I have been loving the Internet this week, you guys. Despite the latest hideous Facebook makeover (do they even have a QA process?), it’s continued to be a great tool for finding long-lost people whom I adore, and also for finding out that my friend Scott should totally move to the country. Over on Twitter, an application that would be perfect if it offered a little more control, someone’s engineered a little more control with TwitterSnooze, which allows you to stop following someone for a limited amount of time – an ability whose usefulness may escape you if you don’t, say, follow a person who liveTweets three Wednesday night TV shows that you don’t watch.

Also using the Internet, I was able to track down a store in the greater LA area (Follow Your Heart in Canoga Park) that carried dairy-free chocolate bunnies so I don’t have to order that crap from Portland with dry ice and such to give my allergic child a happy holiday. And yes, my kid DOES have to have a chocolate bunny at Easter; we’re not religious, but we feel very strongly about inexplicable people and animals who show up your house to bring you junk.

But here is where I had the most fun. If you have had the misfortune to be cornered by me on the subject of American Idol this season, you know I kind of like contestant Adam Lambert. Like, to the point where I wish all those other people would quit interrupting The Adam Lambert Show with their singing and whatnot. One of the reasons I like him is that he is a big ol’ record geek; not like I’m short on those people in my world, but I don’t know many who are 27. And what really surprised me was that we share a favorite completely obscure band, Mother’s Finest. Here, watch Adam talk about them with the fevered eyes of the true believer:

Yeah. I was happy to find out about the Germany thing, because I, who could technically be his mom, am too young to know about Mother’s Finest; I spent my youth hanging out with a bunch of musicians about 10 years my senior, some of them from the South. That’s my excuse. And I’d wondered what his was.

Say Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan and Led Zeppelin formed a supergroup. You’re kind of close to what they sound like. You cannot imagine how dynamic they were (I assume still are) live. I have been to approximately one gazillion concerts – most of them by people who are considered great performers – and nobody touches MF. You can’t squeeze that kind of power into the space of a YouTube video, but here’s a track from what I believe is the concert Adam described seeing:

So, back to my point about loving the Internet: People much younger than I, possibly younger than Adam, are seeing that first video on YouTube, looking up something very much like the second video, going, “Hey, this band is great! Why haven’t I heard of them?” I’ve been helping some people out with collections of MP3s available on Amazon that make a good $10 introduction.

So: Because a kid who is a frontrunner on American Idol in 2009 turned on a television in Germany in 2003 and mentioned it on a clip that was only available on iPhones and on YouTube, one of the most underrated bands of the early ’70s gets a new burst of life.

That’s just cool.

Are you familiar with jazz vocalist Carol Sloane? She’s quite delightful. Today, while researching jazz weblogs for work (nice work if you can get it), I discovered that she has a blog, and my lord, is it fabulous. She’s not the first blogger I’ve read who uses language in a wonderfully precise manner, nor the first who’s laugh-out-loud funny, but I believe she is the first who can use those qualities to relate stories about, for instance, opening for Lenny Bruce.

I got the new CD by Nerissa and Katryna Nields, Sister Holler the other day. I put it on in the car last night and – well, I should tell you I have a rule. On the first listen to a new album, I don’t allow myself to hit either the Repeat or the Skip buttons. With Repeat, on a good album, I usually have to restrain myself once or twice. On a great album, it can go as high as five or six. Sister Holler? ELEVEN. I am almost certain this has never happened before; well, probably on 69 Love Songs, but that’s hardly a reasonable comparison. (For the uninitiated: It actually contains 69 love songs.) Sister Holler consists of new songs based on existing songs, in the folk tradition – some gospel, some traditional, some pop, some classical, that sort of thing. I will almost certainly post more insightfully about the music later, but I need to completely geek out and research the original songs first. Oh yes, I’m going to full-on obsess about this album. For instance, the cover photo shows Nerissa with her face completely obscured by her hair; I may be able to find evidence that she died in 1964 and was replaced by Paul McCartney.

My, that would be geeky, wouldn’t it?

You may think you don’t want to read a blog entry about a lost teddy bear. You’d be wrong in this case; this is the single best piece of writing I’ve read in recent memory.

And finally, Julie from A Little Pregnant details a common medical procedure using props and Play-Doh. Inspired. Or maybe deranged.