon Fist from sun haipeng on Vimeo.

(via Serious Eats)

Musical Interlude Friday

Jill Sobule is pretty cool. Listen to this 1995 cut and then read her Katy Perry quote, below.

Yeah, '95. Now about that other, much more recent song about girl-kissin' for the benefit of the boys watching in the bar?

As a musician I have always refrained from criticizing another artist. I was, “well, good for her.” It did bug me a little bit, however, when she said she came up with the idea for the title in a dream. In truth, she wrote it with a team of professional writers and was signed by the very same guy that signed me in 1995. I have not mentioned that in interviews as I don’t want to sound bitter or petty… cause, that’s not me.

Okay, maybe, if I really think about it, there were a few jealous and pissed off moments. So here goes, for the first time in an interview: Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe “not good for the gays,” title thieving, haven’t heard much else, so not quite sure if you’re talented, fucking little slut.

God that felt good.

Love! More stuff, including free downloads, on her website.

Holy Shit.

Jonathan Mann was on Maddow a couple nights back, singing about Paul Krugman. Where that was delightful, this is horrifying. This is a song actually "written" by the Bush lawyers who decided to twist both language and law to the point that up is down and black is white and waterboarding is an afternoon at the beach, a song whose lyrics were taken without modification from the memoradum explaining how detainees could be tortured without having to call it that. This is where the pick-your-own-adventure moral constructs of the Bush administration have brought us. If Obama does nothing else in his adminstration, it's his absolute moral duty to bring us back.



(Homer found this first)

Friday Fun For the Ears and Eyes

Nathan Gunn is the up-and-comingest young baritone in the country, and quite possibly on the planet. He was a cute chipmunk of a kid back in the late '70s when he was a few years behind me in grammar school; he's grown up quite well and sings like a big deep-voiced angel. Take a listen and a look, and if you're in Chicagoland you can catch him singing Figaro in The Barber of Seville at the Lyric Opera through the end of March.

Friday Free Music Linkage

If you're not, say, an ExxonMobil executive getting a cut of the $1,300 per second your company earned squeezed out of consumers last year, you may be on the lookout for free music streaming. Go get your Big Head Todd and the Monsters on, and groove the rest of Friday away. You earned this one for real.

80s Attack

What better way to spend a beautiful, unseasonably cool Tucson morning than... sitting in the office finishing a report for unnamed taskmasters? Since this part of the process is fairly brainless (making pretty pictures of projectile points), and since nobody else is in here, I took the opportunity to finally listen to some CDs sent by a friend: five hours of the music from the years we were in high school.


Hohokam projectile point (A.D. 950-1100).

Unfortunately, we went to high school during the musically dark years of 1982-1985, in a rather socially conservative town where no one we knew had heard of Violent Femmes or Echo and the Bunnymen. Some of the stoners had a reggae band, but that was as far outside the mainstream as we ever ventured. So I popped the first disc in and promptly hopped on the 1982 Top 40 Nostalgia Express.

Who knew I was carrying so many Journey lyrics in some heretofore unaccessed part of my brain?All the words to "Gloria?" And Jenny 867-5309? Jaysis. You should hear how she talks about you you should hear what she says! Fuck! I can't get out of the house with my lunch and the right set of keys most days, but I can bloody well sing along with Huey Lewis and the News 25 years after the fact. Fuck, fuck.

Amazingly, there are some tracks on here I would still listen to. Joan Jett is still a righteous babe (even my 14-year-old son thinks she kicks ass enough for his band to cover her songs). I did once hear the bassist from Squirrel Bait (a Louisville band following the footsteps of Big Black and Husker Du that almost made it big) say that Huey Lewis at least never sold out and always played hard-driving rock 'n' roll.

Then there's the stuff that makes me say oh fuck even when no one is around to know I'm listening to it. Kenny Rogers? Did I really own his albums? That must have been someone else. Tainted Love? And I'm only halfway through the 1982 disc, giddily wondering what awaits on the next three.

UPDATED: Wow, 1983 was a really rough year musically.

Best Top 40 Deconstruction EVER.

I am hot because I am fly. You, sadly, are not fly, and thus by definition cannot be hot. QED.











Courtesy of the Village Voice, via my Top!Secret G-woman source.

Wages of Age

God, I'm old. Sometimes I say an event or, say, a weekend was more fun than I should be allowed to have. This weekend was one of those, and the issue apparently is not how much fun I should be allowed to have, but how much fun my cranky aged body can stand to have.

Friday night was Gaelic Storm, playing to a decent house at the Rialto. I am a very bad lesbian. I keep falling in love with male Irish guitarists. God, can those boys (and the female fiddler) put on a show. Excellent guitar by the scruffily cute Steve Twigger (friend of Woy Wogers? I must ask), fine accordion and showmanship by Pat Murphy, most excellent work on the bagpipes, tin whistle, and uillean pipes by the Canadian guy, who was raffled off after the show. I stopped drinking at the intermission when I realized I was about one pint away from buying every CD and shirt they had, as well as putting in a bid on Mr. Twigger. The only disturbing image was the piper playing the electronic bagpipe, which is basically a chanter hooked up to a cord. Well, that part's fine. The bad part was the way he held it. Conversation in the bathroom line:

Me: The piper is really good.
K: Except that it looks like he's playing his penis.
Woman in front of K: He was totally playing his penis.
Me: So I guess it really is a bag pipe.

