Category: Music

the eleven-o’clock salad

lettuce.jpgIt’s just past 11:00 p.m., and I just ate a big salad. I realized that before you know it, it will be time for my next CSA pick-up, and I still had 3 heads of lettuce, plus lots of other greens, onions, and kohlrabi. You will be proud of me to know that I opted to make and eat salad rather than going right to the freezer to get out the ice cream which we bought earlier this evening. (Note that I have not yet forgotten the ice cream. Its time will come.)

The salad was good. I do like salad. Especially when it’s been tossed with the dressing in a bowl, so that the dressing is all evenly spread around. An equal distribution of wealth, as it were. (I like to eat a good helping of socialist metaphors.) And by the way: boy-oh-boy has our salad spinner been seeing a lot of action lately.

I keep feeling like I want to record more of my life, of our life. I’m not sure why, exactly. Part of it is that I like my life, and imagine that some day I’ll look back fondly on this time, and feel a bit sad if I don’t remember what my day to day life was like. My future self will think things like: “Back when I was a new mother, did I eat enough vegetables?” or “Did I get enough sleep when I was a grad student?” or “I wonder what I thought about pants when I was in my 30s?”

I keep meaning to update the Phoebe Blog more frequently. Phoebe keeps growing and changing, and well, doing things. Again, things that I feel like I’ll want to remember. My memory fades so quickly, and the days blur together. Hell, the weeks and months blur together. I just managed to post a bit to the Phoebe Blog last night, but there are gaps. It’s strange this feeling that I need to record all of it. I don’t think my parents recorded too much about me, or even my sister (the first-born). I wonder if it’s partially my packrat tendencies making me want to store things away. (The packrat in me badgers me to squirrel things away? Can I fit a rabbit into this somewhere?)

The trip plans are coming along moderately well. I have squared away an apartment in Paris. I have filled out the form from the conference organizers to get a hotel room in Saarbrucken, who seem to have reserved every last hotel room in the town so that you must go through them. (Which means you may not actually get a choice about which hotel you’re going to stay in. Which may lead to some difficulties, as we have special public transportation and crib needs due to travelling with a toddler. I sent an email. I think I’ll be known as a troublemaker to the conference organizers. Because I also questioned their request to have a letter faxed from “the head of my institution” stating that I am a student in order to get the student discount for registration, in addition to sending a scan of the student ID. They claim that such a letter should only take “2 minutes” and is standard procedure. Which is a load of hooey.) I also still have to look more into trains.

And I keep thinking it would be nice to watch a movie. It’s possibly been weeks since I watched a movie. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be doing work. Oh wait. Now I’m supposed to be sleeping. Crap.

And you know how I felt compelled to write more 7 lists? Well, as I anticipated, I didn’t have much time. Phoebe’s nap ended, followed by needing to get her a meal, and get her dressed, and who knows what all, resulting in a time lapse of two hours. Then we went out a shopping excursion to get a birthday present for John’s aunt. (We’re going to her 80th birthday party tomorrow. Possibly not the 80th such party that she’s had.) We didn’t get home till 8 or so, then it was time for Phoebe to get a bath and get to bed. It was 9 by the time she was in bed. (Way past her bedtime, but she seems to have her parents’ night owl proclivities.) So, no time to work on lists. But since I don’t want to throw them away, or toss them into the compost pile with the beet greens, I’ll lay them on you here.

So, here are some sevens (and sevenths) I thought about incorporating into some lists.

More than seven more seven things.

books:

  • The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (I haven’t read it, but it seems to have a Phoebe.)
  • The Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie
  • The 7 habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey (Not that I’ve read it. I have a low tolerance for self-help books)
  • Seven Spiders Spinning, by Gregory Maguire (one of his kids’ books)
  • Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, a young adult novel by Barbara Cohen, based on an Iraqi folktale.

    • music:

  • Seven and the Ragged Tiger, an album by Duran Duran
  • “lucky number 7 passed me by,” a line from Cracker’s “Lonesome Johnny Blues”
  • “Love is the seventh wave,” a song by Sting
  • A line from “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies:

    • If man is five (if man is five…)
    and the devil is six (and the devil is six…)
    then god is heaven (then god is heaven…)
    this monkey’s gone to heaven

  • There are also seven days in a week, seven deadly sins and seven wonders of the world. You can be in seventh heaven, you can get seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror, or you can sail the seven seas. Agent 007 is Bond. (James Bond.)

