Balloons and beavers and record players

I have a fondness for old vinyl album covers - there's just something about them that a CD cover or (God forbid) an mp3 album artwork file cannot capture. I'm usually not one for "holding the music in my hand" but I will admit to loving the feel of a 12" record album in my hand. Perhaps it's because I had so many of them when I was growing up. I bought vinyl long after it was on it's way out - the last vinyl album I bought new was Bananarama's The Greatest Hits Collection in late 1988 - and even then, I'd gone almost exclusively to cassette tapes. Christmas of 1988 saw the arrival of the CD player so who in the hell needed vinyl?

I've turned a lot of the vinyl albums I have into artwork in my home office (see the post "Vinyl trim") but that's left me with a lot of vinyl albums that I can't play. Usually this is no big whoop as most everything I have on vinyl I have on iTunes. But for some reason, I've really had a hankering recently to get a record player and play some of those vinyl albums. I haven't had a record player in 20 years and although vinyl's making a comeback, I just could never justify the expense of buying a turntable to be able to play records again.

Yesterday we went down to Indianola where our friend Jeff was hosting a party for the National Balloon Classic. He has a front row seat to the Mass Ascension of the balloons. The whole thing sounds vaguely religious to me, but trust me, with the company we were keeping, it was as irreverent as ever. Last year was highlighted by the presence of the Beaver Balloon.

Attack of the killer beaver!!

This year, the Beaver Balloon was back, but it turned it's back on us. You can see it in this photo - it's the lowest balloon about 2/3rds of the way across the picture.


That's right, we were snubbed by the beaver (ironically enough, also the title of my college memoirs.) As we said, if there are any beaver jokes that are not inappropriate, we're not interested in knowing them.

But more than that, Jeff was having a garage sale of sorts - selling stuff he had painted as well as some of his personal belongings. One of those was a complete stereo system WITH TURNTABLE (and speakers) for a lousy 20 bucks. I hemmed and hawed as per my usual and then ultimately purchased it after he assured me that the turntable still worked. I set it up today and have not turned on iTunes all night. Here I sit with 21,000 songs in iTunes and I'm happy as a clam to be sitting listening to record albums, just like I did 30 years ago. No, the sound isn't like it is from a CD or an mp3, but there's just something about it.

Click to make it bigger! It's Stevie Nicks!

I've also listened to Barbra Streisand's Stoney End and it's just made me more determined then ever to get more Barbra vinyl. If nothing else, I need to get the People album and probably Simply Streisand which are both albums I had on CD in college, in addition to Stoney End. Jeez, having had all those albums in college, it's not surprising no girls wanted to date me! (not really true, but boy I sure couldn't see through the fog of self-doubt and low self-esteem enough to see it.) It's truly amazing my wife said yes when I asked her to marry me.

Barbra crimped her hair and went down the stoney end. She never wanted to go down the stoney end!

There's something about vinyl, especially the really old albums, that just seems so right. The acquisition of the turntable for the rock bottom price of twenty bucks makes me want to head to ZZZ Records in Des Moines and see if I can score some Joni Mitchell vinyl, or Laura Nyro's Eli & The Thirteenth Confession. As I've said before, if there's an album that begs to be played on vinyl, it's that one.

So everything old is new again. The only thing I wish it did is keep track of play counts. I guess you can't win 'em all. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll listen to some Bananarama. ON VINYL.

Madonna...at her most underrated

I have been a VERY bad blogger this summer. Too much to do, no time to do it in. However, hopefully what I'm about to offer makes up for it just a little bit.

You might remember back in March of 2010, my friend and stalwart Madonna fan Jeff and I did a podcast about what our most memorable Madonna moments were in our lives. We were clearly amateurs at it, but we had a good time and the plus side was we got to spend an hour plus talking about one of our favorite mutual interests. That podcast is still up and available so if you weren't around then and are so inclined, feel free to download it.

Last week I got a wild hair to do another podcast with Jeff. This time, I decided that the topic would be the most underrated or underappreciated Madonna songs. I split it into three categories - songs that we thought were underrated by Madonna, songs that are underrated by Madonna fans, and songs that are underrated by each other. As I say in the podcast, so much of the time, when there is substantial discussion about Madonna, it is not about her music but rather about her image and her controversy. This, I believe, does a disservice to the mammoth amount of work that she's managed to put out over the course of nearly *gulp* 30 years now.

So if you have an hour and some change to kill, I'd say definitely give us a listen. I even got all professional and added some song clips so hopefully Madonna doesn't send me a cease and desist letter (and if she does, I hope she hand signs it.) If you are a fan, you'll probably enjoy it. If you know one or (better yet) both of us, you need to download it and listen. This is what happens when you talk Madonna with someone for 25 years.

Here's the link - get to listening! I would love to hear what you think, even if it's negative. I thought about doing solo podcasts in the future, but I have no idea what I'd talk about and honestly, it's easier to play off Jeff.

Download the madness that is Jeff and me here.

Bound for Gaga

Through a massive trade of days off and shifts (and the graciousness of one of my co-workers), I managed to get time off during Spring Break week to head to see Lady Gaga in Omaha tomorrow night. Heidi's staying home and I'm going with my friends Kyl, Jess and Brandt. The seats don't appear to be the best seats in the house, but they were affordable and from the sounds of it, we were lucky to just get into the arena. Regardless, it promises to be a good time even though I'm not feeling wildly good tonight. I think an early bedtime is in my future so that I can be at my best tomorrow.

Even now, a full two years since I finally succumbed to Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" at the first daddy-daughter dance I attended with Anna, I'm not fully sold on Lady Gaga. I am not convinced that she is the next Madonna, but what I do know is that she's the closest that anyone's come for me personally. Whether she will have the longevity that Madonna has had remains to be seen, but I do admire her moxie. Her songs are light, inoffensive dance/pop songs that don't really aspire for anything greater ("Born This Way" not withstanding) but you know, it doesn't all have to be Shakespeare in order for it to be worthy. As I so frequently say, the music makes me feel good and well, a lot of times, that's enough for me.

