I’m claiming my birthright and flying to Israel for a non-controversial ten-day trip, bolstering efforts of my colleague Andrew to bring lasting peace to the middle east. Or, you know, just kinda enjoying some time off outdoors. Can I really go ten days without bacon cups? Sigh.
Summer Anthems: Because I will be out next week, I think it’s probably best to leave you with two summer anthems. You can spread them out over the course of the next two weeks, savoring the energy they provide you. Crazy In Love is my go-to example of what a summer anthem is. Try not dancing to this song after you’ve had a few, I dare you (a surprisingly good metric for evaluating tunes!) My roommate claims that if she gives birth to twins she will name them Jay-Z and Beyonce – which, I don’t know. It seems weird to name your twins after a real life couple. Remember on the Cosby Show when Elvin and Sondra’s twins were named Winnie and Nelson? I celebrate the end of Apartheid, too, but …weird, right? Much, much less classic is this song: Steal My Sunshine: Imagine it’s the year 1999, you are in high school in suburban Maryland, driving around, worrying about your IB and AP tests, angsting generally, and note that although the radio is dreck (aside from Oldies 100!), there are a few gems that inspire rolling windows down and singing along. This is one of em. Maybe you had to be there? But I AM there everytime I hear this.
I was going to post something random for you to read about here, but it just doesn’t get any more random than vexillology; well done, Lily. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I still can’t really believe that it’s a thing. Who knew Betsy Ross and Adolf Hitler would ever find themselves together on a list?
Friday, May 30, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Bingo
At long last I awarded prizes for March Madness at the All Staff meeting. Recap of my remarks: I expressed my affection for Maureen with gentle ribbing, made veiled reference to erotic pasta, emphasized just how bad Nathalie and Alex’s picks must have been to come in last (they got basketball-shaped pasta for their troubles), celebrated Kelly’s well-deserved win (she took home a gift certificate to Ayza in addition to pasta), and honored Kurt, whose meteoric rise from the bottom of the barrel to second place truly was the Cinderella story of our times. His trophy (the whole WORLD) is displayed prominently at his desk. March felt like a more innocent time perhaps, and circa 5 pm on Tuesday at the staff meeting, my heart felt full.
Two Summer Anthems for the price of one: The Jackson 5: I want you back = what a bassline! Sometimes when I am tired and running, I just listen to this on repeat and can run a million billion miles. Hoping for a pleasant memorial day? Try Chad and Jeremy’s Summer Song. It’s just lovely. Also? Chad and Jeremy are having, in 2008, their busiest year since 1968. This come-back tour to lesser venues in lesser towns/myspace page may seem like a misguided attempt to return to relevance (which contemporaries might claim they never had in the first place) but they are actually still quite charming and their songs are really good and well-executed. You kids today could take a lesson.
You may not know this about me – like most of you, I have many hidden talents – and I don’t like to brag, but I am a really good caller at Bingo Night. I lead a team of volunteers at a senior home every other week, and when I stand there, spinning the bingo ball cage, picking out the next number, waiting for the players to lean forward ever so slightly in anticipation, projecting my voice and eliciting cheers in some and muttering in others, I feel gifted. Sometimes we make jokes: a call of B4 should be followed by “and after!”, I16 always makes me want to hum Sam Cooke’s tune “Only Sixteen” (gross!), and I can’t help but babble about the bingo numbers that are prime. But did you know that British people have codified jokes about the bingo numbers in a totally inscrutable way? Legs eleven! Read them here. Yes, I’m 90 years old.
Life’s great moments are small ones, usually. Have an awes long weekend!
Two Summer Anthems for the price of one: The Jackson 5: I want you back = what a bassline! Sometimes when I am tired and running, I just listen to this on repeat and can run a million billion miles. Hoping for a pleasant memorial day? Try Chad and Jeremy’s Summer Song. It’s just lovely. Also? Chad and Jeremy are having, in 2008, their busiest year since 1968. This come-back tour to lesser venues in lesser towns/myspace page may seem like a misguided attempt to return to relevance (which contemporaries might claim they never had in the first place) but they are actually still quite charming and their songs are really good and well-executed. You kids today could take a lesson.
