Maybe need to watch the shrill commentary in our household.
[setting: dinner table, The Boy (4.5 y.o) and his father; television is on]
The Boy: There's Obama!
Dad: Yup. Do you like Obama?
The Boy: Yeah! We hate McCain, right dad? He's a liar!
Dad: Um, right.
The Boy: I don't want to see McCain any more.
Dad: Well, after tomorrow you might not have to that much.
The Boy: Why?
Dad: Because the election is tomorrow.
The Boy: And then they're gonna kill him?
Dad: ...
[Sunday afternoon conversation]
Elljay: I wish I was a parent.
Dad: Believe me, it's not that great, it's more fun to be a kid.
Elljay: But when you're a parent you get to make the rules.
Dad: ...
Elljay: But I don't want to be president. It's really HARD to be president, you're in charge of everybody.
Dad: Well, not EVERYbody.
Elljay: Yes, even the police and firemen.
Dad: Er.... who do you want to become president, John McCain or Barack Obama?
Elljay: Who do you want?
Dad: Obama.
Elljay: Why? Because he's better?
Dad: Much better.
Elljay: Then that's who I want to win.
Dad (to self): score!
[Backseat of the car Monday afternoon... listening to Radiohead from Jersey City this August.]
The Boy: I like the music.... I want to eat this music for lunch.
The little guy turns 4 today. Last year it was trains... now quickly forgotten. This year Spidey leads off a quickie mix. Enjoy The Boy-centric six pack (with gratuitous Marco inclusion just to see how many of these I can squeeze him in on).
Download the mix
01 Spider Man
02 Boisa-bis-o-boisa -- Jens Lekman
03 Cat Creeps -- Medeski, Martin & Wood
04 What I Want Is A Proper Cup Of Coffee -- Trout Fishing In America
05 Old MacDonald -- Baby Loves Jazz
06 Birthday Boy -- Marco Benevento & Scott Metzger
Previously in minimix:
All Aboard!
Last linkdump of the year? We'll see how much blogging gets done next week.
Following up on Tuesday's video:
1) I jinxed myself and now my normal insomnia has melded into being awake and having the Spiderman theme song stuck in endless loop in my head. Sick!
2) The Boy in the car today (wearing Spiderman shirt and underwear): Spiderman doesn't have a butt.
Dad: Yes he does, everyone has a butt.
The Boy: Spiderman doesn't.
3) ... leading us to this week's links:
OK, here's the most sung song in the OTW household these days... watch this two times and just try not to have it stick itself in your head like some grabby Spidey hands:
Poll question: who would do best covering this song? I say The Bad Plus.
Sing along (it's inevitable, it's drawing you in, you have no choice, succomb):
Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spiderman.
Is he strong?
Listen bud,
He's got radioactive blood.
Can he swing from a thread
Take a look overhead
Hey, there
There goes the Spiderman.
In the chill of night
At the scene of a crime
Like a streak of light
He arrives just in time.
Spiderman, Spiderman
Friendly neighborhood Spiderman
Wealth and fame
He's ignored
Action is his reward.
To him, life is a great big bang up
Whenever there's a hang up
You'll find the Spider man.
Blogging has been a bit lame this week... maybe one day I'll make it up to you.
For now I give you the mind of a 3 1/2 year old, from the "how can you argue with that" department:
The Boy: Superman is stronger than Batman and Batman is stronger than Superman.
Happy Hanukkah to my peeps -- may you remember the time when socks and underwear with superheroes on them were gifts enough to make you giddy.
We're celebrating The Boy this week here at OTW, as he turns 3 tomorrow. This pic just about captures what it's like to be a younger brother at this stage of his life. As such, it's Hank Week which is kinda like Shark Week without the sharks.
We started on Sunday which was a Just Dad day fighting the cold wind and rain. We hit the new kidflick "Meet the Robinsons." The movie was the third in a trilogy preceded by The Terminator and Back to the Future, which is to say it was largely about time travel. I'm no member of the Academy, but this was a little intense for a G rating. I mean the Big Squeeze gets a bit rattled trying to wrap her head around Michael J Fox running into another version of himself, what are the little ones supposed to make of this? I don't understand how difficult it is to come out with some halfway decent material for the rated-G set but it is... the movie dudes should realize that if they just rotated through Finding Nemo and Peter Pan, etc. every week they'd probably sell an equal number of movie tickets to any other crap available on a Saturday afternoon. Anyway, becoming quite an expert in this stuff, I give this one a B-.
Of course, alone time in the car w/ dad = deep thoughts from LJ. Amongst the stream of non sequiturs :
LJ: How do they make roads?
Dad: Well, they flatten out the ground and then they take asphalt which is like little crushed up rocks and tar and they lay it down and then a big roller truck makes it all flat.
LJ: And then what?
