AWOL

On vacation! A couple of hiccups required us to come home for a day, but we’re leaving (again) this morning…..take two.

No Offense….

Whenever someone starts off a sentence with “no offense, but…..” – then prepare to be offended. Even a little bit. That being said….

No offense to divers, but is it really necessary to have color commentators for diving competitions? I mean, I can understand a play-by-play person telling us who’s diving, where they’re from and who’s winning the competition, but I don’t need to hear color commentary, especially when everyone is virtually doing the same dive. There’s really nothing you can add. Last night, in our never-ending battle to find something (ANYTHING!) compelling to watch on television this summer, Steph and I stopped at diving for a few minutes and watched 3 divers. The color commentator said virtually the same thing each time. Steph summarized it best when she mocked, “in order to jump high, you MUST jump high.”

Someone should pay her big money to do this!

Bam! Pow!

Bullets!

  • I woke up on Saturday morning around 5:45am, as usual, to get the kids up and about. As I groggily opened my eyes, I saw an odd formation to the right of my dresser. It was a strange shape and I thought “ok, you’re half asleep, so it’s probably something obvious.” Then it moved! Now I’m like “oh shit!” The first thing I thought was that it was a bat. Because when it moved, everything moved in tandem and it went from wide to thin pretty quickly. Now I’m freaking out a little, because if there’s a bat, I’m not gonna be the guy running around the house with a broom and a box. Hell NO. Remember, all this is happeing in the space of about 30 seconds. So I get up, half-expecting the bat to come at me and peck my eyes out. But as I approach, I realize what an ass I am. It’s a leaf, part of a whole little project that our twin nephews put together for the boys. Sigh. One of the leaves was simply hanging off the edge of the bureau (by fishline).
  • Crazy event this weekend. We went to a pool party thrown by some local Maynard friends on Saturday. It was hard to socialize the way we want to since a) our guys are 1 and the rest of the kids are mostly self-sufficient and around 5 years old. This means most of the kids can swim – and ours just walk around and want to jump in the water. Anyway, I’m sitting there and lost in the craziness of a pool party, I notice another kid jump in. No big deal, looks like he’s done it a million times. 30 seconds later, a woman screams and jumps in the pool, without taking her shirts and shoes off. The dad was already in the pool, so he shot over. Seems the kid that I watched jump in couldn’t swim yet. Holy shit! The kid was freaked out when the parents got a hold of him. I don’t know if it was instinctual or not, but the kid knew to kick and flail to keep himself up. Thank goodness. Really scary stuff.
  • Speaking of pools, Michael Phelps’s display of awesome at the Olympics was something to behold. But swimming is like the NHL. People don’t really watch it except once every few years and I don’t care how many golds you win, swimming goes back into the closet for 4 years now that it’s over. On another Olympics note, it was awesome to see people our age doing great things at the Games. How about a 38 year old Romanian woman winning the marathon by almost a country mile! Or that 41 year old American swimmer? Really cool.
  • Oh, we had our annual “tax-free” weekend in Massachusetts these past couple of days. Basically anything you buy up to $2500 is tax free. It was suppoesdly a decent success. My contribution to the state economy: 24 wall anchors for screws and a fill-up of my propane tank for the grill. Total: $18. I saved one cent!

Ooooh Deary Me

Lily Allen. British to the core.

My latest inexplicable obsession, which came totally out of nowhere, is Lily Allen. It’s not like I saw a video or heard it on the radio. I found it on the web. I guess there’s been some buzz because her new song, called “Fuck You Very Much,” is getting a bit of attention. But here’s the thing – other than the saucy title and wondering how radio might approach it, the song is GOOD! Very good! When I think about my music tastes, I don’t think that a little British princess who sings ska/pop/dance tunes would really be up my alley, but I guess my alley just got a little wider.

So, after hearing that track, I explored. She only has one album, but there are a couple of doozies on there. What is happening to me? Is there something there, or is it just me on a tangent for a couple of weeks? I’m curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on this girl. The song that jumped out at me was “Alfie,” a song about her lazy, stoner brother who spends all day in his room smoking pot and playing video games. I’d post the audio link here, but the video she made for it is way better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRX57zprNdw

OK, so now that you have a slight sense of what she’s about, why is it that when most Brits sing, their accent disappears? This has been a long-standing question in my head that has never been answered. The amount of Brits whose accents don’t disappear when they sing seems very very small. Lily Allen is one of them. Her accent is strong and true in her singing. Who else? Maybe Belle & Sebastian? Sandy Denny. Any others come to mind right away? Can anyone explain why this is the case?