Shall we play a game?

I'm going to need some audience participation here. Or, at least, some co-author participation.

For years, I've been fascinated by songs with titles that don't appear in the lyrics. It's pretty rare - at least in "mainstream" music. But not so rare that it hasn't jumped out and hit me from time to time. But I never remember to, say, write a blog entry. Or a FB Note. Or what have you. So, I have these lightning bolts of realization - hey, that's one of them! - and then I forget. Probably because I then drink something.

So. Let's make a list. Or, actually, two lists - I'm also going to accept songs where the title appears exactly once. The sad part is just how few things I can think of from my years of thinking about this. If I were to spend sober time thinking, I'd find more. But for now, I'll seed each list with exactly one song.

Title Does Not Appear:
Sympathy for the Devil, Rolling Stones


Title Appears Exactly Once:
Verdi Cries, 10000 Maniacs


Go!

Interpret My Star Wars Dream

Last night I had a dream.  There were some friends of mine being held captive by the enemy, who resided in an enormous...building?....on the other side of the valley.  Really, it was like part of the mountain, all the stuff was built right into the ground.  I made my way across the valley to rescue them no problem, and I sneaked inside the establishment.

At this point it became apparent that I was Luke Skywalker, complete with light saber.  It was a yellow light saber like the Luke Skywalker action figure had back in the 70s, except it didn't slide out of my arm.  It had a regular handle and you could turn it on and off.  In my dream, I mean.

Conversing with some nebulous figure, I concocted a plan to sneak into the control room of this mountain fortress and strike off the head of the enemy leader, using my light saber.  This guy was an Emperor-like figure but not the emperor himself.  Looked more like that Tars Taarken dude on the Death Star in Star Wars.  Some name like that anyway.  He didn't look like a big green bug, I don't want to confuse you if you google that name--there's some dude in Star Wars with a name kinda like that but not that.

The plan went well at first.  Using my light saber, I was able to cut open an electrical panel near the control room and screw up the circuits.  Then I posed as a maintenance worker, there to repair the pane.  Ideally, this would give me access to the control room itself at some point.  But when I activated the light saber, I noticed the blade was very weak...watery...translucent.  Just to test it out, I sneaked up behind some random Imperial dude and tried to slice off his head.  The blade passed right through his neck but didn't do anything.  It was nothing more than a light.  No saber quality.

Discouraged and pressed for time, I ran to a bathroom and started taking the light saber apart.  In theory, me being a Jedi, I knew how to build one.  It's one of the skills all Jedi must acquire.  But I unscrewed the top and a spring went sproing!  All these little washers and crap jumped out everywhere all over the bathroom floor.  I couldn't figure out how to put all the pieces together again.  Plus, the power supply was obviously low, which was why my blade was ineffective in the first place.

Interpret that, bloggers.

Song lyrics I got wrong (Billy Joel)

I was listening to Billy Joel this morning.  Some songs played that I used to hear as a kid, when my brother had Billy Joel's "Innocent Man" tape.

There's a line in "Tell Her about It" where Joel sings

give her every reason
to accept that you're for real

As a kid, I thought it was either "accept that Joe for real" (like the singer is just an ordinary Joe) or "accept that chump for real" (like the singer was a, well, chump).  In retrospect, those interpretations appear to be stupid.

From the same album comes the most hated Billy Joel song of all time, "Uptown Girl," which was naturally my favorite as a little kid.  The line in question goes

but maybe someday when my ship comes in
she'll understand what kind of guy I've been

Now.  As a wee bairn I was not familiar with the phrase "when one's ship comes in," so I was at a bit of a loss to translate that line.  I came up with two possibilities.  The first was "when my **** comes in," which sounded like something my mom would say.  It didn't make much sense, but had the advantage of being profane, which was certainly exciting.  The fact that the song was a radio hit, however, made me doubt that particular solution.

What I went with was "someday when my shirt comes in," which made sense to me because at that point in history my family was getting all of our clothes from the Sears catalogue.  It was a big deal with "shirts came in," because that meant we got new clothes.  Someone whose shirt had come in was certainly a better catch than someone wearing old clothes.

There's also a line in that song about "white breaded world" or "white threaded world" that I still haven't figured out.

I don't know what gamey tastes like or ozone smells like

I don't even know what "gamey" means.  It's just a word I've seen thrown around.

I need someone to give me two pieces of meat and say "this one's gamey and this one isn't," so I can learn the difference.  The word itself doesn't render up any taste imagery.  It sounds like parcheesi.  So maybe it tastes cheesy?  Cheese meat?  I don't think I would like that.  That's one of those rules, you can't mix cheese and meat, or eat octopuses.

Ozone is the same way.  People often use "whiff of ozone" in their fancy writing and I'm like, fine, but I don't ******* know what ozone smells like.  Somebody told me you can smell ozone from a photocopier.  I don't know.  I smell toner.  Is that the same thing?  I don't know.  I just don't know.

They say "Ooh, ozone smells like a thunderstorm" and I'm thinking it just smells like everything's wet.  I guess ozone smells wet.

Now, a wet dog, I know what that smells like.

Exotic meat weekend?

So, I went a little wild with weird meats this weekend. I had some ground buffalo that I bought at Whole Foods, and was looking for a recipe to use it in. I decided to go with a bolognese, and poked around the web for some variants. Epicurious had one with bison, which I figured was close enough. That recipe also called for antelope and/or venison. So I went out to Savenor's to see what I could find... and I found elk burgers. Close enough, mark 2? Why not.

Did that on Friday night, and it was really tasty! The buffalo is probably too close to beef to tell the difference in a tomato heavy sauce like this bolognese. But the elk definitely made the whole thing a little gamey. Which is good for me, but I was worried the husband wouldn't like it. In the end, I'm not sure he noticed.

I've got some of that left over, but it's going to have to wait... because today I'm doing python for lunch (also from Savenor's). Crazy, eh?!? Also, crazy expensive, but let's not worry about that. I'll post later with the results.

Oh, and I had the remaining elk burgers for lunch yesterday. I think they're TOO gamey to do that way. Tasty, but a bit overpowering. Ridiculously filling considering it was only ~ 1/3 pound.