I'm sure she'll put on a great show and with Scissor Sisters as her opening act, it's hard to imagine this being a disappointment. I did listen to The Fame in its entirety today - something I had not done until today. I've always liked the singles but most of the album tracks left me a little bit cold. I snuck a peak at the set-list and there were some songs from The Fame that I didn't know so I figured I better educate myself. But I was glad to see that most of The Fame Monster made the set-list. Honestly, that EP is just heads and shoulders above The Fame. It makes me very eager for her new album in May which I predict will be one of two things - pop brilliance or overbaked and overthought drivel. Not likely to fall anywhere in the middle.

No matter what though, whenever I hear her sing "Papa-papa-paparazzi" I will always expect her to take a page out of Yentl's playbook and sing "Papa-papa-papa can you hear me?"

A good pancake

We went to Cedar Rapids today for Heidi's grandfather's 90th birthday party. Relatives from all over converged on their relatively small house to celebrate 10 years shy of a century. Anna and I were goofing around making videos of each other and when we tired of that, we went back and watched the videos that were already on there. I had completely forgotten about this insanity, which was recorded on February 12th, 2011. It was the day of the Oscar movie marathon with Caryle and Jeff and what better way to start out than with a hearty breakfast at IHOP?



Why am I posting this kind of embarrassing video of myself? Because when I watched it, I smiled and laughed at my ridiculousness. That needs to happen more often. And it proves, yet again, that any situation in life can be satisfied with a quote from 9 to 5.

Training day

I will be embarking into the great unknown tomorrow morning at 9AM.

On December 20th, Jill Daiker gave me my last haircut. After about 5 years of haircuts, she has left Ames. In January, she got married and moved to Ireland with her husband where the pastures literally ARE greener. I knew that it was coming for quite a while, but the reality of it really didn't sink in until tonight. Tomorrow when I go to get my hair cut, I won't just be able to sit there, confident in the fact that it's Jill and she knows what she's doing. No, instead I'll be in unknown hands, the result of which could exceed my wildest expectations. Or not. Because tomorrow is training day. To be totally honest, I'd rather be in the market for a new doctor because finding someone I trust to cut my hair correctly is not something I take lightly.

Now, before you all jump to the conclusion that I'm kind of dramatic about my hair, let me assure you that, yes, I kind of am. When I was a kid, my hair was stick straight. Then I hit puberty and the curl turned on. It was at that point that I began my lifelong battle with my hair, trying to force it to do things it didn't want to do and be things it wasn't meant to be. My defense for the longest time was keeping it extremely short. I got my hair cut every 3-4 weeks like clockwork. When I first moved to Ames, I went to someone that almost did it right. I put up with it because I really didn't know where else to go. When she moved away, I ended up with Jill. It was a match made in heaven. She knew just how to cut my hard-to-cut curly hair and recently, I've been going as long as 8 weeks between haircuts. Not only that, she was down-to-earth and easy to talk to. The icing on the cake was that we were from the same hometown, so whenever we would meet for my appointment, we would always swap stories of what was going on and who was dating who, etc. etc. Perfect.

Well now she's gone. I e-mailed Jill a couple weeks back asking her to tell me exactly what I need to tell the new person. I'm going there on Jill's recommendation, but I have been spoiled by years of her just knowing what to do. She sent me a description filled with technical terms, which included the highly questionable term "recession line" (she apologized for using it.) Hopefully, Wendy (the new person) will be able to figure it out. I'm a bit nervous because I'm going in at 9AM and I work at noon, so it doesn't give me much time to figure out what to do with it if it comes out terrible. Which it won't. I hope.

I know, I know. It's just hair. That's what I keep telling myself, even though it IS kind of a big deal to me. But more than that, I'm kind of dreading the 30+ minutes of idle chit chat. Finding a new person to cut your hair is a little like dating - if the chemistry is bad, nothing else matters. I'm not interested in all the questions about where I work and what my wife does and how old my child is. It won't be her fault, that's for sure. She'll just be doing her best, which I'm sure will be fine. Jill wouldn't have recommended her if she didn't have full faith in her. She reiterated that confidence in her e-mail.

But mostly, I miss Jill. However, I will try to pick up the pieces because boy do I need a haircut like no one's business.

Best of 2010: 12 Favorite Blog Posts

My blogging pal Brendan did a post in which he highlighted his favorite blog posts of the year. I meant to do this last year, but life got busy and by the time got around to it, the ship had sailed (oddly, that is the case with SO many posts that never see the light of day.)

Inspired by his post, I have spent a good chunk of the morning scanning through the year's posts. There were fewer this year than in any year since 2005. Not sure why that is - I chalk a lot of it up to Facebook. Things that used to get a post now get a sentence and a link there. Some of the posts clearly did not stand the test of time. They seemed brilliant at the time, but not so much 12 months out. Still, as proud as I am of this space, I found 12 (+1) that really stood out for me. Here they are, again, taking a cue from Brendan, in chronological order.

