Category: General

michelle shocked, my other favorite artist

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

amy, a commenter on one of my kristen hall posts, asked me about some of my other musical favorites.

i blab on so much about kristen hall, and kiki and herb, that you might think that’s all i like. but you’d be wrong.

although i don’t listen to music nearly as much as i did when i was younger, and although most of the music i do listen to when i listen to it was made before 1990, and although i very infrequently attend live music concerts, and although when i do attend them the artists giving the concert most likely got their start long before said year 1990, i do have some current musical opinions.

even though the subjects of my current musical opinions aren’t themselves very current.

back in the day, when being emo meant you were merely just another black-clad youth, i listened to my cure, and my smiths, and my siouxsie, and my pil, and my depeche mode, and my sisters of mercy.

and i listened to my skinny puppy, and my ministry, and my severed heads, and my moev, and my nine inch nails, and my legendary pink dots.

and i listened to my r.e.m., and my fetchin bones, and my love tractor, and my dbs, and my connells, and my royal crescent mob, and my mojo nixon.

and i listened to my alphaville, and my the the, and my new order, and my cabaret voltaire.

and i listened to my nirvana, and my mudhoney, and my sonic youth, and my dinosaur jr., and my jane’s addiction.

and i listened to my kristen hall, and my michelle malone, and my ani difranco, and my utah phillips, and my michelle shocked.

and of all those, the one i still listen to, and listen to the most, and go see whenever she plays in new york city, is michelle shocked.

she, and her music, is a little bit of everything and constantly surprising and enjoyable. she’s a bit of a troubadour and a story-telling raconteur (like utah phillips), and a bit of a brilliant acoustic musician (like ani difranco), and a bit of an incredible lyricist (like kristen hall), and a bit of a political animal (like michael stipe).

except that it’s all in one package. and she’s creative (each of her albums is completely different), uncompromising (she gave her label the stiff middle finger better than nearly anyone else ever has), and entertaining (self-effacing, spontaneous, and explosive).

not familiar with michelle shocked? if you like acoustic, start with texas campfire tapes; if you like folk, start with arkansas traveler; if you like protest rock, start with short sharp shocked.

but you’ll end up listening to all of them anyway, so start wherever you damn well please, or with whatever is accessible or handy.

big apple bbq block party roundup

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

yet another return to the big apple bbq block party held each year in madison square park, although a little birdie told me it may not be located there next year.

we again had a bubba pass — a stored value card that lets you skip the long lines and go “behind the scenes” and in special lines to get your bbq. this worked like a breeze this year — they made it a punch card, so the lines moved quickly with no snafus.

i was there on saturday june 9 — my sense is that the crowds were slightly smaller than in previous years. in fact, i’d say that for some stands, you might have gotten your bbq more quickly in the public lines than in the “bubba pass” lines. and many stands had no lines at all.

that meant more bbq for me, of course. in years past, we’d have to return on sunday to get to all the stands. this year, the combination of smaller crowds and better organization meant that we could hit all the stands in one day. great for my day planning, but not so great for my waistline.

at any rate, here’s a quick roundup of my favorites:

» best sausage, best brisket — southside market & bbq, elgin, texas, my consistent favorite year after year. their sausage is, for me, always the best thing at the entire event. but this year, their brisket was my favorite as well. it had the largest smoke ring, and was the tenderest and most flavorful. bonus points for the slice of cheese and the raw onion. sausage runner up was the salt lick bbq in driftwood, texas — it’s more kielbasa-y than sausage-y, but really juicy and good. brisket runner up was baker’s ribs in dallas, texas — nice flavor and outsanding fall-apart consistency. gotta mention this, though — the baker’s ribs beans tasted like liquid smoke. not positive of that, but if true, a big big no-no. that stuff is cancer in a bottle.

» best pulled/chopped pork was mitchell’s bbq, wilson, nc — whole hog chopped up. it’s good, but what makes it great is the vinegary sauce. it’s in a squirt bottle and not obvious, so while i knew to put it on, not everyone might. the sauce makes the whole taste come together, for me.

» best cole slaw — my favorite was big bob gibson, from decatur, alabama. it was mustardy and rough chopped and delicious. kirk and our friend stephen preferred the coleslaw from the salt lick bbq in driftwood, texas, which had beaucoup celery seeds.

» best beans — the multi bean mix from 17th street bar & grill, murphysboro, illinois was outstanding. honorable mention goes to ubon’s champion’s choice from yazoo, mississippi, for the inclusion of tasty burned-y bits.

