Dancing Queens!

Sometimes you just gotta be ridiculous.

 

Lager Sisters

The Scissor Sisters + Beer = awesome sauce.  Or a trip to Grand Central.

The Swedish Chef: Pöpcørn

The newest Muppet vid (H/T Nerdist, where I found this)

Graul's Cupcakes

While the rest of Baltimore's foodie world was enjoying the foodie stylings of Anthony Bourdain & Eric Ripert, I was singing my little diaphragm out with the Baltimore Men's Chorus (when we have some video up on YouTube I will post a link). Nothing inherently food-related about that. But I do have to comment on the substantial cupcakes we and our audience had during intermission. These were from Graul's, and they came in two versions, both in a yellow pound cake sort of cake: thick vanilla frosting which also tasted a little cream cheesy (whether there was cream cheese in it or not I don't know, but it was rich enough it might as well have been), and an equally rich chocolate fudge icing. I've rarely had edible cupcakes from a supermarket. That's Graul's for you!

These are probably the worst pies in London!

Because it's Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday today! It's not a national gay holiday, but it should be.

Here, Len Cariou's Sweeney Todd suffers the worst pies in London, care of Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Lovett.

Because It's National Pi Day

I made a Buttermilk Pi:


And I made it completely from scratch, using Alton Brown's pie crust recipe, a buttermilk pie recipe posted by Natalie Moore on the NPR website (originally posted in the Southern Living cookbook Country Cooking from 1974), and a Pyrex pie plate with a circumference of about 28.274 inches and an area (at the opening) of about 63.617 square inches. It's up to you to figure out the diameter of the pie plate.

Also to celebrate this most circular of days, the unofficial theme song of the holiday, by the "geek rock" group Hard N' Phirm.

I Eat Cannibals

This popped in my head for some strange reason today. It's oddly appropriate for this site. Anyone remember it?

Dancing around the World...for Gum!

If you've been watching YouTube longer than a year, you've heard of the "Where The Hell Is Matt?" meme (which also made it into this Barenaked Ladies video). This one guy, Matt Harding, goes around the world and films himself doing a silly dance in every single place he visits. This started few years ago, after which the Stride Gum company started sponsoring his trips. Opportunistic of him? Maybe, maybe not. But if a bubble gum company paid me money to travel the world and all I had to do was shill for 'em and do silly dances with the locals, I'd do it! I love traveling. And if I showed them my silly dance, maybe they'd even show me their far less silly ones?

In this latest video, crowds in almost all of 42 different countries bum rush the scene and dance with Matt. I'm a little embarrassed to admit, because it is a silly video, that I actually started tearing up somewhere between Tokyo and Austin. I don't know why! Maybe the combination of the music, the sheer silliness, plus the exact same type of joy being shared by everyone who started dancing with this fella. And then of course I started laughing again around Munich.



In case you were wondering, the music is the Bengali poem "Praan" (Stream of Life), from Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali (Song Offerings), translated by the author, set to song.

Stream of Life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day

runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth

in numberless blades of grass

and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth

and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.

And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

They Don't Know

It's funny what you find by accident on YouTube. I remember this song from when I was a young, young child and MTV was only a few years old. Twenty-five years later and Tracey Ullman is no longer just playing a frumpy housewife, fantasizing about marrying "Paul" while grocery shopping. If all you've seen of her is any of her shows (Tracey Takes On, Tracey Ullman Show, and the new State of the Union), here's what she was doing a quarter-century ago.

Late-Blogging Top Chef 4: Restaurant Wars

I just read that Dale got his whiny, tantrum-throwing ass eliminated last night. Oh what a night to miss!

Plus, there was some show about a kid named David with a microphone? Judged by a temperamental British guy, a so-so record producer and that crazy woman who sang Straight Up (a song which is now - GASP - 20 years old. I remember it in high school.). If it's the show I'm thinking of, I really don't care anymore. I stopped watching when Fantasia was on.

And while we're on the subject: Paula, if you would...?

And yes you may leave a message about how happy YOU are that I'M turning 35. *

Damn, it's my birthday today. I'm no longer in my early 30's. Of course, those of you who are older than I am are probably just shaking your heads saying, "35? Damn, kid, stop whining."

First off, thank you for calling me "kid," and second, you're right - I'll be saying that too in a few years.

And what better way for a Sondheim fan to celebrate his 35th birthday than by listening to the only musical written around a man trying to deal with his friends throwing him a poorly-hidden surprise party on his 35th birthday? I can't think of one, either! I went and saw this version of Company in New York twice, once in its closing week. Raúl Esparza is damn good. And he's a looker, too.

This is the title song from Company. I don't think you can get in trouble for linking to someone else's illegally recorded program, right?



If it is, just skip that one and watch this shortened version of "Side by Side by Side" from PBS's much more legally uploaded video:



I'm just getting cake from my family (they wanted to do more but I wouldn't let them), and going to a friend's St. Patrick's Day party later in the evening. My family is probably throwing a party, but I'm counting that St. Patrick's Day thing as a second party, even though it's not for me. My birthday and St. Patrick's Day have always been intertwined, me being born so close to it and all.

* The entire quote: "Hi this is Bob. yes, today is my birthday. And yes, you may leave a message about how happy you are that I'm turning 35. And whatever you're calling about, the answer is 'Yes'."

Sweeney and Zombie: Separated at Birth?

This is somehow related to food, I promise, but...

I am one of those extremely rare fans of both musical auteur Stephen Sondheim and horror groundbreaker George Romero. And with the recent releases of the movie adaptation Sweeney Todd and the recent Diary of the Dead, it struck me (again) that there are a few parallels between the two masters of their respective crafts:

• Both are, as I just said, masters of their respective crafts - Sondheim is a leading figure in musical theater, Romero in horror;
• Both have people eating disgusting things in their musicals - Romero's characters eat people, Sondheim's eat, well, people in pies (at least in Sweeney Todd);
• Both put out some bloody product.
• Romero's movies are, by their very nature, bloody - all these zombies eating people (Night, Dawn, Day and Land of the Dead, and now this one)...
• Sondheim's musicals are somewhat bloodier than the average musical, as seen in Sweeney Todd (where unsuspecting people are made into meat pies), Into the Woods (where half the cast is killed by a giant, who even eats one of the characters I think) and Assassins (which is about successful and unsuccessful presidential assassins);
• On a specifically foodie angle: Sondheim has a baker-fetish: three of his musicals feature bakers as important characters - Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods (two bakers in that one, a husband and wife team), and Sunday in the Park with George;
  
• They kind of look alike:

Romero

Sondheim

Separated at birth, no? I think I want a meat pie now.

UPDATE: Apparently Romero is a Sondheim fan - he has Sunday in the Park with George in his car and listens to it all the time.

Vegetable Orchestra

The Vegetable Orchestra - a group of Austrian musicians that have turned raw veggies and gourds into musical instruments. It really needs no further explanation.