I keep neglecting this post on The Puppini Sisters, and the universe keeps reminding me to write it up.
Back in March, during an episode of NBC’s Chuck, I heard a rendition of The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” in the close-harmony swing style of The Andrews Sisters piped into the background and was smitten. I’d just been introduced to The Puppini Sisters — a trio formed in the UK in 2004 that actually consists of one Puppini and two friends, I learn from their Wikipedia entry and a short interview with Marcella Puppini [bad link] that’s cited therein. Marcella’s catalyst was the great French animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville; further inspiration came from those Andrews gals, their antecedents The Boswell Sisters, and Marlene Dietrich.
Marcella, Stephanie O’Brien, & Kate Mullins’ two full-length CDs together, 2006’s Betcha Bottom Dollar and 2007’s The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo, mix renditions of such vintage material as The Chordettes’ staple “Mr. Sandman” and the Andrews Sisters classic “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy” with covers of more contemporary pop like “Egyptian”; Woo also includes a few choice originals. Only a handful of songs are currently streamable at the Sisters’ MySpace page, but clipped versions of many run continuously at their eponymous website. Sadly, I can’t find a complete album version of “Walk Like an Egyptian” to share at this writing, and I don’t link to illegally uploaded material as a general rule, but you’ll get snippets at Amazon or the iTunes store. If you really want to hear the whole track before buying it you won’t have to search very hard.
You have to be wary of celebrating a single game too much when it only puts your
team up two to one in a best-of-seven championship series. At a certain point you can even get a mite self-conscious over a blowout, so you can only wonder how your team’s hitters feel when they have to keep going to the plate those last couple of innings on such a tear — sure, they might not try as hard for extra bases when ahead by double digits, but they can’t outright stop swinging. That being said, I found the Phillies’
11-0 rout of the Dodgers tonight to be a hoot.
My old buddy Stefan Blitz is running a zombie haiku contest [bad link] over on his website, Forces of Geek. Entries will be judged by FOG contributor Don Roff; the grand prize is a signed copy of Roff and Chris Lane’s Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection, newly published by Chronicle Books.
At least part of the origins of a dream of mine from last night are obvious: I’ve had Lost on the brain due to peeking in on Nikki Stafford’s Rewatch of the show and lamenting that I still don’t have time to participate.
The context of the dream was me reading about an upcoming film in Entertainment Weekly — yet instead of seeing the words on a page, I was seeing the action described
in my mind’s eye, as if I had peered into Dumbledore’s “pensieve” from the Harry Potter series. And that action was Matthew Fox, in his role as Jack on Lost, standing
on the turret of a castle while a storm raged. Oddly, Julia Roberts was playing a version of Evangeline Lilly’s Kate or someone connected to her, but she was inside. Jack, in a suit and tie, shouted amidst the wind and rain about something being unfair; at one point he dumped the contents of an old-fashioned physician’s bag over the wall of the turret. I believe that the name of the movie was In Absentia.
I have vivid dreams and tend to remember at least one upon waking. Sometimes I’ll recall others later when actual events jog my memory. They’re usually not completely mundane or completely gonzo, but there are exceptions. On rare occasions I’ll have dreamt a slice of life so ordinary that only later when reality contradicts it will I both remember the dream and realize that it was a dream. Last year during a nasty bout of the flu I dreamt of nothing but thick, syrupy pitch-black shapes moving around.
Most often, however, the dreams are entertainingly improbable if not impossible scenarios like me going to a Survivor reunion after nearly forgetting that I’d been on the show, or Jim Eisenreich giving me a pep talk in the Phillies’ locker room before we take the field, or an acquaintance of mine getting me to introduce him to Marlee Matlin after I’ve moved into a new apartment. Yes, I’ve gone back to college and even high school. Yes, I’ve been embarrassingly naked. Yes, I’ve had sex, which to me pretty well belies the old saw that says when you dream that you’re flying you’re really thinking about having sex. I’ve also dreamt that I’m flying, which is utterly amazing and probably my second favorite recurring activity in dreams; first is spending time with one of my family’s dearly departed cats. The following is representative of the average levels of reality and unreality of my dreams as well as their tenuous segues.
A childhood friend whom I shall call Gary looked not entirely unlike Bill Hader of Saturday Night Live, and while I’ve not seen Gary in ages a dream from the other night began with the two of us more or less as adults in a classroom where Hader stood at the chalkboard. I was telling Hader that, like him, Gary did a killer Vincent Price impression, and Hader responded with the news that he was preparing to star in a film that Price had been working on before his death, portraying the main character as Price would have. From there the scene dissolved to what at that moment I clearly felt was supposed to be Hader’s description of the film, via the whole rubbing-the-chin, “it seems as though it was only yesterday...” trick; in this new setting, a bunch of teenagers were lying around waking up from one heck of a party the night before.
I am officially taking a break from the blog.
The world didn’t end just now, and — despite my constant, pleasant surprise at the
fact that Blam’s Blog has a number of actual “followers” — I don’t imagine that my lack of posting lately has particularly frustrated anybody but me. Still, I’d rather make the potentially vain proclamation than just let the blog sit here, suspended and untended sans explanation, like another tendril of dead virtual kudzu.
While attention must be paid to some other aspects of my life, I hope that in
addressing them I’ll be able to return to the blog before too long with renewed purpose and organization. You might yet see a nearly finished review or a totally awesome link pop up here on occasion if things go smoothly. My sincere thanks go out to everyone who’s stopped by so far.
