Possibly America's new theme song, definitely mine

I have a lot to say about a lot of things but I'm waiting for some kind of outcome/resolution... so in the meantime, I've been breathing deeply, reflecting and trying to keep from banging my head against a brick wall. There was a breaking point this weekend and one of my all-time favorite jams came to mind.

My old friend Scooter (she of "half-n-falf" and "MY Alan Thicke?" fame) & I used to exchange mix tapes throughout high school & college. We both like a wide-range of music and on any one tape there would anyone from Lionel Richie to Pearl Jam to Bad Boy Bill (back when all his stuff was underground). One of the first tapes she sent me after we went away to separate state universities had Father MC/Jodeci's "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" on it, and I couldn't play that song enough. I have it on my iPod now and have been using it as my mantra.

It seems these days, what with the incessant reporting on the state of the economy, unemployment and all the other stress-factors, America needs a theme song. I would love for Obama to start playing this at the top of every press conference & public address. If NPR, CNN & Fox News would replace 6 minutes of their chatter about how things around us are falling apart with this song, I really feel like it would help instill some small seed of confidence that things will eventually turn around. Getting pegged in the noggin all day & night with negativity takes a toll.

So here it is, my gift to you. I hope if you have something eating away at you (be it the economy, your job or anything else causing you stress) that you can get Jodeci's voice--the hook of this 1992 gem-- in your head and let it play over & over when you feel your blood pressure rising. Sometimes you just need somebody to tell you that everything will be okay, and if they invite you to dance it out in the same conversation... even better!

Breathe. Everything's gonna be alright.



See ya moving baby, yeah
And you're lookin good, said you're lookin fine
Everything's gonna be alright, yeah
Let the music take control of your body tonight
Whoa, everything's gonna be alright, it's gonna be alright
Let the music take control of your body tonight

Well, that's a new one!

I got some salted caramel hot chocolate today partly because it was chilly, but mostly because the first time I had it (way back in October), this was my reaction:



When I picked it up at the counter, the barista said, "Do you want a splash guard?" and I was so confused that I just looked at him without responding. My thoughts were racing, trying to figure out what he was talking about. A splash guard? Is it like mud flaps on a car? Is splash guard a euphemism for something sexual? As soon as my mind went THERE, I had to say yes. In the name of science or something.

Turns out, if you didn't know, we live in a world where someone came up with the idea of molding a plastic oval the exact size of the hole in a cup lid, so when you're walking around, your way-too-expensive hot beverage doesn't jump out and get all over you. No joke. It's like the evolution of the stir stick.

Check it:



A splash guard. Not what I envisioned, but still, kind of cool. Sure, more waste to go into the landfills, but something has to even out all the talk of saving the environment and being green, right?

While you're at it, don't forget to blink or breathe

After 5 consecutive hours today (not to mention the months that came before today) of Presidential campaign and voting coverage, NPR ran a public service announcement stating, "Don't forget to vote!"

I don't know how anybody listening to the radio for even 15 minutes today could possibly have forgotten that today was the day.


Taken w/ my camera phone even after they said there were no pictures allowed! What? It's a free country!

Public radio redeemed itself after the silly reminder with today's guest on one of my favorite (and always moving) shows, The Story:

A STORY OF SERVICE AND LEADERSHIP
On the day when voters are choosing a new leader, this is one story that's certain to inspire. Army Capt. Ivan Castro was on a rooftop in Iraq trying to secure a safer position for his unit when he was attacked by mortar rounds. Two soldiers under his command died in that attack, and Ivan sustained life-threatening injuries.

After months of rehab and dozens of surgeries, Ivan was finally able to get out of bed and start walking on his own. But he had one injury that could not be fixed: Ivan lost his sight. But blindness has not stopped Ivan Castro from achieving his goals. He has found way to continue to serve and lead despite his injury. He talks with Dick Gordon about how he made the decision to continue serving the nation as an officer in the Army's Special Forces.

