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