Mem'ries, Light the Corners of My Mind ...

This weekend was a bit of a trip down memory lane, and it got me thinking about some of the things I was obsessed with as a child. I figured you all might enjoy some insights into my early years. They may help explain why I am the way I am today. Maybe.

1. The Great Muppet Caper. This was my first memory lane trip this weekend. I was hanging out with my cousins and they happened to have this film, so we watched some of it. I was a little surprised that I remembered every moment like it was yesterday. I was intensely obsessed with this movie as a child, I’m not sure why. It's actually the only Muppets movie I’ve ever seen which is a crime, I realize.

2. Only a Boy Named David. There was this guy that I was in love with when I was approximately 4 years of age. He was probably in his 20’s. His name was David. I loved him dearly. In Sunday school we sang a nice little song about David and Goliath, but I thought it was about my David. Incidentally, I ran into him this weekend and my feelings for him have not changed in 20 years.

3. My Fair Lady. Possibly my most influential obsession and certainly one of the main reasons for my current love of old movies.

4. Red-headed Comedians. I have hundreds of I Love Lucy episodes taped from the marathons they did every New Year’s Day. I’m not sure I love it as much now, mostly because Ricky is such a huge disgusting jerk. I also loved The Carol Burnett Show, and basically wanted to be her. My favorite part was when she came out and talked to the audience. Lucy and Carol are the reason I told my 5th grade teacher that I wanted to be a comedian when I grew up.

5. Tom and Jerry. Wow, I loved Tom and Jerry. Still do. I’m not sure what I love so much about it seeing as basically every episode is the same. Tom chases Jerry, Jerry outsmarts him, Tom looks stupid. Pretty simple. But I spent countless hours enthralled by it. I think I liked that there was no talking; I could just listen to the music and watch the action. That’s really all I need in life. Ironically, since the cartoon was produced by MGM in the 40’s, I’ve come to find that many of songs they used in the show came straight out of some of my favorite MGM musicals! Amazing.

Crazy Neighbors: In Pictures

I decided to take some pictures of the various items that our crazy neighbors leave all over the place.


This is the newest addition to our garage; a collection of outdated political signs. These were never placed anywhere near our home during the actual elections, so I can only assume that they went around and stole them from other people's yards.


This is just a collection of various items.


That carpet cleaner in back is the only thing in the garage that belongs to us.


This is the side of the garage, featuring some ghetto old bikes, a motorcycle, some tires, and a garage motor.

I live in the Naperville ghetto.

St. Patrick's Day

I had a very nice St. Patrick's Day, despite the fact that I had no corned beef :(

It started on Sunday with Old Movie Night: St. Patrick's Day Edition featuring one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man. We enjoyed some festive goodies, drank Green River, and (most of us) dressed up all green. We looked very festive, I'd say:


Monday afternoon CTI took over the McDonald's across the street where we enjoyed some free Shamrock Shakes. This was my first Shamrock Shake and it was good, but I couldn't finish it because it made me a little nauseous. But it was fun to crash the McDonald's with like 50 of my coworkers. We really confused the regulars.

This evening I paid a visit to my mother and came across the remnants of her St. Patrick's Day celebration:


Yep, that's a beer bottle in her treadmill cup holder.

Leap Day

I figured that I should post something today since this is the last time in four years I'll be able to post an entry on February 29th. Seeing as I don't actually have anything of value to say, this will probably be a little random.

So what does Leap Day mean to me? Basically nothing. In fact, I probably would have ignored the whole thing if it weren't for our "Leap Day Party" at work, complete with refreshments and about 50 people trying to cram into a conference room that typically seats 20 comfortably. I stayed in the hallway with the cool kids.

I've been reading a lot of memoir type books lately thanks to the "free book" shelf at work, which is quickly becoming my favorite workplace destination. As a result, I often summarize things in my head the way I would if I was recording them in my very own memoir. It's weird and a little bit annoying.

In other news, I'm pretty sure I offended my roommate last night when I chose to go in my bedroom and watch the New York Philharmonic playing in North Korea on PBS instead of hanging out with her and watching Food Network or some such channel. She seemed taken aback when I announced I'd go watch my orchestra show in my room. I was surprised that she's not yet realized that in my world, music often trumps socializing. Not to mention, I'd heard about this performance on the news earlier that day—it was rather momentous for a U.S. ensemble to play in North Korea—and I knew they'd be playing one of my all time favorite songs, An American in Paris.