» best ribs — hands down, 17th street. honorable mention to rack & soul, nyc, for great baby back ribs. jake’s boss bbq from boston had ribs as well, but they were way too saucy for me. didn’t see any dry-rub ribs, which was odd — maybe i just missed them.

» best surprise — the brunswick stew from the proclamation stew crew from lawrenceville, virginia. didn’t expect to see it there, and loved every last bite.

and damn did i miss the smoki o’s people. no pig snoot for me this year. i guess i’m going to have to go to st. louis.

puppet 1, kiki and herb 0

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aaaaargh. my worst fears have come true. the puppet that replaced kiki and herb at the helen hayes theater won the tony.

words cannot express my fury, and my sadness.

on the positive side, justin bond looked stunning, classy, and totally beautiful on tv last night. for the two seconds we saw him. simple and elegant makeup, hair and dress. perfect. and kenny mellman looked good too — classy (if a bit standard) in his tux.

it would have been a treat to see them onstage, as winners.

i’m sure miss du rane will have many comments about this.

lunch today at the olive garden

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i shouldn’t admit this, as (i say sarcastically) i’m supposed to be a sophisticated new yorker with an impeccable palate, who has dined in some of the world’s best restaurants both here and in europe.

and i live in a city with perhaps more outstanding restaurants per capita than anywhere else on earth. and some of those restaurants are actually affordable and accessible.

as is the olive garden, where i’m having lunch today.

to clarify, i mean that the olive garden is accessible (in times square) and affordable (by new york standards, though i’m sure tourists blanch at the prices on the menu as compared to the olive garden in their hometown). i don’t mean that the olive garden is counted among that number of outstanding new york city restaurants.

but, i have to admit, they make a mean salad. and the soup is passable, though it might as well be a bowl of salted water when compared to the sublime soups that my friend mark makes at red cafe.

so i go, with some co-workers, to the olive garden. occasionally. for lunch. for the soup and salad.

and i like it. so there. yummo, as rachael ray might say. since we’re talking about the olive garden, she’s a good one to quote, i figure.

hey, it’ll tide me over until this weekend, when the big apple bbq hits madison park. fifteen or so of the best barbecue makers on the planet, selling their varied and excellent plates to me via my “bubba pass” (a stored value card that lets you skip the long lines).

now that’s yummo, with a capital “yum”.

but today, i’ll fight the wednesday theater matinee crowd for a table at the olive garden.

pins and needles

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

that’s what i’m on, waiting for the closing date for our apartment. kirk and i, if you haven’t heard, are buying a coop in riverdale, in the bronx, in new york city. we’ll be homo-wners.

sorry — old, bad, joke.

i’ve done everything i can do, which is the big problem. when there’s something i can do to manage the process, or move it forward, or coordinate efforts, or whatever, then i feel like i’m accomplishing something.

but when i’ve done everything there is to do, and the waiting game sets in, that’s when it gets bad for me. i have to make a concentrated effort not to drive everyone to distraction with constant fruitless pushing. that’s the stage i’m at now.

if all goes right, we’ll be closing on the place next week. the bank does its last bit, and then we get the closing date. i can distract myself for that long, and not drive everyone bonkers.

i hope.

weird firefox smiley at bottom of my page

~ jamie ~ 5 Comments

here’s what the bottom left corner of my site’s pages looks like in firefox on the mac:

macintosh firefox

here’s what it looks like using every other browser:

every other browser

what’s up with that smiley thing? is it a part of the creative commons image that only shows on that specific browser? it’s not on the bottom of any other page i can see on the mac using firefox.

i’m not paranoid or anything — i’d just like an explanation and google isn’t coughing it up.

any ideas?

thestagingarea.com up and running

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

kirk’s had that url — “thestagingarea.com” — for quite a while, and it has gone through various iterations. the latest, and perhaps the best so far, is a wordpress blog.

it’s different from mine, in a good way. there are actual graphics on the page, for one thing. i was jealous of that, for a few minutes, but then kirk pointed out that the text-based spareness of this site matches my personality, and the graphics matches his. in addition, my site has been text-based since 1998, originally because i hated slow-loading graphics-heavy pages that took forever to load over dialup. but now, it’s just part of the history of the site. my trademark, if you will.

so text-based it is.

