Buttermilk & Molasses

Blossom! We Didn't Want You To Become A Hippie!

Sure, there was actually the chance that Blossom Russo was going to get more and more flaky as she aged but she was also the eminently practical one on the show!

I should probably also note that Mayim Bialik only played an eclectic, sassy and cute teenager named Blossom on TV.

But since I had the biggest crush in the universe on Blossom in the early 1990s -- and managed to utterly embarrass myself by falling for a girl at VCU who looked just like my TV crush -- I couldn't tear my eyes away from the totem of motherhood that my television girlfriend has become.

Actually, if you take out the baking of challah and other Jewish traditions, she's a bit like my wife. Well, smaller nose here, too.

Here's the interviewers' take:

I have to say that I was both nervous and excited to talk to Mayim because I had heard she had a very unique parenting style. There are so many interesting/somewhat controversial things that she is doing with her family: elimination communication, bed sharing, home schooling, home birth, and choosing not to vaccinate her kids. I knew it was going to be an enlightening interview.

You can watch the whole interview, Lee Harris.

Yeah, Yeah Sings a Little Wild Things

via www.pastemagazine.com

Everyone is raving about the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are flick by the amazing Spike Jonze, and the recently released trailers and soundtrack choices are only adding to the noise. The movie's MySpace page is now streaming "All Is Love," a single from the soundtrack, says Paste Magazine:

As far back as 2007, Paste reported that Yeah Yeah Yeahs' frontlady Karen O had signed on to write music for the movie, and only a couple years later, we've got an actual song. The tune is called "All is Love" and can be heard on the Where the Wild Things Are MySpace page, where it's credited to Karen O and the Kids.

The kiddies in question here are two-fold, including YYYs members Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, Aaron Hemphill of Liars, Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs and Deerhunter's Bradford Cox. But there are real kids, too; the seriously sunshiney tune features a children's choir singing (shouts of "Hey!" and "Woo!" abound) and clapping along. There's whistling too!

Swell Season's Tiny Desk Concert

NPR Music has a silly feature called Tiny Desk Concert, where musicians hang out on a tiny desk and perform their music with a bit of lively banter. They recently featured The Swell Season, which (as they note) "is a shorter but far less descriptive moniker than 'Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Who Won Oscars for the Song 'Falling Slowly,' From the Hit Indie Musical Once.'"

The duo's follow-up to Once is due out in October, but you can get a taste of it at the NPR Tiny Desk Concert. Lovely stuff, really:

For those who can't wait to hear songs from The Swell Season's follow-up to Once (titled Strict Joy, out Oct. 27), Hansard and Irglova played six new songs before performing the first-ever Tiny Desk Concert encore: a white-knuckle journey through "When Your Mind's Made Up." From quietly mournful sing-alongs ("Back Broke") to Van Morrison-esque thrill rides ("Feeling the Pull"), the whole thing doesn't so much satisfy expectations as feed them further.

The Ballad of G.I. Joe

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

I'm sorry. I don't think I've been so taken by a song in at least six generations. Thanks for the lead, Mr. Beefy!

Performing Arts in the Cross Hairs this Week

With the clock ticking down and the city girding itself in anticipation for the opening of the sadly named CenterStage performing arts center, two local bloggers have hit the Internet with competing posts worthy of Brutus and Mark Antony (Shakespeare, not pop music, kids).

Save Richmond seized a predictable opening with news this weekend that former Times-Dispatch columnist Roy Proctor had a parting of ways with CenterStage over the content of a coffee table book he had been commissioned to write. Originally slated to find itself wrapped by the chimney with care this Christmas, the book will have to find itself another author.

Will Jones at the Times-Dispatch broke the news -- if a former reporter and a PR hungry arts center doing a piss-poor job at contracting over work, and utterly misunderstanding why they might have totally different agendas is news:

"I could not possibly have adhered to those things because I would have been falsifying history on a monumental scale," said Proctor, who retired in 2004 as an arts writer and critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Foundation officials insisted they are not trying to rewrite history but said the draft was too much a summary of newspaper articles and void of the anecdotes of performers and shows that had been part of the initial pitch for the book project last summer. Proctor said he considered conducting extensive interviews but decided to work largely from newspaper clippings.

"We are not trying to falsify history, change it," foundation spokesman Jay Smith said. "We felt the manuscript provided was incomplete" and inappropriate for a keepsake book.

"We didn't hire him as a journalist," foundation board member Susan Fitz-Hugh added. "We hired him as an author."

This was prime fodder for Save Richmond which quickly hit the Internet with a "Can't Rewrite History" post (more a culling of Jones' TD piece) that captures the essence of some of the anti-CenterStage vitriol out there:

How going about things the wrong way can poison what may have started out as a noble effort. Critics of CenterStage are not against the arts or kids or old people or sunshine, but rather how the Foundation’s leadership have comported themselves and wasted public money.

Save Richmond's Don Harrison has been tireless in his documentation of the countless times the CenterStage (formerly Performing Arts Center) project has stumbled in recent years -- pricked by countless self-inflicted wounds along the way.

Sadly, Proctor was hired to write a fluff piece, not a critical history.

