Big Leather Couch

Remember to get over and visit TRAVIS of "Trav's Thoughts", because NO ONE does a DWTS recap like our buddy Travis...

Went into the archives because last week I showed these pots empty and cold looking. Click on the logo above to see the other lovers of Mary/The Teach's weekly photo meme...

This is from the past summer...the deck at Nancy's...when the flowers are beautiful! And there is some green in there for the St. Paddy's day theme...

Other than that...any suggestions, loves, hates, cash?

It looks like a food blog will be forthcoming...now that it is in my brain, I am liking the idea more and more. As I said, it will not be a five day a week posting...more like one and two some weeks.

It is that time of year again...and I know many of you have your pools you are in every year, but if you are looking for ONE MORE...then, maybe this one is for you...

The March Madness Pool is back and it will, once again, help raise funds for the continued success of the West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South Baseball Program.

Over the last 6 years, a total exceeding $5000 has been raised. The donations have helped build dugouts, buy a scoreboard and purchase equipment to help improve the skills of the players. In addition it has provided scholarships for players who have difficulty participating in the teams annual spring training trip.

The pool will be managed on the CBS Sports Line website.

There will be a $20 entrance fee with the distribution of your donation as follows:

$10 will be donated to the West Windsor-Plainsboro Pirate Baseball Team
$10 will go towards the bracket pool

If you participated in our pool in previous years, you can log on to the CBS Sports Line web site using your previous user id and password. There are instructions on the web site to help recover them if you cannot remember them. The other alternative is to create a new account. If you have any questions, please email

You can email me for the password and League ID

The pool distribution will be as follows.
1. 70% Winner Share
2. 20% Runner-up
3. 10% Third place

You must be at least 21 years old to play. This event is not sponsored or endorsed by the West Windsor-Plainsboro School System.

Please make checks payable to the WWPHS Pirate Baseball Booster Club. Checks must be received by March 28th.

I will send you the snail mail address to send the check.

I made something for the first time this weekend...it is called "Deer Duey"...Do you know what it is? Do you have a guess?

Well, it will be the subject of my first new food blog...which will happen soon...

bwahahahahahahaha...

Stacey Oristano plays “Mindy Collette” on NBC’s critically acclaimed drama, Friday Night Lights.

Her character is described as a “stripper with a heart of gold.”

Jamie Masada, founder of the world famous Laugh Factory comedy club, is calling on Congress to act immediately on a $700 Thousand Comedy Bail-Out.

Brian Fischler is a legally blind comedian.
The one-time Maxim Magazine Comedian of the Month is the Founder/President of Comedians Unite For Sight, a not for profit that produces Laugh For Sight, a yearly comedy benefit that raises money for retinal degenerative eye diseases.

• Dangerous Lee co-hosts

• Vinny Bond sits on his Big Leather Couch to chat live with the listeners

• Justin the Weatherman delivers a forecast

• A quick and dirty March Madness preview with Chris Datres

• and we’ll take your calls at 646-652-4804

Hope you scrolled all the way down for a treat...a well written song, the perfect pairiing and the most incredible interpretation...usually credited to Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt. The lyrics were written by Gus Kahn. This is the version recorded by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald in New York on August 25, 1950 and released on Decca 27209.

ENJOY....

TO BEGIN....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY LOVE!!!!

Today is my angel's birthday and we will
not even be together as she travels.

KISSES AND HUGS!

Hoping your Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus Holidays were spectacular and you did not have to utter one HECK-A-DOODLE the entire time...

We had a most wonderful time. Christmas Eve, I went down and met Nancy to do some shopping for Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day Antipasto and New Year's Eve dinner. Then on back home to start prepping dinner.

Now, in our home Christmas Eve is the dinner of the 'Seven Fishes'. This comes from Mom Joan's side of the family really. Many southern Italians around the world celebrate Christmas Eve with a Feast of the Seven Fishes (festa dei sette pesci), it is also known as La Vigilia (The Vigil).

It is a meal that typically consists of seven different seafood dishes. Some Italian families have been known to celebrate with 9, 11 or 13 different seafood dishes. This celebration is a commemoration of the wait, Vigilia di Natale, for the midnight birth of the baby Jesus.

I really never understood the meaning of the reason for the 'Seven Fishes' until a few years ago. The tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve dates from the medieval Catholic tradition of abstinence. As a Catholic, you were never to eat meat on Friday's or Holy Days. Now, we did not always follow that on all Holy Days. I mean, what is Christmas without a big Roast beef?

From wikipedia:
There are many hypotheses for what the number "7" relates to, one being the number of Sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church. Another theory is that seven is a number representing perfection: the traditional Biblical number for divinity is three, and for Earth is four, and the combination of these numbers, seven, represents God on Earth, or Jesus Christ.

Out of the 'typical fare', we always teased the menu slightly. Most years, while growing up, we would drive to New City, NY to my cousins Donnie and Linda's, where there would be 20+ people gathered. A large table was set up in the family room and the food flowed throughout the evening.

A typical menu was:
* Stuffed calamari
* Stuffed-baked clam
* Deep fried calamari
* Deep fried fish and shrimp
* Linguine with clam sauce
* Baccalà
* Octopus salad
* Mussels Fra Diavolo

This year I bought some fresh clams and some Talapia. I made a white clam sauce with half the clams and steamed the rest to eat alone. The Talapia, I soaked in milk with dill and some Texas Pete's Hot Sauce and then floured it before sauteing in some olive oil and butter.

The boys came by for a while to read "A Night Before Christmas", a tradition they have with their mom, and open one present before going back to their dad's for the evening.

Some neighbors stopped by and we talked for a while and by the time everyone had left and Nancy and I finished cooking dinner, we finally sat down to eat about 10:15 or so. By the time we finished getting ready for the morning and opening a gift from each other it was almost 2:30 in the morning.

