Tag: Lydia

The Lydster, Part 128: Weird Al

The Daughter asked if I’ve done an ABC Wednesday Y is for Yankovic; why, yes, I have.

weirdalThe Daughter was introduced to Weird Al Yankovic on the release of his July 2014 album, Mandatory Fun, which opened at #1 on the Billboard charts, the first comedy album since 1963 to top the charts. She went away for about a week to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in mid-August, spending time with her 13 y.o. twin cousins and she comes home a Weird Al maven.

This is not a bad thing, mind you. I’ve been following the musician’s career for about three and a half decades, back when it was primarily him playing the accordion on songs such as My Bologna (parody of The Knack’s My Sharona) and Another One Rides the Bus (take on Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust)- versions you can hear HERE – before his sound got more sophisticated and full with I Love Rocky Road (Joan Jett’s I Love Rock and Roll), Eat It (Michael Jackson’s Beat It) and Ricky (an I Love Lucy pastiche based on Mickey by Toni Basil).

The Daughter asked if I’ve done an ABC Wednesday Y is for Yankovic; why, yes, I have.

She came up with her Top 10 videos. All of the songs can be found HERE except the newest ones, indicated with an *, which can be found on the Weird Al main page.

10. Handy* (home repair, based on Fancy by Iggy Azalea)
9. Like a Surgeon (based on Like a Virgin by Madonna)
8. Fat (based on Michael Jackson’s Bad)
7. Eat It
6. I Lost on JEOPARDY! (about the TV game show, based on the Greg Kihn Band’s Jeopardy)
5. White and Nerdy (parody of “Ridin'” by Chamillionaire)
4. Foil* (about the aluminum wrap, based on Royals by Lorde)
3. Word Crimes* (about linguistic sins, based on Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke)
2. Amish Paradise (based on Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio)
1. First World Problems* (style parody of Pixies)

She challenged me to come up with my own list, but it’s so changeable. Here’s a snapshot in time:

10. Trapped In The Drive-Thru (based on Trapped in the Closet by R. Kelly)
9. Dare To Be Stupid (style parody of Devo)
8. Stop Forwarding This Crap To Me (style parody of Jim Steinman, who wrote a lot for Meat Loaf)
7. Tacky* (based on Happy by Pharrell Williams)
6. Gump (about the movie character Forrest Gump, based on Lump by The Presidents of the United States of America)
5. Mission Statement* (every business cliche you hate, a style parody of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
4. Amish Paradise
3. I Lost on JEOPARDY! – since I have, this HAD to be on the list
2. Word Crimes*
1. Smells Like Nirvana (parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana)

But her affection for Foil, Handy, and especially First World Problem may alter my list.

She also insisted that The Wife, less seeped in Yankovicmania, make her list:

5. Like A Surgeon
4. Fat
3. Eat It
2. Tacky
1. Word Crimes

Crummy, we feel

This may shock you, but people related to me have actually suggested that I might be just a touch cranky when I’m sick.

sickIt started with the Daughter a week before Halloween, sluggish going to school, going to her team’s soccer match that Saturday but too weak to play, tired on Sunday, then home sick from school on Monday. She went to school late on Tuesday, but too fatigued for gym.

The Wife, who is never sick – just ask her – was feeling off on Wednesday, stayed home from work on Thursday, and still recovering on Friday.

There’s something unfortunate about being ill on Halloween. The night before, I slept extremely poorly. The Wife, when she’s ill, wheezes audibly so that I can’t sleep. I went down to the sofa, but the cats running around made that not a viable option. Finally, at about 3:20 a.m., I went to live down on the floor in the Daughter’s room. I literally crawled back to bed one minute before the alarm went off at 6 a.m. I thought when I went to work that I was just tired, but realized by midday that I too was becoming ill.

This may shock you, but people related to me have actually suggested that I might be just a touch cranky when I’m sick. When I got home, I schlepped furniture from the front porch to the shed, because The Wife had asked me days earlier to move them, lest the trick-or-treaters use them in their pranks. I was spent after that and could put on a happy face briefly as I handed out the candy before the others took over the task. Home all weekend with various ailments: sore throat, headache, congestion, body aches, and vivid dreams.

The result of which is that I can’t write a cleverly coherent post here, though I wrote TWO posts for my usually neglected TU blog, one on the NYS ballot proposals and Albany School Board election, and one on the governor’s race, which was time-sensitive.

I did watch about a half of (US) football on Sunday, Cardinals over Cowboys – YES! I also saw this unfortunate gaffe on NBC News Saturday night in real time.

