This should be the official theme song of St. Patrick's Day:
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Har Kommer Pippi Langstrump, Tjolahopp, Tjolahej, Tjolahoppsanna...
On Bryan's advice I'm trying to become more proficient in a foreign language and I'm gravitating towards Swedish. About the only stuff I can really sort of follow are the things designed for really little kids. I was pleased to find Pippi Longstocking in the original Swedish on youtube. Alas, the more you start to understand of a foreign language, the more you come to realize that lame dialogue and ridiculous storylines are not an exclusively American or Anglophonic phenomenon. It seems to be a curse of the human condition.
The Most Annoying Thing Ever
The local AM station I listen to a lot while driving plays this commercial regularly. Whenever it comes on I have to turn the radio off, and I usually leave it off for at least 5 minutes, just to be absolutely certain that it's really over. Warning-- this will induce homicidal thoughts within the listener:
Monday, February 2, 2009
Late Night Talk Shows
I remember watching Johnny Carson before Jay Leno took over in 1992, when I was a junior in high school. What I'd forgotten was that after 1980 Carson only did the show four days a week, and that on Monday nights there was always a guest host. Leno got the replacement job because he was the permanent guest host from 1987 on. I liked Leno when he guest hosted but not once he started doing the show on his own. As for Carson, I never really got him. Must be a generational thing.
I remember Letterman when he was on NBC. I always thought he was much funnier than Carson. The show was pretty exciting and very funny to the little kid version of me. When Letterman moved to CBS he was still better than Leno but I always felt that something was lost in the move. Now Letterman is almost as lame as Leno. He needs to hire some new writers are something. He seems to be going out there every night with no material.
Conan's a funny guy. His show pretty much picked up where Letterman left off. Conan's is the funniest late night show on right now. Even so, it's not that great, but he himself is a pretty consistently funny guy.
Craig Kilborn made me laugh sometimes but I'm not surprised that his show didn't last. Craig Ferguson is funny and seems to be really good at the job. He's better than Kilborn but I'd still rather watch Conan.
Jimmy Kimmel is awful. He never looks right in that suit. His is a clone of every other show. When he was Jimmy the Sports Guy on Kevin and Bean he at least had some personality. I always thought Adam Carolla was the more talented of the two.
Carson Daly deserves to die a horrible death and Jimmy Fallon needs to be publicly executed before he's allowed to take over Late Night. I'm thinking something along the lines of the end scene in "Braveheart." I absolutely cannot stand him.
I remember Letterman when he was on NBC. I always thought he was much funnier than Carson. The show was pretty exciting and very funny to the little kid version of me. When Letterman moved to CBS he was still better than Leno but I always felt that something was lost in the move. Now Letterman is almost as lame as Leno. He needs to hire some new writers are something. He seems to be going out there every night with no material.
Conan's a funny guy. His show pretty much picked up where Letterman left off. Conan's is the funniest late night show on right now. Even so, it's not that great, but he himself is a pretty consistently funny guy.
Craig Kilborn made me laugh sometimes but I'm not surprised that his show didn't last. Craig Ferguson is funny and seems to be really good at the job. He's better than Kilborn but I'd still rather watch Conan.
Jimmy Kimmel is awful. He never looks right in that suit. His is a clone of every other show. When he was Jimmy the Sports Guy on Kevin and Bean he at least had some personality. I always thought Adam Carolla was the more talented of the two.
Carson Daly deserves to die a horrible death and Jimmy Fallon needs to be publicly executed before he's allowed to take over Late Night. I'm thinking something along the lines of the end scene in "Braveheart." I absolutely cannot stand him.
Happy Imbolc
Apparently it has pre-Celtic origins. Who knew this whole Groundhog thing actually has some ancient tradition behind it? Click Here
Sunday, February 1, 2009
TV Killed the Radio Star
My stepfather is going to be 72 this year and my mom is going to be 64. The eight year difference between them has turned out to be significant in only one way-- in that my stepfather grew up listening to the radio and my mom grew up watching TV.
My stepfather watches lots of TV now that he's retired, especially shows like Jeopardy and anything involving Bill Moyers. When I was growing up though, he always had an aversion to passive TV watching, as though it wasn't hard-wired in him to relax in front of it. He basically grew up in the '40s and his family had one of those gigantic, tombstone-shaped radios in the living room. He would talk about listening to shows like "Blondie", "The Shadow", and "Mutt and Jeff", shows that sounded just as idiotic as the ones I grew up with, just with no video to accompany them. When my stepfather went off to college in 1955, he came back one weekend and his parents had bought a TV. By that point it was too late for him to develop a habit of vacantly staring at it every day for hours on end.
