the mermaid cafe

I knew Isa Briones was on Broadway, but I had never heard her actually sing until yesterday when I saw this on tumblr: Isa Briones sings "Who's Sorry Now" from JUST IN TIME | Now on Broadway. What a set of pipes!

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Today's poem:

Fire

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
               alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night winds
who will take her
into herself

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am the continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the mountains
a night wind
who burns
with every breath
she takes

—Joy Harjo

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In case you haven't listened to it yet: Streets of Minneapolis by Bruce Springsteen.

It's in my bsky feed and my tumblr dash and I saw it here on DW first (in a locked post), so I needed to have it here too.

And since I've been listening to it a lot lately, here's Help Save the Youth of America by Billy Bragg. Unfortunately always timely.

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I just watched that HBO documentary about Billy Joel and though it is long and a little repetitive in some ways, I thought it was well worth watching. I learned a lot that I never knew about him.

In a brief work update, they did finally announce the new CEO on Thursday, but for some reason*, the current board chair refused to give a quote for the press release, so they had the person we think is going to be the new board chair (still a secret for some reason!) give a quote instead.

*now my boss and I are speculating that she had backed a different candidate for the job and is taking it personally that she did not get her way, but that is absolutely just speculation and may be unfair to her. We just can't think of another reason why she's been so weird about the whole thing.

Yesterday was busy with committee meetings, and I logged off at about 4:45 and crashed hard into a two-hour nap, and then slept nine hours when I went back to bed for the night.

I can't believe Thanksgiving is this Thursday. Where did this entire year go?

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Imagine my excitement at reading this interview with Bob Mould this morning: How Bob Mould rediscovered the great, lost live Husker Du record not because of Hüsker Dü, whom I liked but didn't love, but because he mentions that Sugar reunited. I LOVED SUGAR!!! If I Can't Change Your Mind is 3 minutes of PURE POP PERFECTION and one of my top 5 songs of ALL TIME. Back in the 90s, I saw Bob live solo at least twice (once pressed right up to the stage beneath him and his guitar at...Irving Plaza? I think?), and saw Sugar in concert at least once (maybe twice?). Copper Blue is full of great songs, as is Bob's first solo album, Workbook. (Black Sheets of Rain was also good but less accessible, imo.)

If Sugar actually tours, I might leave the house to see them!

I have other, less fun, work news, but I should probably save it for a locked post sometime later. Sigh.

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New music from Bob Mould: Here We Go Crazy! I like it!

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So I mentioned that I just finished watching Slow Horses, which so far has 4 seasons of 6 episodes each on Apple TV, with 2 more seasons coming. It stars Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, a super gross old master spy who's been put out to pasture at Slough House instead of retiring. He's in charge of a bunch of screw-ups who have also chosen not to quit, in the hope that someday they may be able to get back to "the Park," i.e., MI5 HQ in London, instead of the ratty old offices at Slough House. We are introduced to Slough House when River Cartwright, an MI5 nepo baby, screws up and gets turfed out to the slow horses. He is such a dumbass and I love him.

Other fantastic characters include Catherine Standish, Lamb's PA, who used to be the PA to the head of MI5 and who is an alcoholic (and Lamb never lets her forget it because he is awful; there is some compassion beneath that awfulness, but there's so much gross crustiness to chip away at to get to it); Louisa Guy, who is mostly competent and probably shouldn't be in Slough House; Diana Taverner, played by Kristin Scott Thomas in ice queen mode, and Sophie Okenedo as her boss. In season 4, we also get James Callis as the most useless bureaucrat Taverner has to deal with, and Hugo Weaving in a guest role.

There is a lot of violence (some of which requires major suspension of disbelief) and quite a bit of morally questionable decision-making, but all leavened with a lot of humor, some fun spycraft, and burgeoning teaminess amongst the slow horses. I recommend it, and I think I might watch it again.

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I had an anxiety spiral last night about work and all the stuff that has to get done for this new project, and also the letter from the building mgmt company letting us know that on top of the 10% increase in maintenance they instituted back in the spring, now they are going to be doing a $175 monthly assessment for a year starting in October. I would really like for my raise to come through! But it's unlikely before the end of this month at the earliest. Sigh. As for the work itself, I'm just going to continue to get things done as I can since so much of my anxiety is around stuff I don't control. As per usual. *hands*

Tomorrow, Baby Miss L is having tubes put in her ears. I know it's a common procedure, but please think good thoughts for her! <3

In other news, I think I've mentioned I listen to the classical station while I'm working, and this morning they played the main theme from Superman by John Williams, and it still gives me chills. Just a fantastic piece of music.

