R.E.M. Live Video, February 1981

Two bananas going black on the counter. What to do with them? There's butter and there's rum. So, frying them in butter & rum is a delicious possibility. But I believe fried bananas are better as a topping than as the main component of a dessert. Needs a base. So, something bready? French toast is always a good option, but there's no bread in the house. Frozen waffles work, but are unexciting, and besides, I've forgotten that I just bought some. There are bagels on the counter though. Cinnamon-raisin bagels, in fact. That sounds like a good flavor combo. But a chewy/crunchy toasted bagel with goopy/syrupy fried bananas on top doesn't sound like a good texture combo. There's a single egg. There's milk. Even a bit of leftover cream. Bread pudding!

One cinnamon-raisin bagel.
Two very ripe bananas.
An egg.
A cup of milk.
A splash of cream.
A splash of rum.
A dust of cinnamon.
Butter!

Mix egg, milk, cream, cinnamon. Cut the bagel into 1/2" cubes. Split the bagel cubes into two small ramekins, the insides of which you've already buttered. Pour half of the egg/milk mixture into each. Mix around. If it looks like there's not going to be enough liquid to get all the cubes at least damp, add more milk or cream. Then let that sit. A half hour should do the trick - but even if it's just while the oven preheats, you'll be OK. Give them a little stir if some cubes aren't getting enough liquid.

Preheat an oven to 350.

Get two oven-safe bowls, each slightly larger than the ramekins. Put a ramekin inside each bowl, with enough water in the bowl to come nearly to the top of the ramekins. We're double-boilin, bitches. Bowls go into the oven for 30 minutes.

With 10 minutes left...

Peel and cut up the bananas so they'll fit your non-stick pan. Melt a couple tablespoons of butter in your frying pan, over medium heat. Add the bananas, gently fry until all pieces have some nice golden brown. Heat off, add the rum (carefully! rum may be flammable!). Let that sizzle for a minute or so, to boil off the alcohol. Add more butter if you want more sauce.

Pop the bagel puddings out onto plates, pour bananas over top.

Tada.

The Salary-Celery Merger

Vocal Fry

My little sister, who because of age differences and family fragmentation, I have literally never hung out with outside of weddings and funerals, came down to see us this week.

We drank a lot of wine and vodka last night.

And now I want to curl up and die.

Now that the house adventure is starting to draw to an end, and there's a chance I'll regain my normal life, I have something I want to try: short, collaborative, songs.

• Songs must be no more than 30 seconds long. Shorter is fine.
• People are free to add / subtract / modify the tracks any way they want. If you want to add a part, fine; if you want to change levels / add effects / mix / etc. existing tracks, fine; if you want to chop the song up and restructure it, fine.
• We (anyone who wants to participate) could use Audacity, which is simple, free and multi-platform, to handle multitracking/editing.
• I could probably open up the FTP site here, to handle file storage duties. It would be nice to have some kind of cool source control mechanism to handle check-in/check-out/revision, but I'd rather keep it simple.

Any interest?

Well, that was a lot of butter!

I'm reading this interview, entitled "Is Our Retro Obsession Ruining Everything?", in which author Simon Reynolds complains there’s never “been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past” as ours. He's upset at how today's culture keeps looking back to the past for cultural inspiration instead of trying to come up with new ideas.

While reading this, my iPod shuffled-up a song from Doc Watson, "Crawdad Hole". The song is a traditional American folksong, and this performance was recorded in the mid-60's during the great folk revival going on at the time. Watson played many traditional tunes, but also stuff from old country pioneers like Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter Family. In addition to folk, there was a huge revival of all forms of traditional American music: blues, jazz, jug-band, etc.. And it wasn't just America, of course; I grew up listening to traditional Irish folk songs from bands like the Irish Rovers and the Boys Of The Lough; bands like Pentangle reached back hundreds of years for some of their songs. All the big names of the 60s and 70s rock got into it, to varying degrees: Dylan, the Stones, Clapton, The Beatles, Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers, Jethro Tull, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, etc.. They all kept one foot firmly in traditional folk, blues, country, etc., while pushing forward with the other foot. Even Black Sabbath tried to be a straight blues band for a while.

The 80s?
Come on Eileen, who do you love? Come dancing, let's rock this town. Put on the ritz, or whatever.

And all the 70's-style hair on the hair metal bands?

There was a huge 60's/psychedelic/flower-power revival in the 90s. Dee Lite did their day-glo flowers and polka-dots thing, the Black Crows and Telsa did straight covers of 60s songs. I went to countless rockabilly and surf-guitar shows when I was in college. Then there was the big band / swing dance craze of the 00s, the lounge music revival. Etc..

There's nothing different about today's backwards looking. People have always looked backwards for inspiration, for fun, for comfort, and even for novelty. The past is the main ingredient in everything we do today.

If we ask you for a cashier's check, do not send us a check claiming to be drawn from a business in Raleigh, NC when you're FedExing it from a Kroger's pharmacy in Kentucky. Also, do not print it on your inkjet printer. And, make sure you use a decent resizing algorithm when you enlarge that scanned signature. We are not that dumb. Neither was the bank manager I showed the check to.

Falling Falling