Tag Archives: Music

Apr13

Travel Theme: Benches, Part Deux

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I had forgotten about this funny, quirky, adorable song when I wrote my previous “bench” blog, but my boyfriend kindly reminded me of its existence.  Originally written by French singer-songwriter/poet Georges Brassens, Les Amoreux des Bancs Publics is all about couples making out on park benches.  If this doesn’t belong in Ailsa‘s bench-themed blog, I don’t quite know what does.

Below are the original and a translated version, and below those are the lyrics.  Enjoy!

LES AMOUREUX DES BANCS PUBLICS

Words and Music : Georges Brassens

Les gens qui voient de travers

Pensent que les bancs verts

Qu’on voit sur les trottoirs

Sont faits pour les impotents ou les ventripotents

Mais c’est une absurdite

Car, a la verite

Ils sont la, c’est notoire

Pour accueillir quelques temps les amours debutants

CHORUS
Les amoureux qui s’becotent sur les bancs publics

Bancs publics, bancs publics

En s’foutant pas mal des r’gards obliques

des passants honetes

Les amoureux qui s’becotent sur les bancs publics

Bancs publics, bancs publics

En s’disant des *je t’aime* pathetiques

Ont des p’tites gueules bien sympathiques

Ils se tiennent par la main

Parlent du lendemain

Du papier bleu d’azur

Que revetiront les murs de leur chambre a coucher

Ils se voient deja douc’ment

Elle cousant, lui fumant

Dans un bien-etre sur

Et choisissent les prenoms de leur premier bebe…

CHORUS

Quand la sainte famille Machin

Croise sur son chemin

Deux de ces malappris

Elle leur decroche hardiment des propos venimeux

N’empeche que toute la famille

Le pere, la mere, la fille, le fils, le saint-esprit

Voudrait bien de temps en temps

Pouvoir s’conduire comme eux.

CHORUS

Quand les mois auront passe

Quand seront apaises

Leur beaux reves flambants

Quand leur ciel se couvrira de gros nuages lourds

Ils s’apercevront emus,

Qu’c'est au hasard des rues

Sur un d’ces fameux bancs

Qu’ils ont vecu le meilleur morceau de leur amour

CHORUS (x2)

THE PUBLIC BENCHES

by Georges Bressens, translated and performed by Pierre de Gaillande 

People who see upside-down

Think the benches around

The sidewalks and the streets

Are made only for the impotent or the obese

But it’s an absurdity

For in reality

These venerable seats

Are there to accommodate young lovers when they meet

Chorus:

Young lovers kissing on park benches publicly,

Publicly, publicly

Not giving the slightest damn for the

Honest people’s stares

Young lovers kissing on park benches publicly,

Publicly, publicly

Saying “I love you” pathetically

Look pretty nice if you ask me

As they sit there holding hands

They speak of future plans

Of sky blue wallpaper

That will dress the pretty walls of their nuptial bedside

They see what tomorrow knows

He’s smoking while she sews

Their happiness assured

While deliberating the name of their first-born child

Chorus

When the noble what’s-their-names

Happen to contemplate

Two of these so-and-so’s

They never hesitate to toss out some venomous names

Though the entire family clan

The mom, the girl, the dad

The son, the Holy Ghost

Wouldn’t mind once in a while behaving just the same

Chorus

When the heady months have ceased

When they will have appeased

All of their burning dreams

When their sky grows heavy with the darkening clouds above

They will sadly come to see

That it was on these streets

Upon these famous seats

That they lived the greatest moments of their budding love

Chorus

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Feb8

Delicious Meat-Shell Pie: The Musical!

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My boyfriend, who I think may be clinically insane, was so profoundly inspired by my post about cooking with soup and the majesty that is a Meat-Shell Pie that he has set the recipe to music.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=733401&songID=12156288&showPlayer=true

It’s chock full of oo-ooo’s and alludes to the wonderous Kitchen of the Future, and (if I may be so bold) is kind of genius.

Mmmmm...MMMM!

Mmmmm…MMMM!

OK, so maybe “The Musical!” was a little over the top but it’s still a song about a pie with a shell made out of meat.  And that’s pretty tasty, no matter how you slice it.

Feb1

Travel Theme: Shadows

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All hail the mighty Groundhog!  Long may he reign!

