« May 2007 | Main | July 2007 »
June 21, 2007
ODing On Nostalgia
Andi said it about Iona in the movie Pretty In Pink and now thanks to YouTube it is happening to me too. But in a different way . . .
Two words: Schoolhouse Rock (no, not "sound")
What started me on this kick tonight was a conversation I was having with the 7 year old. He didn't know who Isaac Newton was and I thought that was pretty odd. And then I tried to figure out why I thought it was so odd. Then it occurred to me: I couldn't imagine that there are any kids anywhere that do NOT conjure up the same mental imagery that I do when I hear the name Isaac Newton. That imagery being, the Schoolhouse Rock rendered version of him as a cartoon ... sitting under the apple tree getting clonked on the head by an apple. Nothing from text books, nothing scientific, no; I hear "Isaac Newton" and think of ... cartoons. I know, I really *am* a simp, but we all remember this, yes?
So then I remembered the excellence that was Schoolhouse Rock and I started looking for my faves so I could share them with my son**. I never did find "A Victim Of Gravity" (as the Isaac Newton one is officially titled), but there are still tons of SHR vids to be found.
**(This Rockwellian moment was funded in part by YouTube, LLC)
And now I'm sharing them with you. Watch them, they really are so great.
::siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh::
FIGURE EIGHT
INTERPLANET JANET
INTERJECTION
Posted by Jamie at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2007
Some Sun, Some Rain, Some Golf, and "Hey R2!"
The kids and I went down to Galveston this weekend to visit my dad and have some island fun. Crazy weather kept us unsure at all times about whether or not we should partake in outside activities, but somehow we still managed to have a blast. It's raining, it's sunny, it's raining, it's raining, it's sunny ... I pretty much decided to give up on trying to predict the precipitation on the way down there.
When we got there we found out that dad had gotten a set of golf clubs for the older kids to use, and he took my eleven year old to the driving range to putt some balls (er something - I'm not very adept with the golf lingo, shocking as it may seem). She apparently took to it amazingly and has some mad hidden golfing skillz. Who knew? Cool.
Then last night we played putt-putt golf at the local Putt-Puttery which was very fun - no rain, nice breeze, cool temperature. It was mucho fun and what was even better is that I won!! ::snort:: Then we ate super-syrupy snow cones and watched a couple of chicas fling into the exosphere on this very scary looking bungee type "ride" (read: "shoddy contraption") that is located right next door to the putt-putt place. Eeeps.
Today we got up and went over to Moody Gardens to swim at Palm Beach. I'm officially declaring Palm Beach to be the very best place to swim in Texas. Well it's a close call between that and The Slab in Kingsland (about 60 miles northwest of Austin). But really, Palm Beach is awesome. And I'm not sure how safe this was for everyone, but they didn't even tell us to get out of the pool when it started thundering and pouring down rain! Oh yeah, it poured. After about half an hour of it we went back to dad's and decided to let him open his Father's Day gift . . .
This thing is FUN!! He makes the exact sounds from the movie and is totally hysterical. We opened and got him working and had a major blast. It helps that my dad is a huge Star Wars geek - where do you think I get it from? :)
Then we went back to Moody Gardens to check out all of the cool dinosaur stuff they have going on right now. We went to an animatronic dinosaur exhibit that had full sized moving dinosaurs. We also watched a 3-D dinosaur movie that had tons of cool in-depth info about dinosaurs and paleontology. Very interesting.
Hope all of you fatherly types had a nice Father's Day! We sure did.
Posted by Jamie at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2007
LMC: Lucy on a Motorcycle with Cigarettes
There is a really cool channel on XM called Lucy that I've found myself listening to quite often lately. It's all the stuff I listened to in the 90s but what is cool about it is that they play all tracks from the CDs (not just the popular radio play tracks) and also some live versions by the same artists. Stuff like Soundgarden (I just heard "My Wave" today), Radiohead, tons of Nirvana, and yesterday I heard this excellent acoustic version of "Big Me" by the Foo Fighters (that link is not the exact one I heard, but it is close). Today I heard the greatest thing on Lucy that I've never heard before in my life: They Might Be Giants singing "Why Does The Sun Shine", from 1959. There's a video, check it out:
Now I am trying to find the original album from which this song came, but it seems to no longer be available for purchase. Which royally sucks.
"Space Songs is an album in the "Ballads For The Age of Science" or "Singing Science" series of scientific music for children from the late 1950s and early 1960s.How awesome is that??
On a completely unrelated note, I need to find out if I'm the only one noticing this or of it is some sort of hip, new thing that I am unaware of. In the past week I have noticed 4 different guys on motorcycles, smoking cigarettes. Is it not cool enough anymore to just be a motorcycle dude? I mean the reason it is so striking to me is because they have all been totally awkward with it. They are not just sitting at a light smoking, mind you, no, I mean they are cruising down the street at 50 mph + holding a cigarette in their mouth. If you're thinking that probably doesn't work so well (wind ... hello), you're right. It's hysterical. What is up with this, does anyone know? Four different guys in a week??
Posted by Jamie at 03:34 PM | Comments (2)
June 08, 2007
The Comedic Brilliance Of Amazon.com
Posted by Jamie at 09:04 AM | Comments (1)