About halfway through the interview, Captain Castro described what happened when he woke up in the hospital: His wife whispered in his ear that he was safe, but that two of his soldiers were lost in the attack. His doctor explained his injuries, and that his blindness would be permanent. He demanded another doctor's opinion. The second doctor told him the same thing, that his optic nerve had been damaged beyond repair and that he was now blind. Permanently. Then, he demanded a third doctor from a completely different hospital take over his case. The third doctor came to the same conclusion.

Captain Castro and his wife held each other and cried; she for her husband's injuries and he for the friends he lost in the attack. He said all he wanted to do after that was to go after the third doctor and "tear him apart"...

...for making his wife cry.


That's when I started to cry, too. 

I am not undecided; David Sedaris gets my vote* every time.

If you remember THIS POST from March, you already know that I have much love for David Sedaris. I read his latest New Yorker column today on undecided voters and somehow my feelings for him grew exponentially. As usual, he has a beautiful way of summing things up with ugly (though accurate) imagery:

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of sh*t with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in THIS election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Read the rest of the article HERE.


*I'm not really voting Sedaris for President. He does get my vote as genius wordsmith, though.

The Bullsh*t Doctrine: Learn it. Know it. Live it.

One thing is for sure; the USA should be proud of itself for impressing upon every generation (mine included) the abililty to totally bullshit your way through a question for which you do not know the answer.

In that particular respect, both of these ladies are brilliant, and frankly? Entertaining.


"...so we will be able to build up our future for our children." With maps?


Someone's getting bonus points for the B.S.'ing through the answer of a question she didn't even understand the concept of to begin with:


"His world view, you mean?" Uh, not quite.

Let's review:

• Not knowing the answer to why 20% of "US Americans" can't locate our own country on a map for a teen beauty pagent is okay.


• Not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when you're running for the 2nd in charge to the leader of the free world is not okay. 
  

Even I know what the Bush Doctrine is, but I'm not running for V.P.

It just occurred to me that ALL political ads should end with, "I'm ______________, and I approved this MESS". At least it would be an accurate statement.

Just sayin'.

He'll be on my mind every time I hear that theme song

I've mentioned my fandom (is that a word?) for the British version of The Office; and in truth I resisted the U.S. version for most of the first season it aired. This is because of my love for and loyalty to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (and Karl Pilkington, for that matter... if you are into funny Brits and haven't heard their podcasts, you've been missing out). Eventually I gave in, mostly due to the urging of my 15-year old nephew D., who would always ask if I was watching it so we could share one of those, "Wasn't that funny?" moments that our family enjoys so much. Ever since then I've been a dedicated Thursday night watcher.

I have a Pavlovian response to the theme song. Thankfully I don't drool like Pavlov's dog, but as soon as the theme song starts, my heart beats a little faster, my grin gets ridiculous, and I can't help but bop my head along with the tune. It's uncontrollable. What happens AFTER the theme song (the actual show part of the show) has always been good, so the theme makes me giddy with anticipation of the laughter that is sure to come.

This past Thursday, they dedicated the show to Nathan Robinson, and rolled this video of him playing that theme song on piano:


(Double click on either 'play' arrow if you have trouble with the video)

It didn't take long to track down the rest of the story, which I'll have you know, made me cry.

From the Boston Globe:
Nathan Alden Robinson loved music. His first instrument was a Casio toy keyboard, his family said, and Nathan loved to listen to a preprogrammed version of Beethoven's "Für Elise." "He said, 'So Daddy, can you teach me how to play?' " said his father, Donald Robinson, a professional musician. "I found a simple arrangement and he learned to play it by rote." Nathan, a 15-year-old freshman at Newton North High School, continued to play the piano, and later the clarinet, every day until just before his death Friday of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, pneumonia, and influenza at Children's Hospital Boston.

"Every morning he would get up at 6:10, get dressed, have his cereal, and at 6:30 he would sit down and play the piano; you could set your watch by it," his father said. A few weeks before his death, Nathan was at a friend's house, and the two were talking about "The Office," their favorite television show. Nathan's friend suggested he play the theme music to the program, so Nathan looked online for the sheet music. Nathan mastered the song almost instantly, and his impromptu performance was filmed and posted on YouTube.

