I discovered Florence + The Machine via my teenager’s playlist. Florence’s voice has a wonderful quality that reminds me a lot of Grace Slick.
When I first heard this song, I noticed the “pockets full of stones” line and asked my kid and her friends if the song was about Virginia Woolf. “Who?” they asked. :::facepalm::: It is about Ms. Woolf.
Our biblical-scale rain continues today, so I’ll be mostly indoors. Boo. Might head out later for some retail therapy. What are ya’ll up to?
Baud
Gotta work today.
NotMax
Could always be worse. Could be an inmate at the women’s jail in Pensacola that blew up.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: That jailhouse explosion has been all over the news here, but curiously, I am only just now learning it was a women’s prison.
OzarkHillbilly
Gardening. That is all.
Arm The Homeless
Funny, Betty, I am glad you brought that up. My fiance is a Woolf scholar, I will have to inform her of this.
Was down in your neck of the woods last weekend to adopt our new dog-friend, Arlo. It’s amazing what having another sentient being in the house does to your quality of life. Especially when they will never ask to borrow the car.
Betty Cracker
@Arm The Homeless: Yay, a new dog-friend! Took mine for a brisk walk in between thunderstorms. Poor critters are stir-crazy.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
And from the little I’ve read, one with a checkered past. (Until quite recently, segregating inmates by race as standard operating procedure?)
Comrade Jake
Coates on the whole Sterling mess and elegant racism:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/This-Town-Needs-A-Better-Class-Of-Racist/361443/
A must read I would say.
Steeplejack
I’m getting ready to drive from NoVa to Rehoboth Beach, DE, to check out Bro’ Man’s new beach house. (Is it a beach house if it’s not actually on the beach? It’s at the beach, I guess.) It’s about 2½ hours, a mostly pleasant drive through flat, rural Delaware on two-lane roads. Will be nice to get the Kia out for a road trip and stretch her legs. Plus a good friend has decided to go along, so there will be good conversation. And SiriusXM music.
Bro’ Man has been sending me a stream of texts about things to bring him from his house here, so I’ve got to swing by there to get those before setting out. The weather looks great—partly cloudy and low 60s.
Steeplejack
@Comrade Jake:
Discussed here Thursday night.
SiubhanDuinne
Another shooting in the north Atlanta suburbs, this time at a restaurant.
Nicole
Kentucky Derby Day! I’m going to a party held by a friend of a friend. The friend who invited me let me know she and her husband would arrive about 8PM. I had to tell her that at 8PM tonight the race will have been over for an hour and a half.
Not that I judge. Prior to this week, I was unaware there even was a basketball team called the Clippers.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: Sounds like fun. Drive safely!
grillo
Since the topic of this thread with no topic is music that you enjoy that someone else brought to you, I will go with that.
Some years ago, like five I think, a friend went to Japan (to ring bells, really). I always ask her to buy me local pop music when she goes places. So she brought me a CD.
I began listening to it, and it began with this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmEyloJNIZ8
And I have loved that song from that day to this.
chopper
up since 4:30 with the boychick. despite having the kids most all week so the wife could go interview across the country, I still don’t get to sleep in.
Comrade Jake
@Steeplejack: surprisingly little discussion there, actually.
Arm The Homeless
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, our stuff moved out last night, but Arlo is a cocker and relished muddy tromps through municipal stormwater swales on our walks.
The weather doesnt bother him, but he has some problems with separation anxiety. But we love him.
Good luck with your consumerism.
Porco Rosso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFNFFHXg2Bo
Speaking of strong voices…
Shara Worden. When she steps forward at around 1.33….
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Look up LP’s Into the Wild on YouTube. She’s a tiny woman with a ginormous voice.
Botsplainer
You realize that now you’ve indicated you like it, she’ll have to delete that artist from her playlist, right?
Botsplainer
@Nicole:
I’m going to the Derby, once I’m done working out.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Finished cleaning the fish tank and watering the plants.
Now I have to take a rescued Congo African Grey parrot to the vet and get his/her cage set up at our house.
It will be an interesting day.
But whatever happens with the bird (could be anything), I’ll be in another state all next week so I’ll hear about it secondhand.