    • If you’ve got more 7s for me, toss them my way. Toss them like a salad.

    ants in my pants

    Yesterday was the 4th of July. A rather straightforward statement to make on the 5th of July. But, as you likely know, the Fourth of July is also the way most people refer to the US holiday officially called ant_bunch_sm.jpgIndependence Day. This holiday is often celebrated with parades, fireworks, barbecues and picnics. In fact, yesterday we managed to pull of a picnic of sorts at a nearby park. And in the great tradition of outdoor eating, we did get visited by some ants.

    In honor of picnics, I bring you some ants.ant_sm11.jpg

      them02.jpg

    1. A Bug’s Life (1998)
      The Pixar animated movie about bugs. A sort of retelling of the Seven Samurai, but with bugs. (Also a bit like ¡Three Amigos!, but with bugs.) ant_sm2.jpgThe main character is an ant, voiced by Dave Foley, who seeks help to save his ant colony from bullying grasshoppers.
    2. Antz (1998)
      1998 was clearly the year for animated ant features. This Dreamworks one was more adult-oriented and had the voice of Woody Allen.
    3. Them (1954)
      A movie featuring giant mutant ants.
    4. The Ants Go Marching, a children’s counting song, to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”

      The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
      The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
      The ants go marching one by one,
      The little one stops to suck his thumb
      And they all go marching down to the ground
      To get out of the rain
      boom, boom, boom

      5. ant_sm3.jpg

    5. The ant from “High Hopes,” sung by Frank Sinatra:

      Just what makes that little old ant
      Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
      Anyone knows an ant can’t
      Move a rubber tree plant

      But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
      He’s got high apple pie in the sky hopes

      6. ants_in_line_sm1.jpg

    6. Dance Ants
      A video that someone put together to Fall Out Boy’s “Dance, Dance”. It’s pretty random, but I found it funny. Especially the textual re-interpretation of the original lyrics, like “these are the gloves you’d love to eat”. And yes, the video does have some ants. That dance.
    7. ants in your pants
      An expression. Someone with ants in their pants is so wound up they can’t keep still. A popular reference in songs, like in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” by Rodgers and Hart, a song sung by many, including the amazing Ella Fitzgerald:

      Romance, finis. your chance, finis.
      Those ants that invaded my pants, finis.
      Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – no more

      Or “I got ants in my pants,” by James Brown (hear it here)

      ‘Cause I can’t dance,
      I can’t dance,
      I got ants in my pants,
      Got ants in my pants,
      Now, I can’t dance, ant_2sm1.jpg
      I can’t dance,
      Got ants in my pants!
      Got ants in my pants!

    8. Want to see some real ants? You can see lots of them in time-lapsed videos through the wonder of YouTube. Like ants eating ant poison, or 7 minutes of ants eating a dropped piece of food, or a variety of ants in action in ant farms.

    ants_in_line_sm2.jpg

    if the shoe fits

    Shoes and boots and slippers. (Oh my.) This week’s Themed Things Thursday is all about footwear. Try these on for size.

    1. The old woman who lived in a shoe
      A nursery rhyme. I hadn’t remembered the abusive turn:

      There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all soundly, and put them to bed.

      (Someone’s written up a less harsh version, too.)

    2. to walk in someone else’s shoes
      walk in my shoes
      walk a mile in another’s shoes
      walk a mile in another man’s mocassins
      walk a kilometer in another kid’s bunny slippers       (or maybe not)

      bunnyslippers.jpg
These expressions suggest that we should not pass judgment on another’s actions without having lived through the same experiences. Among other things, the Depeche Mode song “Walking in my shoes” is inspired by this. (video)

