Thank Whatever Deity You Believe In: It's Friday.

It's important to let your meat rest. I'm talking about steaks. Here's an article on why your steak will taste better if you let it sit for 10 minutes after cooking. What did you think I was referring to?

God may indeed have sent an earthquake to punish the Haitians, just like how He may have sent Pat Robertson to punish us by making us slap our foreheads hard, really hard, in disgust at Pat Robertson.

Danny Glover is punishment for somebody for something bad, only I haven't figured out what yet. He tells us that Global Warming is responsible for the Haitian earthquake. Personally, I think he and Pat Robertson should be sentenced to listen to each other talk for a couple hours. Or would that be cruel and unusual?

Outdoor Magazine is trying to get me to subscribe for a year for $5. I ****ing HATE Outdoor Magazine. It's basically Stuff White People Like: Adventure Sports and Marketing Posh Consumer Goods edition.

Some Friday tunes?



Hmmm. The "Rock" in Kid Rock used to be accurate. Not a huge body of work, but a good one. He's reverted to being an interesting bar performer, I think.

Thinking about doing some work on the house this weekend? Lemmy has some ideas about how you should start the livingroom project.



Now for something completely different... Wagnerian opera is interesting because hard core fans understand it in a way that only other total weirdos understand their little fetish. Ever hear a couple tubular guys talking about tires? They'll discuss the vintage of a tubular tire, talk about how the compounds changed one year, and how they have a secret stash of the old compound tires, aging in a dark closet somewhere. I'm not an enormous Wagner fan, but I know my way around it a bit. One of my favorite little bits of is the Festmarch from Tannhauser. I found this recording of it featuring Frederick Stock conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - pulled from a record cut probably in the 1910's or 1920's. It's a remarkable old piece of music, and Stock is one of several really noteworthy conductors of Wagner (along with Richard Strauss, Furtwaengler and Toscanini).



Now another painful gear change. I'm not usually big into chart topping pop, but for some reason I like Lady Gaga. She strikes me as a really talented and conscious artist. Over the Thanksgiving break I was flipping through the channels and she was on one of the talkers, just killing it on the piano. I realized at that point that she is one artist that I am just dying to see jump the shark, in the pop sense. Accepted into Julliard (but choosing a Catholic girl's school) and then later attending the Tisch School, she's got some major talent. At some point - probably when the pop money mill slows down - she'll quit performing in lingerie and show us her talent unadorned by the usual over-production. That will be interesting. Meanwhile, we've got entertaining fluff like this to enjoy.