Tricked by the trash again–and loving it.
Monday was Columbus Day. Ordinarily on Holiday weeks, trash pickup is understandably delayed a day. But not always, especially on iffy, local but not national days off like Columbus’.
So a bunch odd IA on threw block put out our trash anyhow.
Results have varied. Sometimes the big blue receptacles get no relief for another day. Sometimes we’ve gambled correctly on whether a school holiday is a sanitation break as well. Once– and thirds is the sort of event which gives you good feelings about local government for years afterward– we didn’t put out the bins and woke, frazzled and frantic, to the sound of garbage tricks coming up the street. We watched dismayed as the truck stopped at the neighbors… Then gazed joyously as a worker steroid into our driveway, found the trash bin that hadn’t been placed curbside but (we know now) should’ve been, wheeled it to the truck and ceremoniously took our trash away.
Yesterday, here’s what happened. No trash truck at the customary dawn hour. But sometime between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. the trash vanished.

This has happened once before. Some rogue mid-morning truck swooped through the neighborhood, finessing the fishwrappings of the fastidious. It’s like benevolent gods looking after the anguished.
Gee, I love election years. What service!

I’ve been gradually (granulatedly?) working through 15 pounds of brown sugar I overbought at Costco last year. The godsend foodstuff for brown sugar gluts is oatmeal cookies.
Finally worked them so they had crisp edges and melt into flat shapes. These aren’t soft, squishy oatmeal cookies. I don’t know how to make those.

1 ½ cups brown sugar
1 cup margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs (don’t have to be large)
1 cup white flour
1 ½ cups spelt flour (you can use whole wheat; I just happen to have a lot of spelt berries around these days)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups uncooked oats (not the “quick” kind or any fancy kind; just the generic round tub of oats).

Beat the hell out of the brown sugar and margarine, until frothy. Add the vanilla and eggs and beat it more. Toss in the flours and baking soda—stir more gently this time. Finally, the oats. Don’t let them get soggy.

Heat the over to 350 degrees. Use that cooking spray stuff, or very lightly butter, a couple of cookie pans. (I use a cast iron pizza pan. I mention this because it has a heavy bottom and I don’t burn the cookies as easily when I use it.) Spoon teaspoonfuls of the batter onto the pan. (Use a spoon, not your fingers. You can thank me later.) Cook for about 10 minutes. I find it helps to switch the pan from the upper rack to the lower rack, or vice versa, midway through.
Eat, and rejoice that you’ve just used 1 ½ cups of brown sugar in one fell swoop.

It’s Fashion Week in our little burg. Semester Abroad, who named the band before the event in their title came true, indeed did Europe up proud and came back all wearing black for their homecoming Bullfinch gig. Flower Names, next night same club, also wore remarkably similar outfits—none of which involved flower patterns. A coincidence, says percussionist Pansy, “but having done it, we want to do it again.”
Meanwhile, that was Sonny Blit’s signature cape (with the red lining) being worn by Vommy of two drunk two screw last Friday at a Tree Street basement show. Sonny’s laying low due to his latest scene embarrassment; his clothing is apparently bolder and more social than he is.
Meanwhile, three out of four members of Yes Table wore ties when they opened the early March Waters show at D’ollaire’s Sunday. Excuses: two of them had rushed to the gig from church, another from the morning shift at DiPizza’s Ristorante. Ordinarily they would NEVER dress up for a gig. Who would?

Parties at Pickfair and The Pepper Youngs at The Bullfinch… The Tenth Men and The Creaking Door at Hamilton’s… An evening with Cuddles and Tuckie at D’ollaire’s…

Our band has booked its first gig in our living room, two nights from now.

The Happy Thoughts
Wish I’d discovered this band in Spring (when their album The Happy Thoughts was released) instead of now. It’s jaunty raw indie rock, and pops up like dandelions. Doesn’t work in autumntime for me, though. I keep wanting those freewheeling solos and frisky lyrics to be ironic. Still, “Half Day” works better during the school year, I guess.

