Magic Jewball

You know what was weird this run up to Passover? Putting away my bakery tools in my cabinets. You see, these days my cookie trays and pastry brush and dough cutter are out pretty much all the time. I have mixed feelings about closing down for two weeks (yes, Passover is only eight days but the way the delivery schedule works and what with having to clean my kitchen in advance, it ended up more like two weeks). On the one hand, I’ll miss the income and in fact, with one of my big markets being my fellow Jews who were trying to get rid of their own chametz (non-Kosher for Passover food), my orders have been pretty flat this month in general. But on the other, it was kind of nice to put it all away and know for sure that there would be no midnight bake sessions and running to the post office only to see the snarling lady who accepts the click ‘n ship packages (I know she’ll miss me too). As I’ve said numerous times, although I tend to procrastinate, I’m also a planner and not knowing until the day before that I’d need to bake has been a new challenge. A fun one, no doubt, but still sometimes hard to schedule.

So although you hear a lot about how crazy Passover is and how hard the work is to create it, there will be an element of relaxation for me and I am looking forward to that. Hope everyone who is celebrating has a happy holiday and a happening seder!

Still no Napster substitute. Working on it!

I’m not even sure what to say about this one. I was scrounging up videos for Are Everything when I discovered this… gem? I don’t know. The juxtaposition of wholesome, high-haired teens of the 80’s clowning around for the camera while perhaps the most depressing New Order song ever (it had been a Joy Division song before Ian Curtis committed suicide and left it unfinished, so that should tell you something) plays is both horrifying and riveting. It’s apparently from a local Michigan public access show of the time and some of the other videos they have on their channel are more chipper and have the teens dancing around the cheesy studio. So I’m thankful, at least, that no one’s dancing to the funereal “beat.” But just the sort of “go around the room catching kids chit-chatting or answering the phone while bad text graphics run across the screen” visuals with a sonically bleak song about death as the soundtrack is enough to utterly boggle one’s mind.

If you make it to the end, and I doubt you will, there’s a short advert for a play or something at Edsel Ford’s Auditorium (not “The Edsel Ford Auditorium,” mind you; this sounds more like it was a large room in the Ford mansion). Senior citizens are free! Better tell your grandparents, though, because I doubt many of them were watching this show.

[youtube width=”384″ height=”313″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hSch-VjGVU[/youtube]

BTW, fun story! I know this song well because it’s the first track on the “bonus” CD of New Order’s Substance greatest hits package from 1987. I did not yet have a CD player and I already owned the cassette, so I split it with The White Whale, and all I have on CD to this day is Disc 2. However, this cassette was played so much at Palais Royale, our Baltimore rowhouse, that I literally did not listen to it again for at least ten years. That’s when I discovered the gym and how great most of the songs work with it. Not this one, though. Of course, I have named a post after this song before. That post was about death, natch.

Last year, I was terribly upset because my third blogoversary post narrowly missed being my 500th post. Well, screw you, random numbers! Because this post will be exactly my 600th. Go me! Except that means I’m posting less than ever, so, boo me. But this year has been a bit different from all the others. I have a new direction and so, somewhat, does the blog. Last year I said in my blogoversary post that I had something cooking and now you know what that was, my big life change. Should you want to do some reflection (because I won’t be doing much today), or just rehash that post, it is here. But besides that, I also reflected on the occasions of the end of the decade, John Hughes death, Michael Jackson’s death, and two memorable Depeche Mode shows.

I think the one about my life change was easily one of my favorites of all time to write (and re-read), but I’m also enamored of the Depeche Mode one with its snippet soundtrack, and my two part series, Guided Tour of Becca’s Baltimore. That had a soundtrack too, you just couldn’t hear it.

And now, a link free paragraph. Lots of times, I wonder if there is a natural point for a blog to end, not because I want mine to be over, but because I worry that I never will end it. Sometimes, weeks pass where I have nothing significant to say or I am too busy writing things that someone will grade to post anything here. This is the sort of obvious place to say, “I never imagined I’d still be blogging four years later!” But I did. In fact, until some other, better medium comes up, I can’t imagine not having this place to connect with people. Other forms have come up like Twitter and Facebook and Buzz and they have their place. But they are not like this place. So thanks everyone for reading and commenting and connecting with me. If elected, I promise to do my best to actually update my sad and old “About” page as well as my outdated Blogroll. God bless the Internet!

By the way, it appears after three+ years of letting me post songs for free, Napster has revised their site and business model. Which means that not only can I not post Midge Ure’s Four as I had hoped to, but that all my links, nearly four years of them, are broken. Super. I will look for a better solution; yet another campaign promise.

After all, it could be the last one of my life. While I was sitting in the Spring Break dead-empty library today I received this message via Google Voice:

Hm. This was kind of what I had been imagining but I hadn’t realized the receptionist would be so up front about it. Don’t you wish your dentist were as honest about what your visit entailed as mine is? By the way, Tamara Ross is “tomorrow’s” and my dentist’s name isn’t really Dr. Cassius, although death by knockout might be more merciful.

This could be the best Google mistranscription I’ve received since “We’re gonna do it now in the parking garage.”

As for “Transcription useful?” on the bottom right, there doesn’t seem to be a box for “burst out laughing on an overworked and undercaffeinated morning” so I’ll just go with Yes.

The Police – Murder By Numbers

Seriously, the weather here has been something resembling one of those typhoons they used to have on Gilligan’s Island for about three days now. Luckily, the Professor tied me to a tree so I wouldn’t blow away. In the meantime, here is some hope of Spring, courtesy of my window sill via the delightful Bar Mitzvah I attended this weekend.

It’s like everything you like about Spring in one image!

Except Spring cleaning which, you can probably see from the window, has also not been around in a while.

Yaz – Winter Kills