His parents said Nathan cared genuinely about how others were treated and could form instant bonds with people, regardless of age. "He was a good person," his father said. "He didn't like to see people picked on. He had great empathy. He'd get very upset when he'd see people be mean to one another." When he wasn't playing the piano, Nathan loved to write. For the last few years, he had been privately working on a book. He had completed 90 pages; Nathan's parents say they don't plan to read the work-in-progress out of respect for his privacy.

Most of you know about my good friend Nic, who is still in the ICU and is fighting her way through not only brain cancer but also the one-two punch of a staph infection AND spinal meningitis (among other hurdles); who has been on a respirator for 3 weeks, keeping us all on a surreal roller coaster ride that trust me, you don't want to be on. Against all odds, she opened her eyes a little bit and squeezed her husband's hand for the first time a couple of days ago; and although she hasn't been very responsive since then, we hope it's because she's storing up her energy to continue kicking the ass of everything her immune system is up against.

My point in writing that is to update those of you who were so great about sending her positive energy & keeping her in your thoughts (especially those of you in the Cherry Icee Coalition!). I'm so happy that she's being thought of, even by people who have never met her; who aren't fortunate enough to know first hand what a fantastic person she is.

The people who loved Nathan Robinson must have been so touched to know that because of an extremely thoughtful and generous decision by someone at NBC/The Office to run that piano-playing video of him at the end of the show, millions of people were going to know more about what a special person Nathan was... And isn't that what any of us would want when we are afraid of losing someone we love... taking comfort in the knowledge that even for a minute, lots of other people had an opportunity to have known them just a little bit, too?

Abu Dhabi, Ubbi Dubbi... Ubbi Dubbi, Abu Dhabi.

It was impossible to get away from NPR's (and every other newstation's) coverage of the story on Abu Dhabi's multi-million dollar investment in Citigroup today.

I know, I know... it's a sign of the times; a seriously weighty disclosure and all of that. Nothing about it is funny.

Still, I couldn't help but giggle to myself every time the reporters said "Abu Dhabi", simply because it made me think of the Ubbi Dubbi pig greek language from the PBS show ZOOM way back in the day; as well as Letterman's famously unfunny "introduction" bit from his stint hosting the 1995 Academy Awards.

You'll have to watch both of these short videos to really get inside of my brain, thereby enjoying this post to the max:


Abu Dhabi, Ubbi Dubbi... Ubbi Dubbi, Abu Dhabi.



Oprah, Uma... Uma, Oprah. (starts at :27)

There IS a bitch in this story, but it certainly isn't the dog!

See this adorable and depressed-looking dog? Not the bitch in this story.


I know the following headline will have lots of you chuckling (especially you married guys, because things are much funnier when you can actually relate to them directly, right?); but after that initial laugh? You're going to think, "Whaaaa?" and "Whooo?" and "Nahhhh!" and "Whyyyyy?" and Dude!" and then, finally; "OH-MY-GAWD-THAT-POOR-DOG-SOMEONE-SHOULD-DO-SOMETHING-LIKE-CALL-MCGRUFF!"

Man 'marries' bitch to beat curse
An Indian man has "married" a female dog, hoping the move will help atone for stoning two other dogs to death. P Selvakumar, 33, said he had been cursed since the killings, suffering paralysis and a loss of hearing.

The wedding took place at a Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu state. The "bride" wore an orange sari with a flower garland and was fed a bun to celebrate. Superstitious people in rural India sometimes organize weddings to animals in the hope of warding off curses. Crowds cheered the newly-weds at the end of the ceremony in Sivaganga district, about 50km (30 miles) east of the city of Madurai. The "bride", who is called Selvi, was led to the temple in Manamudurai wearing a sari before vows were exchanged in a traditional Hindu ceremony.

A relative of the groom who attended the wedding said he hoped Mr Selvakumar would now be cured. "Fifteen years back Selvakumar was physically fit. But, once he attacked a pair of dogs and thereafter Kumar could not move his limbs freely," the relative, Ramu, told the BBC. "He tried every cure for his ailment but could not be rid of his disability.

