Category Archives: Play

Sweet, True Love

January 12, 2006MP3s, MusicMush

In which you hear me sing a song that was written for me to solo on. For real.

Remember my trip to New York last September? To sing on a friend’s acapella album? Well, I saw her over New Year’s and she gave me the tracks.

She doesn’t like them and isn’t going to use them; she wants to re-record the material later this year. I don’t blame her. It’s kinda rough, really. It’s really hard to record acapella material, especially without a conductor.

But anyway. Here, for your listening pleasure, is Sweet True Love by Barbara Morillo, recorded at LiveWire studio in NYC last autumn.

I’m uploading this track specifically because, hey, this site’s all about me and I’ve got a solo in the end of it.

Sweet True Love

Enjoy! Do please tell me you love me.

Rehearsal Tonight

January 5, 2006MP3s, MusicMush

In which I’ll probably not look as young or thin as I once did.

Tonight at House 11 rehearsal we’ll be setting the band room back up (now that the gear is all back from the gig), and then watching the video from New Year’s Eve.

*groan*

The band will now know about that one verse I made the words up for because I’d forgotten the real ones!

In other news, here’s some poppy pop goodness. It kinda sounds like the theme to the Sopranos, but it’s about Internet porn and I love it.

Butternut Squash Lasagna

January 4, 2006RecipesMush

Butternut Squash Lasagna

Cooking spray
3 cups chopped onion
10 cups fresh spinach
¼ cup (3oz) shredded sharp provolone cheese
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 large eggs
1 (15 oz) carton part-skim ricotta cheese
1 (15oz) carton fat-free ricotta cheese
3 cups diced peeled butternut squash
6 cups Smoky Marinara (see next recipe)
12 oven ready lasagna noodles (such as Barilla)
1 cup (4oz) grated fresh parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375°.
2. Heat a large Dutch oven coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté 4 minutes or until tender. Add spinach; sauté 1 ½ minutes or until spinach wilts. Combine provolone, parsley, salt, pepper, eggs, and ricotta cheese in a large bowl.
3. Place squash in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover and cook on high five minutes or until tender.
4. Coat the bottom and sides of 2 (8 inch square) baking dishes with cooking spray. Spread ½ cup Smoky Marinara in the bottom of one prepared dish. Arrange 2 noodles over sauce; spread 1 cup cheese mixture over noodles. Arrange 1 ½ cups squash over cheese mixture; spread ¾ cup sauce over squash.
5. Arrange 2 noodles over sauce; spread 1 cup cheese mixture over the noodles. Arrange 1 ½ cups spinach mixture over cheese mixture; spread ¾ cup sauce over spinach mixture.
6. Arrange 2 noodles over sauce; spread 1 cup Smoky Marinara evenly over noodles. Sprinkle with ½ cup parmesan. Repeat procedure with remaining ingredients in remaining pan. Cover each pan with foil.
7. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake and additional 30 minutes.

Yield: 2 lasagnas, 6 servings per pan.

To Freeze Unbaked Lasagna: Prepare through Step 6. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing to remove as much air as possible. Wrap with heavy-duty foil. Store in freezer for up to 2 months.

To Prepare Frozen Unbaked Lasagna: Thaw completely in refrigerator (about 24 hours). Preheat oven to 375°. Remove foil; reserve foil. Remove plastic wrap; discard wrap. Cover lasagna with reserved foil; bake at 375° for 1 hour. Uncover and bake an additional 30 minutes or until bubbly.

Smoky Marinara

Look for fire-roasted tomatoes (like Muir Glen) in the organic section or with the canned tomatoes in your supermarket.

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh, or 2 teaspoons dried, oregano
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 (28oz) can crushed fire-roasted tomatoes, un-drained
1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes, un-drained

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic, basil, parsley, and oregano; sauté 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in vinegar and remaining ingredients. Reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Yield: 6 cups (serving size: ½ cup).

As my cuzin said, it is very labor intensive, but you do end up with 2 pans of lasagna … not a bad deal.

– from Enviroboi

Save Those Ears For Later

January 4, 2006LOTDMush

It’s the link of the day: listen to your Uncle Pete, kids, he’s an icon.

Pete Townshend Warns iPod Users to turn it down before they go deaf.

And he’s not kidding, either. I personally managed to give myself mild tinnitus (which is permanent – as in forever, as in for the rest of my life) with my own iPod, and now I’m very careful with headphone volume because I want to continue to be able to hear things for awhile longer.

I even wear earplugs for gigs and rehearsals now, which I’m sure my dad will be glad to hear.

Freaky

January 3, 2006InkMush

In which I’m flattered, but mildly disturbed.

