Friday Randomness
[youtube]http://youtu.be/C7l3y7LOzLc[/youtube]
Have you seen the beautiful tribute to my first husband, David Bowie, at the BRIT awards? This is the entire thing, I think, including a tribute by Annie Lennox, a tribute by Gary Oldmam, and a song by Lorde, backed up by performers who had worked with Bowie in the past. I’ll confess, Lorde’s song brought me to tears. I miss David Bowie being alive in the world. It was a better place with him here. Coming so soon after the Emmy awards, which included a tribute by Lady Gaga, of course invites comparison. I’ll chime in and say that Gaga’s tribute left me feeling cold, didn’t move me at all. Hers was an over the top performance, with her dressed to honor the glam rock Bowie from the 70s. She did a fine job, but tried to squeeze in too many songs, and it sounded like she was trying to pitch her voice to match his. Lorde instead did a straight up version of ‘Life on Mars?’ that was gorgeous and simple. The video above is the whole BRIT tribute. If you want to see just Lorde’s performance, it starts about 9 minutes in.
Speaking of Gaga, I read today that Joe Biden is going to introduce her at the Academy Awards on Sunday, where she will perform her Oscar nominated song about rape and sexual assult. This comes in the wake of a court decision this week that Kesha, who was (allegedly) sexually assaulted by her producer, Dr. Luke, will not be released from her contract with Sony. Kesha says she wants to break all ties with Luke, but Sony says they are unable to do so, because the contract belongs to Dr. Luke’s company, which has a deal with Sony. What a mess. This is just an injunction, however, and the actual trial hasn’t started yet. So we’ll see whether she will be contractually required to create 4 more albums with her attacker. I don’t know more about the case, but I’m glad it’s getting attention. Sexual assult is hard to prove, and so often the blame is put on the victim. We need to change that mentality.
How’s the weather where you are? It’s stupidly gorgeous here, 70 degrees outside right now. We’ve had a very dry February, though not as dry as recent years. January was pretty wet, which was good, unless you live on a cliff in Pacifica. But February is prime rainy season. It’s not unheard of in an ‘el nino’ year for us to have a dry spell, so I’m hoping still for a wet March and maybe even April. After that it pretty much dries up around here. What we need are winter storms to drop a lot of moisture, and we’re just not getting that right now. Ugh.
Did you watch ‘Freaks and Geeks‘ when it was on back in ’99-2000? We did, though I think we missed it first run and watched in reruns. The entire series (only 18 episodes) is available now on Netflix. If you came of age in the early 80s, you should give yourself up to a good binge and watch the entire thing. We just finished the other night, and it really held up well.
I thought the series finale of Downton Abbey was this coming Sunday, but maybe they didn’t want to go up against the Academy Awards. It’s next week, March 6th. We have the DVD, so we’ve watched already. Clearly I’m not evil and I won’t spoil anything for you, but I will say I think they did a really nice job with it.
Do you like Spaghetti and Meatballs? We do. We’re especially fond of the recipe in my Alice Waters cookbook. It’s fairly involved, though, and usually Ted makes the meatballs while I make the sauce and it’s a real team effort weekend type meal. So I was happy the other day to see that Smitten Kitchen had an everyday meatball recipe. And instead of serving it with pasta, she said maybe you might want to have it with garlic toast, as sort of an open face meatball sub. So that’s exactly what we did, and gosh it was good. I think I would have liked the sauce portion to be a bit more complex, maybe some onions or carrots or something in there, but for a quick sauce, it was quite good. Happily, there are leftovers on the menu tonight.
Lastly in this rambling post, for some reason last night I was thinking about these TV dinners, Libbyland, we sometimes got when I was a kid, in Alaska. They were made and marketed to kids, so there was a game or a puzzle or something on the box that you could occupy yourself with, there was a packet of Nestle Quick that you could mix with milk and have chocolate milk (maybe they even had strawberry milk with some meals, I’m not sure.) TV dinners back then were cooked in the oven, and these for some reason often came with chocolate pudding, so that was hot. Strange. The food was definitely geared towards kids tastes, and was fairly gross. But boy, I loved those things. I think we would get those if my mom was going on a date, so not a nightly thing by any means.
8 Comments
Ally Bean
I never watched Freaks and Geeks, but I think that I should. It sounds like it might make the dreary days of March more tolerable.
I used to be invited to Pampered Chef parties. They no longer seem to be a thing around here, but one good idea I learned at one of those parties was to make your meatballs in small muffin tins. The meatball will be more like a miniature hockey puck, flat and easy to turn into a non-messy meatball sub sandwich. Also your little meaty pucks freeze without taking up much space.
I don’t remember Libbyland meals at all. Maybe they weren’t available around here? Or more likely my mother didn’t allow them. After reading your description of them, I kind of feel deprived
J
Give F & G a try, it’s really good. I saw something the other day with your idea, of putting the meatballs in muffin tins. I’d never thought of it before.
Rain Trueax
Rambling posts are fun. It’s how we live most of the time of going from one thing to another.
On the Dr. Luke and Kesha, I have followed that one but have no idea what’s going on. She has thrown a lot at him from insulting her, threatening her, to rape, which is criminal if the insults were not. He claims he’s never had sex with her and she is maligning his reputation to get out of the contract she signed. These are bummers no matter how it turns out as many believe he is guilty without any proof, especially of other predatory behavior. Women do lie about such things making it worse for the next woman who really was assaulted. Since I am not into the music of today, I have no idea of the reputation of either of them. She has had a lot assume she is telling the truth and jumped onto her side which is harmful to him if he actually didn’t do that but maybe did tell her she was fat or whatever else he said that made her feel demeaned. It could be they are both lying ;). That’s the problem with our world today. We hear a lot but often have no idea what to believe.
J
It’s true, it’s often difficult to find out the truth, because none of us were there. I hope she’s telling the truth, though that’s sad in and of itself. I don’t want it to be true, but even more I wouldn’t want her to by lying about it.
simon
I never saw Freaks and Geeks but tried the first episode on Netflix the other day and liked it. I’m also currently bingeing on New Girl.
J
I’ve not tried New Girl…might have to give that a try.
Nance
Oh, thank goodness someone else thought little of Gaga’s Bowie tribute! I thought I was The Only One. I think she is a great talent, but she pitched her voice to a terrible low octave and looked awkward and clunky during the whole thing, to me. I really endured it rather than enjoyed it.
Rick and I watched–very greedily–the penultimate episode of DA on Sunday night. It ran longer, so we really loved that. I have disliked Mary steadily throughout, so I was revelling. There will be terrible Withdrawal come March. We are searching for a suitable Stuffy English replacement.
Libbyland tv dinners! (“That’s Billy the kid spelled sideways…sort of!”) Rings a very dim bell, but I don’t think I ever ate them. Probably my mother got them for my little sister as a bribe.
J
We just rewatched the Gaga tribute, and it really looks like a Vegas show to me, more than anything with feeling. I also like Gaga generally, so I’m not dissing her so much as saying it fell flat for me.