• Give It Up: One of those album posts that come out of nowhere - this time about Wilson Phillips' Shadows & Light. God, I loved that album more than I really should admit anywhere.
• Monolith: Social media is here to stay. It's changed how we interact with people, and not necessarily for the better.
• Easy Bake Pam: A not-so-great day ends with an impromptu baking of chocolate chip cookies in an Easy Bake Oven with Anna while she jams out to a song about a May-December relationship.
• And Now for the Audio Portion of the Program: My friend Jeff and I try our hands at podcasting. This was our first and only attempt and ended with us rambling on for nearly an hour about Madonna - like that should surprise anyone. The podcast is still available to download if you're interested.
• This Sweater is Old and Faded: I actually wore this sweater to work once this winter so far. For being a nearly 10 year old sweater, it's in remarkably good shape and not that out of style.
• A Mere Heart Attack: Misheard lyrics - the subject that launched a thousand blog posts.
• The (Non)appendicitis Was (Not) Rumbling: I'mincluding this post not because it was particularly witty or well-written - it's not. It was kind of a throwaway post. It has become, however, my most visited post of the year (next to the Madonna remixology posts.) Seriously folks, I don't know any more about rumbling appendicitis than Wikipedia. Move along.
• Come Down Here for a Minute: This was one of many Stevie posts I did this year. It was also the one that came the most out of nowhere.
• Get Out of Her Way: Kylie's "Get Outta My Way" video, as I have said before, reduced me to a screaming fanboy in the way that only Kylie can. My favorite song and video of the year.
• Zen and the Art (and Calculus) of Dishwashing: Probably the nerdiest post of the year. And that's saying something. Who knew calculus would EVER apply to the washing of dishes?
• Look Who's Evil Now: An account of my trip to Kansas City to see Evil Dead: The Musical - the bloodiest musical I have ever seen.
• Private Dining: Probably my most personal post of the whole year. I was surprised to get the amount of feedback on it that I did - both in the comments section and privately to me in e-mail. It made me realize that it's not quite as awful to share those kinds of stories as I always think it will be.

And the plus one...

• Last Night a Pharmacist Saved My Life: Because I can't let an opportunity to remind everyone of how awesome I can be when I set my mind to it. ;)

Thank you to EVERYONE who reads this space. The numbers are few, but I am thankful that anyone finds it interesting enough to come back to day after day. That's the best Christmas present I could possibly receive.

Stay golden

This weekend was the first of a few Christmases we have lined up this year. I can't keep track of how many there are actually going to be or when they're going to take place. I've kind of adopted the attitude of "you just tell me where to be and when to be there. Provided I'm not working, I'll show up." Truthfully, I find it to be much less stressful just to go with the flow rather than getting worked up and end up not enjoying any part of the holiday.

But last night's Christmas was what we lovingly refer to as "Tina's Christmas." It's called that because of a 15+ year-old inside joke that started between Heidi, Jeff and me. It refers to Christina "Tina" Crawford, adopted daughter of Joan Crawford and author of celebrity tell-all turned camp-classic Mommie Dearest. Don't ask me why the joke started, it just did. It's part of the history now and honestly, if it weren't there, life would be A LOT less interesting. But Tina's Christmas is tradition now, so much so that we book it a year in advance and God preserve your soul if you schedule anything else on that weekend.

Food is consumed, gifts are exchanged, alcohol is drunk, games are played. We always try to outdo each other when filling out the tags on the presents. This photo below gives you a pretty good idea of what I'm saying.

The best part of this was when Anna was passing out presents and she said "Who is La Bouch?" (pronouncing it so that it rhymed with "ouch") Close, but no cigar Anna. Among the other people receiving presents last night were Richard Burton & Liz Taylor, Barbara Mandrell, Dexter, 'Lizbeth Walton, Wonder Woman, Starbuck, Liza (from David Guest) and many others I can't remember. Seriously, it's the best part. It gets so bad that sometimes the gift giver has to think about who it was really for. It's kind of a very camp Christmas.

And somewhere along the line, Santa started to visit early. We're starting to push up against the age where Anna might start to not believe in Santa for much longer (she's 9 and not showing very many signs of disbelief) so we kind of milk it a little bit. Last year, he brought everyone pajamas and this year was the same thing. We orchestrate this quite elaborately to perpetuate the belief. Anna was really anticipating this to happen this year and so when it did, she came down the stairs declaring that she KNEW it would happen because she still believed.

Of course, a man in a red suit did not actually visit. We all had drawn names to see who would buy pajamas for who and Jeff got my name. We all had e-mailed our pajama sizes and preferences and I think for the most part, everyone was pleased. Inside my package was a pair of flannel pants and a big navy thermal shirt that I wore to bed last night. Also in the package was a T-shirt that might only ever be a bed shirt, I'm not sure. I did wear it today. I think the image kind of speaks for itself.

Really, coming from Jeff, it's a perfect gift. The Golden Girls is beloved by gay men far and wide, but he and are among the few straight men I know that enjoy the HELL out of it (although I do know of at least one other - you know who you are.) It really is - pardon the pun - comedy gold. The writing is so strong, the performances so perfect that even in the later seasons when Blanche was ultra slutty, Rose extra dumb and Dorothy extremely bitchy, it still didn't suffer. I've seen every episode multiple times and Heidi always says that watching me laugh my head off for the hundredth time is, for her, the best part of watching it. My friend Mary, who was also at Tina's Christmas, is fond of saying that in high school, while her friends were out getting laid on Saturday night, she was at home watching The Golden Girls. Well, so was I.

What I love about this gift is its subtle meaning. In many ways, what Tina's Christmas is all about is how everyone is loved for being exactly who they are, despite AND because of their flaws. These folks are our family of choice and it's so important to me that this continue in some form or another for as long as it can.

I've spent a lot of today in a funk I couldn't quite shake. That's not all that unusual for me after a flurry of activity. When the party's over, I'm more inclined to quiet introspection than anything else. It's not about turning it into something sad or melancholy, it's just about the transition. Tomorrow is back to work for four days and then a few more Christmases. I'm not getting that much time off around Christmas but I am taking eleven days off beginning December 30th for my sister's wedding on NYE. Then it'll be a week of trying to catch up and unbunge (as my brother always says) from the hustle and bustle of the season and get back to normal.

I would end this post with a "thank you for being a friend" gag, but really, it's too obvious. To all those who are family of choice to me - those present last night and others as well, just listen to that damn cheesy theme song and know what it's all about.

Are they still there for us?

My sister and (soon to be) brother-in-law were cracking me up tonight. They were taking a page out of the Dan & Heidi playbook and were pseudo-conversing on Facebook. My sister was taking great pleasure in the fact that she "got Andrew to admit that Star Trek: The Next Generation was the best series of the 90s and that Friends totally doesn't hold up." And Andrew said something to the effect that "Ross had the most punchable face on television." I'm not sure how I feel about the first statement (um, X-Files anyone?), but I totally agree with the second point. Ross mostly just pisses me off and that was before he all the characters became caricatures of themselves and Ross' neuroses went off the chart.

