As Elaine Benes would say,"that's a big coincidence."

The cover of the latest New Yorker, on the right, is obvious in its meaning. The cover on the left is from the week before (dated April 25 but we all know that magazine cover dates and, what's the term? drop dates? are different).  The adoring-fans-in-red-and-blue-with-guitar-in-foreground issue arrived in my mailbox after Prince died on April 21. I remember thinking, very briefly, wow, that was fast. I even thought, oh that's clever, they used red and blue, which of course together makes purple. The title of that cover art is Closing Set, appropriate title for a farewell to Prince, who was a great guitarist, something I didn't appreciate until after he died. 

Today the Purple Rain issue arrived so I checked on Google just to be sure I was right about the magazine devoting two covers to his death. I mean I get that he was beloved, talented, and successful but two covers? In the New Yorker? 

No, they didn't devote two covers to him. The left cover is by artist R. Kikuo Johnson and is described by him in the New Yorker this way:

“Everyone in Brooklyn is a d.j., so I rely on my much cooler friends to take me out,” the artist R. Kikuo Johnson says. “I have been taken to many one-night-only warehouse parties—I love dancing—but this was my first time at the Palisades,” he continues, referencing the underground venue in Bushwick that was the model for his cover of this week’s issue.

I say R. Kikuo should be credited with some unconscious foreknowledge. 

-------------------

**From "The Statue," Seinfeld, April 11, 1991:

RAVA: Yes, that's all, a coincidence!

ELAINE: A big coincidence.
RAVA: Not a big coincidence. A coincidence!
ELAINE: No, that's a big coincidence.
RAVA: That's what a coincidence is! There are no small coincidences and big coincidences!
ELAINE: No, there are degrees of coincidences.

I could watch this on a continuous loop. Very calming.

Colbert at his finest.

It's long and it's sometimes uncomfortable but godlove S. Colbert. (Who I just learned was sick of the Comedy Central job and would have quit soon anyway even if the Letterman job hadn't come along.)

Only 2 more posts to go!

I ain't nothing but tired
Man I'm just tired and bored with myself
...
I check my look in the mirror
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
 
Springsteen lyrics (from Dancing in the Dark) that keep going through my head. It's an exaggeration of course, but not entirely. 

I like weeding in Maryland, but maybe Norway has really special weeds.

I wonder if everyone who tries this "post every day in November" thing whines at the end about not having anything to say? I know one other blogger who does (just a smidge). I confess that I didn't visit many other NaBloPoMo bloggers during the month (I don't like that acronym, and also NaNoWriMo -- they sound like parodies of neighborhoods in lower New York City). Maybe now that the pressure (ha!) is off about daily posting I'll explore the other participants.

Happy Birthday Bruce! This is what 65 looks like when you love your work.

Actually, he was only 63 and 64 in this video, a compilation of mostly audience shots from his world-wide Wrecking Ball Tour, 2012-2013. As of today, Bruce is on Medicare. Let that sink in, especially those of you who have had Bruce in your life for 30 or 40 years.

The Halloween Parade -- "The past keeps knock, knock, knocking on my door"

Trick or treating is now officially over. We had a lot of kids this year, maybe 15 groups of 3-6 kids each plus 5 or so doubles & singles. Good! There's not that much left-over chocolate. I should take it to "work" or give it away. I'll do a little of both, but I'll eat a goodly amount of it too. So there.


Lyrics by Lou Reed

There's a down town fairy singing out, "Proud Mary"
As she cruises Christopher Street
And some Southern Queen is acting loud and mean
Where the docks and the Badlands meet
 

This Halloween is something to be sure
Especially to be here without you
 

There's a Greta Garbo and an Alfred Hitchcock
And some black Jamaican stud
There's five Cinderellas and some leather drags
I almost fell into my mug
 

There's a Crawford, Davis and a tacky Cary Grant
And some homeboys lookin' for trouble down here from the Bronx
 

But there ain't no Hairy and no Virgin Mary
You won't hear those voices again
And Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita
You'll never see those faces again
 

This Halloween is something to be sure
Especially to be here without you
 

There's the Born Again Losers and the Lavender Boozers
And some crack team from Washington Heights
The boys from Avenue B and the girls from Avenue D
A Tinkerbell in tights
 

This celebration somehow gets me down
Especially when I see you're not around
 

There's no Peter Pedantic saying things romantic
In Latin, Greek or Spic
There's no Three bananas or Brandy Alexander
Dishing all their tricks
 

It's a different feeling that I have today
Especially when I know you've gone away
 

