“Marry the Night,” Lady Gaga
“Bad Company,” Bad Company
“Slam,” Onyx
“Moonlight in Glory,” Brian Eno and David Byrne
“You Belong to the City,” Glenn Frey
5 Songs I Like to Imagine as the Soundtrack as Priscilla Pufferson Steps Out Into the Night
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Tom Petty, “Learning to Fly”
2
This is in my top five ever, I think. I love this song.
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WE SHALL SEE
I think I just solved the biggest problem of my life.
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How to make broccoli
Here is how to make broccoli, fast, in a way that tastes delicious. The mother of my child taught me. You will want to do this, because broccoli is very good for you. Using this method, you can easily, quickly, and cheaply cook broccoli and eat it as a side dish with your lunch or dinner. Or breakfast; I don’t care. Anyway, do it.
- Buy a bag of frozen broccoli. Get this right. The other week, I made the mistake of buying an off-brand, and I got mostly stems and few florets. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you; it matters to my one-year-old, who LOVES BROCCOLI.
- Put some of the frozen broccoli in a microwavable container. If you are feeding the broccoli to a child, use a BPA-free container. If you are old like me, IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU, so Gladware or whatever is fine.
- Drizzle the broccoli with olive oil and sprinkle it with salt. I wouldn’t say be liberal with either, but don’t be stingy exactly either. Remember that if you add too little, you can always add more; but if you add too much, you’re screwed.
- Put the lid on the container and shake it up to disseminate the olive oil and salt. What, you didn’t know you needed a container with a lid? What, you just jumped ahead without reading the instructions all the way through once first? This is on you, not me.
- With the lid resting on top of the container, microwave it all for, like, two minutes. Do not actually fasten or close the lid, or everything will explode. And it’s not a bad idea to stop things halfway through and give everything a good shake again (do fasten the lid for that, or hold it down tightly), to get the olive oil and salt better distributed. Finally, it might take longer than two minutes; possibly it will take less, though I doubt it. Anyway, this isn’t beef Wellington — just give the broccoli a try and see if it needs more time.
All right. Now you have perfect broccoli, and it’s pretty healthy, and it’s tasty, and it took like no time at all. That was easy. Don’t you feel dumb for not knowing? I did. You have no excuses now. Eat more vegetables.
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Michael Penn, “This and That”
Someone reminded me what a great song this is. His second single. I remember hearing it on the radio — the first time I would experience that faint, foreboding sense that something I liked was just not going to catch on with the mainstream.
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Hmmm
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.
Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.
—Lao-tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell
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“The Wicked Fairy at the Manger,” by U.A. Fanthorpe
My gift for the child:
No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort—
The workshy, women, wogs,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases,
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.
Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.
(via Alan Jacobs)
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