    3. Blue Suede Shoes
      Don’t step on them. Walked in and passed down by many different singers, including Elvis.
    4. The Quick-Quick Slow Death
      This episode of the Avengers features a cobbler who makes shoes for a dance school, and who really wants to make a pair of shoes for Emma Peel’s perfect feet.
    5. The Twelve Dancing Princesses
      A fairytale about 12 princesses who would sneak out of their locked sleeping chamber at night, and wear down their slippers every night dancing.
    6. The Red Shoes
      A fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. A cautionary tale with some red shoes that won’t let the wearer stop dancing.
    7. The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
      A movie about a man (Tom Hanks) whose single red shoe drew the attention of the FBI.
    8. Cinderella
      Many versions of this tale feature a special slipper which was used to identify the woman (who left in a hurry with only one shoe) after charming the prince at his ball. Often a glass slipper, potentially based on the version by Perrault, it was sometimes also described as a golden slipper. (It is not generally described as a bunny slipper.)

      9. rubyslippers1.jpg

    9. The Wizard of Oz
The movie features Dorothy’s iconic ruby slippers, taken from the feet of the witch squished by Dorothy’s house. The original book by L. Frank Baum featured silver slippers. Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s take on the tale, compromised between the two by having the slippers be of an indeterminate shiny color.
    10. These boots are made for walkin’, by Nancy Sinatra.

      These boots are made for walking,
      and that’s just what they’ll do
      One of these days these boots
      are gonna walk all over you

    11. Seven-league boots
      Magic boots that are featured in various fairy and folk tales that allow the wearer to travel great distances with each step. (Those boots were made for some serious walking.)
    12. Kinky Boots
      A movie about a shoe factory owner who tries to find a new niche by making shoes and boots for transvestites. His inspiration, a singer named Lola, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, known to me better as the relentless agent from Serenity.
    13. They Died With Their Boots On (1941)
      A movie about Custer’s last stand. Haven’t seen it. Probably doesn’t actually feature a lot about boots.
    14. Imelda Marcos
      The former first lady of the Philippines was well known for her extravagantly large collection of shoes. Over a thousand pairs. Imelda’s shoes can apparently now be seen in a shoe museum.
    15. In these shoes, by Kirsty MacColl intheseshoes.jpg

      I once met a man
      with a sense of adventure
      He was dressed to thrill
      wherever he went
      He said “Let’s make love
      on a mountain top
      Under the stars
      on a big hard rock”
      I said “In these shoes?
      I don’t think so”
      I said “Honey,
      let’s do it here.”

    all you need is “dude”

    Late last week, jen of one plus two wrote an in-depth discussion of an important and versatile word of our times: dude. In that post, she suggested that if I were writing that post, I would include a list of song titles with the word dude. I took this as a challenge.¹ But being really, really freakin’ tired, it’s taken me a few days to get up off my metaphorical butt and figuratively rise to the challenge.

    When I read her suggestion, the first song that popped into my head was the Beatles’ classic “hey, dude”. Following along with this, I bring to you a selection of dude songs from those fab four dudes.

    1. hey, dude
    2. baby you’re a rich dude
    3. love me dude
    4. I wanna be your dude
    5. dizzy dude Lizzy
    6. nowhere dude
    7. Norwegian dude
    8. with a little help from my dudes
    9. Martha my dude
    10. can’t buy me dude
    11. you’ve got to hide your dude away
    12. a hard dude’s night
    13. the dude on the hill
    14. why don’t we dude it in the road
    15. ob-la-di, ob-la-dude
    16. eight dudes a week

    —-
    ¹ jen also offered a more direct challenge: for commenters to use the word dude in a haiku. My own dude haiku, which featured somewhat traditional references to nature, made me laugh. But it was late at night.

    peachy keen

    peach1web.jpg
    This week’s edition of Themed Things Thursday is as peachy as can be, with a hand-picked selection of juicy bits of peach. Just in time for Summer.¹

    1. Do I dare to eat a peach?

      The line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“:

      Shall I part my hair behind?
      Do I dare to eat a peach?
      I shall wear white flannel trousers,
      and walk upon the beach.
      I have heard the mermaids singing,
      each to each.