My Fringe rewatch continues and knowing now where things are going, they really did seed some stuff in pretty early on. I'd forgotten it was a JAbrams show, at least to start, but it did eventually provide some answers, more than a lot of his other stuff does, at least. And it's definitely a fun ride getting there.

I just hit the first episode of s2, and suddenly there's random Meghan Markle! I'd totally forgotten that. I'm excited to get to some of the best episodes of the show soon!

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The meeting yesterday went well - I was planning to arrive around 3:30, but ended up taking an earlier train (which was late, thus giving me time to catch it) and arrived at 3 pm to find my boss and old boss1 and various other people already there! Assistant L had the food handled, so all I really needed to do was track attendance and take notes. So everyone was mostly happy (we had one complaint that the meeting was in midtown at rush hour, but like, come on).

The meeting ended right on time, and since Assistant L mostly handled everything, I was able to leave pretty quickly, and the walk over to 9th didn't take that long (though I must say, the length of the block between 8th and 9th Avenues is extremely long - it feels longer than even other long avenue blocks). Since our reservation wasn't until 7, I ended up sitting in a coffee shop with an iced cappuccino until about 6:50.

Dinner was lovely, and I had an Aperol spritz for the first time, as recommended by my nieces. It was delicious and felt barely alcoholic at all.

I had already decided to take a car home, given the timing of my train, and it turned out to be a Tesla, which I had never ridden in before yesterday. It was a nice enough car but I don't get the fuss. Also, why do they make it so hard to open the doors?

Anyway, I took today off and I was glad I did. I had a very mellow day - I took a nap, I made some lotion, I watched this week's episode of The Acolyte (( spoilers )).

My sister's surgery went well and she is home and feeling okay.

In other news, apparently Smooth by Santana feat. Rob Thomas is 25 years old!!! And it still rocks. I have listened to it quite a lot today. *g*

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Today is John Williams' birthday, so WQXR played a few of his scores and there's something to be said for doing spreadsheets while listening to the march from Raiders of the Lost Ark (possibly my favorite movie of all time) or the main theme to Star Wars (my other possible favorite movie of all time, by which I mean ANH). And just for good measure, have the Imperial March as well, in case you haven't heard it in a while.

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I really enjoyed the Taylor Swift movie - I especially enjoyed how much my nieces enjoyed it - and Swift puts on a good show. Did we really need the full 10 minute version of "All Too Well" or as many songs off Midnight at the expense of other eras? Probably not imo, but I realize I am not the target audience, and that is what other people want. And like every concert, there's always going to be songs I like left out in favor of songs I don't know or don't care about. But we did a lot of chair dancing and singing along, even though the theater wasn't that big or full. Also, I feel like it was so polished (possibly because they combined stuff from multiple shows? I am unsure if that's true, but I think I read that) that it didn't have some of the rawer edges you often get with live music. But maybe I am just used to rock bands rather than pop performers. I don't mean I wanted long random solos, because I did not, but I mean the kinds of call and response you get at live shows, or the improvisational singing, or the snippets of covers on a segue from one song to another. This had none of that - it was very polished and choreographed to within an inch of its life.

And I think that it probably works like gangbusters if you are actually in the stadium, but watching it from a remove, it didn't quite hit the mark for me in that way. I mean, I am not a spiritual person at all but the closest thing I've ever found to transcendence is at concerts, where people who are deeply passionate come together to participate in the thing they are deeply passionate about. A good crowd is as important as the performer in the alchemical formula of a great concert.

But this was a concert at a remove. As I said, seeing it with my nieces gave me some small measure of that feeling, and there were moments when I had got chills or even teared up a little (music frequently makes me cry - it's involuntary and I hate when it happens in public), but I was always conscious of it as not just a performance (which every concert, no matter how heartfelt, is) but as a movie, which took it a step further into being prepackaged. So it was an interesting experience.

I don't watch a lot of concert movies, but I was just thinking about the Springsteen on Broadway show that was recorded and shown on Netflix, and that did kind of have that distance but I think a lot of that was ameliorated by the intimacy of the performance. So you're not getting the crowd vibe but you are getting closer into the stage than you would in the theater. And in this movie, you do get views you couldn't possibly get in the stadium, even in the closest few rows. So that was very cool. But it also made me very conscious of being in a theater watching a movie, not being at the concert I was watching.

