stuff

When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery.  After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery.  But oh look!  Hippo Mouth has a resident!

 

 

 

Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by.  But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:

 

and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....

Get your free download of this most excellent boppy fun song.

Includes lines like "others try topping us, keep coming up short like Webster Papadopolis"

RIGHT HERE

You can get the "unwashed version" which I think includes Chase Utley's parade F-bomb.

Well, here it is, let's see:

 

Thanks for the free download and the great song!!

Also, thanks to Arbed for alerting me to this awesomeness from someecards:

 

Okay, it's anti-cat but it's still funny.  I liked the part where he was talking about what would happen if there were seeing-eye-cats.

 

I know, "Cats for Clunkers" doesn't really make sense for this, but don't give me grief about it, I didn't make it up.

I know it's only October, but everytime that dreaded year end listmaking comes up I draw a blank.  Every year WXPN asks you to send them their list and then have a drawing for something, usually a bunch of the top CDs, maybe an iPod. 

So here are MY FAVORITE (that means no arguing that I'm wrong, because I'm right) of 2009 so far.  Subject to change depending on if anything I like better comes out in the next 2.5 months, or if I get into something I hadn't heard that came out before, of course.

They aren't going to be in order excpet the ones I like best and listened to the most will be at the top, lesser listened to toward the bottom.  The top 2 are my runaway favorites of the year.

Illinois--The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe

 

Mexican Institute of Sound--Soy Sauce

Kinky--Barracuda

Empire of the Sun--Walking on a Dream

 

Art Brut--Art Brut vs. Satan

 

Gomez--A New Tide

 

Sondre Lerche--Heartbeat Radio

 

Andrew Bird--Noble Beast

 

The Church--Untitled #23

 

Okay, that's 9.  I scrolled back through my music and couldn't find much else.  I hate the top 10 of the year because I rarely find albums the year they come out unless it's an artist I already know and love.  And sometimes I just put them on the list because even though I don't think it's their best effort (see Kings of Leon Only by the Night and Ryan Adams Cardinology...) I put them on the list because I know it's still better than half the shit out there.  Sometimes I just put stuff on the list because I've heard a few songs off the album.  Anyway, the only reason I'm doing this is so I have it for later and also because I am procrastinating doing housework. 

For some reason when I couldn't sleep last night I thought of this movie and for some reason too, I started writing a review at about 3 a.m.

Before there was Gil Grissom, there was Richard Chance, William Petersen's character in To Live and Die in L.A..--the bowlegged badass bungee jumping cop who is out to get the guy who killed his partner:  Rick Masters, the flare-nostrilled artist who makes most of his money by, well, making it, the counterfeiting way, since he prefers to burn most of his paintings before he can sell any.

To Live and Die in L.A., to me, is the ultimate 80s movie (not counting John Hughes flicks).  It has the flash and glam and new wave California decadence of the 1980s, countered with the gritty reality of cop life and the seedier side of LA.  Throw in an awesome, nailbiter, edge-of-your-seat, wrong-way-on-the-highway car chase and a killer Wang Chung soundtrack* and you've got yourself one hell of a movie.  It's got a bit of the cheese factor, but it was the 80s, after all.  That's part of its attraction, its charm, if you will.

William Petersen is sexy.  Willem Dafoe is nasty sexy.  Look for a sexy lesbian played by Jane Leeves (yes, Daphne Moon of Frasier), and John Turturro as a crafty convict.  John Pankow (of Mad About You) plays his new partner, John Vukovich, a by-the-book cop who is dragged to the naughty side by Chance.

*Scoff not at the Wang Chung soundtrack.  This is not your "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight" Wang Chung.  They captured the time and mood of this film.  It's sultry, and it is 80s.

A little trivia for the kiddies---this movie, I believe, introduced bungee jumping to American audiences.  What may seem common or even passe now was almost unknown in 1985.  Also, we had to rent this movie in a store, on videotape, and we didn't have cell phones, internet or iPods.  We drank water from the tap, not from plastic bottles!

 

to wit:

 

Of course, that is not the US cover. 

And I couldn't get anything other than Amazon US to come up with any results (I didn't wait very long though)

That is all for now.

this song is embedded into my brain today so why not embed it into my Vox?

 

"I feel like a prize asshole...no one even mentioned my casserole."