In honor of Groundhog Day, Ailsa has decreed this week’s travel theme to be: Shadows.  So to celebrate my shadowy side I figured I’d look at the rascally bunch of ne’er-do-wells I am privileged to be friends with.

Damn musicians.  Step out into the sunlight every so often, people.  These aren’t the tidiest or least grainy pictures I’ve ever taken, but I had a lot of fun taking them.  :)

Anyway.  First up!  Check out the local favorite Snakes Are Strong, a punk band who trades vocals between their male and female singer a la the band X.  SAS likes to play with their set lighting by projecting a movie–usually some kind of trippy horror flick–over the band.  Below is a picture of the drummer, Pete, and you can see the shadows of the other two members of the bad, Jeff and Brianna, off to the right.  The band’s movie of choice for this performance–I would bet money on this–is Dario Argento‘s Suspiria.

Pete, beasting it on the drums while Brianna and Jeff loom menacingly to the side.

Pete, beasting it on the drums while Brianna and Jeff loom menacingly to the side.

Next:  Drift Division.  My friend Andy’s band played at our gem of an art deco movie house, the Campus Theatre, right here in beautiful downtown Lewisburg.  The band set up in front of the movie screen and also had a film (made for them by a friend of theirs) that projected over them as they played, which seems like a no-brainer when you’ve got a giant screen behind you just begging to be used.

Shadowy men playing moody music.

Shadowy men playing moody music.

And then there’s: Fear Factory.  This taken when I went to see Burt at a show in Philadelphia, and what I love about this picture is that Burt isn’t the primary focus but rather, it’s the silhouettes of the fans up front.  Because the fist pump and the metal horns?  Yeah.  That’s what it’s all about.

Metal. \m/

Metal! \m/

And finally, because my boyfriend starting giving me a hard time about my choice of Fear Factory picture (“Technically that’s a silhouette, not a shadow” he said, to which I replied, “I don’t think Ailsa’s going to call the blog police on me,” though maybe I’m wrong), here is me.  And what is clearly, inarguably, a shadow.  Taken  at Jockey’s Ridge State Park in North Carolina, from the top of one mo’fo’ of a sand dune.

HELLO.

HELLO.

Go check out the rest of the blogs at Ailsa’s travel theme!  You know you want to join in on the fun.  See you there.

Dec5

Music: An Interview with Ellis Paul

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This interview also appeared in the Local Music Collective Newsletter

Guitar-totin’ folk singer Ellis Paul is a busy man.  He tours anywhere between 150 and 200 days a year.  He writes every day.  And he is preparing to record his 18th album, the latest in a series of albums he is recording independently since leaving his former label in 2005.  After a recent performance at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Paul sat down with me for a few minutes to talk about songwriting and the pros and cons of recording without a label.

‘ssup?

Paul broke with his former label and started the process of independently-funded music when he decided he wanted full creative control over his work.   He says, “You have to please people who aren’t you, and the reason you’re trying to do that is because they’re the ones who are paying for everything–the studio time, the mixing, the marketing.  You keep clamoring for the attention of the label executives who, understandably, want a positive return on their investment.  The big problem with that thinking is, the labels want to pigeonhole artists and have them create songs that are more formulaic and will end up on the radio.”

He continues, “When I work without a label, I’m only responsible to my fans, and myself.  With fan-funded music, you get to make all the choices, create your own deadlines, own all your own masters.  The downside is that you then have to pretend you’re a record label, and do your own marketing and promotion, which is not my favorite part of the industry.”

Bring it home, Ellis.

Playing Guinness, his beloved guitar, in fine form after a prolonged repair due to a tragic speaker incident.

Paul says his music has benefited by becoming more broad since he’s struck out on his own.  A former track athlete who didn’t start playing guitar until an injury sidelined him in college, he says, “I’ve been able to explore music I haven’t had a chance to yet.  I started playing in college and writing my own stuff as soon as I learned to play, so I didn’t have that high school cover band experience.  I don’t know a lot of covers.  Reinterpreting other people’s music alters the way you understand chords and song structure and so the vocabulary you’ve developed with your own music changes.  I’ve written a list of 200 songs by other artists I admire, and my goal is to learn them all.  And we’ll see how that impacts my writing.”