anyway, back to kirk. it’s a great beginning, and i think he’ll post and keep up with it, so it’s worth bookmarking or adding his rss feed. and he has a crapload of content in the vaults — all of the sites he designed for various broadway and off-broadway shows, including the original hedwig.com site. if he gets all that up and running, it would be very cool.

one note of response to his first real post. he says:

Jamie has also said that I think too much. There will be no argument here; I do think too much. This is why I can’t sleep. This is why when he’s calling me from the other room, I don’t hear him. I admit it, my head is obsessively caught up in thought.

except of course he uses capital letters. show-off.

with me, though, there are vast stretches of time where there’s literally nothing going on in my head. i don’t mean that flippantly or facetiously; i mean that i just don’t think of anything. i don’t hum a song, or do sums, or even think about not thinking, although at some point i become aware that i’m not thinking again, which of course is thinking in itself.

it’s probably better to think too much than to not think enough.

one closing promise, as i reread what i’ve written.

my blog will not become an insufferable dialogue between my blog and kirk’s blog. i’ll keep the cross-commenting to a minimum.

mister rogers, armando benitez, and more

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

a few this-and-that things for a friday:

» 15 reasons why mister rogers was the best neighbor ever. i got all teary reading this and had to take a walk to the pantry at work. i’m convinced that watching his show every day as a kid, and hearing him tell me that he loved me “just the way you are”, helped me accept being gay, even if that took a while longer than it should have. thanks, mister rogers.

» giants deal armando benitez to marlins. the best news a mets fan could hear. since the marlins play in our division, we’ll get lots of chances to rattle him and win games. or maybe he’ll rise to the occasion. i wonder what mister rogers would have to say about that?

» the apple tv is getting better and better. i wanted one of these before it came out, changed my mind when it did come out, and i’m now back on the fence a bit. there’s a new model, with a bigger hard drive. and it seems that they are opening it up a bit, with you tube access coming. i can watch you tube on my hdtv using my wii right now, so no need to buy an apple tv yet. but when i can use an apple tv to surf the internet and watch iptv, they may have a buyer. unless nintendo gets going and opens up the wii a bit, which would be smart for them.

» i can has cheezburger? is my favorite new site. so much for intellectual pursuits. now i have to get my daily fix of cute kittens with funny captions.

100 words every high school graduate should know

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

via a digg link, here are the 100 words.

before i clicked, i thought i’d know most, if not all, of these words. i’m a college graduate. i taught high school english.

after clicking through?

let’s just say it was a humbling experience. there were more words i didn’t know, or at least didn’t know a precise definition for, than i thought there’d be.

and although i recognized nearly all of the words, there was even a word (moiety) that i’d never even seen before.

here’s my personal list of words for which i need to confirm a definition. for me, having a vague idea of the definition, or having the ability to use the word in a phrase without knowing the precise meaning, means i included the word on this list. context isn’t always everything.

abjure
abstemious
churlish
evanescent
feckless
hegemony
jejune
mitosis
moiety
pecuniary
quotidian
tautology
unctuous

i’ll have to get busy soon.

update: someone wrote a wordpress plugin that checks your blog for which of the 100 words you’ve used, and how many times you’ve used them.

excluding the listed words above, i’ve used four of them: euro, wrought, reparation, and irony.

clearly i need to raise the level of the dialogue around here.

my new york moment with lou dobbs

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

one of those wacky, random things that happen, as they say, only in new york, kids.

kirk and i went to a free screening of “whatever happened to baby jane” last night. the turner out employees group had the event in the screening room in the new time warner center.

we had a great time, especially with the audience laughing and joking around with the movie. it’s the classic so-bad-it’s-good movie with bette davis and joan crawford chewing the scenery.

and there’s an unforgettable moment when bette davis, looking a thousand years old and dressed as the former child star her character was, sings “i’m send-ing a let-ter to dad-dy” in that inimitable voice. great stuff, if you like your camp really campy.

so, on the way out, kirk and i were in a great mood. and we were alone in the elevator going down to the lobby, and we started singing that song together, in our best bette-davis-soundalike voices. singing probably a bit too loudly.

and we weren’t paying attention to the floor, and the elevator doors opened, and we stopped singing, and kirk started to walk out.

onto the third floor.

smack into lou dobbs.

now, is that surreal or what?

he looked pretty bemused. and i have to say, though i’m largely not a fan of his stand on immigration policy, he seemed like a pretty cool guy. and he had real presence as well, the kind you don’t see often. i’ve met lots of famous people, and i’ve experienced that whoosh feeling of projected power twice in my life.

lou dobbs, and bill clinton.

anyway, he laughed, i made a joke about “almost there” down to the lobby, he asked us (in reference to don rickles on larry king on the elevator tv screen) “is that guy still alive?”

i almost said “which one?”

but thought better of it, and just said, “well, it may be a repeat.” he laughed, the elevator doors opened, and that was that.

definitely a weird chance encounter, but surprisingly enjoyable.

lou dobbs. a guy i’d like to knock back a scotch with. who knew?

the end of apple’s mac mini?