"On the advice of an astrologer and others, he decided to marry a bitch to get cured. Then we arranged Selvakumar's marriage with a bitch."

Hold up, let me get this straight. He married a dog to cure himself of physical problems that came on over the course of 15 years after he STONED 2 other dogs to death; And he was advised to marry the dog by an astrologer (is this where people go for advice these days)?

This story is wrong on so many levels that I feel the need to tell this bitch guy off in the best way I know how!


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San Diego en el fuego

Pacific Beach in San Diego is one of my favorite places on earth, and seeing the news coverage on these California fires has been awful. Some of my favorite people live in California, and I hope everything there is under control soon.


Pacific Sands Motel, Pacific Beach. We didn't stay at this place, but it was so adorable I had to shoot it as we walked by on our way to the water. ©House of Jules

If my high school had required GPS-laced uniforms, my parents would have assumed I was headed for pilot training after graduation

School uniforms track kids
Parents already have a way to monitor kids' phone calls and text messages, and soon they might have the means to track children wearing school uniforms.

An English manufacturer of uniforms is considering adding satellite tracking devices to its line of school clothing so that parents can locate their child's whereabouts at all times, according to an article from the Daily Telegraph in Australia. The manufacturer, Lancashire-based Trutex, believes there is a demand for such clothing. In a recent survey of its own, the company found that 59 percent of 800 parents surveyed were interested in buying uniforms with embedded Global Positioning Systems.

Still, it seems unlikely that a teenager would willingly wear a GPS-laced outfit. According to the article, only half of kids 12 and under (who were surveyed) said that they wouldn't mind wearing the clothes.

I hope the manufacturers weren't surprised that the teenagers surveyed--and I'm willing to bet the ones who weren't surveyed would concur--would be unlikely to wear clothes that their parents can track.

My parents would have spent many nights wondering how my photography and art classes in high school tied into all those nights at the airport. What would your parents have wondered?


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The people of Mobile, Alabama need to start reading this blog!

If only they had read my recent Public Service Announcement, this whole thing could have been easily avoided. People, I'm here to help!

Motorist Who Flipped Off Cop Gets $3,000

MOBILE, Ala. -- The Mobile Police Department has been ordered to pay $3,000 to a government engineer who was arrested for cursing and making an obscene hand gesture to an officer.

He sought $10,000 in damages from the police department because of time lost from work, the threat of losing his job, and the embarrassment of being put in jail. Mobile County District Judge Michael McMaken awarded DeBoi the money last week, saying that police officers must have "thicker skin" than the general public.

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I'm disgusted and repulsed, and I can't look away!

Did you watch the annual Coney Island Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating contest on ESPN yesterday? It was absolutely cringe-worthy. I have never been less hungry for a holiday grill-out than after watching this competition.

The "mustard belt" is back in America's hands after the past 6 years of seeing Japan's Takeru Kobayashi take it home with him. This year he supposedly had a major jaw injury but there were no signs of it as he stuffed 63 hot dogs down his gullet, mostly 2 at a time, in 12 minutes.

Throughout the competition, my thoughts were consumed with important things like: "Is there someone at the ready with the heimlich maneuver in case one of the competitors chokes?" and "Is there someone at the ready with a bag in case I yack while watching this?".


Having just completed our "Maybe I shouldn't be so entertained by these movies but damnit all if I'm not!" Kevin Smith classic film fest (see my recently watched flicks in the sidebar), I couldn't help but think of Rosario Dawson's line at the end (:30) of the trailer for Clerks 2:





Click here for the ESPN article and a short video on the 66-hot-dog-eating US winner, Joey Chestnut.

He'll probably use the "Going Green" defense

Sadly, I think the only surprising thing about this story is that a Prius can get up to 100 MPH.

From the NY Times:

Al Gore’s 24-year-old son was arrested and jailed in Southern California this morning.

Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 miles an hour on the San Diego Freeway near the Crown Valley exit in Laguna Hills when he was pulled over by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at about 2:15 this morning, a sheriff’s department spokesman, Jim Amormino, said.

