Here are 8 TikToks to delight or vex you. Let me know what you think.

 1. "Ever since I was told that corn was real, it tasted good."

2. Yes, there is a burger bra. The question is what to wear with it.

3. For the European person — the coolest places in America.

4. Mr. Jeff's Musical Gizmos is open. 

5. Do you know the song my recently departed mother loved?

6. Getting searched at the San Francisco airport. (This can't be real, can it?)

7. Approaching the volcano in Iceland.

8. Glen Campbell and Leon Russell play "Jambalaya."

"I love you in a place where there's no space or time/I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine."

"And when my life is over/Remember when we were together/We were alone and I was singing this song for you..."



"Leon Russell died on Nov. 13, 2016 in Nashville at the age of 74. His wife said that he passed away in his sleep."

From the NYT obituary:

With a top hat on his head, hair well past his shoulders, a long beard, an Oklahoma drawl in his voice and his fingers splashing two-fisted barrelhouse piano chords, Mr. Russell cut a flamboyant figure in the early 1970s. He led Joe Cocker’s band Mad Dogs & Englishmen, appeared at George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh and had hits of his own, including “Tight Rope.” His songs also became hits for others, among them “Superstar” (written with Bonnie Bramlett) for the Carpenters, “Delta Lady” for Joe Cocker and “This Masquerade” for George Benson. More than 100 acts have recorded “A Song for You,” a song Mr. Russell said he wrote in 10 minutes.

By the time Mr. Russell released his first solo album in 1970, he had already played on hundreds of songs as one of the top studio musicians in Los Angeles. Mr. Russell was in Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound Orchestra, and he played sessions for Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, the Ventures and the Monkees, among many others. He is heard on “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds, “A Taste of Honey” by Herb Alpert, “Live With Me” by the Rolling Stones and all of the Beach Boys’ early albums, including “Pet Sounds.”

Amazing. So many beautiful songs. All those connections.

"I've been so many places in my life and time..."

We're listening to "A Song for You" here at Meadhouse tonight. The original, by Leon Russell, and this version by The Carpenters.

ADDED: Interesting that the lyric is "life and time," not "life and times." The stock phrase is "life and times." You see it in many subtitles — "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla," "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" — and titles — "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid." "Times" refers to the era in which the character lives, so "life and times" is a reference to 2 related things — the person and the setting where we find him. But "time" without the "s" seems to refer to the period of time that is the character's life. Think of how we say things like: Your time is almost used up or My time here on earth. "Life and time," then, is a redundancy, 2 references to the character's own life, and none to the era. When I listen to the Leon Russell original, I feel that I can hear an implied "s" on "time" (and a similar effect on the word "rhyme" in the rhyming line: "I've sung a lot of songs, I've made some bad rhyme"), but then I listen again and it's not there at all. I check Karen Carpenter's ultra-clear articulation: It's "life and time" and "some bad rhyme." It's odd when you contemplate the meaning of language, but when you think about the sound, closing down those lines on the hum of "m" is so much nicer than hissing into an "s."

AND: 1. "The Best of Leon Russell," and 2. "Carpenters Gold."

About Al Gore.

Sixteen interesting things about Al Gore, from David Remnick's article in The New Yorker.

1. Leon Russell is one of his neighbors—in the Belle Meade section of Nashville. 

2. Tipper Gore keeps a drum set in the living room.

3. They keep bugs out of their yard with a "system that sprays a fine mist of ground chrysanthemums from various discreet sources."

4. Gore is “having a blast.”

5. Gore has an eccentric artist friend who is "a crazy kinda guy” who's got a band called Monkey Bowl that's "a cross between the Fugs and Ali G."

6. Gore thinks the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas is "a ve-rrry interesting guy."

7. Gore has a problem with television: “There is just nothing on the dendrite level about watching television."

8. Gore is interested in "flow." Me too!

9. Gore has been avoiding “Fahrenheit 9/11." Me too!

10. Politics was a bad career choice for Gore because as an introvert, he's drained after an event. Clinton, an extrovert, is invigorated.

11. Gore didn't use Clinton in the 2000 campaign because he loves Tipper so much and cares about marital fidelity.

12. Gore thinks Bush is "a very weak man" who let other people push him around. He says Bush "was rolled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11." Gore doesn't think Bush is dumb, just "incurious." (Who started that "incurious" meme? It must have originally been a play on "Curious George.")

13. Gore doesn't seem to like Kerry very much. The two co-senators did not have much of a relationship, even though they had something in common: "aloofness." But, per Gore, Kerry "took the initiative to reach out to me and to identify the fact that he felt the relationship was not what it could be and should be and asked to sit down and talk about it and jointly create a basis for a much better working relationship. " That must have been one hell of a polysyllabic conversation.

14. Gore keeps an Apple G4 on the table when he eats a meal in front of the New Yorker reporter, who peeks at his bookmarks: the Times, the Washington Post, Google News, mediawhoresonline.com, truthout.com.

15. Gore seems a bit obsessed by a memo Lewis F. Powell, Jr. wrote just before he went on the Supreme Court. The memo argues that conservatives should strongly defend free enterprise because it is “'under broad attack' by well-funded leftists, who dominate the media, academia, and even some corners of the political world. " As if Justice Powell is at the root of a vast, right-wing conspiracy.

16. Gore doesn't like Bush's Christian fundamentalism because it doesn't have enough of the Sermon on the Mount in it—not enough about helping the poor. He and Tipper can't even find a church to attend in Nashville: “The influx of fundamentalist preachers have pretty much chased us out with their right-wing politics."