Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

You know how, when you listen to a song on the radio (or nowadays, the iPod), the song catches in your head, and sometimes infects your brain, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to get rid of it, except maybe try to replace it with another. If you're looking for such a viral infection to infect YOUR brain, YouTube "Home" by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. It has over 2,500,000 uploads. A sample of the chorus lyrics:

Home, Let me come Home
Home is Whenever I'm with you
Home, yes I am Home
Home is wherever I'm with you.

Nothing profound, just...infectious.

I had my third Avastin (bevacizumab) infusion this morning, and it went well, just as with the others. The plan now is for three additional infusions, every two weeks, then repeat the MRI to assess tumor response to this agent.

On TV this weekend: Les Miles, More Favre

The Couch
by Jason Gay
The Wall Street Journal
October 22, 2010

This weekend the Couch asks baseball to sort out this year's World Series before the East Coast is snowed in for the winter (done), wonders if Les Miles can possibly pull off one more crazy win as LSU faces Auburn (he couldn't), and sees if Green Bay can still work up the anger toward Brett Favre as the Packers host the Vikings (yes).

Trick Plays
by Yoni Brenner
Shouts & Murmurs
The New Yorker
October 4, 2010

The Open-Source Sweep
A week before the big game, team officials engineer a "chance encounter" between the opposing quarterback and the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, The pair become fast friends, attending a number of folk concerts and rummage sales together. As their relationship blossoms, Gyllenhaal inculcates the quarterback with progressive ideas about transparency and freedom of information, and by the end of the week he convinces the quarterback to post his team's playbook on WikiLeaks. The team loses five of its next six games, and the quarterback is benched. As for Jake Gyllenhaal, he is eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, and is hired by Fox Sports to join Howie Long and Michael Strahan on the Sunday NFL pre-game show.

West Coast Misdirection
During the off-season, the opposing quarterback is again approached by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. The quarterback warns Gyllenhaal to keep his distance, but Gyllenhaal tells him that it isn't like that---he wants to offer the quarterback a part in an independent film he is producing, called "The Quarterback and the Dame," about an unlikely romance between a gridiron hero and the English stage legend Judi Dench. The quarterback reads the script, and he has to admit it's pretty good, so he signs on. The quarterback arrives on the set for the first day of shooting, only to find Gyllenhaal costumed in shoulder pads and eye black. The quarterback goes berserk, believing that he'd been promised the part. "No, no," Gyllenhaal coos, "you're playing Judi Dench."

Met at the Movies

I took my MIL Mary Beth to see a Live in HD Metropolitan Opera performance of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at a local movie theatre Saturday morning. It started at 9 a.m., and we left after noon. Was told that it didn't end until 2:15 p.m., but we were long gone by then. Overall, an enjoyable experience and a very well done production. It was sung in Russian, with English subtitles. In fact, the entire cast was Russian with the exception of the title character, who was played by the German Rene' Pape. I had won a voucher for a pair of free tickets from All Classical FM.

Good Poems for Hard Times

This anthology of 185 poems was selected by Garrison Keillor from those he has read on "The Writer's Almanac" on public radio.

Enough pilfering from poor Mr. Keillor,
If not for Prairie Home Companion
He'd be out on the bread line.

If you like the poems
you can buy the book,
$10.88 from Amazon,
or borrow it for free.

Good poems for hard times (7,8)

Don't read too much into this. I just like the poem; not planning to go anywhere soon.

My Cup
Robert Friend

They tell me I am going to die.
Why don't I seem to care?
My cup is full. Let it spill.

Last Poem
Ted Berrigan

(Last line only)

"...Let none regret my end who called me friend."

Big noise from Winnetka...Big news from Eugene

Yes, the Ducks are No. 1 (at least in the human polls), but that is OLD news, no longer BIG news. The BIG news is that Pete and Tracy are expecting their third child, our fifth grandchild. Congratulations, you two, and stay healthy, T!

Good poems for hard times (5,6)

The Benefits of Ignorance
Hal Sirowitz

If ignorance is bliss, Father said,
shouldn't you be looking blissful?
You should check to see if you have
the right kind of ignorance. If you're
not getting the benefits that most people
get from acting stupid, then you should
go back to what you always were---
being too smart for your own good.

Dawn Revisited
Rita Dove

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits---
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.