The Rocker

I cannot wait to see this movie. Maybe it's the Aquanet left over from the 80s still stuck in my brain responsible for this, but man, you put Rainn Wilson in a movie about a hair band refugee, how could I ever resist?

The 100 Books meme

I've stolen this from Gillian:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them
5) Put a star next to those you've only partially read.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
**10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens** but love the movie w/ Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow ;-)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
**14 Complete Works of Shakespeare**
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
**20 Middlemarch - George Eliot**
**21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell** so shoot me, I only made it to page 63
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
**24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy**
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh One of my top 3 all-time favs
**27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky** (but don't tell Mrs Barlow, my 11th grade AP English teacher!)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck loathed this one
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Um, hello, this is one of the Chonicles of Narnia!
**37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini**
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
**51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel** Maybe I'll finish this someday
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville No. Never. Not on your life.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
**89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle**
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare again, this would go in his complete works, no?
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The GW Bush Sewage Treatment Plant Or, Why I Love San Francisco

I can't think of a better way to honor the memory of GW Bush's time in office.

An oldie but goodie

Do you ever have a song randomly pop into your head after years adrift? "Metropolis" by The Church did that to me this evening.

But you can call me Felix

I don't care what the quiz says, Kara Thrace remains my hero...

You are Felix Gaeta. Tactical Officer on Galactica. Loyal, smart and intelligent. You have saved the fleet on more than one occasion. You secretly worked against the cylon backed government while on New Caprica. Felix Gaeta 70% Sharon Agathon (Athena) 69% Commander William Adama 67% Karl Agathon (Helo) 63% President Laura Roslin 54% Lee Adama (Apollo) 52% Kara Thrace (Starbuck) 48% Chief Galen Tyrol 47% Saul Tigh 41% Sam Anders 40% Number Six 27% Dr. Gaius Baltar 22% Take the Quiz! Battlestar Galactica Quiz

Staggering to the beat of our own drummer

My dear friend Tamara has kindly alerted me to this auction on eBay. I am half-tempted to buy this. The item description alone must be worth something, and Ethan's birthday is coming up in a few days...

It's almost Snacktime!

On Thursday Ethan and I will be going to see Barenaked Ladies. To get in the mod, I'm trolling the web looking for cool clips - enjoy!

This first clip is one of my favs, Raisins, from their new "Snacktime" CD, followed by that oldie but goodie, One Week.

The second clip is an interview about the album.

Something I am (most likely) not going to do

In reading the paper this afternoon, I came across a quite striking ad and proposition: Be one of the first 175 people to spend $200 on Emporio Armani underwear at the Macy's in Union Square starting tomorrow, and I'll get to meet David Beckham later this month.

Apparently we buy now, and inspect pick up the package later.

Can I Have Another Piece of Chocolate Cake?

Let's get this out of the way first: Neil Finn is a song-writing god. I've always thought it, but last night confirmed it. WOW - the Crowded House show at the Fillmore was just amazing, I wish I was going to tonight's show and the 2 this weekend in LA. if it were possible, I'd be there.

They played for a full 2.5 hrs, and, though they didn't get all my favorites (if they had, we'd have been there twice as long!), they did pay about 40 songs - including a 45 minute long encore. That, my friends, is how it should be done. This was our first time at the Fillmore, and it was great - it's an old hall, no seats, just boxes upstairs and a dance floor and bar on the main level. But, this worked well for us, as we were able to be right in front. I spent the entire show not more than 15 feet from the band. The pics in this post were taken with my iPhone - I wish I'd brought my regular camera - I'm sure with a zoom and all I'd have been able to get some really good shots.

I'm still waiting for the band's web site to post the set list, but here's what I remember, in no particular order:

Sister Madly
Four Seasons in One Day
Don't Dream It's Over
Pineapple Head
Love This Life
Whispers and Moans
Into Temptation
Chocolate Cake
Sacred Cow
Private Universe
Recurring Dream
World Where You Live
Now Were Getting Somewhere
Love You 'Til the Day I Die
I Feel Possessed
When You Come
Love This Life
Don't Stop Now
She Called Up
Silent House
You Are the One to Make Me Cry
Fall at Your Feet
Four Seasons in One Day
Won't Give In
Distant Sun
Locked Out
Nobody Wants To

Several brand new songs whose names I don't know

Covers: American Woman, the whole thing (and it ROCKED!) sung by Mark Hart, followed by Australian Woman - Neil's tribute to the Bee Gees sung in a hilarious falsetto right after American Woman
It's All Right (partial)
You Sexy Thing (partial)
Happy Birthday

The band was really into things and you could tell they were having a blast - as was the crowd. Poor Nick Seymour was plagued by technical woes with his amp and monitor throughout, but did an amazing job nonetheless. Fun audience participation highlights included an impromptu group music lesson in the middle of Chocolate Cake, wherein Neil made us sing scales (I kid you not!), lots of group singing, call and answer types things, etc. When we were all singing Don't Dream It's Over, Neil had the crowd take over the final chorus and we all, it seems, have been listening to the same live recordings at home because the whole place drew out that final "Home" for the same (very long) length, then held for an oddly-timed rest and came back in with "soon" in unison. It was very, very cool. Neil looked a bit surprised and pleased, to say the least.

