How to tell if you're trapped in an Elvis Costello song

• You tease, you flirt, you shine all the buttons on your green shirt.
• You're the legendary hitchhiker and you know 'where it's at.'
• You have a spooky girlfriend.
• You're a waitress named Teresa who is now known as Juanita.
• You're a dead Italian tourist.
• You're just a shabby doll behind a green elevator door.
• You felt a chill before the winter came.
• You mind is made up but your mouth is undone.
• You don't speak any English but you do speak American with out tears.
• You're somebody's baby with a brand new hairdo and you look fine.
• You're a little sister who likes to try on your big sister's clothes.
• You're a boy with a problem.
• You seriously do not want to go to Chelsea.
• You want to pump it up.
• You bay for the boy in the tiger skin trunks.
• You have a science fiction twin.
• You sit in your favorite chair very quiet and still while you lose what's left of your mind.
• You never asked me what I wanted, you only asked me why.
• You select the plainest face from a spiteful row of girls.
• You don't know how to be dumb.
• You gave me a poisoned rose that I could not throw away.
• The angels wanna wear your red shoes.
• One of these days you're gonna pay it back, pay it back.
• You and your sister are doing it again.
• You traded in your baby for a Chevrolet.
• All the pretty girls call your name and they love the filthy way you talk.
• You hope I'm happy now.

Happy birthday to the one true Elvis!

Happy birthday to the only Elvis worth a shit, Elvis Costello!

My favorite music year

Periodically The Onion AV Club runs a recurring feature called 'My Favorite Music Year.' In this feature one of their staff writers rhapsodizes about the year a bunch of the favorite music came out. This is my take on that feature.

My favorite music year was 1978. But don't think I'm stuck in 1978, I enjoy new music and I'm constantly on the prowl for new bands and singers to enjoy. However, in 1978 some of the albums that shaped who I am today came out.

Among them was this album:
Smart, funny, deeply acerbic, and musically brilliant are just a few ways to describe the late Warren Zevon. I had already come to know about him through is session work for Linda Ronstadt who I adored at that time. This album had his biggest hit Werewolves of London on it, and it was deservedly a hit but to me Excitable Boy and Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner were even better songs. Mr Zevon died a few years back and there's been a void in our music scene ever since.
I've written how this album changed my life before on this blog and if you want to root around through my archives you can read about it. This album came out when all you heard on the radio was disco, sugary pop songs, and bloated prog rock shit. The music I heard on this album was so totally different, so new, so captivating that it hit me between the eyes like a hammer. It woke me from my late '70's slumber and pointed me in a new direction.

Fronted by every straight 16 year old boy's sexual fantasy, I was 16 in '78, Debbie Harry, Blondie was a breath of fresh air. They had radio friendly hits but they also rocked. And no one was sexier than Ms. Harry. Her breathy vocals made me swoon with teenage desire.

In Elvis Costello I saw someone who looked like me (a geeky gawky guy with huge black horn rimmed glasses) and had issues with women like I did back then (I was desperately shy and when I did make a move on a girl I was usually turned down which made me more self conscious and less likely to try again later). He was all attitude, snarling about lost love, shitty jobs, and had a general sour outlook on things, and I loved it. It was like he was speaking to me about me. It took me many years to fully appreciate this album but I finally do. Like many of his other works, it's classic.

Nick Lowe is the flip side to my Elvis Costello worship. He's more poppy, more fun, and more accessible. I loved his sound, his look, and his production of other rock and roll albums, he produced many of Costello's early albums and his fingerprints are all over many other artists of that time. I didn't come to know this album until many years after it came out, my introduction to Nick was 1979's Labour of Lust. When I finally got this album on cassette, I wore that cassette out from paying it over and over again. Due to fears of a backlash by Christians in this country they changed the name of this album when they released it over here in the USA, they changed it to Pure Pop for Now People. It's a stone cold classic.
On this album Springsteen finally lived up to the hype the press had heaped on him a few years earlier. Gone were the wordy ballads about fucking in the mud, catching the bus while drunk, and hanging out on the boardwalk in New Jersey. In their place were finely crafted songs that didn't take twelve stanzas to tell the story. And the songs were backed by blistering guitars, heavy duty bass lines, and tight drums. I still get a chill when I hear the 'Badlands', 'Adam Raised a Cain', and 'Prove it all Night.'