Songwriting, says Paul, is a combination of crafting and inspiration, and good songs find a successful balance between the two.  ”When I’m working on a new album, I probably break in six or seven new songs on the road.  I like to watch how my audience responds to a song because it helps keep me in balance.  If inspiration takes over, it’s easy to start trying to be increasingly clever in your phrasing, or keep making cloaked references, and in doing so you can lose sight of what the song is about.  Conversely, if you give craft too much control, then your song can become contrived and joyless and your audience can start to follow how you think.  Playing new songs live can be a great way to stay self-aware and determine if you’re over-crafting or if you’re being too clever for your own good.”

Here’s a song already written for his upcoming album.

This article will also appear in an upcoming issue of the Local Music Collective newsletter.  

Sep22

What I’m Watching: High Fidelity

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I have a confession to make.  It’s not that I never saw High Fidelity; it’s more that I saw it at exactly the wrong point in my life and have shunned High Fidelity for years.

Let me explain.

When High Fidelity first came out, I was sort of in an “I’m over John Cusack” state of mind so I didn’t go see it in the movies, despite the allure of the record store setting.  (For the unknowing: I worked in a record store for a few years in high school, and it was pretty fantastic.  A thousand years later I’m still friends with many of my former co-workers and we get to music-geek out anew whenever we get together, much to the chagrin of our spouses and partners.  And I digress.)  When I DID see it…

I had taken a road trip to Massachusetts to visit some friends of mine a few weeks after my ex-husband and I split up.  Even though I was the one who initiated the split, it was still a difficult transitional period; I had unraveled the fabric of my life and had no idea what was next other than that I wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.  My friends (you know who you are, ladies, and I still love you!  XO) thought it would be totally girly to watch a John Cusack movie together, since they’re usually funny and full of endearingly pithy bumblings.  Normally they’d be right. I didn’t really know what the movie was about except that it was sort of a disaffected Gen-X romantic comedy that took place in a record store.  I think I’d only ever seen the trailer…

…which doesn’t exactly tell you that the movie opens with John Cusack’s girlfriend moving out as they end their long-term relationship, and then launches into a diatribe about Rob Gordon (Cusack)’s Top Five breakups…

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Did you know you can develop an eye twitch in just 4 minutes and 39 seconds?  It’s true.  I timed it.  My friends stopped the film perhaps five or six minutes in and asked me if I wanted to watch something else but I said, “Oh, no.  It’s too late now, I’m sure I’ve seen the worst of it,” which was true.  We watched it through to the end and while there was no other part of the movie that punched me in the throat, the damage was done.  I haven’t seen it since.  Despite the allure of the record store stuff.  Despite the inherent music geekery.  But!  As I am a resilient human being, I’ve thought for a while now that I really ought to watch it again.

So I did.

First, I have to make note as to how my sensibilities have changed.  There was a part of me that wanted to retitle the movie to John Cusack Smokes, because he’s got a grit in nearly every scene, which at one point in my life I would have thought was totally cool, if it had even registered as something worth my notice.

Second, they nail the music geekery.  So.  So.  Well.  This “Top 5 Songs About Death” scene nearly killed me, it was so spot-on.

Especially because there was an immediate disqualification involving an unspoken, never-before-considered and organically understood rule of what “counts”.  Genius!  And the part where Rob Gordon discusses the rules of the mixtape?  Perfection.  When Rob reorganizes his record collection autobiographically?  Wow.  I mean, I’ve got mine organized alphabetically by group or artist, and then alphabetically by title for those groups in which there is more than one album.  And I have argued with the people who have them categorized alphabetically by artist and then, for more than one record by an artist, chronologically.  Oh, yes, I’ve argued.  Passionately.  But autobiographically?  Never.  The mind wobbles.  Oh!  And the line, “Get your patchouli stink outta my store” should be immortalized the world over, because I was with Rob on that.  I mean, I was really with him on that.

And I also…it gives me much chagrin to say this…I loved…I mean, loved…Jack Black in this film.  Sure, he was the asshole snotty record store guy, but he was awesome.  Passionate.  Funny.  Abrasive, of course, but he kept his eyebrows under control and didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time mugging for the camera.  Maybe I liked him so much because my perceptions are colored by his latter-day tendency to rely on facial contortions but nevertheless, his performance gets a win from me.