"have you ever been told your hair looks like a wig?" (yes, Jemaine, I have)

"Have you ever been told you look like a llama."  no on that one....

After 2 1/2 years I am finally figuring out my camera...heh...

You can listen to the archive right here on NPR and here are some photos and a little bit of video.

 

 

 

 

(I can never decide which ones to post so I just post all the ones that turn out best...)

 

 

 

 

Even his feet and legs are cute.

 

And here's a little bit of video of the crowd singing him "Happy Birthday" (it's tomorrow).  I didn't have much space for video on my camera card so it's only like 10 seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

Notice how my timing stinks and I never get pictures where you can see his nice blue eyes.

Another video, this one is of him singing the Norwegian Happy Birthday song:

 

His voice is amazing, and really, just his voice and that guitar pack a real punch.  Even though there are strings and a lot more on the CD on the first song, Good Luck, for instance, nothing is lost, you wouldn't even notice.  He's really really good.

and since his show was a little shorter than some of the others I've been to, I had time to run out to the lobby and get in the line near the front for the old meet-n-greet, before I caught my 1:09 train back to the office.  This was one of the girls ahead of me who wanted her photo with him. 

 

 

I did not subject him to a photo with me, I just had him sign the new CD (out this coming Tuesday!) and told him I was a new convert.  And maaaaybe I'll see him tomorrow night for the full concert in the same venue.  Will there be cake, I wonder?

Dear Cliff,

Don't feel bad about being shelled by the Braves last night.  It wasn't your fault.  It was mine.

I should not have accepted the invitation to the game.  I really should have backed out when I found out you were pitching, but I went anyway.

You see, as much as I love the Phillies and want them to succeed, I seem to bring better luck when I am watching from my couch at home.  When I go to the games in person, I am the opposite of a lucky charm. 

In July of 2007 I went to my first game at Citizens Bank Park.  They lost to the Nationals, and as if that wasn't bad enough, it was also the game that Chase Utley was hit by a pitch and broke his hand.  Ouch. (sorry, Chase)

I didn't go to any games in 2008 and we know what happened last year.

In June I went to a Phillies/Orioles game.  We lost.

On August 21st I went to New York to see the Phillies play the Mets--the injury-ridden, lowly Mets, who had just lost David Wright to a concussion.  We lost.  Oh, we won the next 3 but lost the game I was at.

See?  I'm a sucky charm.

This week I kept saying, 'Oh, I hope I don't jinx them...I hope I don't jinx Cliff Lee.'  But I don't really believe in all that superstitious nonsense.  So I went.  Well, no more.  No playoff games for me.  No (potential) World Series games for me.

But you know....  Maybe it's NOT me.  I realized...going to baseball games is a treat for me.  It's pretty much the only place I will eat a hot dog, it just seems to go with attending a ball game. 

So now I realize that every time I've been to a Phillies game, I've eaten a hot dog.  So maybe it's not me...it's those nitrate-laden, squishy, mystery-meat ALL-BEEF ballpark franks I'm eating at the games.  I don't eat them at home!  When I stay home and don't eat hot dogs, you guys often win games! 

I know they're not good for me, hot dogs.  Lips and assholes some people call their ingredients.  I try to eat healthy, I shouldn't be eating them.  But I do.  And when I do the Phillies lose.  And last night? Not only did I eat a hot dog before the game and unwittingly shoot evil nitrate laserbeams down to the mound from the 420 level, but I also ate a giant ice cream cone, which I also shouldn't be eating since ice cream is so deliciously high in saturated fats which is good for neither my cholesterol nor my muffin-top.  And that's what made the rains come, and the thunder and the lightning and the rivers of water coming down from the skies (it was kind of a blessing in disguise to not have to suffer through the last 1.5 innings but it was a pain in the ass for us fans getting out).

So no more games for me. 

Till next year, anyway.  I'll test the jinx early in the season, and I will eat a salad before the game, and drink water during the game.  And if that doesn't work, I will stay home for the rest of the season.

Please accept my apologies for ruining your perfect record since joining the Phillies.  I accept full responsibility for eating hotdogs, and I vow never to partake again.

Yours truly, and Go Phils!

Jinxypants. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MICHAEL JACKSON (RIP)

 

AND

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ELVIS (MY DOG)

 

WHO IS 12 YEARS OLD TODAY.

next year you can celebrate your bar mitzvah. (we'll have to convert first)