Anyway, the evening featured three Guinness pints that were more or less danced off, so I told myself, having crowed beforehand with K about Guinness' relatively low caloric and carbo baggage. Jesus. As thrilled as I was to have gotten through three without falling down, it bothered me to be evaluating my beers on the basis of carb levels. Truth be told, it bothered me to be excited about getting through three without falling down. In the old days that would have been naught but a warmup act.

Shite.

Saturday saw three more beers go through the system, albeit over a longer span of time than Gaelic Storm's first set (love them! did I mention that already?). The family started hitting town, the first wave being my uncles and their wives, which meant a trip to El Charro for piles of carne seca.

Maybe it was the last beer on top of a slightly dehydrated day. Maybe someone in the kitchen selectively poked my plate, my girlfriend's, and the part-time housemate's. Maybe, by pure coincidence, the three of us developed carne seca intolerance at the same time. Gastric distress ensued and lasted through the next morning. It is not a hangover, I kept telling myself. I am certain this is sheer coincidence.

Sunday, then, started out on something of a draining note, built up on a crescendo of a soccer game on a hot field, and finished with the clanging cymbals flourish of the Fourth Avenue Street Fair.

Several thousand people on 4th Avenue.

I didn't buy anything, but did notice many different vendors and cool stuff. Wheat weaving! Metal art! Blue fading to purple was the glaze de rigeur at every ceramics booth. And it was heartening to see that not many people dragged their dogs out onto the hot asphalt.

Blown-glass octopus I coveted mightily. But I left my $95 in my other pants.

So I spent a dollar on the KXCI prize wheel and picked a Built to Spill single out of the box. Not bad. The rest of the evening was devoted to dinner and more than I am used to drinking, even though "more" here means "two or three followed by a glass of red wine." Monday was rough. I am officially a lightweight. Why, oh whyyyyyyyyy?

Friday Music Smackdown

Whatever. I read and re-read the Keillor column and roughly a bazillion comments on each side and still am missing the big obvious boat on what a brilliant piece of satire it is. And in the process I managed to be so deeply ironic and satirical myself that even I didn't notice my own apparently brilliant argument that gays don't have to put their kids before their own lives, as the anonymous commenter on the last post pointed out.

Which only goes to show that you can take the girl out of the southern Illinois trailer park, but even a tornado won't take that trailer from where it's firmly jammed up my ass, impacting not only the sigmoid colon but the complex reasoning centers of my brain as well. Thanks for that. I remain befuddled.

In that case, I'll forego misguided social commentary/rabid gay hypersensitivity/lack of reading comprehension or understanding of literary devices for the rest of the afternoon and point Irish-minded readers in the direction of Liz Carroll and John Doyle. Saw them last night at the Berger Center and was blown away. This was the first time I'd seen Carroll live. The fiddle remains elusive to me, maybe because of how in untrained hands it sounds like a cat being skinned alive, so when I watch a master at work (like Carroll or Eileen Ivers), it's pure magic. Doyle just makes me want to burn my guitar. He is an amazing craftsman, both on guitar and mandolin. I first saw him years ago when he was touring with Ivers and the incomparable Jerry O'Sullivan, and tentatively fell in love. It's a sealed deal now. I could listen to him forever.

In a side note, all Green Linnet CDs are 20% off through the end of the month.

Friday Bests

Best live music experience this week: The Chieftains at Centennial Hall (Wednesday).

Best addition to The Chieftains in recent years: Canadian dancer/fiddler Jon Pilatzke, his dancer brother Nathan, and dancer Cara Butler, all three dangerously easy on the eyes--seriously, there ought to be a law--and all three loose-limbed joy in motion. Oh yeah, the old Irish guys were pretty good too.

Best thundering on the Senate floor: Ted Kennedy on the Republican stonewalling of the minimum wage legislation (yesterday).

Best non-thundering denunciation of the war (Democrat): Russ Feingold.

Best fuming denunciation of the war (Repub): Chuck Hagel.

Worst news in local bread: Beyond Bread has discontinued their onion bread. Unfortunately other customer do not place the Onion Bread as in high regard as you due to the fact the we were only selling between 2-4 loaves a day and we having excessive waste. In order for our mixer to work properly we must make at least 20 loaves or the product will not develop correctly.

Two to four loaves per day? What is wrong with people?

Best way to cheer up after learning onion bread has disappeared: Quagmyre.

Most transparent theme of this Friday Bests: Jon Pilatzke. Who, I am certain, loves some onion bread.

What a Week

Whew. After the adrenaline rush of Wednesday and Thursday, it's all sweetness and light today.

Music recommendation du jour: Leila Lopez, folk fusion from Tucson. Another chick with a guitar who gets it right.

