Tower of Power

Sorry for not blogging on Wednesday. Travalon and I joined Cecil Markovitch, the Single B-Boy, and the Dairyman’s Daughter to see a musical group from Crete. They played all kinds of exotic stringed instruments, like a small thing that looked a little like my rebec, but the guy played it like it was a tiny cello. Just to add to the exotic flavor, the bow had jingle bells on it. However, one guy was playing a mandolin that looked just like mine – I never thought of mandolins as being from Crete! Maybe they were brought there by Italians? I got pictures of these instruments and will post them at some point.

Yesterday I didn’t blog because Travalon and I were very busy. Rich’s Brazilian housemate is back in Brazil now, but Groupon sent him just what he needs: an offer to buy a coupon for a Brazilian steakhouse up here in Madison. He forwarded it to us, so we bought two coupons and went to Samba, where there is a fabulous salad bar, the background music is all Brazilian, and the waiters keep coming by with meat on skewers for you to try. Instead of rolls, they have little bread things that taste a lot like Yorkshire pudding but are apparently gluten free. Whatever, I ate a ton of them. When the bill came, we both got out our coupons, but it turns out you can only use one per table, so we will just have to go again sometime. There are worse things. Then we went to see Tower of Power at the Overture Center. They are a funk band from the 70’s, and in fact one of their big hits is called, “You Got to Funkifize.” They have a big horn section, and my favorite was the baritone sax. It’s so low, and it would honk just before the rest of the horns came in, giving the songs not just a great bass line but a swingy syncopated feel. All their songs made me want to get up and dance, so we did to a few of them.

This morning I was having a dream that I had accidentally downloaded an app onto my phone, and it had taken over and wouldn’t let me get away from that screen, so I was so cranky that I actually woke up. It was ten minutes before we were getting up anyway. I thought it was just PMS making me so cranky that it actually woke me up, but then just a few minutes ago I was reading about the terrible Packer game that we missed due to the concert, where they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, on a trustworthy site. However, something weird happened and my screen said someone was trying to breach my firewall and access my bank accounts (this message was not in what I would call fluent English), so I should call some toll-free number. I was skeptical and tried to close my browser window, but it wouldn’t let me close it. I had to go into the Task Manager and end the program. Wow, how weird! Did my dream predict that?

Famous Hat