Advice

Have a personal problem? Here's where you can take it:

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Company

Visit some of the Cafe's friends on the Web:

Like Fats Waller's musical style? It's called stride, and James Steeber is a pro at it.

Bide a wee at Uncle Aus' ever-changing Little Home Page on the Prairie. She's got a monthly Wodehouse-inspired logic puzzle, whimsical art, intelligent rantings and who knows what else. She also hosts the Mining Company site for Houston.

Godfrey Daniels isn't the strangest person I know. He's the second strangest.

Cardhouse is home to Jeff Hansen, whose Missives are some of the most entertaining writing whizzing around the Web these days.

Nigel Richardson had taken the art of the personal diary to a new level.

Matthew Foster always made us smile when he was Baron of the High Plains, aka an alarmingly witty high school student sending multi-page letters pouring out his soul and adventures as weird as anything that happens to us. Now he's a grown-up, at least chronologically, and moved on to the title the Most Serene. We're not fooled, but we're still smiling.

God's Work takes many forms. Some of our favorite minions belong to the Cacophony Societies in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Others drive sculptures-on-wheels in Houston's Roadside Attractions, the annual Art Car Parade. And we wouldn't want to leave out those evil geniuses themselves, Penn & Teller.

Admit it: you've cussed at your computer. At first we loved Entropy Gradient Reversals because it made your computer return the favor. Now we just like the ranting of the incomparable RageBoyTM.

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A few of our favorite things:

Music / Pop Culcha / Amusements

Music

Here's what gets a lot of airtime at the Cafe's command center (along with links to CD Universe, where you can order copies of the recordings for yourself, by secured credit card transaction.)

CD Universe

CD Universe Quick Search

Our favorite band in the universe, world without end, amen, is Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks. Singular instrumentation -- electric banjo, saxophone, clarinet, tuba, harmonium and drums -- and a sardonic, world-weary intelligence distinguish this neo-cabaret minimalist orchestra nonpareil. Little Jack Melody himself has a direct feed to Kurt Weill and a knack, in live performance, for pushing things to the edge of mayhem. The band's cover repertoire includes a sing-along Beethoven's Ninth (auf Deutsch), the definitive interpretation of Petula Clark's "I Know a Place" and a turn on "Send in the Clowns" that gives the song its just desserts. If this were my planet, these guys would be millionaires. Listen for yourself. Or just take the plunge and treat yourself to LJM's three recordings. There's nary a clunker on any of these:

LJM's inspiration, and mine, are Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya . Recordings of many of his works are here.

The Baltimore Consort has also won my devotion. These early music pros really rip things up in concert and no wonder; a couple of these guys are old rock 'n' rollers. Browse their catalog of recordings. (Our favorite's "On the Banks of the Helicon.")

Christine Lavin, on the other hand, will really crack you up. Here's her catalog.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Other musicians I've been following for years are the Austin Lounge Lizards, Jonathan Richman, Trout Fishing in America, and the late lamented Uncle Bonsai.

Few albums stand up to repeat play, especially when the intervening interval is only as long as it takes to flip the record and recue the needle. (Yeah, record; I'm funny that way.) These do it for us:

Armed Forces by Elvis Costello
Peter Gabriel's Passion
Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads
Sally Oldfield's Water Bearer (like her more known brother Mike, she plays just about every instrument on an over-populated album)

Need something to soothe your savage whatever? Try Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast (which, we hear, always draws a flood of phone inquiries every time excerpts appear as incidental music on "All Things Considered") or Kay Gardner's A Rainbow Path, which uses no tempo faster than a human pulse at rest.

Pop culcha

The Duckman Information File.

Hot-AIR is the virtual home of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Lewis Carroll

Meet one of the proprietress' childhood loves, Moomintroll.

Another is The Marx Brothers.

And, of course, the original Dr Pepper.

Amuse Yourself

Generate a surrealist compliment.

Order a virtual pizza.

Scramble your name.

Zounds! Lotsa sounds!


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Send a greeting to your on-line pals from the Cafe!

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Sweets

Care for the sublime? How about the ridiculous? Want more?

Okay, then -- what about some fruit?

A cocktail more to your liking?

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fortuna@pipeline.com.