They finished the tour in LA this weekend, then, as I understand it, head home to work on a new album - it can't come out soon enough for me!

I Heart the 80s

I heart the 80s, and my score here proves it!

789 and other brilliant songs

I am all about Barenaked Ladies, as you probably know, and am LOVING their new CD, Snack Time, a collection of original kids songs. "789" is the first single (see video above), though there are some other songs that have already become new favorites of mine (I've only had the book and CD about 3 hrs now!), especially "The Ninjas," "Bad Day," and "Crazy ABCs."

They'll be in town on Ethan's last day of school and we're going to see them - I am counting down the days, believe me! If you love BNL, have a kid, or just love catchy songs, you can't go wrong with this CD. This quote says it all, "Our collective kids now outnumber the band more than 2 to 1," explains vocalist/guitarist Ed Robertson. "We set out to make a record that would be entertaining for them…not strictly a children's record, but a record that children would really enjoy. Our kids are in to all kinds of music. They love the They Might Be Giants kids records, but they also love The Beatles, Fountains of Wayne, Randy Newman, Black Eyed Peas and Green Day. Making the focus about what our kids like was a truly liberating process and fun for the whole band."

Two words

Fashion. Victim.

Note the Burberry visor, arm warmers (yeesh!), cropped (or just too short?) paints, etc. I don't even know where to start. To quote Chandler Bing, "Too...many...jokes..." Indeed.

This Dream is Brought to You by the Letter...

I had a dream last night that Ernie was supporting Barak Obama, while Bert was voting for John McCain. I'd always sort of thought Bert was the smart one, but, clearly, I was mistaken.

If only I could use this!

If only I could use this article as a references &/or student resource for the digital video & media course I'm writing right now. I KNOW the kids would love it, but am not sure sure about my editors and the teachers who'd have to deal with the ensuing "productions." I bet even Madge would get a kick out of seeing that vid!

One gas station island down, 5 to go

I'm still at it

A story, by Ethan

Part of Ethan's weekly homework is to write and illustrate a story. Here's today's tome.

My Lost Tooth

On April 6th, my tooth was loose.
I wiggled it and I wiggled it!
It did not come out.
It finally came out on April 10th.
Guess what?
I swallowed it!

Any literary or studio agents reading this, please contact me to begin negotiations for film and book rights ;-)

One comma down...

I need to start carrying a Sharpie marker with me, but a regular old black pen works just as well, I suppose. This morning, I struck back in the fight for proper punctuation. I may well find myself banned from the ARCO in Danville, CA, but it'll be worth it. You see, after I added the comma and put the pen away, I realized I should have gone "whole assed" (to quote Jamie Buchman from "Mad About You") and added a period at the end. I'm already plotting my next trip to the ARCO.

More notes from yo mamma...

So, I'm still addicted to the Postcards from Yo Mamma blog, and came across this one this afternoon:

The news is out! Dad bought me a Webkinz. It is reallly well designed and is the biggest craze I’ve seen in a long time.. It is comparable to the tamgachi and beani babies of your early youth. Every first grade through 5th grade student has one. They are awesome, yet a bit addicting.

I need your help. I can’t make enough money to feed my Webkinz. I have failed at three jobs so far. Please do not check my resume. My Webkinz has survived on pudding which is the sale item.

Please tap into my account and do something about it. Remember, I can get kicked off the site if not used appropriately. No mating of Webkinz. Any ways here is the information you will need.

www.webkinz.com
username #######
password #######
Thanks, Gotta go and make some real money.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Don”t give my password away………seriously

LOL! As someone who spends waaaay too much time at the site (thank you Ethan!), I really feel for this woman and her pudding-eating Webkin. If only I knew the username and password, I'd log in and win her some KinzCash...

Yo Momma...

This has got to be the funniest blog I've come across in a long time. The entry below is my fav (so far)

APRIL 2, 2008
Convent internship

Thanks for your note. How coincidental that just this morning we have just completed the application process for [xxx]’s entry into the 5 yr. convent internship program, conveniently located adjacent the main gate at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.

Having the Army so nearby gives the sisters that added sense of security.

I am sure she’ll be in touch once the 2 year seclusion period passes.

love,
mom

In league with the Grammar League

In light of yesterday's post about the roving grammar police, I am inspired anew to seek out typos and other abuses of the English language. I've not had far to look. At lunch today, I came across a customer service pledge promising that I would be "completely sasistied" by my dining experience. The food was great, if only I could say the same for the typing. As the guys in the article noted, sole proprietorships tend to be the worst offenders when it comes to these things, and this was the case for me today. If only I'd had a million red pens and a few hours to go through and correct all of their menus...