For a hot day: Jazz it up!

Jazz is cool.

When it's steamy outside, turn up the ceiling fans and play some Etta James or Ella Fitzgerald.

Here's a link to Ella singing Too Darn Hot.

Here's a link to Etta singing Take Me to the River

Play some air guitar and slide trombone. Groove a bit. You're going to feel cool.

Reading list: Music and the intersection of the brain and the soul

Oh wow! I just found a perfect reading list for myself! (Just in time for summer reading, yay!)

A Facebook post directed me to a Brain Pickings post called,
"7 Essential Books on Music, Emotion, and the Brain" by Maria Popova.

Isn't that just perfect!

Here's what the author says:

But perhaps even more fascinating than the subject of how music works is the question of why it makes us feel the way it does. Today, we try to answer it with seven essential books that bridge music, emotion and cognition, peeling away at that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins.


Here's the list:

1. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition by Oliver Sacks
2. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin
3. Music, Language, and the Brain by Aniruddh D. Patel 
4. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
5. Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination by Robert Jourdain
6. The Tao of Music: Sound Psychology - Using Music to Change Your Life by John M. Ortiz
7. Music and the Mind by Anthony Storr

I love that: "that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins." That's where music works its magic. 

Silly Fun: Veggie Tales' Rock Monster

The original song, Rock Lobster, by the B52's was fun and silly enough, but it gets even sillier when it's the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything performing their version of it.
In case you've never heard of Veggie Tales and the PWDDA, look them up. They're awesome. Really. The vegetables who are pirates are adorable.
Groove with Rock Monster. Dance with the monster! You'll feel great. Really!