I have to agree with Auguste, this is perhaps the best time waster ever. I won’t say how long I spent playing with it last night after everyone went to bed. It was time I probably should have spent sleeping. But it was the most undirected, unfocused time—time that’s not dedicated to doing what someone else needs or wants me to do—that I’ve had in a couple of months.
I’m taking a blog break until sometime after the holiday, and just spending that focusing on my family. I’ll be back here sometime between Dec. 26th and New Year’s Day.
In the meantime, I don’t have any eloquent holiday/year-end message. So I’ll leave you with my favorite song this time of year, which pretty much says it all.
May you and yours have a happy and safe holiday, and enter the new year with renewed hope. And so may we all.
Amy, Amy, Amy. If they try to make you go to rehab, please “go, go, go.” I was just listening to Back to Black this week, and it sounded as good as when I first heard it this summer. It’d be shame if there wasn’t any more music from you. It’s great that you sound a little like Billie Holiday. But emulate her sound, but don’t join her on this list of talented folks we should have heard a lot more from.
This isn’t really a Friday Random Ten (which I haven’t done in a while). Tonight is my turn to put Parker to bed, and in the last few months — every since he heard me singing “Route 66″ from his favorite movie, Cars — that means I sing a few songs for him after I tuck him in. I’ve been expanding my repertoire since then, and when I think of a new song that’s appropriate, I surprise him with it.
It’s grown into quite a playlist, actually, and I have to cut it off at a certain point or he’ll never goto sleep. (Once, a medley of “When You’re Smiling,” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” and “S’Wonderful” extended bedtime into a 20 minute concert.)
Yesterday, I got the idea to create a playlist in iTunes of Parker’s songs. Partly because I like that they’re now “our songs” in a way (and maybe someday he’ll hear one of them and remember that Daddy used to sing them for him), and partly so that I can add new songs and learn them for future “performances.”
Anyway, here’s the list so far. I doubled up some songs, just for thematic purposes when I’m listening to it.
I’ve got a couple of actual blog posts planned for today, but right now all I got is a bunch of stuff, none of which is worth an entire post, but that I can’t resist commenting on anyway.
First, I love ya, Keith. When it comes to “Straight Guys I Love,” you’re right up there with Jon Stewart. OK? But this time I think you’re asking way to much of the president. I mean fight a war? You know and I know he’s got no experience. For that matter, neither do a lot of his supporters in the administration or in Congress. And his youngest supporters aren’t interested in the job.
Tucker, you’re next. Unlike Keith, I’m completely over you. My advice: pipe down and uncross your legs already. Trust me, nobody much wants it anyway.
Amy, goodness knows I love ya. I mean, those first coupla lines in “Back to Black” were enough to do it for me. But, sugar, it’s time to go to rehab. I mean go, go, go.
And as long as I’m being bitter, I kinda sympathize with women who fall in love with lifers — guys who ain’t probably gonna see the outside of a prison unless they manage to peek out from a pine box — but I’m not sure I’m feeling their “doing time on the outside” vibe.” After all, you can marry your man. Some of you are lining up to marry these guys. Me? I can’t marry mine, and he didn’t even kill anybody.
And speaking of marriage, you might want to check out Boi, who says the same folks who don’t want to let me get married don’t want to let you divorce either.
The funny thing is, they don’t want me to marry in this country, but if I go abroad and get married, they won’t let me get divorced either. How do ya like that? They’re so divorced from reason that the same logic that leads them to oppose my marriage would also require them to uphold it, because to let me divorce they’d first have to acknowledge the marriage. I’d almost go to Canada, come back and file for divorce just to piss them off.
And finally, I can’t wrap up without enjoying a little schadenfreude on behalf of my old home state, Georgia, which was so anxious to stick it to illegal immigrants that it ended up inadvertently sticking it to used car salesmen. Undocumented immigrants can’t get licensed, so they’re returning their cars. Boy, I’m glad people don’t think stuff like that through. It’d be a much less amusing world otherwise.
I’ve always had a thing for Enrique Iglesias, but hearing via Towleroad that he recently performed at a gay club in London and — at the point in the show where he would usually invite a female audience member onstage — Enrique asked a young man on stage and gave a new meaning to the term “equal treatment.” (Video after the jump.)
I finally got the Lycos Mix code to work, thanks to a handy Wordpress plugin. And when I was trying to think of a way to test it out, I started getting nostalgic for a show I grew up watching in the 80s: Friday Night Videos. I remember staying up to watch it, before we got cable. What I didn't know was that it lived on until 2002.
Anyway, I started randomly looking for videos, and next thing I know …
One of the unexpected pleasure of parenthood,lately, is that I get to sing again. At some point, we went from Parker asking me to stop singing around the house (admittedly, in the middle of one of his favorite shows) to Parker actually asking me to sing to him at bedtime and in the car, because he likes it. I admit, I couldn’t help grinning when I heard him say “Daddy’s a good singer.” Made my day, it did.
