Everyone knows: Meatballs and sneezes don’t mix

Homemade meatballs over quinoa spaghetti noodles (infinitely better than those rice or corn gluten-free substitutes). All covered with cheese. Alas, the garlic bread is made of wheat.

The meatball song has been repeating in my head for two days.

Don’t know the meatball song?

On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball
When somebody sneezed.

That one?

Well, when I was a kid walking uphill to school both ways, it was popular.

I made meatballs on Sunday and served them on Monday, so it’s been the background music in my subconscious for two days.

It’s a parody of “On Top of Old Smoky,” a traditional folk song once recorded by The Weavers about lost love. “I lost my true lover, for courtin’ too slow…” Apparently Tom Glazer created a hit with “On Top of Spaghetti” in 1963. Perhaps hip parents in the ’60s sang it to their toddlers when serving meatballs. Not sure how I heard it so much, I can still repeat the stanzas up to the mushy demise of said meatball. But so you don’t have to wonder whatever happens to the tasty ball of meat on its sneeze-induced journey, here are all the words:

It rolled off the table
And onto the floor,
And then my poor meatball
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled into the garden
And under a bush,
And then my poor meatball
Was nothing but mush.

Oh, the mush was as tasty
As tasty could be,
And early next summer
It grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered
With beautiful moss.
It grew lovely meatballs
And tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti
All covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball
And don’t ever sneeze.

Breakfast and all that singing jazz

How to begin a week. How to kick off a month. How to add music to Advent. How to end a night on the town:

House of Blues Gospel Brunch.

My Beloved and I and another couple dined on biscuits and gravy, omelets, cheesy grits, cornbread, fried chicken and other over-the-top southern brunch goodies this morning at the House of Blues in downtown Chicago, but it was the atmosphere, not the food, that made this experience memorable.

Gregg & Friends provided the soulful tunes and plenty of enthusiasm.

I vaguely recall enjoying the gospel brunch at the House of Blues in New Orleans more than dozen years ago, but I haven’t been to Chicago’s blues mecca before. I highly recommend it as a way to top off a night on the town. Rather than showering and grabbing a Starbucks on the way out of the city, the gospel brunch puts a bow on the whole weekend. Though we didn’t have kids with us, I have to believe kids would love it, too.

Purchase tickets in advance for your group, and you can score seats in one of the opera boxes, which gives you a little elbow room and a great view.

Can I hear a hallelujah?

Something so pleasant about crazy

This entrepreneur’s perspective on Big Business echoes my own:

Entrepreneur Erik Martin: Yeah, you’re crazy to do this, but you’re almost more crazy to work at some big company.

Reporter Amy Standen: Erik Martin is general manager of the social news site Reddit and a NewME mentor. He says, sure, the odds of any start-up becoming the next Instagram or Dropbox, let alone Facebook, are long.

Martin: So are the odds of working at some big company that doesn’t give a crap about you and is making much more money off of you than they’re paying you.

This I heard on National Public Radio this morning as I was driving down the road, working for myself. And then I thought of crazy-like-a-fox Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 hit, to which I pounded out many miles while training for a marathon six years ago:

I remember when, I remember
I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space

And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly.

~ Gnarls Barkley

We the people … in order to celebrate the Fourth of July

Note from Minnesota Transplant: Here’s an oldie, but a goodie, reprinted from Minnesota Transplant on Jan. 5, 2011. It’s perfect for celebrating our country’s 236th birthday today. Enjoy!

We, the people,

in order to form a more per-fect u-nion,

establish justice, insure domestic tranquility-ee-ee-ee,

pro-vide for the common defense,

promote the gen-er-al welfare, eh-hend

secure the blessings of liberty

to ourselves and our posterity,

do ordain and es-tah-ah-blish this Constitution

fo-o-or the United States

ah-ah-ah-of America.

