Barnes and Noble Prizes in Music and Literature

[captainsblog]

Eleanor and I both treated ourselves to Stuff the past few days. She, thanks to a recommendation from the lovely-in-blue ellettra, came home the other night with a CD from a PDX band called Pink Martini, titled Splendor in the Grass. It's about as eclectic a mix you're likely to hear any old day- of languages (their lead vocalist sings in at least five), of musical styles (everything from 60s bossa novaish sounds to a cover of Sesame Street's "Sing"- appropriate on today, the 40th anniversary of the show)



- and of just plain fun.

Then, an hour or so ago, I wandered through the corner B&N to treat myself to an early pressie- a memoir by an author who was featured on of my Baltimore-bound listens to the Whadya Knows I downloaded before leaving last week. It's by Paul Rudnick, a spiritual relative of David Sedaris if ever there was one, who's responsible, in varying degrees, for the stories or scripts of such film and theatrical projects as the Sonnenfeld Addams Family movies, I Hate Hamlet, and (his connection to this latter one being described in hilarious detail on the NPR show and hopefully in the book as well) Whoopi Goldberg's Sister Act. He wound up taking his name off that last one, but the studio let him pick a non-Smithee pseudonym of his own choosing for it.

Tonight, we are not in Ithaca, meeting or greeting Dar Williams at a small club on the inlet I'd hoped to do street team work for (the comrades of the Peoples Republic of Ithaca are pretty snobby about people from the West Side, and we're about as far up West Buffalo Street as you can get), and Friday night I will not be attending a gig at Ani DiFranco's venue featuring Jill Sobule (who we know and adore) and Erin McKeown (who we don't but who sounds serious cool), but I may take the moments to check out music by any or all of the above as the Next Best Thing To Being There.

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Other things today Wot Made Me Happy:

* The town came by and cleaned up some majorly huuge leaf piles that'd been on the side of the road. When I got home from a round of rounds early this afternoon, one of them looked like Jabba the Hutt was plopped in the middle of our street.

* My party did pretty okay in last night's results. The God's North Country Congressional race, that Sarah Youbetchah had stuck her nose into, wound up going to a Democrat for the first time in ages. Locally, the county Repuglicans cheated by not even running candidates in most city-based races, which naturally depressed the minority turnout for legislative and countywide races, but the Democrats held onto the most important check-and-balance position in the whole shootin' match for another four years, and that's a good thing. Even more locally, the GOP gained control of our town  board, but I was perfectly happy to see two of the three Democratic candidates defeated- one of them, a long-time political hack who probably ran a negative campaign for kindergarten milk monitor at Forest Elementary School in 1962, the other a serious beyotch who Eleanor knew from her furniture-selling days and had no respect for whatsoever. Besides, even the Democrats out here are such whores to the union thugs and the developers, it's hard to tell the difference between them and the other guys.

* I went back to the new gym at 5 tonight after the B&N run, mainly to see how busy it was at "prime time." Answer: busier than at 3 on a Saturday afternoon, but no waits for equipment and still a nice-seeming bunch of people compared to the last place. Also, I wondered if the previous visit's lack of Fox News on the monitors was a function of Saturday afternoon college football. Not only was there no Glenn Beck to rot my stomach lining tonight at 5, they actually had monitors tuned to MSNBC instead. I have found My People.

* And, as they once said on the old Batman TV show previews: Late-breaking news from the Cape! Emily has a Real Date with a Real Guy two nights from now. After pretending to sit on a porch with a loaded shotgun for a few seconds, I smiled and told her it was fine. Which it is.

* I'm not the only old coot turning 50 right about now, just one of the less significant old coots. Randi Rhodes had a substitute host on her radio show today: Air America regular Nicole Sandler, whose radio career goes back to the Jim Kerr Show on New York's WPLJ, which, sheesh, I listened to in high school. Her blog reports that she turned 50 today. As did Weird Al Yankovic, two Fridays ago, exactly 10 years before my older niece was born. And as will BBC luminary Tony Slattery, on my exact b-day next Monday. He played Brian, the out-of-place new lover of one of Stephen Fry's friends in Peter's Friends, which I did go back and finish over the weekend while Eleanor was at work. Its ending was far sweeter than the middle we bailed out of, and Tony's character was one of those who showed ranges of both comedy and tragedy in his moments on the screen.

I hope they all get CDs and books as good as we did this week.

Comments

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

Sharing a birth year with Weird Al makes turning 50 even sweeter, I'll bet! Glad you had a good day!

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

Much Happiness on the Upcoming Celebration of Your Taking in Oxygen and Expelling CO2 for Half of a Century!

Congrats also to Em! Bill has said that he shall meet in potential suitors for C in full uniform and cleaning one of his larger assualt rifles. :D

I, too, and quite happy about my party's performance in recent elections, esp. in VA.

I really need to visit Starbucks. Books and Peppermint Mocha Starbucks are waiting for me.

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Peppermint Mocha Starbucks!