Bacon Mashup

Caturday Covers

The original version of Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown…) is a pretty dumb song, like most Beatles songs (picture my middle finger but with, like, a smiley face drawn on it). It’s supposedly a thinly-veiled true story about some journalist lady who wouldn’t give John Lennon the sex, and so in the song version of the story he burns down her house. Obvs. But it’s borderline-legitimately interesting for being the first rock song to feature a sitar (or the first rock song where a white guy plays the sitar himself, or some shit). The sitar has nothing to do with anything other than George Harrison heard some dudes playing one and thought it sounded cool and thought Norwegian Wood “needed something,” that “something” apparently being “musical colonialism.” So whatever. Cut to 1 year later and the sixties and drugs and beards and shit and they’re all Hare Krishnas and now we forever associate the sound of sitars with filmic acid trips.

AND SO BUT cut to the mid-90’s and Cornershop records Norwegian Wood but ups the ante by singing the entire song in Punjabi. This is the only version of the song that I like. (You can pigeonhole Cornershop as some kind of 90s multicultural britpop gimmick because every frathole has only ever heard Brimful of Asha, but do yourself a favor and listen to Wog and 6am Jullandar Shere first, you monster.) It’s probably not accurate, but I want to imagine this version as Tjinder Singh pointedly re-appropriating the hippie appropriation of Indian music (and in the process making the song 800 times more enjoyable to listen to).

AND SO BUT ALSO cut to the mid-aughtsies and The Fiery Furnaces record Norwegian Wood for some Rubber Soul commerative thing and for some reason Eleanor Friedberger decides to sing the song in her later-period robot Bob Dylan voice (and in the process makes the song 800 times less enjoyable to listen to (by taking all that is lilting and pretty in the original and making it jerky and awkward, which is a pretty classic Fiery Furnaces move)) (nevertheless this is my second favorite version of the song). Again I want to believe that there is some kind of pointed music nerd commentary in singing a Beatles song in the voice of an animatronic Bob Dylan, but I’m fairly certain there’s not, because I’ve also read that she sometimes gives interviews in that voice.

BOEHNUS
All of this is to say that if you still have doubts about Cornershop, at least listen to this MIA remix of their song, Topknot, which is my 8th-ish favorite song in the world, and then think about the obvious parallels between how MIA is critiqued now and how Cornershop was critiqued then, and what a fucked up criticism it is to begin with.

Nurses Who Kill

Lox and Bagels

Start with this bagel recipe that begins the night before.  The next day find a different recipe when you realize you’ve used the wrong yeast. Boil them for a minute.

Bake them and they’re done because it’s easy.

The smoked salmon smoked for about 5 hours. I brined it in 1 to 1 salt and brown sugar.  I thought it was too salty but no one else cared.  Next time I’ll only brine it for maybe 5 hours and double the brown sugar.

Serve with veggies and Four Loko premium caffeinated alcoholic beverage.

Turns out you can make cream cheese by draining plain yogurt.  It was soft.

Andrew W.K. Does the Weather

As he always should

Drunk History