But.

But!

I can honestly say, without the impact of a recent breakup influencing me, that I really didn’t like this movie all that much.  I thought Rob Gordon was a terrible person who didn’t deserve any of the girlfriends he had.  I thought the writers didn’t give him enough time to grow up as much as he supposedly grew up in this movie.  I didn’t believe in his journey, and I didn’t believe that {{{spoiler alert}}} Laura came back to him for any reason other than it was preferable to re-entering the dating scene.   The movie was written by Nick Hornby, who I know can give the world a believable coming-of-adulthood story about a self-absorbed man-child since he did that so wonderfully in About A Boy.  I found it a little sad that this movie–which I had given so much negative energy to for so long because of bad timing–was really kind of an emotional letdown.  Though it’s nice to finally have that weird little clutch purse of emotional baggage destroyed.

As an aside…if you want to watch a great record store movie (even with the few temporal flaws and leaps of logic you would have to accept), watch Empire Records.  (Please enjoy the slightly extended scene below.)

And so, there you have it.  I need to go watch all of Empire Records now, I feel it calling to me.  I’m sure I’ll write about this movie soon enough.  Though it always begs this question of me: why do so many of my favorite movies feature Liv Tyler?

Aug21

H! Challenge: Headstock

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Headstock.  Not to be confused with Woodstock… I like to take photos of the headstocks of guitars.  Or basses.  Stringed instruments, really, and it’s just a matter of time until I co-opt my friend’s little girl’s violin for a photo shoot.  What?  No, she’ll be fine.  I’ll just distract her from her pursuit of mastering the scales with the clever use of television and candy.

Because people, I give.  AND, then I get to feel all cool and be like, pish-tosh, these silly old geetars?  You mean the ones my groovy musician boyfriend plays?

True story:  I was on the phone with a friend of mine, catching up, and was telling her about my new boyfriend (this was, clearly, years ago).  She asked what he was like and I said, you know, nice, smart, plays guitar, has a band.  She was silent for about fifteen seconds and then said, “So you’re FINALLY dating a musician, huh?” and I’m like, “God, YES!  And the best part is, he’s a musician, but he’s totally stable!”  Anyway.  Ahh, memories.

So.  I started playing around with photographing instruments, but felt like I hooked into something when I took the following picture of my brother’s bass.

Where it all began.

Usually I end up having a photo shoot with one of George’s guitars.  They don’t demand pay, I don’t have to worry about their late night parties with the newly-single Johnny Depp.  Though he is a musician too, so maybe I’m being a little cavalier here.

Anyway.

Below are some of my favorite pictures I’ve taken of George’s electric and acoustic guitars.  This is how a photo shoot goes in my house.

Yes, that’s a record in the background.

The first thing George said was, “Wow, that’s really dusty.”  I said, “Don’t think of it as dust.  Think of it as the spirits of great notes come to rest on your guitar.”

Nah, I’m just messing with you.  What I thought but did not say was, “Damn skippy, son. Why don’t you see if Pat Sajak will sell you a dustcloth?”

I think this is one of the first guitars George ever had.

And then there was that fine winter’s day when the sun was slanting in through the blinds and caught his electric guitar just so…

The sunlight, glinting off the tuning pegs…ahhh, l’amour.

In all seriousness, I love how the design on the pick sort of mimics the slats on the blinds. Really. Not joking here.

So that’s my tale of the headstock.  Remember, local peeps, if you want a groovy sexy headstock picture…*ahem*…call me.

This post is for the H! Challenge by Frizztext

Because I love a good alphabet challenge.

Aug18

Weekly Photo Challenge: Merge

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Sometimes, you have to appreciate that the world will collide around you and present you with said collision, wrapped up in a plastic album sleeve, for sale in a local used record store.  ”Merge” is the weekly photo challenge from WordPress this week, and you can see all the entries here.

Apparently, Jackie Gleason was more than the buffoonish comedian from The Honeymooners; he was a bandleader in his own right (even though he was admittedly not a conductor and apparently could neither read nor write music, and “vocally conveyed” his musical compositions) and his Music for Lovers Only stayed on the Billboard charts for 153 weeks.  Which is not too shabby.

