"MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR..."

JOHN CASH b. FEBRUARY 26 1932

cash & rick rubin were so prescient in their understanding of what made cash cash & what made american music american. we're on the 6th album of these sepulchral recordings &, for me, i want them to go on & on. sure, there are some clunkers here & there but i'll tell you what: you do something like this as the curtain closes & we'll see how it stacks up, ok?. w/the exception of warren zevon, i don't think anyone else in american music got to close it out as profoundly & self-consciously as cash. the trick w/both of them was that as the self fell away(as it always does)Being(heidegger's big "B") asserted itself in its most fundamental way.

we'd do well to listen very very closely.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS RIP FEBRUARY 23 or 24 or 25 1983

"All good art is an indiscretion."

oddly, i found three different death dates for williams from five different sources. i'm sure this is something that would have amused him. i mean, they know when pliny the elder died; it seems like they'd have a handle on someone from the 20th century.
be that as it may, i've mentioned before how i took williams lightly back in high school, especially when i compared him w/o'neill. seeing his plays actually performed by professionals opened up a whole other side to his writing for me & convinced me of his true genius. i believe now he had a much better sense of the stage than o'neill did.
i met williams in key west. i was there w/frank & di in our new college days. there was a huge gay bar down on front st. it had several levels & the top one was an open air bar built around a huge kapok tree. there was a swiss family robinson aspect to it but for mature audiences. williams was very drunk but very gentlemanly. he said nothing memorable & paid more attention to di(faghag that she was/is)which should have offended me but didn't. the whole encounter amounted to us being able to say we bought tennessee williams a drink, tho i suppose it exposed the origins of one of his great lines about strangers.
he didn't buy any of us a drink.

"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory."

"PLEASURE BOMBS..."

 

william grimes described craft restaurant's gnocchi as "light-weight, butter-laden eye-rolling pleasure bombs" & that description fits this version from mark vetri. i taught a skillful means seminar at the nyingma institute that included making gnocchi. they're relatively easy & quick to make if you use a light hand. these were served w/cremini & golden chanterelle mushrooms in a porcini cream w/shredded baby spinach. they were also ann's lunch on monday.

 

SOLO DESSERT

INDIVIDUAL BLACKBERRY CRISPS
there are any number of similar desserts & they all have cool names like grunts, slump, betty, cobbler, buckle, pandowdy, crumbles & crisps(& let's not forget their french ancestor, the clafoutis). i used to like crisps & cobblers when i was a little kid because i could scrape the fruit away & just eat the fruit flavored sweet crusts.

"MADE ME FEEL LIKE A BUCK & A QUARTER..."

prine was mike's "discovery". i have to say that at the time i wasn't as impressed as he seemed to be but kristofferson was big on prine & i was big on kris so i went along. eventually, i was playing most of the songs off prine's first album at the quaint lounge. still, i remember being the first in the group to get springsteen's born to run. we played it in philip's cave & as the last extraordinary notes of "jungleland" faded, mike blurted out, "o john!" he'd conceded whatever point there was to concede.
funny but when ken or mike or philip & i talk, prine usually isn't in the conversation but the fact is, he's endured & continues to produce good music. the same can't be said of some of our other music heroes. the second video here is from costello's show & it's a song from his 1995 album, lost dogs and mixed blessings. the duet w/iris dement is from his 1999 album, in spite of ourselves.
i've been fortunate to see prine twice. once way back when in atlanta & just recently at the hardly bluegrass festival out here in cali. the atlanta show was in a tiny venue & i sat just a few feet away from him. he had an odd stage presence back then, very nervous & spasmodic. he seems to have mellowed w/age.

HOT POCKETS of deliciousness

POTSTICKERS for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. i could eat a million of these little guys. they featured in one of ann's bento box lunches last week but just barely. i kept "taste testing" them.

EATING MEMORIES

actually, i have no idea why the foods of my past have begun to haunt me. maybe it's seeing mike's senile post & hearing time's winged chariot but i've gotten all nostalgic thinking about lemon & chocolate pudding cakes, coconut cakes, fudge cakes, rocky road, etc. i'm researching the best coca-cola cake but this 7up cake caught my attention before i could decide on the right cola cake; it's all about the lemon-lime frisson.