The deputy smelled marijuana and searched the car, Mr. Amormino said. In the search, the deputy found less than an ounce of marijuana and a clutch of prescription pills that included the narcotic Vicodin, addictive sleep and anxiety aids Valium, Xanax and Soma, and the amphetamine Adderall, which is approved to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but is also a powerful stimulant. “He doesn’t have a prescription for any of these pills, and that’s what makes it illegal,” said Mr. Amormino.

More than 10 hours after his arrest on drug charges, the younger Gore remained in a Southern California jail because no one had showed up to post his $20,000 bail. Mike Feldman, a Gore family spokesman, said that the former vice president was “in transit and unavailable.” The elder Gore was in Britain on Tuesday and is scheduled to appear in New York City on Thursday to promote “Live Earth,” a series of concerts being held around the world on Saturday to raise awareness about environmental issues.

The police impounded the younger Mr. Gore’s car and took him to jail in Santa Ana. He faces four drug charges and was cited for speeding, Mr. Amormino said. If no one shows up to post bail, Mr. Gore must await arraignment in court, which would occur no earlier than Thursday afternoon and could be delayed until Friday, Mr. Amormino said.

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An outraged Hilton feels misled by attorney suggesting jail sentence as 'Time for Reflection'; had nothing to do with actual mirrors.

From People.com:

Paris Hilton Released to Her Home
THURSDAY JUNE 07, 2007 09:45 AM EDT
Due to an undisclosed "medical condition," Paris Hilton has been reassigned from jail to her home, where she will wear an electronic monitoring device.

I'm absolutely certain her "medical condition" is something along the lines of allergic reactions, in order of severity, to:

1) Orange jumpsuits




2) Low thread-count bedding




3) Lock-down




4) Restricted access to lip-gloss




5) No mirrors! Oh the humanity! How is she supposed to "reflect" under these conditions? Especially if her greatest fear is that she ceases to exist if she can't see herself staring back into her own eyes, watching her very-own lip-glossed mouth say, "That's Hot".




If the judicial system hasn't completely lost it's mind, I expect that she'll get sent back to the clink and hopefully by the end of the month, Nicole Ritchie will be joining her there as punishment for her own DUI incident; and you know what that'll mean...


This is just some magic I made in photoshop, but it's probably already in development from the creators of The Simple Life


JUNE 8th UPDATE:
Turns out that she WAS just remanded. Back to jail for Paris. First, though, she's at the hospital getting checked out by the county jail medical team. The news reports have been throwing around "nervous breakdown" as speculation, but I just think it's a temper tantrum.


That kind of behavior (from my sister & I) was good for about 30 seconds once when we were little, but our dad wouldn't have any of it after that. Example of how "tight the ship" was around our house: I was grounded in the 4th grade for 6 weeks --until the next report card came out--because I got a bad grade in handwriting. That is no joke. The irony is that he was frequently asked if he was a doctor based on the fact that his own penmanship is off the chicken-scratch charts. I'm thankful for his being strict on us, though. Otherwise I might be just like Paris Hilton, and THAT'S NOT HOT.

See what happens when cheese stops being polite...and starts getting real. Real moldy.

I can't believe this special brand of reality TV has been going on since December and I just found out about it tonight. I was trying to pay attention to Anderson Cooper AND read the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen simultaneously, but you know it's usually one or the other. I know some of you are jaded cynics (err, proud skeptics?) and would never believe that this wasn't just made up by **The Farmer in the Dell, but I assure you, sirs and madams, that this is a real story out of England. It's also great news for my drunk friend who could use a hunk of this to put on the DVD player when watching Bambi.

WESTCOMBE, England - Aging cheddar Web site cultivates a following
Call it a cheesy publicity stunt, but one cheese maker's approach to bringing attention to a millenniums-old food-making practice has become an odd fascination on the Internet. Since www.cheddarvision.tv debuted in December, the Web site offering a live broadcast of a round slab of English cheddar cheese slowly maturing has had more than 1.2 million hits. From a group of middle school students in Florida to a 32-year-old, self-described cheese freak in London, the increasingly moldy cheddar is cultivating cult status.