BUT!  He also put out the LP Lonesome Echo, a tightly orchestrated swath of strings and tinkly piano that would be most appropriately packaged in an album sporting a cover bearing ladies in puffy chiffon.  However, no.  Lonesome Echo‘s cover was designed by and features none other than surrealist painter Salvador Dali.  (And while you’re checking out the surrealists, take a look at Man Ray.  Just for fun.)  For those who aren’t familiar with Dali, go check out his work here.  For those who are familiar with his stuff and just want to see the hellscape that is Jackie Gleason meets Salavador Dali…behold.

Front cover.

So, OK, is not so bad, no?  There’s a butterfly on a kebab spike and some ominous shadow looming in the lower left, probably just a guy searching for his…is that an oud, randomly dropped in the rear center of the painting?  Generally speaking, it’s weird, but whatever.  Until you see the back cover.

Back cover.

Wow.  Surely the record exec who dreamed this up never imagined there could be a photo wherein both participants would have looked happier being eaten by alligators.  Look at Gleason; he’s smiling, but he’s arching his body, literally trying to pull himself as far away as possible from Dali.  And Dali’s not even trying, bless his pointed little moustache.  Said exec probably thought, “Artistic type + artistic type = WIN!” without ever thinking…maybe this won’t work.  This ain’t some kind of Mexi-Thai fusion cooking that sounds crazy but has important commonalities upon which fusion may occur.  Oh, no no no no.  This is, “I know, let’s mix chlorine with ammonia and take a deep breath!”  (<–Kids, remember, that is an extraordinarily bad idea.)  And does the spiked butterfly seem like an appropriate cover for the man who orchestrates songs that make Mantovani seem edgy?  If nothing else, it should grace an exotica album, and a freakish one at that, perhaps something by Yma Sumac.  Sometimes, the merger between two different creative forces doesn’t result in groundbreaking innovations.  Sometimes, merging two creative forces who clearly can’t relate to one another is a train wreck towards which we, the viewing public, cannot stop looking.

Below are some of my favorite contributions to this week’s photo challenge, which is indeed quite challenging.

http://catbirdinamerica.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

http://tacts21.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

http://thegoodvillager.com/2012/08/17/weekly-ph

oto-challenge-merge/

http://fortheloveofclouds.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

http://motherwifestudentworker.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

http://angelinem.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/weekly-photo-challenge-merge-day-264/

http://bodhisattvaintraining.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

http://disorderlychickadee.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

http://shaanthz.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/weekly-photo-challenge-merge/

Aug14

G! Challenge: Guitars

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My boyfriend is a musician, and I spent some time as a music store nerd.  Not High Fidelity-level of nerdery, mind you, but I can throw down with some pretty good music trivia and am generally fairly knowledgeable about music history (though no, I don’t play an instrument, and the music world thanks me for it).  So we tend to gravitate towards musically oriented things, including museum “fancy instruments” exhibits.  The following pictures were taken at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (Go MFA!) during one of our winter visits.

The MFA has a fantastic exhibit dedicated to all manner of musical instruments from around the world.  There are dulcimers and harps and a small cabinet containing crystal glasses that have been specifically ground to resonate at a certain note–no water required. And there are guitars. There are more guitars than I’ve included in this blog, but these two were my favorite.

The first is an Italian guitar made in the early 1600s by Jacopo Checchucci (as an aside, this was how his name was spelled on the MFA website, but I noticed it spelled without the second h when I did a quick Google search, so…musical historians, feel free to offer guidance.)

Four hundred years of ah-may-zing.

Check out the detail work in the sound hole.

That’s a lot of work for a part almost no one is going to be able to see.

And here’s another beauty, also of Italian make.  This one was built in the early 1700s by Jacopo Mosca Cavelli, so it is a mere 300 years old.

A hundred years, a little fatter, and astonishingly, even more elaborate.

I like that this one’s got a message.  It references Revelation 14 in the inlaid inscription…

Fannnnnnncy.

I have absolutely no Latin training at all, but the best I can tell is that this seems to say that this is the sort of guitar that would be appropriate to play at the coming of the end of the world.  Latin scholars?  Anyone?  Someone?

