Once again, the big delicious cookie of a blog post I might have once planned has been stepped on and broken into fragments. A crime, to be sure, for now it is all crumbs, but just the same, crumbs is what I got. Please enjoy the broken bits.
Fiona Apple has a new album out wait what? I knew there was an album coming, as I’d read it in Emily Nussbaum’s phenomenal piece on Apple earlier this year. But I didn’t know the album would just one day be a thing I could have. And now I have it? And it’s amazing?! Okay, listen, Idler Wheel is probably one of my favorite albums of all time. A top tenner. It is raw-boned and throaty and barely constrained in its willing derangement, and it speaks to me in a thousand different ways. So I’m digging into this new one and finding it has its own lunacy — it’s a bit quirkier, but still feels like someone took their heart and their brain and blended them up in a Vitamix and dumped it on a countertop. It’s wonderful. More fun and less flensing than Idler Wheel, but still toothy as shit. Got bite. Got little shrieks. Got dog barks. Pitchfork gave it a rare 10, if you care about that sort of thing.
I remember how I found Fiona Apple. I mean, I didn’t “discover” her and give her to the world or anything. I was working in college for a coffee house — Dillworth, in Charlotte, NC — and we of course played a lot of “coffee house” music. (Think, y’know, Lilith Fair and weird jazz.) We would get random CD deliveries from… honestly, I’ve no idea who. Music companies? Demons? Whatever. They’d deliver weekly stacks of CDs and nine times out of ten they were half-shit. But one time, in the stack came Tidal. And I was working a shift with my good friend and roommate Jim at the time, and we put it in and… I dunno how many times during our shift we listened to it, but I knew it made me feel the same way I felt when I listened to, say, Portishead’s Dummy. And we were like, fuck this, this is too good for the coffee house. So, we took it. And listened to it constantly. Her work since then has been a journey, each album still irrevocably her, but each album also very much its own creature.
I aspire to have my books be that, by the way. I never found genre to be a thing I wanted to be trapped in, or by, but I also want you to read one of my novels and know it’s one of mine, and have it feel like I’m my own damn genre, even if the genre is sci-fi, or horror, or fantasy, or whatfuckingever. Which also is why I can see how some people bristled at the Aftermath series — I mean, besides the usual shitbirds who had problems with the ahh, “content” in terms of who is allowed on the page. But I remember reading a forum post at one point where someone lamented, “Doesn’t he [i.e. me] understand, all we read are Star Wars novels?” and that clarified a lot of things for me. I wasn’t just writing a Star Wars novel. I couldn’t. I had to still write a “me” novel, otherwise, what’s the fucking point? It’s my name on it, too. I have to own it. And that’s my feeling on all my books — that’s me on there, that’s my name, it has to be all of what I bring to the table. Which then makes me think, what are all the authorial things I’m bringing to the table without realizing it? Common themes, but also lazy bits? Hmm. Worth more study. When I’m not trapped in lockdown. This fragile era is not the best time for putting the self under the lens, maybe. Or maybe it is. Who knows.
Oh, to explain the aforementioned dog barks. Yeah, no, it literally has dog barks in it, the new album. It’s the perfect lockdown quarantine album. Because it feels like she just recorded it all last night, in a binge, in her house. (I think she actually did record a lot of it in her house.) Her dogs sometimes bark. It’s amazing. (And for the record, I know she didn’t just record it last night. Its chaos is far too artful — the power of it being in how it feels improvised and mad, but is no such thing. It is her design.)
Pennsylvania is champing at the bit to “reopen.” Which is, at this point, delusional, but never underestimate people’s ability to misread a moment. See, here in PA things aren’t as “bad” as people thought, so like the Y2k bug, you have people claiming it’s either a hoax or that people got it “wrong,” despite the fact that PA arguably did a lot more a lot earlier, and has since clamped down on some of the worst of things. (Also don’t forget, we’re still not testing like we should be. So the true numbers are wildly unclear.) To reopen everything, you gotta go slow, methodical, and increase testing or get antibody testing in play. But you have the local Republicans just wanting to hee-haw their way into kicking the doors open for everyone to come rushing in, back to business. Which will cause a certain spike and surge, because, a-duhhh, the virus didn’t magically go away. Listen, I want shit to get back to normal, too. But we cannot just ignore experts and embrace magical thinking just because we want businesses open. We need better leadership from the top that helps people weather this storm in a way that doesn’t just toss vulnerable folks into the pyre in the name of Mammon, for Chrissakes.
