Ft Lauderdale reflections

We're on our way to Fort Lauderdale, where we'll be cooking in the humidity. Anyway, this has prompted some reflections, largely on the film "Flight of the Navigator". Remember that one? It involved some little white boy from Ft. Lauderdale who falls in a ravine and is picked up by an alien spaceship and then put back in the same ravine but 8 years later. The big twist is that he doesn't age while the rest of the world does. Also, after dropping him off the alien spaceship crashes and then hijinks ensue - which i won't recap here.

For the most part this film was depressing - with the spaceship being weird and creepy, the storyline being sad and strange and the government being weird and quasi-evil. It makes me feel sad for Florida.

Most important is the tracklisting of the score, composed by Alan Silvestri. It's below, I especially like the title of the last track.

1. Theme from "Flight of the Navigator"
2. "Main Title"
3. "The Ship Beckons"
4. "David In The Woods"
5. "Robot Romp"
6. "Transporting The Ship"
7. "Ship Drop"
8. "Have To Help a Friend"
9. "The Shadow Universe"
10. "Flight"
11. "Finale"
12. "Star Dancing"

We can't go on with suspicious minds.

I always, always, ALWAYS have that Elvis song in my head. Don't ask me why. Well, when I don't have that Whitesnake "Here I Go Again on My Own" song. But these things really don't bear confessing in such a public venue: I digress, at my own expense.

Really, what I came to say was that we spent Yom Kippur in Memphis, TN. There were plans A, B, C and D re: where we were going to atone and fast, spanning everywhere from Austin to Atlanta to most places in between. But we settled on Memphis. This morning, before we drove out, we ate here:



It is "the oldest cafe in Memphis," where Mystery Train and Walk the Line and a million other movies were filmed. We had the luxurious combo of BOTH hash browns and biscuits. Eli wished for bottomless biscuits: tough luck, Oberman.

My point here is that as many of you know, the one celebrity in my mishpocha is Elvis, having been my dad's downstairs neighbor in a two-family house owned by Memphis' kosher butcher circa 1953 (Buy me a drink and I'll tell you Fruchter family Elvis gossip! I promise!). My dad was a baby and Elvis was a teen, known to love cuff links, and to be, as my Bubbe might have put it, a very sweet fellow. My Bubbe and Gladys Presley used to caffienate together on the porch while my grandfather, an Orthodox rabbi, would play cantorial records upstairs. We were going to go by said house, but it turned out that it is now a highway, which made me kind of sad. I also considered going to the synagogue where my grandfather was rabbi, but ended up elsewhere. Still, getting to be there was pretty awesome in light of all my family's history there, especially for Yom Kippur, DESPITE the fact that our pre-fast meal was some of the most speedily consumed Subway subs ever, devoured moments before lurching in our ever-inconspicuous NY van into the more-enormous-than-we'd-ever-seen-before synagogue parking lot.

In conclusion: we're about to be in Athens, and something pretty earth-shattering has just now happened. The less Star Wars-educated among us (that would be Oberman and Fruchter, in descending order) were taught the "Ewok Celebration song," during our stay in Memphis. Just now, as I wrote this, it was simultaneously blasting through the van by way of youtube dot com, with lyrics that begin "yub nub." Some of you will be familiar with the Ewok scene that ensues, but I certainly wasn't, so you'll excuse (and understand) the abrupt nature with which I now cease to blog, in a manner of profound shock.

Temim.

you want the vlogging to stop? then pay up.

oh vlog

PICS

Photos courtesy of the Illustrious Tara:



LA.



Santa Barbara.

I lied

about the extremely active evil secret Santa game. Truth is, only one gift has been secretly and nefariously given in the thick of night, and to be fair, said gift sucked.

More importantly though: A small roundup (at the very least) of Certain West Coast Adventures is in order (although, below, in no particular order, 'cause it's me doing the blogging here). To start, though, the fabulous Kina Williams took pictures at our Portland show, which happened to be at an ex-mausoleum. Without further ado:






Not to be all link-happy, but not only did our Portland show yield awesome photos, but ALSO delightful vegan not-really-honey-cake provided by the illustrious Isa Chandra Moskowitz (whose brunch cookbook we are eagerly anticipating, after sampling one of its top secret to-die-for recipes) AND a tie! For me! Made with love and style by the spectacular Sossity, more of whose work can be found (and bought! buy it! it'll get you dates, guaranteed!) here.

In other news, we played San Francisco. The city that fed me the Vietnamese food that nearly slayed me by virtue of its excellence AND where I spent one entire day eating no food but drinking four consecutive cups of coffee. Also, the city where we got to reunite and gallavant once again with Bruin! Got to breakfast, and see his new house, and merch-table-ize together. And continued the Everyone We Know Anywhere Should Move to New York project, an admirable effort, we think.

In other news, we played Olympia. The Olympians we met made us some of the most delightful blackberry vegan ice cream and blackberry cobbler I have EVER consumed. And we played a very fun house show.

In yet other news, we played Seattle. I have a small city-crush on Seattle, though I can't quite explain it. We brunched at the legendary King Street in excellent company and discussed such things as 1) Roseanne 2) high school fashion 3) dirty 30th birthday party concepts. Good things all. We played to a sweaty and dancing packed room - the best kind - and, not shockingly, enjoyed a hefty sum of Mighty O Donuts.

There is other news, still!

In other news: we went to LA.

Also, we went to Santa Barbara.

Then, we went back to LA.

News!

In LA, the Pacific Ocean completely cured my midway-through-tour-my-muscles-have-now-completely-melted-and-atrophied-in-this-van blues. Also, we stayed at a bizarre fancy-in-the-80s hotel that featured lots of off-white, fish tanks, and indoor-but-lit-up streetlamps. In Santa Barbara, there was more beach. We crowded into Muddy Waters and had a blast playing, followed by delicious, huge make-your-own burritos and more beach, QT with our Santa Barbara favorites, Tara and Alena. And, I will herein try to refrain from Blogging While Hungry but we ate the most flavorful, heartbreakingly good Thai food EVARRR with the aforementioned Tara and Alena in the aforementioned Santa Barbara.

Am I still talking? More on this uneven, nonsensical West Coast recap soon. And perhaps a Gossip Girl roundtable....

xo
Temim

Dear Poor Neglected Blog

We realize we have been immensely distracted by the following:

-beach
-other beach
-more beach
-donuts
-infrequent but worthwhile celebrity sightings
-vegan snacks
-excellent friends
-an extremely active game of evil secret santa
-perilously good thai food
-rosh hashana
-our general adjustment to the west coast, only starting to happen now, as we depart from it

that we have neglected to write in you. Sigh. We will be back, we promise. New Year's commitment number one: Write In Tour Blog. Do it soon. Hopefully Ian will have more dreams to vlog about; in the interim, stay tuned for Shondes-on-the-west-coast recaps.

xo from AZ
Temim