Style Weekly's Jason Roop captured the essense of the CenterStage fumbles in a series of Twitter posts over the weekend (@StyleWeekly had a lively exchange about the Proctor gaffe with @aarondotson, @sarvay, @jonnewman and @LaDIFF this past Saturday):

@LaDIFF @sarvay @aaronsdotson How is it not news? This was a major project the foundation planned and pitched stories to media about! 10:48 AM Aug 8th from TweetDeck

@LaDIFF @sarvay @aaronsdotson Plus, now there's no book to go along with the opening. It's an embarrassing botched project. 10:50 AM Aug 8th from TweetDeck

@LaDIFF @sarvay @aaronsdotson If that's not news, how about there's no executive or artistic director or full season 30 days b4 opening? 10:51 AM Aug 8th from TweetDeck

Leave it to the new blogger on the street to throw his body in front of the speeding train of criticism. One Way Richmond got its cultural angst on last night with a lengthy, sometimes rambling, and occasionally pointed post defending CenterStage, "Fuck culture, I've got comic books":

When folks say 98% of Richmond will not support it, I suddenly remember folks saying 99% of Richmond will not support The National. Um, The National is on a roll. Sell out after sell out after sell out. Remember when ‘they’ said nobody will come down to ‘First Fridays.’ Oh the laughter. Richmonders are still gun shy about Six Street Market Place. I get it. But I live downtown. It is a new day down here folks. Using parking, black people, or the fact it’s to expensive as excuses just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The Performing Arts Center has had it’s issues. Of course it has. What do you expect from something conjured up by Doug Wilder a.k.a Thug Wilder. The meals/sales tax put on local restaurants in order to pay for this site was unfair. I am simply arguing the fact that now that it’s built, it will succeed. Everyone, including detractors has stated how beautiful the site is, and how well the site meshes the new with the history.

Now that "Serious Fun" is almost upon us, it looks like the proof may well be in the pudding. If they eat pudding at the opera.

(I'll be scurrying around backstage at the end of the month getting a behind-the-scenes tour of CenterStage. Keep an eye out for a snarky, but honest, appraisal of what your meals tax has purchased for Richmond.)

Paste Magazine's 20 Favorite U2 Songs

Since I'm finally going to see U2 this October in Charlottesville -- how I resented my older step-brother for seeing them with The Alarm and The Pretenders back in 1984 -- I find myself scanning the news for information about the Irish rockers' latest tour.

Paste Magazine delivers a snapshot (with audio) of writer Josh Jackson's 20 favorite U2 songs.

I agree with one commenter that Bad should be at the top of the list. Check out this amazing version of arguably the best U2 song ever. ("Walk to the Water" will always have a strong spot in my heart; thanks, Julia.)

New Radiohead Single Honors Oldest WWI Vet

Boing Boing pointed me toward the new Radiohead single, which honors Harry Patch. Patch was the oldest surviving British veteran of World War One when died last month. He saw thousands die in one of the most brutal battles in modern history -- the battle of Passchendaele, where more than half a million soldiers were slaughtered in just under 100 days. But Patch was also a very vocal critic of war, and it was his poignancy in speaking about the horrors of war that inspired Radiohead's new release. Proceeds go to the British Royal Legion.

Boing Boing included the above YouTube video in their post. It is one of the last interviews with Patch, who was 111 years old when he died. "War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings," Patch says in the interview. It is worth watching, and Radiohead's new single is worth downloading. (You can listen to it here.)

Over at Dangerous Minds -- Thom Yorke's thoughts about the song, and about Harry Patch:

I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4. The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me. It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.

It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny. I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.

It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us.

I hope we do not forget.

Rally 'Round Richmond's Creatives

Richmond Magazine has steadily improved over the years, and one of its greatest gifts to our community is their annual Theresa Pollak Prizes for Excellence in the Arts. You have two days to nominate Richmond's great artists for the 12th annual awards.

See who has won the prize in past years, or go straight to the nomination form.

A Little Punk Rock Confessional

I have never really listened to the Minutemen, but would still agree that Double Nickels on the Dime was one of the greatest punk rock records in American history. Xeni Jardin, who was probably listening to them the same time we were hanging in the street outside of Rockitz together in the late 1980s, tips her hat to the Minutemen on the 25th anniversary of their earth-shattering release.

"Taillights Fade" Dredges Up Memories

God bless that Carrie Brownstein, and NPR for giving her a place to be esoteric and interesting about music. It was just last August that old Bob Boilen asked readers/listeners what their favorite year for music was, which got me thinking about 1991 and 1992. Last August was the first time I'd thought about the band Buffalo Tom in ages, so I was surprised that Brownstein surfaced them from my memory almost a year later in a piece titled "The Ultimate College Rock Band". Oddly enough, I'd never heard a single The Dead Milkmen song until I watched their "Punk Rock Girl" video that Brownstein posted on her blog.

That said, I think Buffalo Tom's "Taillights Fade" remains a standout song. Chip Jones of Honor Role introduced me to the band around the time he was playing with Mark Linkous in Salt Chunk Mary (the precursor to Sparklehorse).