Take Me to the Pilot of Your Soul

A Trump Storm

The great thing about  past news is that you rarely care about it just a short time later.  Months ago, Trump in church was the talk of the town on this day along with a gnarly windy sleet storm here in Brooklyn.  At the time it seemed important and I recall having tons of thoughts on it.   Yet, this slow cooker chicken chili is what will be etched in my mind from that cold day. 

Black Bean Chicken Chili

Want You to Know You Shaped This Heart of Mine

Diner BBLT - Burger Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato

Having essentially a bacon burger on toast gives happy old school diner vibes to an interesting time of lunch meals with music buyers and friends at the Evergreen Diner in Times Square back in my record store days.  A place for the locals instead of tourists and male waiters that never wrote anything down even for a party of 8.  A magical space where time stood still in mostly good ways.  I mean you wouldn't want to go the the bathroom or look too closely at the kitchen but they all still considered this a legitimate job.  These grown men had full lives as evident in their faraway eyes as they smoked cheap cigarettes down to the end right outside of the front entrance before squashing the butt on the sidewalk with their shoe like bad ideas.  A place to be remembered.  Nothing was great, but everything was just right.

Evergreen Coffee Shop Restaurant - Gone but not forgotten

New buddy; Lefty 'Karl' Goodman from Murray, Kentucky

This little kitty has famous lineage as he was adopted for us by S.G. Goodman herself, the highly gifted singer also from Kentucky. 

I do not own this video

Do You Believe in Magic?

Our friend J was to play a show for the CMJ Music Marathon. A city-wide music festival that's billed as the most important platform for the discovery of new music. Five days and nights, over 1300 bands, over 80 venues... Anyway, it used to mean something. Now, we weren't sure. Who are these industry professionals? All but a handful of retail are gone, most of sales, promotion and marketing lost their jobs at the labels and distribution centers. Radio is a joke. Who is left except all the struggling musicians with no clear avenues or support system or industry to speak of really at all.

But despite those truths, the kids were out at the clubs it seemed in full force. J's set was great, even kinda magical with the lighting and the big white piano on the stage.

And the bonus was as with anytime we have reason to be out in the city, we get a nice dinner out on the town. This time at Republic, the restaurant also with unique billing. Its said to be created like no other restaurant in America. Republic offers a non-traditional cuisine that combines a variety of ingredients, spices and cooking methods from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and China. The decor is minimal and communal but for some reason, I love it there. It's very loud and open so you don't notice you're sitting next to people. But the best thing is the food is right on time and mighty fine!

I used to go to Republic when I worked at the Virgin Union Square store for lunch and I used to attend the CMJ Marathon every year for many years. I won't bore you with the memories it brought back being there.

Instead I'll bore you with my story about how scary and ghostlike that stupid bar was. I felt like I was in a dream that if I stepped outside, I might be in another dimension. I couldn't concentrate on what anyone was saying all night.

Doesn't the lighting look like a movie set? Where the hell were we that night? The people didn't even seem real to me. More like extras in the background of a good movie, not the kind they have sitting around on a tv show. They were passable as real but yet they didn't seem to be alive.

Dead movie set extras? I don't know what kind of hoo doo was going on that night but I was spooked and thrilled when P was ready to leave.

We hailed a cab and got the cmj out of there!