Enormous, Gargantuan, Humongous...

Colossal? One of my newest discoveries is This is Colossal. A visual extravaganza. An idea bazaar. A creative detonation. Love it. Check it out. 

Oh, Dear.

I don’t normally enjoy the deprecation or misfortune of others (OK, maybe there’s a little freude in my schaden), but the Dear Coquette blog transcends criticism and gets to the heart of the impracticality of our most absurd emotional and intellectual moments.

In this age of PhotoShopped models and fabricated homework assignments of especially precocious elementary school kids, it is always smart to wonder if it’s real.

Nevertheless, her blog is entertaining and thought-provoking. It’s easy to get sucked in, for sure. Give her a read…and don’t forget to stop reading and go to bed. ;)

Strange, Indeed.

At work, we use the expression: pulling too many levers. When we’re testing the performance of a print or web piece, if we factor in too many variables, we’ll never know which is the one that’s making it sing (or suck, which is sometimes the case). This makes wonderful sense. 

When you’re desperate, however, there’s an urge to pull every lever maniacally and repeatedly. I’m at this stage with the state of my physical well-being. I have a strong suspicion that what is plaguing me is related to stress. So, even though I love writing for this blog, and feel the benefits of daily writing, I need to lessen the anxiety of the daily obligation, at least for long enough to see if it’s part of what’s going on. 

I’ll keep posting, but for the next several days I’m going to let other works lift the barbells. Today, it’s a story that I didn’t hear live on Morning Edition, but heard advertised and then tuned into it later. 

Read or listen here the fascinating story behind the song Strange Fruit (Really, please check it out. I was so moved by it.) And also a rare video:

Not Cool.

Usually when you see a girl jumping up and down loudly expressing her disapproval of the situation, she is in the cereal aisle, she is not getting a box sugar-coated, uniformly-puffed deliciousness, and she is accompanied by her mommy.

None of these describe my surroundings this morning, yet my heels did leave the linoleum while my mouth erupted in a lava of less than loving language. It might have looked like a temper tantrum, but it was actually a fairly sane response to fairly unreasonable circumstances.

I’m not even embarrassed by it. Because I think I was actually the most grounded person in the room—even if was, at times, a few inches off the floor.

That was my day. How was yours?

The Brass Menagerie.

A bit belatedly, I realized that in my post from Saturday, I may have suggested that I am the fairer partner in our marriage union. Not so. We each pulled the same-sized straw. While he does set our table with some mystifying preferences, so do I.

I may have forgotten to mention that I went through a period from about 1996-2001 during which the entire Ultra Lounge Series was the only item on the menu: Yma Sumac, Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Julie London, and Sergio Mendes…just to give you an idea. So Nice was our wedding song, and we even took dance lessons so we could properly swing it.

  
I do seem to have phases, and a few more oddities passed our ears before settling on the current, which is about 1:1 arabic belly dance grooves and high energy gypsy horns. In both cases, the better to shake it.

For me. For Ben, I suspect he wishes I would please shake the addiction.

The Arabian beats are so entwined with my dancing that there is little to explain. The Gypsy brass bands are just a progression of that sound that unexpectedly pitched a tent in my consciousness.

Once, during a road trip to our friends' wedding, this song was playing at the precise time that we were so lost that we actually missed the ceremony. Ben claimed it sounded like music in the waiting room of hell.

The good new is that, like Witchcraft and others for me, Ben has also found a sound from my collection that doesn't feel like aural water boarding. Meet LaBrassBanda:

Autobahn is actually their killer song, but this one has more visual energy. Enjoy!

(I hope.)

The Green Light.

You know that re-circulate button on your car’s dash? I’m starting to suspect that I have an internal one that is stuck on. Whatever this pestilent sludge is that is pumping through my blood stream, it refuses to be expelled, leaving me repeatedly weak and sickly.

Last week, probably because she was tired of looking at my pale, sweaty visage, my boss recommended that I go to the local juice bar and order a Dr. Feelgood—a blend of greens and things that claims to be a serum of fortitude. It had worked for her a month earlier, and we both crossed fingers that I would get the same result. And, I actually did.

Now, I know that my sudden turnaround could have been entirely psychosomatic, but so what? If a little trickery is all it takes to shake the disease, who am I to argue?

Let’s guess that it’s a little from Column A and a little from Column B, though. I’m enough of a believer either way to recreate it at home with my juicer. (you will also need a juicer, by the way)

I watched them make it, so I know the ingredients. But, I have to say, it was a bit on the ewww side, so I tried to improve it without de-powering its magic.

Here’s what you need:
      
4 whole stalks of kale
3 ribs of celery, halved
2 medium pickling cucumbers, halved
2 small apples, quartered (no need to peel or core)
1 nectarine, quartered and pitted
A handful of green beans, stems and ends removed
One 1½” piece of ginger, peeled
1 oz. of aloe vera gel, the dietary supplement kind (optional)

It all looks so lovely. How bad could it be?

Here's what to do:

Easy! It all goes into the juicer a little at a time (though I just mixed in the aloe at the end). Follow the instructions for your juicer and you’re good. 

This yields about 16 oz. My additions were the green beans, nectarine, and aloe gel. I added the nectarine because I had one on hand and I thought it would improve the flavor. It did. Next time I would double the ginger. I barely tasted it in mine, but it was what made a drinking a giant glass of green fluid possible the first time around. 

Cheers to your health!

Maybe My Horses Are a Little Bit High.

Things happen in my house that I never would have imagined. Out of my control, movies like Piranhaconda and Sharktopus are up on the screen before I can say, “Nooooooo…!”

My husband and I appreciate one another because we bring to our daily feast a mouthful of unfamiliar flavors. For him that is jazz, unexpected cuisine, and more exposure to fashion than most testosterone can absorb. For me, that is alien conspiracies, colossal toads, and doom metal.

From a music perspective, there is little I can appreciate. I find much of it more dark, heavy, and, at times, more dismal and depressing than I can bear. How interesting that one can feel so much joy from sounds that come from what seems to be such a gloomy place. Huh.

But there is more. Outside of the doom, there are bands that Ben has introduced me to that arouse in me not only approval, but, occasionally, even a head bang or two. Witchcraft from Sweden is one of them.

Well, I think they are paying one hell of an homage to Black Sabbath, but thank goodness someone is.