No. 646 – King of the Mountain

Performer: Kate Bush

Songwriter: Kate Bush

Original Release: Aerial

Year: 2005

Definitive Version: None

Laurie has a huge circle of friends. If you took all of the friends I ever had and got them in the same room with Laurie’s posse, it might equal half of the number of people on the other side of the room.

But as is the case with such a large group, Laurie’s posse has become a bit more far-flung—some having moved out to the suburbs, others to other parts of the country and still others to around the world, for that matter. So, we don’t see some of them as much as we’d like.

One couple who we definitely used to spend more time with are Ann and Aaron. I met them early on in my courtship with Laurie—at a music-release party for another friend—and I got along with both of them right away. After I had been in Chicago for a while, we were invited out to their place in the western ’burbs for a dinner party.

Ann and Aaron are vegetarians, so Laurie took a veggie lasagna. Her lasagnas were well-known amongst the posse, but I hadn’t had one, so I was looking forward to trying it. I brought the wine.

We had a bunch of pupus for pre-dinner munching as Laurie put the lasagna in the oven. They had Aerial and said it was excellent but never played it. (I got it soon afterward sound-unheard anyway based on their recommendation.)

Finally, it was time to pull out the lasagna and cut into it … and we discovered it hadn’t set up. In fact, it was so loose that whenever anyone cut a chunk, the sauce filled in the hole. Laurie was pretty upset that it seemed to be a huge disaster (and a blow to her reputation for lasagnas), but it quickly was redeemed from a comedic standpoint. We dubbed it the Neverending Lasagna Pan—no matter how much you took, there never was any less—and that saved the evening. In truth it tasted pretty good even if it were a tad, shall we say, soupy.

A funnier thing happened after dinner. I learned that Ann was a major celebrity in a particular household in Cincinnati. One of my niece Leah’s favorite shows on Noggin was Jack’s Big Music Show, and one of her favorite episodes was about Prudence, the Music Genie, who was given the ability to yodel. Ann was Prudence, the Music Genie. No way!

We watched the episode, and I couldn’t wait to tell Scott that I knew Prudence, the Music Genie. As far as he was concerned at the time, that was almost as cool as if I had said I had had dinner with Geddy Lee. (I would doubt that Leah even remembers this now.)

We haven’t seen much of Ann and Aaron lately, unfortunately. Ann’s music career has been rolling along pretty good, and she’s been on the road a lot in the past two years. Like I said, far-flung.