Who knew my oven timer was so powerful?

I do not think that label means what you think it means...

…and why doesn’t it work like my TiVo remote?  Wouldn’t that be cool?  "Go eight seconds back in time."  If I had that button the other day, I might have saved myself the horrendous cleanup of flour mixed with oily, yeasty water when the beginnings of a pizza crust dough went horribly wrong all over the kitchen counter.

I blame Jamie Oliver for making that flour-well thing look so easy.

Just in case you feared I had become anything resembling hip…

…No, it shall never be.  And to prove it, just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, several minutes of pointless video that might only be of interest to a small subset of my friends and relatives*:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrDbrlIofWE

“This is not how I am” indeed, Simon – get yer paws off of the coffee table.

Happy holiday weekend, at least to the US folks who are looking forward to beer and barbecue tomorrow.

*And of that small subset, there’s probably an even smaller subset consisting of John and my mom who will actually be amused by this video.

As long as we’re piddling about today with YouTube and music

Have a glance at my cousin, fronting the Compaq Big Band.

I have some cool relatives.

In a continuation of the odd blogging synchronicities that we’ve been having ’round here lately…

Making Light posts a link to the YouTube Video of The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain doing one of my all time favorite power-pop songs, Life on Mars*:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxCj2MO02AE

I rather love this – especially since the first singer bears a passing resemblance to John Simm.  It’s also clever in that glee-club/harmony/deadpan way when they start to go intentionally off the rails.

*My favorite version of which is probably Seu Jorge’s, even though it has none of the bombast that makes the original so compelling to me and was a key component of yesterday’s plea for help. What can I say – I’m fickle.  Of course, Bowie’s original isn’t really jangly, so doesn’t neatly fit into the category I posited anyway.

Oh – and hey lookie – another video.  Seu Jorge himself:

See?  Love.

Jangly power-pop

I was sitting home yesterday letting my laptop serve up what it wanted out of the 9.7 days’ worth of music it has in its innards, and Bleu’s "DDBDD" came on.

This, of course, brought me right back to the summer of 1993, the last summer I lived in Minneapolis.  I didn’t know it was to be my last summer – I managed the world’s fastest move back to the East coast on having been summarily accepted as a transfer to the University of Maine School of Law: two weeks from acceptance to classes starting.  I try to remember that summer when I get the idea that something isn’t doable in the time allotted.  If I found someone to take over my lease, packed my one-bedroom apartment, loaded the caboodle into a U-Haul and made the two-day trek from Minneapolis to Portland* in two weeks, I can bloody well do ANYTHING.

Sorry – digressions upon digressions.  Getting back to the point, "How on earth did an album released in 2002 bring you to 1993?" I hear you cry.

Two words: Andy Sturmer.  Andy Sturmer of the sadly short-lived band Jellyfish, which I saw live that summer, works with Bleu, and on some songs (as with "DDBDD," and "Could be Worse"), the result is so Jellyfish-like I get an absolute jones for more jangly, harmony-drenched, sunny-yet-slightly-bombastic power pop.

So I’m begging you: any recommendations?  The last.fm playlist in the sidebar to the right has some good examples of what I’m talking about.

*Hat tip to Dad, who did the driving, but only because he hates being driven.

Coincidentally

Hard on the heels of my story yesterday about a drama school classmate using a live snake in Cleopatra’s death scene, it appears the Shakespeare Company of DC is doing the same thing in their current production. (And I have to go with Scott Simon’s assessment of these critters – they are cuter than the average run of such reptiles.  Still not sure I’d like them coiled around my hands, though.)

I’ve had two such coincidences in as many days in my colossal online media empire. What’s going on here?  Am I plugged into a heretofore-unknown outlet of the zeitgeist?

A good day in spite of itself

John has wanted to try a tandem bicycle experience with me for some time.  My response has generally been, "Don’t those things come with divorce papers as a standard accessory?"  However, I finally caved and booked us a tandem rental at "Bike the Sites " in DC for this weekend.