Tolerable alternative to M.I.A.: Lady Sovereign. But just barely.

Book recommendation, Old Skool: Three Soldiers, by John Dos Passos. Written after World War I, this follows three American soldiers--one from New York, one from Indiana, and one from San Francisco--into France for the fighting and the aftermath. It is a masterful study of how the machinations of war grind three mens' psyches into very different forms.

Book recommendation, current: Living with Saints, by Mary O'Connell. This collection of short stories intertwines the themes of the lives of selected saints with abortion, aging, body issues, sexuality... the prose is tight and the emotion wistful but not overdone. I hope O'Connell keeps writing. While growing up a Catholic female probably adds extra touches of familiarity with the settings and personalities described, you don't need that experience to totally get the book.

Shows pissing me off recently: Gilmore Girls and CSI. Please. I couldn't even get through ten minutes of GG this week and found other things to do last night during the non-creepy bits of CSI. I know, I know, CSI isn't supposed to be a deadly accurate reflection of reality, but I expect a reasonable level of plausibility that doesn't leave me looking for things to hurl through the screen. I think I was churning out that level of screenplay in eight grade.

Recommended late-night snack food: Thai coconut curry chicken sticks from Trader Joe's. 15 minutes in the toaster over gets you light, crispy, lemon-grassy goodness with a low calorie impact and decent amount of protein.

What the hell happened to this place since the last time I was there, oh, four years ago?: The Biz. Ay.

The Man: Keith Olbermann, always.

Hasta proxima semana.

Navel-Gazing Music

I love Mogwai. Mogwai works particularly well when it's a rainy day and you're feeling introspective. Go here and click away.

This is why, still.

I'll get back to the political yowling in a day or so. For now I'm contemplating the impact one man had on hundreds of people, evidenced by the numbers who showed up at the first memorial service. A lot of people have come to this blog by way of googling his name (hi, Tish!). He was the kind of teacher they make movies about, and I'd venture that the sheer numbers of us who count ourselves lucky to have been his students make it a happy ending.

Recommended

After the weekend, focus is still slow in coming. I don't want to think about politics, immigration, feminism, organic farming, or gay marriage. I don't care to care that much about anything at the moment, truth be told.

In the interim before I get my angsty freak back on, here's a list of recommended diversions.

Books.

Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and The Passion
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
Franco Ferucci, The Life of God
Jay Winik, April 1865
Ruth Reichl, Tender At the Bone
MFK Fisher, The Art of Eating
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
Andrea Barrett, The Voyage of the Narwhal
Ian Frazier, On the Rez
James Lileks, The Gallery of Regrettable Food
Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea

Music.

Natalia Zuckerman, On a Clear Day
Nortec Collective, The Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3
DeVotchKa, How It Ends
Nada Surf, Let Go

Soccer.

Brazil.
Ghana.
Italy.
Not us.

Soccer coverage.

Univision.
Not ESPN. JP Dellacamera is a blithering idiot.

That is all. Deep insights tomorrow, really.

Sunday Afternoon

Lovely late-afternoon sun making the palo verde blossoms glow yellow... woodsmoke on the breeze... a comfy chair in the shade of my mesquite tree, a good book, and a cold beer. It makes a body downright reflective. Well, "reflection" isn't the term. More like "open conduit for random memories."

1977, and I'm living in an apartment complex in northern Indiana with my mom and step-dad. I mostly hang by myself; there are plenty of dumpsters for diving, a small woods to explore, and a vacant lot covered with limestone gravel that is chock-full of plant fossils. I still have two small boxes full of crinoids in the top of my closet. Anyway. I occasionally played with two girls who lived across the parking lot, one a year or two younger and the other a couple years younger than that. They were some brand of Baptist I hadn't encountered before. Early on in the association we were sitting in the room they shared and the younger one--the names escape me, but she was the whiny one--fixed me with a glare and said, "Girls ain't s'posed to wear pants." Befuddled, I looked over at her sister, who was reclining on a bed. She explained, with infinite world-weariness, "It does not please the Lord." I was too green at 10 to fire off a snappy comeback, but I remember wondering why they thought God was so offended by my Levi's but would groove on the goofy corduroy culottes the Jeebus sisters always wore. I mean, come on. Culottes? Flouncy and skirt-like at first glance, but two very pants-like separate slots for the legs anyway. You're telling me God falls for that crap?

More 1977, or possibly 1978. My hamster gives birth to a litter of 9. I name them after the Cubs' starting lineup. DeJesus and Buckner die within days; Blyleven and Madlock are the only two to survive into hamster adulthood. Flash forward to today: Bill Madlock throws out the first pitch at the Cubs game this afternoon and sings the seventh inning stretch. The thrown pitch was much better than the sung one.

Things that bug me: "hampster." "bumber sticker." "rediculous." "ammendment."

Jalapeno update: Plant One has five peppers in progress; Plant Two has three. The plants need snappier names. Reggie and Lothario, perhaps.

Recommended reading: Bitch magazine. Seed magazine. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.

Recommended listening: Neil Anderson. Sera Cahoone.

All in a summer's day.