Spitball Army

Three things that are making my world a better place:

• Yim Yames  Tribute To  (CD)

  

  Jim James, the singer and frontman of My Morning Jacket, has just released a 6-song EP of covers of songs written by George Harrison.  Two of them are from the Beatles era, and the remaining four were all drawn from Harrison’s classic All Things Must Pass album.  While having a strong fondness for Harrison, and All Things, in particular, I was disappointed in the sameness of the sound of the four central tracks on the CD.  The songs that bookend the EP, however (“Long, Long, Long” from The Beatles’ “White Album” and the title track from All Things Must Pass), have an eerie lightness and languorous spirit to them that comes close to channeling the soulfulness of some of the quieter music that George Harrison produced in his lifetime.

  [audio:Jim_James___Long_Long_Long.mp3]
  “Long, Long, Long” (2009) by Yim Yames (Jim James), from Tribute To

• Harvard Beats Yale 29-29  (DVD)
  This terrific documentary is not exclusively a sports doc.  The Harvard/Yale game of 1968 happened only ten years before I entered Harvard as a Freshman, but the events surrounding this event seem a world away.  The final minutes of the football match-up are nail-biting, unbelievable and, frankly, ridiculous, but it’s the context that is laid out before that really amps up the drama.  The Harvard team is portrayed as a scrappy close-knit bunch of guys from wildly diverse backgrounds, while the Yale team seems made up of several “legacy” undergrads.  Tommy Lee Jones, a guard for Harvard, talks about the secret talents of his roommate, Al Gore; one of the Yale players describes a date with Meryl Streep; Vietnam veterans play alongside SDS members.  This is as much a social document as it is the remembrance of an amazing sporting event.

• California Pizza Kitchen’s Garlic Chicken Pizza (forbidden foods)
  Pizza is not on my short list of allowed foods, but I went ahead and purchased this frozen pie at the supermarket, anyway.  What a treat!  Once baked in the oven, the crust was thin and crispy, with a mellow butteriness.  The simple topping consisted merely of mozzarella cheese, chunks of chopped garlic cloves, and a generous smattering of the white meat from a chicken breast.  The same pizza might cost $15 to $20 at your local trattoria.  This cost about $5.00.