Stuck like a broken record, if anyone remembers what that means

There are certain times I really feel my age. The one aspect where I find it most pronounced is when trying to follow any current music scene.

Oh, I've bought CDs and downloaded songs from itunes recently, sure. But to illustrate my point, the last song I downloaded from itunes was "Island in the Sun" by Weezer. Certainly not a recent hit. The last CD that I remember buying was "Songs for Jane" by Maroon 5, and that was about five years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child.

I want to be more in tune (okay, pun intended) with current music, but I feel like I have so much ground to cover. The last time I was really up on music was in the mid- to late-90s, when I was spending a lot of time with friends who worked in radio, long before I was married and certainly well before I had kids.

These days, I'm more up to date with The Wiggles' latest release than whether or not The Fray and The Killers are cool. I don't even know what songs The Killers sing. For someone who was known as a sort of music maven, it's rather embarrassing.

My brother tried to help my cause a couple of years ago by giving me some CDs for Christmas. I really liked the Belle and Sebastian one he got me, and would have liked to share it with the boys, but the lyrics were, shall we say, inappropriate for children. I didn't quite "get" the Apples in Stereo disc, but maybe I'm just showing my age here. I still have two more discs to listen to - TV on the Radio and The New Pornographers, but I don't know when I'll have time to digest them.

Probably when the boys are old enough to listen to music that will make me wistful for some Stabbing Westward.

I triple-dog dare you...

Now, I love my husband very much. I love him and my kids more than anyone or anything else on this earth. That said, it really bugs the hell out of me when he makes sarcastic comments about me hiring a cleaning lady. It makes me want to issue the following challenge, which is also my current fantasy:

I wake up and get up when I'm good and ready to. I take a long, leisurely shower and shave my legs and my bikini area. I moisturize my entire body, get dressed, fully blowdry my hair, and put on make up.

I give the boys (including the hubster) big kisses and say goodbye. Hubster asks where I'm going, I say "out." Hubster asks when I'm coming back, I say "later." And I go out somewhere for the day. (I haven't worked out this part of my fantasy just yet)

While I'm gone, the hubster must accomplish the following:

• Feed all three kids three nutritious meals (only one meal may be purchased outside the home - so if the older boys have bagels and chocolate milk for breakfast, they can't have fast food for lunch or dinner). This includes preparing cereal to the proper thickness and feeding it to the baby.
• Ensure that nobody dehydrates - provide the older boys with appropriately diluted fruit juice throughout the day and prepare and feed formula to the baby (did I mention that I breastfeed and can't pump lest I overproduce?)
• Give the kids snacks, but not too many so as to spoil their appetite.
• Clean the entire house - kitchen, both bathrooms, all bedrooms, living, and dining rooms
• Wash, dry, fold, and put away at least one load of laundry
• I'll give him a pass on grocery shopping because he stays with the three boys while I have my "Mommy time" (hub's words, not mine) at the supermarket. Besides, if need be, I can always have Peapod deliver while he's home.

If this challenge is not successfully met, ... oh heck, even if it is, I still deserve acknowledgement that being a stay at home mom isn't an easy job. And that outsourcing the housecleaning does not make me lazy (that's a subject for another post entirely).

I love you honey, but the sarcastic comments about what I do all day need to stop.

Books are Brain Food

Like a lot of other moms, I've been sucked into the Twighlight series by Stephenie Meyer. Of course, the joke's on us as kajillions of teenage girls have been into the series for a couple of years now. But I digress... I've read the first three books and am waiting for the library to call me when a copy of the fourth is on reserve for me.

So for kicks, and to tide me over until the book is in, I checked out the trailer for the second movie in the series, New Moon. Okay, I realize I'm a bit older than the movie's target demographic; however, I do like to kid myself and think that I'm still in touch with my preteen-angst self. That said, my comment to the studios: Really? Am I missing something? I'll admit that when reading the books, I imagine Edward looking rather Robert Pattinsonesque, but in this clip he could pass for an escaped animatronic from Disney's Hall of Presidents. Maybe he was directed to act that way (in that case, he's a director's dream, a wonderfully malleable actor), but he was just so ... wooden ... in the scene where he tells Bella he's leaving. I was really disappointed.

Maybe it's because I spent four years of college learning how to make and critique movies (my coursework included scripting for the media, recording and editing film, experimental video, and film and video analysis), but with the exception of the Harry Potter series, I have rarely seen a movie version of a book that did the book justice. Maybe it's because I spent many a summer devouring stacks of fiction that I learned how to create vivid mental pictures that can't be faithfully translated into reality. Maybe it's because the best images are left incomplete, left to one's own imagination rather than to some hotshot director's vision.

Maybe it's because books are way better brain food than movies.

(Note to self: Continue to demonstrate this by being an example of a voracious reader for the boys.)

(Note to everyone else: While I am enjoying the Twilight series tremendously and do not begrudge Stephenie Meyer her success, I do not think the books are examples of good writing. In fact, I find them quite the opposite, and felt that Eclipse was the poorest written of the series so far. I don't know that I could do any better, but you know what they say about those who can't do... they either teach, or become critics. I'd be happy being a combination of the two, as long as my criticism of my students is purely to help them improve their skills and not out of spite or malice.)

Two more thoughts on Adam Lambert...

... well, three.

