A Dash of Catch-Up

A warm welcome to new reader MrsSchlereth, who raised the question of whether my son's tattoo was his own design. It's not. In fact, it's currently a popular tattoo design with some minor variations here and there. (Not that I knew this when he first talked to us about getting it. I thought it was the name of a band I never heard of, which would be true of any music group formed after about 1964, the year my musical tastes went into suspended animation.)

It's been a bad couple of weeks for electronics here. First, the hard drive on my desktop computer blew out. Ok, says I wistfully, I've got a laptop and fairly recent backups of everything except the 500 songs on my ipod, and since the songs are already loaded on the ipod, no big deal. A couple of days later, I turned on my ipod and found the screen was cracked from the inside which, if you are familiar with ipods, you know means they're pretty much destroyed. (It is with no small irony that I remembered feeling terribly smug and smart about not spending $15 to buy a protective plastic case that, while probably worth about fifty cents, would have saved me from having to spend $150 on another damn ipod.)

Ok, says I, a bit less wistfully, I still have the music cd's I got the songs from the first time, and that nice set of backups of my other files, so it's just a question of loading them onto the laptop. And by laptop, I mean the computer that, a couple of days after the ipod debacle, happened to be near where some idiot (ok, it was me, but don't tell anyone) set down a cup of coffee. The coffee did what coffee always does when placed in the general proximity of electronic equipment, creating what computer service people genteelly call a "liquid spill." Twenty four hours, one can of compressed air, and a whole lot of guilt-ridden prayer later, the laptop was able to function completely again. Well, almost completely; the letter that comes after "y" doesn't work. This wouldn't be a big deal, except my normal isp is veri[letter after y]on.

Harumph.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Canoodling (I love that word) around You-Tube a few days ago, I came across a Monty Python clip in which they performed Eric Idle's brilliant song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." I've heard it countless times, but for some reason a portion of the lyrics really jumped out at me this time and have continued to rebound in my head. Not quite haunting me, but something close. I won't think about why.

"For life can be absurd, and death's the final word.
Always face the curtain with a bow.

"Forget about your sin, give the audience a grin.
Enjoy it. It's your last chance anyhow."


Let Me Say This About That

I watched the Frost-Nixon movie dvd a couple of days ago. What a great pleasure to watch a well-made movie that relies on cerebral, grown-up concepts instead of visceral reactions to loud noises and visual stimulation. Frank Langella as Nixon was astonishing. And the irony of putting a dvd into a player to watch a movie about Nixon and having it start off with an FBI warning: priceless.

Living the Dream

Having reluctantly abandoned my life-long ambition of having someone walk up to me on the street in NYC and ask how to get to Carnegie Hall, before it's too late I wanted to set down in writing a couple of things I still want to accomplish before they're singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" at a memorial service for me:

• Every day in NYC I see those double-decker sight-seeing buses filled with camera-carrying tourists. And every time I do, it's impossible not to think about how much fun it would be to moon them. ("Hey, I got your sights, right here!")
  
• Have you ever watched those morning shows where grown men and women get up at heaven-only-knows what time so they can stand behind Matt or Meredith or whomever and wave a "Hi Mom" sign on television for three seconds? (Heaven help me, I once saw the Today Show's Ann Curry do a remote from Antarctica and there were people behind her doing this. IN FRIGGING ANTARCTICA!) How cool would it be to hold up a sign like that and, when the camera's on, let a flap fall open that says something deeply crude and grossly obscene? Just wondering...
  

Wanted to Mention

I don't care whether that camping picture with the squirrel is real or not. It's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.