Coathangers, Larceny and Old Lace. I’m a sucker for bands which pun on titles of old American stage comedies. The music is a comfortable return to the composed chaos of punk/new wave bands in the label-dominated 1980s. There’s something choreographed in those antic screams and raw guitar melodies. I trust it not to get out of control, which is not what I feel from a somewhat similar yet much more dangerous female-fronted band such as The Darlings.

Peanuts Sudoko Comic Digest (Andrews McMeel, 2008)
This book, which promises “200 puzzles plus 50 classic Peanuts cartoons,” gave me a true Charlie Brown Christmas vacation moment:
“Good grief! There are 70 puzzles to do before the first cartoon page comes up!”

“Welcome to Black Friday 2,” said the harried cashier at Kohl’s department store in Hamden. It was January 2, the Monday school holiday version of New Year’s Day. The store was mobbed. Not just for returns and exchanges. Purchases. The post-Christmas sales had commenced days earlier. The staff were openly bewildered by the consumer rush. Hope that statistic gets noticed in the Christmas shopping economic studies. Felt like change.
Been spending a little more this season myself. Little luxuries like CDs and cashews.

This is the year I finally rose up against the tyranny of supermarket laundry detergent, an item that had been the bane of my weekly shopping budget for eons.
Surely one can make these things oneself. Did people not wash clothes in the 19th century?
My sanitized salvation came via a slew of homesteading websites. A good basic recipe is offered by Crystal Miller at her Family Homestead site.

I also dug this photo-illustrated recipe for powdered laundry detergent at DIY Natural, the site run by Matt & Betsy Jabs, authors of the DIY Natural Housecleaners book.

Both are based around Borax and a substance called Washing Soda, both easily available at Stop & Shop if you can look beyond the pop-art glare of Tide and Clorox. Plus, you know, soap—a grated bar of Fels Naptha or, if you’d rather, Dove or Lux.

A batch of each homemade concoction, wet and dry, has lasted me months so far, with dozens more loads in sight. Big deal when you walk to the market as I do (liquid soap is heavy), try to keep your weekly grocery bill within the double digits, and do about 10 loads of laundry a week. (Family of four, don’tcha know.)

As for cleaning power, the home brew seems more powerful than the cheap watery dollar-store laundry-soap brands, and equal to the top ones. Low-suds, so they’re front-loader friendly. The liquid one has a lumpy consistency, and as far as I can see, the fact that you have to shake the bucket before using, and have to add your own fragrance (if desired) is the only difference (and a charming, craftsy one at that) between my ultracheap soap and the costly ones that have blinded and hypnotized me for so long at the store.

The OverCovers are a franchise—a frighteningly precise one.
The conglomerate exists to pump out a fixed repertoire of 214 current and classic, instantly recognizable pop tunes “by famous artists.”
The business model is a five-piece band where the keyboardist doubles as a saxophonist and triples as a woodblock percussionist.
It requires a blond male singer.
We have seen three separate OverCovers in action. On any given night, between two and five platoons are in the region, treating shallow listeners to stuff they’ve been forcefed by the mainstream radio stations pumped into their bland workplaces, a stultifying rock which they sadly crave even when they go out to drink and forget other aspects of their dismal day jobs.
We have talked this over with various OverCovers, who take the criticism with a bemused grin. After all, this is THEIR job, and not a bad one. If they work extra hard for the host company, Party Party Party Party Party Entertainiment, also DJing or doing a magic act, they can even get benefits.
We still find it sad. A waste. A shame. We like our shame to be original, and we like it to come in spurts of noncommercial rebellion, preferably bellowing out of the PA at the Bullfinch. When we are overcome with love for music, it is never because we have been OverCovered.

The Tower Treausure and Footprints Under the Window at The Bullfinch… Bombay Boomerang (a cocktail reference) and, looky here, The OverCovers (Model B) at Hamilton’s… Jungle Pyramid at D’ollaire’s, joined on this leg of the tour only by Sting of the Scorpion; other towns got Firebird Rocket…

Finally connected with family. They said when they figured I wasn’t coming they decided to “give me some space.”