Just the same, I guess we’re doing okay here. I got yeast, thanks to a friend who did a driveby driveway drop-off. We stood 20 feet apart and yelled conversations to one another. It was both nice and super weird. With yeast, I guess I’ll now try my hand at bread like every other carboloading individual out there. If you have good bread recipes, hook me up, because I’ve zero idea what I’m doing.
We have VR, an Oculus Quest, and it’s great. This should be the Quest’s shining moment, because VR actually feels a little bit like an escape (and you can see how Ready Player One actually comes to be). But the supply chain is disrupted and the Quest is hard to get at a meaningful price so, oops. But there are some truly spectacular experiences for it. I need the new Half-Life, but it isn’t on Quest natively, and I don’t have a PC that will load or run it. Is now a good time to get back into PC gaming? Probably not, and yet, I wanna? Because I’m an idiot?
Speaking of apples, since apparently I like anything with the word “apple” in it: did you see about the lost apples, rediscovered? Or there’s this video of an apple detective. Which is what I wanna be when I grow up. I’ll be DETECTIVE COXWORTH “GOLDEN DELICIOUS” PIPPIN, aka “Doc Pippin” for short. I will solve all the apple mysteries. This is my design.
Got me a birthday next week. In the middle of all this, a fuckin’ birthday. That should be illegal. Also illegal: our current autocratic government ineptly and cruelly stomping on all our norms and freedoms. But also, the birthday thing.
Maybe next week I can announce a cool thing? Maybe I can tell you about one of my secret books. Maybe. We’ll see. No promises. Time is goopy. Everything is wet paint.
And now, a bird photo. It’s an oafish cardinal yelling HEY at you. And not a friendly hey but like a HEY QUIT LEANIN ON MY CAR, YOU JABRONI.
Lindsay says:
I really like the word jabroni.
April 17, 2020 — 11:20 AM
Rachel says:
Bread recipes? Check out Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Changed the way I thought about and baked bread, and has the hands-down best bagel recipe for a home baker I’ve ever found. Enjoy!
April 17, 2020 — 11:22 AM
Jenny Hansen says:
Thank you for this. I need break help too!
April 20, 2020 — 1:30 AM
Owen Nicholls says:
Having read the frankly excellent Wanderers, which would be the best next Chuck (or next best Chuck) to get my eyes into? I mean, I could just read Wanderers again but variety makes for a spicier life.
April 17, 2020 — 11:27 AM
MarkPainter says:
Does this mean you’re trying out sourdough? I’ve been baking with sourdough for 20 years now, and watching it suddenly become a Thing on the Internet has been an interesting experience.
Suggestion: sourdough is not just for bread. Try making sourdough bagels, English muffins, waffles, whatever. Everything bread or bread-adjacent tastes better with sourdough in it.
April 17, 2020 — 11:32 AM
Staci Fritz says:
Best lazy person “I’m not a bread maker” no-knead bread recipe:
3 cups flour, 1 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon yeast, 1 1/2 cups water. Throw it all together in a nice big bowl, mix it into a shaggy lump with a wooden spoon or the equivalent, cover and leave on the counter for 12-18 hours. When you’re ready to bake it, put your dutch oven/casserole pan into the oven and turn it to 450 degrees. After 20 or so minutes, take the hot pan out of the oven, glop your gloopy dough into the now-hot pot and cook for 30 minutes with the lid on. After 30 minutes take the lid off and let it cook for another 15 or so minutes. Get it out of the pan and onto a cooling rack when you can. Mine doesn’t usually stick to the pot but you can make your life a little easier getting it out of the hot pan if you used some parchment paper to make a sling but it’s not necessary.
So this bread is all good and fine, and you’ll end up with a beautiful and delicious loaf BUT where this really shines is if you want to turn it into cheese bread, or jalapeño bread, or oregano/garlic/pepper flake bread, or ‘whatever spices you have a bunch of’ bread. Add that stuff in at the beginning by the handfuls, whatever you’ve got, and your bread becomes a masterwork of laziness and gluten.
This bread got me voted “second favorite mom in McFarland, Wisconsin” by my younger son’s friend and I’m sure I was second favorite only because he would’ve felt bad naming me his favorite mom in McFarland with his own mom standing right there.
