Andrew's View of the Week

As The Pizza Cooks — Episode 24

Posted on 04/07/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

I just checked and I started this blog 13 years ago this month. So far I’ve done 1,307 posts with a couple actually worth reading. WordPress says I have 4,333 followers with some 25,992 comments. Well, okay, 12,032 of those are me replying to other people’s comments. My average post gets around 32 likes and six or seven comments. These aren’t get numbers by any internet blogging standard, but it’s the best blogging results I’ve ever had.

Okay, I only have one blog, so there’s not much to compare it to.

I started this blog as a way to just get into consistently writing something every week. That kind of worked, I have managed a lot of posts, but what really got me writing here was when I was when I started treatment for cancer. That just clicked something over in my brain and I wrote a lot. In time I moved on from that subject to others, including pizza — which is a more pleasant conversation than cancer treatments.

At the time I considered myself a prose writer and thought that I’d try and write a novel or short stories or something. I started working on a novel, but I’ve not finished it. A year or two after I finished my cancer treatments, I thought I’d write a book about the experience, but when I sat down to write that, it all came out as poetry. I blame the radiation — must have changed something in my brain. These days I don’t call myself a writer, but rather a poet (even though I don’t post much poetry here).

When I get to this time of year and the arrival of spring, I think about this blog, my writing practices and think about whether or not I should change anything. Maybe stop blogging, do some videos, actually work on that novel, start a new blog … lots of thoughts race through my brain. I don’t know. I might. One problem with blogging for this long is that at times I find myself rewriting the same blog post I did years ago. I didn’t look it up, but I know I’ve written this post about blogging a few times.

I know all bloggers have times when they think it might be time to stop or time to change. I follow a lot of blogs and they come and go. Some people write consistently for awhile and then just stop. A small number of blogs I follow have been going longer than mine. Some folks announce when they’re quitting and some just stop. Strangely enough, I can name three blogs that I’ve followed where the blogger has died — all of them good blogs.

This isn’t the post I sat down to write, but it’s the post that came out. I won’t make any startling announcements today, but am just saying I’m thinking about stuff.

You may hear more or less from me. You may see a video or two. I might even start a blog about theology or perhaps start a YouTube channel on making pizza.

All I really know is that it’s almost dinner time here and I have to go.

Friday Wisdom — Coffee

Posted on 04/05/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

I had a fancy latte the other day where Heather and I discussed the finer points of coffee. Here’s everything I know about it:

I learned that there is a sad coffee – it’s called depresso.

I was sitting in my car outside Starbucks drinking a latte in my slippers when I thought, “They should have given me a cup.”

I went to the urgent care doctor and told her that I get a stabbing pain in my face every time I take a sip of coffee. She said to take the spoon out of my mug.

What kind of money do they use on the space station? Star-bucks.

The kid next door is like coffee – always getting grounded.

I have no problem with caffeine. I have a lot of problems without caffeine.

I was in Starbucks when someone stole my cappuccino. The Barista called the police and reported a mugging.

Never give a snake coffee – it makes them viperactive.

Paul McCartney is rumored to be working on a new song for a Starbucks commercial – Latte it Be!

I knew a guy who got fired from Starbucks for not changing the coffee filters. Turns out that’s grounds for dismissal.

A guy I knew took a first date to Starbucks. Turns out he’d forgotten her name …

I was reading about this lady who sued Starbucks. The judge threw out the lawsuit because she had no grounds.

I bought a coffee in Starbucks today. No idea what that is in Earth money.

I tried a new drink a Starbucks today, but it tasted familiar. It was a case of Deja Brew.

Years ago I was manager of an IT team and I put a sign on the coffee pot saying, “Break fluid.”

Tolkien’s first draft: Not all who wander are lost. / They’re just looking for coffee …

Coffee raises my heart rate, so I count a large mug of coffee as my aerobic exercise for the day.

Posted in wisdom | Tagged coffee, coffee jokes, food, humor, wisdom | 25 Comments

As The Music Plays #11 — Piano Man

Posted on 03/30/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

This is a series of posts about the music I play while writing. This time we’re up to Piano Man by written and sung by Billy Joel. Released in 1973 first as a single and then on his album, Piano Man this was his first major hit and in time became his signature song. It’s hard to imagine listening to a Joel concert and him not playing this song.

Piano Man is largely autobiographical as it’s based on Joel’s real experience play in a piano bar durning 1972. The story goes that Joel had signed a record contract with a company that wasn’t really working out when Columbia Records got interested in him. Joel decided he wanted to move to Columbia, but his current contract made that difficult so he decided to hide out for a while in L.A while Columbia’s lawyers worked to get him out of the contract. He still needed to earn a living so he took a job at a bar playing the piano while hiding out from the first record company.

The whole song came from Joel’s observations of the customers at the bar. The music is simple and so are the lyrics. It’s simple poetry and as Joel once observed they limerick like. The power of the song is in those simple lyrics and how they tell a good story in few words. For example, take the line, “Now Paul is a real estate novelist / Who Never had time for a wife” here we get the life story of a man in just two lines of seven words each. In those 14 lines we learn Paul writes novels, is a real estate agent and hasn’t been married. Similarly this leads to learn about “Davy who’s still in the navy.”

The lines about Davy bring to my mind the image of a few sailors I’ve know and I can just see Petty Officer Davy leaning on the bar drinking a beer. The conversation between Paul and Davy is likely about politics or maybe Paul’s telling stories about his time in the military.

There’s nothing overly sophisticated about this song, like the rhyme “Davy in the Navy,” but that doesn’t get in the way of us getting a full picture of the activity in the bar from the customers, to the bar tender, manager and even the waitress. The waitress in the song is actually Joel’s first wife Elizabeth Weber who worked at the same bar while Joel played the piano.

Joel has written a lot of music, having had 33 make the top 40 list and much of that far more complex music and lyrics. Still, it is the simplicity and clear story that always bring me back to this song. Like so many of the songs on my writing play list Piano Man gets my brain into a story telling mood and as the song says, “Gets me feeling alright.”

One of my favorite versions is this one: