Who's sad and blue?

Connie Francis, 50s and 60s pop songstress extraordinaire, died Wednesday. She was 87.

I started paying attention to her in the 80s, because the power she put behind the lyrics and melodies was truly amazing. Like Donna Summer, the woman had an astounding set of pipes and she was far better than much of her material.

Francis’ career took a dive after she was raped in a Howard Johnson motel room in 1974; she spent years recovering physically and mentally from the attack. She was “rediscovered” in recent months by TikTokers, and she was still performing on the circuit. The lady really had class.

In choosing which of her iconic renditions I should post for today’s earworm, “Who’s Sorry Now?” seemed to me appropriate, given that the Kleptocrat is desperately trying to deflect attention from the Epstein files—to the point that he’s chiding his conspiracy loon followers with the same pejoratives he usually reserves for soldiers killed in action.

Life comes at you fast, eh?

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

The beaches, the landing fields and the cake stands

I confess: I like cake. (I like pie, cookies, ice cream and tiramisu, as well, but this post is about cake.) You may recall how, when told that “Bosnians like cake”, I made sure that I had cake for breakfast every day I was in Sarajevo.

I got into baking cakes as a stress reliever while in grad school—it’s something you can do that you have to concentrate on (so you’re not wigging out about your research) but is time delimited and bears concrete results relatively quickly. In recent times I’ve switched from full layer cakes to cupcakes both for portion control and because you can freeze cupcakes so they don’t dry out like the big ones do.

(My first cupcakes were pathetic—using a spatula to frost them resulted in things that looked like plops of dinosaur poop. Then I spent a few hours on YouTube, bought a pastry bag and tips and my output has improved. I have no idea how people learned to bake before YT.)

Well, the conman currently heading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz, went on TV this week to lie about how the recently passed budget bill won’t negatively affect Medicaid recipients (fun fact: it will). And Mr. Crudités added this advice for people losing their healthcare: “Don’t eat carrot cake.”

This was evidently said without irony, in the face of TACOman’s preferred diet of fast food and Diet Coke. (Li’l Donnie Two-scoops, of course, is probably the most chemically-enhanced president in our history. A chunk of that enhancement has to be cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes medication.)

Well—there sprang up a new group of heroes in this nation—the Cake Resistance.

And I have enlisted as a private in that army.

On y va.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Bag lady

Meet my new grocery shopping bag.

The Barnraisers Project, an organization I support, was giving these away. I could have had a tee-shirt, but TBH, I have more tee-shirts than God from my years in tech, so I chose the tote.

TBH, I also have more tote bags than God (also from my years in tech), but they seem to wear out faster than tee-shirts.

It’s a small thing, to carry a bag that urges people to “Love harder than the fascists can hate”, but it’s something.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Summer beauty

We are fully into crape myrtle season, and I am totally here for it.

This bi-colored one is extra primo good:

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: la belle France

Since today is Bastille Day, I’m expressing my undying love, appreciation and gratitude to France.

As with the United States (or, TBH, anywhere), there’s plenty that you could crab about the country, but its history, wit, diversity, language, flair and geographic beauty vastly outnumber the flaws. It fills my soul in places where I didn’t even know there were gaps.

I’ve never been disappointed taking a trip to France. From my first one—straight out of college, with no credit cards, riding a bicycle from Paris to Santiago de Compostela and staying in youth hostels, abandoned houses and highway rest stops—to the most recent involving comfortable hotel beds and some very nice meals—each one has enriched my perception of the world.

I love the sense of history in France. Yeah, the French are subject to selective amnesia as much as the next nation, but coming from Southern California, chills ran down my spine the first time I stood at the edge of the medieval boundaries of Poitiers, looking across the plain in the twilight below and just faintly hearing the echoes of the Moorish armies that encamped there in 732, before Charles Martel drove them back toward the Pyrenees.

You don’t get that sort of thing on La Cienega Boulevard. Not usually, anyway. And certainly not without chemical enhancers involved.

Moreover—nobody knows how to throw a revolution like the French. Nobody.

Here is the range of France—the Arc de Triomphe:

And a road sign in Calvados (zoom in):

Vive la révolution!

 

©2025 Bas Bleu