MattF
Various errands. Pick up new lenses for my glasses that are needed post-lamellar keratectomy. For all you youngs out there, eye surgery is one of the varied afflictions of getting older.
A happier errand is going into downtown DC to visit Cocova:
http://www.cocova.com
and replenish my dwindling supply of good chocolate.
Nicole
@Botsplainer: Oh, cool! I’ve never been to Louisville. I go to Belmont every year, but there’s no comparison between 50,000 and 150,000 people.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: I went to the Derby during freshman year with a friend who was at Vandy. On the way there, she took a wrong turn, and we ended up in Indiana. Back then, my sense of regional geography was fuzzy, so I didn’t realize Indiana was right across the river; I thought we were hundreds of miles off course!
When we finally got to Churchill Downs, we were in the infield. I don’t think we saw a horse all day, but it was a helluva party! Have fun!
Steeplejack
@Comrade Jake:
Yeah, just letting you know the topic was raised.
WaterGirl
Retail therapy is highly underrated.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for reminding me. Tax-free shopping in Delaware and mucho outlet malls. There is one kitchen/housewares store in particular that I might want to hit.
The Thin Black Duke
@Porco Rosso: Whoa. Thank you.
The Thin Black Duke
…speaking of wonderful voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH2qyfQLAgc
feebog
Golf, then a little gardening, then work on our community newsletter for the rest of the weekend. Y’all have a good one.
danielx
Cleaning family room carpet…which is somewhat less than clean after a long, snowy, miserable winter. Which is STILL trying to hang on; it was down to 40 degrees last night and is only expected to reach 50 by noon.
But spring has arrived. And with that thought…
Thread needs moar kittehs!
It’s springtime, and a cat’s thoughts turn to….birds. Even including cats like Zoey with what a physician would call a weight issue, a cat who at the moment couldn’t catch one on a bet. As matter of fact, she recently had a mishap when attempting to jump up on that very same cedar chest – she tried to set her claws in the blanket and pull her way up but, ah, micalculated and pulled down blanket, stacked laundry, etc., on top of herself.
Naturally she did the classic embarrassed cat act: rapidly retreated to the other side of the room and started washing herself – I meant to do that, no problem, nothing to see here, move along. Of course the next time I was up there and she wanted up on the chest, she started marching back and forth in front of it and making the usual cat complaint noises and looking at me….c’mon, boss, lift me up there. Nothing doing, if you want up there and can’t get your fat furry ass up there by yourself, you’re out of luck. She also has a problem with shedding, and I may yet have to resort to the Furminator.
And just because, a portrait of Eric the Magnificent and his bosom buddy the late CeeCee, the only other cat we’ve ever had who didn’t beat the shit out of him on a regular basis. They were doing their jobs keeping your humble obedient servant company while I was suffering through a diverticulitis outbreak. Maybe suffering is the wrong word because the doc had prescribed vicodin in addition to antibiotics; I was floating on a cloud and thinking ‘this is wonderful, this is great shit’. I remember coming to at some point, too dopey to even lift my head, and seeing two cat tails swaying back in forth in unison in the dresser mirror, and how comforting that was….
raven
Off to take pictures of the school “field day”!
Betty Cracker
@danielx: She’s just big-boned, is all…
JGabriel
@Comrade Jake:
Anyone know when the term “elegant racism” came about? I’d never heard it until the Coates essay was published this week, though I assume it’s identical to what we used to call “country club racism” when I was a kid in Pennsyltucky.
mainmati
At Dulles Airport. Off to an environmentsl conference in Jakarta. A very long, tedious haul but I have done it a lot. Will at least get to see my Pulitzer Prize winning brother. Yay!
ixnay
Sorry, lost me at “wonderful quality,” and “Grace Slick” in the same sentence. The track is pretty good, and Florence doesn’t devolve into that chesty fake vibrato that Gracie used. Degustibus non est disputandum.
Schlemizel
the is the bright yellow thing in the sky today, I remember seeing it two weeks ago, before I started building the ark. Still need to finish uncovering the beds & getting the last of the winter fallen leafs out of the yard.
MattF
@ixnay: This is pretty famous, but if you haven’t heard Gilliian Welch doing ‘White Rabbit’, you’ve missed something special:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzInrjDQDnM
Comrade Dread
And over here we’re having 100 degree temperatures in April/May and in our third year of drought. Good thing Climate Change is a myth, or I might start to worry about persistent frequent ‘freak’ weather events.