And I mean, I can't undersell the benefits of 1. not paying $1500 or even $250 to see the concert, not having to be pressed in a crowd entering and exiting a stadium, nor sitting in a parking lot for 45 minutes, waiting to be able to get out onto the road. And not being deafened by the sound, or unable to hear any of the between song patter - all of that is crystal clear in the film. But even in a theater with other fans, chair dancing to songs we love, it didn't quite have the uplifting vibe of a really good in-person show.

If you like Swift's music, I would recommend the movie, but only if you go with other fans. I don't think the experience would work quite as well alone, and I generally don't mind going to the movies alone. I don't do that for concerts, though.

Afterwards, I went to my brother's and spent most of the weekend there. We were supposed to have a nor'easter yesterday, which didn't really materialize outside a lot of rain, and some wind separately today, but there was also a bug situation in my apartment that the exterminator just took care of on Friday and I was looking to be out of the apartment for a little bit after that. I took so much allergy medication and still had hives from the cat, but it was worth it.

And now I'm home and it's back to work tomorrow.

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RIP Sinead O'Connor. I hope she's at peace now. The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got were in constant rotation on my walkman during my commute in the early 1990s. I saw her in concert once, at the Beacon Theatre, and her voice was just as stunning live as it was on tape.

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Work yesterday was good - in addition to my birthday, both associate GCs had birthdays in the last few weeks, so my boss took us all out for lunch. We split a pizza as an appetizer and I had mozzarella in carrozza as my entree. It was very good, though it seemed like our waitress had never been a waitress before? Idk, but she was not good at the job, and she was alone for much of the lunch rush, which seems like a bad way to run your restaurant, since it was also very busy.

Of course, my train was late and then on the subway, we sat in the tunnel for a while, so I didn't arrive in the office until 9:20, which was luckily in time for my 9:30 meeting, but meant I couldn't stop off at Starbucks for an iced latte first. Sigh.

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I did make coffee granita on Monday night, and this morning I whipped up some whipped cream to have with it. It was so good. I am looking forward to it tomorrow and Friday as well. It's super easy to make and doesn't require any special equipment: Whisk 1/4 cup of sugar* into 2 cups of strong hot coffee, pour it into a shallow metal or glass dish (I used a loaf pan though I have also done it in a pie plate), wait for it to come to room temperature, and then put it in the freezer. After an hour, scrape down the frozen bits around the edges, and return to the freezer. Continue to scrape and stir it up every 20-30 minutes for a couple of hours, until it's fully frozen, then serve.

*I don't take sugar in my coffee, but it's necessary here to keep the liquid from freezing completely smooth and solid. You could probably use liquor instead, since alcohol also inhibits freezing - Kahlua or Bailey's might work, or if you're looking for that full espresso experience, use amaretto or Sambuca - but I don't know how much you'd need. A tablespoon maybe? you'd have to test it out.

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June recs update:

unfitforsociety has been updated for June 2023 with 25 recs in 6 fandoms:

✭ 19 DCU and 1 DCU/Criminal Minds crossover
✭ 2 Ted Lasso
✭ 1 Earthsea, 1 The Old Guard, and 1 Star Wars

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And have some fun music links:

= Fall Out Boy's update of We Didn't Start the Fire, which I enjoyed.

= Rick Astley at Glastonbury: Never Gonna Give You Up and There Is a Light That Never Goes Out. Honest to god, who needs Morrissey when Rick Astley is available to sing The Smiths?

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I took today off since we had our event last night - there may be a locked post coming with more details about that - so I ended up not doing any of the chores I need to do (laundry, mostly) but I did make this strawberry doughnut recipe as cupcakes and I think they turned out really well. I got exactly 12 standard sized cupcakes, so it would probably make 36 minis. I might have to test it again with strawberry frosting - it could be a new Christmas addition this year, especially since you can make 'em with frozen strawbs. I did a lemon poppyseed one last year, but they were not the best (hence me continuing to try to find a lemon cupcake I really love), and this could replace that. Hmm...

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My oldest niece and I send each other links to songs we're currently vibing to fairly often, labeled "song of the day," and here was yesterday's song of the day: Siouxsie and the Banshees' cover of Dear Prudence.

This evening, I enjoyed Justin Verlander warming up to "Till I Collapse". Hopefully I will enjoy this game as well - that is not guaranteed with how bad the Mets have been lately.