It started when Parker adopted Cars as his favorite movie. One night after I realized the movie soundtrack contained several songs I knew, rather than sing the theme from Thomas the Train again I asked Parker if I could sing a song from the movie for him. He happily said yes, and I launched into “Route 66″ for him. Since then, I’ve added “Life is a Highway” and “Life Would be a Dream (Sh-boom)” to the set list, though I have to print out the lyrics to get through the first one.
But what’s been the most fun is reaching back into my singer’s brain to find songs that I’d enjoy singing and Parker would enjoy hearing. I came up with “It’s not Easy Being Green” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (the first song I ever sang on stage). The first one’s been requested again, but not the second one, yet.
I’ve been enjoying it so much that I think I might hook up with a voice teacher, just to see what kind of pipes I have left and what I can do with them. But even if I never sing for an audience again, I’ve got at least one ardent fan. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to put together a playlist of Parker’s “lullabyes.” (The last one is a version of “Rainbow” is probably my favorite.)
Why’s this significant? In light of the latest act of homophobic violence in Jamaica, it’s very significant, and Madison Square Garden management needs to know about it. But first, a little history.
“Not only did “American Idol’s” little-contestant-that-could impress Simon Cowell and Jennifer Lopez this week, but the show’s musical director Rickey Minor now says it’s possible that Sanjaya Malakar can win the entire competition.
“You know what? I think that he could win the show,” Minor told The New York Post. “He’s gotten this far because he really is what he is - he’s got this huge smile, he’s a handsome guy and is really likable. People are pulling for him - and people really care about him.”
For the first time since the show entered the final 12 phase, folks got a glimpse of the pipes that impressed the judges during auditions during Tuesday night’s performance of a song in Spanglish.
“I can tell you he can sing,” says Minor, now in his third season as “Idol” musical director. “I think there are people who are naysayers, but I’ve run into a lot of credible people who really enjoy his voice. He has a connection to the lyrics and people are pleasantly surprised.
“This isn’t a singing competition alone. It’s for a star to emerge,” he says. “Sanjaya has a huge likability factor. I think it’s possible for him to win based on the way he’s moving through the competition.”
That alone did my heart good, then I heard Sanjaya sing “Besame Mucho.”
I’d always heard about this moment, when Marvin Gaye sang the National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All Star Game. Except, I must have heard it wrong, because I always thought he’d sung it at the Superbowl. What I did hear correctly is that it was phenomenal. But I’d never seen it. Or, rather, I’d never heard it until now.
I also didn’t know that it turned out to be the last time we saw Marvin on television. At least that’s what Stevie Wonder told Thomas Dolby in 1985. They were supposed to “perform” a pre-recorded version of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Grammys that year. Dolby suggested a version similar to Marvin’s, and Stevie told him the story.
But I may have reason to watch now. That is, unless there’s a way to vote without watching the show. Because if there is, I’m going to vote for Sanjaya every chance I get, even though I’ve never heard him sing. I don’t even know if he can sing. But I still want him to win. Turns out, as I discovered from talking to people in my office, lots of other people do too. They’ve got they’re reasons, and I’ve got a few of my own.
I’ve posted about this song before. But I came across this video, plus the Ray Charles quote via SugarJar, and it kinda fits my mood over the last few days.
“The words say, ‘It’s not easy being green,’ but the song is about knowing who you are. And in it you hear Jim’s message most clearly. He believed that people are good and that they want to do their best and that no matter how or why we might be different from anybody else, we should learn to love who we are and be proud of it.” - Ray Charles
Well, I'd hope so. Anyone stupid or careless enough to put an uzi inthe hands of an eight-year-old ought to be charged with something. The D.A. looking into "whether anyone committed a reckless or wanton act" by allowing the child to fire a weapon. Oh, I'd say that qualifies as reckless and wanton. If it doesn't, then nothing does.
I admit it. My first thought when I saw this was, "Honest, officer. I don't know what happened. I totally meant to hit the brakes. I guess my foot just slipped."
I'm not saying its the kind of thing that anyone should base their vote on, but I gotta admire a campaign when I find out about the candidate's economic plan on an LGBT social network, and then get a link to read or download the entire plan on Scribd. It tells me that a campaign is making a special effort to reach out to people like me, and that the campaign is up to date on the latest ways to disseminate information.
If you haven't yet, take the time to stop by Box Turtle Bulletin, where they have been doing a great series of day-by-day posts on the Matthew Shepard murder. Today's post is a particularly heartbreaking one, about the moment ten years ago when Dennis and Judy Shepard walked into their son's intensive care room and saw him for the first time since the attack. It also links to the earlier posts in the series.
Its sounds like a joke, but it's true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
Big news. Clay Aiken is gay. Bigger news. So is Lindsey Lohan. Or, at least, she's been dating a woman "for a really long time." I don't know what counts as "a really long time" for Lohan. But kudos to Aiken, at least, for finally coming out. The closet is no place to raise a kid.
See, stuff like this is the reason I don't use Google Ads already. I tried it for a while, but I kept getting advertisements for James Dobsons' books on my posts, and I never found an easy way to block them other than entering the URL into the Google Ads filter every time I discovered one. No thanks.
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