missed connection in a grocery store

I love shopping at the grocery store late at night...the music always seems better, the people more mysterious and the checkers eerily sedate.

Last evening I was at my local Giant Food when this amazingly gorgeous song came over the speakers. Usually when this happens, a "clean-up in aisle 4" message almost always interrupts the flow and the magic is gone.

But this time I got to hear the entire song. And once I realized I really liked it, I pulled out my cell and scrambled to type every word I heard into my "notepad tool," sure that when I got home I'd be able to figure out the song title through Google, Bing and even song lyrics websites.

Alas, I wasn't able to and now the song is still swirling through my mind, or the rather the echo of it is, taunting me with the fact I may never know its beauty again. :(

Oh mi dios!

Gloria Estefan's Miss Little Havana came out this Tuesday and though I just read a great review for it, I'm not sure I like the album all that much except for three stand-out ("you've got to get on the floor and dance right now!") songs.

"Right Away" kinda sounds like good old school Miami Sound Machine, "Hotel Nacional" rhymes Susan Lucci with hoochie coochie and has a mean horn section that defies you not to move and "Make My Heart Go"...well...not really sure why I like this one.

Of course, there is some absolutely awful, awful material on here as well: the first time I heard "Wepa" I thought it was some kind of joke, a throw-in track to see if fans were still paying attention to Estefan et al after all these years.

And the title track is almost as abysmal. Yet I still feel so terribly guilty for writing something so cruel (in the late 80s I thought the sun set and the moon rose by her) because it's very obvious Estefan put her heart and soul into this...


read the article here

Experimenting with some new gadgets and branching out some...

I recently discovered you can add a gadget to a Blogger account that lets you post a link for your favorite charity.

If people click the link on (there is no charge at all!), money will go to the blogger's favorite cause.

To Write Love On Her Arms (see here for more info) is mine.


from fundraisingip.com:


To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA) is a charity about suicide prevention, started by Jamie Tworkowski in 2006. Jamie himself is a major draw for the organization, as beneficiaries of TWLOHA feel a personal connection with him. 

The organization’s strategies for spreading the word include live events and effective use of the internet and have helped to create almost two million dollars in gross receipts. Not every group will be able to produce such stellar results in such a short time, but there are several things you can do to…

Shock Value...

I'm enjoying Shock Value so far, but I wish it were longer and more inclusive of other directors in horror besides the ones that come immediately to mind.

Horror which relies exclusively on excessive gore and unrelenting punishment a la Saw style (sometimes referred to as "torture porn") has kind of made me cynical about a lot of horror, but I did recently (kind of) enjoy Insidious, a film that seems to remember true scares work better with a "less is more" mentality.

The visuals (especially one of a ghost child skipping through a living room to the sounds of an old record) got under my skin and after the movie was over I found myself turning on all the lights on, something I almost never do when I've finished something scary.

Get Well Soon (the way it's meant to be said)

Last year I was floored when I first heard Rumer sing on the single "Slow." She sounded so much like Karen Carpenter it kind of scared me, mostly because you don't hear too many vocalists who resemble the late singer's voice so well.

And it also made me feel sad because I'm pretty sure if Karen Carpenter were still alive today she would still be singing and sounding as marvelous as ever. She loved music so much I don't think you'd be able to tear her away from it!

But moving on...I was floored again tonight for the same reason when someone tweeted about the album Get Well by Sarabeth Tucek and I just had to have a listen. 

Her resemblance to Karen (mentioned in the tweet) is also uncanny, but putting aside that for the moment, I'll say this: Get Well Soon is an amazing, amazing recording and certainly worth its own merit no matter whom Tucek sounds like!

read more here

An Old Photo of Your New Lover

My Amazon widget page is missing! I can't access the pictures to post alongside what I'm writing about. I'm sure I can fix the problem, but for right now I'll upload my entry and then add the picture later for The One A.M. Radio's "An Old Photo of Your New Lover." If anyone knows why the widgets aren't working, feel free to let me know:)!

The song is really rather clever and spot on. The first time it goes through the chorus it leads up with a little story about a man finding an old picture of his new girlfriend and feeling left out of her life, even though he hadn't met her at that point.

The second time the chorus approaches it twists the title around with "A New Photo of An Old Lover." Now the song is about the man discovering to "his chagrin" (online? we never know for sure) how his former flame is doing by finding a new picture of her.

Both times the verses are followed with: "There's a world without you" and that part is so profound...so profound, maybe even layered with more than one meaning.

The first world is one I can't truly relate to, but the second is a different story and all too familiar because of a little thing called Facebook: that weird and instant flicker in your heart when you see someone who used to mean so much to you, as they are today, not when you last saw them.

The "world without you" part? I can't figure out which scenario is more painful, even as both are true: there is a "world without you," certainly before and certainly after.

And rationally I think most of us know this when we're in relationships or when they've ended. But knowing that doesn't take the sting away.

