One of my favorite songs of all time is "Mary's Prayer" by Danny Wilson. I still get chills whenever I hear it and I just discovered the video for it:


watch here

Other amazing songs on the album it's from (Meet Danny Wilson) include: "Davy," "Nothing Ever Goes To Plan," "Steamtrains to the Milky Way" and "A Girl I Used to Know."  The whole album is just magically wonderful!!

Thank God for music!! It's better and safer and more fun than drugs!!! Plus there are a lot more kinds of music for your moods than there are drugs...really!!

Amazon.com essential recording

Technique is New Order's most fully realized dance album. Although other New Order albums have been mighty danceable, this recording contains a masterful use of the acid-house trends storming the club scene in 1989, when this album was released. New Order embraced the technology that was available at the time but never substituted brilliant song structures with prefabricated formats that sequencers, samplers, and other high-tech noisemakers can easily provide. They intelligently used these devices to incorporate elements of a broader genre beyond the "New Order sound," proving that even while experimenting with musical trends and other fleeting diversions, this accomplished group is capable of pulling off a genre-defining album without ever losing sight of their own identity. --Beth Bessmer

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Even better than rediscovering old favorites is finding an album you completely missed the first time around (I think I pretty much slept through 1989 as far as music went.)

Been listening to New Order's Technique ever since I found it in a used cd sale bin a few weeks ago and I'm loving it.

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Also loving this:

I first heard Royksopp back in 2009,  but on this quiet evening I dug it out of my cd collection and added it to my MP3 player....absolute favorite track off of it is called "Royksopp Fever"...very mystical and empowering instrumental that builds to an amazing finish...I actually feel like I'm levitating if I close my eyes and sit in a Yoga position while listening!! Seriously, levitating...off the floor and into a really dreamy, buzzy state where nothing can bother me.

You outta try it sometime!!!!:) Amazing stuff!

"The melodramatic doings in Watch and Ward probably caused James some embarrassment in later years, and it's easy to see why he disowned the book and spoke of Roderick Hudson as his first novel. Still, many critics have pointed out that melodrama always held a certain fascination for James. Watch and Ward is only a particularly gauche example."--from Wikipedia


There's a certain amount of creepiness and immaturity in Henry James' first novel or maybe it's just because I have a certain amount of impatience with characters (male or female) who set out to groom young wards into potential future lovers.

While most certainly not his best work, Watch and Ward still shows that even at his worst James had this amazing insight into emotional complexities and matters of the heart.

This sentence reminds me of how determined the human heart can be to not get attached:

He used to lie awake at night, trying hard to fix in his mind the happy medium between coldness and weak fondness.


In an early part of the story the main character, Roger, refuses to recognize at first that the young woman he is persuing (who is much closer to his own age than the ward he is soon to take on) has no romantic interest in him whatsoever. His letters to her are so insistent and lacking in awareness that she writes back: "Do leave me alone!"

Poor Roger! The reader's pity for him battles with an understanding that what so often motivates the heart for more is the very undoing of it...

At times I do I think Mr. James was probably a lot less stuffy than he came across as...

I love how Amazon's MP3 store offers free songs on a daily basis. The problem is that when you end up really liking the song (like the one above!!) you want to buy the whole damn album (in this case, a mere $5.99, worth every penny!!)

Bobby Long has a voice that reminds me of whisky and warm comforters, with some Cat Stevens thrown in. I can't stop listening to his album! "Who Have You Been Loving?" (again, free!) is a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n roll, a whole lot good!!!

To paraphrase an octogenarian friend of mine (talking about Robert Redford) he can put his boots under my stereo any old day! (My friend said 'bed'.)

Ignorant or Innocent?

I just bought Glee's version of "Afternoon Delight" off of iTunes and am struck so much by how sweet and wonderful it sounds, definitely my favorite cover so far from this eccentric and lovable show.

 I remember hearing the original (by Starland Vocal Band) on the radio when I was a little girl and having no clue what the song was about...much like fully adult Emma didn't on Glee's "sex episode" a few weeks back.

I love how, after she and her husband (played by John Stamos) finished performing the song with some of the members from the Celibacy Club, she said she thought a "nooner" was when she went out during the middle of the day to grab some dessert...most likely, cherry pie!: )

During that particular episode of "Glee" Will Schuester was alarmed to discover how little his students really knew about sex. That kind of concern is certainly understandable and realistic.

Not knowing much about sex can be dangerous, of course, but not knowing everything about it can also be sort of sweet, which may be one reason Emma (often played with wide-eyed innocence by Jayma Mays) is so endearing. I have always found those not jaded by life to be very appealing.

It is, however, very disconcerting when Emma's husband reveals in their therapy session that they have been married four months and she's still a virgin. Underneath all the humor surrounding her character lurks a rather scary attitude about love and sex...which can be summed up best in her use of the words "hose monster" to refer to a certain part of male anatomy.

Poor Emma!! But to be fair to her....Afternoon Delight" (no matter which version) has always had a certain innocence to it that belies its sexy side!:)