Oh Heck Yeah, It's Friday!

First Order of Business:

1.      Parker Milsap

2.      Lillie Mae

3.      John Mellencamp

4.      Dan Auerbach

5.      Valerie June

6.      Feist

7.      Rhiannon Giddens

8.      Devil Makes 3

9.      Justin Townes Earle

10.  John Mayer

11.  Pokey Lafarge

12.  Willie Nelson

13.  Sheryl Crowe

14.  Chris Stapleton

15.  Jeff Tweedy

16.  Ani DiFranco

17.  Shovels and Rope

18.  Adele

19.  Lumineers

20.  Regrettes

For posterity, my Prairie Home Companion list, if you’re playing along at home. It counts as a point if they appear on the show in any capacity, even just sitting in with the band. Although nobody on this list sat in with the band or appeared as featured duet artist last season, because that’s just way too easy. I’m really annoyed that I didn’t make the right call Fiona Apple, who is appearing this week as the featured duet artist. I considered her. She toured with Nickel Creek in the early naughties, but she’s been pretty quiet lately so I didn’t put her on the list.

Last year he stayed pretty consistent with Sarah Jaroz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins. This year he seems to be spreading the featured duet artist love around a bit more. Earlier this season he featured Rachael Price from Lake Street Dive. That episode made me ugly cry repeatedly. Damn you Thile!!! No, seriously, it was actually cathartic and I felt a little less alone in this crazy fucking world. Thile can be really effective at making one feel all of the feels when he sets his brilliant little mind to it.

Some of them will depend on timing. I almost left Chris Stapleton off the list because he’s pretty big and fairly mainstream, but it just happened that he was playing the arena across the street that night and was willing to take the time to appear on the show. I think that John Mayer and Adele would both be down with coming on the show for standard PHC pay scale if timing allows. I don’t think they would divert from a tour though. The show is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and just doesn’t have the budget to make that worth their whiles.

I’m still really tickled about being right on the Auerbach call. I can’t wait to see Thile go all fanboy over the Black Keys guy. He’s totally going to go all fan boy and it’s going to be adorable. He’s totally what Andro would refer to as a Cinnamon Roll. I’m not sure where she got that. I can’t keep up with the things the kids are saying these days, but when I get ahold of what she’s saying I sure do love mangling it just to annoy her. Yes, I’m THAT kind of mom.

Speaking of moms, I had a lovely bit of texting with mine last night. We just started talking again a few weeks ago. We had a bit of a falling out after the election and didn’t speak for a few months. Either enough time has passed to give us some distance from that shit, or she’s maybe starting to see that the current political climate is causing chaos and craziness and it’s out of control and the angry mango was as bad a thing and I’d feared.

We had a post-election conversation that went something like this:

Her: At least he isn’t a criminal. Benghazi and her emails. She’s had people killed.

Me: Yes, mom, yes he is, and a dangerous, narcissistic one at that. And those other two things aren’t actually real things and no she hasn’t.

Her: Well, that’s your opinion.

No! It isn’t my opinion. Whether or not actual events did or did not happen is a matter of fact. An opinion is a stance on whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza (it does). How did this woman raise me to have such acute critical thinking skills when it appears she has none of her own?  Now that we are on speaking terms again, she is carefully avoiding politics and religion. (Which I had been previously avoiding, but she always managed to bring them up and then proceed to call me hateful and intolerant for my views about things like, you know, facts, and whether or not the NYT is a credible news source. It is.)

In the time since we last spoke, she has learned how to insert GIFs into text messages and has become for all intensive purposes (the Word Murderer used that this week and I also spit coffee out of my nose, but more on her later) a texting tween girl. She also uses the tween text abbreviations like 2 and u and b and ur and 4 – like she’s writing lyrics to a Prince song or a DJT Jr. tweet. (Seriously though, he doesn’t know the difference between Maxine Waters and Frederica Wilson and then proceeds to slut shame her over a HAT??? How the fuck is a hat slutty?) And it makes me insane! This is the woman that raised me to be a grammar Nazi (although she said last night that she prefers the term Word Warrior, which I agree is much less fascist) and from whom I inherited my knack for writing and editing.

So, the Word Murderer. Well, this week she’s used the word “understandment” repeatedly, as in “It is to my understandment that…” and she’s referred to the Hawaiian word for hello and goodbye and thank you and welcome and probably a few other things like chicken, tree, papaya, and the color mauve, as “Haloha”.  She did this on Monday like six times in the space of an hour. She’s also been bragging about her IT skills dropping terms like “chat room” and “disc drive”, because those have been relevant at any point in the past ten years, but yeah, I totally believe you’re an expert. And of course continued discussion of the ubiquitous Swifter.

And proof that I’m a Word Warrior and not a grammar Nazi? I haven’t even attempted to correct her.

Thank the fucking goddesses it’s Friday. This week has been about a month long and I’m ready to go home and sit on the porch with Grumpy and Bucky and declare it wine-thirty.