A Case Of Mitchell

Recently, my friend Brian tumbled about how easy it is to download an artist's entire discography. He was lamenting, as I do, how this changes the music experience for the Kids These Days.

Specifically, he was talking about snagging the entirety of Joni Mitchell's ouevre in one go. I think it's a crying shame, as I learned about Blue and later Court & Spark and later still Hejira, all three of which I enjoyed immensely as full albums, from start to finish. Now, of course these had all been out for years before my music appreciation awakening happened, but you didn't buy more than one album at a time, at least not on a college student's budget.

One good thing I'll say about the internet and music is that you can risk free - if maybe not so legally - sample some of those horrible tribute albums they do. I'm still a purchaser of the ones for causes - and am glad for the tracks off this month's Dark Was The Night and War Child comps that I bought.

Speaking of Mitchell, I swiped an album of covers of hers that wasn't to benefit anything, and judging by the crummy track list I wasn't so excited until I heard this lovely version of "Carey" by Miss Cyndi Lauper. Is it better than JM's? Nope. Is it pretty great in its own right? Yep.


Thanks, Internet. You too, Cyndi.

Last Train To Squaresville

My job involves a lot of conference calls, and often I'm only really needed about half the time. I blogged about a cool sand website a little while ago, which gave me lots of enjoyment, even if my art wasn't as good as everyone else's.

I sure was happy to find this website here.

You might not guess it, but it's very satisfying to start with this:



And end up with something like this:



Mmmm, the hours go by.

Shamrock O'Shake

Woohoo! They're here!

Well, maybe they're here. They're awfully hard to find.

This website serves as a Shamrock Shake Finder - users can send in updates after Shake spottings - as of today, there have been no reported sightings in NYC.

In my research for today's post, I enjoyed this tidbit here from Wikipedia:

Minty Mudbath Shake
In May/June 2007, McDonalds introduced the "Minty Mudbath" shake to go along with the movie Shrek the Third. It takes the original Shamrock Shake formula and mixes it with chocolate. On June 23rd, 2007, the product was discontinued by corporate headquarters after several Internet sites revealed that "Minty Mudbath" was the 'underground' reference for a fetishistic act.

I don't know what a Minty Mudbath is, and I fear it will haunt me if I ever learn. Thank God that's nothing Uncle O'Grimacey (surely related to Cookie O'Puss) would talk about in those ads from our youth.


Mmmmm...shamrock.

Posts-card from the Edge

I feel bad about not blogging on Friday, but I was just too hung over. I know I let the 15-20 of you frequent visitors down, and I apologize. I apologize to you too, person who googles the names of Hortense Calisher short stories and ends up here on accident. I did the best I could to make it up to everyone by live tweetering over the weekend with my activities.

One of the fun things Amber and I did that WASN'T tweeted was watch Postcards From The Edge, starring my pal Shirley MacLaine. I had recently read the novel and really enjoyed it.

Sadly, we weren't so enthralled by the film. Maybe it's because the bar was set so high from our matinee, the weekend's top box office movie? Either way, one thing we did like was ol' Shirl putting her spin on one of our favorite Sondheim songs for Dames.

And so, with apologies to my friend Elaine Stritch, here's a pretty dang good "I'm Still Here."



Thanks, Shirl.

Best Matinee Club EVER

The Race is ON

Oops. Yesterday I was WAY too hanged over to blog.

Today though, nothing could keep me from BRUNCH CLUB followed by WITCH MOUNTAIN CLUB.

Bring it!

Fanny, She Wrote

Today's Murder, She Wrote Moment is brought to us by the word Fanny.

Do you think Terminator and Terminator 2's Linda Hamilton knows that the F word means something different in Angela Lansbury's homeland?