Helium In Effect, One Week Later
Month: July 2013
Rally Round The Lawn
Don’t know who these folks are or where this was taken, but it looks to be the 1930s, according to the dresses and hairstyles. I like the ribbons in the girls’ hair, and the restless boys who can’t sit still.
I especially fancy this dress!
But I do wonder why this fella was left holding the baby.
A Gush Of Euphony Voluminously Wells
Remember 1902? Me, neither. This book does. It’s all sorts of “m” words: musky, mildewy, moldy. That’s what happens when you’re over 100. You can see the date at the very bottom.
It’s chock full of stories, poems, and pictures by dead people. This groom looks rather serene on his honeymoon. He basks in the memory of the previous night, while she chooses which add-ins to order for her three-egg omelette. Sounds about right.
Included is a Poe poem (aha! one letter’s difference!), which inspired the post title. No, I don’t know what it means. If I did, my blog would be called, “I Very Much Get It.” Clearly, I do not.
I also don’t get why this painting is titled “Bringing Home The Bride.” Whose home is this?
Pardon me, but why are there old people at her home? Why is that septuagenarian helping the bride disrobe in front of her grandpa? Children at bay windows are witnessing this! Gossip is being told to Teddy Roosevelt. Men lifting suitcases on the staircase should mind their own business. Truth be told, the departure from home seems much more lively. Perhaps she should continue departing.
This volume also includes the courtship of not Eddie’s father, but instead, Miles Standish. I particularly enjoy this line: “She could not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant.” I hear that.
And what do you think of this?
This couple gazing admirably at her ring–it’s very sweet, isn’t it? And who wouldn’t be excited to be engaged to the fourth musketeer? FYI, musketeers protected royal families. I wonder if the little babe of Windsor, soon to be birthed, will have its own private musketeer? No, wait, that’s only French royal families. Nevermind.
Here is an excerpt from The Bride of Lammermour:
Oh, my gosh, you guys. Don’t you HATE reading dialect? What the what? How am I to comprehend the mumblings of a paralytic hag? As if.
Now I thought Romeo & Juliet were supposed to be about fourteen years old. Romeo looks considerably older than that in this picture. Like he could possibly see rated R movies. I think we all know what happens next.
And here we are at the precursor to Say Yes To The Dress.
Is that guy the tailor? He seems pretty smug. Or is that the groom? If so, he shouldn’t be seeing her before the wedding. He’s quite the dandy, no? And what’s with the girl? Is she praying for a similar dress one day or already consumed with thoughts of the reception playlist. “Please play ‘Celebrate’ by Kool and the Gang or I shall just die…”
Read this ditty, and you may be disturbed, and I don’t mean by heaving breasts.
I would have had a heaping helping of sassy backtalk from my bridesmaids, should I have forced them to become Corsican like me. Yeesh.
Now observe this lovely portrait.
It takes a village to make a wedding. And a nice top hat.
And don’t kid yourselves, ladies:
Total Yodel Recall
NBC has been advertising its new summer show, The Winner Is, all week, and as much as I enjoy Nick Lachey (and am glad for him that he finally became a daddy after a decade of waiting), I cannot take time out of the second half of my life to watch this. I spent last season cheering for Blake Shelton’s team on The Voice, and frankly, I’m exhausted. I had bristled at the thought of both Usher and Shakira as judges, but they won me over, and now I’d prefer to never see li’l Cee Lo or Diva Aguilera set foot on stage again. But I digress.
One of the clips NBC continues to pimp (while I’m TRYING to get my Hoda and Kathy Lee fix–all Kristen Wiig’s fault) of the new singing competition shows yodelers. Is this a new trend? Really? I was forced to watch Heidi Klum teach Bradley Cooper to yodel on The Tonight Show a couple months ago, and I’m pretty sure she did it again on America’s Got Talent last month. And is it NEWS that Jewel can yodel? Is it news she used to sleep in her car? I thought we all got the memo on that in 1995. I don’t need to hear her yodel again, with or without snaggletooth. I admit it’s preferable to hearing any of her hits, vacillating between her awkward lower register and what I like to refer to as her higher “toddler voice.” Her goo-goo ga-ga voice. Honestly, I’m yodeled out.
I do admit I was mildly amused by Jimmy Fallon and Brad Pitt’s yodeling skit last month, but mainly because they weren’t taking themselves too seriously. For my money, that’s his best acting job since Benjamin Button.