Comrade Jake
@JGabriel: I don’t think it’s identical, though much could depend on your interpretation of “country club racism”.
Coates writes:
I suspect country club racism to be a bit more overt and still largely identifiable.
danielx
@Betty Cracker:
She is a big cat, but not that big. I discovered her rapid weight gain was due to hanging out on top of the desk when the spousal unit works at home one day a week. She was getting a good portion of whatever I took up there for breakfast, whatever that might be – pancakes, bacon and eggs, bagels and cream cheese, blueberry muffins for chrissakes…everything except fruit, which she disdained. Now she gets an eighth of a thirteen ounce can of canned food in the morning and a quarter cup of exceedingly expensive Blue Buffalo weight control dry food in early evening and is convinced that we’re deliberately starving her.
Pogonip
@danielx: She looks like the negative of Tunch!
The Derby’s probably a lot of fun in person but on TV it’s tedious. Four hours of blah-blah-blah leading up to a two-minute race. So I’ll be cheerfully ignoring it.
I read the books as a kid but can’t remember: didn’t the Black Stallion, or one of his kids, run in the Derby? Also, would he have been as popular had he been the Generic Horse-Brown Stallion?
I read somewhere that Arabs weren’t thrilled with black horses (forget why;sunscald, maybe). They actually preferred gray and bay (horse talk for “reddish-brown with black points”). Although since gray horses, like gray poodles, are born black…
Higgs Boson's Mate
Working on another raised planter box for Mary G. Our hordes of succulents have thrived to the point that we’re going to be able to do the front yard from our own stock. Yes, we’re taking up the grass and replacing it with decomposed granite paths and succulents. We turned off the lawn sprinklers some weeks ago and part of doing the new yard will be to replace them with drip irrigation. We’re using that for the rest of our plants already and it works a treat.
donnah
If everyone leaves me alone, I’ll be working on this:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d27/Rughooker/imagejpg1-10.jpg
danielx
@Pogonip:
The Derby is a lot of fun in person. A lot of years ago I was there visiting a friend for Derby weekend – went to see Little Feat the night before and Lowell George was still alive and playing with them, which says how long it was. Next day we head to the Derby with cooler packed, and have to have it inspected by this Kentucky state trooper who was about the size of the Statue of Liberty. Then we go through the tunnel to the infield, just like at indianapolis motor speedway. Being the designated beast of burden, I come staggering up into the light from the tunnel and the first thing I set my eyes upon is this classic…..Southern Belle.
White crinoline dress, BIG fuckin’ hat, gorgeous strawberry blonde vision of loveliness…and I think (surreptitiously, in all due respect to my female friend), yep, things like this are why I came to the Derby. I look down for a sec to take a better grip on the cooler, which at this point felt like it weighed as much as an iron maiden, look back up and my Southern Belle vision is swilling from the neck of a bottle of Gilbey’s Gin…at ten o’clock in the morning. Rather took the bloom off the rose, you might say…
Higgs Boson's Mate
@danielx:
Heh, I know where you’re coming from. I must have spent at least half of my long life mistaking flesh Madonnas for the real one.
SiubhanDuinne
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Looking forward to seeing results in an upcoming Sunday garden thread!
JPL
@mainmati: enjoy your visit with your brother.
OhNoNotAgain
Here’s a voice for you: Banks – Warm Water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYG3iIcZOkw
Not super-strong like F&M, but sultry….
tybee
@Porco Rosso:
i like it.
WaterGurl
@Steeplejack: nice! Our tax here is 9.75, which I think is crazy high.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thank you. We’ve already taken up the grass in the back yard (Source of Mary G’s Garden Thread pix) so we’re doing it in front as well. It seemed the responsible thing to do in view of CA’s ongoing drought. We can’t change the world. We can change ourselves.
maya
Ehh, songs with deep messages. After all these years I still don’t know what Billie Joe McAllister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
WaterGurl
It’s the first farmers market of the season (yay!). Bought my pepper and tomato plants from the organic guy at the market, and I’m excited about planting next week. Made a quick stop at the grocery store, now I’m sitting at the meat market waiting for them to open. Just 3 more minutes. Then home for breakfast, and I’m hungry.
divF
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Given my experience with a friend’s African Grey, you are likely to get a pretty comprehensive summary of the week from the bird.
