Lazarus!

I dropped my phone into water last Friday and have unsuccessfully tried to turn it on every day since. This morning, my hopes extinguished, I went to the Verizon store on Mission to try a new battery. They didn't have any batteries in stock. I tried turning on my phone one last time, and it turned on. And it works. It was a good morning, and Conrad and I celebrated by taking a walk to get some tamales. It made me think of what I did the MLK day before last-- the Baptist church in downtown Portland was having a special memorial service at night at which six different Baptist congregations from the surrounding areas converged to pay their respects. Some of the music was amazing... some of it was not. I actually had to leave the service when an awkward church band comprised of 3 young white acneed teenagers on the guitar, bass and drums and one of their moms (the band's lounge singer) for their rendition of Funky Lazarus. I kid you not, she introduced the song by saying something along the lines of, "The boys and I came together to think of something appropriate to play for tonight and figured that we should do a funk song, since funk music is so important to African American history... and then we decided to sing a funk song about Lazarus, because, I mean, what's more funky than a man being dead for a few days and then coming back to life? Hit it, boys!" Ugh, it was horrible, and made me feel stupid by association, having even been in the same room for that awful introduction.