The Monks!

There's a new documentary out about The Monks, a band from the 60's made up of U.S. Army GIs stationed in Germany. I first learned of them from a WFMU video. The documentary doesn't have international distribution yet but rumor has it that the band will reunite for a late-2006 tour.

But mine goes to 6.0

Holy crap.

Just make the damn site intuitive!

From Overheard in the Office.

You know what happens when you assume things?

I was thinking about why wearing a Support the Troops t-shirt would be considered an act of protest.

Maybe someone was reading into the message the wrong way because he feels very guilty that his actions aren't actually supporting the troops? Hmmm?

Granted, the woman wasn't treated as badly as Cindy Sheehan, but she was still removed from the audience.

Stress

As one of the buttons on my denim jacket in high school said, stress is "The confusion created when one's mind overrides the body's desire to beat or choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately deserves it."

Seems like I know a lot of people who want to choke somebody what with the Alito confirmation, the spying, the continued violence in Iraq, bickering going on in the office while the cats are away...

Little less than 7 weeks till Hawaii! Hooray!

R.I.P. Chris Penn

I wasn't going to comment on the recent death of Chris Penn, one of my favorite actors, because I don't like projecting feelings I would feel for a friend onto a complete stranger.

But my iPod played Sinatra's It Was a Very Good Year and then Stealers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle with You and even though Penn wasn't in that scene in Reservoir Dogs it nevertheless made me think of him and how I'm sorry I won't see him in much of anything else again.

And when I read that one of his last movies is the upcoming The Darwin Awards, I kinda winced.

The black cloud of crime spreads far and wide

O! how I wish a story like this popped up in the Montclair State campus police blotter when I was on that beat.

In today's Asbury Park Press police briefs lies an item just teeming with story ideas for one Guy Ritchie (or maybe it's a sequel to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle).

Two guys, one from Piscataway, the other from Woodbridge, work at one of those shady car audio shacks you see across the state, this one in Edgewater Park. (Edgewater Park??!! That's about an hour from where these guys live so I hope the pay is worth it).

They go to Eatontown (Eatontown??!!) thinking they're going to sell some audio equipment to a bunch of guys in 80 Acre Park at 11:30 on a Saturday night.

So it's no surprise to you that once these guys get to the park, they "were threatened [by five guys, one of whom works for the Bradley Beach Department of Public Works] with a knife and a gun and robbed of jewelry, cash, cellular telephones and their 1997 Chevrolet van, which contained equipment from their business."

I see quick cuts slickly edited to the funky beats of James Brown as the Dept. of Public Works employee and his gang plan the heist and tool up route 35...

Ritmo Latino: the correct link

A while ago I posted about one of my favorite podcasts, Ritmo Latino. I gave you links that were all wrong. This one is the right one.

Listen to it! It's great work-out music...

Prejudiced Google

This article points out a "Prejudice Map," which points out stereotypes of the world according to Google's search results. It's cute; not all countries are represented.

la la la la La Llorona

I was listening to the latest Hometown Tales podcast this morning and they were talking about the legend of La Llarona, the wailing woman, which is featured in one of my favorite movies, Mullholland Dr.

On my short walk from my car to the office, it hit me. I should write a song about La Llarona set to the tune of My Sharona.

Brilliant!

Substitute teachers and houses

Last night I realized that a house is like a room full of middle- or high-schoolers. You must earn its respect or else it'll start throwing spit balls and paper airplanes at you while you nervously fiddle with the VCR so you can show the assigned after-school special to the class.

When we moved into our new (used) house, we had a nice month where nothing big needed to be fixed. Kent added a trap to the master bathroom sink, we painted the family room, all went fairly well.

Turns out that the house was merely sitting back and sizing us up. After that honeymoon month, it said, "Ok tough guys, let's see what you got. Let's see if you can keep up with me."

So when Kent replaced the wax seal on the downstairs toilet to stop the sewer smells from leaking into the house, another leak in the toilet developed. After a few attempts to fix the leak, a small crack in the tank grew worse from the jostling that requires us to replace the toilet.

Like a teenager with a vendetta, the house is creative and persistent.

As the weather got colder, the Pergo in the living room started to buckle and come up at the edges.

One of the garage door openers broke and Kent spent a day replacing it.

The roof leaked a bit during the eight days and nights of rain we had a couple of months ago.

The performance of the washer and dryer is starting to deteriorate; the timer on dryer no longer works.

The faucets for the washer sprang a slight leak and though Kent can fix it by tightening the faucet, we really should get them replaced.

I feel like Kent and I are Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier of Blackboard Jungle and To Sir with Love, respectfully. If we could just show the house that we only want to help it, to nurture it, to make it stronger, maybe it will grow to respect and even love us.

And then maybe Lulu will show up and sing to us...

Christmas at the Beach Cinema

This Saturday Kent and I took in a matinee at the Beach Cinema in Bradley Beach. It's their 80th anniversary this month and they celebrated by showing White Christmas along with a vintage cartoon and the Three Stooges short, The Three Beers. All for 2 bucks. And real butter on the popcorn.

It was such a nice time. There were a bunch of little kids there and even though they got restless at some parts (White Christmas is about 2 hours long with some extraneous musical and dance numbers to pad it out so it's hard to not get restless), they weren't annoying. Neither were the adults - no talking on cellphones or speaking at a conversational volume.

I wish I could open up a movie house just like the Beach Cinema.

Christmas in our first house

We bought the first Christmas tree for our first house last Sunday from the lot next to our local Applegate Farms (how lucky am I - I got to eat their great ice cream at their Montclair location while I was at college and now they're in Freehold!).

This is my desk in our "library," which is the room in the front of the house. We'll fill it with books some day.



O Tannenbaum!

This just might be true

One of The Onion's most believable articles:

Voice of God found to be Cheney on Intercom

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189&rss=1

Can I play too?

Today's Salon broadsheet by Lynn Harris describes the current political discussion about abortion; that is, the discussion the menfolk are having. Seems that women aren't even pawns in this game anymore; we're not even on the chess board.

Great.

Podcast alert

For those of you who podcast listen to podcasts, you have got to check out Ritmo Latino. It is awesome!

(Yes, I said "awesome.")


Update
Here's the RSS link.

And here's the homepage although I can't get it to load.

Science rules!

From Reuters:

'Intelligent-design' school board ousted in Penn

By Jon Hurdle Wed Nov 9,12:35 AM ET

DOVER, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Voters on Tuesday ousted a Pennsylvania local school board that promoted an "intelligent-design" alternative to teaching evolution, and elected a new slate of candidates who promised to remove the concept from science classes.

Thank God!

At The Office

Whenever I get stressed out at work from being forced to listen to long, ill-informed conversations about politics, I get the title song to the American version of The Office stuck in my head and I immediately feel calmer.

Maybe it's because The Office is 10 times more deranged than mine. Maybe it makes me feel better knowing that there must be a million offices like mine otherwise how would this stuff wind up on TV.

All I know is, it works.

(Wouldn't it be sad if that's really all I know?)

Attacking cat

Strange multitasks by attacking Roscoe mid-yawn.

Friday copycat blogging

Top: Roscoe
Bottom: Strange

I have the same cats as Atrios except that Strange, my b/w cat, has a black nose where Atrios' b/w cat has a pink nose.