For multiple people, for multiple reasons

tonight I need to post this classic song.



Enjoy.

In case you were wondering

This is what profiteroles with truffled chocolate ice cream look like. Note the slice of truffle on the whipped cream.


This is what Sarah looks like as she's preparing her A Year In Prose entry. You owe it to yourself to read this week's.


Or, does she look like this?


Or both?

My money's on both, because all writers feel that way at least some of the time.

In other news that isn't news, you need to listen to this John Hiatt song.



With faith settled, we also need loyalty. For that, we turn to another John, whose cover of this great song I dearly love.



Finally, though I've blogged it before, we all need this for and in each other and, most of all, in ourselves. Sing it, Preacher Hiatt, sing it.



Yes, we do.

Benny & Joon

is one of my favorite movies. It's quirky and loving and always entertaining, but most of all, it has a pure and wonderful heart. Johnny Depp earned my admiration forever with just this one role, and Mary Stuart Masterson was perfect. Aidan Quinn and Julianne Moore in key supporting roles were also amazing.

The music, too, was often wonderful. Sarah and Ben watched this film last night, TV in different places but a shared experience nonetheless, and Sarah pointed out the following video, which is for a great John Hiatt song I've long loved.



Watching it got me thinking about the song that acted more or less as Benny & Joon's theme, "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" from the Proclaimers. I can't embed the link to that video, but I'll wait while you go watch it.

Even though I know the real world leaves few of us with ideal outcomes, even though many of us go to bed alone each night far from our loved ones, even though most hours of most days may be hard for us, even though we may never get as much as we want of those we cherish, I will always believe in love. I will always believe that no matter how weird, how troubled, or how different you are, you will be able to find at least moments of transforming love with someone who tries to see you for everything that you are and still loves you with an aching, longing heart.

Those moments make everything else worthwhile.

John Hiatt and the safety cake

Five of us ventured into the rain tonight to see John Hiatt, a long-time favorite of mine, perform at the outdoor amphitheatre at the North Carolina Museum of Art. There was, however, one big obstacle: it was raining heavily and steadily. We ate dinner from the hot buffet at Whole Foods and pondered the situation. After much thought, we realized there was only one solution.

We had to buy a safety cake.

A safety cake is one you purchase as insurance. You buy it so the world knows that even if it keeps pissing you off--in this case, by raining--you will have a good night, because, after all, you have cake. So, the world has no choice but to relent.

The safety cake worked wonderfully. They decided to go on with the show unless lightning started. During the opener, the rain stopped. John Hiatt performed for two and a half hours, and the show was big fun. He played many of his hits, including "Slow Turning" and "Perfectly Good Guitar" (which he used to start the show), as well as a wide variety of songs old and new. The audience didn't know it, but they had us and the safety cake to thank for their show.

Afterward, though, we faced the one problem of the safety cake strategy: we had a cake.

Fearless and self-sacrificing people that we are, we took this giant chocolate and raspberry concoction to Jennie's and ate half of it while watching an episode of Burn Notice that we had missed. The other half will make its way to tomorrow night's party.

I should also mention the annoying sentence of the night. On the way to dinner, we noticed that a builder had the unfortunate name of Beezer. We then turned onto Ebenezer church road. This semi-rhyme situation led us to construct a sentence fragment about an old man with breathing problems doing a commercial for a cooling device specifically built to chill tweezers in a house from this builder on that road, or, to sum it up, the

wheezer geezer Ebenezer Beezer tweezer freezer teaser

Don't blame me; I just report the news.

FLASH UPDATE

Sarah wishes to announce the following song recommendation:

"Bleeding Heart Show," The New Pornographers

Check it out on pain of her cake-fueled wrath.