As for the "chagrin" part? Don't even get me started!:) Because that's true, too.

(photo from TV Guide)

I'm so excited about the new FX show American Horror Story with Jessica Lange I can barely type this :) It begins on October 5th...here's more about it:

http://www.broadway.com/buzz/157571/check-out-glee-creator-ryan-murphys-american-horror-story-starring-denis-ohare-and-jessica-lange/

New York magazine puts it on their "and we're also anticipating..." list for the new fall tv season because American Horror Story stars  "Jessica Godd*mn Lange. And it's on FX, a network willing to take real risks."


I guess it's silly to put the asterik in the curse word...probably a leftover habit of mine from that word always always being a BIG no-no in my house when I was growing up. Basically the use of that word (I'm assuming) is the magazine's way of saying just how awesome Jessica Lange is,  just how legendary!:)

There was a time when I would do almost anything for good food. In my 20s (pretty much through all of them) I could eat whatever I wanted without suffering any consequences except intense but surprisingly short periods of guilt and shame.

Some nights I would go to the store for that week's worth of groceries and come home with a pint of ice cream and a cherry pie, both of which I'd eat in one night.

It was only a few years into my 30s when I realized this wouldn't do anymore. I'd just look at something and gain weight. Eating whatever you want whenever you want can only go so far before fate or karma or whatever you want to call it comes calling to collect its dues. I cleaned up my act and started eating better and more sensibly.

A large part of my success with this came from two things: scented candles and glossy food magazines. I bought so many scented candles that smelled like cinnamon buns I thought I worked in a bakery and the amount of vicarious thrills I got from pouring through issues of Bon Appetit and Cooking Light (not to mention Cheap Eats specials for Baltimore and Washingtonian) was far more titillating than it should have been.

I used to laugh at aromatherapy, but there really is something to smell and the fact that a whiff of something can make you feel like you actually ate it. I can't really explain why looking at pictures helped so much except that maybe the physicality of looking at something can be almost as good as actually doing it.

Music also played a big role. My love for music grew and grew to the point where I'd rather spend any extra money I made on new cds or iTunes songs and because I liked (like) music so much, I suddenly found exercising more exciting than any food item I craved.

I'm not saying I don't have days where it's all I can do not to eat an entire Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey in one sitting or that I'm a skinny Minnie who doesn't have to worry about weight gain anymore...I'm just saying that my love for junk food only became cheap and sordid to me when I realized how many more uplifting things there are in life, one of the most important of them being music, a presence that is almost as strong as love as far as I'm concerned.

And one more thing: the tv. Turn it off when you're eating and you'll notice how much better everything tastes and how much slower you eat it. When I stopped associating food with the television I really started cutting back. I can't stress that enough!:)

I watched "Let Me In," the American remake of the Swedish "Let The Right One In" a few nights ago and I still feel kind of torn up about it. It's the most oddly touching and sadly atmospheric film I've seen in ages and it's as much about loneliness and feeling out of place in the world as it is about vampires.

Never mind that it's amazing just for the fact that it's a remake that is possibly better than the original...Let Me In also is intriguing and terrific because it captures the feel of the early 80s better than any recent film I remember and it makes you care about its central character Owen (a young boy tormented by his classmates and pretty much ignored by his over-worked and beleaguered mom) so much your heart physically hurts.

Of course how you react to the film may depend on where you're coming from...I was Owen's age in 1983 (the year Let Me In takes place) and I didn't fit in at all in middle school. And while another child my age who was also a vampire didn't move in next door to me like one does in the film, I certainly can empathize with how quickly and deeply you can form an attachment to someone who is as lost and as lonely as you are...

I can't recommend Let Me In enough. But it is not for the faint of heart at all, so consider yourself warned!!:)

Beer in Outer Space?

Thanks to insomnia and specials about The Universe on the History Channel late at night, I now know that far far out in space there are "beer clouds."


And I was so full of wonder at this I just had to get a second opinion online:


"Scientists said the cloud, located near the constellation Aquila, contains enough alcohol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer." 



read more here


I don't drink alcohol, but I definitely know people who will be both happy and sad to hear this...happy that so much beer exists, sad that it is so terribly out of reach!!:)

George Michael's understated album Older received little critical or commercial attention when it came out in 1996, but I remember liking the album a lot...or at least most of it. My favorites included the surprisingly touching and beautiful "Jesus To A Child" and the more upbeat "Fastlove" and "Star People."

But the song that spoke to me most was "Move On"...maybe because I was in the midst of wanting to be out of love with someone I was hopelessly in love with. The song was (is) pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be about it, except for the fact it's sung like something would be in a quiet supper club late late at night when the singer is lonely, world-weary yet still somehow rising above it all with something approaching optimism.

The best part, the part that is so vulnerable and lovely, is when George Michael sings softly at the end, "I'm going to be lucky in love one day...going to be lucky in love one day" over and over as "Move On" fades out.

You're never really sure if he's certain of this little fact or he's desperately hoping he will...