Ronnie Spector concert.

Ronnie Spector puts on a *great* concert – the top range of her voice is a bit weakened, but the rest of her range is strong and her rhythm and feels for her songs are impeccable.

I’d def. go see her again!

I was also very struck by her as a historic figure (the concert was set up as a review of her biography)...

Most of all, how she got to know the Beatles before they hit it big thanks to an English tour, and how to them she was always this cool (black) girl from the States.

Who was she to them, at that time?  What an odd moment in history.

Also, she danced at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC, and Brian Wilson wrote “Don’t Worry Baby” for her as a follow-up to “Be My Baby”, though Phil Spector wouldn’t let her record it and so the Beach Boys ended up doing it. 

She sang “Don’t Worry, Baby” at the concert, though, and what a different song when she interprets it!  It’s almost completely different, and gorgeous, with her voice and style.

Dream of something wrong.

The other week, I had another dream of something everyday but wrong.

I dreamt that I looked in the mirror, and across my left cheek was several razor marks from shaving too close against the grain, like small red scabbed tiger stripes across my cheek.\

They weren't painful, and I wasn't surprised.

Failed mnemonic notes.

I’ve started keeping ideas for blog posts as draft text messages on my cell phone, and use small words as shorthand to jog my memory later when I actually take the time to sit down and write the posts.

This shorthand has failed a few times, however, and then I have no f*cking idea what I was supposed to write about, for example with:

5-20- centrifuge- ladybug

I also had this shorthand that I can’t interpret:

Get put on bus and go there

. . .

Britney Spears.

I’m underwhelmed by Britney Spear’s new song “Work, Bitch”; it’s a great idea, but the beat and melody and rhythm of the lyrics are much less effective than her “Scream and Shout” collaboration with will.i.am.

On the other hand, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend is a huge fan of the song, and even says in a very (British) way that it has a good message (“you want a hot body/ you want a Bugatti/ you want a Maserati/ you better work bitch”), and that it should be mandatory viewing at welfare offices everywhere.

(He’s joking, of course, and thinks that poverty is systemic rather than individual, and is instead understatedly poking fun at the reactionary idea that poor people are lazy, through his patently ridiculous idea of the government using a Britney Spears video in an official capacity to motivate the poor...  British humor is so odd, he almost came up with a whole modern-day Monty Python sketch by himself.)

That said, the video for “Work, Bitch” isn’t half bad, especially how a BDSM Britney cracks the whip at the climactic chorus words “now get to work/ bitch”, and how female mannequins explode at a climactic music part towards the video’s end, a striking image that that doesn’t quite make any narrative sense but is nevertheless very memorable and arresting.

Latin tweets.

The other month, I met to read some of Caesar’s Gallic Wars and sightread some of Pope Francis’s Latin tweets with my one very good Latin student, who’s taking time off from regular lessons in order to study for career certification exams.

Many of the Pope’s tweets were profoundly moving, especially the ones about never having war again, and how he extremely deplores the use of chemical weapons.

Who else can send such genuine bursts of truth with such simplicity and authority?

I really didn’t want to stop reading the tweets and our lesson went 20 minutes over, which I justified by saying the extra time was in return for him buying me my beer and whiskey, but even then I wanted to keep reading, and so I stayed at the bar and had another beer and whiskey and kept reading the Pope’s Latin tweets.

Pharmacy lightboard.

Back in October, I was passing by this pharmacy in the neighborhood where the university that I attend is, and the lightboard was programmed to say a number of things in rotation, including –

WE HAVE ALL YOUR HALLOWEEN NEEDS.

“Like ass?”, I thought.