Marching to a different drummer--one of my personal specialties

How does that Bruce Springsteen song go?

Anyway, the point is that there are about a million paintings of the Annunciation of Mary and about zero of the A of J. Thus, into the breach we charge.

How does that poem go? Half a league, half a league?

I must say, having looked at a lot of the Mary paintings, the one by El Greco does give me a charge. The look on both their faces is priceless:



You can almost imagine her, upon hearing the news, going: "Oy gevalt!" And him? Perhaps something along the lines of: "You don't know the half of it, sweetie."

How does that passage from the Qur'an go?

[Redacted. I decided that I don't want to get in trouble by quoting the Koran and then be the object of a fatwa, or a jihad, or whatever it is that Salman Rushdie got the sharp end of. Although if dating Padma Lakshmi is part of that package, then I'm reconsidering the fatwa. Or jihad. I love the scar on her arm.]

How, by the way, is THAT for a you-learn-something-new-everyday item?

Sometimes, if you can't remember something, you think about something else and it comes back to you. This is also one of my personal specialties. That said, the Bruce Springsteen song I was thinking about was "Growin' Up."


Growin' Up Lyrics

Special emphasis on the line that goes: "I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd, but when they said, "Sit down," I stood up."

Then there's something about growing up (perhaps not my strongest suite).

Wasn't it Picasso who said he worked his whole life to be able to paint like a child?
Yes, but I'm trying to be self-deprecating here and that's not helping.
But still...
I know.