There's a girl from Soho with a T-shirt saying, "I blow"
She's with the 'Jive five 2 plus 3'
And the girls for pay dates are giving cut rates
Or else doing it for free
 

The past keeps knock, knock, knocking on my door
And I don't want to hear it anymore
 

No consolations please for feelin' funky
I got to get my head above my knees
But it makes me mad and then it makes me sad
And then I start to freeze
 

In the back of my mind, I was afraid it might be true
In the back of my mind, I was afraid that they meant you
 

The Halloween Parade
At the Halloween Parade.
See you next year, at the Halloween Parade

Read more: Metrolyrics Print Halloween Parade

More Lou. With Metallica, and Emmylou Harris & Sheryl Crow doing Lou.

 

Sad day. Lou Reed (1942-2013). "The pedestal that so many reserve for Bob Dylan? It belongs to Reed."

 

I hardly saw them all but I saw a lot, including Lou in about 1999, no 1998, at the 9:30 Club in DC. He made some awfully good music. And he had a good marriage. Two pretty great things. 71 wasn't a bad run for someone who, shall we say, didn't always show the best judgment. He'll be missed.

Chris Richards, Washington Post, 10/28/13
"Reed was our most uncompromising rock star. The pedestal that so many reserve for Bob Dylan? It belongs to Reed. Reed, the grouchy genius. Reed, the street poet with the lousy singing voice. Reed, the inscrutable self-mythologizer. Reed, the guy who always made rock-and-roll feel mysterious and alive."

Sweet and Dandy.

I'd really like to hear this song at my daughter's wedding in June but I don't think it's going to happen. (It's complicated, plus I'm not totally sure I understand the lyrics although it is about a wedding and they sure sound happy.) That doesn't mean I can't listen to the song over and over, as I've been doing lately. The music we're having at the wedding will be a couple of singers with guitars, and although it will be lovely I'm sure, I'd be surprised if they could work this in. Here are the lyrics. (And if  you haven't seen the 1972 movie The Harder They Come you might want to try it. It's dated but oh the music!)

Sweet And Dandy by Toots And The Maytals
Etty in the room a cry
Mama say she must wipe her eye
Papa say she no fi foolish
Like she never been to school at all
It is no wonder
It's a perfect pander
While they were dancing in that bar room last night.

Johnson in the room afret
Uncle say he must hold up him head
Aunty say she no fi foolish
Like a no time fi him wedding day
It is no wonder
It's a perfect pander
While they were dancing in that bar room last night.
One pound ten for the wedding cake
Plenty bottle of cola wine
All the people them dress up in a white
Fi go eat out Johnson wedding cake
It is no wonder
It's a perfect pander
While they were dancing in that bar room last night.

Since I've obnoxiously bragged about one child I can't stop from reporting a little news about the other child, especially when a cake recipe is involved.

Last week Greg turned 30 (I can't quite process that fact yet).  And Erin, his special friend, graduated from the University of MD.  She worked hard for that degree, which is as it should be.  On Saturday, Greg's band will officially release their second full CD (I've lost count of their EPs). Meanwhile on to the cake, which was delicious if I say so myself.  I made it lactose-free, for Greg, and cut back on some of the ingredients. I worried that it would have an overpowering peanutty taste, but it didn't.

Peanut Butter Cake

Ingredients for cake:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
Peanut butter (at least 1/2 cup; if using more, decrease shortening by an equal amount) (I used 3/4
    cups)
3/4 cup shortening (I reduced this to 1/2 cup)
1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons milk (I used lactose-free milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs (I used those cholesterol-free fake [?] eggs)

Directions for cake:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F if using a glass dish.
2. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together. Add graham cracker crumbs, peanut butter, shortening, milk, and vanilla.
3. Beat mixture until moistened, and then beat for 2 more minutes.
4. Add eggs and beat for 1 minute. Bake in greased 9-inch by 13-inch glass pan for 30 to 35 minutes. Do not remove from pan to cool.

Ingredients for frosting:

1 c. butter, softened (I used fake butter)
1/2 c. peanut butter
2 tbsp. water
2-4 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. vanilla
1/8 tsp. salt
4 c. powdered sugar (I only used 3 cups, and I could have used less)

Directions for frosting:

1. Cream together butter and peanut butter. 
2. Add the water, salt, and vanilla and cream again. 
3. Slowly add the powdered sugar. 
4. After all the sugar is added, beat in the honey until creamy.

