Friday, November 24, 2006

My Dog Just Wants to...Party All the Time!

I can't get that song out of my head! My friend Merlin and I caught the latest Detroit reunion show at the 400 Bar on Wednesday night and I'm STILL humming tunes from it two days later. I can't look at my dachshund Huck without singing "My dog just wants to...party all the time!" to him and I also got to hear the band play another of my favorites, "Mowin' the Lawn." ("Mowin' the lawn, mowin' the lawn, mowin' the lawn, mowin' the lawn, baggin' the grass, you bet your ass, mowin' the lawn, mowin' the lawn..." It will be with me every time I get the mower out next summer.) Of course, Detroit also did their famous Rush medley (with the surprise Loverboy bit at the end) and "Hard Rockin' Mama" which features various hair metal verses strung together medley-style in the middle. And there were the requisite pyrotechnics, too. I got my $10 worth and then some given that the band played for at least two hours and my old friends The Sandwiches played an hour-long reunion set before Detroit went on. I haven't enjoyed a show so much in ages! In case you aren't familiar with these bands, here are their MySpace sites which (thankfully) feature several of their songs for you to listen to (Detroit's "He's Smart" and The Sandwiches' "Panic Girls" [Rock on, Louise!] are classics):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=111228283

http://www.howwastheshow.com/reviews-2004//detroit-01-24-04.html

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=120825386

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let them do it again SOON...


P.S. Actually, now that I think about it, I did really enjoy the Tally Hall show that Dan & I went to in Ann Arbor, MI, in September. It reminded me a bit of these two bands. Like Detroit and The Sandwiches, they have "costumes" (they all wear white shirts, black pants and color-coded ties), their songs are very catchy with clever lyrics and they put on a STELLAR live show (lots of witty banter between songs - always a plus). The night that we saw them, they planted someone in the audience to yell "Free Bird" for an encore suggestion then faked not knowing the song. By halfway through the song, they were totally rocking it, they had two women dressed as birds dancing on stage, there was confetti flying out into the audience and part of the U of Michigan marching band was making its way through the crowd to the stage playing along with the band! Spectacular! Here are some links for them, too (they have some great video clips on YouTube):

http://www.tallyhall.com/

http://www.myspace.com/tallyhall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi-CuZbpEhc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHZThVUl8ww

I hope they HEADLINE a show in Minneapolis SOON - seeing them open for Teddy Geiger at the Fine Line in October was sort of disappointing after their Ann Arbor show...

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

This Year's Pumpkin Pies

Pumpkin pie has long been the de facto dessert at Thanksgiving. And I have in many past years volunteered to bake the pumpkin pie for our family's holiday gathering. This year I have done so again.

Now, I went all out this time around. My sister and I bought organic Halloween pumpkins from Gardens of Eagan near her house, and I spent yesterday evening baking my large pumpkin (in 11 pieces) and then pureeing it. I started right in this morning making my crust from scratch, too, using a pumpkin pie recipe from America's Test Kitchens, a PBS-based cooking show that's as good, if not better, than anything the Food Network has to offer. (The host, Chris Kimball, is superb and his two main chefs, Bridget and Julia, who do all of the demo cooking for the show are wonderful, too. And their gadget evaluation segments are responsible for my NAILING Dan's 2006 birthday gifts of a scraping/cutting tool, a microplaner and an egg slicer that he uses EVERY time he slices mushrooms now, per ATK's tips.) The recipe includes a lot of refrigeration steps during the crust-making portion, so it took me a couple of hours just to get to the filling steps given all of the in&out of the fridge steps with the crust. But I got the first pie in the oven (I'm making two of them) and the timer's beeping now to let me know it's done. Let's see what we've got... After a few extra minutes in the oven to firm up the filling, it looks good! ...and about an hour later the second one looks tasty, too. I was careful to follow my mom's advice to put foil around the crust during baking to keep it from getting burnt - worked like a charm, as always. I even had a little crust dough and filling left over so I made four "mini pies" in a muffin pan. I've included a photo of my finished products for all to see. Wipe that drool from your chin!

Epilogue: After a late Wednesday night at the 400 Bar, I treated myself to a mini pie upon arriving home. It was DELICIOUS. Dan tried one Thanksgiving morning and pronounced them TASTY, too. And the family concurred at Aunt Ellen's house after the Thanksgiving meal. Who knows? Maybe I'll do it all over again in 2007...

Monday, November 20, 2006

Wow. I have a blog.

OK, then. What to blog about? I just returned home from seeing the movie "Jesus Camp" with Dan at the Riverview Theater in South Minneapolis. Disturbing film. All of the Evangelical adults in the movie pretty much admit that they're focusing their messages on children because the kids believe everything that they tell them. A few of the scenes showed parents encouraging their kids to approach random people to ask them if they've "been saved" or "found Jesus." I keep thinking about what I would say if one of those poor, misguided innocents came up to me to "save" me. What approach could I use to plant a seed in their minds that might get them to start questioning their faith and to develop rational thinking skills? So far, all I've come up with is responding with "Yikes! That's what they told me when I was your age, too! Did they tell you the truth about Santa Claus yet? Here, I'll fill you in..." Or maybe I'd try to reason with them by employing some of the contradictions in the Bible. I wonder if either of those approaches would have any effect?

The timing of our seeing "Jesus Camp" might give some indication of the strength (waning?) of the Evangelical movement in the U.S., too. Pastor Ted Haggard appears in the film in all of his glory at his Colorado Spring church. He talks with a young man named Levi who enjoys preaching and Ted shows himself to be quite an ass by asking Levi if he thinks that people listen to his preaching because he has good content or because he's a kid?! (Poor Levi looked like he'd been kicked in the stomach. What a jerk!) Of course, just a few weeks ago, we learned that Pastor Haggard's just another hypocritical religious figure who preaches one thing and does another (explored homosexual relationships & bought meth). And the recent mid-term election results suggest that moderate thinkers still run things in this country. WHEW!

However, in the words of one of my favorite Air America Radio personalities, Kent Jones -- "VIGILANCE!"