    2. The peach story of Zhang Daoling, founder of a sect of Taoism. Followers had to prove their faith by leaping an improbable distance to pick peaches. (Did they dare to pick a peach?)
    3. James and the Giant Peach
      The book by Roald Dahl, and animated movie (1996) based on the book. Involves a boy and a journey in a…giant peach.
    4. momotaro The old Japanese folk tale about the “peach boy.” An old woman finds a giant peach floating down the river, which turns out to contain a boy. She and her husband adopt the boy and name him James. No, wait. Taro.

      Another, possibly older version of the momotaro tale involved the older couple eating an unusual peach they found, being rejuvenated by said peach, and then…gasp…having sex, leading to the birth of the peach boy.

    5. Peaches have often been associated with sex, and their cleft shape has been likened to buttocks. Apparently in several cultures, such as in Japan. There’s also A Pathan song (which I read mentioned in M. M. Kaye’s The Far Pavilions) is said to contain the following lines:
      giantpeach.gif

      There is a boy, across the river
      With a bottom like a peach
      But alas, I can’t swim.

    6. There’s a South Carolina roadside attraction that is a water tower shaped and painted like a giant peach. It’s said to look like a big orange butt.
    7. Peaches, by the Presidents of the United States. (Hear the song, and see the video. But I warn you, this is a song that can get stuck in your head. It was once stuck in my head for days. Insidious, I tell you.)

      moving to the country
      gonna eat a lot of peaches
      I’m moving to the country
      I’m gonna eat me a lot of peaches
      …
      peaches come from a can
      they were put there by a man
      in a factory downtown
      if I had my little way
      I’d eat peaches every day

    8. Peaches (2004). A movie featuring a peach cannery, and a young woman who works there.
    9. The Ripest Peach, a poem by James Whitcomb Riley. Likens a woman to a peach (that’s out of reach):

      The ripest peach is highest on the tree —
      And so her love, beyond the reach of me,
      Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow
      Her heart down to me where I worship now!

    10. There’s the expression “be a peach.” As in “you’re a peach,” “he’s a peach,” or “she’s a peach.” Means more-or-less “be nice.” There was a Bloom County comic strip once about Reagan, where one character argues for his impeachment, and another talks about what a nice guy he seemed, leading to the line “impeach the peach!”

    red_peaches.jpg
    ——————–
    ¹ It’s Summer now, for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, just today is the Summer Solstice, starting off the official Summer season by some calendars.

    learn to dance in 3 easy steps

    Okay, so maybe these videos won’t teach you to dance. But they are lots of fun to watch:

    1. The Jan Pehechan-Ho dance scene from Gumnaam (1966) (and featured in the movie Ghost World )
    2. Christopher Walken dances to Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice”
    3. OK Go, their famous treadmill dance to “Here it goes again”. (Hat-tip to jeanerz, who thought she was the last person on earth to have seen this, but who was the first who showed it to me.)

    I yam what I yam

    It’s time for another helping of Themed Things Thursdays. It being vegetable week here, in honor of my first pick-up of my CSA veggies, this Thursday Theme for Things is vegetables. Okay, the list is a bit heavy on the onion bits (with apologies to those who don’t like onions), but you can pick them out.

    some vegetables

  • beans
    Jack and the beanstalk, a fairy tale featuring magic beans that grow a towering beanstalk.
  • corn
    Children of the Corn (1984) A movie based on a Stephen King story. Horror in the corn fields.

  • spinach
    The cartoon character Popeye (The Sailor Man) gets super-duper strong when he eats a can of spinach. Even has a little song he sings when he gets all juiced up: I’m strong to the finish, ’cause I eats me spinach…
  • broccoli
    Powerpuff Girls episode 17 “Beat Your Greens“. Alien broccoli attacks.
  • cabbage
    The Kids in the Hall offers Cabbage Head, a man with cabbage for hair. (There are also the Cabbage Patch Kids, scrunched-up looking dolls that were all the rage in the 80’s, and that now have their own urban legend.)
  • pumpkin
    Peter Peter pumkin eater. A nursery rhyme. Also a song you can play on the piano using only the black keys.

    Peter Peter pumpkin eater
    Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
    He put her in a pumpkin shell
    And there he kept her very well

  • peppers
    Peter Piper A nursery rhyme and tongue twister: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”
  • carrots
    Bugs Bunny is known for his trademark carrot-munching. But did you know that his carrot-munching was a Clark Gable immitation?

    bugs

    Bugs Bunny’s nonchalant carrot-chewing stance, as explained many years later by Chuck Jones, and again by Friz Freleng, comes from the movie, It Happened One Night, from a scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing, giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character, during the hitch-hiking sequence.