Both of these recipes are all over the Internet but here's the site I'll credit for the cake, and here's the site I'll credit for the frosting.

Florence + The Machine.

I've got this song in my head and it won't go away. What a voice. When you get to about 1.25 minutes into the song she really let's it fly! She was on SNL last week and Letterman has had her on at least once, maybe twice. (Husband Doug likes her a lot too -- and it's not just about those legs, although I'm sure they don't bother him one little bit.)

Reading The Internets I have discovered that she likes her tequila. Hope she doesn't burn out too soon.

New Gibson guitar arrives! Son is happy, kitty is happy (boxes to play in), so I'm happy.

It's called a Les Paul and it's really, really purty.

I said I wasn't going to do this* and I tried to avoid it, but I heard Bruce singing this today. Rise up,he said.

*"This" being allowing myself to join in this national weekend of mourning.

Ironically, Bruce wrote this song before 9/11/01.

"The song was written in November 2000, for an Asbury Park, New Jersey Christmas show benefit to help promote the revitalization of the city."

Root Boy!

San Francisco Margo (AKA Margaret) sent me this picture. On the left you see the late great Root Boy Slim, one of life's more eccentric performers. I don't know who the guy is on his left. Root Boy played at the long-gone Psychedeli in Bethesda where Doug and I (and Margo) saw The Root many times. We also saw him at the Warner Theater downtown near the White House, and at the University of Maryland. He was a hoot, was The Root. He had many memorable songs, but Boogie Till You Puke was one of my favorites. I also liked Christmas at K-Mart, and the Rootettes were wonderful. It was a long, long time ago -- late 70s -- but amazingly the memories are still fresh. And we did. Boogie till we puked that is (or at least I puked). TMI?

Now if I can just find my Root Boy glasses I'll post a picture of them too.

My potatoes.

These made a nice medium bowl of great German potato salad. No mayo, just a little oil and vinegar and chives and salt and pepper. And maybe some mustard? I've had this post in draft for a week or so. I hesitated to post it because I knew I'd have to post a video of "My Sharona" at the same time. Whenever my brain says "my potatoes" an earworm makes my brain play the song "My Sharona." It was a hit in 1979 and maybe I listened to it on the car radio a lot. Not sure, but it's in my head and apparently it will be there till the end. (After all these years I still like it.)

And I just checked on the status of The Knack. Bit of a sad story. Lead singer Doug Fieger died of brain and lung cancer in 2010 at age 57. Cancer sucks. But he left behind this song and that's good.

Clarence Clemons: 1942 - 2011

From the NYT:
Mr. Clemons’s first encounter with Mr. Springsteen has become E Street Band lore. In most tellings, a lightning storm was rolling through Asbury Park one night in 1971 while Mr. Springsteen was playing a gig there. As Mr. Clemons entered the bar, the wind blew the door off its hinges, and Mr. Springsteen was startled by the towering shadow at the door. Then Mr. Clemons invited himself onstage to play along, and they clicked.

“I swear I will never forget that moment,” Mr. Clemons later recalled in an interview. “I felt like I was supposed to be there. It was a magical moment. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love. And that’s still there.”

I was going to post about peat moss but then my cousin sent me this video and I thought better of it.

This non-believing, cynical skeptic found this video to be so uplifting. No matter what your religious beliefs, if any, how can you possibly not appreciate the beauty of this piece of music?

I can bitch about peat moss any day.

An email review from my friend SEC (aka cyradaria) who saw Bruce & the E St Band on Monday in DC.

Last night: Best concert of the Bruce dates I’ve seen to date. A real mix – mostly Born to Run, with some Irish foot stomping music, a smattering of the Rising, plus a lilting encore of Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher with back-up singers moved to the front as soloists. Very high energy. Everyone at their performance peak. Greatly improved sound system – really rock and roll – and a greatly improved stage. Not the simple stage but there were several wings and a mid-audience mini stage where he came out for a bit and moshed it back to stage rapidamente. Very warm, personal performance. Performed Lenny Sullivan’s favorite song -- -- Cowboy Pete – up-tempo. He also did No Surrender which isn’t often performed.

[review used w/ permission; photo used without permission but I got it from some sleazy celebrity website so I'm not too concerned--is that wrong?]

Saw him the other night at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA. James McMurtry.

Listen to the rain. First minute or so of this Slovenian group's performance. Speakers up, please.

"Toto's Africa," performed by Perpetuum Jazzile live at Vokal Xtravaganzza 2008 (October 2008). Thunderstorm simulation effects inspired by Kearnsey College choir (South Africa).