Hello, dears. Just popping my head up above the water to say hello and bring you a quick dump and run of delights.
First, I’m popping out the oldies with Lenny Bernstein’s slick version of Exultate Jubilate. The recording is very Lenny – a big church filled bombastically to the formerets with an orchestra consisting of every single fucking person in Bavaria who can play an instrument (cute violinist alert at 5.04) and a deathly silent audience, stunned into submission by the music and the stark staring terror that they might cough and Lenny would gut them with his baton. However, Arleen Auger’s voice is lovely, and this recording is the one I hear in my head if I happen to think of Lenny. It was playing one night at one of his parties, and he was serving drinks and bopping around like he usually did when he got to hear his own performances, like a drunk bullfrog that has been connected to the mains, and at the height of one particularly spastic conniption he managed to tip an entire jug of margaritas over Nancy Reagan, so it always makes me laugh. The recording of the Great Mass in C minor that goes with this on CD is a cracker, by the way.
Next, following on from Cole’s mustard abduction, a charming little story by Theodore Sturgeon called “Yesterday Was Monday” which was pointed out by KBS, and which explains everything.
Random food blogness: Fat Yu, who apparently IS FAT YU! (and also a tiny little bit racist on the Japanese), but who writes otherwise entertainingly of his eating exploits around Shanghai.
If you like a bit of tentacle in your tale and can “Ïa! ïa! Shub niggurath!” with the best of them, you might enjoy Innsmouth Mazazine. I have been working my way through them very happily, even if they do give me odd dreams.
Last, and then I am off to bed in my upside-down down-under bed, I suggest you go and see the website of sculptor Thomas Doyle to see the coolest things ever.
Goodnight my dears. Sleep well and dream of Ted Cruz slowly slipping down a slavering and drool-bespattered maw. Ïa! ïa! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Jerzy Russian
I love that title. I will try my best to use that often in my normal day-to-day life.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
If I were brave, I would create a category called “Breaking the unbagging protocol”, but I’m not that brave.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Jerzy Russian:
Why thankyou, that’s very kind.
Schlemizel
My brother & SIL show dogs. One story they tell of the stupidity of dog people involves a dog that had only one testicle which would eliminate it from competition. The owners decided to have a fake inserted. The problem was that after a few shows the other one descended so when the judge checked he had 3 balls. That made him ineligible to show.
The movie “Best In Show” was not nearly as bizarre as the real thing
Felonius Monk
Cole’s mustard is probably resting in the same place as all his missing socks.
Corner Stone
@Jerzy Russian:
Reminds me of those two musicians doing the Geico ads. Not sure how they’d work it into a commercial but:
“Jimmy, how happy are the people saving money by switching to GEICO?”
“Happier than a dog with three balls.”
“He does look happy doesn’t he?”
NotMax
(h/t to maddowlblog)
A passel of mighty purty pikshurs.
Southern Beale
The state of the media is grim, my friends.
What comes from this mess, God only knows.
Rosalita
did the mustard ever show up? too lazy to read all the comments on that post…
Scott S.
I would love to read so much more of that Innsmouth Free Press… but I barely have time to read all the books I’ve got now, much less start adding magazines to the pile…
Southern Beale
Anyone want to place bets on this actually happening in our lifetimes?
Not gonna hold my breath on that one! Free markets! Ponies! Privatization! Job-killing unions! Wheeee!
Origuy
I just got back from two weeks in Moscow. The male a capella group Doros was singing in St. Basil’s, as they are in this video. Unfortunately, when I was there, they were only singing briefly and then selling CDs.
BGK
I was busy with, I’m thankful to say, not-work things this weekend, so I had little time to spend in front of the teevee machine until yesterday at the gym. Where Dancin’ Dave was blathering about Sarah Palin’s…um…performance at CPAC.
Was it just me, or was she blotto? The wacked-out hair, the glazed eyes, the decidedly blurry-at-the-edges quality? That, or she’s heavily medicated.
Schlemizel
@Southern Beale:
“Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. . . ”
Yeah, I wonder why that is? I’m sure it is all just messaging. Pasta bless them if they actually do decide to give up the hate for women, poor, immigrants, gays and people of color. If they also add the anti-theft policies you mention they will lose 90% of their current base. They will become the 1960’s Democratic Party and the parties will have pretty much swapped places on the right/left scale.
Villago Delenda Est
Ethnic Chinese? In Singapore? The Japanese did a hell of a job in the 40’s turning hearts and minds of other Asians against them with their own attitude.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
This will happen pretty much the same time I’m recalled to Russia to take personal possession of the Winter Palace as Tsar.
Roger Moore
@Felonius Monk:
I think it’s following Dick Cheney’s lead by moving to an undisclosed location to avoid terrorist attacks.