Other seminal albums that I love that were released in 1978 include:
Waylon & Willie (Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson), Easter (Patti Smith Group), Squeeze (Squeeze), FM Soundtrack (various artists), Street Legal (Bob Dylan), Peter Gabriel (Peter Gabriel), Some Girls (Rolling Stones), More Songs About Buildings and Food (Talking Heads), Who Are You? (The Who), One Nation Under a Groove (Funkadelic), Time Passages (Al Stewart), Dire Straits (Dire Straits), Outlandos d'Amour (The Police), Give 'em Enough Rope (The Clash), and Midnight Oil (Midnight Oil).

I could have just as easily went with 1979 but for the fact the Blondie and Springsteen released their classic albums in 1978.

What's your favorite music year?

Six Degrees of Green Monkey Music Mayhem ( or How I became a Green Monkey Music Master in three easy mixes!)

When I saw that Splotchy was reviving the Green Monkey Music Mixes I jumped at my chance to participate in my third one because once you do three mixes he awards you this coveted award:
Being a GMMP Master means that one day, Splotchy willing, I'll be able to set the theme for a mix. I'm grateful to Splotchy for making me a Green Monkey Master and I'm grateful to Beth for allowing me to be in her 'Six Degrees' Green Monkey Music Mix. You can download all the different participants by clicking here.

My choices for the mix are as follows:
1. I've made no secret for my love of Stiff Records. The first record Stiff put out back in the day was one by Nick Lowe. Sadly, that song is not in this mix.

However his criminally under appreciated song American Squirm off his late '70's album Labour Of Lust is. On an album that features a slew of great but somewhat twisted pop songs, American Squirm remains one of my all time favorites. It's got the best first line of any song ever written by a snarky British dude who was married to Johnny Cash's step daughter, Carlene Carter Cash. The song begins, "I made an American squirm and it felt so right..."

2. Lowe was, and still is, not only a great singer/songwriter, he's also a talented producer. He not only produced this Elvis Costello and the Attractions album, he also wrote one of the few hits off it.

That's right boys and girls, when Elvis sings, "What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?," he's singing lyrics Nick Lowe wrote. I like this version better because it's the one I first heard and it's less folky than Lowe's original version. This song is also the unofficial theme song of my blog.

3. Elvis took a page out of Nick's playbook and he branched out into producing records as well. He produced some tracks for The Specials and for one of my favorite Irish rock bands ever, The Pogues. In fact, Elvis not only produced this album for the Pogues, he also made off with their token female singer Cait O'Riordan, who is lead vocal on this track by the way. Sadly their romance didn't last but we'll always have Rum Sodomy and the Lash. One of my favorite tracks from this great album is the song I'm a Man You Don't Meet Everyday. It's a haunting song that's done beautifully.

4. When Elvis stole Cait away from the Pogues they replaced her with Kirsty MacColl on a few tracks on later recordings. The most famous of which is the song Fairytale of New York. I chose not to put that song in this mix and instead I chose this song by Kirsty, Don't Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim. It's a country tinged song about a gal who lays down the law to a would be suitor. It features the late Ms. MacColl's voice wonderfully.

5. When not singing with the Pogues and making records on her own, Kirsty MacColl was married to one of the most influential record producers of the last 30 years. His name is Steve Lillywhite and he produced many many tracks for a ton of groups like U2, the Rolling Stones, Morrissey, Phish, the Dave Matthews Band, and The Talking Heads. Life During Wartime is one of my favorite songs ever. Maybe I'm paranoid or maybe I'm just a nervous person by nature but whatever it is I really identify with this song.

6. One of the places mentioned in the above song is a seminal rock and roll club called CBGB's. I've never been there, and I think it's been torn down now, but I know it was the place to play for a time in the late '70's and '80's. One of the bands that played there is a sugary confection of a group from Japan called Shonen Knife. Shonen Knife is girl group that sings catchy poppy songs that invade your subconscious and don't let go. One of the songs of theirs that does that is this one:

I defy you to listen to that song and not start singing it's chorus later.

Thanks once again to Beth and Splotchy for bringing the Green Monkey back. And you my little pets, you can now call me either Dr. Monkey or Master Monkey, whichever you prefer.