You may not know this about me – like most of you, I have many hidden talents – and I don’t like to brag, but I am a really good caller at Bingo Night. I lead a team of volunteers at a senior home every other week, and when I stand there, spinning the bingo ball cage, picking out the next number, waiting for the players to lean forward ever so slightly in anticipation, projecting my voice and eliciting cheers in some and muttering in others, I feel gifted. Sometimes we make jokes: a call of B4 should be followed by “and after!”, I16 always makes me want to hum Sam Cooke’s tune “Only Sixteen” (gross!), and I can’t help but babble about the bingo numbers that are prime. But did you know that British people have codified jokes about the bingo numbers in a totally inscrutable way? Legs eleven! Read them here. Yes, I’m 90 years old.
Life’s great moments are small ones, usually. Have an awes long weekend!
Friday, May 16, 2008
We will be tested to our very souls
Summer Anthems: Been brainstorming this for a week now, assembling a mental list of summer anthems, ranging from the very personal and evocative, to the mass pop hits that manage to provide us with a sense of collective identity in spite of ourselves. This week I’m highlighting a song that is, to many, the epitome of summer anthem. Catchy, joyous, difficult to get sick of even after over-inundation, the rousing Hey Ya! seemed to be loved by everybody. As much as I’m into our increasingly diverse/individual/niche/user-generated content cultural milieu, where everyone’s face can have a book about it, and every band can have its space, etc., it is still fun when songs manage to break across those niches and entertain many people, all together, not just at our computers. Summer anthems should be happy, light, and they should bring people together, possibly by making us dance poorly to them. (The linked-to video is really really cute.)
It’s grey out there, but here’s the good news: My sister sent me this ‘news’ item about kittens who saved their human owners by alerting them to a house fire; this Washington Post story says that women have been key to reconstructing Rwanda; check out this artist who paints fantastical portraits of Stevie Nicks – she used to take commissions for portraits of you and Stevie, but has fallen about a year behind – most important, you can get said portrait on a tambourine; and, good news, a drink or two a day may make for stronger bones.
May is strange around here. Many of you are using up vacation days before the end of the fiscal year. Fridays at HRF this month, it’s like a ghost town, or like a Friday in Dillon, Texas when there’s an away game. (I am netflixing Friday Night Lights. I just got netflix. It is awesome. Trust me, this is apt.) I should note that I have no such days to use up, and am a little jealous. Speaking of FNL, this speech is both cheesy and awesome, and surely is in some way apropos: We will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. We must keep this in our hearts. That what we have is special. That it can be taken from us. And when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls.
It’s grey out there, but here’s the good news: My sister sent me this ‘news’ item about kittens who saved their human owners by alerting them to a house fire; this Washington Post story says that women have been key to reconstructing Rwanda; check out this artist who paints fantastical portraits of Stevie Nicks – she used to take commissions for portraits of you and Stevie, but has fallen about a year behind – most important, you can get said portrait on a tambourine; and, good news, a drink or two a day may make for stronger bones.
May is strange around here. Many of you are using up vacation days before the end of the fiscal year. Fridays at HRF this month, it’s like a ghost town, or like a Friday in Dillon, Texas when there’s an away game. (I am netflixing Friday Night Lights. I just got netflix. It is awesome. Trust me, this is apt.) I should note that I have no such days to use up, and am a little jealous. Speaking of FNL, this speech is both cheesy and awesome, and surely is in some way apropos: We will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. We must keep this in our hearts. That what we have is special. That it can be taken from us. And when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Spargelzeit
It’s been really fun here with the whole senior management team offsite, don’t you think? It struck me during our pizza party that, if ever there was an hour to become an autocrat and abuse human rights with impunity, that was it. You know, because the normally ever-vigilant eyes of HRFers were momentarily unfocused.
Did you know that, not only is it Springtime, it is also Spargelzeit? Of all the many, many, many weird things I learned about while studying abroad in Germany, this was perhaps my favorite. Literally, the ‘time of Asparagus’, this is the time of year when Germans go asparagus crazy (or, to coin a term – Spargelverrückt), with asparagus on the menus of every restaurant, asparagus featured on billboards and in television and magazine advertisements, asparagus featured in sketches, etc etc – asparagus is more aggressively marketed during this time than Grand Theft Auto IV. Seriously. I know. Plus, the asparagus that is so celebrated is white. It’s like asparagus that has been drained by Bunnicula – but it hasn’t, it’s just normal asparagus grown without direct sunlight and something weird happens to its chlorophyll. I don’t know. At the end of the semester I wrote complex 15-page papers auf deutsch on German nationalism and history, but I’ve forgotten most of that, remembering only the good, weird things: Spargelzeit, that time our landlady accused my roommate and me of being prostitutes – because our American friends visited so often, Wer wird Millionär/Deutschland Sucht den Superstar, watching the dollar get lame against the Euro, and some truly awful dancing.