Back to work today, but just muddling through…

This shall pass. I hope so.
**
My friend Dan’s story on how fear, nastiness and dirty tricks sideline public discussion of the Albany City budget.

The Lydster, Part 127: Watching the news

I was the kid who was watching Huntley-Brinkley on NBC News or Walter Cronkite on CBS News by the time *I* was ten.

NEWSFor her first nine years, I sheltered the Daughter from watching the evening news, viewing it after she went to bed, or before she got up in the morning. Sometimes, I’d watch it while she was in the other room.

Turns out that she is preternaturally interested in these things. Moreover, she develops opinions about them that did not necessarily come from us. Ferguson, MO made her aware that it’s a little scarier being a black child in America than she previously thought. The death of Palestinian children during the conflict with Israel made her angry. And she has great antipathy for Russia’s Putin.

Sometimes, she shows off her knowledge. Last summer, she said to a friend, “Do you know what happened in Mali?” Her friend didn’t know who Molly was; it was a reference to a plane crash. During a manhunt for a cop killer in Pennsylvania, she was surprised that her friend from Pennsylvania was unaware of it.

It’s my fault. I was the kid who was watching Huntley-Brinkley on NBC News or Walter Cronkite on CBS News by the time I was ten. But the news seemed tamer when I was her age. Our involvement in Vietnam was still minimal. There was racial strife, but it seemed to be focused in the far-away South.

Now, there are ISIS/ISIL video executions; she didn’t see them – heck, I didn’t see them, but she was still aware of them, though not the first one until after the second one had taken place. Hundreds of girls are kidnapped in Nigeria. Several NFL players are involved with domestic violence.

She always DOES have the option of going away from the set, but she seems to have the peculiar notion that she should be an informed citizen. Where she got THAT idea, I have no idea.

One wants to protect one’s child, but I guess keeping her blissfully unaware is not an option anymore.

The Lydster, Part 126: Allergies

Cats, and in particular, Midnight and Stormy, The Daughter LOVES.

looks like a young Stormy
looks like a young Stormy
The Daughter went to the allergist in early August to get a skin test. She tested positive for dust mites, plus pollens in grass, ash, birch, beech, maple, oak and poplar. These were previously known.

The new wrinkle: she’s now allergic to cats.

As noted, we got two cats last year. Continue reading “The Lydster, Part 126: Allergies”

The yard sale

Another thing I hate about yard sales: dealers, who come an hour before the stated time, then harrumph when the stuff you have doesn’t meet their needs.

yardsaleLet me state that I generally hate yard sales, garage sales, and the like. Specifically:
*I don’t like going to other people’s sales, especially when they put out things that are, to quote Oscar the Grouch, everything “ragged and rotten and rusty.”
*I don’t like having our own sale, because it involved going through lots of our own stuff. It’s time-consuming and enervating.
And most of all:
*I HATE bringing back into the house the stuff we decided to sell, but it didn’t.

Yet we (OK, the Wife and the Daughter) agreed (and I accepted the decision) to have a yard sale on September 6. The logic of that date was that it would be after school began, but before the fall got going in earnest. Soccer began the following week, as were her tryout for the Nutcracker and rehearsal for the church play about the Beatles.

To make it better, we thought we’d get our neighbors to do the same, and two of them agreed. But we didn’t do much advertising, since we were busy with prep. In fact no ads or posters, until three days before the sale, when I placed a free ad on timesunion.com.

The Daughter was particularly motivated. Her room was not as tidy as it could be, because she had so much stuff she had never gotten rid of. Tantalized by making money, she suddenly found books and stuffed animals she no longer wanted; indeed, a few of the books I kept myself. She also sorted out clothes that no longer fit her.

That Saturday morning, one of the neighbors pulled out. They looked at the forecast, which suggested that it would rain in the middle of our 9-3 sale, and that wasn’t going to be viable. Sigh.

Another thing I hate about yard sales: dealers, who come an hour before the stated time, then harrumph when the stuff you have doesn’t meet their needs; we had three of them, one especially rude.

In the first half-hour, we had no one. In the first hour, we made about $1.50. But as the day went on, we did better. This was improved by the addition of my brother-in-law’s family driving nearly an hour to add their stuff to ours. Separate accounting, but still: more stuff makes it better.

I got rid of both of my old CD holders, which I never liked; they opened like accordions and took up too much floor space.

At the end of it all, we made close to $100. More importantly, we got rid of stuff, and the Daughter’s room is far cleaner. And while the Daughter was disappointed that almost none of her clothes sold, we’ll be giving them to someone who can use them, so it’s all good.

Still, it will be a LONG time before we have another one unless I can hire Eddie Mitchell to run it.

Ramblin' with Roger
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