I explore this question in my new little postie for The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-31/bharmony/
Click it. Checkit.
I am so high on Benadryl right now. More later.
Here’s Friday’s musical mouse. The National, Apartment Story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnI28bdZylM
The other day my friend came over, I pushed my two chairs and one little table to the side, and we had a midday dance party. It was incredible. This is a good song for pushing table and chairs out of the way, literally and figuratively.
I will admit I’m watching entirely too much CNN. The reasons range from election obsession to work procrastination to avoidance of specific other thoughts. The point is, I need my 360. My Coop, my Roland, and of course the Gerg. These people are my cake and ice cream (the cake and ice cream in addition to my actual cake and ice cream.)
The problem: in recent days they have had on this bespectacled, fart voiced Repuppetcan named Bay Buchanan. She is sandwiched in between Gergen and Roland and she is killing all of us. I understand the need for a Republican voice in the discussion, because good television is about differing viewpoints, but surely, surely, there must be someone more tolerable than this Fucking Idiot. I wish I could call her something other than that, but really, she is a Fucking Idiot who does not deserve to be on my ice cream show. She is credited as the “former senior advisor to Mitt Romney” which is, I think, the lamest credit I have ever seen. It seems she was the treasury secretary under Reagan, which is a combination of terrifying and baffling. She is a Nonsense Babbler. An Intelligence Sucker. A Fun Gobbler.
The point is: she’s killing my 360 buzz. She’s taking the bright red AC balloon out of my hand and letting it go. Good for Roland Martin for literally laughing in her face when she actually called Barack Obama a socialist.
Also, I hate her blue glasses. I hate them. It’s like plastic scaffolding placed over her face while construction workers attempt to renovate her feather brain. Boo.
I have a new thing up on TheDailyBeast.com about the places where I think you should not save money, even if you’re supposed to be saving money.
Also:
I know I already wrote about Nellie McKay, but I found another video that I really like of her singing “Long and Lazy River” off her album entitled “Pretty Little Head.” This is a really gorgeous song and an amazing performance. Watch it HERE. I found this video because I am supposed to be working on a million things and instead am eating ravioli, drinking wine, noodling around on the interwebs and watching my Tivoed episode of The View. That’s right bitches – I’m addicted to The View.
Long and lazy story short – I’m having a nice little Monday, as I hope you are too.
Somehow, some way, in a galactic collision of strange circumstances, I ended up on AC 360 last night proclaiming my adoration for David Gergen. You can watch it on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQbTcD-aBXM
By far, one of the weirdest, most hilarious things in which I have ever been involved. Gergen, characteristically, was a total champ about this silliness.
As John McCain would say:
My friends…(ugh)
My friends, I have two really fun upcoming live shows bookending the election. I have not been this excited since three weeks ago when I got a new mattress, decided I hated that mattress, and then ordered yet another new mattress.
NOVEMBER 3rd
COMEDY CENTRAL LIVE AT CRASH MANSION
I will be hosting some very funny people – lineup to come…
Crash Mansion
199 Bowery
8:00pm
NOVEMBER 5th
EUGENE MIRMAN AND FRIENDS
Me, Arj Barker, Hannibal Burress, Kumeil Nanjiani. My faves.
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St
8:30pm
Details:
Hi anyone and everyone or whoever,
So I wrote a little love letter to the love of my CNN life, David Gergen, and it was posted today on Tina Brown’s new web thingy The Daily Beast. You can read it here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-15/im-in-love-with-david-gergen/
I truly do love the Gerg and am very excited to watch him analyze tonight’s debate. I have to go figure out what to wear, just in case all of a sudden technology magically changes and he can see me through the screen. (As my friend’s beautiful mother Ilene used to say, “Always look your best because you never know who you’re gonna meet.” That has haunted me forever. Looking your best is exhausting. Usually when I look my best I also look exhausted from getting to that best point. There’s no winning.)
…on Nellie McKay.
Last night I went to see Nellie McKay play classic songs at South Street Seaport. A perfect New York City night when the sky is clear and the moon is out and the water is sparkley. I had two excellent martinis yesterday and some great dim sum so the day had that going for it as well.
If you can ever, ever, ever go to see her perform, you must. Go to her website right now, see if she’s playing anywhere near you, even if it’s years from now, and buy a ticket. If you must get on a plane get on a plane. If you have to spend more money than you’re comfortable with just do it, and don’t complain like you always do. Because she is so incredibly special. Her weirdness and her blondeness and her funny prettiness. She’s like lemon merengue for your ears. If you don’t like lemon merengue imagine stuffing something else you like in your ears.
The show started late so we were a smidge grumpy, but the second she appeared, delay was forgotten. I love her original songs, but her voice is so old fashioned and sweet and lilting it feels like it’s meant to wrap around the same songs Billie Holiday used to sing. A genius on the piano and on the ukelele, she played till about midnight, but I think I could listen to her every minute of every day.
You can watch her play two songs on uke HERE. The first is an original and is kind of silly (but good), but the second, which starts about three and a half minutes in, is her version of “If I Had You” and if it doesn’t leave you in a puddle you need to hold your hand over a candle till you feel something, for petes sake.
Came home and bought a ton of Nat King Cole songs on itunes (who cares bad economy blablablabla whatever) and then swaddled myself in a million blankets and fell asleep all smiley listening to some old school croon.
So my wondrous awesome friend Maura Madden has written the most fantastic book.
“Crafternoon: A Guide to Getting Artsy and Crafty With Your Friends All Year Long”
Maura reminds us of the delicious good times you can have just hanging out with your friends and making things. Years ago, when we were both living in Brooklyn, Maura initiated the first “Crafternoon” at her sweet little apartment. A bunch of excellent randoms, heeding a mysterious and adorable email, gathered to make valentines. She and her mom had made cookies and brownies and all kinds of goodness. On the table – and every other surface – was paper, magazines, string, glitter, stars. Glue and paste and tape. And everyone sat around for hours, people in our late twenties and early thirties reliving the glory of making a superfun mess while alternately gabbing and being quiet, serious and yet enjoying the delight of concentration. Not the concentration of a job, not the concentration of figuring out a bad relationship or the concentration of breaking down a 401K. Just the childlike concentration of beauty and love and friendship.
The book would be worth it for the cookie recipes alone. But it’s so much more than that.
Check it out here!:
A friend of mine emailed me the other day to ask if I’m into Big Star. Well yes, of course I’m into Big Star, I write back. But then over the course of the next few days I think about it and realize that like everyone else, I’m not into Big Star enough. And so I sniff around and listen to Big Star and like them more and listen and like them more still, and then I find their song, “I’m In Love With A Girl,” and I really, really don’t know when I’ll be able to stop liking them more because they’re so seventies sincere.
If I was smah-ter I’d figure out how to just post songs but I always have to youtube around to find some home crocked video using the song as soundtrack, but in this case my heart broked a bit because someone out there put this song on top of City Lights, which I saw on Christmas day last year. I’d seen it years ago in high school as part of a terrible film class, and we watched it on a little VCR. And I remembered that famous last close up of Chaplin’s face but it was this time, filling the screen for a Christmas crowd, every member of whom started to cry, that the completeness of the feeling and the genius enveloped me. And I cried too, tears splashing against my box of Junior Mints.
So here is sweet sweet Charlie Chaplin and the sweet sweet song of the day. Oh does this one make me sigh. I don’t know what lady inspired this but if it was me I would not stop blowing Alex Chilton till I was deadzo.