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel:
Fixed that to show the hard cold reality of the modern Rethuglican party. A party of cold hatred toward “the other”.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, I took their direct quote – it does show how out of touch with reality they are & your edit is spot on
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Villago Delenda Est:
Shanghai, but yes, you’re right.
handsmile
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
I remember seeing Thomas Doyle’s sculptures in a group exhibition “Otherworldly” at NYC’s Museum of Art and Design a year or so ago. As he’s a fairly obscure artist, how did you come across his work?
If miniature sculptural environments intrigue you, let me recommend that you take a look sometime at the work of Charles Matton. His own website is in French (which should pose no problem for a cosmopolite like yourself), but I’ve linked as well Matton’s “artist’s page” from the Forum Gallery (his representative in New York).
http://www.charlesmatton.com/
http://forumgallery.com/artist/charles-matton/
Do note the intricate details of each interior and then the size of its box container. (Regrettably, Matton’s virtuosic craftsmanship and perspectival enigmas don’t reproduce all that well on-line.) Nevertheless, perhaps you will find them to be of interest.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
#18, Best description I’ve read.
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
What a great post. Thank you. Now go say hello to all those men lined up outside your door. Your admirers wait.
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
Unsurprisingly, it’s all about changing the marketing campaign rather than improving the product. They really don’t get, or don’t want to get, that it’s their policies that are hurting them, not their PR.
Schlemizel
A friend just posted a picture of the character of the devil in the History Channels “The Bible”.
First why would you pick a black actor to play the devil? We are still not a race blind society. But it gets worse. The actor bears a passing resemblance to a certain President of a certain North American nation. I’m sooo sure that is just a coincidence.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@handsmile:
Thankyou very much. I have no idea, I confess, how I heard of Doyle. He was lurking in my bookmarks from a few years ago.
Maude
@Roger Moore:
#23
I call it a patina of BS.
handsmile
@Southern Beale:
With reports like that, The Onion will soon be out of business.
It does impress me how fully the RNC (and the GOP as a whole) recognizes and exploits the credulity and ineptitude of the Village media (its foremost target audience.)
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
Diana Kuan is one of my favorite food bloggers. She also helped my wife and I pick out some awesome restaurants during our travels (including Grandma’s Kitchen, the locally famous Hangzhou minichain).
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel:
They just do not get it. At all. Rinse’s “allies” who produced the report are all Bush crime family operatives, who desperately need to put the shit in new wrapping so Jeb! can reclaim the Oval Office for the crime family.
Roger Moore
@handsmile:
The only way they could have encapsulated the contemporary Republican party better is if the report were the result of paying millions of dollars to a political consulting firm with close ties to Reince Prebius.
Villago Delenda Est
From SoBe’s linked article in the LA Times:
So, the 10 point plan doesn’t mention the(ahem)herd of elephants in the room that are systemically trampling any chance of the GOP appealing to most women.
The stupid will be with them. Always.
handsmile
@Roger Moore:
Indeed, but how can you be sure no such consulting firms were involved? From the LAT:
“The report is the product of a committee headed by Priebus’ allies and supporters, including Henry Barbour of Mississippi, the nephew of former governor and RNC chairman Haley Barbour; former George W. Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer; and Sally Bradshaw, a longtime advisor to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.”
Nephews, spokesmen, and advisors. That’s a pretty graft-astic group right there. You’d have to think that Priebus would demand a piece of that Unregulated Free Market action.
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Shhhh. Let them think they need to keep calling women sluts, push personhood for zygotes, and encourage Sarah Palin to run again because she’ll totally get it right next time, and let them think we’re afraid of Sarah now that she’s shown us her Big Gulp.
Roger Moore
@handsmile:
I guess I missed that part. And since they don’t seem to say how much money they spent preparing the report, there’s no way of knowing how much grift was involved.
Suffern ACE
@Southern Beale: Yes. They shall decry! Or they’ll just blame the president for not bailing out twinkies.
Eric U.
@Roger Moore: with a list like that, they’re probably at around of $1mil already. I don’t think Ari Fleischer works for free. Now, why anyone would want to pay him, I have no idea.
Corner Stone
I’m being informed that the fight to approve President Obama’s nominee for new Labor Secy is going to make Hagel look like Sunday picnic.
That part doesn’t surprise me. The part I can’t figure out is since when did we have a Dept of Labor?
Who knew?
Randy P
@Rosalita: I conclude based on the reported experience of others that when JC buys a replacement mustard and goes to put it away, he will find the missing mustard and several previous mustards in the same place.
Corner Stone
@Randy P:
Mustard has evolved to some sort of asexual reproduction?
If that’s the case then the “asexual” part will help it fit right in to the Cole household.
jafd
Folks interested in hyper-realist miniature sculpture (and/or ‘toy soldiers’) might want to check out the annual show of the Miniature Figure Collectors of America, which will be held this year on Friday, May 10, and Saturday, May 11, 2013,
at the Valley Forge Convention Center in King of Prussia, PA. See http://www.MFCAshow.com for more info.