  • potato
    Everybody’s favorite spud has got to be the ever-dignified, interchangeably featured Mr. Potatohead (Apparently, there are many new Potatohead varieties that have sprouted, including the venerable Star Wars Darth Tater
  • sweet potato
    “Sweet Potato,” by Cracker. (Off the album “Kerosene Hat”) A rockin’ romp of a song. Be my sweet potato, I’ll be your honey lamb

  • yams
    Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Yams play a central role in the Nigerian community depicted in this novel. (See? I can get all literary, too.) (By the way, these yams aren’t the same as sweet potatoes, which are often called yams in the US)
  • turnip
    You can’t get blood from a turnip, or “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip” (You can also find more garden-variety cliches) An expression meaning that it’s not possible to extract something from a source that doesn’t contain that thing.
  • onion
    1. The Onion (“America’s finest news source”) My own favorite Onion article? This eerily prescient one from January, 2001.
    2. Shrek (2001) An animated movie featuring an ogre who likens himself to an onion:

      Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: They both smell?
      Shrek: NO! They have LAYERS. There’s more to us underneath. So, ogres are like onions.
      Donkey: Yeah, but nobody LIKES onions!

    3. The End: Book the Thirteenth, the final installation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket begins with the following layery, teary-eyed, oniony sentence:

      If you have ever peeled an onion, then you know that the first thin, papery layer reveals another thin, papery layer, and that layer reveals another, and another, and before you know it you have hundreds of layers all over the kitchen table and thousands of tears in your eyes, sorry that you ever started peeling in the first place and wishing that you had left the onion alone to wither away on the shelf of the pantry while you went on with your life, even if that meant never again enjoying the complicated and overwhelming taste of this strange and bitter vegetable.

  • bok choi
    Bok Choi Boy, the story of a young lad raised by vegetables to become a legendary leafy-green fighter for truth, justice and better nutrition. (Okay, I made this one up.)
  • a whole bunch o’ different oversized veggies
    June 29, 1999 written and illustrated by Caldecott award-winnder David Wiesner. A picturebook featuring gigantic vegetables raining down from the skies. A beatifully illustrated, beautifully absurd book:

    Cucumbers circle Kalamazoo. Lima beans loom over Levittown. Artichokes advance on Anchorage.

    Check out some of the illustrations on the publisher’s webpage for the book.

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    vegetable medley

    greens_album.jpg I went to collect my first CSA vegetables this evening: an impressive selection of greens, greens, greens and more greens. Fresh, fresh off the farm.

    To celebrate, I thought I’d put together a musical tribute. We all know that green-friendly classic “give peas a chance,” but do you know some of these other vegetable hits?

    A Medley of Vegetable Songs

    1. we got the beets
    2. it ain’t easy being greens
    3. smells like teen spinach
    4. rutabagas keep falling on my head
    5. give my regards to broccoli
    6. are you lonesome tomato
    7. can’t take my eyes off arugula
    8. I never loved a man the way that I love yams
    9. saving all my leeks for you
    10. when a man loves a radish
    11. first time ever I saw your kale
    12. the dawning of the age of aspargus

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    my pants are falling down

    Once more, I’ve been shockingly lax of late with my pants. It’s been ages, simply ages, since I’ve posted some serious pants content.¹ And sadly, I don’t really have time do write much today. Not even about pants. (I have work to do.) But I can share a bit of pants I’ve been sitting on for while.

    Feast your eyes and ears on this pants musical extravaganza².

    Warning: the video linked does feature a brief non-pants bit. As in where the folks in the video are not wearing any. Pants, that is. Of any sort. The question is, will this attract or repel you?

    Well, I guess this is a short pants post. But short pants can be good, especially when the weather gets warm.

    ———–
    ¹ “Wait,” you’re saying, “has the pants content ever been serious?” Well, no, not really.

    ² Thanks to jenny for bringing this inspired pants production to my attention.