They played splendidly and watching it made me long even more for Ravinia season (a.k.a. summer). I can't wait to catch some fabulous concerts this summer; hopefully they'll have a Gershwin night! It also further cemented An American in Paris as a front runner for my favorite song ever. I listened to it again on my way home from work. I think I blew out my speaker. Unfortunately, It wouldn't be the first time I blew out a car speaker listening to classical music. What can't I blow out my speakers with something cool?

That's all I got.

U23D

I went to see this U23D movie last night with some coworkers at the Imax. Yeah, it's a U2 concert in 3D. Having never been to an actual U2 concert, I figured this would be a fun, and it was. I'm not sure there was a huge need for it to be in 3D, but that made it a little more realistic than just looking at a flat image. You get very close to the band and you get to see every little detail ... I'm not sure I ever wanted to see Bono that close up, but it was cool. They're pretty amazing in concert! And we got to wear those fabulous glasses. It would have been even more fabulous if they had made Bono style 3D glasses, but I guess they're just not as clever as me.

The only disappointment was that they didn't sing a few of my favorite songs such as "Mysterious Ways" and "Desire." They basically sang all their songs about how terrible the world is. They're good songs, but it takes some of the fun away when Bono is telling you how evil everyone is. Bono, we get it, you hate America and everyone is lying and evil, bla bla. Then they sang "The Fly," which I love, but they threw in all these 3D words flying (haha!) toward the audience telling us that everyone's lying to us and our lives are basically a sham. It was very distracting I thought. I just wanted to see them perform the song. But everyone I was with thought the words were fabulous, probably because they were just about the only fancy 3D effect in the movie.

Despite all this, it was still way fun! I really wanted to clap at the end of the songs, but nobody else was except a few weird people in the front. So I refrained.

If You're Bored ...

I was introduced to a fabulous site, Blogger Play. It just runs a slideshow of all the photos that are currently being uploaded to Blogger. If you find one that piques your interest, you can click on it to be taken to the blog it's posted on. The only problem I've had is basically every picture I've clicked on has been from a non-english site. Doesn't really do much for me. Apparently we english speaking folks don't have any interesting pictures to share.

Give Me a Head with Hair

I was a little disturbed yesterday while watching Millionaire Matchmaker (yes, it’s slightly disturbing that I was even watching that show in the first place, but it’s not the most disturbing part). On the show, the matchmaker chick gets a group of women together, talks to them, tells them everything that’s wrong with them, and then picks one to go out on a date with one of her millionaire clients. She was right about most of the things she criticized about the women; they dressed slutty, wore too much makeup, ect… But then she crossed the line. She told all the girls with curly hair to straighten it. The reasoning behind this is that a man wants to be able to run his hand through her hair.

I’m sorry, but there is just no way I’m going to straighten my hair for a man. If he doesn’t like it, he can go find himself a boring straight haired girl.

Plus,

1. I’ve tried straightening my hair and it doesn’t work out. I just have too much hair.

2. I regularly get compliments on my beautiful curly hair. They generally come from 80 year old ladies at church, but I say a compliment’s a compliment, and they make me happy.

This is not to say that my hair hasn’t been a huge pain for basically my entire life. As a child I pretty much hated it. I remember one time when my mother got a brush stuck in it. It was painful and it took forever to get it out. I remember another time when I was in my bedroom trying to make my hair look presentable and I got so mad, I chucked my brush across the room and nicked off a corner of the wall.

Also, when I would go to get my hair cut, my mom would always try to pay the people the adult rate even though I was like 6, because I had an abnormal amount of hair. I’m pretty sure I had more hair than my mom at that age and she didn’t know how to deal with it. This led to a number of painfully ugly hair styles from about age 4 to 23.

But, finally, I’ve come to (kind of) love my hair. I’ve figured out how to keep it in line (sometimes). Plus, a little while back it suddenly became popular to have curly hair so they came out with a million new curly hair products. It was great. For a short while I was so completely in style and there were endless numbers of products to suit all my curly hair needs. But then everyone realized what a huge pain curly hair is, and straight hair came back in. Even still, I know that in another 20 years curly hair will make a comeback. And I’ll be cool once more.