1. I still find the guy really likeable. And I sincerely want him to have a long and successful career as an artist, whatever that means.
2. I've said this for as long as I'd been watching American Idol this season: I find that Adam Lambert's singing voice sounds an awful lot like Brian McCarthy's. Except I think these days, Brian is now known as Owen McCarthy. Either way, he was the lead singer for the Everyothers, the band for which my cousin played bass. And every time I watched Adam sing on AI, I would think of Brian. Owen. Whoever.
3. This has probably more to do with the folks at 19 Entertainment than Adam, and I'm not sayin', but I'm just sayin'. Enough with the Donnie Darko version of "Mad World." Please. I used to love that song. Mostly because you never heard it except on 80's flashback programming, and only then if you were lucky, and it was usually the original Tears For Fears version. But now that it's become Glambert's signature song, it's waaaaaaaaaay overdone. Please, for my sake, give the song some breathing room. Like seven or eight years' worth.

Good Children's Programming

In the interest of fairness, since I bashed Hip Hop Harry the other day, I feel the need to provide an example of a *good* children's television show.

Exhibit A: Pinky Dinky Doo

Why It's Good:

1. It teaches new vocabulary words. Each episode introduces a new word, and every time a character uses that word, Mr. Guinea Pig heralds its use with trumpet fanfare. (reminds me of what Mrs. Bender used to have us do in the Intermediate Unit - in our writing pieces, whenever we used a new word, we were to draw blue flashes around it. When you're a third or fourth grader, that's pretty kewl stuff.)
2. It teaches narrative elements such as sequencing and summarizing. Yeah, pretty heavy stuff for preschool television, right? After each episode, Pinky and her brother Tyler play games like "What Came First?" and "Who Said That?" to test viewers' comprehension skills.
3. It has a hand-drawn, collage-like look that's not unlike another favorite of mine, Blue's Clues. Rather than utilizing slick 3D computer animation like some kids' shows, characters and backgrounds in PDD looks like something a kid could draw him or herself.
4. It has a kid's sensibility. Character names include Bobby Boom, Daffinee Toilette, and Nicholas Biscuit. One episode takes place in outer space, and the kids' spaceship is shaped like a giant toilet. It's purely a sight gag; the shapeship's appearance is never mentioned. Kids are treated like intelligent beings who get such a joke, not objects to which writers must condescend.

Thank you, Jim Jinkins for creating a terrific kids' show.

Genius or Exploitation?

I watched Adam Lambert on Regis and Kelly today.

You know, they call him "Glambert," the guy with the black nailpolish and eyeliner ("guyliner" to be precise) who everyone was convinced would win American Idol but didn't? Yeah, that guy. I really enjoyed watching him on AI, but after his interview with Reege and Kelly, I'm not sure how I feel about him anymore.

He told the hosts how instead of viewing AI as a competition with other singers, he looked at it as a competition with himself, that each week he strove to perform better than the week before. Loved that Zen-like twist on competing.

Then he went on to say that he approached his audition for and experience on AI not as a competition to win, but rather as a platform to become a mainstream artist. Sure explains his reaction to Kris Allen's win, and yes, Jennifer Hudson also said something similar, but for some reason this left a sour taste in my mouth.

Maybe because it's so soon after the finale that Adam has exposed AI for what it is - not just a means to discover as-yet undiscovered talents, but also a platform for aspiring (and semi-seasoned) artists to springboard their careers.

I wonder how Simon Fuller feels about this.

Kiddie Kritique

I admit it. The title sucks today. Can't think of anything more clever right now.

So this afternoon while T was at his program, J and I watched some television. The first show we watched was his current favorite, Hi-5. In the beginning, as with most children's shows, I found it kind of annoying, but after a few (hundred) viewings it's grown on me. The songs are catchy and, most important, the content is age appropriate and rather unoffensive. After Hi-5 was a program called Hip Hop Harry.

Hip Hop Harry. Where to begin? As you might gather from the title, the show features a character named Hip Hop Harry, which is actually some person in a bear(?) costume. But not just any bear, oh no. Let's just say that Harry's costume was probably designed by Jack Donaghy - oversized T-shirt with the manufacturer's label on the lower left front, baggy shorts, humongous white sneakers with untied laces spanning the eyelets, and let's not forget the massive "H" chest medallion hanging from what appears to be some sort of gold drapery roping.

The show also features some children and a teenager or childishly dressed adult, all stereotypically attired with oversized pants and shirts for the boys, and cropped jackets for the girls.

I was so dizzy from the camera work - arcing pans, quick zoom in/zoom outs - that it was hard to focus on the dreck these kids were saying. Today's episode was all about how hip hop music contains elements of other genres - classical, country, etc. Naturally, there was the setup dialogue ("I love hip hop music! Is there any other kind?") accompanied by the requisite mugging to the camera, followed by H3 (takes too long to type Hip Hop Harry so many times, so from this point forward, we'll call him "H3") explaining from behind his two turntables and a microphone that yes, Virginia, there are other kinds of music played on ... gasp! ... REAL INSTRUMENTS (demonstrated by the kids with FAKE, SYNTHESIZED EXAMPLES), and if you just give it a chance, doggone it, you just might like all kinds of music.

I think I'd like to meet H3's head writer and the suit who greenlit the show and punch them both. Kids deserve so much better than this crap.