I will admit that I only sort of watched Friends while it was actually on TV. Where I really learned to appreciate the show was in syndication starting in roughly 1999. We would watch it every night at 6:30 after the local news, but heaven forbid we actually remember to tune in and watch the new episodes. When Friends and Must-See-TV Thursday night on NBC were at their peak, it was very like me to hold that which was terribly popular with disdain. I still do that sometimes but to a much smaller degree than I used to and when I do it, I usually get called on it by Heidi. It was the constant onslaught of reruns that eventually wore me down. And for the most part, I think it's a pretty funny show that is by and large well written and well acted (save some of the latter seasons.)

But to address my sister's assertion - does Friends hold up almost six and a half years after it went off the air? To be honest, I actually think it does, and better than many of its contemporaries. Like so many sitcoms, it's important to remember that it is ultimately a product of its time. And for Friends to hold up, you HAVE to keep that in mind.

The greatest argument that Friends does hold up is that it really captures a part of the 90s zeitgeist. It is 90s nostalgia at its finest and only during the final few seasons, when the writing kind of fell apart and (as I mentioned) the characters become extreme versions of themselves does the connection to that zeitgeist feel a little bit forced. For what Friends really represents is a 90s nostalgia that never existed - it's kind of a modern day Leave It To Beaver. Maybe it rings a little truer in more urban areas, but let me tell you how I did not spend my 20s and early 30s hanging out in a coffee shop waiting for my friends to show up. No, TV is not reality, especially a show like Friends, but I think it plugged into the kind of community that a lot of people our age really wanted but were having a hard time getting. Who wouldn't want a group of close knit slightly neurotic (in a good way) friends to be with and to have basically as a "family of choice?"

When Heidi and I were rewatching Friends on DVD (which took about half the time that it took for the show to actually air), there were a lot of times that I found myself a bit wistful for what I knew really never was. I always wished that I knew someone like Phoebe. I always loved (and was frequently a bit jealous of) the relationship between Joey and Chandler which was probably one of the best examples of a bromance before bromance was a buzz word. Even self-absorbed Rachel and massively OCD Monica were very oddly comforting. By magnifying their quirks, the writers somehow managed to make mine feel a bit smaller.

And then there's Ross. *sigh*

Whenever I do one of those "which Friend are you?" quizzes, I always, without fail, get Ross. And that kind of ticks me off because I don't think that I am in any way as pathetic as Ross. Ross is so much a victim of his life's circumstances which is something I try to avoid. But when I'm honest with myself, I'm so not a Chandler (everyone always wants to be a Chandler) and hell no, I'm not a Joey. So that leaves Ross. There are so many episodes of Friends that have massively painful Ross moments, and they usually aren't the focus of the episode. It's always some dumb plot point that relies on Ross being clueless or socially inept and it's usually regarding his rather hapless efforts to find love. These moments multiply exponentially in the final seasons to the point that it really is just so much farce. I have blocked a lot of them out, but so much of the time, it was like watching a horror film through your fingers.

So yeah, Andrew is right. Ross is the most punchable face on television, but I don't think that just because I keep getting him on a stupid Facebook quiz means that I'm equally punchable. All in all, if I had to pick, I'd rather be Paul Rudd as Phoebe's husband Mike Hannigan (aka Crap Bag) than any of the the three main Friends. But who in the hell DOESN'T want to be Paul Rudd? The guy is crazy cool.

If it hadn't been for Wendy, this post would never have happened. Honestly, I don't usually think about Friends this much. But now I want to go rewatch the series. Or maybe just the one in which Chandler is trapped in an ATM vestibule with Jill Goodacre.

I look forward to hearing what others think - does Friends hold up? Or is it just hopelessly dated and passe?

The ghost of Halloween past

I don't know about anyone else, but it seems like Halloween has been an all-weekend affair this year. I guess that's what you get when you have trick-or-treating on Friday night and Halloween doesn't actually happen till Sunday night. Surprisingly, we really weren't all that into Halloween this year. A lot of that had to do with the fact that October was an amazingly draining month so by the time we got to the end of it, we really lacked the ability to put something fantastic together. We had a few friends over, but we didn't even dress up this year which is VERY unlike us. So since there are no new pictures of a costumed us, I raided my hard drive and found a bunch of photos from Halloweens past.

This is from the first Halloween party we ever had. We lacked the space for it so Jeff hosted it with us at his place. We went as Gomez and Morticia Addams. My sister Wendy went as Wednesday Addams but I can't find the picture of the three of us. She killed it as Christina Ricci's version of Wednesday. We weren't too shabby ourselves.

1999 found us hosting our first Halloween party in our first house. We went as Dorothy and the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Heidi made our costumes and I do believe we pulled it of pretty well, even though we had to be a bespectacled Dorothy and Scarecrow.

Never to be outdone, Jeff came to that party as Joan Crawford accepting her Oscar in her nightgown. Jeff, you have a level of courage that I can only aspire toward.

My brother and sister were living in Iowa City that year, so they came to the party as well. On the right is Ryan doing his classic Unabomber costume which was based on the famous artist's composite sketch. My sister arrived as "the new Jan Brady" complete with blond hair sticking out from her black Afro wig. Perhaps two of my favorite costumes ever.

This is from 2002 - Anna's first Halloween. She was a ladybug that couldn't stop sucking on her pacifier.

In 2004, Anna had to wear the cat costume that was worn by Heidi and all her sisters at some point. So I decided since Anna was going as a cat, I'd go as a mouse. That thing hanging around my neck is a picture of cheese but it's flipped around so it just looks stupid.

2008 we started doing Halloween parties again in earnest. Anna was Princess Leia that year on a "diplomatic" mission to Alderaan.

