Have a glance at my cousin, fronting the Compaq Big Band.
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=MuzH51AX9IgI have some cool relatives.
Archives for June 2008
In a continuation of the odd blogging synchronicities that we’ve been having ’round here lately…
June 30, 2008 by
…Making Light posts a link to the YouTube Video of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain doing one of my all time favorite power-pop songs, Life on Mars*:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxCj2MO02AEI rather love this – especially since the first singer bears a passing resemblance to John Simm. It’s also clever in that glee-club/harmony/deadpan way when they start to go intentionally off the rails.
*My favorite version of which is probably Seu Jorge’s, even though it has none of the bombast that makes the original so compelling to me and was a key component of yesterday’s plea for help. What can I say – I’m fickle. Of course, Bowie’s original isn’t really jangly, so doesn’t neatly fit into the category I posited anyway.
Oh – and hey lookie – another video. Seu Jorge himself:
See? Love.
Jangly power-pop
June 29, 2008 by
I was sitting home yesterday letting my laptop serve up what it wanted out of the 9.7 days’ worth of music it has in its innards, and Bleu’s "DDBDD" came on.
This, of course, brought me right back to the summer of 1993, the last summer I lived in Minneapolis. I didn’t know it was to be my last summer – I managed the world’s fastest move back to the East coast on having been summarily accepted as a transfer to the University of Maine School of Law: two weeks from acceptance to classes starting. I try to remember that summer when I get the idea that something isn’t doable in the time allotted. If I found someone to take over my lease, packed my one-bedroom apartment, loaded the caboodle into a U-Haul and made the two-day trek from Minneapolis to Portland* in two weeks, I can bloody well do ANYTHING.
Sorry – digressions upon digressions. Getting back to the point, "How on earth did an album released in 2002 bring you to 1993?" I hear you cry.
Two words: Andy Sturmer. Andy Sturmer of the sadly short-lived band Jellyfish, which I saw live that summer, works with Bleu, and on some songs (as with "DDBDD," and "Could be Worse"), the result is so Jellyfish-like I get an absolute jones for more jangly, harmony-drenched, sunny-yet-slightly-bombastic power pop.
So I’m begging you: any recommendations? The last.fm playlist in the sidebar to the right has some good examples of what I’m talking about.
*Hat tip to Dad, who did the driving, but only because he hates being driven.
Coincidentally
June 28, 2008 by
Hard on the heels of my story yesterday about a drama school classmate using a live snake in Cleopatra’s death scene, it appears the Shakespeare Company of DC is doing the same thing in their current production. (And I have to go with Scott Simon’s assessment of these critters – they are cuter than the average run of such reptiles. Still not sure I’d like them coiled around my hands, though.)
I’ve had two such coincidences in as many days in my colossal online media empire. What’s going on here? Am I plugged into a heretofore-unknown outlet of the zeitgeist?
A good day in spite of itself
June 28, 2008 by
John has wanted to try a tandem bicycle experience with me for some time. My response has generally been, "Don’t those things come with divorce papers as a standard accessory?" However, I finally caved and booked us a tandem rental at "Bike the Sites " in DC for this weekend.
Or… I thought I had.
The dude (and I use the term specifically – it’s a highly descriptive term of art in this particular instance) I had booked the reservation with told me to simply e-mail him with my contact information, which I dutifully did. And when we arrived… no bike. He hadn’t taken my credit card information, so they didn’t reserve it. He hadn’t entered my phone number into the system and they stated they couldn’t contact me (they had my e-mail, but… let’s just not go there).
So, we regrouped, rebooked for the weekend after next (for my non-US readers, the National Mall in DC is to be avoided next weekend at all costs ). On our way home on the Metro, weary and hungry, we decided to stop in downtown Rockville for lunch.
This was a very good plan.
Rockville has done one of those downtown revitalization schemes which when done badly makes a downtown into a shopping mall and when done well makes a downtown into a magnet for community. And they’ve done a really nice job of the second type. In addition to making the new main branch of the county library a major feature (a move applauded by our household), they’ve managed to attract a nice selection of mostly non-chain restaurants and shops. They also have created a fountain that is truly designed to be a kid-friendly community water park:
After our Lebanese luncheon, we went home for a nap and a ride on our own bikes. So despite the false start of our morning, quite a good day in the end.
Where am I?
June 26, 2008 by
Hullo my friends.
Sorry I’ve been non-comm since my last post. We had a busy weekend, and I’ve had a busy week up until now (well, I’m still busy – but never to busy for you! Yes, I mean YOU).
I’ve had some things shifting around in my professional life, and the upshot of that is that I’ve spent a large portion of the last 24 hours (or so it seems) working up an entirely new site. It is definitely not a replacement for this site – this will still contain the oddments of my life: cute pet photos, knitting progress, and apoplectic rants about telephonic "service" providers. What it is is a professional presence on the web. So, if you’re interested in what I’m up to professionally and what my thoughts on being a freelancer are, you can find them here:
It’s brand-new and relatively unpopulated, but… thoughts?
Made me laugh so hard I cried.
June 10, 2008 by
Take two utterly insane things, mash them up, and you have Wookies dancing.
Oh, what a world, what a world
June 8, 2008 by
When I was growing up in New England winters, there was the temperature and then there was "wind chill." Temperature was pretty much irrelevant. Wind chill was the important number, since that was what you were going to experience when you walked out the door.
Fast forward to summertime in the DC area, where the humidity is tactile: a hot washcloth pressed over the nose and mouth, a dog’s hot breath in your ear, a damp velvet suit hugging your every move. The humidity and heat combine to create the yang to wind chill’s yin – the heat index.
The heat index is on us, with expectations of heat experiences of over 100 degrees, and even with jogging in the morning before the full blast of summer, I tell you I am melting .
There goes my baby, she knows how to rock and roll
June 4, 2008 by
Mom and I were talking about "our" words a while back. It’s something Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in Eat Pray Love – if I recall correctly, she has a friend who believes that every city and every person has a word that describes them or sums them up. It’s "their" word. Mom asked me what my word was, and it just popped out:
"Okay."
Now, that may seem like a pretty lame word to be one’s all-encompassing, but anyone who’s ever heard me talk has heard this word many, many times out of me. And it’s not because I’m overly accommodating (stop laughing, Ma, John, everyone else). It just happens to be a word that I find infinitely flexible. A lot has to do with intonation.
Bridging: "Hey Jill – here’s something you absolutely disagree with!" "Um… okay. So let’s think about this…"
Happiness: "Jill – something fun!"Â "Okay!"
Processing:Â "Jill – bad news."Â "…Oh-kay …"
etc.
But it’s that last example I am talking about here. I’m unemployed. I’ve been unemployed for about a month now (I wanted to take some time before I talked about it here). I was unemployed when I started this blog , back in 2004. So we’ve come full circle, and not in a way I would have wanted.
Oh-kay .
However, so far so good – at least emotionally. I’ve kept up with my running. I’ve kept up with Tosh’s training. I’ve kept going with the job search and the networking and the stuff that goes along with it. I haven’t gotten too freaked out. In fact, coming back from my run today, I was shuffling and dancing down the forest path near our house (yes positively jitterbugging – jazz hands may have been involved, I’m just saying). Hey – you try to stay still when "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" comes onto your iPod. Let me know how that works out for you.
I don’t think anyone saw me (except poor Tosh, who clearly knew in his doggy way that Mommy had completely lost her marbles). And you know what? If someone did, I don’t care.
OKAY!