Lola at the Coffee House

I usually don’t get into the music discussions, mostly because I have a tin ear. But also, music to me normally involves Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Pavarotti, Callas…or folk like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and the like, which is not where most “music” discussions are headed. (Glad to see so much of it here!)

I watched Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove this afternoon…and Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again is working a rut in my brain. I cannot shake it…and will probably wake up during the night with it playing in my head.

Spectacular movie…haunting ending…compelling song.

Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again is working a rut in my brain...

Did you know that Maria Callas was a fat person as an up-and-coming singer, when she was learning the trade.
Then she got a tapeworm, due probably to eating steak tartare, and she got skinny.
Weightwatchers don't have that as an option.

We have a very old house (by US standards). It was common to house all sorts of folks in these rambling shacks. We have"A hired mans room", a tack room", outer mud room, amd inner mud room, a Parlor, cool pantry a warm pantry , two winter bedrooms with fireplaces upstairs and two summer bedrooms along with two "inside bedrooms"(these had Franklin stoves). There is a library (which was the local post office in the 17 and 1800's). Kitchen and Dining area had to be scrounged out of the tiny downstairs rooms , one of which was a bar.
theres an "Attic bedroom" for travellers and several others that we had converted to bathrooms

Cmon lets shoot some pool, thatl get you cheered up. I stink at pool.

Did you know that Maria Callas was a fat person as an up-and-coming singer, when she was learning the trade.
Then she got a tapeworm, due probably to eating steak tartare, and she got skinny

Various rumours spread regarding her weight loss method; one had her swallowing a tapeworm, while Rome's Panatella Mills pasta company claimed she lost weight by eating their "physiologic pasta", prompting Callas to file a lawsuit. Callas stated that she lost the weight by eating a sensible low-calorie diet of mainly salads and chicken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Callas

When she lost an incredible 40 kilograms in one year Maria Callas transformed herself from fat and dowdy opera singer into svelte and elegant diva.
The pressure to stay thin was tremendous for the food-loving soprano, whose newly published personal papers show how she tried to comfort herself during her tormented battles with her weight.

Callas began a habit of meticulous recipe collecting, scribbling down instructions for her favourite dishes as she travelled the world.

She would 'steal' recipes from famous cooks in hotels, writing them on scraps of paper and stuffing them into her handbag. But they were for food she herself would never eat. 'She loved food, especially cakes and puddings, but lived mostly on steak and salad,' said Callas expert Bruno Tosi, who is allowing the handwritten recipes to be published for the first time in Italy. 'Writing down these recipes was a vicarious pleasure because she rarely allowed herself to taste any of them.'

Callas's international career began in 1947 when opera singers were expected to be overweight. But at 108kg she felt miserable and regarded herself as ugly and unlovable. When the director Luchino Visconti told her to lose 30kg before he would work with her, she dropped 40kg. She then went on to lose another 8kg.

According to legend, Callas's enormous weight loss came about because she deliberately swallowed a tapeworm. Tosi, president of the International Maria Callas Association, said she did have to have treatment for worms, possibly because of her fondness for raw steak, but she dropped the weight by following a diet based on consuming iodine.

'It was a dangerous treatment because it affected the central nervous system and changed her metabolism, but she turned into a beautiful swan,' said Tosi.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/24/italy.arts

What does Maria Callas and her tapeworm have to do with Knopfler?