That was also the same year that I shaved my beard and went as David Tennant as The Doctor. Heidi went as the scariest thing we could think of - President Sarah Palin. Looking back, my resemblance to the Doctor is only vague at best, but I had a good time.


Last year's Alien chestburster victim is the best costume I've ever done. It was a little bit technically difficult to rig up, but once I figured it out, the rest was easy. I got more comments on that costume than any other.

Heidi was a bit less inspired that year - going as the "H" Scrabble tile. Anna was Coraline from the movie version - complete with blue hair.

Jeff arrived in full Glinda regalia that year. I think that we both peaked in terms of costume ideas that year. No one does Halloween drag like Jeff. And it led to the very surreal picture below.

So yeah, although Anna dressed up this year, we didn't. Next year, we'll have to make up for it.

Vacation reflections

It's the last day of vacation. Tomorrow, I head back to work and back into the real world. It's not quite going to be the real world until Heidi gets back sometime on Thursday, but it's the end of lazy days in front of the TV and yard work afternoons with my dad. No more staying up till 2:30 in the morning and sleeping late. I'm sad to see it end but I'm also ready for the return of my daily rhythm - well, as much rhythm as I can generate in a job that has rotating shifts.

I didn't blog nearly as much as I wanted to. I didn't get the bathroom recaulked but will try to do so this afternoon. I did get to meet up with Matt and Bess one day for lunch which was very fun and, as usual, full of unpredictable conversation topics. I was massively productive outside with the always appreciated help of my dad. I reconnected with my daughter - not that we were suffering this huge disconnect, but being her sole caregiver gives you a glimpse into the things that she usually splits between us. She missed her mom but learned that, as a certain Gloria Gaynor said, she will survive.

The thing I would excise from this past week if I could would be the unanticipated arrival of Operation: Keep Blair Alive Until Heidi Gets Home. After spending approximately 48 hours during which time we saw him exactly once, he is quarantined in my office where he is recovering from a respiratory infection brought on by his extremely low white blood cell count which is the direct result of his recently diagnosed multiple myeloma. He's on the mend - eating and drinking and getting stronger. Still, facing the very real possibility of having only three more months with him is a hard truth we're still coming to terms with. We do love him even though, as Heidi said, he is the fucking bitchiest cat that ever lived.

I feel ready to get back to it, even though I'm sure that I'll miss my free time the instant I get back to work. That's a natural reaction. I have had a lot of good times this week even though Heidi has been gone for the entirety of it. I have learned a few things over the last week though.

1) If I did nothing else, I could almost keep up with preventing the house from falling into complete disarray.

2) I can give Blair medication without the help of anyone as long as it is a liquid medicine with a total volume of 2 mL or less.

3) It helps to have an agenda. Otherwise, you can spend massive amounts of time at the computer accomplishing next to nothing.

4) It's amazing how the absence of one person can make the dishes so much more manageable.

5) There is such a thing as watching too much Hoarders.

I've been beyond lazy this morning. I got laundry put away but I can't motivate myself to do anything else. Even writing this blog post seemed like a Herculean effort. But I suppose that since this IS the last day of vacation I should cut myself some slack. The good thing is that there are fun things on the horizon. I'm headed down to Des Moines on Wednesday night with my mom to go see 9 to 5: The Musical while my father does Anna duty. And then on the weekend of the 22nd I'm headed to Kansas City to meet up with my friend Jason who will be in town for a conference. We'll be hitting Evil Dead: The Musical and I'm looking forward to just hanging out. We started planning this back in July and it seemed like forever away then. Hard to believe it's just around the corner now.

Today is also my 13th wedding anniversary. It's a little bit bittersweet because Heidi is not here. She is on her way to Austin today as she and Marie make their way back to Iowa. I love her so very very much and can't wait for her return.

But for now, I'm going to go see if I can find the caulk. Because there is caulking to be done on that upstairs tub. The caulk just looks terrible. We'll see if I can make the caulk look more appealing. And yes, those last four sentences are there specifically to make a certain reader laugh like a 12-year-old boy.

Carrying a laser

I have been REALLY into the song "Kyrie" by Mr. Mister these last few days. It all started when I had to completely reinstall everything on my computer and lost all my Genius playlists in iTunes. To get started again, I randomly created a Genius playlist based on the Go-Go's song "Lust To Love." iTunes populated the list with the expected (Belinda Carlisle's "Mad About You" and Madonna's "Physical Attraction") and the not-so-expected (10,000 Maniacs' "Cherry Tree"? WTF?) But "Kyrie" ended up on that list as well.



Anna and I were listening to it in the car on the way back from her piano lesson last night and she said to me, "Dad, I can't sing along with this song because I can't understand what he's saying!" Well, when I was a kid, I really didn't either - although I did know what a kyrie was thanks to my Lutheran upbringing. But her comment made me think of a friend of mine had misheard the lyric in the chorus - Kyrie Eleison down the road that I must travel - as "carrying a laser down the road that I must travel." Thanks to her, whenever I listen to this song, that's what I hear.

And talk about a band that was white-hot and then completely disappeared. The follow-up album to Welcome To The Real World was a commercial disappointment and the band broke up shortly thereafter. I wonder if it was any good - surely three Mr. Mister songs in an iTunes library is enough?

Evidence of brilliance

Well, it isn't exactly the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but here's the audio blog post/podcast that Jeff and I did on Sunday. I was going to try to be all cool and put in intro and outro music, but clearly I need a remedial lesson in how to run the software because I couldn't even do something as simple as that.

So as a consequence of my technical (in)abiity, it's pretty bare bones, but it's what we have. Instead of all the fancy bells and whistles, you get Jeff and me going on for an hour about how we became Madonna fans and what we consider the highest points of her career. As with most things, it didn't quite go in the direction I thought it would, but I still think that it will be appealing to Madonna fans and possibly to people who know us. And I like it because it's a sliver of who I am.

I want to apologize in advance for the fact that Jeff and I talk all over each other. See what happens when you let two huge egos in the same room? And you also can see that even though we might both be fans, we don't always agree on everything.