Look, unless you’re a singing cowboy (Roy Rogers or Gene Autry R.I.P.), leave yodeling alone. It’s not like it has lyrics the rest of us can sing along with. It’s not soothing, good to dance to, or helpful during a break-up. It’s like a gussied-up hog call. Don’t do it.
Let it go the way of country singer Slim Whitman, who passed away last month at the age of 90. Never heard of him? He was quite the yodeler. Per the New York Times article, “Michael Jackson named Mr. Whitman one of his 10 favorite vocalists. George Harrison credited him as an early influence. Paul McCartney said Mr. Whitman gave him the idea of playing the guitar left-handed.” And don’t even get me started on his impressive ‘stache.
Idol Distraction
Warning: This post is faith-based, so turn back if this is not your cup of tea.
I read today that the average phone user checks his phone 150 times a day. 150? Not me. I can go a couple days without looking at my phone. I spent enough time answering phones at former jobs, that I avoid it all costs in real life. And I don’t text. Ever. So that makes me better than you, right? No, it doesn’t. Because I check my email and facebook and this very WordPressy blog nation. Sometimes several times a day. I’m guilty of wanting to be entertained and amused. Constantly. Anything to escape a harsh reality, the huge dip in the 401K, the unpeace in the Middle East, the recession–basically everything the Today show reports in the pre-9am hour, before they get to the fun stuff.
But as I was reading the chapter Isaiah today (in my Bible), about men making wooden idols out of the very thing used to bake their bread, I thought about men making pocketsized idols out of plastic. Little screens that show movies and play music and have games, all the things the devil uses to distract us from what’s real and important. That is no different than a golden calf, no different than making an idol of our job, of our economic status, of the bling on our aging skin. But that’s not who we are; that’s not what matters.
I don’t want to be the teen I saw, skating circles at the roller rink, staring at her ipad instead of engaging in the present moment, with the flesh and blood humans around her. I read my Bible in a book made of paper because I imagine if I read it on a screen, I would be tempted to check shinier bells and whistles on that screen as soon as I left the scripture. Instead of letting it sink in.
Ever since 9/11, little ticker tapes of needless information have run across the bottom of the TV screen, and they run across our minds. And then we lie awake at night, wondering why we can’t slow down, why we can’t let it go.
I admit I enjoy all these distractions, the ease of randomly picking a topic, doing a search, and then reading a post about it. Sometimes informative and engaging, even. But we won’t lie on our deathbeds, regretting we didn’t read enough blogs or check enough status updates. Facebook will be as over as myspace by then. Will WordPress exist? And how much crazier could it get? Will we have chips implanted in our heads like Humane Society dogs, telling us the time and temperature and names of celebrity babies just birthed? It is so hard to detach and let go. There is too MUCH information. It’s like trying to decide on a dessert at The Cheesecake Factory. We went from flipping through immediately outdated copies of Encylopedia Brittanica in gradeschool to having access to the power of Google–the world at our fingertips. We never have to wonder about song lyrics again.
But I need to check myself and remind myself what to read first thing when I awake. It’s not this. It’s not my phone. It’s not facebook. It’s not TV. But it IS the source of all that matters.
Caption Me
My apologies to the teens at the public pool today (who have probably never heard of WordPress), but you strode right into my lens space whilst I was trying to capture my son for posterity. So what else can I do but have a caption contest at your expense?
1. “In twenty years, they’ll be down to here.”
I’m So Rumbly In My Tumbly
I just saw this cool pic on Coffee & Cigarette’s blog http://chrismartinez956.wordpress.com. Perfect depiction of how we like to label every valid human emotion as a disorder. I think I’m experiencing three of those right now.
Corn-Fed Barbie
Looking at this new Barbie is like looking in a mirror. That’s my caboose!!
Home Of The Brave
End of Camelot
Yesterday I was given a stack of Houston newspapers from the week of JFK’s assassination. This November will mark the 50th anniversary of his passing, and I imagine some homage will be paid in the media. I found these brittle browning pages interesting, as they unraveled the course of history.
The page above was from the November 22, 1963 issue of The Houston Chronicle, when all was still well in Camelot. As far as they knew.
Hours later, another photo from the same scene is shown adjacent to a headline declaring “Secret Service Man Reports JFK Dead.”
The country knew that JFK and Texas Governor John Connally had both been shot, but JFK had not been officially pronounced dead.
But by November 23rd, the truth was out.
An article explains how doctors attempted to save the president’s life.
The suspect had been taken into custody.
And then the suspect himself was slain.
Finally, the president was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery.
And Little John John bid his father farewell.
I Don't Get It 