Turbulence
About a year ago, I started taking classes at a local circus school. Think circus acrobats rather than lion taming or juggling. I’m old and slow and heavy, but I’m still an aerialist, so if I ever do a performance, it will probably be accompanied by Florence’s “I’m so heavy” song.
I mostly do aerial silks plus a little hand balancing. Here are some professionals rocking out to “I’m so heavy”: silks and handbalancing.
SectionH
Getting ready for the Derby party at my son’s house. My job is to print up several copies of the Derby field for the “draw names from a hat” betting pool. Think I can just about handle that.
I’d been thinking about bringing some Spoon Bread, but it’s still going to be too hot to have an oven on. They’ve already got the ham, biscuits, and mint julep fronts covered for that “old Kentucky home” touch, so the Spoon Bread can be skipped.
JGabriel
@Comrade Jake: Ah, ok. Thanks.
SectionH
@Nicole: Heh, my son’s first Derby guests showed up last Saturday.
I lived in the Bluegrass for many years, and am firmly of the opinion that unless you can get into a box at the Derby, which mere mortals can at the least aspire to, a good party wherever is the way to go. YMMV, but I know if I tried the Infield, I’d the entire day in line for the portapotties.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Turbulence:
Congratulations! What an amazing thing to undertake.
ranchandsyrup
Making some tzatziki this morning for tonight’s falafel fest. Then going for a family hike at Torrey pines reserve then some beach time.
Mnemosyne
@danielx:
Charlotte keeps chattering at the birds outside the window. I am firmly convinced that they know she can’t get to them so they keep coming closer to taunt her.
In more general news, it’s frickin’ hot here in So Cal, and looks to stay that way all summer. We may be looking at moving this summer, for which we will probably pick the hottest day of the year because that’s how it always ends up.
WereBear
As a kitten, RJ would sit at the far end of the guitar bench at his favorite window, because he really didn’t like what the crows outside kept calling him.
Ruckus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
You can change the world. The steps are just so very, very tiny though. And there may be someone going in exactly the opposite direction which sorta brings your point into the discussion.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Ruckus:
I’ve always done what I could. Apparently it wasn’t enough.
WereBear
Hey, if everybody did that…
Besides, how do you know? Even people like Gandhi, Dr MLK Jr, and President Obama couldn’t do it alone. And indeed, they did not!
trollhattan
@maya: The ring.
Just to clear things up.
SectarianSofa
@MattF:
Argh … would love to hear that, but the sound quality on that is …not good.
Nicole
@SectionH: One of the owners running a horse on the Derby undercard today wrote a pretty hilarious (unintentionally so) piece complaining that the corporation that owns Churchill Downs won’t give out free seats to owners running today. He complained that when he tried to book a table for 8, including a WW2 veteran, they offered to sell him one for $43,000 and he was outraged because, of course, he expected to get the table for free. Oh, I love rich people- happy to do favors for something they expect someone else to pay for.
Mind you, he spent $700,000 on a single 2-year-old horse in the most recent sales.
Now, when Secretariat’s jockey, Ron Turcotte, wrote about being denied a handicapped parking spot at Churchill (he’s there to sign autographs this weekend) I was totally on his side, and Churchill’s people are being total dicks about that.
Nicole
@Pogonip:
It’s like any other sport- if you follow it, it’s great; if you don’t, it’s like watching paint dry.
If I recall, his son won the Triple Crown and his daughter won the Derby, but gave up her career when she fell in love. I’m not making that up.
There are very few truly black Thoroughbreds (I guess it’s more common in Arabians, but I don’t know as much about that breed); most of them that look black will be listed as “dark bay or brown.” Grey horses can also be born bay or chestnut and grey out later. It varies.
Bob In Portland
One of the gang in Kiev that killed the forty people in the Trades Union Building in Odessa tweeted that they were “roasting Colorado beetles”. Another noted that the blackened bodies taken out of building resembled “negroes”.
Those are the guys the US is backing.
