1. So I got these lovely CD from Jon Clay, from Barny, including their only 3 recorded songs (”Undisputed Beauty Queen”, “Free Your Mind” and “Liquid Satisfaction”) and a live gig at the Water Rats (1998). All of it great stuff! I wonder why weren’t these songs properly released why I listen to them at work. I’m equipped with huge Behringer headphones, I’m concentrated designing the artwork for The Sound of Starke Adolf Vol.1 CD cover, I’m feeling that it has been so far a good evening. I even had a great hamburger. As usual, every now and then I check this obsessive website that is Last.fm. But what does Last.fm do to me? It ’scrobbles’ the Barny songs as Barney. Yes, just as Barney, the purple annoying dinosaur that my little cousins enjoy. On top of it all, a smiling Barney picture shows up, happily adorning my music chart, sandwiched between Hookline and Silverfish and The Close Lobsters.
2. On Saturday I’m around the art galleries in the Wynwood area in Miami. I’m more interested in complimentary drinks than art itself, shame on me. We’ve found this gallery that are giving away some pomegranate liqueur. I guess it could be considered a “chick drink”, but I really like it. It’s terribly sweet and tastes so good just as those pomegranates I used to pick up in the Peruvian Andes, taking all those seeds out for eating or for “seed wars” with my brother. Mind you, in Spanish pomegranate is “granada“, literally a grenade.
Drinking and drinking, refreshing the torrid tropical night. The Pama bottle continues to pour plastic cup after plastic cup while I round the four walls of the gallery. My friend Felix is still flirting with the bartender. Don’t know if it’s because she is cute or because he doesn’t want to tip her. Suddenly this lady approaches to me, I’d say late thirties, early forties. “Why does it say that on your t-shirt” she asks me with a puzzled and wrinkly face. I double-check what it says on my t-shirt. “Cats on Fire”, written in italics, below it a little owl -which later that night was the reason another lady would say “how cute, I love owls”- nothing weird on my t-shirt then.
“Well, it’s a band” I answered. “Do you find weird the name?” I ask her as she kept staring at me. She replied “Just that my cat died last week”. A small silence, I try to quickly think what I’m supposed to say, I feel for you? I’m sorry? My condolences? She doesn’t give me time to answer, “and I cremated him yesterday”.
Tough luck. Cat on Fire indeed.
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