Tried to read and watch first-round March Madness Games will minor success. Though the mere name Oral Roberts causes me to grit my teeth, I did call that upset and it was a great game. However, my other anticipated upsets did not occur, as did a few anticipated wins. Life will definitely go on. Weird but also a relief to see a massive tourney roll out with crowds not much larger than a practice.
Nicole and I celebrated Friday with a delicious Zeus from Tony’s Pizza and South Park’s vaccination special (we needed that).
Streaming for Strivers:
A perfectly titled album. Play loud if your surrounding environment is too serene, though this is the autumnal Last Exit release.
Continued on the to-do tip. House-cleaned, book-hauled, organized–then checked to make sure no one had put greenies in my allergy meds. Check. I plan to kick back tomorrow just to make sure this isn’t a, uh, concern.
You’re tired of hearing it–this is the last time: Pasta La Fata is indeed, in excited pedestrian words we once overheard, “the thing around Columbia.” Last night, we tried their greens and ricotta lasagna and it rocked. We’ve ordered once a week for most of the calendar year and haven’t been disappointed. I suspect we’ll be loyal even when the pan-damn-ic is over. Or if, ever. Sorry for the steal, Hardin.
Movie Night: still reggae-fixated, we watched The Harder They Come for about the 3rd or 4th time. Never gets old! And it makes you want to do donuts all over a golf course in a convertible! We also watched one of the extras from the Babylon BluRay we (we!) just bought, a terrific 45-minute documentary examine the work of my favorite dub poet and musical politician, Linton Kwesi Johnson. I bought some chocolate and ice cream for the occasion (plus our anniversary’s round the corner), but Nicole brought some home, too.
Streaming for Strivers:
Programmed an afternoon block-party of Miss Grae yesterday and more boomin’ from my system this morning. Definitely one of the top 5 female rappers ever, though it isn’t proclaimed enough.
We awakened to pouring rain, flashing lightning, booming thunder–and some dude screaming epithets into the pre-dawn dark from the driveway next door. Nicole thought it was happening in her waking dream, but alas it was not.
We celebrated St. Pat’s with soda bread and a pint of music from that talented nutcase Van Morrison and The Chieftains (their team-up is passionate and evocative), with a Pogues chaser. Somehow it was fitting that I ran out to the truck through a thick downpour and drove to work accompanied by more sudden flickers of electricity. It may have been St. Pat’s (and Biden Bucks Day for some), but the main news was horrifying and unfortunately nothing surprising.
When I got home, I had to mop some water out of the basement “Kitten Room”–we need a sump pump. More rain’s on the way. We squeezed a long walk in between downpours, discussed a home improvement future, ate more corned beef and cabbage, read and scrolled, and faded into Hypnos’ land with a couple of episodes of Kim’s Convenience. You may have noticed I use the simple teacher-trick of repetition quite frequently in these commentaries–on purpose. This show is consistently entertaining.
Streaming for Strivers:
Spoon ‘n’ The Brute. Their chemistry made my day and night yesterday, and is gonna make it this morning. Jimmy was Arkansan; Webster was KC-born.
I’ve been in a real to-do list mode the last few days, but the to-dos have been a mite strange.
Every time my browser of choice (Firefox) freshly synchs, it duplicates all my bookmarks. Having haunted forums trying to correct it, I kicked it to the curb and meticulously moved my on-line life to Edge. So far so good.
Also, as I have mentioned, our house overflows with tomes, so yesterday I hauled a mess of them over to Stephens to bibliopopulate my naked office shelves. (I’d be moving more in now but it’s pouring rain and flashing electricity out there at present.
In addition, I took a community cat we refer to as Crazy-Eyes Killa to The Spay Neuter Project to get her spayed and vaccinated (SNP rocks, and that service costs a mere $25), then set up our garage for her 48-hour recovery. Turns out she was already fixed, and she’s a he. Fortunately, her sobriquet is gender-flexible.
But wait: there’s more!
Do you lose track of services you subscribe to on-line? I refuse to, so I unsubscribed from about $75 worth of services we haven’t been using much.
Oh, and I vacuumed!