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I had a 9:30 am dental appointment this morning and I was afraid I was going to be late so I called to give them a heads up and they tried to tell me to come back at 11 am. Like, I am on my way into the city for this! I am not hanging around for 90 minutes! I made it by 9:40 and had the fastest cleaning I've ever had in my life. The trip home was a lot less fraught, and I was at my desk by 11 am. Normally I try to schedule dental appointments for when I'm in the office, since they're only a few stops away from each other, and back in November, I was scheduled to be in today, but the schedule has undergone multiple revisions and I was not going to be in today. I do have to go in next Tuesday, but next Thursday's meeting was switched to video only so I don't have to schlep in twice in one week.

Anyway, in order to make the 9:30 appt, I had to get up earlier than I do on days when I work from home, so of course I woke up an hour before that and then wondered if I hadn't set the alarm properly or something but it did eventually go off. Sigh. And I went to bed at a reasonable hour and everything! This weather has been good for sleeping, so I'm trying to enjoy it while I can.

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Yesterday, as usual on the day before a grocery delivery, I went through my order and refined it - I deleted things that were no longer on sale or which could wait until next week, added a thing or two I'd forgotten earlier etc. This morning, imagine my surprise when all of the new items plus all the deleted items arrived with my delivery. Like, why would I need two bags of arugula?? I deleted the more expensive bag in favor of the one on sale but somehow received both. Also it's stuff like Parmesan cheese and butter, so it's not like I won't use it, but it bumped my grocery bill up fro about $75 (with tip and delivery) to over $100, which I was obviously not expecting. Idk, I guess there was a glitch on the Stop and Shop website?

In what might have been a harbinger of how today was going to go, I woke up at 8:25 am and realized my alarm was not set (it usually goes off at 8:15 on WFH days), so I guess it's good I woke up on my own? I don't even remember turning it off yesterday (as opposed to just turning off the radio but leaving the alarm set, which is what I usually do), but I must have.

When I turned the radio on in lieu of my alarm, it was in the middle of a report on the snow/ice situation that rachelmanija has been dealing with in San Bernadino, along with a resident, but I missed the intro so I don't know if it was you or someone else being interviewed! (It was on CBS NewsRadio 880.)

In other radio-related news, I have been livestreaming WQXR a lot recently while working - sometimes the silence of working from home is oppressive, but classical makes for a nice, unobtrusive background, and it reminds me of my dad. It was his regular listening in the car and at home.

The other day, they played Boléro and dedicated it to people with repetitive jobs (because the drummer plays the same thing throughout the whole piece), and while this isn't the version they played, it's one I like a lot: Wiener Philharmoniker - Maurice Ravel - Bolero - Conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel is coming to the NY Philharmonic this year, which is pretty cool.

In baseball news, this was a fun read: Here's how Team USA got its superstars to say ‘yes’ (re: participating in the World Baseball Classic).

While I'm a little skeptical of so many Mets being at the WBC, I was glad to hear Matt Harvey had a good outing for Team Italy (!?) yesterday, and it's nice to see all the kids getting a chance to play while the regulars are gone.

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I woke up this morning with Scarborough Fair in my head, which seems somewhat apt for All Saints Day.

Today was the first time it really felt like fall this year, despite the weather still being unseasonably warm. It was the light, or lack of it, or something. Idk.

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Why does every update of an app somehow make it worse and less functional? Why? I can't remember the last time I saw an update and thought, "oh, this is so much better!"

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The Robin onesie I ordered for the baby came today. It's so cute! Admittedly, it doesn't have a hat with wings, like the Captain America onesie or the Flash onesie, but I am partial to Robin. *g*

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Here's the October monthly writing roundup:

tomorrow will not be too late (on AO3)
Earthsea; Tenar; g; 1,232 words
Tenar has been reborn more than once.

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I slept the sleep of the just last night - out like a light at 11:45 pm and sleeping through until 7:55 am, just 15 minutes before my alarm goes off. So I'm not sure why I'm so tired right now. Anxiety, maybe. The bosses are meeting tomorrow to discuss whether we're going back to the office again starting next week, or if they're going to keep putting it off for a bit.

In other news, this was linked from the NYTimes cooking newsletter and I am having so much 80s nostalgia right now: WLIR/WDRE Screamers/Shrieks of the Week, 1980 - 1997. I don't think it's complete (and it seems to include things I would be surprised were ever played on the station), but it is a fantastic blast from the past.

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