My apologies for missing the last couple of Fridays — moving is a thing, and so is teaching, and when I haven’t been teaching I have been unpacking boxes and generally settling into the shape of the new place, and for the last two weeks I’ve only noticed Friday in retrospect from somewhere on Saturday afternoon.
Today, though, was special.
Stu and I went out to the countryside with our friend Kevin, and wandered around the autumnal loveliness of my family’s home. We went with no expectation of sharing a meal, but were coaxed into staying for an early dinner courtesy of my sister and brother-in-law bringing take-out after they’d finished their respective work days.
My sister and her husband are both musicians — and through some combination of weather, silliness, hunger, and general loveliness, composed lyrics about the shawarma and pizza they were bringing in the thirty minutes it took them to drive over, and sang those lyrics to the tune of “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Naturally, we took video.
(I have no idea whether vertical or horizontal video is the done thing anymore! I hope this is legible to your screens!)
Tell me, then, friends, whether or not you are musical — tell me of a time your take-out was so phenomenal either in substance or context that you would’ve liked to compose music to it, write odes to it, affirm its nourishment of your bodies in some kind of art.
Oh, Amal, we watched the Freestyle Love Supreme documentary today, and it reminded me of you and Dounya and Leila, and the whole family, and of ritual and of generosity and service and theater and song. And LMM is kind of, Carlos pointed out, Bugs Bunny.
Oh I love it! Justin & I regularly sing silly nonsense together -- lately we've been in the habit of doing 'boots & cats & boots & cats' (& sometimes 'snails & bees' in honor of Benton skincare) to a endless variety of songs from folk songs to memes to pop, but he's amazing at coming up with relevant song lyric & poem riffs to just about anything on a moment's notice. (We do in fact bust out "Speaking Moistly" quite regularly.) I think we sing more about ingredients when cooking than we do about takeout, which now feels like an oversight!
Today we had ramen delivered, because I've been feeling poorly & tonkatsu broth is perfection when my throat is sore or I have a migraine; the rich salty fattiness soothes my throat and my soul both. I think ramen on the tail end of a migraine is completely worthy of an ode.
I'm so glad you had such a lovely, rejuvenating-sounding day! I love the picture of the milkweed -- milkweed at every stage is something I dearly miss from the northeast now that I live in California, and that picture reminds me of how much I loved that plant as a child (the sap, the clusters of chonky little purple flowers, the broad leaves, the spate of monarch caterpillars that monched it, the joy of playing with the silky autumn fluff, the broad thin seeds).
I do nothing but sing and compose parodies, mostly to my animals as two decades plus of smoking means I croak like a frog more than sing like a bird. My new kitten is a cow cat, and the strains of "Mr. Cowman, cow me a man/make him the cutest cow that him cow can" burst forth often in jubilance at his tiny perfection.
"Friday Take-Out Nation" Brought me much needed laughter this morning! I am not musical, but my wife and I have many, many songs we've composed for our dogs, who truly love to be sang to because they're proper monsters.
We are not musical. And our favorite music is flamenco. So that's a harsh combination. That said, we often make up silly songs to sing in honor of our take-out food in fake flamenco (we just add a lot of "aaauauaauaauaah" at the end of lines :P) I had no idea other people did this too (not the flamenco bit, the singing to your take-out bit). We're not musical enough to actually use existing melodies, but we are known to sing, usually during meal prep, whether it's cooking or setting out take-out, "You're a vegetable! You're a vegetable!" (We sing this line quite literally, not in the way Michael Jackson meant it; though there is some debate about what he actually meant...)
Congrats for the BPL Literary Prize shortlist :)
Is that milkweed in one of the photos?! I'm researching milkweed for my novel. Might try to grow some up on the roof next summer. It'll be in containers, which is the main worry. But I'll attempt to eat young leaves, fry up young pods, and so on... Even the stems are edible, maybe? (or have I been reading too many survivalist blogs?!)
Are there humans who don’t in their secret heart of silent souls make nonsense lyrics about daily life? I wish them wider wonders, if so.
We usually sing about our two cats. Or waiting for the bus. Or cooking dinner. I think I just sang about making coffee as I filled our press. That’s the thing: I don’t always realize I’m doing it apparently, because I could have sworn I had NOT sang silliness to our bigger cat a few days back, but my partner says I DID, and should know the cat was affronted by my nonsense.
There’s a halal Thai restaurant, Amina, nearby that does our very best area takeout from what we can tell. I’m sure if I could get to Baltimore and manage to keep the food hot an hour home, Woodberry would do a solid song worthy meal too. I miss it so.
I grew up on Weird Al and created parodies with friends. It turned into a parodying compulsion in my twenties, which was useful when raising young children, but it got so bad that I couldn't even listen to music with lyrics for a couple of years because my brain wouldn't stop rewriting every song I heard. That ended with the end of my abusive marriage. I guess it was an absurdist coping mechanism. Now it's just a superpower I can call on when necessary and put down whenever I want.
As for takeout, for me it's the yakisoba and yaki udon from Asian Grill, a restaurant in Waltham, Massachusetts that's been closed for over fifteen years now. As the name implies, it was a generic pan-Asian-American place. Nothing special; serviceable sushi and perfectly average bibimbap. But something about those noodle dishes was so perfect, so exactly matched to my emotional needs, that I wound up almost in tears every time I had it.