Do you know the preamble to the U.S. Constitution? You might if you watched Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s. Thanks to School House Rock, which put the preamble to music, all I have to hear is “We, the people” and I’m off and running. Here, you can sing along, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLP_HGKq-jg

When John Boehner, the new speaker of the U.S. House (and third in line to the presidency, by the way), officially takes the gavel today, one of his first directives will be to have the Constitution read on the floor of the House on Thursday. He’s tipping his hat to the conservative Tea Partiers, who consider the Constitution to be the sacred scripture by which all law must be measured.

I believe in the Constitution, too, but I would politely point out that the Founding Fathers thought good government would “insure domestic tranquility” (are you listening, Fox News?) and “promote the general welfare,” which doesn’t grow on trees but has to be funded by, yes, taxes.

What I’d really like to see, besides progress by both major parties in Washington during the next two years, is John Boehner singing the preamble to the Constitution tomorrow. In fact, if he agrees, I’ll sing with him!

All together now!

Time out for a fun Monday distraction

“The Voice” keeps getting better every week.

Regular readers know I’m a big fan of reality shows, but I’ve never really gotten into “American Idol” or any of the dozen other shows in that vein. Until “The Voice.”

Maybe it’s because I have a couple of iTunes cards burning a hole in my pocket (you can buy your favorite songs of the evening on iTunes — how’s that for almost instant gratification?). The contestants on “The Voice” do covers of popular music (yes, pop, so sue me) that make old music new again.

If you haven’t been watching “The Voice,” it might be hard to get into it because you don’t know who to root for and you don’t know the backstories. But you should check it out anyway. Just watching it cheers me up. The music is so fun. Except for Christina Aguilera. I pretty much hate anything that comes out of her mouth. Ignore her. The rest is a joyous distraction.

And at the end of a long Monday, there’s nothing better.

(P.S. Vote for Chris Mann. Just to be “weird.” Thanks, Adam Levine, for that commentary.)

Making spirits bright … or maybe just haunting me

“Captain, he put creatures … in our ears
… to control our minds.”

~ Chekov in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”

Yeah, nothing like a Ceti eel to interfere with the mission at hand. Here on Earth, they’re known as ear worms, I learned this week on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation.”

An ear worm is one of those nuisance fragments of a song that plays endlessly in your head.

For some inexplicable reason, that nuisance song for me recently has been “Jingle Bells.”

A listener of “Talk of the Nation” offered this advice for combatting such a creature: Sing through the whole song to close the loop (click here for that replay).

Let’s try it …

Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way.
Bells on bob-tail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way,
Oh, what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

Did it work? Yeah, me neither. At least now I won’t be alone in the rubber room.

You’re welcome.

Planetary proximity

Venus and Jupiter look like they’re cozying up together in the Western sky tonight and tomorrow night.

The are within three degrees of each other — the width of your thumb at arm’s length (try it — stick your thumb out there). With the relative lack of light pollution in the little burg of Hampshire, I observed them through the leafless trees in my back yard tonight. Venus is brighter (of course she is) because she is relatively closer to Earth than Jupiter.

In third grade, my teacher created one of those famed bulletin board displays that burns into one’s brain like witnessing a fellow third grader puke green beans all over his melmac tray at lunch. You just can’t erase the memory.

Because of her (the teacher, not the source of green vomit), I understand the order of the planets and what makes them unique — tiny Mercury, cloudy Venus,  life-giving Earth, red Mars, Jupiter with its weird eye, ringed Saturn, unremarkable Uranus and Neptune and, at the time, far-flung Pluto. Since the ’70s, Pluto lost its standing as a planet and is now considered just a big hunk of space rock but the nostalgic armchair astronomists assign her past title like a head of state. Once President Bush, always President Bush. Once Planet Pluto, always Planet Pluto.

And yes, I did that on purpose. Astronomist = astronomer + astrologist. While I can guess what happens with Venus, the planet of love and beauty, dances near to Jupiter, the symbol of growth, expansion and prosperity, I’m not astrologist. You’re on your own.

