I'm sure many of you remember this most clever of advertisements from the 2010 Super Bowl:
When my children were very young, I watched Sesame Street with them after work. If you've never seen it, you won't realize that it, like the old Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons, was made with multiple levels of humor, just so that parents like me could comfortably watch with their kids. Believe me, it wasn't excruciating to sit through an hour of Sesame Street the way it was through five minutes of Barney!
I hope you enjoy Grover's interpretation of the Old Spice commercial as much as I did:
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Moss Man, Thwarted
Gregory Liascos of Portland, Oregon is a rather clever man, but probably not a dog lover.
A caretaker at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro, Oregon found a hole cut in a wall of an exterior bathroom last Wednesday and called the local police. The police, including a K-9 team, were on the scene around 5:00 am Thursday morning. The dog alerted his handler that he smelled something, then bit the ground, which cried out in pain.
It was Liascos, wearing a ghillie suit -- think Marine snipers -- that made him look like a patch of grass.
He is currently a guest of Washington County, pending a hearing on charges of burglary and criminal mischief.
A caretaker at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro, Oregon found a hole cut in a wall of an exterior bathroom last Wednesday and called the local police. The police, including a K-9 team, were on the scene around 5:00 am Thursday morning. The dog alerted his handler that he smelled something, then bit the ground, which cried out in pain.
It was Liascos, wearing a ghillie suit -- think Marine snipers -- that made him look like a patch of grass.
He is currently a guest of Washington County, pending a hearing on charges of burglary and criminal mischief.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Colder Weather
Well, it's a winding road
when you're in the lost and found.
You're a lover, I'm a runner,
and we go round and round.
This is the heart of the story the Zac Brown Band tells in Colder Weather, the latest song I can't stop listening to.
Like many a song of loneliness and loss on the road, it sounds gorgeous. Every musical detail, from the instrumental arrangement to the vocal harmonies to the melody, is as exquisite as I've ever heard.
Unlike many a song of loneliness and loss on the road, the road isn't the storytelling device. We get a couple of vignettes, first hers, then his. In both vignettes, we get details that we can see -- taillights shining through a window pane, a night as black as a cup of coffee -- so that this story feels lived in.
There's a highly expressive vocal bridge after the verses, and structurally, it's a rather conventional climax to the song. It does deliver an effective emotional payoff.
Nothing else in the song works quite as well as the emotionally devastating coda. There's enough ambiguity here that we're unsure if the guy is about to climb into his car again to wander after another phone call to her, or if he's standing next to her grave, remembering and regretting.
I'm with your ghost again,
It's a shame about the weather...
when you're in the lost and found.
You're a lover, I'm a runner,
and we go round and round.
This is the heart of the story the Zac Brown Band tells in Colder Weather, the latest song I can't stop listening to.
Like many a song of loneliness and loss on the road, it sounds gorgeous. Every musical detail, from the instrumental arrangement to the vocal harmonies to the melody, is as exquisite as I've ever heard.
Unlike many a song of loneliness and loss on the road, the road isn't the storytelling device. We get a couple of vignettes, first hers, then his. In both vignettes, we get details that we can see -- taillights shining through a window pane, a night as black as a cup of coffee -- so that this story feels lived in.
There's a highly expressive vocal bridge after the verses, and structurally, it's a rather conventional climax to the song. It does deliver an effective emotional payoff.
Nothing else in the song works quite as well as the emotionally devastating coda. There's enough ambiguity here that we're unsure if the guy is about to climb into his car again to wander after another phone call to her, or if he's standing next to her grave, remembering and regretting.
I'm with your ghost again,
It's a shame about the weather...
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
It's Just As Well They Can't Read
I told Sheldon and Leonard, our male kittens, that, since they were going to be asleep during the procedure and didn't have to shave their testicles beforehand, getting neutered today was no big deal. I don't think they bought it.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Marching To The Beat Of A Different...Guitarist?
David is, among many other fine things, a guitarist. We were driving from some point A to some other point B during his last visit a couple of months ago, and, being fans of classic rock, we were listening to Boston's debut CD. Long Time was playing, the song reached the bridge between the first and second verses, and as it went into the brief strummed acoustic guitar passage, David said, "This is my favorite guitar riff." I made some sound of absent-minded agreement, and we went on with our day.
I didn't think about this exchange for probably another month, until the next time I heard the song. Then, I really thought about what he said.
I think of a riff as a lead part, but the piece David commented on was definitely rhythm guitar. It is a catchy piece of musicianship, one that lingers in the mind, but it's rhythm guitar. David is intensely serious about his music, so he's very qualified to recognize a riff. But, it's rhythm guitar!
Music is one of life's great pleasures, both intellectual and visceral, and is there any real reason I should have hesitated to embrace a new perspective on it? On mature consideration (don't laugh), I didn't think so, and I have found that my musical enjoyment is enhanced by listening to it a bit differently, a bit more attentively.
So, here's a thank you to one of my favorite guitarists, my youngest son David.
I didn't think about this exchange for probably another month, until the next time I heard the song. Then, I really thought about what he said.
I think of a riff as a lead part, but the piece David commented on was definitely rhythm guitar. It is a catchy piece of musicianship, one that lingers in the mind, but it's rhythm guitar. David is intensely serious about his music, so he's very qualified to recognize a riff. But, it's rhythm guitar!
Music is one of life's great pleasures, both intellectual and visceral, and is there any real reason I should have hesitated to embrace a new perspective on it? On mature consideration (don't laugh), I didn't think so, and I have found that my musical enjoyment is enhanced by listening to it a bit differently, a bit more attentively.
So, here's a thank you to one of my favorite guitarists, my youngest son David.
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