Podcast about Hal and Mal's Chef.

Paul Wolf podcast with Chef Damien Cavicchi of Hal and Mals

Soul Sessions Jackson · Damien Cavicchi

The Blue Whales and I

 A Frenchman in a red knit hat came on television and told me about Blue Whales.  

Is it bigger than an elephant?
       It's bigger than six elephants.

Is it bigger than a brontosaurus?
       It weighs twice more than the Brontosaurus.

It's bigger than three school buses.  It's bigger than a jet airplane. Its food is smaller than your pinky finger.  Its heart is enough for a boy like you to stand up inside.  Its brain is larger and more complicated than yours.

To find each other through the broad, dark, deep ocean--they sing.  They sing through their giant bellies, the bones in their nose, and the nostrils on the top of their head.  Their song fills the water and travels for miles until it finds another behemoth, a deep, long, sad song of cold and food and sunlight and life and beauty.  

When I was a boy, the Frenchman in the red knit hat said that the Blue Whales were dying.  We were poor companions for it on this living blue ball, and they were dying.  In my dreams, I could see the last few blue behemoths swmming through endlessly deep oceans, praying they would live.

They did live.  Though their extinction was thought all but certain, they came back out of the pure blue depths.  They are the largest animals that ever lived.  We are the animals with the largest environmental impact that ever lived.  Maybe we are bound together.  Maybe their songs I hear in my sleep have a messge.

A New Perspective On The Academy

 Some of the best students of literature and history I ever met were electricians and plumbers in the daytime.  Some of the best carpenters and electricians I ever met were lawyers, doctors, and accountants in the daytime.

For forty years, I've advocated that Millsaps could work with Hinds Community College to offer joint degrees.  That way, your sons or daughters could get a degree in modern language and plumbing, history and carpentry, theater and cattle science.  So far, precisely zero people have taken up my idea.

You spend four years in college.  It costs a great amount of money.  The best thing we can do for these young people is to help them create a framework they can hang their life on, recognizing that their brains go in many different directions, and sometimes what they're best at isn't what they're best at making money with.

Can you imagine how useful a person with a theater and carpentry degree or a theater and electrician's degree could be for theater artists?

William Tuttle

 Every artist has a very recognizable style.  William Tuttlel was responsible for some of the most remarkable prosthetic makeups in film (prior to Planet of the Apes). Here are two examples of his work.  Eye of the Beholder, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and a Morlock from The Time Machine.  

King Cake

They seem to be loosening the rules on what comprises a King Cake.  When they get to chocolate, somebody send me a text message.  

Touching Whales

 

Grey Whales seek out human companionship in the Gulf of Mexico.  You can't train an animal this size because their diet is krill, we have no way to reward them with food, and it's illegal to punish whales in any way.  They seek us out; they seek skin-to-skin contact with human beings because they want to.

Feed The Birds

Beginning in 1915, Jane Darwell made scores of films before retiring in the early sixties when she moved into a retirement home, unable to care for herself.

Walt Disney was producing the film Mary Poppins and believed that the song Feed The Birds was strong enough to provide a real turning point in the film.  Disney offered the role of the Bird Woman to Darwell, which she turned down because of her health.  A life-long fan of hers, Disney made several trips to the retirement home to try and talk her into it, ultimately promising to drive her to the set himself for filming, which he ultimately did.  Darwell died 3 years after filming Mary Poppins.

The song became Disney's favorite for the rest of his life.  Haunting, Feed the Birds sounds like caring for the birds, but it's about simple acts of kindness that cost almost nothing to help the lady.

Baby Elephants

Nobody knows why, but sometimes baby elephants are born with a full head of hair, looking for all the world like a four-legged version of Ringo Starr in 1968

Fast Car

 Henry David Thoreau said: "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  For me, nothing echos his words more than this song by Tracy Chapman.  Among other remarkable things accomplished by Chapman, she was also the lover of Alice Walker.  

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won't have to drive too far
Just across the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
Finally see what it means to be living

See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with a bottle, that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
When mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said, "Somebody's gotta take care of him"
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising, entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
And we'll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinkin' late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together, you and me'd find it

I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way