Toby Goodshank, Truth Jump Fall. The prolific and propulsive former Moldy Peaches guitarist hasn’t quite distanced himself from that band’s immature fan base, but the sex jokes and nursery rhymes here are buried amid Procol Harum organ chords, classical guitar, thumping drums and harmonies that sound like drunk celebrants at church. Still loose and lively, just… growing up before your very ears.

I chanced upon the 18th issue of Irving Stettner’s literary journal Stroker. I see that it might fetch me thirty bucks or so on eBay because it’s one of the issues with Henry Miller. I’m more excited, frankly, that it’s got Seymour Krim in it. Krim’s one of my greatest lit heroes, an overlooked member of the Beat elite who’s more controlled, reflective and usefully argumentative than many of his famous writer friends. Krim was unarguably one of the greatest essayists of the 20th century. His contribution here, from Book of Fame, begins:

America is the cradle of modern fame; screw liberty for the moment, let’s concentrate on fame before it became such a popular commodity as it is now—don’t misunderstand, still rare by the percentages but far more of a string of popping firecrackers going up all over the place than it was in the late ‘20s when I was first hearing its majestic sound. America was fame’s babe because the very country was a fable compared to the rest of the toil-stained world. America itself is still the most famous word among the entire human race, everyone who has spent time outside our hectic shores knows the alternately sweet and sour burden of carrying the name American, and it was the the most natural and perhaps finally cursed thing in the world for her children to want some of that fabulous identity for themselves.

Irving Stettner, who was able to build a whole book out of his correspondence with Miller over Stroker and other shared interests, published Stroker from 1974 until his death 30 years later. For all its longevity and variety, the journal nonetheless looks and reads perpetually like a product of 1967. I find myself wrestling with the concept of Krim and Miller even being alive in 1980, though I know they were. The cheap offset printing, straight-from-the-typewriter design, inconsistent quality of photos and illustrations, all reek of when such journals were in their infancy. By ’80, punk zines had sprung up by the dozens and many were slicker than this. But Stroker’s ability to draw (and yet not pay) the likes of Miller, Krim, Georges Simenon, Mohammed Mrabet, Lawrence Durrell, Kazuko Sugisaki, Bertrand Mathieu and Tommy Trantino—all in this very issue—humanizes them, shows their passion to be printed anyhow and anywhere, demonstrates their loyalty and camaraderie. So it is a punkzine of sorts, but more a timeless journal of great writers of the past at sea in the present, contemplating the future.

We live downtown, which often behaves like a small village. We occasionally shop in the suburbs, which feels like an intense, overwhelming urban onslaught.
We were proud card-carrying CostCo members. After a few years, the fervor faded. We swore off big-box services and concentrated on supporting the new Stop & Shop in our neighborhood.
Then a coupon came in the mail and at a vulnerable moment, and next thing we know, we are beholden to BJ’s.
Like it so far. It seems about a third smaller than the Post Road CostCo, especially in the height of the ceiling, which makes it feel less Orwellian as a shopping experience. At CostCo, I used to clutch my cart as if I was steering a space module. It was an intense, disorienting experience. As a store, it felt like Tron.
We would recover from a CostCo shlep by eating at a Chinese restaurant down the road, or buying crafts at another shop, but nothing comforting was immediately nearby. The North Haven BJ’s, by contrast, has several comfort zones, including Barnes & Noble and the Rave cinemas, within walking distance.
Stop & Shop is still our neighborhood market, where we wave to friends and drop change in jars to support school sports teams. BJ’s (or CostCo, when we could handle it) is the fantasyland where a large bottle of vanilla costs just $7, where we can afford the charitable impulse of birdseed for the feeders in our garden, where we can buy a bag of frozen broccoli large enough to serve an icepack for an elk.
Downtown’s got scale. We use a bag or cart to shop. Further out, it’s madness.

Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways
Bliss raspberry meltaways