Gauloises

Flossbonder told me he'd heard that Gauloise cigarettes were being discontinued, and I found confirmation from the IHT. Wonder if they still make Mary Longs?

Wild Turkeys

Three wild turkeys were in the parking lot at work and came right up to the window, maybe three feet from where I sit. That was strange. This is Sacramento, not Jackson Hole. Sorry I don't have a picture.

Two albums

Here are two lightweight, genre-bustin’ albums I've been enjoying this summer: The first is called "Tijuana Sessions Vol 3" by the Nortec Collective. I don't know about volumes one and two, but volume 3 is a dance club cut-up of Mexican music, thus the lame name: Nor(teno) plus tech(no). They use live accordion, tuba, bajo sexto and shrill overblown horns over the rather standard-sounding dance beats, and the overall effect is sort of a hopped-up beery haze. The words seem to have been translated from Spanish into Japanese and thence into English: "what I care about is to see you again and to dance that song".

The other album is called "Nouvelle Vague". It's based on the goof that "bossa nova" actually means "new wave"; thus it’s a bunch of 80s new wave songs done as bossas. The most successful are more what I'd call British synth-pop: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by New Order, "Just Can't Get Enough" by Depeche Mode and "I Melt With You" by whoever that was by; the sort of songs one would have heard on WFNX if one was living in Boston in the mid- to late-80s. Juliana was, and she's quite partial to the album.

Sorry I've let the Spartan Bar go dry, though one might recall this hapenned not infrequently at the Paca-Carrol Spartan Bar. I was down in San Jose for Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur and played a bunch of shows with the Mad Maggies, including one at the Placerville Pagan Festival. I made a fine dinner this weekend: squash soup, polenta with gorgonzola and a salad with the eight or so cherry tomatoes I was able to pull from the garden.