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the apple insider website is predicting that the mac mini is dead.

it’s probably true. the website has been pretty accurate as of late, and this rumor makes sense. the mini hasn’t been updated in ages, i don’t think apple sells as many of them as they thought they would, they don’t have much of a profit margin, and they probably cannibalize sales of the new apple tv.

still.

it was the mini that made me return to apple, after a five-year-or-so hiatus on the dark, dark pc side of things. and if this rumor is true, it saddens me a bit.

the mini isn’t a very cost-effective purchase if you run the numbers. you can buy an imac for the cost of a mini + display + keyboard +mouse, and get a better, faster computer in the deal. it makes more sense if you are reusing your old display, or hooking it up to a tv.

but the truth is in the pudding, to mix a metaphor. go to an apple store, count the minis you see on display, and compare that to the number of imacs you see on display. there’s a reason for that. it’s gotta be supply and demand, pure and simple. if apple sold tons of minis and made money on them, you’d see tons of them out on display in the store.

if the mini goes away, there will be a gaping hole in the low end of the mac product line.

expect to see it filled.

with something, i hope, really fantastic.

mcguire’s forced to remove “joke” bathroom signs

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

this has to be the dumbest damn thing i’ve seen in a while.

there’s a great irish pub in pensacola, florida. used to go there all the time, back in the day. they have live music, usually some folky guy with a guitar with whom you can sing “the unicorn song” or whatever. they have the last of the original tullamore dew in a glass display case, and i think you can buy some for an astronomical sum, if i remember correctly. you sign a dollar bill and staple it to the wall or ceiling on your first visit, after you’ve kissed the moose on the wall or some such thing. the regulars all have mugs with their names on, for when they visit.

you get the picture. goofy fun type bar. great atmosphere, fun people, good food and drink.

and one of the jokes is that the signs on the bathroom doors (you can see the signs if you click the link above) mislead you into entering the wrong restroom.

big frigging deal. it happened to me the first time i went there. and i walked into the ladies’ room.

and i immediately realized my mistake, and exited, and everyone laughed, and someone bought me a drink.

and i laughed too.

maybe that’s because i have the ability to laugh at myself. that’s a trait i treasure in a person.

and evidently it’s the trait lacking in the sad asshole-y poor excuse for a human being who threatened to sue mcguire’s because his 15-year-old daughter got walked in on by mistake by a college-age guy. and the state made mcguire’s take the signs down.

good lord. big fat hairy deal.

i’m hoping this turns out to be a snopes-worthy hoax.

i’m betting it isn’t, though. it’s idiots like this who ruin the world for everyone else.

get a life, dude.

kiki and herb get a tony nomination

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good lord, it happened.

kiki and herb were nominated for a tony.

i’ve written a lot about kiki and herb. kiki is portrayed by justin bond, of shortbus fame.

their homepage is a good place to start if you don’t know much about them.

congratulations to our miss du rane. we saw her last sunday at joe’s pub, and my god what an epic show it was. nearly two and a half hours of complete derangement.

it was delicious, and hysterical. even herb basically stopped playing piano just to watch the meltdown. definitely a show for the ages, or the vaults, or whatever. our friends from out of town loved the show.

and we’re going to see them again on thursday–they are taping their dvd at the knitting factory. should be quite an event.

anyway, here’s hoping that kiki and herb win that tony. their only competition is jay johnson, the ventriloquist.

dear god, please don’t let kiki lose to the puppet that replaced her at the helen hayes theater.

of course, if she does, it’s a comic vein that will be mined for years, which i guess makes it a win-win situation.

mainstream media versus giuliani: the hit is on?

