I like watching SNL via YouTube clip a day or two after the show.  I have been loving SNL super-hard since last year (along with the rest of the universe), but last night's Larry David /Miley Cyrus episode left me wanting. Weekend Update was great as usual, though.

I've never seen Curb Your Enthusiasm so I have no feelings either way about Larry David, but I felt like he didn't have much to work with this week.

I heard Miley Cyrus interviewed on Howard Stern and respected her-- she seems to have a good head on her shoulders and a healthy understanding about who she is and where her place is in the universe. I also think she has a powerful voice, and an accurate voice, too-- but the musician in me wishes her songs weren't so contrived and dumb, and I wish she didn't rely so heavily on "faux R-and-B melisma thinly veiled as passion and soul." Just fucking sing the song. (Then again, I wish someone would give her something better to sing... but then again, she is in her early 20s and maybe that's all she has to sing about right now.). 

Everyone's a critic, apparently.

My UPenn consulting gig is going well, though I really don't feel like they need me very much, though they use me a lot. I think they just use me as a sanity check/training wheels, but their own instincts are great and they don't really need my guidance. I'm happy to give them the extra assurance if it makes them feel better, though. 

Hot Breakfast is back in the studio and we've got two songs done; "Giants are Sleeping" which is a dream Matt had, and "Taking Care of Bobby" which is about someone who is taking care of a person ("Bobby") with a mental illness. Bobby was once a famous musician and now decades later he's become unwieldy and unstable and relies on the kindness of others until he wears out his welcome and is foisted on some other unsuspecting fan.  We're about to start recording our Meatloaf-esque epic song "Open Mic Night," which is an 8-minute monstrosity with skits and everything. I'm ridiculously excited about it.

I've been doing a lot of voiceover work lately. My latest project is that I'm the voice of New Mexico's health insurance exchanges (e.g., "don't forget to choose a healthcare plan under Obamacare" since open enrollment is HELLA SHORT this year and ends December 15th and the healthcare.gov website is closed Sundays I shit you not. (Fuck you, Trump.))   I'm also the voice of St. Francis Healthcare, which is a hospital in Wilmington.  It's fun to hear my voice in commercials when I'm listening to the radio in the shower. 

Yesterday Matt and I played in a memorial softball game for our friend Joel who died two years ago. Joel loved softball, so our friend Kevin Regan organized a game so we could do something fun on what would normally be a sad day. It was a gorgeous, crisp fall day, and we had fun.  I played catcher which means I did 73,000 squats, which means I can barely walk today.  But I did hit both righty and lefty which was fun.  Matt pitched really well, and also hit really well, too. A fine day out.

Allrighty, I'm gonna sign off-- got stuff to do.

My friend Anthony Stramaglia (whom I wonder if Thomas Boutell and Jeremy Moskowitz know from the classic computing shows they've gone to?) attended this weekend's house concert, and was kind enough to tape all of the songs.  I am SO grateful to him for doing so, because in all of my prepping for the show, I totally forgot to set up something to record the happenings. Anthony is a life-saver and an all-around awesome guy-- he used to run a local BBS back in the day. (Epsilon Process in the hoouuuuussse!)

So this morning he sent out a link to the second Sunnyvale song of the evening; this one is called "The Enemy."  This song is an old Evelyn Situation song, and we retooled it for one voice, as opposed to the three voices that sang it back in the day.  We dropped the key a step because in the old days Danielle (top voice) sang the melody on the choruses, and now that I'm covering all the parts essentially, we had to drop the key so I could sing the choruses that lay a little higher, as well as the verses (which I always sang because they, like my balls, hung low).  (so classy.)

This song was always my favorite Evelyn Situation song. It was written from the perspective of a person who was left behind as their significant other decided she was leaving the "cold cold northeast."  (In case you're wondering: Yes, Jeremy knows the song was inspired by him, though he wasn't interviewed before the song was written or anything. Durk just sorta imagined that this is how someone in Jeremy's position might feel.)