"We sat around the table, wondering how we could get across to people how long it takes to produce a traditional cheese," said Tom Calvar, the 20-something cheese whiz from the dairy cooperative West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, of which his family's farm is a member. "We thought, why not have a live webcam feed of it, just 24-7? And that's what we did."

The 23-kilogram, or about 50 pound, cheese lies on an upper-level shelf in a dank storage barn in Westcombe, about a three-hour drive southwest of London. The celebrity cheese is one of some five thousand rounds of calcium-rich goo sealed in cheesecloth and lard and swirling with bacteria. But this cheddar is the only one in the barn that has Mother Nature's slow aging process captured by a webcam fastened to a McGyver-esque concoction of wood planks, nails, a desk lamp and kite string. "People from all over the world are e-mailing us about the cheese. Somebody has written lots of songs about. It has been invited to a wedding. We've had post cards sent to it," Calvar said.

Calvar and other artisan cheese makers on his family-managed farm turn the cheese about once a week to ensure it keeps its shape. Calvar says the star of cheddarvision.tv will stay under the webcam's lens for about a year before it is auctioned off for charity. If that's too long a time to gaze into dairy cyberspace, YouTube.com has a time-elapsed video of the cheese's first three months of life. London-based mortgage broker Alan Johnson said he wouldn't mind getting a slice of the cheddarvision.tv cheddar once its matured. "Everyone would want to own a piece of that," Johnson said. There's also a MySpace.com Web page dedicated to the cheddar, described as a single Capricorn according to its online profile.

"When I first saw the link to it, I think there were only 13 or 14 people listed as friends [of the cheddar]," Johnson said. Now there are more than 860 Myspace.com 'friends' -- from New Zealand to New York -- who have pledged their love for the cheese. Cheese purveyor Patricia Michelson admitted that she wished she'd thought of putting a webcam in her cheese storage room at her high-end London cheese shop, La Fromagerie. "The fact is that most people think of cheese as being a little bit of yellow square in plastic wrap," she said. "Actually seeing the real thing in its glory, from start to finish. Watching it, live, in real time, growing and growing its molds and getting darker and literally, slowly aging is a phenomenon," she added.

Click here to see LIVE! NUDE! CHEESE! (Just kidding about the "nude" part. I don't think you can classify something that never wears clothes as nude, and cheese doesn't ever wear clothes so it's totally safe for work. Unless you'll get fired for looking at some firm, voluptuous cheese while you're on the clock! Wait, you better not look at this live cheese cam at work, how would you even begin to explain it to your boss? I mean, it's live video of CHEESE.

I wonder what they'll think of next. It seems like the only untapped live webcam feed will be of paint drying, which will hopefully coincide with smell-o-vision.


**The Farmer in the Dell is the one who spread that nasty gossip about the cheese standing alone, when in fact the cheese actually took a wife. Her name was Brie, and together they had Babybels.

A special "'ello love" to readers in England! I have nothing against your cheese, in fact I quite like it. What I wrote is just a sample of yank humor. Damn yanks!

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Though he had no plans to SING about it, Brazilian man influenced by the Olsen Twins' ability to turn 50 cents into a $300 million empire

Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen's 1992 debut album Brother For Sale, 50 Cents sold 325,000 copies, one brother; and had it not been for that pesky Brazilian government, one weight-in-gold-worthy wife.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The government has ordered an Internet auction site to remove an advertisement in which a Brazilian man offered to sell his wife for about $50.

The Secretariat of Public Policies for Women announced late Friday it had ordered Mercado Livre, partially owned by eBay Inc., to remove the ad and warned it was violating a law banning the offer or sale of “human organs, people, blood, bones or skin.”

The advertisement was no longer visible on the site Saturday.
It was posted by a man who gave his name as Breno and said: “I sell my wife for reasons I prefer to keep short ... I really need the money.”

The described his wife physically and listed her qualities as a homemaker and companion. He reportedly said she was 35 and “worth her weight in gold.”

Or, you know, however much gold $50 will buy in today's market.

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