Stupid blog.

My so-called commitment to this thing is interrupting quite possibly one of my favorite weekend rituals of all time.

M and I are in the middle of cooking a somewhat elaborate dinner (Garlic, Lemon, and Caraway roast pork with apples, savoy cabbage, and mashed potatoes), drinking Lillet, and listening to music. More specifically, we're listening to WEFUNK Radio on the SqueezeBox at a volume that could probably be construed as a bit annoying to our downstairs neighbors, if we actually had downstairs neighbors on the weekends.

There are times when I think WEFUNK has kept me sane in London. It's a station out of Montreal that plays old and new school hip-hop, funk, and groove music, and constantly streams the best of their shows over the internet. I have always had an obsessive love for funk music (in spite of being a whiter-than-white girl from Chicago) and WEFUNK has taught me more about this style of music than any concert I've seen, book I've read, or CD I own. There's something truly comforting about being in our flat in the center of faddish, poppy, clubland in East London and listening to music that reminds me of the Boom Boom Room. In their own words:

WEFUNK celebrates a lineage of powerful, inspired music. The roots of soul, funk and rapping go back way further than the 70s, but something special began when James Brown gave the drummer some, Larry Graham hit the bass harder, Kool Herc gave the dancers breaks, DJ Hollywood worked the mic... and musicians worldwide found the funk seeping through their walls and into their music. Strong music gave a strong foundation to speak on social problems, relationships, politics and living conditions. And it made one hell of a party groove. Funk gave birth to hip-hop, and as the past grew into the present funk and hip-hop touched every modern music, leaving their mark—a swagger, a groove, mo' bounce... and something to twist your face and nod your head to. You know it when you hear it. And we play it on WEFUNK.

For example, right now I'm listening to Joe Bataan sing "Johnny." Who? Joe Bataan. "Johnny?" Yeah...I don't know either, but it's super-funky. It sounds a lot like Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, actually, and I'll bet Denson knows who Joe Bataan is.

About six months ago I was in the kitchen cooking dinner and M was working in the office. I had WEFUNK on and there was some excellent, deeply groovy, hip-hop song playing. The kind that made me rethink hip-hop in the first place. The kind that had me dancing - really dancing - in the kitchen. Like, getting down, spinning around, waving dishtowels dancing. M came out of the office, saw me in the kitchen getting my groove on and said, typically deadpan, "I didn't know you liked Public Enemy so much."

Well, hell. Neither did I.