RIP Mary Weiss; Black green-banana- pasta follow-up; the Australian Open and Aryna Sabalenka

I’m All Lost in The… what I’m obsessing over THIS week.

Week #15.

1) I’ve long dreamed of writing a book called From Shangri-La to Nirvana: The History of Punk. The “Shangri-La” reference in that title is a nod to the early-mid-1960s “Girl Group,” the Shangri-Las, whose street-wise, working class Queens sensibility (and thick accents) added a juvy-hall edge to their teen-aged operetta pop hits while also distinguishing them from the more curlicue cursive love songs of their bouffant hairdo and evening gown contemporaries like the Angels, Shirelles, Supremes, Cookies, Ronettes, and Marvelettes.

“Ms. Weiss [the Shangri-Las’ 15-year-old lead singer Mary Weiss, who died this week at 75] was once asked about the evening gowns worn by some other singers onstage,” the Washington Post wrote in Weiss’ obituary this week , “‘Old people’s clothes,’ she scoffed.”

Reclaimed with a sense of sordid 1970s ennui and irony less than a decade later by the proto-punk New York Dolls (also from working class Queens), the Shangri-Las quickly became a template for the CBGB set as bands like Blondie, Suicide, and the Ramones (also from working class Queens) leaned into their own trashy pleas of adolescent angst.

On the louche intro to their 1973 urchin love song “Looking for a Kiss,” the Dolls’ lead singer David Johansen steals Mary Weiss’ spellbinding intro line from the Shangri-Las’ 1965 top-20 hit “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” —When I say I’m in love/you best believe I’m in love/L-U-V!

(I should say, as the span of time between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, that once seemed so epic, recedes further into the past, the Shanri-Las’ earnest woe and the punks’ witty camp become harder to distinguish from one another, nearly blurring the Shangri-Las and the New York Dolls into figures from the very same artistic scene.)

I started embracing the meta remove of pop-punk myself as a teenage songwriter in the early 1980s by mimicking David Bowie’s own precursor punk snide, the dystopian Doo-wop on his early 1970s records; I was born a decade late.

Subsequently, in the early 1990s, I went full Shangri-Las, writing a series of intentional and default odes to Mary Weiss: “Radio Halo,” “Nitro City,” and “Black Sabbath Boots.”

A line from "Radio Halo":

1965/she's got a record on the radio/I've got a demo/I really think she oughta know.

... And from "Nitro City":

Oh, Mary/when you say you mean L-U-V/don't you know we're only human beings/in history/we are everything.

I still think she oughta know. Here are my demos: “Back Sabbath Boots,” 1993 (note the “great big kiss” at the end); “Nitro City,” 1994; “Radio Halo,” 1994 (note the Shangri-Las’ piano).

RIP Mary Weiss. She died on Friday, January 19th.

2) I’ve included Solely’s green banana black pasta in this weekly roundup before, having had a plate of the tasty corkscrew pasta and veggies for dinner over at my friend D—X.’s place two weeks ago.

After that savory dinner, I promptly ordered four boxes—“The only PASTA that comes straight FROM A TREE.” The new pasta provisions arrived this week. And Solely’s fruit pasta has made my list again.

On Monday night, I cooked up a cup of the handsome fusilli with tomato sauce, crushed garlic, chickpeas, peas, pan fried onions, and nooch. It was a delicious success.

And healthy too. As the packaging says: “This box contains 5 organic green bananas & nothing else.”

3) Another fawning NYT’s profile on tennis hero Coco Gauff this week alerted me to the fact that the 2024 Australian Open is well under way; during last September’s U.S. Open coverage, I rediscovered that I love watching (and playing) tennis. So, I quickly upgraded my Hulu subscription this week to tune in the remaining matches from Melbourne.

The Gauff profile used her quarterfinal win earlier in the week as a news peg to hype her potential path to another Grand Slam title; just 19, Gauff, currently ranked 4th in the world, won the U.S. Open last year for her first Grand Slam crown. The NYT article didn’t say who Gauff was playing next on her march to potentially winning the Australian. But I had an inkling.

I quickly googled the tournament to check up on my favorite player; that would 25-year-old Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, the person Gauff beat in last year’s U.S. Open final.

It turns out, just like Gauff, Sabalenka, who’s ranked 2nd in the world, was now storming through the Australian Open herself. Sabalenka, in fact, with her signature crushing serve and her guided missile backhand, was now Gauff’s upcoming Australian Open semifinal opponent; all of this went unmentioned in the NYT’s Gauff hagiography.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Gauff (I gleefully call her “Ka-Pow Ka-Gauff!”). But Sabalenka’s sad sack Peter Parker vibe—she’s kind of a discombobulated fuck up whose unawares comedic confusion during interviews invariably short circuits the pre-fab media narratives—has completely won me over. I’m rooting for her to win the Australian Open, just as she did for her first Grand Slam crown last year.

That’s Sabalenka pictured in the background below (after losing to telegenic Gauff at the 2023 U.S. Open) in a NYT puff think piece titled “Coco Gauff Has Grabbed Our Attention: She won the U.S. Open and seized the spotlight as a symbol of her generation.”

With my Hulu upgrade set, I’ve now watched a couple of Men’s matches so far, including kooky Russian Danil Medvedev (ranked 3) in a five-set quarterfinal thriller over Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz (ranked 9), and German Alexander Zverev (ranked 6) in four sets over Spanish phenom Carlos Alcaraz (ranked 2), setting up more to come: a Medvedev v Zverev early Friday morning (my time) semifinal, and oy, Serbian Novak Djokovic (still ranked 1) up against Italian Jannik Sinner (4) in the other Men’s semifinal.

More important, I watched the Thursday morning wee-hours (re)match between Gauff and Sabalenka. After Sabalenka, a la Peter Parker, blew a 5-2 lead, going down 6-5 in the first set, she evened it at 6-6 and then cleaned up in the tie breaker going on to win the match in two sets 7-6 (7-2), 6-4.

In Saturday’s upcoming Women’s final (I’m writing this on Thursday evening), Sabalenka is facing off against an evident rising star, China’s Zheng Qinwen (ranked 12), who has also blazed through the tournament, only dropping 3 sets out of 15; she hasn’t faced any top-ranked players, though.

As for Sabalenka, she’s yet to lose a set, and she’s beaten three top-ranked players on her way to the final, including Gauff.