Music Friday: "Grief Is Only Love" & "Cuckoo"

The lead singer of American Aquarium put out his top ten or twenty list of best albums of 2023 a while back, and the album that was number one was Steven Wilson Jr.'s Son of Dad. 

So I picked it up, and I like it. I'm not a person who automatically gravitates toward county-like music, but Wilson Jr. is more Americana music, and you can tell he has a wide background in types of music. 

Here are "Grief Is Only Love" and "Cuckoo." 

Random Notes from a Crank

Watching Northern Exposure with all its Red Hook beer advertising reminds me of one of my favorite breweries. I drank my fair share of Red Hook ESBs and Long Hammer IPAs. Strangely enough, I drank lots of Red Hook, a beer made in Seattle, when I lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I've never seen it around these parts, unfortunately. And now they have all kinds of interesting IPAs that I can't get my hands on.

I searched for it on Binny's website, and all I got was squat.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that show, Northern Exposure. It has to be my favorite TV series of all time. I'm so glad Amazon made it available on Prime.

Because of a possible "wintry mix," the schools around here did not have have classes. All it did was rain. The silliness of people who aren't used to snow...

I've seen a trend recently of mid-size cities or larger cities making people their area's poet laureate. When did this move of laureating poets in places like Mobile and Mufreesboro start to happen? 

I'm not against it or anything. In fact, I like it because it supports the artistic community, but I'm just wondering when this trend started. 

Who started the laureating fire? And where else will it spread to? 

NPR has an interesting article out about the "Nones," who are apparently the largest group in the US in regard to religion. I fit into that group because I'm a highly skeptical agnostic.

The article is "Religious 'Nones' Are Now the Largest Single Group in the U.S." 

The good news to me is that this group is growing and they are likely to be liberal.  In addition, apparently Evangelicals is a group that's shrinking. More good news. 

Music Friday: Where You Lead

I'm working from home on this snowy Friday, and I'm listening to my iPod on shuffle. This song came up. 

So enjoy.  

Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Beef Liver Pate

I got the basics of this recipe from the InterWebs, but I modified it a bit. I added juice from a couple of slices of lime to brighten it up a bit. 

Ingredients

1 package of beef liver

6 TB of butter

2-3 slivers of lime, squeezed

Salt and pepper to taste

Dried thyme to taste

Process

Wash the liver and pat them dry. Cut into smaller sizes and sprinkle with kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Put a cast-iron skillet on medium-high heat and add three tablespoons of butter to it. 

Once the butter is melted and sufficiently hot, add the liver and sauté each side of the liver for one minute. Move the cooked liver to a plate to cool. 

In a separate small skillet, melt three tablespoons of butter on low. 

Wait for about fifteen minutes, so the liver cools down. Place the liver, lime juice, melted butter, thyme, salt, and pepper into a food processor. Process till it's smooth and refrigerate. 

Music Friday: "Pictures of You"

As I was driving to my son's basketball games yesterday, I listened to the Life with John Mayer channel on SiriusXM radio. He has interesting musical tastes. 

One song that came one "Lovesong" by The Cure, and I was reminded how I like that band, but it's another one of those bands that I never really bought any of their albums. 

Here's one of my favorite tunes from The Cure, one with a long instrumental opening. 

Musing of the Moment: The Danger and Stupidity of Bottled Water

The Washington Post has a great article out today about the danger of not just microplastics but also nanoplastics in bottled water: "Here's What You're Really Swallowing When Your Drink Bottled Water."  

Bottled water is one of the biggest scams out there because a lot of bottled water simply comes from municipal sources. 

And then there's an old Penn and Teller bit on bottled water that you can watch below.

So people are buying water they can get from their faucet or filtered from a refrigerator. 

They are voluntarily ingesting microplastics and nanoplastics, which I would assume it bad for one's body. They are paying an exorbitant fee for the water they could get from their municipality. And because so few people actually recycle the bottles, the world is awash in plastic polluting the very water they want to drink. 

The stupidity of humans.

Music Friday: "The Man"

This song makes me grin. It kind of reminds me "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski. 

Here you go. 

Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Lemon-Butter Fettuccine

I tried a recipe from The Washington Post a little while back, and I didn't like how it came out. So I modified it to my liking since I use the store-bought, cheaper parmesan cheese that mucked up the original recipe.

I like this version much better. 

Ingredients

1 stick of butter

2 lemons

1 regular box of fettuccine

1 TB of dried basil

1 Ts of dried oregano

1 Ts of minced garlic

1 Ts of Dan-O's seasoning

1 TB of Seasonello Bologna aromatic herbal salt

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Process

First cook the pasta to al dente and drain. Once it is fully drained and cooled, drizzle it with some extra virgin olive oil and toss. 

Halfway through cooking the pasta, melt the butter on medium-low and zest the two lemons. Add the lemon zest, seasonings, and minced garlic to the melted butter and adjust to low. Juice half of a lemon into the melted butter and add salt and pepper. 

Kick the heat of the butter mixture up to medium-low and add the pasta in to fully coat it. 

When serving, liberally apply lots of parmesan cheese on top since the reaction between parmesan and lemon is a delightful combination. 

Random Notes from a Crank

I saw this one ready-made shot that you can buy called "Porn Star." It's a half and half mixture of raspberry vodka and blue curaçao. 

If you were to make a shot called "porn star," don't you think it would be a different color, such as white like a pina colada to mimic the color of spunk? Just sayin'.

It's an old proverb from somewhere in Africa, but it rings true: Madness is hereditary. You get it from your kids. 

When I searched for that quotation, the search engine attributed it to someone named Sam Levenson. But I've always remembered it as a proverb that came out of Africa. 

A simple search found that Mr. Levenson was a white dude. Perhaps he stole it? 

I recently finished Nick Offerman's delightful book Where the Deer and Antelope Play. I highly recommend it. Straight talk, people. 

Another book I picked up last month was George Carlin's When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? It's typical Carlin diatribic humor, some of which hasn't aged well. Imagine what Carlin would have done with Moscow Don?

Another book I'm starting is Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. I psyched about it. 

Sunday Hangover: Michigan

What a frustrating game. 

Alabama played so well in the second half until they didn't. 

I felt the offensive play calling was terrible. We have a highly mobile quarterback that terrifies defenses, and we rarely roll him out to take advantage of his skills. It's madness. 

The plays they ran in overtime were uninspired. 

The Tide can't win a national championship every year, but they were definitely in the hunt this year. I blame the coaching. 

The good news is that Milroe will be back, and he progressed a hell of a lot this season. 

We will lose some great players to the draft though, four of whom likely to be first-round draft picks: Latham, Turner, Arnold, and McKinstry.