Also, double the recipe because the first loaf will be gone so fast.
Also also, thank you kindly for your writing during this weird, weird time. Well, this ongoingly weird time. It’s been weird for a while, but recently gotten weirder.
April 17, 2020 — 11:43 AM
Maximilian Bruno says:
If you’re looking for bread recipes, I’ll always recommend King Arthur Flour’s site for that, no matter what. They’ve got a great blog to explain the ways of the loaf, and some other sweet baking things in there, too. However, if we’re on the discussion on best breads to bake? Let me recommend you the wonders of Anadama. I don’t have the recipe right in front of me at the moment (or my existing location), but there used to be a restaurant/bakery in Exeter, New Hampshire, called The Loaf and Ladle. I’m not sure if they’re still around (which I’m sad about because while I was born in that area, I never hung around long enough to actually experience the place before it closed), but my parents were given a recipe book the owner had written, and within it exists a great recipe for Anadama. None of this information helps except that you can probably find either the recipe book online OR just look for the general bread recipe wherever you may choose. Either way, it’s a rich, molasses-savory-sweet, nutty bread. Enjoy fresh and warm from the oven with butter and honey.
April 17, 2020 — 11:44 AM
zkhetzner says:
Look, this isn’t an ~artisan~ bread recipe or anything, but it is very easy and pretty hard to screw up. It’s how my dad’s been making bread for decades.
Throw 2 cups flour into bowl of a food processor. (You can just use the regular blade.) Add 1 tbsp of salt, 1 tbsp of sugar, and 1 highly mounded tbsp of yeast into f.p. bowl. Add another 2 cups of flour. Turn on processor and let dry ingredients mix while you turn on hot water tap. Let water get as hot as possible and fill a 1 qt pitcher with water. With machine running, drizzle water down the spout as close to the outer edge of the bowl as possible. Add water until the dough is smooth and isn’t sticking to the edge of the bowl. If it gets too wet and sticky, toss in some flour and try again.
Remove dough and add it to a big bowl that has been smeared with olive oil. Flip dough around until it is coated with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and put some place warmish to let it rise. When dough has doubled–which could be in less than 30 minutes or as long as an hour–peel wrap to one side and push the dough down, then cover it up and let it rise until doubled again.
Put a bit of either olive oil or flour on a clean counter to prevent dough from sticking. Toss dough out on counter, give it a few desultory pokes and pushes to get some of the air out, then cut it in half and knead it a little more before shaping it into a loaf that fits whatever pan you have. Dump the bottom of the loaf into some corn meal if you have it and then put it on your bread pan, which has been lightly coated with oil. Do the same with the second loaf. Use a sharp knife and cut a few decorative slices about 1/4 inch deep into the tops of the loaves. (These prevent the loaves from cracking when they bake.) Let rise.
After 15 minutes, turn your oven on to 380 F. About the time your oven is hot, the loaves should have risen enough. If you want shine and color on the crust, beat an egg, add a tbsp of water, and brush an egg wash over the tops of the loaves. If you want toppings, spray or brush bread with water and then sprinkle sesame, poppy, dried onion, dried garlic, caraway, or all of the above onto the dough. Stick them in the middle of the oven and bake for 40 minutes. Pull out, tap, and if they sound hollow they are done. If not, give them another 5 minutes or so. About 10 minutes after they come out of the oven, pull them out of the pan and flip over so the bottoms don’t get soggy when they cool.
April 17, 2020 — 11:46 AM
Jessie Voigts says:
There was a fantastic article on her in the New Yorker; I think you’ll love it!
April 17, 2020 — 11:54 AM
Lita says:
Staci Fritz has got your back. Stay safe and well, Chuck.
April 17, 2020 — 12:16 PM
Kim Starrett says:
Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish is the best bread book. There’s a terrific 60% whole wheat bread recipe in there that you can also find by hitting dr. google.
April 17, 2020 — 12:57 PM
Jim says:
People do seem to be ignoring the new Fauci (aka, scientific) norm in favor of a fable, not by Aesop, but by asshole (in Chief, that is). What was once the common sense class, spewing pearls of wisdom borne of many generations in the same house, and practical upbringing, now are getting their mantra from Hannity, et al, as well as the ever ignorant memes and videos on Facebook. Recent pics of “demonstrators” against the “government telling us what we can do”, complete with Nazi and Confederate flags, resemble anti-Vaxers in full bloom, damning the torpedoes and putting us all at risk. What a world.