Or… I thought I had.

The dude (and I use the term specifically – it’s a highly descriptive term of art in this particular instance) I had booked the reservation with told me to simply e-mail him with my contact information, which I dutifully did.  And when we arrived… no bike.  He hadn’t taken my credit card information, so they didn’t reserve it.  He hadn’t entered my phone number into the system and they stated they couldn’t contact me (they had my e-mail, but… let’s just not go there).

So, we regrouped, rebooked for the weekend after next (for my non-US readers, the National Mall in DC is to be avoided next weekend at all costs ).  On our way home on the Metro, weary and hungry, we decided to stop in downtown Rockville for lunch.

This was a very good plan.

Rockville has done one of those downtown revitalization schemes which when done badly makes a downtown into a shopping mall and when done well makes a downtown into a magnet for community.  And they’ve done a really nice job of the second type.  In addition to making the new main branch of the county library a major feature (a move applauded by our household), they’ve managed to attract a nice selection of mostly non-chain restaurants and shops.  They also have created a fountain that is truly designed to be a kid-friendly community water park:

Kids playing in the fountain - looks like fun...

Kids playing in the fountain - looks like fun...

Kids playing in the fountain - looks like fun...

Kids playing in the fountain - looks like fun...

After our Lebanese luncheon, we went home for a nap and a ride on our own bikes.  So despite the false start of our morning, quite a good day in the end.

She’s BACK!

my mom, I mean. And boy, do I love to read her voice again (even though we talk on the phone several times a week – you can only revisit those conversations in your mind – you can’t go back and re-read them and find new and wonderful things, because memories tend to fade.  Writing lasts).

My mother and I are both terrified of snakes.  It’s an atavistic, irrational, overpowering thing.  I remember one time in a drama scene study class, a classmate brought her friend’s pet boa (a wee thing, really) in to play the part of Cleopatra’s asp in her scene.  As she was being critiqued, another classmate played with the critter, letting it crawl around him.  He was sitting several seats away from me, and I tried to stay where I was by sheer force of will and logic.

It’s feet away from you.

It is harmless.

You have nothing to fear.

And suddenly, my mental monologue was interrupted, and I found myself at the other side of the room – as far away from the snake as I could get and not leave the class.  The strength of my will and the force of logic were suddenly swamped by my deep and subconscious need to get away from That Thing.  Okay , said the subconscious, That Thing is dangerous, and if you – Ms. Rational – aren’t going to take care of us, I will. And boing – I was teleported to the other side of the room.

And yet, as much as I fear the things, I don’t hate them.  My being afraid of them isn’t about hate – so I love Mom’s conjuring up a herpetological cocktail party.  I can imagine the snakes, their tails coiled delicately around the stems of wine glasses, giving serious advice to the poor soul who had his leisurely crawl through the grass interrupted rudely by some marauding giant.  And I can imagine that snake’s inner monologue:

It’s feet away from you.

It is harmless.

You have nothing to fear.

And suddenly – he is rearing up and doing his best to imitate one of his dangerous cousins, without even realizing it.  His subconscious takes over, you see.  They do that.

Where am I?

Hullo my friends.

Sorry I’ve been non-comm since my last post.  We had a busy weekend, and I’ve had a busy week up until now (well, I’m still busy – but never to busy for you!  Yes, I mean YOU).

I’ve had some things shifting around in my professional life, and the upshot of that is that I’ve spent a large portion of the last 24 hours (or so it seems) working up an entirely new site.  It is definitely not a replacement for this site – this will still contain the oddments of my life: cute pet photos, knitting progress, and apoplectic rants about telephonic "service" providers.  What it is is a professional presence on the web.  So, if you’re interested in what I’m up to professionally and what my thoughts on being a freelancer are, you can find them here:

jillasmith.com

It’s brand-new and relatively unpopulated, but… thoughts?

Made me laugh so hard I cried.

Take two utterly insane things, mash them up, and you have Wookies dancing.