Throwback Thursday: 1989

Louie's Caffe - New Rochelle, NY
(Photo: ? The camera was Lorraine's, but...that's Lorraine on the right)

Here's the thing.
Our college IDs were laminated, but they didn't have Date of Birth.
You could peel back the laminate,
type in a DOB that made you 21,
and use a warm iron to melt back the laminate into place.

Our "Junior Sisters" dutifully took us through it freshman year.
I dunno if that's what CNR had in mind with the Junior Sister program.

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Big Papi!

Look who they let into a company box at Fenway.
"I was on TV!"

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I'll Call You Back On My Purse

Betsey Johnson bag spotted at Macy's in Downtown Crossing.
The handset works, dude.
The handset works.

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Naked Cake

September 14, 2015
2:55am · Allston Rock City, MA

The last of the party guests had gone home, hopefully happy. Joey had done his part of knocking out eight or nine bottles of red wine. So I put my none-too-steady husband to bed, assuming he'd be asleep in minutes. Next I set about tidying up, putting away leftover cheeses, covering olives, closing bottles of tonic, organizing the empties...when I heard an exuberant voice from the living room say "Red velvet cake!" Apparently Joey was up again. He had gotten himself a fork, and was doing some naked post-party drunken cake eating. Notice the wide-open window and lack of pants. You know what, guys? He's never boring. 💓

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Happy Birthday-ay-ay-ay-oh-oh-ooooo...hey, that's nice!, Mel Torme

Melty.

That was a fun party.

We'd intended to prepare only legit retro party food, but we chickened out once we looked into it. As it happens, party food was gag-inducingly loathesome in the 60s and 70s. Pimento olives made far too much of a showing. Entirely too much ham and gelatin was involved, shaped into something truly diabolical. Everything was formed into a mold or a loaf of some kind.

Friends don't serve friends "molds."

As a nod towards the theme, we prepared shrimp cocktail, a cheese fondue and deviled eggs, but mostly we just re-named better, edible food in a Mel Torme-theme. The maiden punch in my new punch bowl was dubbed "Velvet Fog," and my delightful salad with baby greens, dried cranberries and walnuts was "Mountain Greenery." Joe made a less tacky, more updated champagne & brie "fondue-bee-doo-bee-doo."

 I think Joe might have recruited a few new Velvet Fog converts.∎

One of the slides I made.
The "slide show" was just the Apple TV idle screen
sourcing a set of photos on the drive.
These info cards rotated in between fun pictures of the Velvet Fog 
at all ages, singing, playing drums and just generally cavorting.

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If anyone was going to buy cheese at Star Market in Brighton today...

...sorry, they're out. I bought it all. 

Just returned from a shopping trip with a metric ton of various cheeses for Joe's locally famous Fondue-bee-doo-bee-doo.

Celebrate The Velvet Fog's 90th birthday with us! 

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Throwback Thursday: 2003

Joe Kowalski (bass/keys All the Queen's Men)

Throwback to 2003 AQM tour! A local photographer came and took great photos of the band. I missed the entire show.

"Great set! Your tour manager is in surgery."

While AQM rocked Bikini Test, a great club in La Chaux de Fonds, I was downstairs in the green room where a Swiss woman whose name I never caught was holding my hand and feeding me tea. My gut was on fire. The band got off stage to find I had been rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery with a severe case of diverticulitis I didn't know I had. You've heard "I left my heart in San Francisco." Well I left my sigmoid colon in Switzerland. Other than that, it was one of the best nights of that tour!

AQM at Bikini Test (La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland

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#TheRentIsTooDamnHigh

Something's fucky in the rental market in this town.

I've read several articles over the past few weeks about "high end glut."All over Boston they're in the process of adding over 2000 new high-end rental units, which are NOT getting rented, meanwhile regular folks are struggling to make rent in ordinary family neighborhoods.

Anyone have $2360 to rent a 400 sq ft studio in The Continuum? That's the new "high end" mixed-use building opening soon in Allston, on a busy corner overlooking a gas station, an old dry cleaners, a Dunkin Donuts and a 7-11.

Talking about it with friends, I was saying that a possible attraction would be the handy 66, 70 and 86 bus stops practically at the front door, but someone pointed out that this place will have a free shuttle bus to and from Harvard Square.∎

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Throwback Thursday: 1986

Shepaug Valley High
(Photo: Brenda Fitch)

I'm sorry there wasn't enough mousse for you in '86.
I needed it.

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It's happening

Mel Torme and Friends
Joe had two copies of the same record, so we hung one of them in an album frame.

Got Joe a tuxedo T-shirt for the party.

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