April 17, 2020 — 12:57 PM
CONNIE COCKRELL says:
Hey there.
First of all, love the cardinal picture. He does look like he’s yelling at the neighborhood kids.
Second, congratulations on the yeast. In the interest of not searching for yeast again, check out this sourdough starter recipe. https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8392/sourdough-starter/ Before I was diagnosed with celiac, I was really getting into making my own bread and had a started always on my kitchen counter. (It’s also a cool science experiment for your son!)
My favorite bread recipe was one that was baked in my enameled cast iron dutch oven. I’ve long lost that recipe but this is a good site to give you some techniques and recipes. https://www.bakefromscratch.com/dutch-oven-bread-101/
And for the trolls, ignore them. But you already knew that.
April 17, 2020 — 1:03 PM
Samantha Bryant says:
I’m enjoying these random posts. Just right for where my brain is. As for bread, The Bread Book by Linda Collister was my go-to when I was learning to bake bread. The books covers a good variety of kinds of bread and gives very clear directions with good illustrations for a beginner who doesn’t know what different stages should look and feel like. That challah recipe is still my favorite.
April 17, 2020 — 1:07 PM
T.K. Eldridge says:
My Dad’s brother, Howard Eldredge, was a cook on Navy subs in the early 60’s. This is a recipe he wrote in the front of a cookbook for me back in the early 80’s when I first got married. I’ve made this recipe weekly for over 30 years.
You can add sugar, cinnamon, and raisins to it to make raisin bread.
You can add shredded cheddar, finely chopped rosemary, some parmesan to it to make cheesy herb bread.
There are a LOT of options with this – it even makes a pretty amazing pizza crust.
Here’s the recipe, transcribed exactly how he wrote it in my cookbook:
Uncle Howard Eldredge’s Bread Recipe
Sprinkle 2 pkgs dry yeast over 2 cups warm water
Add 2 eggs, 1/2 c sugar, 1/2 c liquid shortening (melted Crisco or veg. oil)
& 1 tbsp Salt
Stir well, mix in enough flour to make a soft dough (about 6-8 cups)
Knead well, add bits of flour until it’s not sticky.
Put in a clean bowl with a damp dishtowel over the top.
Let rise until double – punch down and knead again until no air pockets are in dough. Split into whatever you want it to be – rolls, loaves, etc.
put in pans and let rise again until double
Bake at 350F about 25-30 min until a thump on the top sounds hollow
makes 2 large or 4 regular loaves.
Also: take a handful of dough, stretch into a flat circle, and fry in hot oil – sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar for New England style fried dough treats
April 17, 2020 — 1:45 PM
Tess Lecuyer says:
Basic yeast bread:
2 teaspoons yeast (or one of the envelopes)
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons salt
One 12 oz can of beer – stout is better than IPA
Dump it all in a bowl. Mix it up. Cover the bowl and set it aside until tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. At least give it overnight, ‘kay?
Next day: Peek under the lid. Inhale heaven. Whisper a few secrets to it.
Add a few glugs of olive oil.
Add a few tablespoons of molasses or honey or maple syrup or other sweet nothing.
Add a handful of pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds or chopped nuts or herbs or seeds. Or a big sweet onion chopped up un bits.
Mix it up.
Add flour ¼ cup at a time until it makes a soft dough.
Cover it up for another day. Or overnight. Or 8 hours. Time is an ingredient, motherfucker.
Toss some flour on a surface. If you use a big cutting board, stick it on place by putting a damp towel under it so it will not skooch when you knead.
Open the lid, inhale heaven. Give it a poke just for fun. Turn it out onto the board and chuck a handful of flour on top. Flatten it. Fold it in half (use a scraper if it sticks). Flatten, fold, repeat until it springs back. Just plain white bread dough should feel like a soft earlobe when kneaded enough. 10 minutes will be enough. More cannot hurt.
Prep your pans or sheets with oil and a sprinkle of cornmeal and salt. Get the butter out to soften.
Then either make one big loaf or several small loaves by whacking off a hunk of dough and flatten and roll into a cylinder and tuck the ends in and place, fold side down on sheet or in pan. Cover loaves lightly with plastic wrap.
Let rise 1 hour. 45 minutes in get your oven on and at 400F.
