Today was somewhat eventful, featuring Georg's car refusing to start (turned out to be no big deal, just a bad lead connecting to one of the battery terminals), a trip to Borders and another trip to Thriftworld. Which is still the store I deserve.
We went back because I had forgotten some of the stuff we wanted to drop off. And also because one of the skirts I had bought hadn't made it into my bag. The skirt was sitting behind the register, and the girl at the counter was really nice about it. I don't think she entirely understood what I was saying, but she let me have the skirt without any argument over paying for it again. Even though I'm not 100% sure I paid for it yesterday, since they don't give receipts.
While we were there I also looked through the jeans, and finally found a pair that fit! Woo hoo! My months-long quest for jeans is finally at an end. This pair are from the Gap, which is funny because I had tried on some Gap jeans in the mall and really liked the way they fit, but didn't buy them because of the price. But these were only $6! I'm wearing my new jeans and new sweater right now. Thriftworld is the best.
At Borders I browsed sewing books (the bookstore is the perfect place to read them, because they have useful tips but nothing so earthshattering that I feel the need to own them), while Georg spent the gift certificate my sister had given him, on a calendar and a couple of CDs and Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, a new reissue of his out-of-print classics La Technique and La Methode.
He even got a present for me: Sammy Davis Jr. At the Cocoanut Grove. I love Sammy, he's easily my all-time favorite male vocalist (as Georg well knows) so this is great. This is the first live performance I've heard with just Sammy alone. On the Rat Pack CDs it's really fun to hear the guys play off each other, but it's also frustrating because Frank and Dean never let Sammy get through a song without interjecting jokes that can be pretty offensive by modern standards. Of course things were different forty years ago, we can't judge them by our standards, etc. But still, this CD is a nice change of pace. He imitates other singers (including Sinatra), riffs on that newfangled rock-n-roll, tells a funny story about meeting JFK and making an ass of himself, and sings some kick-ass songs. Right now he's doing a hilarious, spot-on impersonation of Marlene Deitrich singing "Falling In Love Again." Sammy rocks!
4 Comments
i'd love to borrow your sammy CDs sometime!! i don't really like any of mine.
Love to! We have 2 good ones: the Cocoanut Grove one and "Sammy and Friends," plus some Rat Pack compilations with good Sammy material. I really prefer swinging Sammy to the schmaltzy stuff he did in the mid 60s. You know, the show tunes with lots of strings.
The Times Book Review a few weeks ago covered an interesting-sounding biography of Sammy Davis, Jr. that you might want to check out. Because of his putting up with those Rat Pack jokes, and because of his support of Richard Nixon, SD gained ill-favor among a lot of Blacks. The review, at least, argues that his impact is underestimated, and that his method of simply ignoring color barriers was its own kind of radical.
Thanks for the tip! I'll look for that biography. I remember hearing that his wife May always felt Frank and Dean went too far with the racial jokes on stage. But that Sammy put up with it because he believed it was just part of the act, they respected him as a person and Frank in particular had done a lot for his career. If I recall correctly, it's because of Frank that Sammy was the first black performer to stay in the same hotel in Vegas at which he was performing.