The Philly Opry

My friend Kevin told me of a saying he heard, I think when he was in Italy. It goes, " Those that eat alone, die alone." It sounds morbid but really it's just an Italian way of saying, "Hey man, how great does it feel to sit down with each other and feast?" I'm a big believer in food bringing people together. Perhaps one of the lonelier times in my life was that post-college apartment jumping stage where I was always sharing a place with people but always sitting down at different times and eating solo. I remember realizing that although I was by no means ready to start a family to remedy this I really wanted that experience back of sitting down with loved ones and kindreds and sharing a meal, sharing the end of a day together.

Anyhow, I thought of this tonight as I sat down with some friends to share a friday evening. Cooking has always been something that seemed just an extension of my creativity. I don't think I haven't met a passionate musician that wasn't also a passionate cook. Feel free to let me know about the exceptions in  funny anecdotal character descriptions if you can. Now I'm drinking some bourbon while also licking fresh cookie dough off my finger and I'm sitting down at my desk while they play in the front room.

I'm excited to sit down right now cause I'm about to post photos from the Philly Opry I hosted at Johnny Brenda's a few weeks ago. It was our first one, an experiment of sorts, and I was getting nervous as the day came because of all the snow. I started acting like a fatalist and making all these nervous predictions that everyone wasn't going to come cause of no parking, etc. But it was as if someone opened the top of the club and poured them all in. I could only describe the crowd as giddy, rammy, and riotous with occasional bouts of slow dancing fever.

The broken bell republic was aglow. We would like to thank Johnny Brenda's for being such

a music institution, Lisa Schaffer for taking all the photos, Nick Miles and Veronica for building the barn out of salvaged cardboard (!), Angela Miles for homemade nudie suits, raffle prizes and more,  and everyone who decided that that's where they needed to be that night. This may become a tradition.....Love, Birdie Busch

more photos of the night can be found in my photo section at birdiebusch.com!

Ol' Mommy Nature: It don't visit da' wrong door

Traveling further along in the Groundhog Day realm. It is snowing out today, it has been snowing out many a days in this past week. A blizzard in fact. I looked online at the Accuweather page to see what was going to happen next and meandering to find this prediction I clicked on a video of a weatherman doing this wacky skit where he has a box with the phrase "ol' mommy nature" on it and he was kicking it and punching it off a desk in front of the blue screen. I guess he originally had wanted to be a comedian.

 I'm woodshedding and drinking an apple cider tonic. I have this book called "Staying Healthy with the Seasons" that I trashpicked last year. It's one of those California New-Agey books about yin and yang and what season means what. Like we are in the water season, did you know that? And throughout time there has always maintained about the same amount of water on the planet, just shifting in its various states of vapor and ice and what have you. Did you know that? And we are as humans our own "earth" because we have about the same percentage of water in our body make-up, which should make us feel a connection in a way to the grandness. This is what the book says.  This book is not an old blues song.

I stumbled upon a section all about karma in this book. Karma. I guess we all have images or ideas that come into our head when we say this word. For me, I see a Zappa-like looking man named Reverend Leroy Montana that used to come into the open mic I used to go to, singing his classic, "Karma Doesn't Visit the Wrong Door" to which he answers himself, "cause if it did, it wouldn't be karma". I always thought of karma as if doing something bad to someone, it's gonna come back around. I've messed up and made bad decisions and  I think that bad things are going to get me for it, sometime, somewhere. But catch this definition from the book, I really like it,

"Karma is a process of learning from this natural law of the universe. Each life crisis has a lesson, which if we learn, we will not need to experience again. Yet, if we deny the potential learning this experience represents, the same lesson will present itself again and again, often more intensely, until we learn it."

Which, I guess, this is what I was trying to flesh out when watching Groundhog Day and writing the post before this, and then this came along....

I Sure as Heck-fire Remember You: A Lesson in Groundhog Day

So things get better in some ways. I just figured out that stealing one of those monstrous yellow Ikea shopping bags could make taking the recyclables down to the curb from my second floor place that much easier. I also started buying cat food and litter in bulk which has saved me time and money. I think I’d like to do a western movie where the bandits are named Time and Money and they ride off into the horizon together, leaving me in the dust of my sorry old town rubbing my eyes wondering what happened. 

It’s strange how I think about these things that I figure out over time. It happens here and there. I get a pair of shoes that are actually comfortable and I think about how long I went just compromising out of misinformation? Stupidity? What? It’s a strange wisdom that accrues but I’m started to relish it, as someone must have felt when he or she rounded off the points of a square to make a wheel. These realizations are my winter joys. Come spring, I’ll be laying in a park, warm and drinking wine and out of my gourd.

I watched the movie Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day and I’ve been thinking about it. I hadn’t seen it in a long while so some things now finally made sense, like when she orders a “sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist” and Bill Murray wretches in disgust. I just got that. Funny thing is a few months ago I was really jonesing for a cocktail one night after all the state stores closed and all I had was a bottle of sweet vermouth in the house, and I had that very same drink.

But anyhow, it’s a pretty intense movie underneath all the wacky light-hearted comedy (would we expect anything else from Mr. Murray?)  and I’ve been hooked in understanding its points. See, he kept waking up in the same day, even on a few that seemed like he was going to not wake up on the same day because he got the girl and they had a great night and were lying together in the same bed. He was always trying to perfect it, make it better, and learn from his mistakes on the previous days. He even started becoming a master of ice sculptures and piano. Still, same day. Then, it seems that he starts to really invest in not just the girl and his talents but the people around him, all those folks that make up Punxsutawney, PA. He starts to truly care, not to just care for conquest sake, and this is when it all started to feel right, this is when he finally wakes up with the girl and a new day. 

If you’ve seen it, remember when he looks into the news camera when he’s at the groundhog festival and says as his prediction, “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s going to last the rest of your life!” Such a funny classic line, and fortunately, not true.

Up to you, Birdie Busch

Picture of the Day: Making the backdrop for the Philly Opry at Johnny Brendas