6/11/02
Last night, I went to Les Paul's 87th birthday concert at Iridium--the guy's been playing there every Monday night since I moved to the city, and I'd never seen him in person before. I suspect the main effect age has had on his playing is that he's now being a little more selective about what notes he wants to play. He had two other guitarists (playing Les Pauls, of course) and a stand-up bass player, as well as a bunch of guests (one of whom was a comedian, who went on way too long but fortunately didn't try to jam with the rest of the band), but was very clearly the star of the show. Most of the people sitting around me appeared to be regulars, which I suppose is as it should be; a lot of them were backstage with him saying hi and happy birthday before the show. This morning, for my radio show, I wanted to play Eugenius's "God Bless Les Paul," but my copy appears to be in storage. Too bad.
The day we've feared (well, just a little) has come: Edie has discovered that there is a world beyond the front door of our apartment, meaning that every time we open it she darts out and we have to retrieve her. (Lisa's way of doing this is to coo "Inside, baby... inside..." until it has some effect on Edie, which it generally doesn't. My way is to stomp toward Edie with an I'm-gonna-dropkick-you look on my face until she runs inside and hides under the couch. Both ways have their flaws.) We are considering convincing Bandit, the lupine "Bowie dog" (one eye blue, one brown) who lives down the hall, to scare her straight.
Attempted to read Jim Harrison's The Raw and the Cooked today, and found it intensely dull and pompous-in-a-mock-humble-way enough that I gave up about a third of the way through and left it on the "books if you want 'em" cart in my building's laundry room. Also donated to the cart: Larissa's Bread Book, which had been kicking around here since I picked it up at last year's BEA: a book of bread recipes that was evidently written to appeal to people who really, really liked Steel Magnolias. (Back cover copy begins: "'Honey,' said Miss Bessie, 'there isn't another place in this world as wonderful as a Southern woman's kitchen.'") Today, I realized that I'd never baked a thing from it, glanced inside, noted that one of the characters who exchanges bread recipes in letters to and from her "cher Maman" dies in childbirth three pages before the end, and decided that I really didn't have the space for it on my overcrowded shelves.