We woke around 8:30 and immediately began prepping breakfast. The boys had been promised one of our special breakfasts. Nancy and I kick a** on this...French Toast (using Italian Bread), BACON, pork sausage patties, home fries, and scrambled eggs.

The boys arrived and we left everything ready to finish up in the kitchen and moved into the family room. The boys opened their presents with abandon and then they headed to the neighbors to compare bounty.

Nancy and I got breakfast ready when the boys and the neighbor kids showed up. Asked if they wanted to join us, both kids, Katy (14) and Jacob (9) accepted readily, so we set two more plates and sat down to dig in.

It was great!

Unfortunately, then I had to run home, as a package had been delivered after I had left the day before and it could not sit outside until I returned home that evening.

Once that was done, we all headed to Nancy's sister's home for their Christmas celebration. As mentioned above, I was bringing my antipasto platter. The meal was all finger foods.

It is different from what my family has done, but the meal you eat is not as important as the people you spend the time celebrating. After the meal, presents were exchanged and then Nancy's mom (Momma Dot), put the kids to work, breaking them into two groups - boys & girls - and sending them off to come up with a Christmas song to sing, the winners to get more bounty!

The boys did a much better job than the girls did and collected their gain. I have been warmly welcomed into this family and it is very special. Nancy's sister told me "Well, you are now being treated as a family member, you and Nancy are getting a gift together." It made me smile.

AND it turned out there was a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Fesitvus/Gift Of The Magi Miracle on top of it all!

Y'all know the story of The Gift Of The Magi, by O' Henry (not the candy bar, the poet), wherein Jim Dillingham Young and his wife Della are a young couple who are very much in love with each other, but can barely afford their one-room apartment due to their very bad economic situation.

For Christmas, Della decides to buy Jim a chain which costs twenty dollars for his prized pocket watch given to him by his father. To raise the funds, she has her long hair cut off and sold to make a wig. Meanwhile, Jim decides to sell his watch to buy Della a beautiful set of combs made out of tortoise shell for her lovely, knee-length brown hair.

Although each is disappointed to find the gift they chose rendered useless, each is pleased with the gift they received, because it represents their love for one another.

Well, here is how it worked in our world this year...

Our good friend MATT-MAN from "Bagwine Ruminations" owned a leather jacket....

Matt-Man told everyone he looked hot in the jacket, and his friends all told him it was so, instead of telling him the truth that he looked like an un-cast extra on a remake of West Side Story set in Des Moines, Iowa...

On Friday, I began digitizing some cassette tapes. Mom Joan and Dad Vince left their cassette deck behind. About 15 years ago a friend worked in the Warner Family of companies. They released a CD set that was The Warner/Chappell Collection. W/C is the music publishing arm of Warner brothers.

It was started back to 1929, when Jack Warner, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc., founded Music Publishers Holding Company (MPHC) to acquire music copyrights as a means of providing inexpensive music for films. Among the historic compositions of which the publishing rights are controlled by WMG are the works of Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

I had duped it onto cassette and now I am adding it to my iTunes. It is a remarkable collection of music. On one cassette there is Talking Heads, Frank Sinatra, Barry White, Bing Crosby, Willie Nelson, The Coasters, Madonna and Wham!

It was a 40 disc set, that took up 26 90-minute cassette tapes. So much Ella and Lena Horne and the like. I am having a blast transferring this stuff.

In the evening I met Nancy and the Boys to see a Mississippi River Kings hockey game. A Church group form where they lived prior to their home now, comes up to see a game every year and it was really nice to meet some of the people I have heard about over the last year.

Saturday was the last of the shopping for New Year's (except the fish, which I ordered yesterday and will pick up on Wednesday morning), Prep some of the dishes and spend the day alone with Nancy.

She has to go back down to Jackson Sunday afternoon to finalize two more deals...my baby is rockin' this job!

As we said the other day, we will have a post tomorrow, and then Wednesday morning you will find a New Year's Eve Mix to enjoy.

Our next post after that will be Monday, the 5th, here pictures and stories (those that can be shared), of New Year's Eve will be shared.

The following Monday, we will begin anew with New Music Monday...bringing you 2 new artists and giving you the chance to own their music.

Spread the word if you will...let people know there is music out there to be had!

See y'all tomorrow.

From the newest digitization...two I really love having at my fingertips once again...

Mr. Wilson Pickett, "634-5789"...and Ms. Ella Fitzgerald, "Blue Room"...

ENJOY....

Excellent job Pia...Exactly correct...
BAND: Jerry Garcia - unofficial
SONG: My Funny Valentine
BAND MEMBERS: Jerry Garcia (guitar), Merle Saunders (organ), Bill Vitt (drums), John Kahn (bass)
ALBUM: Live At The Keystone Volume 2

This is a tremendous album as is Volume One ...
both albums contain superb performances drawn from the quartet's
July 10-11, 1973, run in the intimate confines of Keystone Korners in Berkeley.
For this song, the band does not do their interpretation, they pretty
much take the song apart and rebuild it to their taste.


We will come back to this at another time...

For today...other interpretations of this tremendous song...
as our friend from Canada pointed out,
this classic is by Lorenz Hart & Richard Rogers...

Enjoy with your angel, your honey-bunny, your love, your cuddles,
your darling, your DH or DW....sweet

ELLA:

FRANK: (hope this one works)

SARAH:

CARLY:

ROD: (another one giving me troubles)

BARBRA:


NOW, Go back and listen to the Garcia/Saunders/Kahn & Vitt
version and see how brilliant it really it...

ENJOY ALL...tomorrow, a special story about
a special person in the music business