Not so for my mom though. Her parents got a TV in the early '50s when she was still in elementary school. She remembers watching "Howdy Doody", "Leave it Beaver", and "The Honeymooners", and all those old-timey shows. She developed a healthy TV-watching addiction that she happily passed on to her children.
Within a generation there will be no one around anymore who didn't grow up with television, and the facts that when I was little we had one TV that was in black and white, that we didn't get a TV with a remote control and a VCR until I was 10, and that we didn't get cable until I was in jr. high, will seem quaint and archaic.
My stepfather watches lots of TV now that he's retired, especially shows like Jeopardy and anything involving Bill Moyers. When I was growing up though, he always had an aversion to passive TV watching, as though it wasn't hard-wired in him to relax in front of it. He basically grew up in the '40s and his family had one of those gigantic, tombstone-shaped radios in the living room. He would talk about listening to shows like "Blondie", "The Shadow", and "Mutt and Jeff", shows that sounded just as idiotic as the ones I grew up with, just with no video to accompany them. When my stepfather went off to college in 1955, he came back one weekend and his parents had bought a TV. By that point it was too late for him to develop a habit of vacantly staring at it every day for hours on end.
Not so for my mom though. Her parents got a TV in the early '50s when she was still in elementary school. She remembers watching "Howdy Doody", "Leave it Beaver", and "The Honeymooners", and all those old-timey shows. She developed a healthy TV-watching addiction that she happily passed on to her children.
Within a generation there will be no one around anymore who didn't grow up with television, and the facts that when I was little we had one TV that was in black and white, that we didn't get a TV with a remote control and a VCR until I was 10, and that we didn't get cable until I was in jr. high, will seem quaint and archaic.
The Day the Music Died
Tuesday's going to be the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. I actually only know this because I couldn't sleep on Friday night and was up listening to Coast to Coast AM, and they were talking about it. Coast to Coast is actually a pretty entertaining show when they aren't talking about Roswell, or any other conspiracy theory where there is incontrovertible evidence to prove that it is false, many times over.
On Friday night's show they had some music expert I'd never heard of, but then, (I thought this was the most interesting part) they talked to two women named Donna and Peggy Sue, who knew Holly and Valens in real life, and for whom two of their biggest respective hits were written.
What was interesting about what these women had to say was that both said they were very young at the time of the accident, that these men were their boyfriends, and that while they remembered the events surrounding the crash and finding out about it very well, they were also able to talk about it all very matter-of-factly. This was something that had happened a very long time ago, both women had had very full lives in the time since, and both hinted at the fact that when it came down to it, they didn't really know either of these men all that well. As if to say, how much can someone really be the love of your life when you're only 17, 18 years old? If both women had been 30 at the time I suspect the event would have been much harder to get over. I thought it was interesting anyway.
Incidentally, my own mom was a 13 year-old in West Covina, California when the crash happened. She said the only one she knew of at the time was Valens, who was kind of a local hero. My stepfather was 21 at the time and said he had only heard of the Big Bopper at the time.
My impression was that Valens was fairly well known at the time, because of the three hits he'd had, that Holly's star was rising in the U.S. but that he'd more of a name for himself in Europe up to that point. The Big Bopper had had a big hit with "Chantilly Lace" but that he was hardly a superstar or on his way to being one.
I think, had they lived, Valens and Holly probably would have had careers along the lines of someone like Jerry Lee Lewis or Roy Orbison, not so sure about The Big Bopper though.
On Friday night's show they had some music expert I'd never heard of, but then, (I thought this was the most interesting part) they talked to two women named Donna and Peggy Sue, who knew Holly and Valens in real life, and for whom two of their biggest respective hits were written.
What was interesting about what these women had to say was that both said they were very young at the time of the accident, that these men were their boyfriends, and that while they remembered the events surrounding the crash and finding out about it very well, they were also able to talk about it all very matter-of-factly. This was something that had happened a very long time ago, both women had had very full lives in the time since, and both hinted at the fact that when it came down to it, they didn't really know either of these men all that well. As if to say, how much can someone really be the love of your life when you're only 17, 18 years old? If both women had been 30 at the time I suspect the event would have been much harder to get over. I thought it was interesting anyway.
Incidentally, my own mom was a 13 year-old in West Covina, California when the crash happened. She said the only one she knew of at the time was Valens, who was kind of a local hero. My stepfather was 21 at the time and said he had only heard of the Big Bopper at the time.
My impression was that Valens was fairly well known at the time, because of the three hits he'd had, that Holly's star was rising in the U.S. but that he'd more of a name for himself in Europe up to that point. The Big Bopper had had a big hit with "Chantilly Lace" but that he was hardly a superstar or on his way to being one.
I think, had they lived, Valens and Holly probably would have had careers along the lines of someone like Jerry Lee Lewis or Roy Orbison, not so sure about The Big Bopper though.
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