So I just discovered that there is an image in my gallery – of one of my tattoos – that was hit over nine thousand times in November. (Nine thousand times!) There are even a variety of juvenile comments about how much my ink sucks.

New tattoo

It never occurred to me to turn off comments in my gallery, because who the hell comments on random images?! And even curiouser: who drove all that traffic here in the first place?

Anyway, it’s kinda weird to think that so many strangers have seen my ass crack, that’s all I’m trying to say.

01/04 Update: The images in question are still getting mad hits – over two hundred since yesterday. I put a counter on the pages, and it looks like most of the traffic is coming from my boyfriend Google’s image search function. (Oh, you didn’t know Google is my boyfriend? Well ya live an’ learn, dontcha!)

Update: I upgraded to Gallery 2.1 and lost my comments. *sigh*

Happy New Year, Everyone

January 2, 2006Music, SocialMush

Strange but fun: a New Year’s gig with two extremely different bands. This entry is extremely long… YHBW.

I went back to town with Bread. At the hotel, he split for the bar to order himself a burger and a beer, and I headed up to 265 to put on my face and change into my gig clothes.

WTC and KO were there; W. was trying to meditate and rest a bit since he’d been on the run all day, and K. suddenly remembered he only had white socks – which he announced would look terrible with his black pinstriped slacks – and left in a hurry to rush home and remedy the situation.

We’re So Beautiful!

Someone emerged from the bathroom; I could smell the steam from where I sat cross-legged on the credenza in front of a mirror, and I didn’t dare turn around for fear he, whoever he was, wasn’t decent. He saw me, though, and uttered an amusing and heartfelt, “Oh shit!” before explaining, “Damn, I couldn’t figure out what you were, sitting up there like that!” WTC chuckled from his spot on the bed behind me. The showerer was BvB’s hubby and our sound man MvB, and he was, I was glad to see, completely dressed. He put on his new shoes and left the room.

W. settled back down in the bed behind me for a few more minutes of rest. In the silence I discovered, after applying black liquid eyeliner, that I only had brown mascara – and an old and dried-out tube of brown mascara at that. (I am plagued by dried-out mascara. I should start using false eyelashes again; they’re fun and they look cool and they solve the problem.)

W. must’ve abandoned the idea of rest as he got up a few minutes later. He sat on the floor next to the credenza I was perched on and ate a sandwich while we chatted and I finished my make-up. When I took my hair down from the knot I’d put it in to keep it out of my way, the nice wave I’d troubled to create earlier was gone. I put a couple rollers in briefly but didn’t bother to heat my hair so they didn’t really help. I need a cut and color anyway. Plus beauty’s a pain in the ass, really.

K. returned and dressed, and I have to say the man looked astounding. W. asked our opinions on his two shirts – one black with pinstrips, the other I think was red – and we voted for the pinstripe. I went into the bathroom and changed. We really did look fantastic together, I have to say, in our black, red, and silver. As we congratulated ourselves on cleaning up so good, K. said he felt like a million bucks and W. put on his shades. Laughing, we went down for the gig.

Continue reading Happy New Year, Everyone →

New Drums Are So Hot

January 1, 2006Blurbs, MP3sMush

In which my brother got a new drum kit.

This is one of the dozen images my brother emailed me of his new drum kit.

On the phone today he told me, “My new drum kit is so hot it’s going to have my kids. As soon as I find its vagina, that is.”

In other news, this will cheer you up. He’s so funky, the Purple One.

Off The Main Sequence

December 30, 2005ReadingMush

In which I admit publicly that I no longer loathe RAH.

I received Off The Main Sequence as an automatic monthly selection from SFBC.

Last year I read an ebook of Heinlein’s non-fiction and decided I might be willing to forgive him for Stranger In A Strange Land and Friday and all that other incestuous crap.

I’d always found reading Heinlein to be like this: he’d set up a great premise with great characters and the first half of the book would be a joy to read. Then… well, then they’d all start fucking each other – sometimes they’d time travel and screw their own ancestors – and good sci-fi would degenerate into interstellar soft porn. Ugh.

I also pretty much hated the second half of Stranger, but that’s another story.

Anyway, I read some of his non-fiction quite by accident and realized that he really was the genius all the dust jackets said he was. And not too long ago I read a book of his shorts and loved it, and now I’m reading another book of his shorts with equal relish.

Okay, so, I’ll come out and say it: I was wrong. Heinlein doesn’t suck. I’ll even dig up some of the novels I hated and re-read them now that I’m older and of dirtier mind.

(But I never did like LOTR and I never will and I don’t care who knows it.)

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blogging for no apparent reason since 2001