The Outlaw, The Pretty Gal, and The Punk

Today's classic country video is "Crazy." Willie Nelson, who headlined the Democracy Now! 12 year gala the other night, wrote it and Patsy Cline made it famous. In today's clip Willie put down the bong long enough to do a great version of his now classic song with husband and wife Elvis Costello and Diana Krall.

Elvis's tour is coming to Knoxville in May. There's been no word on when Diana will show up in my neck of the woods, but I'll keep an eye out for her.

Commence the classic country!

When Elvis released Almost Blue in the early 80's I hated it. I sneered at the country covers and I decried the lack of the angry Elvis I had come to know and love so well. In the 1991 I decided to give it another listen and I hated it even more. Then in 2004 after my heart attack Sparky and I were out of town for a weekend away after my bypass surgery and I saw the 2 CD reissue of Almost Blue and for some reason I bought it. I put it in the CD player when we got home and the music hit me like a ton of bricks. I had been wrong all those years, the CD was great and the tracks on the bonus CD were even better than I had hoped for. So here's the "big hit"(it was a huge hit in the UK but not so much over here in the USA) from Almost Blue. It's a cover of a George Jones song and Elvis manages to make it all his own.

The two girls in the video who "sing" back up and harmony were the young daughters of the owner of the house where they shot this video. He insisted they be given a part in the video so that they could keep an eye on Elvis and the band. I guess they must have been tough little gals who would have kicked those grown men's asses if they had had done any damage to that house.

Now all the signs in the shopping arcades say, "The corporation thief is the new Jesse James!"

Odds bless him, Elvis was anti corporate before being anti corporate was cool.

By the way, the guy who plays the gameshow host in this video, Harry Enfield, is huge in Britain, over here however he can't get arrested.

I have no idea who the brunette in this video is but she's insanely cute in it.

Continuing Education

That cute little smiling imp the the picture above has tagged me with the Curriculum meme that's slowly making it's way around. That chubby cheeked imp who is smiling so big, for those of you who do not know, is Delia Guzman. She is one of my blog buds and the more stuff of hers that I read the more I think she may be the Hispanic side of me I never knew was there. She writes two blogs, like me, she's left leaning, like me, she's funny, well I try anyway, she's into Harry Potter and BBC Britcoms, like me, and we're roughly the same age, we're both 29ish, shut up, we are! In addition to all that she also wrote this bittersweet powerful post and she adopted two of my favorite actors on her blogs, Rachel Weisz and Hugo Weaving. So given all that, how could I refuse her anything?

Here's the rules of the meme which she got via the person who tagged her, FranIam: “You must write about 5 classes you would like to take if you could make up your own curriculum. AND- and this is important, ONE of them must come from your tagger's list.”

So the class I'd take from Delia's curriculum is this one:

1) Blogging: Philosophy and Practice (with Lab)This course would be the highlight of my day, because all my bloggy heroes—D-cap, D-cup, FranSheIs, Jess Wundrun, Matty Boy, Princess Sparkle Pony, Dr Monkey, Splotchy, Whiskey Marie, GetKristiLove, VikkiTikkiTavi, and everyone else whose blogs I love would also be enrolled in the class! The Lab would be wall-to-wall laptops with WiFi of course, and a few TVs on all the classic content-inspiring channels – CNN, Discovery, Animal Planet, Faux “News” Channel, Style Network, E Entertainment, etc. Talking, food, and fellowship required!

Yep. I'd have to agree with her there. I'd love love LOVE to take that class. Oh wait, hang on, I think I may actually teach that class.

Now, here are my additions:

2) Elvis-ology 548-This is an upper level class that is open to anyone. It focuses on the musical career of Elvis Costello. Class attendees will listen to most Elvis Costello recordings over and over. However, his classical music recordings, the Burt Bacharach collaborations, and the CD entitled "North," will not be covered in this class, but feel feel free to listen to them on your own. In addition to listening to the recordings of Mr. Costello, concert attendance will also be required should any of his tours come to your town and you must catch all his appearances on television when possible. Appreciation of the music of his current wife Diana Krall, while not a prerequisite for this class, is highly recommended.