New Feature! Summer Anthems: Because it is summerish, I would like to use this space going forward to highlight summer anthems, songs that embody the carefree energy of summertime. Songs that you hear spilling out of ice cream shops and bars as you walk down the street in your flipflips, songs that you hear at the park or the beach while you are throwing a frisbee with your best friends, songs that fuel long drives in the suburbs with the windows down. The first song I will feature is dear to my heart: Summers of 1997 and 1998, at last I had friends old enough to drive volvos, then I was driving myself, and Rockville Pike has never been so glorious as when we were flying and singing along to this. Adolescence was never the halcyon days we sometimes remember, but… listening to this song with my best friends, I’m sure I was less awkward than usual, and more happy. Give it a listen. 10-11 years ago, this was my song! (Borrow the CD if you’d like – and also please email me some of your favorite summer anthems.)
Did you know that, not only is it Springtime, it is also Spargelzeit? Of all the many, many, many weird things I learned about while studying abroad in Germany, this was perhaps my favorite. Literally, the ‘time of Asparagus’, this is the time of year when Germans go asparagus crazy (or, to coin a term – Spargelverrückt), with asparagus on the menus of every restaurant, asparagus featured on billboards and in television and magazine advertisements, asparagus featured in sketches, etc etc – asparagus is more aggressively marketed during this time than Grand Theft Auto IV. Seriously. I know. Plus, the asparagus that is so celebrated is white. It’s like asparagus that has been drained by Bunnicula – but it hasn’t, it’s just normal asparagus grown without direct sunlight and something weird happens to its chlorophyll. I don’t know. At the end of the semester I wrote complex 15-page papers auf deutsch on German nationalism and history, but I’ve forgotten most of that, remembering only the good, weird things: Spargelzeit, that time our landlady accused my roommate and me of being prostitutes – because our American friends visited so often, Wer wird Millionär/Deutschland Sucht den Superstar, watching the dollar get lame against the Euro, and some truly awful dancing.
New Feature! Summer Anthems: Because it is summerish, I would like to use this space going forward to highlight summer anthems, songs that embody the carefree energy of summertime. Songs that you hear spilling out of ice cream shops and bars as you walk down the street in your flipflips, songs that you hear at the park or the beach while you are throwing a frisbee with your best friends, songs that fuel long drives in the suburbs with the windows down. The first song I will feature is dear to my heart: Summers of 1997 and 1998, at last I had friends old enough to drive volvos, then I was driving myself, and Rockville Pike has never been so glorious as when we were flying and singing along to this. Adolescence was never the halcyon days we sometimes remember, but… listening to this song with my best friends, I’m sure I was less awkward than usual, and more happy. Give it a listen. 10-11 years ago, this was my song! (Borrow the CD if you’d like – and also please email me some of your favorite summer anthems.)
Friday, May 2, 2008
Mayhem
I don’t know, you guys. This week AHRF and otherwise has just felt kind of …grey. The weather, sharply contrasting with last week’s serotonin-inducing sunshine, has been downright gloomy, and every day I’ve shivered through it thinking it should really be warmer than this by now. I thought it was just me, but I think the world in general hasn’t been much fun: when the biggest news story is that everybody is totally tired of following this news story (election, I am looking at you), don’t you feel …tired? And who is this person named Miley Cyrus who I think I am too old to understand? (That Hannah Montana is no iCarly!) But here are some things that I like and understand anyway, even when it’s grey:
- Brazilian Music: trust me, it’s awes.
- Continued existence of 30 Rock (I didn’t show an episode to the staff this week but I still love it.)
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall: It’s a non-ponderous break-up comedy with full-frontal male nakedness, literal and emotional. And, it’s hilarious. And, there’s a Dracula puppet rock opera. Vampires are a great metaphor for the human condition. I am totally going to see it again instead of Iron Man.
- Bacon cups.
- Next week’s weather.
- Brooklyn.
- Coming soon: the return of the HRF beach club.
- Happy Birthday Ruthie!
Kelly, Kurt, Nathalie and Alex: I haven’t forgotten about you. I cannot wait to honor you for your March Madness performances. But I will wait, a bit longer. Perhaps during May Mayhem? (I’ll be calling it May-hem.) (Surely April Apathy must give way to some kind of month craziness. June Jubilance is mere weeks away.)
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