Other news: Nicole and I would really like to encourage Columbians to try Tiger Chef for some outstanding Burmese and Thai cuisine. Our recent favorite has been their Pad Thai and Mi Goreng Noodles, both with tofu. Keep in mind that their heat scale is 1-5!
Five more days and this commentary comes to a close. Nicole and I were able to schedule our second vaccination next Tuesday (we just can’t get enough microchips!), once again at the Isle of Capris Pants, so the timing’s pretty good. A few months ago, I wasn’t so sure it would make sense to stop at an arbitrary 365 days. It still may not.
We slept in a bit and both had to scramble to get ready for work. Nicole “threw together” our lunches–I told her I could manage but she insisted; she’s very sweet–but it didn’t seem thrown together to me: delicious ultra-garlicky za’atar hummus, toasted pita bread triangles, some walnuts, carrots, and celery, and an apple. I still had hummus left after the dipping was done, so I mixed in the walnuts and created “Walnut Hummus Surprise.” I texted Nicole to try it herself but she did not.
The BiPap therapy seems to be helping my energy, as I’m returning to my (even more) industrious self. A slow day at the office convinced me to channel our book overflow onto my fairly empty shelves there; I suppose I haven’t worked at Stephens to have amassed the requisite biblio-backdrop, so I’m going to simulate one. It’s going to take a few trips.
We squeezed in a neighborhood walk before a downpour and got some reading in. Nicole’s started Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and I’m legitimately excited about that. As usual when I’ve cleared my reading decks, my library holds came in, and they’re excellent so far: S. A. Cosby’s turbo-charged crime novel Blacktop Wastelandand Levon Helm’s engaging autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire.
Streaming for Strivers:
For such a humble package, it’s hilarious a copy is going for $900+ on Amazon and I couldn’t even find one on Discogs (I looked because the compilation is also sharp). Would you like to swing this morning? Click.
Top 10 Things Yesterday That Made Up for Losing an Hour Today:
(randomly ordered)
1) Nicole decided to make corned beef and cabbage for St. Pat’s and found a head of cabbage as big as mine.
2) We had an unplanned chat with our neighbor Shireen as we finished our and she began her walk.
3) We listened to classic reggae all day, but the highlight was taking in The Wailers’ stunning live-in-the-studio “Burnin’ and Lootin’.” Stopped us both cold as it usually does–a more frightening, intense, and real song I know not of.
4) It was chilly enough for it to be a perfect day to slurp ramen noodles for lunch.
5) At two different junctures, our cats (or more accurately, different units of our cats) seemed to form phalanxes for us. We were never in danger or on the attack.
6) My bangs had started tickling my nose, so Nicole gave me a perfect haircut. I had threatened to shave off my beard, but after 6-7 years the result might have been doughy and disturbing.
8) Donnie Harden Jr and I had another of our Facebook Messenger music gabs, this one about the crashes that claimed Otis and Skynyrd. We also turned over in our minds the complications of those Southern rockers.
9) After talking about it for months, we finally watched Anthony Hopkins’ KING LEAR. Hopkins and Jim Carter were stellar; Florence Pugh and Karl Johnson were underemployed. Also, the endings of the First Quarto and the First Folio were combined, which was either a stroke or a cop-out, I’m not sure.
10) Trying their oyster mushroom Cabernet ravioli and red gravy, we confirmed once again that Pasta La Fata is still the thing around here.
Extra credit: we pretty much fell asleep laughing through two episodes of Kim’s Convenience. And Tux was foiled in one of his ongoing attempts to block our goodnight kiss.
Streaming for Strivers:
Still celebrating the great jazz drummer Roy Haynes‘ 96th birthday up in here.
As rain, clouds, and cold descended, we attempted to weather it sans heater. Or rather, I did, as Nicole was relatively warm at work. Thermal underwear and an extra pair of socks got me to her quitting time; the cats either formed yin-yangs or crawled under comforters. The chill did keep me alert enough to finish Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill, or as I now like to think of it, Dread Pill. Not sure whether I’d recommend it other than if you enjoy being aggressively sobered (and I ain’t talkin’ ’bout hooch).
Activities: after our terrific experience with the film Babylon, Nicole requested a reggae playlist on her Spotify account (particularly peopled with the women of reggae), and I obliged, unsurprisingly ending up listening to reggae myself all day. I was reminded once again that NOT EVERYTHING IS STREAMING.