3) Flavor: The Use of Spices and Herbs in Cooking 101-This class will teach you how to use spices and herbs in your cooking to enhance the flavors of all the foods you cook. It will also teach you that the word "spicy" does not mean scalding hot. If you like your food bland and flavorless then do not take this class, instead, please continue to buy and eat the tasteless shit they sell at your local grocery store deli.

4) Walking Tall, Shopping Taller 342- This class will teach you how to have the backbone to speak up and stand up for yourself when you get shit on, ignored, or hassled by a store employee, waiter/waitress, and or a soul crushing multinational corporation. You will learn to differentiate between when a clerk or wait person is having a bad day and when they just want to get rid of you and we'll also cover how to deal with companies who love to screw over their customers, like Charter Cable, Comcast, and every insurance company that you ever tried to file a claim with.

5) They May Talk Funny But Boy Oh Boy Do They Look Great And Man, Are They Wildly Talented or What?! 750-This class will teach you how to appreciate non North American born actresses. You'll learn to appreciate women like Helen Mirren, Penelope Cruz, Carmen Mura, Michelle Laroque, Liz Hurley, Irene Jacob, Sophie Okenedo, Shirley Henderson, Keisha Castle-Hughes. Special emphasis will be placed on appreciating the following actresses:

Indira Varma

Namrata Shirodkar

Archie Panjabi

So there you have it. That's my continuing education class schedule for the rest of my life. I now tag Ed from Enriched Geranium, his lovely wife Suzy, Jess Wundrun, and D Cup. If any of you don't want to do it, that's fine too. And if you do want to do it, then there's no hurry to get it done.

A great vegetable you probably aren't eating is...

...eggplant. And it's a shame if you don't eat more of it. It's a great versatile vegetable that is loved and eaten the world over. It's got a creamy rich texture if it's cooked properly and it tastes great if prepared properly.

The most important thing about cooking eggplant you need to remember is that you have got to slice it, sprinkle salt on it, and let it sit for at least 30 minutes before you cook it, althought I recomend that you letthe salt sit on the eggplant for as long as possible a couple of hours is best. The salt draws out the water in the egg plant and it's the natural water inside the eggplant that can give it it's bitter taste if you do not use salt to draw it out. From time to time my dictatorial aunt would fix eggplant and she never drew the water out and for years I hated eggplant. It was only when I bought my girlfriend a Mediterranean cook book years ago that we learned how to prepare eggplant properly.

Eggplant comes in many different varieties. The long slender one above is the Asian eggplant. It also comes in a white variety and an Asian variety that looks like this:

We bought some eggplant yesterday at our local farmers market that looks like that. I plan to wash it, slice it, sprinkle salt on it, and then to oven bake it with a spicy olive oil brushed on it.

Other eggplant dishes I make are eggplant lasagna, breadcrumb covered wok fried eggplant, eggplant Parmesan, and eggplant puree.

Some people eat an eggplant dish called Baba Ganoush. I'm kind of leery about eating eggplant unless I or my girlfriend fixes it because not everyone draws out the bitter water before cooking it.
Many people in this region eat eggplant regularly and they live to a ripe old age.
They also eat a lot of olive oil, eat more fruits and vegetables and far less meat than we Americans do, and they drink a good bit of red wine as well.

Mmmmmm, red wine and eggplant, mmmmmmmmm.

I love the French word for eggplant, which is 'aubergine.' It sounds so romantic and suave.

Elvis Costello sings a song called 'Aubergine' on this CD. Also on this CD are some great songs, great jazz music, and the great Debbie Harry.
This is a painting by an artist named Jennifer Thewlis that I found when I googled the word aubergine. I really like it's impressionistic quality and the fact that the woman in it looks like a real women, not some fake skinny bony ass thing.

If you are reading this Ms. Thewlis, I really like your work. I like it almost as much as I like eggplant.

Yo, Happy Fourth of July...

...from me and Elvis Costello and the Attractions. This is the theme song to this blog.

A pissed off terpsichorean chick asks me five feckin' questions

After reading Pam's interview with Angry Ballerina I decided it might be fun to have the Angry One interview me.

She graciously decided to accept my offer and here is the interview.

