This is Not a Message

Not a message, just sharing some amazing lyrics off Paul Simon's "Surprise" album. I took it out from the library, and I may have to buy it.

Another Galaxy (by Paul Simon)

On the morning of her wedding day, when no one was awake, she drove across the border. Leaving all the yellow roses on her wedding cake. Her mother's tears, her breakfast order.
She's gone, gone, gone.
There is a moment, a chip in time, when leaving home is the lesser crime.
When your eyes are blind with tears, but your heart can see: another life, another galaxy.

That night her dreams are storm-tossed as a willow. She hears the clouds, she sees the eye of a hurricane, as it sweeps across her island pillow.
But she's gone, gone, gone.
There is a moment, a chip in time, when leaving home is the lesser crime.
When your eyes are blind with tears, but your heart can see:
Another life, another galaxy.

Misc Pcs

Isaac Mizrahi has a great site worth exploring. He's got webisodes (Watch Isaac), several blogs (including a video blog), and lots of links to his collections, inspirations, etc. He's just designed a very cute collection for Liz Claiborne too.
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Who is the young woman in the new Oasis video, Falling Down? (That's a link to the NY Mag embedded video. You can go to Myspace to see it, too.) She's fab. Looks a little like a blue-eyed Jewish Penelope Cruz at certain angles. Anyhow, I'd be surprised if her career didn't pick up after this - though she may already be famous in England, for all I know.
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Really, it's too risky for celebs to sing live?! I find this incredibly insulting to both performers and audiences. First of all, if I had the God-given talent to sing, I'd be much more afraid to screw up the lipsynching than to actually sing. Seems like you're adding on a whole unnecessary skill-set with lipsynching, no? I just don't understand why this has become acceptable practice. If the audience is willing to listen and then applaud your performance, shouldn't you give them something to legitimately applaud? It defeats the whole point of a performance and insults every performing artist who has gone before you on their own talent. Arrrgh.

CinePassion!

I bought a CD for Christmas. I know you are thinking, "but you don't celebrate Christmas". True. I didn't buy it for me. I was so fascinated by the CD (by the cover design, and the theme of the disc) that I bought it with the excuse that it was a Christmas gift for someone else. Undecided as to the recipient, however, meant that no one received it, and so today, after letting my conscience off the hook, I unwrapped the CD and put it on. (The wrapping was made of biodegradable cellophane of some kind, which was a plus.) It's great. Sorry I didn't give it to you... but obviously not that sorry!

The CD is by a German quartet called Quadro Nuevo.

This particular CD is their interpretation of melodies from film soundtracks and is called CinePassion.

The themes they cover range from Lawrence of Arabia to The Sixth Sense. I haven't even finished one full play of this CD and I knew I ought to blog about it - it's that good.

Quadro Nuevo's albums are distributed in Canada by Justin Time Records.

Does buying CDs indicate I am an old geezer? I rather think it might.

RIP: Eartha Kitt

My sister just informed me that Eartha Kitt pass away. I caught her rendition of "Santa Baby" earlier today on the radio - I don't know if that was just coincidence, or if they had already announced her passing, but I thought at the time, "ah, nice to finally hear a classic sung by a legend". I have been hearing a lot of newer and more pop versions of carols this year.


She really symbolized fabulousness in ways other posers can only dream of.

Chanuka Muse

Not only did this evening's fry-up inspire a new short story, but I've just come up with a Chanuka Carol. Sung to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas, here is The Eight Days of Chanuka. You'll know how it goes, so just sub in the following.

On the first day of Chanuka, my true love gave to me,
The Essential Paul Simon CD
On the second day of Chanuka, my true love gave to me,
Two sheepskin gloves
and The Essential Paul Simon CD.

Get it? Now sub in:
Eight candles flickering
Seven chocolate coins
Six soufganiot
Fiiiive Goooolden Latkes
Four Coffee Cards
Three French pens

(Two sheepskin gloves - you're singing now aren't you? - and The Essential Paul Simon CD!)

That's it. There are only eight days, you know.

Stirring Coffee with Your Thumb

A few posts ago I mentioned that I went to one of the 1001 Friday Nights of Storytelling held at the Innis College Cafe every Friday night.

One woman went up and sang a Pacific Northwestern tall tale/folk song called The Frozen Logger. Wikipedia credits James Stevens and Ivar Haglund with writing it, and it appears that the Grateful Dead and Nick Cave both recorded a version of it.

The version I heard starts:

As I set down one evening in a timber town cafe
A six foot-seven waitress, to me these words did say
"I see you are a logger and not a common bum
For no one but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb

The rest of the lyrics are on a Canadian ex-pat's blog here.

Go read them, it'll cheer you up.