Holiday Cheer

Here's a pretty little thing for you to listen to while you're waiting for me to say something...

Nine Years

That's how long I've been doing this blogging thing as of today. On Monday, I got home from yet another trip. It's been a busy summer and I've been without internet access during a few of my trips, so it's been hard to stay on top of all the email, news, social media and blogging. But I'm still hoping to keep up my little spot here in the aether, once my life finally returns to the quotidian.

But in the meantime, in honor of this anniversary, here are Lindsay Lou and Joshua Rilko performing "Nine Years Waltz," by Norman Blake (who was born in Chattanooga! You might recognize him from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack).

Hey, Hey, My, My

You have to see it to believe it

I've told this story before, but it bears repeating... the first time I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan play, after hours and hours and hours of listening to the audio, I could not get over it. "Wait!!! Where the hell is the other guitar player?!?" And still, watching the video -- even all these years later -- I still want to search the stage for another set of hands and a rhythm guitar. Incredible.

Whew! Where does the time go?!?

Calm down, humans! Did you all really need to schedule all of the things for this one week? Settle yourselves -- there's more left of the year (excited about spring, are we?)...

Seriously, I think there was one day this week when we here at Chez 10K managed to have dinner before 9pm. And there was one day when it was close to 10 before we even made it home, so we quickly decided to fuck it and just nibble on a few things before heading to bed.

So, yeah -- the sort story is: busy week! TGIfF!!

But, I don't want to leave you empty handed, so there's this...

Holy Crap!

I only just discovered this tonight...

... and I'm blown away (put this on speaker and turn it up!).

Time Flies

Alice Herz-Sommer Redux

I posted about this incredible woman before, but I recentlly ran across another wonderful video on the shiksa, and it's worth posting an update...

Video from KarmaTube

Turtle Island

G-Dog and I just spent a great evening enjoying some jazz from the Turtle Island Quartet, who played some John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis, among other things. Awesome show (courtesy of the Patten Series)!! Here's a selection from the same group in August, 2010:

Hat Tip to Peter, Rush and the T-Birds

Good on you.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Blues Night at the White House

Strings Fangirl

Love This

If you want to write, you need to read

This is really well-written, informed, prose. The fact that I'm the author's mother is beside the point. ;-)

“I Think I Need a New Heart” opens to the standard jangling, upbeat melodies the Magnetic Fields churn out with a deft, casual ease and consistency. The instruments provide a contrast to the emotional pain of the song’s narrator as he breathlessly describes being dumped. It seems like a standard pop variation on a theme. Then the bridge hits. The jingle jangle drops off. It’s Merritt alone with his acoustic guitar, crooning his confessions. “’Cause I’ll always say ‘I love you’ when I mean ‘turn out the light’, and I’ll say ‘let’s run away’ when I just mean ‘stay the night.”

“How fucked up is that?” I tearfully asked my chardonnay when I heard the whole thing. (A comparable sucker punch is “You Fit Into Me,” by Margaret Atwood: “You fit into me/ like a hook into an eye/a fish hook/an open eye.”) After the bridge, the chorus returns with a rich cacophony of incongruously cheerful sounds. Like any good pop song, it starts and ends with the same melody, but The Magnetic Fields put that structure to meaningful use. The chords repeat themselves over and over just as the cycle of dysfunction perpetuates in the characters’ lives. The narrator returns to the titular refrain of needing a new heart. He’s brokenhearted, all right, but not because of this particular dumping—he came out of the box this way.

Read the whole thing at Unbest.

More from my favorite late night comedy team...

Remember these guys? Guess who showed up on Colbert recently?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Exclusive - Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile - "Quarter Chicken Dark"
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Daye-um!!!

I was working on a post for the evening, and then I ran across this. And now I'm speechless. (Before you hit play, make sure you hook up some speakers -- you'll be thankful for the bass in playback.)

UPDATE: more on the grouping here, here and here.

Alice Herz-Sommer

My sister sent me a link to this delightful video back in March. It features Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest known Holocaust survivor, who insists that she never hated the nazis. She personally knew Franz Kafka and Gustav Mahler, and currently spends several hours a day playing the piano. She attributes her longevity to her optimism, which she says is fueled by music. She talks about her life here.

"I have had such a beautiful life. And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love."

Friday Food Photo

Sigh. Well, as much as I'm loath to push my lovely parents down the page, I've got to get a food photo up!  But first, an update on the past week, which has been fun, exciting and busy!

First the fun: at Emmie's prompting, she and G-Dog and I went to see Garrison Keillor's Summer Love show when it rolled through town last Saturday night. Wow! It was a three-hour, energy-filled, story-telling extravaganza! If you happen to catch the Chattanooga recording, that's me you hear clapping!  ;-)

This week I also realized that we're barreling headlong into autumn and before we know it, October will be upon us -- and that means that the unbelievable is about to happen: Emmie, my itty bitty little baby, is going to {{gasp!}} turn twenty-five! Ouch! I don't know how that happened, but it calls for some sort of observance, so I'm conspiring...  shhhh!  ;)

Another thing that crept up on me is that tomorrow is the anniversary of the day I quit smoking. It's been 8 years, and according to this little gadget, I've saved a staggering amount of money by not buying cigarettes for all that time.

I spent some of that $$$ today after I stumbled upon a great deal on a digital piano. Little did I know when I got up this morning that by the end of the day, I'd have a full-sized keyboard sitting in my house! It's been years since I gave up my last piano in a move, but I've really been missing it lately. Something in my brain just clicked some time in the past year or so and all of a sudden when I was listening to music, I got it in a way I never did before. It's kind of hard to put my finger on what it is, but I finally figured out what my poor, long-suffering piano teacher was trying to tell me all through my childhood, and I've been itching to take the fingers out for a spin ever since.

But first, this evening I raise my glass of cabernet in memory of dear Mrs. Wallace, piano teacher extraordinaire, who was such an incredible musician (a wonderful classical pianist, and -- in my humble opinion -- even better when she jazzed it up with her hubby by her side, playing the upright bass!). It's too late now for me to be great, but I am finally going to have a grand time being awful and I think she might have taken some pleasure in that.

And finally, if you've seen me this week, you might have worried that I must have conked my head on something hard (or that I'm in the midst of a second, wicked puberty), because I've got a big, red bump on my forehead. But I wasn't being clumsy -- I was being kind. I have a bunch of wasps squatting on my balcony upstairs, and for weeks now, I've been trying to encourage them to build their houses elsewhere (mostly by knocking down the ones they build). But they keep rebuilding and yesterday morning, one of them crossed the line and actually stung me on the face! So, much as I hate to break out the toxins, I'm afraid I may have to go nuclear on the little meanies. That is, unless someone can turn me onto an alternative that will dispatch them swiftly?

But back to the food... here's a recent dinner, whipped up quickly on a busy evening this past week. It's a variation on this idea, using a couple of different kinds of squash and with a bit of okra thrown in for good measure. The side salad included some tomatoes from the yard. Yum!!

Have a great weekend, folks! Be safe, healthy and happy!