Miss Piggy Roasting, Mingus' Cat-A-Log, Monk's Wisdom, etc.
In which any similarity this newsletter has with an actual person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
🦋 I’ve been enjoying my time on Bluesky.
🎄 This makes me want to watch all the Christmas movies.
🚫 Texting a greeting followed by nothing should result in at least some community service, if not outright jail time.
🥶 Does anyone take the cold plunge more seriously than Johanna Nordblad? On the accident that turned her to a world record.
⏲️ The 25 recipes that changed the last 100 years of American cooking.
📜 The reason movies stipulate they are “a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental...” “It all started when an exiled Russian prince sued MGM in 1933 over the studio’s Rasputin biopic, claiming that the American production did not accurately depict Rasputin’s murder. And the prince ought to have known, having murdered him.”
🖼️ “From the way the Met’s treating it, you’d think it was the equivalent of your kid’s macaroni art taped up on the fridge door, but I just went today, and it’s astonishing— the most enjoyable exhibition I’ve seen in recent memory.” A look at a new exhibit at the Met, comprised entirely of art by the museum’s staff.
🎣 Breaking News: “For the third time this year an oarfish, a rarely seen deep sea fish that has historically been considered a harbinger of doom, washed up on the California coastline.”
🎡 The line-up for next year’s Coachella.
🐈⬛ Jazz legend Charles Mingus had quite the temper, once angrily trashing his $20,000 bass on stage after being heckled, and, “when a pianist didn’t get things right, Mingus reached right inside the piano and ripped the strings out with his bare hands.” Apparently he also loved kitties and once wrote a manual (that he called a CAT-A-LOG) on toilet training them. So, there’s that.
🐽 I have not and likely will not watch the Martha Stewart doc on Netflix, but I have watched the video of Miss Piggy dunking on Stewart like, a thousand times.
🕵️ Before the Internet, we often didn’t know the meanings behind songs. “The most intense phase of Beatles exegesis kicked off into high gear with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (released in June 1967). Even the album cover was a puzzle—we knew some of the faces, but most were a mystery.”
♟️ Chessboards that served as a “brief respite from a harsh reality” during the holocaust. “Some were crafted during the war, others were made before the war and taken with Jews who were deported from their homes.”
🎹 I’ll leave you all with some words of wisdom from pianist/genius Thelonious Monk:
“Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.”
“Always leave them wanting more.”
“Stay in shape!”
“Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it.”
“They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.”
❤️ Keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