With a very sharp knife or raver slash the tops of the loaves. Then stick them in the oven for at least 30 minutes. Then 15 more, until done. Toothpick check like with cakes works.
You’re welcome.
April 17, 2020 — 2:17 PM
CJ's Goldfish (@Jocelyn_Vilter) says:
New sourdough baker here Chuck and as we must all do, I have named my starter – The Baby. As in, every morning I would say “I would like to feed The Baby” in my poor imitation of Werner Herzog. I have settled on this recipe as my every other day loaf and it is almost enough for us: https://anoregoncottage.com/easy-sourdough-artisan-bread/
I made some tweaks to it and changed up the flour a bit and put it in my Copy Me That recipe app, which I highly recommend. I use 2 Cups of bread flour, 3/4 Cup Whole Wheat and 1/4 Cup vital wheat gluten.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us, it helps, it really does.
April 17, 2020 — 2:32 PM
M.A. Kropp says:
Enjoy your bread making! It’s one of my favorite types of baking. I have a recipe, and also some hints. If this is your first attempt at yeast bread, don’t go all fancy. Stick with a basic, firm-textured dough. Loose, slack doughs make nice bread, but are a bit tricky to work with. If you have a good stand mixer (aka KitchenAid or equivalent), use it. I use mine to do most of the kneading, but I have wicked horrid tendinitis in my hands so all that hand kneading hurts. I would encourage you to do at least a few minutes kneading by hand to get familiar with how the dough should feel. If you can, weigh your ingredients. Much more accurate, but I will put approximate volume measures in the recipe. Let the bread cool completely before you cut it. I know- warm bread, mmm. But if you slice before it cools and sets, all you are going to do is crush the spirit out of all that lovely texture you worked so hard to build. Mostly- enjoy. This recipe makes a lovely loaf of soft white bread. It makes awesome sandwiches, toasts beautifully, and is just good as a slice with nice butter.
Soft White Sandwich Bread
355 grams (1.5 cups) all-purpose or bread flour
9 grams (1 t.) salt (you can adjust to your own taste in later loaves. This is what we like)
11 grams (3.75 t.) yeast
1 T. extra virgin olive oil
234 grams (about 1 cup) warm-ish water
Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of your mixer. I use a spatula to make sure it’s all combined well. Make a well in the center and add the oil and most of the water.
Put the dough hook on your mixer and mix at low speed, scraping the bowl as needed, to mix in the liquid. Add more water as needed to make a firm, fully moistened, but not wet dough. Turn off the mixer, cover it with a kitchen towel, and let rest for 10 minutes. This hydrates the dough and starts the gluten forming. Take off the towel and knead on 3 or 4 speed for 8 minutes, or turn the dough out on a lightly floured board and knead by hand for about 10 minutes. You want a smooth, stretchy, elastic feeling dough without much stickiness. You can do the baker’s window test to see if it’s good. Take about a golf ball size piece of dough and stretch it, If it pulls out to where you can practically see through it when held to the light without tearing, it’s good. If not, knead a few minutes more. Honestly, I rarely do this anymore. I just know how it feels when done.
Cup the dough in both palms and roll on your board to form a nice, smooth ball. Put it in a lightly greased bowl, turn to coat all of it, flatten it just a bit, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise 1.5 to 2 hours. This is the fermenting step It will double in size. Here’s where you need to be patient. You can’t force dough. It will rise as it will rise. Warmer kitchen or proofing box? Rise faster. Cooler room? It will take longer. Patience, grasshopper. You will be rewarded.
Once it’s ready, deflate gently. I don’t punch my dough. Treat it well. Pat it out into a rectangle about as long as your loaf pan, fold the bottom edge up about 1/3 of the way, and fold the top edge over the bottom. Pinch along the seam to seal, tuck the ends in and pinch those, also. Spray your loaf pan well with cooking spray or oil it well. Tuck the dough into the pan, cover with plastic, and let proof (rise again) for about an hour or so. It should be about an inch or so above the top of the pan in the center.
About half an hour before you think it will be ready, preheat the oven to 425 F. Put the loaf in the center of the oven and bake till golden brown on top, about 25-30 minutes or so. It should read 200 F on an instant read thermometer. Turn the loaf out onto a wire rack. If you want a nice, soft sandwich bread crust, cover it with damp paper towels as it cools. If you would rather a crisper, chewier crust, let it cool uncovered.