SectionH
@Nicole: I haven’t been doing my homework re the Derby this year because we’ve been in moving/remodeling purgatory, but Oy. Entitled jerk is entitled. Agree with you about Ron Turcotte, too. There should be some way to accommodate him. I recall there’ve been a number of things re the new Churchill Downs management that didn’t seem to bode well.
We were having dinner in Tucson some years ago, and although I don’t usually pay attention to other diners’ conversations, I couldn’t help overhearing snatches of Very Interesting conversation about racetracks and horses. And I’ve never before or since approached a stranger at another table, but as we were leaving, we stopped by (they’d finished dinner) and said something friendly as to a fellow Kentuckian a couple of thousand miles from home. Turned out the guys were all at a convention of Race Track managers, and the Kentucky guy was Tom Meeker, the president of Churchill Downs.
Meeting him was Way cooler to me than practically any actor or musician you can name. ;-)
SectionH
And now we’re off (ahem) to Del Mar to get a couple of bets down before the party.
Origuy
@Bob In Portland: Since you didn’t supply a link, as usual, the only reference to this I found was in Russia Today. Hardly an unbiased source.
Colorado beetles are an invasive pest the world over. The Ukrainians are calling the pro-Russian separatists that because they wear the orange and black St George’s medal, like the orange and black carapace of the beetle. Link to Radio Free Europe.
Bob In Portland
@Origuy: Yeah, that’s sort of what Hitler called Jews. You know, vermin. I wonder if the comment regarding burned bodies’ resemblance to “negros” has anything to do with why some of the Maidan mob hung up that Confederate battle flag up in city hall in Kiev. You know, if you look at people who oppose the coup as vermin, and your grandfathers killed Jews, Russians and Poles for the Waffen SS, you probably don’t have much sympathy for ethnic minorities, to include those who do not live in the area.
Bob In Portland
By the way, what are your unbiased news sources on Ukraine?
Origuy
So you are following the line that the Russians in Ukraine are opressed ethnic minorities, like the Jews in Germany. As I recall, Germany’s neighbor wasn’t a country run by Jews with a huge army. What happened in Odessa was awful and I’m not justifying it, but the building that burnt wasn’t the homes of Russians, it was a public building that they had forcibly occupied. And until the Crimean invasion–which is what it was–were there any acts of violence against the Russians in Ukraine? Give contemporaneous sources, please.
ETA: I’m getting a lot of my information from The Interpreter, http://www.interpretermag.com/. Some of it comes from links posted by Russian friends on Facebook.
worn
He’s so unhip
That when you say Dylan,
He thinks you’re talkin’ about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he is.
The man ain’t got no culture.
Nicole
@SectionH: As a Pennsylavanian transplant to NYC, I’m rooting for Wicked Strong, as he’s a Belmont-based son of Hard Spun. But it’s a very odd year- lots of speed horses, all of whom drew next to each other.
Calming Influence
…and answering my question: “Why do I keep coming back to Balloon Juice?”
Thank you, Ms. Cracker.
Calming Influence
@worn:
I’ve lost my harmonica, Albert…
Ol' Nat
Grading papers. Sigh!
Aunt Kathy
I seriously love Florence beyond all reason. Not a day goes by that I don’t listen to one song or another. Anybody looking for more should prowl the youtubes for clips like this one. Florence now is super, but early Florence was super-duper, back when nobody thought to tell her it might not be a good idea to go on stage kinda tipsy. And still she sounds like this. Take that, you autotuned harpies.
http://youtu.be/_hlK1TtkUc8
Ajaye
Once in awhile it is good to have teenagers in the house. I also discovered Florence and the Machine thru my daughter and landed up with quite a few of her songs. Listen to them often. (Also discovered Green Day thru dd, we have similar taste in music)
Check out Cosmic Love. What could be better than a rock band that uses a harp? I love that!
Ajaye
Once in awhile it is good to have teenagers in the house. I also discovered Florence and the Machine thru my daughter and landed up with quite a few of her songs.
Check out Cosmic Love. What could be better than a rock band that uses a harp? I love that!
Ajaye
Check out Cosmic Love. What could be better than a rock band that uses a harp? I love that!
Ajaye
Omg. Sorry!!!!
Calming Influence
@Ajaye: Ajaye, what the hell?!? ;)