Once again, I tried to be extra-dictionny with the words so you could catch them all.  In the event you can't, here's a link to the lyrics.  (Click "Lyrics" from the cutting-edge 1996 FRAMES web technology, and then choose "The Enemy."  (Huge apologies to Tom, whom I can hear cringing from over here! lulz))

If you want to hear what the song sounded like in its original Evelyn Situation format, click here.  Cue college-age Jill.  Good lord, how I loved that band like it was my only true, true love.  And daaamn, how I love how the voices end the song with Danielle resolving to the 7th of all places, because why the hell not.

God damn, I love music.

ps: I wrote this while getting my iron infusion today. It went well. I can already feel the difference. Tomorrow I will be really cooking with gas. I go for a second infusion next week because MOAR MOAR MOAR.

I've decided that when I die, my headstone should make mention of the fact that I could sing pretty okay, and that I really like socks. 

Matt bought me a pair of new socks the other day called "Heat Holders." I think I may have heard them advertised on the radio, but maybe not. But either way, Matt bought them for me and SWEET HOLY GOD LORDT ABOVE THESE SOCKS ARE THE MOST MAGICAL THINGS I HAVE EVER PUT ON MY FEET ALL CAPS. I have incredibly sexy cankles that swell up, and by 3pm pretty much every pair of socks that I own are digging into my shins and then they roll down an inch, and then they dig in there, and they roll down an inch, and by 6:30pm my lower legs look like a hand grenade. Very sexy. But these socks are big enough where they don't dig into my legs, but they don't fall down either. 

The inside of these socks are like brushed soft yarn... like long yarn... I don't know how to describe it, but it's like having your foot engulfed in the virgin baby hair of Scandinavian angels. And if your feet sweat, somehow these socks keep your feet reaaaaaaallly warm, but never damp. They are pretty much the perfect thing. I have the feeling they weren't made to be worn with shoes/boots, but maybe just worn as slippers around the house maybe... they're really thick. But I threw on a pair of boots over them today and when I took my first step I squeeeeeed audibly and started making up songs in dumb voices about how I was walking on magical clouds. So put these effers on your holiday gift list, and ask for nothing else, because no gift you get will be better than these. I got the fuschia/cerise striped ones. They make me stupidly happy.

What else is going on...

If you haven't watched John Oliver's final 2016 clip of Last Week Tonight, it is very much worth the 25 minute investment. If your 2016 has sucked as much as everyone else's has, then you will especially like the final five minutes of it. 

What else is going on...

I have pretty big and not very funny confession to make, but I will make that confession in a friends-locked post because it's not for public consumption... so if you're not logged into LJ or if you don't have an account on OPW, you're outta luck.

What else is going on...

Matt and I have been recording a Christmas EP, and so far we've got four songs done out of the five. The song titles so far are "Everyone's a Child When it Snows," which is not particularly "Hot Breakfasty" in that it's not funny or dorky, but quite sweet and a touch precious even... but we're OK with it. Next is "Don't Get Me Anything," which is an upbeat fun thing which parrots my anti-noun stance on gift giving... and please for the love of God, no more gifts for my damn inner child... I'm forty-fucking-five and I don't need toys. Up next is "Christmas is for Believers," which is also not particularly funny, but has Matt's clever wordplay and also a very honest, even-handed and kind way of approaching what could be a controversial topic: non-Christians who celebrate Christmas. The song we recorded tonight is called "Clean Blank Slate" which starts off saying something like "It's January 1st and everything magically resets and all the bullshit that was going on last year just disappears," and then the rest of the song is saying, "Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if it was like that, but it isn't." When we were recording the backing vocals, we got the idea of burying a subliminal message in there... so we added some lyrics waaaay low down in the mix, and I'm really proud of what we did and how it came out. We have one song left to record called "The Holiday Shift" which has a similar feel to our 2013 hit "An Idiot for Christmas", and is about a person who has to work on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day for the sales, and how they feel about it. (Spoiler: You might think it's a horrible thing, but our hero actually likes the extra hours and overtime pay, and is happy to have an excuse not to hang with his family.) We're releasing this new Christmas EP on December 17th at a show at World Café Live at the Queen at our "Hot Breakfast! & Friends Present: A Very Dorky Christmas." It should be super-fun!


Allrighty, that's all I got for now. Tune in soon, true-believers, to an LJ post near you for my big ol' secret confession. 

xo!

x-posted from xtingu.livejournal.com/