If you didn’t read this week’s post “Kicking the Idea of the Bucket” I will read it to you, dramatically and enthusiastically, below. 👇
Enjoy!
Notes from the Captain
Crew. How’s your bucket going? Not the bucket list—I mean your life. Is it filling up nicely with feelings? Sloshing about? Spilling over the edges with happiness?
Seems like I’ve got buckets on the brain, lately. Bucket lists, bucket hats, bucket heads. Weird how the mind works.
Like this memory.
I worked in the kitchens at Parliament House in Australia for a few months after I finished University and got sick of being on the dole. Early morning shifts. I sometimes had to make massive quantities of egg salad in big plastic tubs. I think it was egg salad….
Doesn’t matter what it was—that’s not the memory. The memory is that the mayonnaise. It came in giant white buckets and weighed an absolute elephant. Picture me in my black and white checkered kitchen staff pants and white shirt, dragging giant buckets of it around on the industrial tile floors so I could pop the top and scoop the goop with a massive ladle.
Not sure why, but that bucket memory just popped into my head. I can almost smell the contents of that bucket.
Sense memory.
And also, life threads.
Captains don’t start as Captains. We were all deck hands once.
👩🍳
We are almost midway into the first month of the year and today, as luck would have it, is “Quitter’s Day.” The second Friday in January. That’s the day when most people give up their New Year’s Resolutions.
Resolutions (which are different from bucket list items) are just goals with airs, so it’s always nice to bring them down a peg or two.
Be gone, wretched and foul beast! (Or stick around. I dunno—you do you.)
Two weeks in and I’m already exhausted. There’s just so much to do and I bought a larger day-to-day task diary this year and I seem to fill almost every line on the next day’s page as I sit in bed at night before and argh—so much to do!
And then I read and forget all about it.
It doesn’t matter how long the list is—I will get each item done eventually. I will not quit. I do not quit.
There is no Quitters Day for this Captain.
Although I did quit that job with the mayonnaise buckets….
Please enjoy today’s post and video and feel free to leave a comment or share anything that might be on your bucket list. Yes, I make fun of them in the video, but I do so with curiosity and love.
Your Captain, Janeen 🫡
Thangs from this episode…
👩✈️ Bucket Drummer
People drumming on buckets will never not impress me. I still remember the echo of them in NYC subway stations. Memories like this make me miss that place.
Fun fact: The first time I ever saw or became aware of bucket drumming was at the start of the movie Green Card. I was more of a ‘saucepans in the kitchen/wooden spoon’ kinda gal.
It’s Larry Wright in the movie, who is often cited as the original bucket drummer. He was also in this Levi’s spot in 1990, directed by Spike Lee.
Here he, also in 1990.
2022. He’s still at it.
👩✈️ Buckethead
I used a clip of Buckethead in today’s episode. Here is the full “Bucket of Bernie Brains” performance at Bonnaroo 2002. Side note: My love for Les Claypool grows exponentially with every viewing of any video of him playing. Wizards gotta wizard.
👩✈️ Kick the bucket
We all know it means ‘to die’ but what is the etymology of this saying? As I mentioned in the episode, I did some digging into the origins of the idiom to ‘kick the bucket.’ A lot of folks seem to think they have the definitive answer and numerous YouTube videos declare it confidently, but I turned to the Oxford University Press blog for this one. In the following post, the author digs into the most common explanations (pig slaughter connection/possible connection to do with hanging), and concludes that it cannot be verified and so remains ‘origins unknown’. Take a read: More on Idioms: Kick the Bucket
👩✈️ Bucket List, the movie
Just in case you’ve never heard of it.
👩✈️ Skyhooks
I don’t talk about Skyhooks in the episode, but I do use a clip of their song “Horror Movie” when talking about how I will never enjoy horror movies. Skyhooks were a CLASSIC Australian band in the 70s. Red Symons, the guitarist, is probably most recognized as being the grumpy gong guy during the talent segment on the TV show, “Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday.”
They were a fun band, classified as glam I believe. Their song “You just like me cos I’m good in bed” was, surprisingly, banned due to sex references. Whaaa? I always liked “Ego is Not a Dirty Word.” I often sing that to myself when I’m getting too cocky as a kind or ironic reverse psychology. But enough about me. The sound is very ‘70s.
Thus ends this week’s Cultural Exchange.
OK. That’s it for this week. I should confess that I went back and forth putting the Kentucky Derby “I will never” in the first section of Monday’s post. Chances are I will never and I don’t really want to, but let’s just say, hypothetically, that I got a job for some whacky TV show where they made me do all these things a la Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs” and all of a sudden they were like: “How about riding a horse in the Kentucky Derby?” Unlikely, sure, but you never know and the point is that I would at least consider that before declining so that’s why I kept it there.
“Truly, it was an honor to be asked,” I’d say, “But I haven’t ridden a horse since I was a teenager and my knee hurts and I don’t see real good no more. The horse’s name was Banjo, thanks for asking.”
I really just want to wear the jockey silks…
Thanks for listening/watching and sharing. If you want to chat about any of the concepts in this week’s post—or just in general—feel free to leave a comment for the Captain (it me.)
Do. Make. Be.
🫡
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple
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