1. Ok, really, what the fuckitty fuck is with the Crunky? (this question is for my own personal knowledge)

One day while searching Flickr for stupid pictures that I could use on my blog I found a set of photos that had been tagged with the name 'foreign groceries.' I clicked on said set and saw a picture of someone holding a Crunky bar. Crunky apparently is a type of candy bar/cookie/ice cream treat that is sold in only Japan and or other parts of Asia. I laughed out loud when I saw the name so I put the word 'Crunky' in the search box on Flickr and up came all those pictures of the various Crunkys and the people who hold them. I decided to use all of them one by one in my now infamous daily feature "Who's holding our Crunky now?" It's just a stupid joke that won't die until I use up all the pictures, which should be in a week or so. The tone of it is funny to me and a few of you have gotten it as well. I realize it's not for everybody and not everybody thinks it's as funny as I do but I like that as well. I like making jokes only one or two people get.

2. Who would you rather find yourself in a drunken conversation with, Diane Fossey, or Jane Goodall?

No question about it, Jane Goodall. I've dug Jane since I first saw her on a National Geographic TV special years ago. I've had a little crush on her ever since I saw her that first time, and I'm not the only one either Johnny Yen wrote about his thang for Ms. Goodall a few weeks ago. If Jane and I did get drunk together I picture us drinking gin and tonics with lots of lime wedges or maybe some lemony vodka drinks. Seriously though, Jane is one of my heroes for her tireless work on behalf of chimps and her work educating people about the need to save not only the chimps habitat but the whole world in general.




3. "Boys everywhere, fumbling with the catches, I struck lucky with motel matches." You are obviously an Elvis Costello fan, which album, or song, would appropriately describe your life at the moment. Why?

You are correct Ms. Mad Dancer, I am indeed a huge Elvis Costello fan and I have been since the late 1970's. His music was like a bolt from the blue that hit my young head and cleared out all the adolescent cobwebs. When I first saw him on Saturday Night Live, this was the infamous episode when he made his band stop playing the song that NBC and Lorne Michaels had picked out for them to play and instead he led the Attractions through a rousing version of Radio Radio, it was like manna from heaven to me. There he was all goofy looking with his spastic movements, his black horn rimmed glasses, his bad hair cut, and I said to myself, damn if that guy had blond hair, no musical talent, was shy around girls but tried to make up for it by being funny, then he'd be me.

The Elvis album that would describe my life at the moment would be Spike. It's got songs that appeal to my sense of political outrage (Tramp the Dirt Down), my sense of social justice (Let Him Dangle), my concerns about aging (Veronica), the out of control multi national corporations who want to run our lives (This Town), and phony religious assholes (God's Comic). If I had to choose one song though, it would be The Other Side of Summer from Mighty Like a Rose because it combines a jaundiced view of the world with some humor and keen insight. Excellent question by the way, thanks for asking it.

4. I took some time and went though your flickr, what is your favorite piece of work you have displayed? What was the inspiration/story behind it?

Of the ones I've posted this one is my favorite:

The inspiration was I took a piece that I had done that I hated and I decided to paint over it. I was doing my "Plate Tectonics" series of mixed media pieces and this is a variation on them. I painted the back ground color and let it dry, then I took a piece of flimsy material that had tiny holes in it and dipped it in some yellow paint. I flogged the paint covered material on the 13" by 13" piece of wood and let it dry. Then I splatted the lavender paint on an old record album (I collect cheesy record album covers) and I pressed the album on the piece of wood. After all that paint dried I ran a picture of Diana Krall off the internet and traced it twice. I glued both faces on top of one another to get that blurry effect and then I cut the words "What Your Skin Does" out and glued them on. Then I spotted a hand I had drawn and thought it fit as well. And then finally I put a thin layer of decoupage glue over the whole thing. I like how it turned out.

My favorite that piece that I have made that I have not posted yet is one of my Princess Diana collage mixed media pieces. She is one of the few people I will not joke about or mock because I really admire her, she had it all, lost it, still gave her all for others, and was killed by the corporate media. I do intend to get off my ever growing ass and post more of my art pieces soon and I will post that one when I do.

5. In your Mother's Day post, you described two touching (and funny)memories that have stuck with you through out the years, and you said that your mother taught you to look up to people who tried to make the world a better place. Out of all the people you listed, who had the most impact on your life, and still does?