Getting nostalgic for third grade and thinking of dancing planets has me musing philosophical about another bit of random pop culture.

Goddess on the mountain top,
Burning like a silver flame,
The summit of beauty and love,
And Venus was her name.

~ “Venus” performed by Bananarama

Gleeful diversions

My Beloved steadfastly refuses to watch “Glee.” Go figure. He hates episodic television anyway, let alone one about high schoolers set to music.

But I catch episodes here and there (out of his earshot), and I love it. I guess that makes me a Gleek.

Expecting to watch the first hour of “Biggest Loser” while on the treadmill at Snap Fitness, I was disappointed to show up there and see “A Michael Bublé Christmas.” Huh? So I watched “Glee” instead, and I was amused to find the producers must have been born when I was.

Tonight’s episode, titled “Hold on to 16,” featured a line from John Cougar a.k.a John Mellencamp’s  ”Jack & Diane”:

Hold on to 16 as long as you can
Changes come around real soon
Make us women and men.

Every time I hear that song, I think of the boy who taught me to French kiss (he was a John Cougar fan). But hearing the song tonight, I realized I was 15 when that song was big. Oh, to think of how I should have been holding on to 16 as long as I could instead of wishing it away!

Tonight’s episode of “Glee” also featured “I Will Survive,” made famous by Gloria Gaynor in 1979. If I was ever forced on stage to sing karaoke, it was going to be “I Will Survive” at the top of my lungs. But tonight’s pumped-up version on “Glee” — now that would be showstopper on a karaoke stage!

Since I don’t watch the show regularly, I think I could get my “Glee” fix with a few iTunes downloads. That would be a switch from NPR! Boy, the inside of my car would get loud before appointments!

I’ve got all my life to live,
I’ve got all my love to give
and I’ll survive.
I will survive.

‘Pumped Up Kicks’ isn’t the bubblegum song it sounds like

If you’re not listening very closely to the words of Foster the People’s hit song”Pumped Up Kicks,” you might want to rewind.

I read about the song in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune, and then I heard it — consciously — when I worked out at Snap Fitness. The band appeared on Saturday Night Live tonight, and when you listen for it, you’ll know the song:

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,
You’d better run, better run,
Outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,
You’d better run, better run,
Faster than my bullet.

Guns? Bullets? The lyrics tell a story about a kid preparing to shoot his classmates at school.

Ick.

For all its smooth perkiness — Follow the People even whistles at one point — “Pumped Up Kicks” may not be the sort of lyrics with which to feed your mind. And as reporter Steve Johnson points out, ” its bright carousel of a chorus gets in your head and spins merrily around” so they’re hard to escape.

Garbage in, garbage out. Might want to take the garbage out on that song.

Who do you, who do you think you are?

Doesn’t this whole federal government meltdown make you crazy?

If you understand it at all, you probably have an answer you think Congress should pursue, but more likely, you don’t know what a debt ceiling is (really, do Americans understand the concept that there’s an end to how much you should borrow?) and you’re not even sure how to pronounce Boehner (who is he again?). It’s not BONER, I can assure you.

Does this make Gnarls crazy?

It makes me think of Gnarls Barkley.

Huh? How does hip hop relate to government shutdowns?

Barkley recorded a great pop crossover hit that was big in the summer of 2006 when I was training for a marathon. In fact, the memory of that song prompted me to download some tunes from iTunes yesterday. This is a rare enough occurrence that I got an email warning alerting me that someone had purchased something through my account on device “not previously associated with this Apple ID.”

Same old device. It’s just been a while, iTunes.

The song is “Crazy.” Instead of advice or demands, I’d like to sing this message to President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner (BAYner, people):

Come on now, who do you
Who do you, who do you, who do you think you are?
Ha ha ha, bless your soul
You really think you’re in control?

Well, I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
Just like me