After a Shakespeare’s pizza and salad, we had another delightful Zoom with Frank and Rebecca Wimer-Pisano. We like to gab about movies; under discussion last night were Nomadland, Moonlight, and the new Billie Holiday biopic. Rebecca’s new name for KFC nearly brought us tears of laughter.
Full justice for Breonna Taylor!
Streaming for Strivers:
Nyabinghi-powered goodness from an early Rasta too-soon-departed.
Supervising student teachers can make you want to get back in the game in two ways. One way is unfortunate–you want to show ’em how it’s done. However, the other is inspiration–you want to try those new ideas yourself, and feel the rush again; you might even want to team-teach with the intern. The latter was my experience yesterday morning. This intern taught an engaging and varied lesson that focused on both Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls and the life of the great Toussaint L’Ouverture, and not only did it make me wish I was a high school teacher again, but I wish I’d had someone like her teaching me when I was kid. She has a great future.
Otherwise, it was a quiet but good day: trip to the mulch site; lunch featuring delicious leftover chili with plant-based protein that could fool carnivores; nose in two books, one of which, Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill, sent a chill down my spine it was so culturally (and uncomfortably) close; nice chat with Mom; listening session devoted to R.A.P. Ferreira, with whom I think I could have a beer and gab.
Thursday Movie Night? Franco Rossi’s highly recommended 1980 film set in Brixton, Babylon. It truly belongs with The Harder They Come and Rockers as a great reggae film, though it was unreleased in the States for 40 years. Upon its conclusion, the stream sent us straight to the German documentary Reggae ina Babylon, featuring Matumbi, Aswad, Steel Pulse, Alton Ellis, and other musicians who were unfortunately not identified. We will be listening to reggae non-stop for the next few days.
Streaming for Strivers:
I never tire of this poet and this band. Nicole, the band’s led by Dennis Bovell, who was behind the music for Babylon and was the bassist for Matumbi.
Days of rain coming, as well as several anniversaries in the coming months, not all of them happy. A post by a friend, and my wife’s reminder, got me thinking about getting steeled. I’ve never looked hard at that verb formation before.
Nicole’s been feeling under the weather lately (and the weather hasn’t even arrived). Fortunately, she was able to work from home yesterday and (physically, at least) take it easy.
At work, I managed to set up a recurring appointment with a student athlete who simply needs deadline checks and a sounding board. This semester has been a slow one where tutoring is concerned but this seems like an encouraging way to close it. I was invited to teach summer school for Stephens again, too, so that’s a definite plus.
Taxes are finished: federal “damage” offset by state “bounty.” In an isolated occurrence, I had to fill out a capital gains worksheet that apparently was created by a drunken Rube Goldberg-type character. Line 16 instructions, 1040, if you’d like to marvel at it.
On the way to pick up some food at Bangkok Gardens:, we mused about where we’d dine in when we first felt it was advisable, and when we might feel it would be advisable. We really didn’t arrive at a conclusion for either query. Have you?
Streaming for Strivers:
I’m always looking for more Sonny Sharrock on record. He left us far too soon. Just discovered this this morning.
Turned a day off into a futile work day, IT- / IRS-style. The WiFi software and driver mysteriously disappeared from our laptop, so I tried everything suggested by about 10 forums to absolutely no avail. I have yet to return it to its factory specs…but that may be next. I also seemed to have successfully completed our fed and state tax forms (though, working on-line, my state work got wiped once in the process), only to get a late-breaking e-mail about a late 1099B that is on its way about five minutes after I wrapped it up. I’m never gonna get that work day back.
As if in compensation for both of our difficult days, Nicole and I went for another great neighborhood walk, enjoyed some chili-‘getti, and spread some Skippy on the coffee-chocolate brownies she made this weekend. I also defiantly rejoiced in breaking my New Year’s Resolution by buying a very scarce record that popped up on Discogs, The Supreme Angels’ If I’m Too High. That’s a gospel album, by the way…
Streaming for Strivers:
A great singer and lefty guitarist who was covered early on by The Rolling Stones. And she’s still at it.
The Overeem Farewell Tour: Dispatches from the Public School Trenches 