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there’s a whole spate of negative stories about rudy giuliani in the press today.

there’s this one in the ny times: Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

there’s this ap wire story: Giuliani’s clients could pose conflict

there’s this reuters wire story: New Yorkers back Bloomberg over Giuliani in poll

not that i care, because i can’t stand the man and i think he’d make a lousy president.

but it certainly seems that his success has gotten under someone’s skin, and that there’s a concerted effort to knock him back a bit.

maybe it’s just the inevitable backlash against a frontrunner about whom relatively little is known on a national level.

maybe a few compliant, lazy reporters were fed stories by someone with an agenda.

i don’t know. just an observation.

fun weekend with houseguests

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our friend dayna is coming to stay with us, along with her friend jennifer as well.

we know dayna from richmond–we met them when kirk was doing hedwig at a local theater. at the time, they had a goth clothing shop, and they did some co-promotions with the show.

dayna now does stunning makeup and style consulting with her company vamps and vixens. and the two of them are in town for a makeup show, and they are staying with us.

this won’t be easy. we’ve started a bit of packing in advance of our upcoming (hopefully!) move, and we gave away our futon on freecycle (you should give them a try–great way to get rid of crap you don’t want anymore. people just come and get it).

anyway, with no futon and a living room full of boxes in our new-york-sized one bedroom apartment, you can imagine how interesting this will be.

we’re giving them our bed, and we’ll sleep on the floor on sleeping bags and cushions and whatnot. this may sound gallant, but in reality sleeping on the floor for a night or two will do both our backs a world of good. so it’s self-interest, really.

so brunch today at piper’s kilt–nothing like all-you-can-drink bloody marys to start a weekend right. then some shopping with the girls, whose tastes make for fun times. tonight a bit of carousing, and then it’s off to work for them sunday and monday.

oh and dinner somewhere too.

but we’ll have fun today. it’s a welcome change to have friends stop by. and it gave me an excuse to stay home from work yesterday and clean the house.

it needed it.

i’ll let you know how it all went, probably.

unexpected theatrical pleasures

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

there was the play i was dying to see.

and the play that, frankly, i was dreading seeing.

we saw “deuce on friday night, and had plans to see “our town” on saturday night.

yes, that old warhorse. staple of dinner theater and high school gyms everywhere. we had a friend playing the stage manager, and he was reprising the role for another theatrical company. we’d seen him play the role before, in a production where kirk was both professor willard and his understudy who went on as stage manager once.

this other production of our town was less than a year ago, and i saw it twice then–once to see kirk as professor willard and once to see him as stage manager. i’m supportive that way.

so you can imagine how anxious i was to see the three-act-two-intermission-long-and-heavy-themed “our town”. and i told you how anxious i was to see angela lansbury on stage again after 25-odd years off it.

well, that just goes to show you not to settle your opinions and expectations too early.

deuce, frankly, was a major disappointment. oh, angela lansbury was fine. and marian seldes was outstanding, and frankly outdid lansbury by a mile, i think.

but the play was pretty tedious. it’s about this superannuated (typecasting, i know) doubles tennis team who sit in the stands at a u.s. open tennis match, and discuss their career together.

it’s mildly entertaining, and you get to hear jessica fletcher (if that’s your angela lansbury reference point) utter a few choice swear words that seem to put there, well, just for the sake of hearing cute old ladies say “fuck” and “cunt”.

but the problem is that there’s absolutely no conflict. none whatsoever. it’s the stage equivalent of “forrest gump”, my least-favorite supposedly classic movie. something happens, something happens, something happens, play over. not adding up to much.

the lack of conflict has a point–to highlight the difference between the genteel play and lives of older tennis stars, as compared to the endorsement-filled, slash-and-burn play of the new generation of tennis stars.

but that doesn’t make for much dramatic interest. at the end, i felt like i had attended the angela lansbury lifetime achievement awards, complete with the last line of the play, a gentleman fan sweeping his hand toward the standing pair of actresses and intoning “you will never see their likes again” or some such overwrought nonsense.

yeah i get it. goodbye angela lansbury or whatever. i’ll just have to close my eyes and imagine her as mrs. lovett in sweeney todd–something i can listen to on cd but never see for myself.

and then, last night, came the dreaded obligatory visit to “our town” to see a friend in a role i’d seen him play before, in a play i’d seen twice recently and read innumerable times.

bo-ring, right?

wrong.

they had done some judicious trimming, splitting the play into halves with the second act beginning with george and emily’s flashback of how they fell in love, which moved then right to the wedding.

