It’s 6pm on the West Coast. For most people, that’s “Cocktail Time.” But not for me. For me, it’s “Debate Whether or Not to Work Out and Celebrate Said Contemplation by Ordering a Large Pepperoni Pizza and Sitting On My Ass Watching Reruns of The Bob Newhart Show” Time.
I don’t miss cocktails as much as I used to. But damn, I do miss photographing them. I had the knack. This is my all-time favorite shot of my all-time favorite cocktail… a vodka martini. Isn’t she beautiful? I named this one Emma. Then I drank her.
I only bring up being on the wagon because our host of tonight’s podcast, The Big W, is on the wagon too (he’s under the weather, so it’s strictly soda for him tonight). But as you serve up your shaker and toast the end of the work day with that far-out cat or groovy gal of yours, he’s got the perfect Hi-Fi soundtrack for your evening’s real gone scene.
Highlights on tonight’s podcast include Jack Jones singing “Wives and Lovers,” which some of you may know as the song that runs over the credits of the film The First Wives Club.
The Big W’s also got Doris Day’s “The Glass Bottom Boat” from the 1966 film starring Day and Rod Taylor, a swingin’ version of “Won’cha Come Home, Bill Bailey” by Della Reese, and “Kookie Kookie Lend Me Your Comb,” which up until this podcast I didn’t know was actually a song. I thought it was just something 1950s kids said to each other, like “What’s Buzzin’?” and “Neeto Freeto!”
And then get ready for two very unique and very different versions of “Old McDonald” First up, it’s a radio jingle from Frank Sinatra for “Peter Epstein Pontiac.” And a little later, brace yourself for the most far-out version of the song you’ve ever heard, performed by Ellz Fitzgerald. You’ll never look at it as a kid song again.
My introduction to this show involved a pre-Robin Mattson Heather Webber dropping LSD into Diana Taylor’s iced tea as part of her plan to drive Diana to the mental ward and claim for her own Diana’s baby, who was actually Heather’s biological child sold months earlier on the black market. What Heather didn’t know was that the lazy susan the identical iced teas were sitting on was accidentally turned on when she wasn’t looking, and poor Heather ended up dosing herself. My mind exploded at the idea that this is what grown-ups got to do with their time. It explains a lot about my own personal life choices as an adult, but that’s a topic for another post.
Sinatra’s version of the song was recorded for the 1959 album Come Dance with Me!, which spent over two years on the Billboard album charts and became Sinatra’s most successful album of all time, though it peaked at number two. The album took Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, Best Vocal Performance by a Male and Best Arrangement for Billy May. Aside from “Just in Time,” Come Dance with Me! also includes the classics, “Cheek To Cheek,” “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Baubles, Bangles & Beads.”
For those of you who like a little spirited action and romance themes to goose you into the kitchen and underscore you weekend beef bourguignon preparations, here comes nearly four hours of the best tracks from 40 years of James Bond music, reaching back to 1964’s Goldfinger and shuffling all the way up to 2008’s Quantum of Solace.
I know… you’ve been asking yourself for over two years now… “What does Gary Green actually sound like? Could his voice possibly be as masculine and virile-sounding as I’ve always imagined??”