I had a stellar lemon-butter risotto the other week that made me so happy. My poor family. Normal people just say, "Oh that's good!" and then eat, but my family has to put up with me talking about how much I love it for the entire meal.
I love the song, btw. Glad you got to see your sister!
KNEFI! If you’ll recall.
Oh, Amal, we watched the Freestyle Love Supreme documentary today, and it reminded me of you and Dounya and Leila, and the whole family, and of ritual and of generosity and service and theater and song. And LMM is kind of, Carlos pointed out, Bugs Bunny.
Oh I love it! Justin & I regularly sing silly nonsense together -- lately we've been in the habit of doing 'boots & cats & boots & cats' (& sometimes 'snails & bees' in honor of Benton skincare) to a endless variety of songs from folk songs to memes to pop, but he's amazing at coming up with relevant song lyric & poem riffs to just about anything on a moment's notice. (We do in fact bust out "Speaking Moistly" quite regularly.) I think we sing more about ingredients when cooking than we do about takeout, which now feels like an oversight!
Today we had ramen delivered, because I've been feeling poorly & tonkatsu broth is perfection when my throat is sore or I have a migraine; the rich salty fattiness soothes my throat and my soul both. I think ramen on the tail end of a migraine is completely worthy of an ode.
I'm so glad you had such a lovely, rejuvenating-sounding day! I love the picture of the milkweed -- milkweed at every stage is something I dearly miss from the northeast now that I live in California, and that picture reminds me of how much I loved that plant as a child (the sap, the clusters of chonky little purple flowers, the broad leaves, the spate of monarch caterpillars that monched it, the joy of playing with the silky autumn fluff, the broad thin seeds).
I do nothing but sing and compose parodies, mostly to my animals as two decades plus of smoking means I croak like a frog more than sing like a bird. My new kitten is a cow cat, and the strains of "Mr. Cowman, cow me a man/make him the cutest cow that him cow can" burst forth often in jubilance at his tiny perfection.
This Kickstarter i am in of women and nonbinary people writing and making art about loving monsters has a week left and a good way to go, if anyone would like to check it out. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kaijuhime/girls-who-love-monsters/rewards
"Friday Take-Out Nation" Brought me much needed laughter this morning! I am not musical, but my wife and I have many, many songs we've composed for our dogs, who truly love to be sang to because they're proper monsters.
Happy to see the books are out of their boxes :)
We are not musical. And our favorite music is flamenco. So that's a harsh combination. That said, we often make up silly songs to sing in honor of our take-out food in fake flamenco (we just add a lot of "aaauauaauaauaah" at the end of lines :P) I had no idea other people did this too (not the flamenco bit, the singing to your take-out bit). We're not musical enough to actually use existing melodies, but we are known to sing, usually during meal prep, whether it's cooking or setting out take-out, "You're a vegetable! You're a vegetable!" (We sing this line quite literally, not in the way Michael Jackson meant it; though there is some debate about what he actually meant...)
Congrats for the BPL Literary Prize shortlist :)
Is that milkweed in one of the photos?! I'm researching milkweed for my novel. Might try to grow some up on the roof next summer. It'll be in containers, which is the main worry. But I'll attempt to eat young leaves, fry up young pods, and so on... Even the stems are edible, maybe? (or have I been reading too many survivalist blogs?!)
Are there humans who don’t in their secret heart of silent souls make nonsense lyrics about daily life? I wish them wider wonders, if so.
We usually sing about our two cats. Or waiting for the bus. Or cooking dinner. I think I just sang about making coffee as I filled our press. That’s the thing: I don’t always realize I’m doing it apparently, because I could have sworn I had NOT sang silliness to our bigger cat a few days back, but my partner says I DID, and should know the cat was affronted by my nonsense.
There’s a halal Thai restaurant, Amina, nearby that does our very best area takeout from what we can tell. I’m sure if I could get to Baltimore and manage to keep the food hot an hour home, Woodberry would do a solid song worthy meal too. I miss it so.
I grew up on Weird Al and created parodies with friends. It turned into a parodying compulsion in my twenties, which was useful when raising young children, but it got so bad that I couldn't even listen to music with lyrics for a couple of years because my brain wouldn't stop rewriting every song I heard. That ended with the end of my abusive marriage. I guess it was an absurdist coping mechanism. Now it's just a superpower I can call on when necessary and put down whenever I want.
As for takeout, for me it's the yakisoba and yaki udon from Asian Grill, a restaurant in Waltham, Massachusetts that's been closed for over fifteen years now. As the name implies, it was a generic pan-Asian-American place. Nothing special; serviceable sushi and perfectly average bibimbap. But something about those noodle dishes was so perfect, so exactly matched to my emotional needs, that I wound up almost in tears every time I had it.
I had a stellar lemon-butter risotto the other week that made me so happy. My poor family. Normal people just say, "Oh that's good!" and then eat, but my family has to put up with me talking about how much I love it for the entire meal.
I love the song, btw. Glad you got to see your sister!