Out of the people I listed in that post, I'd have to go with the Berrigan brothers even though I am no longer a Catholic and am an atheist now. They were two Catholic priests who were anti-war and vehemently pro peace. They were some of the only religious figures that I have seen "walk the walk," so to speak. They broke into draft board offices and poured blood over files that contained names of men to be drafted, what impressed me was that the blood they poured was blood they had drawn from themselves and from other protesters. They were of course arrested and tried for this crime but that did not stop them. They kept protesting for peace and against war. They kept it up during the Reagan years and right up until Phil Berrigan died. His brother, Father Daniel, still is involved to this day, as much as his old age will allow him, in the anti war movement. They stood against the tide of support for the Viet Nam war and against racism, and their own church leadership to do what they felt was right. If I ever get to be as much as a quarter of how brave these guys were then I'll be doing damn good.

That's all folks. If you want to be interviewed by moi, then leave a comment in the comment section that says, "Interview me."

Ask Dr. Monkey

I recently sat down and answered some questions from journalists, fans, and ne'er do wells.

I have decided to make a smattering of that interview public.

Dr. Monkey, what exactly do you have a doctorate in? I have a doctorate in Party-ology. I got it back in the 80's. Supds MacKenzie was also in my doctoral class at Psychotic State.

Speaking of dogs, do you have a dog?

No. But if I did, I put silly hats on it and take pictures much like the above one.

Cash or credit? Cash.

Do you know Eva Braun? No, I never met her.

You're sure about that? Yes, of course.

Why do you blog so much? Ever since I had my heart attack and bypass surgery I am not supposed to go outside for very long when it is too hot or too cold. It's way hot right now so I stay inside and blog and read other people's blogs.

Oh okay. Now back to the Eva Braun thing... Ok, I admit I knew her. Barely. We were just acquaintances.

Do you know personally anyone who has lost a shit load of weight? Yes. This is my friend Brad.

He lost 190 pounds after this picture was taken. He looks great, his health is one thousand percent better, and he has added decades to his life because he lost all that weight.

Sweet. Yeah, we're proud of him.

One more question about Eva Braun.... No. I will not answer any more Eva Braun questions.

Which environmental activist do you have a secret crush on?

Majora Carter. I adore her spirit and her passion for environmental justice. And she's as cute as a button.

If we could just get to the bottom of this Eva Braun thing...

Okay, I admit it. I knew her but I did not love her. Now let it be. That's all I'm saying.

Sorry Doc, we missed that last answer of yours, what did you say again?

I said, "I never loved Eva Braun."

Ok.

We love this picture of Fatty Delicious, do you also love it?

Sure. It's funny and mysterious at the same time.

Show us a picture of one of your favorite CDs of all time.

Okay, here you go:

If you had to choose between Monica Goodling and Angela from The Office, which would you choose?

No contest, I choose Angela from The Office. Angela is a character on a hit TV show, the other one is a religious zealot who helped the Bush junta oppress gays, liberals, blacks, and others. Angela rocks, Monica should be in a prison jumpsuit breaking rocks.

Coffee or tea? Neither, I'm hooked on:

We all have our vices.

Yep. And since I had to stop smoking, give up most red meat, give up candy bars, and switch to a low fat diet, I'm not gonna give up my soda. Nope. No way.

What was one of your early comedy influences?

Hee Haw? Surely you jest.

I'm not kidding and stop calling me Shirley. I plan on writing about my love for Hee Haw sometime soon, so watch for that in the near future.

Look at this picture:

Do you agree that Evil Monkeys Rule?

Who says we're evil monkeys here at Monkey Muck HQ? Just because we do not agree with the prevailing paradigm does not mean we are evil.

Would ever wear a sweater like this one?

Not just no, but hell no. Never, not even if I was freezing to death. Now maybe a nice cardigan...

Who in your opinion is one of the world's cutest babies?

No doubt about it, this little gal is. I won't divulge her name or her home country but she is one of the hands down cutest babies on the planet.

Wanna go out for a drink now?

Sure, you all go ahead and wait for me. I'll be along in a while.

Let us pray

Dear God,

I think I'm cracking up. The masters of war ignore our pleas to end the war and the media makes fun of the only candidate for President who will end the war. If you're up there, or out there, or where ever it is you hang out, how about a little help, how about you give us some peace love and understanding? Or at the very least how about a nice treat, like say, oh I don't know, maybe a banana split? If you do that then I promise not to burn down the malls.

Sarcastically yours,
Amen.