Download this insanity here.

If you like it, let me know! If you don't, please consider my fragile ego before providing feedback.

And now for the audio portion of the program...

My friend Matt has produced a podcast with his friend Lance for nearly a year now - I was even a guest on it once. Sadly, it's on hiatus right now as Matt is basically working the equivalent of two and a-half jobs, but I'm hoping that they pick up with podcasting again once his life settles down again. I fell off the listening bandwagon late last year, but I always enjoyed it - even when the topics were only of tangential interest to me. Knowing one of the podcasters personally certainly helped - you really can't say that about most podcasts.

I always told Matt that my friend Jeff would be a great guest on his podcast - and it's true. I knew that Jeff would be a natural, so for the Oscars this year, our friend (and his significant other) Caryle suggested that we record our own podcast, in which we detail our picks for the films that were "snubbed" by Oscar in years past. So that's just what we did. We sat around the MacBook and prattled on for 40 minutes. I finally sat down today to listen to it and I will never post it anywhere that can be found. It's not that I am embarrassed by its content - far from it - but we are clearly amateurs at this. But for a first try, it wasn't bad. It entertained me and I sent it to all the podcast participants (Heidi, Jeff, Caryle and Mary) but it's not really fit for other people's consumption. Most of the jokes are long standing in-jokes that would just make most people think we were on drugs while we recorded.

But that was enough to give Jeff the podcasting bug, and he e-mailed me this week to see if I would be interested in doing one with him. The only trouble is that he lives in Indianola, which is an hour or so's drive from here. The distance pretty much rules out getting together to do anything semi-regularly. Plus I didn't have any idea what we would talk about. And who in their right mind would listen?

Well, he convinced me and we're going to record something tomorrow when we rendezvous with Heidi's mom to collect Anna from a weekend at Camp Grandma. It's going to be Madonna related and the details have yet to be truly hashed out, but I can think of no more natural topic for us to discuss, as he has been my partner-in-crime for all things Madonna for 20+ years now.

This will definitely not be a regularly produced thing. My schedule (and Jeff's) simply doesn't allow it. If it happens even once a month, I'll consider that miraculous. I still don't think that I have the technical know-how that Matt has to do this with even a tenth of the quality he and Lance do. But it feels right and rather than call it a podcast, I'm viewing it more in terms of it being an "audio blog post." If I feel like it goes well, I'll be posting a link here. I may or may not pimp it on Facebook.

A significant portion of the credit goes to Matt who proved that this kind of thing can be done and done well. I know that something like this would never have even crossed my mind had it not been for his blazing of the trail.

So we'll see what happens. One thing is for certain - I shouldn't lack for things to say.

The nature of the beast

We take the connectivity the internet provides us for granted nowadays, but I can still remember my first foray online. Like many other pharmacy students at the University of Iowa, it was at the green-screen CRT in the Learning Resource Center of the pharmacy building. A classmate of mine told me about something called ISCABBS that she used. An electronic bulletin board? What would I want with that? But I let her talk me into it.

As you might expect, I was hooked from the get go. For those that don't know, ISCABBS was one of the largest bulletin board systems in the world at that time. It still is, for that matter, but that's not really saying much. During the 90s, it was THE go-to bulletin board, especially for those of us on the U of I campus (because it was affiliated with the University of Iowa), but also for users throughout the country. You could log on and instantly be amongst hundreds upon hundreds of other users. It was so popular that very frequently, users would have to wait in a queue for an open slot, although U of I users were given priority and I never once waited in a queue. Once inside, there were about a hundred different forums covering a wide array of topics.

In addition to this, it allowed you to eXpress message (or simply "x") other users. It was a rather primitive version of instant messaging, limited to 5 lines of text (a fact I would not have remembered without the help of the Wikipedia article on ISCABBS.) Using this functionality, users could interact in real time. And it was in this environment that I made my first online acquaintance.

We met through the much-dreaded "random x" but I was a newbie so I didn't mind it so much. He was from northern California and a computer science major. He contacted me because of some long-forgotten detail in my profile that he liked. He was also, incidentally, the first gay guy that I ever met - or at least the first one that who was out about his sexuality. Looking back on my life, there were MANY gay people in my life, they just weren't out of the closet. Despite that, his orientation was a non-issue even then and I think, in a small way, meeting him and becoming friends with him helped cement my interest in LGBT issues and my eventual transformation into a straight ally.

Anyway, we struck up quite a good online friendship. It survived many years of me changing handles on ISCABBS, my undergraduate graduation and the gradual decline of ISCABBS as the web became more and more prominent. After that we lost touch and I never really knew what became of him although I always kind of wondered. While I figured losing touch was the nature of the beast - people change and move on - it never set all that well with me and I always felt a little bit bad about it.

Over the years, I've made sporadic attempts to find him on the internet, using my best Googling abilities. This proved less than successful as his name is a very common one and he also shares it with a celebrity, so trying to pin him down just never seemed to work out. But the other day I decided to try Facebook, which can limit a name search to a school (I remembered where he went to school) and lo and behold, I got a match. I figured what the hell and I sent him a message. Time will tell if he actually IS that person and even if he is, if he'd even remember me.

In the 15 or so years since the internet and the World Wide Web have come to be a part of everyday life, I've had the great fortune of meeting a lot of really cool people whose paths I would have not otherwise crossed. For this I am very grateful. As I so frequently say, this is not our parents' generation and the places we find friends is not going to be as simple as the Elks club or the progressive supper at church. Online friendships can be very ephemeral, disappearing as quickly as they appear, but sometimes that is half the draw. Heidi and I always liken a new e-mail friend to a crush - all the rush of emotions are there - but it's what happens after the glitter fades (as Stevie Nicks says) that determines where it goes. I've had my share of flame outs and false starts, but I've also managed to cultivate a fair number of what I would consider close friends across not just the country but around the world. In so many ways, online friends are a mirror of all our relationships, especially as more and more real life relationships are being maintained across the series of tubes thanks to Facebook.