The point–other than showing off fancy things–is this.  The guy(s) who made these stunningly gorgeous instruments didn’t have power tools and laser cutters to put this together.  Those instruments were shaped thanks to the cunning use of steam or the gentle application of constant pressure and the use of a rudimentary lathe.  (I admit it: I like the word lathe.)  The inlays were carved by hand and placed, piece by often miniscule piece, by tweezers.  Once again the sound hole is elaborate, which is something that nobody except the musician and whoever borrowed his guitar would see.  And I can barely get it together enough to give myself a little pedicure and get my gnarly feet ready to face the rest of the summer.

I mean seriously, I’m probably going to only have to do this once more for the season, before I can stop worrying about it for the fall.

Clearly, I’m not doing something right.  But I do enjoy looking at the results of those who are capable of getting it together.  It reminds me that we can do great things, all we have to do is focus on the task at hand, and do that to the best of our abilities.

Unless that task, of course, involves me playing guitar.  That, I will leave to the experts.

This post is for the G! Challenge by Frizztext

Because I love a good alphabet challenge.

Jul24

D! Challenge: Double-take

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Not very long after my boyfriend and I moved in together, I was sorting out what had quickly become “our” collective mess of LPs laying on the floor in George’s man-cave.

Man-cave, music room, whatever.  He’s a musician and needs a place to keep his guitars and small recording setup and microphone.  And LPs.  Tons and tons of LPs.  Vinyl.  Albums. And a record player.  A “phonograph”, if you will.  Or as a friend of mine in Texas has called it, “The Way-Back Machine”.

Groovy.

And yes, we both have plenty of albums.  He is a music fan, I worked in a record store and got a pretty deep discount, and we both (still to this day) troll the used record/cut out bins for vinyl nuggets of cultural significance.  These days I lean towards anything instrumental that may sound like Mantovani and his orchestra (horrifically delicious), or exotica (think Martin Denny), or something samba/mambo-ish, a la Perez Prado.  But sometimes you stumble across that thing that’s far too craptastic to pass up, and it has to go in your collection.

Bear with me, it’s coming.

So I was alphabetizing my records and sorting them into the “my pile” vs. the “his pile”, and I saw…this one record…and inserted it in the proper place in my pile.  Then a minute or two later I thought…huh…isn’t that funny, I thought I’d already put…this one record…away, but I shrugged it off and considered myself mistaken and went to the section of the alphabet where…this one record…belonged.

Only there were two.

 

[wait for it...]

 

 

[wait for it...]

 

No, your eyes do not deceive you.

That’s right.  We both own a copy of Cybill Shepherd’s “Cybill does it…to Cole Porter”.

This is how I knew he’d be able to manage my weirdo love for exotica and mambo and Mantovani.

This is how I knew we were meant to be together.

This post is for the D! Challenge by Frizztext

Because I love a good alphabet challenge.

Jul23

Music: Fun With Acronyms!

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My boyfriend and I were driving down the road the other day discussing the band KISS, and sort of joking about how people said it stood for all sorts of ridiculous things; he’d heard that it secretly meant Kids In Support (of) Satan, and I remember hearing that it stood for Knights In Satan’s Service.

Can you feel the evil?

And then we started talking about the idea that all bands or performers had to have names that were anagrams describing what they’re all about.  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, in no particular alphabetical order:

REM:  Ha ha!  No, not rapid eye movement but rather, Really Enigmatic Men

Prince:  Petite Rocker Interweaves Nudity, Christianity, Electronics

(The) Kinks:  Kinship Inspires Near Killing Spree

Phish:  Phucking Hipsters In Sweaty Hemp

(The) Who:  Wildly Hurling Objects

AC/DC:  Angry Celts, Deliciously Crude

(The) Beatles:  Bobblehead English Artists, Teens Love Endearing Smiles

Edith Piaf:  Entertainer, Diminutive, Iron Throated Honey, Paris Is Appropriately Fascinated

More to come!  All suggestions welcome.

PS: SORRY! If you got a link about “anagrams”.  I originally sent this link out with the wrong word in the title–written after driving all day, no excuse, but still, that’s what happened–and corrected it as quickly as I could…but not until some of you had the wrong link.  My apologies.  I’ll be more careful in the future.