It felt just like when Charles Schulz died just as the last episode of Peanuts appeared in the Sunday newspapers. I received the latest issue of MacWorld, with its cover teaser “Jobs Resigns: What’s Next for Apple?” and hours later learned that Apple’s top human icon had expired.

Having the luxury of monthly deadlines and not at-the-moment improvs, MacWorld has a measured view of Apple post-Jobs. They provide a timeline of the company’s successes and failures. They opine that Apple is a much more robust and secure brand than it was when Jobs rejoined it a decade ago. They reprint his resignation letter, which demonstrates took he recommendation to appoint Tim Cook as CEO. They profile Cook.

But the way MacWorld most clearly answers the question which has swamped the media these last two days—whence Apple sans Jobs?—is on its cover. Jobs’ resignation may consume the magazine’s columnists and sidebar-writers, but it’s not MacWorld’s cover story. That would be “Lion Revealed—Tips & Tricks for Making the Most of OSX10.7.” It’s a positive and practical 16-page section devoted to the latest operating system update. The future is already now. There are new fields to conquer. We don’t need to be living in the mortal past.

Talk about culture wars: The Yale press has gone all swirly over reports that the forthcoming frozen yogurt shop on York Shop, Flavors, has been accused of stealing design concepts from Froyo over on York Street. Froyo’s co-owner Derek Bok says he was “disheartened” to have learned that Flavors’ proprietors were old friends of his, and called their new business “betrayal.” Amusingly, considering the bad feelings, one of the things Flavor is accused of lifting from Froyo is its logo: a smiley face.
I find Froyo’s unsmiley sensitivity here appalling. Froyo’s moved in on the very block where an older frozen yogurt store had been established for years. Now in the Yale Daily News Bok is bitching about Flavors opening “literally in our backyard”—actually several blocks away, a whole separate shopping district in downtown terms, whereas the Liberry which Froyo stomped out of business could be seen through Froyo’s window.
Now it wants to compete in an open marketplace by browbeating other upstarts, accusing them of betrayal, theft and more? You’re a fair-weather product, Froyo, and apparently a fair-weather friend. Keep your cool.

I’ve been playing “Panic in Detroit” all morning long. The original Bowie version, the Christian Death cover, any one I can get my hands on. It’s just an appropriate phrase for how I’ve felt last night and this morning. The city must just be running wild, beaming with joy. And being knotted by panic over the World Series games which now must be played.

It’s a different feeling from when the Tigers beat the Yankees five years ago in the same contest. Then, they seemed erratic, having nearly scuttled their winning season in its final month. It was like rooting for a crazy person to randomly do a good thing while on an otherwise destructive rampage.

This year feels more stable, every success deserved. Last night’s first inning, in which the Tigers calmly got back-to-back home runs and delivered a crushing psychological blow to the arrogant Yankees, was delightful to watch. A World Series win (which would be the team’s first in 27 years) may not be inevitable, but it would be a welcome and appropriate end to the season. Detroit sure needs the sort of glow which Boston got from being a winning city (not to mention beating back the bigger-city Yankees) in 2004.

Putting a gospel singer in front of a rock band is such an old concept, it’s in the Book of Numbers.
Guitarist Senor Grace inverted expectations for that hallowed format Friday by standing in front of a gospel choir, letting them do their a cappella thing where they carry the melody, bass lines and harmonies vocally, then let rip—loudly and prominently—with electric solos. The axe threatened to drown out the acolytes, but S.G. behaved just as if he was one of those overpowering tenor soloists. Voices were lifted. Hallelujah!

Gregory Hood and The Chandus at The Bullfinch, together and separately… Oldies Nite—real oldie, like Ye Olde ‘90s—at Hamilton’s with The Contented Carnations and the Aunt Jennys… Dreft Stars at D’ollaire’s, shooting downward…

Jammed for like ten minutes, then just listened to songs we might like to cover if we could ever learn to play.