Dad: Well, that's it, then they have a road.
LJ: ...
Dad: And then a truck comes around and paints all the lines.
LJ: That's what I was wondering about!
....
LJ: Dad, look! Did you see that?
Dad: What?
LJ: A tiger just ran by!
Dad: Really?
LJ: April Fools!
Dad: April Fools Day already passed a couple weeks ago.
LJ: It's still April isn't it? I'm celebrating April Fools Month!
....
[midway through conversation about trip earlier this month on which family flew JetBlue]
LJ: ...even the plane was fun... we had coloring books and TV!
Dad: Yeah, that was good. When I flew on airplanes when I was a kid we didn't have TV's.
LJ: You mean you lived in the olden days!?!
Dad: It wasn't that long ago.
LJ: But you didn't have TV!
Dad: On the plane, we didn't have TV on the plane. We had TV's at home.
LJ: Oh...
Dad: We didn't have a computer, though, when I was your age.
LJ: Wha!? You really did live in the olden days!
Indulge me for a paragraph and I'll throw something decent and a lil' more LJ your way...
First day of the NCAA's and I can't let it slide without at least mentioning "The Snub" as we're calling it with a capital "S." The shit's been hashed over aplenty, with the best work again by Baxter and Waters over at Syracuse.com. My favorite thing about this has been watching Boeheim just all over the place pleading his case. I don't recall as heavy a PR blitz just laying into the selection committee quite like this. I liken it to a good coach working the refs early in the game on some questionable calls and then getting all of them to fall his way during crunch time... I just don't see how we get screwed again. Anyway, last Cuse post until next year unless we end up winning the NIT!
Check out Boeheim on PTI here
His press conference here
Jimmy on the radio making a pretty damn good case
We could go on... by the way, if you'd like to be in my NCAA pool, get in touch before noon on Thursday. Onto some more links...
Picture of John Zorn bumbling about in an appropriately confused manner on stage before the Old Knit birthday show/The Stone benefit at Town Hall last Thursday.
LJ (from the back seat of the family wagon): How do you make people?
Yesterday I posted some CD reviews including one by The Earlies and I was remembering where I had first heard about them: Very Short List. Totally worth signing up for: you get a quasi-daily email giving you a little heads up on music, movies, TV, books, weblinks, etc. One item a day and it actually does a pretty good job ferreting out something semi-obscure or under the radar. In a day when it's harder and harder to find something before it's already been beaten to death, it's pretty refreshing... not that I follow up on more than one or two of their suggestions, added a title to my Netflix queue but it still makes me feel a smidgen cooler. They've also got a nice overall aesthetic going on, so check it out.
Also cool: Tom The Dancing Bug comic over at Salon. I'm a big fan of Salon for a lot of reasons, but those Ruben Bolling comics kill me every week. Worth clicking through an ad for.
Other worthwhile goodies from my shared links from the past week:
The Boy had his first taste of the cruel, cold world of the athletic arena today, his first whiff of sweaty, gladiatorial competition... that's right, his first sporting event: Harlem Globetrotters live and in person!! (cue Sweet Georgia Brown) The kid did surprisingly well after a steady infusion of syrupy beverage, deep fried snacks and the coup de grace: the Carvel twist. Next step: The Carrier Dome.
[Thanks to birthday boy, David C and family for the fun afternoon in the dirty Jerz]
And for those of you who could care less what my son and I did this long weekend, I add that while we still might be weeks away from chicken fried bacon, we did our first batch of homemade french fries and they were yum for the whole family.
The year is coming to a finish and instead of some big whopper of a send-off to 2006, I feel like we're just kinda petering out. Looking back, this year was, well... boring. We didn't even have some end-of-days level natural catastrophe or national event. 2006 just was. Kids are a year older and that much closer to being smarter, cooler and better looking than their pops. There was plenty to digest, particularly on the music front. I finally got an iPod back in January after much resistance. Yeah, I love the thing and it's changing the way I listen to music, but I'm not sure I'm 100% happy about it -- everything I feared about it has come true.
Other than that, I'm happy to report I lost like 30+ pounds this year, despite ingesting an enormous amount of BBQ and bacon. Three cheers to regular exercise!!
Anyhoo, this week at OTW I'll be doing a rundown of the past year, with "Ned's favorite" listings of albums & shows as well as a special 2006-roundup maxi-mix on Friday.
Today, my list of the best 2006 movies I saw this year. It's a rare thing for me to get to the theaters, but somehow I did it more than once... with two of those instances coming in the last week, thank Jesus. Of course, half the movies I saw were for kids, but that doesn't make me an old fart, does it? Thanks to the miracle of Netflix and digital technology, I don't feel too far behind.
My list follows... if you've got some 2006 movies I should have seen, particularly something that might not be on my radar, let me know.