they consolidated some parts (out professor willard, with his lines read by wally webb as a school report, which makes good sense), changed others (rebecca webb as a very young child, which also makes sense when you hear her lines coming from a six year old, and would have been much more effective if played by a child that wasn’t completely annoying and a terrible actress), and beefed up others (simon stimson makes several added strategic appearances, with his drunken stumbling underlining the lines of others in the play).

the church choir was more omnipresent as well, and although i wouldn’t have had them sing “you lift me up” or “you raise me up”–i can’t remember which, but it’s that horrible schmaltzy “wind beneath my wings”-sounding gospel-y song that i’ve heard on the commercial for some late-night time-life cd compliation–it worked for them to sing under the lines and action as mood music. and there was canned mood music as well–sometimes worked, sometimes a bit cheesy and too much.

but i digress. overall, very, very well done, with all nearly all the actors giving spot-on excellent performances. they definitely breathed new life into an old chestnut.

angela lansbury would have been much better served had she been downtown playing mrs. gibbs.

p.s.–dinner at i trulli magnificent as always. i had warm mozzarella in a tapenade of vegetables, followed by loin of rabbit with mozzarella tomatoes and capers, with heavenly polenta and broccoli rabe; cheese for dessert. kirk had cantaloupe soup with proscuitto followed by pheasant with wild mushrooms and the aforementioned broccoli rabe; sheep’s milk ricotta and berries for dessert. food delicious, service perfect, atmosphere lovely.

update: ben brantley’s ny times review is kinder than i am to angela lansbury, but he hates the play.

angela lansbury in “deuce” tonight

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

that’s what i’m doing, along with eating at i trulli.

it’s been a number of years since angela lansbury was on broadway. 1983 to be exact–a revival of “mame”. before that, you are in the ’70s with “sweeney todd”.

so as soon as i saw “deuce” go on sale, i jumped all over it. it’s a limited run–18 weeks. we bought tickets for my favorite time–in previews, a day or two before opening night. my logic with that is that most or all of the kinks will be worked out, and the cast’s energy is building, and if the show’s a hit you don’t have to deal with the madness that comes after opening night.

and if the show’s a flop you still got to see it. nothing worse than the show closing before the night you had tickets for a performance, if you really wanted to see it.

it’s been a while since we went to i trulli, but it’s wonderful non-red-sauce-italian food that’s consistently tasty, and the atmosphere and service are always top-notch.

i need a good new-york-style great night on the town.

i think i’m going to get it.

inside scoop: the final sopranos episode

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you may not know of my cassandra-like abilities.

you may not be aware of my similarity to nostradamus.

i try to be modest about my ability to see the future through my dreams. i reveal this ability only when i know that i can do good by its revelation.

so, having dreamed of the ending to the sopranos last night, i’ve decided to let you in on the secret, so you can sleep nights yourself, and stop wondering.

and of course, this comes with a definite:

«spoiler alert»

and a definite:

«sick & twisted mind alert»

first up is tony. he’s on his way to surprise carmela for her birthday–she’s at the strip joint she works at now.

didn’t you know that? i guess she gets the job in the last episode.

anyway, tony looks at the marquee for the strip joint. damn! uma thurman is appearing tonight!

he’s pissed. parking is going to be a nightmare.

so he drives, and drives, and finally finds a parking space. he quickly locks his suv and dashes across the street toward the strip joint.

but no! he doesn’t make it! he’s hit by a car! he flies through the air and off the road.

but it’s not an accident. the car is driven by a horde of gypsies, and they quickly carry his body to a waiting tent, where they cut out tony’s vital organs to sell on the black market.

carmela is a different story. turns out she never made it to work at the strip club that day. she was at home, recovering from her brain surgery. to operate, they had to take off the entire top of her skull, from right above the ears. and afterwards they stitched it back on, but rather crudely.

she’s still a bit dizzy, evidently, because she stumbles and hits her head on the coffee table.

and the top of her head flies off.

she stands up, momentarily confused by what’s happened, and tries to feel the top of her head. of course, her fingers plunge into her grey matter.

not good. she immediately starts hallucinating. she sees all the people who have died on the sopranos before her. big pussy. adrianna. ralph. all of them, around a dining table.

she sits down at the table. and falls backwards, and dies.

then a dog comes up, and starts chowing down on her brain. and a few more, and pretty soon there’s a whole gaggle of dogs, munching away.

fade to black.

remember.

you heard it here first.