This is my go to recipe for a basic loaf of bread. Yeah, it sounds complicated, but there’s a lot of down time while you wait for the ferment and proofing. If it doesn’t turn out perfect the first time, keep trying. Like anything cooking, it can take some practice. Questions? Shoot ’em my way. mak at thekropps dot com
April 17, 2020 — 4:02 PM
Jan O'Connell says:
Easiest ever bread recipe (if you have time to wait overnight for it to rise – and of course you do) is Mark Bittman’s no-knead bread. The recipe is here: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread It has never failed us.
April 17, 2020 — 7:51 PM
Deborah Makarios says:
“I’ll be DETECTIVE COXWORTH “GOLDEN DELICIOUS” PIPPIN, aka “Doc Pippin” for short. I will solve all the apple mysteries.”
I would pay to see this.
Here in New Zealand the flour mills are going round the clock, the wheat harvest was great, and yet somehow there is no wholemeal to be had (WHO ON EARTH is using all the wholemeal, and for what??). And when there is wholemeal on the shelves, it is snapped up by the young and healthy types who can still go into supermarkets without risking life and limb.
Since our sourdough starter is accustomed to wholemeal – and in these yeast-deprived times, the last thing you want to do is to upset the starter – we are dependent on the kindness of friends who leave a share of their own wholemeal on our front step in a surreptitious paper bag, or keep an eye out for the fabulous mythical wholemeal-creature on their hunter-gatherer expeditions (so far, alas, in vain).
We are considering the possibility of spelt, despite not knowing what it was last week. Pretty sure our starter would not be keen on trying coconut flour, which is about the only sort still easily obtainable, possibly because no one knows what to do with it.
April 17, 2020 — 8:56 PM
Kim says:
Hahaha. That made me laugh. Actually you can make a pretty awesome gluten-free banana bread with coconut flour. But who needs more banana bread?
April 18, 2020 — 9:07 AM
Jess Smith says:
There’s a plethora of bread options here, but I want to shout out this pretzel bread recipe from JoyFoodSunshine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nINQjT7Zr9w)…
I grew up outside of Philly and when I moved away about 10 years ago I started to regularly get huge cravings for pretzels, and this recipe fills that peculiarly twisted void in my heart. I like to further divide the two recommended loaves in half or smaller to make pretzel rolls and I try to lightly twist them into a rope and then into a roll shape to really get that “center of the pretzel” feeling.
April 17, 2020 — 10:24 PM
terribleminds says:
oh god yes
April 18, 2020 — 12:03 PM
Jess Smith says:
Whoops, put the wrong link… https://joyfoodsunshine.com/pretzel-bread/
Unless you want to watch the Phantom of the Opera. In which case, use the one in the original comment…
April 18, 2020 — 12:54 PM
Jennifer Dian says:
Re: bread
I’ve had extraordinarily good luck with any recipe I’ve tried from Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” and “Artisan Breads Everyday.”
If you make baguettes, a baguette pan is worth every penny.
April 17, 2020 — 11:21 PM
sylfarblog says:
Thank you for Fiona Apple ! I’m going to admit that I’ve never heard her name up until I started reading your mail. But now she’s playing on my Ipad and I like her a lot. So again- thanks!
April 18, 2020 — 4:49 AM
MicheBing says:
I love your blog – it feels like you’re inside my brain sometimes! And I’m in the f’n birthday club next week too, in south Jersey, at the shore, where I can’t do a thing (I usually do a roller coaster ride as a present to me). 55 this year, and I want a parade with superheros like all the kids are getting, though I know I won’t get that either. I do like apples quite a lot, and they are attainable, and though I’ve never tried Fiona, today might be the day.
April 18, 2020 — 9:25 AM
John says:
“Local republicans just wanting to hee-haw their way into kicking the doors open” is so dead-on for ALL republicans: DeSantis trying to put on a mask while he opens beaches; Vos wearing his best impression of a full hazmat suit while telling people it’s safe to go out and vote in Wisconsin; Mitch McConnell Mitch McConnelling everything he can get his hands on. Good luck to all of us, ‘cause we’re gonna need it.
April 18, 2020 — 10:53 AM
Lizza says:
I lived near Charlotte when that album (Tidal) came out, so I know how it felt to listen to it on a snowy morning ride to ‘make the doughnuts’ out in god’s country. It’s one of my all-timers too. That and O.K. Computer.
May 6, 2020 — 5:25 AM