Let’s Get This Party Started!

Thank you to all the MOTI for our care package which arrived from the world famous Katz’s Delicatessen in NYC. I can report that at least one thing in that city still works right.

It arrived frozen on Thursday and we thawed it out slowly for tonight’s feast: Raj’s birthday party! There’s a most excellent chicken noodle soup with fine needle noodles that have the most elegant texture for chicken soup ever.  Then there are 2 packs of pastrami: 1 ‘juicy’ (I think that’s for me) and 1 lean, for the recovering Raj. Since he’s been good and not wined about any of the low fat (but delicious) offerings that either my sister or I’ve served him since he came home he’s earned a lean Pastrami sandwich with low fat Swiss cheese. Mind you Katz’s has the best pastrami in the world. So it’s worth blowing a week’s worth of fat allocation on such a glorious birthday dinner. And as I told Zephyr, the mugs will provide the props for my reenactment of Meg Ryan’s infamous deli orgy. Dinner AND entertainment.

Oh, and Katz’s rye bread is unbeatable, except for my brothers homemade. I’ve already had it as toast for breakfast with jam but there’s no doubt that its true calling is to hold the hanging chards of the mighty fine pastrami sandwich together so you don’t get your hands too greasy. 

Of course, there will be no dessert following this over-the-top feast but I promised to make Raj his now mandatory pear gingerbread upside down birthday cake tomorrow.

Last year’s rendering:

No, it’s not low fat but it IS his birthday (season)! So if we make it through the pastrami without incident he gets his cake – just no whipped cream this year. We will luxuriate in deli-deliciousness tonight and thank you all for  your very kind gift of juicy lusciousness which will be enjoyed for as long as it lasts and remembered fondly for long after that. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottoms of our hearts. The MOTI are indeed mighty.

So what do you say: let’s get this season’s party started!

Child found at random on the internet, circa 1920s, clearly ready to celebrate

It never gets old for the little tykes.

Brain Worms, Mondegreens and ‘The Hook’

Reading Neithan Hador’s comment about Operation Mockingbird reminded me that I had done a post about this operation many years ago. I did a search to see if I could find it. I couldn’t, but I found this totally unrelated mockingbird themed post. It was originally posted on December 27 2020 and links to one of the late, great bloggers of our time, Gerard Vander Luen who passed away on January 27, 2023. It is one of Gerard’s always informative and amusing posts and as it is the season to be jolly I repost it as a crazy-season diversion. Enjoy. And RIP dear friend, I still miss you every day.

Originally posted December 27, 2020

I will be gone all day so what do you say we spend today pondering this eminently ponderable: what is it about the human brain that causes us to mishear certain words or phrases? And why, once misheard, does the brain try to render meaning to the nonsensical and forevermore insist on mishearing the same thing over and over?

Ed Driscoll was obviously wondering more or less the same thing when he posted this little gem retweeted from a reddit thread. He did so with this droll observation: ANALYSIS: TRUE. France is Bacon.

We’ve all had this happen to us, but somehow it seems other people’s misheard brain worms are more interesting than mine. Take Gerard Van Der Leun for example: not only does he advise us what this phenomenon is called (a ‘mondegreen’) but as you’ll see in his post - Delete “Hook.” Insert “Heart” – when his brain misfires it’s actually better than the original. Here’s his take on the Blues Traveler’s song titled “The Hook” (which really should have been a clue, but the brain will do what the brain will do):

All of this is a periphrastic way of coming to what I had heard sung in the refrain to ‘The Hook.’ for many years. I never heard the word ‘hook.’ Instead I heard the word ‘heart,’ as in:

“Because the heart brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The heart brings you back
On that you can rely.”

I’ve listened to ‘The Hook.’, with attention or just as background, probably around a hundred times over the years. I’ve trance danced to it. I’ve even been to a Blues Traveler concert in New York City that had it on the setlist. In all those iterations I’ve never heard ‘hook,’ but always heard ‘heart.’ Now I know different …. but not better.

Seen whole the lyrics to ‘The Hook’ are all about the plight and pain of being a pop star. One of the thousands of such screeds in which our celebrities bemoan the curse of wealth and fame their rise has brought to them — the endless angst of those who fear they had to ‘sell-out’ in order to ‘buy-in.’ I try, but somehow I just can’t feel this pampered pain.

In the end, I really don’t want ‘The Hook.’ to bring me back. I want ‘The Heart’ to bring me back:

“Because the heart brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The heart brings you back
On that you can rely.”

It might be a mondegreen, but it makes a much better song.

It’s hard to argue with his conclusion, it really would make a much better song. But then, Gerard is a poet and writer so I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that his mondegreens are better than ours, and indeed, better than the real thing.

Still, I find it interesting to ponder the power of the human brain to fill voids with misinformation. But for this fact the mockingbird media would not exist. They’ve literally created an entire industry out of replacing news and information with alternate words that they want you to believe are better than the real thing. They exist to make us see clearly now: Lorraine is gone.

Warning: misinformation is not a joke

I vote to give MSM ‘The Hook’