Tapestry/Carole King (1971) Wow! If Carole King can’t make the earth move under your feet, it’s too late; you’re probably so far away, out in the cold, and way over yonder that you don’t know about smackwater Jack. If you’d like to come home again, where you can be part of the beautiful tapestry, remember that you’ve got a friend and where you lead, I’ll follow, but will you love me tomorrow?

Track Listing:
1 I Feel the Earth Move
2 So Far Away
3 It’s Too Late
4 Home Again
5 Beautiful
6 Way Over Yonder
7 You’ve Got a Friend
8 Where You Lead
9 Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
10 Smackwater Jack
11 Tapestry
12 (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman
13 Out in the Cold
14 Smackwater Jack

Renee Olstead/Renee Olstead (2004) This bright young thing is an actress who caught David Foster’s ear. She has a surprisingly mature voice for her age. I particularly like “Midnight on the Oasis.”

Track Listing:
1 Summertime
2 Taking a Chance On Love
3 Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby
4 Someone to Watch Over Me
5 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
6 A Love That Will Last
7 Meet Me, Midnight
8 Sunday Kind of Love
9 On a Slow Boat to China
10 What a Difference a Day Makes
11 Midnight at the Oasis
12 Sentimental Journey

This slim volume documents Bryson’s tour of CARE facilites throughout Kenya. It is tragic to see the level of poverty.

I always wondered what it would be like to consume a panoply of pharmacopoeia while washing it down with booze. Not exactly a “scared straight” adventure, but definitely a head scratcher. How he had enough brain cells left to write the Rolling Stone articles that became this book is far beyond my comprehension. Thompson and his attorney go to Vegas in 1971 ostensibly to write one article about a motorcycle race in the desert and another about a convention of District Attorneys discussing the serious problems of the drug culture. Whether those articles got written, I don’t know, but at least he wrote about the experience. This book contained illustrations drawn by Ralph Steadman and if the reader isn’t already having nightmares from Thompson’s prose the artwork will finish them off.

There are many Americans who believe that President Bush, by virtue of his many speeches, budget appropriations and declarations, is leading a war on terror. By using the word “war” he expects to have certain legal, constitutional, “wartime” presidential powers and privileges that allow him to operate in the manner to which he and his cabal need. As long as he is fighting this “war” without a real named opponent (the terrorists) with whom he could negotiate an end to this “war,” it will not end. He didn’t declare war on Iraq. He didn’t declare war on the Middle East. He declared war on an ideal. There are even US Representatives and Senators who believe that this is just a legitimate war that can no longer be won. They have bought into the notion that they gave the President the power to declare war. They did not. They voted to allow him to bring the perpetrators of the attacks on 9/11/2001 to justice. Even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction within his borders, he and his country cannot be connected to that attack. The invasion of Iraq is not a declared, legitimate war despite our president’s efforts to instill this idea in the minds of the American government and people.

The other night, I reclined in my favorite chair, watching television and absently reached for the half-eaten banana on the table to my right. As I brought it to my mouth, something fell from it and I thought it might be a bit of the peel. I absently brushed my hand across my shirt and to my horror, it was not a piece of blackened banana peel that scurried down my lap and off my leg, but a huge hairy spider that I must have disturbed as he ate my abandoned fruit. I screamed appropriately and despite the Househusband’s incontrovertible testimony that the arachnid had fled the scene and no longer dwelt in the living room, I continued to feel his eight furry legs whispering across my appendages throughout the evening. I would only have been calmed by said Househusband brandishing said villain incarcerated in an empty peanut butter jar on his way to banishment in the garden. As that didn’t happen, I can only tell you that residual feelings of discomfort remain despite the ever-vigilant four legged, black, furry protector perched across my abdomen.

100 años de Mariachi/Plácido Domingo (1999) I probably should have included this album last week, but I think my mother-in-law would understand. This is high art meeting folk music and the result is superb.

Track Listing:
1 Paloma Querida
2 La Malaguena
3 Pa’ Todo el Ano
4 De Que Manera Te Olvido
5 Como Olvidar
6 Tequila Con Limon
7 La Rondalla
8 Ella
9 Mas Fuerte Que Yo
10 Ay, Jalisco No Te Rajes!
11 El Jinete
12 Sí Nos Dejan
13 Cuando Sale la Luna
14 Yo Soy Mexicano
15 Amaneci en Tus Brazos
16 La Feria de las Flores

The Greatest Hits Collection/Bobby Goldsboro (2004) I have to admit that many of these tracks seem schlocky to me, but my mom loved them. A friend of my dad wrote “Little Green Apples” so I have a soft spot in my heart for it. In the seventies, Goldsboro had a variety show on television.

Track Listing:
1 Honey
2 The Straight Life
3 With Pen in Hand
4 Muddy Mississippi Line
5 Blue Autumn
6 Little Things
7 Summer (The First Time)
8 Watchin’ Scotty Grow
9 See the Funny Little Clown
10 The Cowboy and the Lady
11 Broomstick Cowboy
12 It’s Too Late
13 Autumn of My Life
14 Hello, Summertime
15 I’m a Drifter
16 Brand New Kind of Love
17 Kids Are People Too
18 Little Green Apples
19 If You’ve Got a Heart
20 Whenever He Holds You
21 A Butterfly for Bucky

The Best of the 3 Tenors/ The Three Tenors (2002) This album is a great combination of tunes from movie musicals and classical arias. They take turns doing group pieces and tracks featuring them individually. “Nessun Dorma” is one of Pavarotti’s signature pieces.

Track Listing:
1 ‘O sole mio
2 Funiculì, funiculà
3 Libiamo ne’lieti calici (Brindisi)
4 Sous le ciel de Paris
5 El Gato Montes: Si Torero Quiero Se: El Gato Montes: Si Torero Quiero Se
6 Parlami d’amore, Mariù
7 Black Orpheus: Manha do Carnaval
8 Lolita
9 Dicitencello vuie
10 Core ‘ngrato
11 Because
12 Carousel: You’ll never walk alone
13 Singin’ in the Rain: Singin’ in the Rain
14 West Side Story – ‘O paese d’o sole – Cielito lindo
15 Ochi tchorniye – Caminito – La vie en rose-
16 Mattinata. – Wien, Wien, nur du allein – – Amapola
17 Lippen schweigen
18 Brazil
19 Sous les ponts de Paris (Under The Bridges Of Paris)
20 Torna a Surriento
21 Nessun dorma
22 La donna è mobile

The Number One Hits/Elvis Presley (1987) My mom and I are both awful singers, but we couldn’t help singing along with Elvis. One of her favorite movies was “Love Me Tender” with the title song, but she never missed an opportunity to see an Elvis movie and I still remember a night at the drive-in watching three Elvis movies in a row. We had our own greasy grocery bag filled with freshly popped corn and watched “Speedway,” “Clambake” and the concert film, “Elvis: That’s the Way it Is.”

Track Listing:
1 Heartbreak Hotel
2 I Want You, I Need You
3 Hound Dog
4 Don’t Be Cruel
5 Love Me Tender
6 Too Much
7 All Shook Up
8 (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear
9 Jailhouse Rock
10 Don’t
11 Hard Headed Woman
12 A Big Hunk O’ Love
13 Stuck On You
14 It’s Now Or Never
15 Are You Lonesome Tonight?
16 Surrender
17 Good Luck Charm
18 Suspicious Minds