All the green screen CRTs are but a memory at the U of I and ISCABBS, now no longer associated with the university, is a shadow of its former self (I logged in today as a guest and there were 16 users online). But I will always have a soft spot for it. And Steve, if you're out there, this post was for you.

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

It seems kind of silly to post it here, since there's a full album of it over on Facebook. Anymore, posting stuff there reaches a wider audience, but I still can't put near the amount of commentary there that I'd like. Because of that, you get the redundancy. But last night was Halloween, and because there's been so much sickness going around this year, we were saying small prayers all week that we would be able to make it through to Halloween without getting sick. In all seriousness, I'd rather be sick on Christmas than on Halloween, because you sure as shootin' don't get to dress like this on Christmas!

We had what is rapidly becoming our annual Halloween bash last night which was well attended and fun all around. As you can see, we all dressed the part as well. Anna is Coraline, Heidi is a Scrabble tile (which was an idea that I sarcastically suggested when she was trying to figure out what her costume should be, only to have her pick it up and run with it) and I am an Alien chestburster victim. Here's a close-up - I am prouder than hell of how it turned out.

The costume overall was easier than you'd think to rig up - I had the plush chestburster already (which was originally blogged about during Nerdery Week) and the bloody shirt was an ink-stained T-shirt that I cut a hole in the center of. I wore a red fleece shirt underneath it, pushed the chestburster through the hole in the shirt and wrapped the tail around my body. A bit uncomfortable, but not bad. The blood on the shirt is spray blood from the Halloween Bootique here in town and the blood on my face is lipstick.

As good as my costume was, it will not top my good friend Jeff who once again proved that it's not Halloween if he's not in a dress.

Jeff is my hero if for no other reason than he is so completely fearless in his actions. He, as I have said before, leads the "fuck you" charge against traditional masculinity and all its traps and preconceived notions of what being a man means. I am nowhere near as brave as he is, but I will always cheer him on and draw inspiration from it.

There was a lot of candy and food and good conversation. It's always that way with this crowd. It included people like my parents who have known me since birth and Jeff who I have known for 20+ years, as well as bringing in new faces like Jan and Sarah and their 4 kids who we met this year. And while the transitive property of friendship is sometimes a bit dicey, it always seems to work with us - and I'll just be thankful for that.

So today has been a bit more subdued. We went to the NaNoWriMo write-in at Smokey Row in Des Moines. Well, actually Heidi and Anna were the only ones writing, but I finally finished The Worst Hard Time so at least I can say I accomplished something. What I really should have done today is spend time in the yard raking leaves, which I'm not sure I would have had the energy for even if we'd have been at home.

The demise of October and switch to November is always a little hard for me. I'm not really sure why - it's purely arbitrary and really shouldn't matter much. I guess it's because to me, it feels like fall is over the instant October ends and November begins. It may as well start snowing, although actually forget I said that because of the aforementioned yard full of leaves. We stopped at Petsmart in Ankeny on the way home and they are full-on Christmas already so I can only imagine what less niche-y stores are like.

So here's to November, let's see what it does. Mostly I'm ready to kiss 2009 goodbye. There have been a few good things (the trip, Heidi's book sales) but mostly, it's kind of sucked. There's two months left to redeem it.

Podcast revealed

As promised, the podcast I participated in is up and ready for the download. You have one of two options should you choose to listen to it (and really, you should - we're brilliant.) You can go to the podcast web site (it's episode 31) and download from there. Alternatively, you can go to iTunes and get the podcast that way. Either way, do it.

I clearly need to be taught how to use a microphone, so go easy on me. If you have positive comments, I'd love to hear them. Please keep negative comments to yourself. My ego is, as Kylie would sing, made of glass.

And to anybody arriving at this blog via the Live Free or Blow Hard web site - welcome. Hope you like what you see. It was a blast being on the podcast and just want to say thanks to Matt and Lance for having me on.

Post-podcast update

Well, I made it through my first experience podcasting. I had a great time, the topic was one I could speak about half-way intelligently and I think I actually surprised both Matt and Lance with some of the things I mentioned. So that's a good thing. I'm worried that my relative lack of experience with recording and a microphone may have compromised the quality of the audio - specifically, I have this nagging feeling that I was either too loud or too soft, but I suppose there isn't much to be done about that now and we'll just await the final product which should be posted some time today.

I had fun and I would totally do it again, but it confirmed my suspicion that while podcasting was a thrilling chance at a performance, blogging really is my home and a natural outlet for my creative endeavors. I have a great deal of admiration for Matt and Lance who crank out an episode a week like clockwork. I don't know that I could keep that kind of schedule. Plus I really like the chance to go back and edit my words - a complete impossibility in the podcast format.

Watch this space for the link to the podcast when it is available for the download.

You wanna see something REALLY scary?

I really didn't mean for a post about Samantha Fox to sit at the top of my blog for the better part of a week, but sadly, it did. What can I say? The week has gotten the better of me, BUT it is now over and I am on a 5 day break from work. I am very excited. Tomorrow, I'm headed down to Des Moines to meet up with my friends Matt and Bess for lunch at Proof which looks quite ritzy but Bess assures us they serve soda in cans. So no worries on that front, I guess. Heidi is going for a massage at the East Village Spa while I am at lunch.

And then, later that night, I am headed down to Matt's house for the recording of his weekly podcast Live Free of Blow Hard. He, along with his friend Lance, have been doing this since February and have 30 episodes under their belts. Their topics run the gamut and although I usually can't find 60 consecutive minutes to listen to their podcast, I have only missed a few. I admire their tenacity because podcasting is a much bigger commitment than blogging! They invited me to be on the podcast quite a while ago, but a combination of my work schedule, their recording schedule and the topic we chose has delayed that until now. Our topic is going to be (just in time for Halloween) "top 3 horror films and why?" although I'm sure that they'll title it much better than that. Anyway, it is sure to be a good one. I have been doing my homework so as not to look like a complete idiot.