I'll get back into new music all next week with some "favorites of 2006" lists and a maxi-year-end mix next Friday (if I can sort everything out by then).
Until then, in honor of my lil' girl turning five today (send her an email, I assure you she'll reply and tell you she loves you) and perhaps more importantly my surviving five freakin' years of fatherhood, a little children's music for you that hopefully is equally worthy of your discerning adult ears. Kid's music grows increasingly intriguing to me as time goes on -- the ultimate in kiddie music is the same in any other genre, but boiled down to the basics -- the ultimate hook. Here's a nice set that somehow teaches you counting, colors, geography, nursery rhymes and the dangers of gluttony. If you've got some favorite "kindie rock," please share...
As always, feel free to pass on.
Download the mix
"Then he ate ten twinkies, some ice cream and some oreos
And Slow Mo Joe wasn't so slow no more..."
01 Mahnamahna -- The Muppets
02 Alphabet of Nations -- They Might Be Giants
03 Slo Mo Joe -- David Weinstone: Music For Aardvarks And Other Mammals 7
04 West Indian Counting Song -- Dan Zanes, Aggie Decaul & Courin Gibbs: House Party
05 Upside Down -- Jack Johnson: Sing-A-Longs & Lullabies For The Film Curious George
06 Jenny Jenkins -- Jerry Garcia & David Grisman: Not For Kids Only
07 The Window -- Trout Fishing In America: Big Trouble
Ahoy there citizens! A new frontier in Nedland as I started jury duty last week and was chosen for a trial that started yesterday. Should actually be an interesting case and while I can't talk about it at this point, I'll post a full murderously awesome "review" once the verdict is handed down.
They say it's going to take 2.5 weeks, but everything seems to move slow by a factor of 3 or 4, so this could take a while. I'll try to keep up with semi-normal posting, but if I lapse, it doesn't mean this blog has gone into the closet with the tango class, Boy Scouts uniform and pan flute lessons. At the very least, you'll definitely be getting a batch of sweet new tunes on Friday.
And while I'm posting and owe you a photo, we went up on a massive Super Happy Fun-Time Family Jaunt through New England over this past long weekend, all culminating in a rainy-but-climactic visit with Thomas The Tank Engine in Essex, CT and we got to meet Thomas hisself. Anyone with a son between 2 and 10 years old can appreciate the magnitude of the event. They can also appreciate the phrase "license to print money." Tally-ho Thomas!
Last night was marked the official start of the college basketball season for my beloved Syracuse Orange as they opened their short preseason schedule. I love the NFL, dig hard on baseball (read: Mets), college football and the NBA, but college hoops is where it's at for me and being a native Syracusan, it's all about the Orange. Let this post serve as a warning that I might delve deep into SU minutiae from here up until whatever painful exit they inflict on us faithful in March.
Some links:
It's Halloween, so I thought I'd throw some cute at you, loyal readers. That's "Boo! The Ghost Boy" on the left and "Wonderella."
What you do on Halloween is a real indicator for where you are in life. When you're a kid (see candy-addled preK-types above), it's all about getting candy, 100%. Eventually at you become image conscious, the costume becomes important, too. Shortly thereafter, Halloween means being out by yourself with friends after dark and somehow shaving cream and toilet paper serve as metaphors for the absolute ridiculousness of teenage suburbia.
For me, Halloween took on its full import when I went to college and was fully immersed in seeing live music. That started a good decade long endeavor of seeing some absolutely amazing live shows on and around Halloween. For a lot of people, this is when Halloween started to mean getting wasted and potentially getting laid, but for me it meant scraping together the dimes for trips to Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and similarly exotic locales:
what the previous Halloweens had done -- as sick as those were, from the front row especially. This is pretty much the show that launched the deep funk for Phish the next couple of years. 10 years, damn!!I've got two links under the subheading: I'm frightened for my children's future.
The first is Hip Hop Harry which I stumbled across the other morning. Usually my daughter, Lily, has a certain morning routine which involved certain morning television, of course all of it vetted by me. Her usual 7am show has been Magic School Bus on the Discovery Channel. But Monday morning we were disappointed to find out that we'd been co-opted by Mr Harry. It was a total rubberneck, but I couldn't look away no matter how I tried. It was so amazingly awful, it felt like some po-mo sketch comedy out of the Bob & David school, but alas, these kids were dead serious.
when I say 'dance!' you say 'circle!' , say dance!
circle!
dance!
circle!
You can picture the guys who came up with this -- "it's like a cross between Barney and Vanilla Ice, what could be annoying about that?" Make it go away, Mommy!
Second link is via BoingBoing which I post without commmmmmment.
(although I forgot to add the link, which means I am an idiot, but still... it's there now. "I would like your finest food stuffed with your second finest.")
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