Once the podcast is done and posted, I will post a link to it here so that those of you who choose to listen can do so. I would say, like Heidi did earlier this week, if you want to hear what I sound like, you should listen, but since I've done those few video blogs and a good chunk of you actually know me in real life, that's not much of an incentive. But if you like horror films, you probably won't want to miss it.

Also, Kylie is set to take the stage in Chicago in a mere 30 minutes and yet here I sit. DAMN YOU SALAZAR!

Blast from the past

I have this long history of eagerly awaiting the arrival of the mail. When I was growing up, I actually wrote letters to a lot of people so I had a reason to obsessively check the mailbox during every commercial break of "The Young & The Restless." As an adult, I find myself still kind of excited by mail delivery, even though it's usually just bills and other things I don't particularly give a shit about.

I'm kind of in a "where's the mail, dammit?" mode because I ordered a Sticky & Sweet Tour shirt from the Live Nation store during a one day $9.99 sale. As I said on Facebook, I absolutely won't spend $30-50 on a crappy tour shirt that cost 50 cents to make, but I will spend 10 bucks. (I was looking for a link to it in the store, but it's apparently sold out. This is the one I bought.) Anyway, that didn't arrive today, but this did:

It is nothing less than a Blond Ambition Tour era postcard! I don't know if it's actually from that time period or not, but who cares because I love that photo! It is one of my all time favorite photos of Madonna. As it turns out my friend Matt found it at a record show he went to this weekend and knew that I would love it. And at only a buck, the price was right. I think it's frickin' awesome.

Semi-relatedly, Madonna's new video is available for free on iTunes right now. I think you almost get your money's worth with it at that price. I'm sorry, but if she isn't going to put any effort into making videos any longer, she just needs to STOP DOING THEM. I know that not everything can be a "Vogue" or "Express Yourself", but seriously! When was the last time she had anything approach the greatness of even some of her late 90s videos? This one is even lamer than the "Give It 2 Me" video was! (even though I kind of liked GI2M at first)

And then, to add insult to injury, there is a "deeeeluxe" (Heidi will get the reference) edition of Celebration on iTunes which is the single most horrific example of money grubbing I have witnessed in quite some time. OK, at 30 bucks, it's probably a deal. You get the two disc set, 30 videos and two bonus tracks, one being a remix of "Celebration" and the other a never-before-heard American Life b-side. I will NOT be purchasing it, mostly on principle but also because this is one rare example of me actually wanting the physical CD vs. the digital copy. I simply cannot justify spending the money twice this time around (like I did with Confessions and Hard Candy). Plus, there is a DVD coming out with FORTY SEVEN videos on it + I already own all those videos on the video collections already out. Paying all that extra dough for what boils down to one song? Forget it. The record company is begging for that to be pirated like crazy.

OK, I'm done bitching. For now. I'll be back tomorrow or the next day with a word or two or fifty about a couple of new releases to really be excited about.

A beer kind of weekend

Those of you who know me well know that I will, 99% of the time, choose coffee over beer. Not this weekend. I don't know why, but I found myself consuming more beer this weekend than I have, well, pretty much ever. Now before you start calling AA or the Betty Ford Center, let me put this into perspective.

• I split a pitcher of Bud Light with Matt at the Pizza Pit on Friday night. Bud Light is pure crap but it tastes so. damn. good. with Pizza Pit's greasy pizza.
  
• I had a bottle of Peroni Nastro Azzurro on Saturday which I don't think I even finished (the very last bit of it went into something Heidi was cooking).
• Today I had a bottle of Samuel Adams Blackberry Witbier which, because it is fruit flavored, probably doesn't even count as a beer.

So, as you can tell, I'm not exactly walking around the house impaired.

It's been a good weekend overall. Heidi and I spent a lot of time together as Anna was at her grandma's house for the weekend. We spent 2 hours on Saturday looking for chocolate cake and ended up in places we didn't expect. We also never found the chocolate cake, instead buying a box cake at Hy-Vee and baking it at home. We did, however, become seriously disenchanted with Lost after watching the first episode of Season 3. We are officially calling ourselves "on a break" from Lost, but I have a feeling that she has broken up with Lost permanently. So we watched Ocean's Eleven instead, which has held up surprisingly well and just made me want to go to Vegas even though I have no money with which to gamble and probably wouldn't even if I did.

I picked up the book Shutter Island from the library and have nearly finished it in less than 24 hours. Sadly, it's not because it's THAT GOOD it's just that easy of a read and mostly I'm just reading to find out what happens. I also found this book, Inferno, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle who wrote the pretty good Lucifer's Hammer and the absolutely unreadable Footfall. It is bascially a retelling of Dante's Inferno, and the sequel, Escape From Hell, just came out this year. Predicatably, the library had the sequel but NOT the original, so I downloaded it from Audible and am listening to it. Pretty decent so far. Audiobooks take me forever to listen to, so I probably will finish just in time for my 40th. On my side is the fact that it is only 5 and a half hours.

Also had a nice belated birthday celebration on Friday night (see the above splitting of the Bud Light pitcher). Always good to see friends and hang out. As a consequence of hanging out with Matt, I also listened to a tremendous amount of a cappella that night on my computer as we navigated our way through the a-cappella.com website after listening to a clip of an a cappella cover of Boston's "Foreplay/Long Time" on the Mouth Off podcast. Believe me, it doesn't sound that fun, but it really was!

Additionally, I am also thinking a lot about the constant flux of long term friendships - those of you who follow me on LJ (my quarterly post over yonder has arrived) know of what I speak. It's nowhere near as bad as it probably sounds and doesn't (to my knowledge) involve anyone reading here.

So that's it. It's a proper "update" which I have not done in a long time. I have been feeling the pressure to not post about music so much. I can't really help it, but since this is not a music blog, I don't want every post to be "look how cool this song is!" and I have felt like it has become that lately. That is not, in and of itself bad, but music, while something about which I feel passionately, is but a sliver of the things I think about on a regular basis.