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At the End of the Day, I Shouldn’t Have Watched That
It’s too late for me, but maybe you can save yourselves. If you have any kind of leanings toward depression, you might want to re-think going to see Les Miserables. I am not sure what illogical portion of my brain took control when I made the decision to fork out bucks to go see that movie, but I think my blind adoration of Hugh Jackman may have had something to do with it. You would think that the fact that it is titled Les Miserables (you don’t even have to speak French to translate that) would have clued me in. Or, perhaps, my experience watching the musical on-stage a few years ago… in addition to the repeated viewings of the anniversary celebration on PBS… and then on my treasured DVD. But, no, I just had to see the movie.
Many people would find it up-lifting. Parts of it were. But other parts were mind-searingly tragic. Especially trying to watch Russell Crowe sing. Unfortunately, despite Inspector Javert’s forgettable solo performances, I could not get the rest of the darn soundtrack out of my head.
And then I returned to work today. I was so completely busy that I had no time to mentally replay the musically accompanied deaths of a dozen horribly abused and mistreated characters.
My reprieve lasted until about 6:30 tonight. I brought Dimples to dance practice and sat in the lobby, listening to mothers chatting. One of them was lecturing another mother on her lost ATM card. She finished her advice by saying, “And at the end of the day, the bank is liable.”
Who says that?!!!!!!!! Who still says, “At the end of the day?” The whole friggin’ song washed over me in a second, and I thought, “I am never going to get away from the streets of 19th century France. Curse you, Hugh Jackman!”
So, I returned home, with the darn music playing in my head again, and I looked at Wonderbutt and realized that he is really a canine Javert, always alert and on the look-out for his quarry. And I am his quarry. Which would make me Jean Valjean.
And now life is very confusing, so I have decided to swear off all musicals except Grease. Because the only thing that ever depressed me about Grease was the worry about being a Beauty School Dropout. Since I am now 40 something and have a master’s degree in something completely unrelated to hair and makeup, that does not concern me so much anymore.
I can’t watch Grease 2, though, because I’m still bummed that we never had a graduation luau at my high school. Or Maxwell Caulfield. Or boys.
Wonderbutt. At the end of a day waiting for me.
I Miss The Hairbrush Song
O.K. Just crossed one more thing off of my list. Dimples’ Christmas c.d. is finally finished.
Yes, I know it’s the day after Easter.
And, no, I am not starting early on this year’s Christmas list. Do you not know me at all by now?
Allow me to explain.
Every year, since she turned 1 in 2002, Dimples has received a carefully compiled c.d. of special songs for Christmas. Each song somehow reminds me of her. They are generally a mix of “kid” songs and “grownup” songs. Here is the playlist from the first year: I Hope You Dance, You Are So Beautiful, Over the Rainbow, Because You Loved Me, You & Me Against the World, Say Goodnight, Tomorrow, Wonderful World.
Pretty sappy, huh?
Over the years, the songs have morphed a bit to try to incorporate Dimples’ actual taste in music. Miss Independent and The Hairbrush Song (from Veggie Tales) debuted in 2005. Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield made the 2006 cut. In 2007, Trans-Siberian orchestra just HAD to be included.
2009 is where things went awry. First of all, I included Boom Boom Pow by the BlackEyed Peas, not realizing I had downloaded the explicit version. Dimples informed me that there was a bad word on her Christmas c.d. We had the talk about how words aren’t bad; it’s just how and where you use them. Since her name isn’t Fergie or Will.I.am, and she does not often perform on stage in front of millions of people, Dimples seemed to accept that her life does not often provide the appropriate context for that kind of language.
The problem was that Dimples decided that she liked that c.d. so much, she played it for a year. Every day. And every night. Because she cannot go to sleep unless her c.d. player is on. And no other c.d. would do.
Eager to transition to a new c.d. that played anything, ANYTHING, other than Boom Boom Pow, I quickly burned a new c.d. for Christmas 2010. It included what I thought were some great hits in the 8th year of Dimples – Movie Loves a Screen, Human, You Found Me, …
Dimples tried it for one night, and declared that there was NO WAY she was going to sleep with that c.d. on. There were too many slow songs, for one thing (according to her), and I forget what her other equally unreasonable reasons were.
It is amazing, after two years of listening to the same ten songs every day and every night, how it finally becomes white noise in your environment. Either that, or I went insane and I haven’t figured it out yet. Now that I think about it, that could explain why we got Wonderbutt, the bulldog puppy, in December 0f 2010…
Anyway, this past Christmas, I was in no rush to carry on the c.d. tradition based on the lack of customer appreciation the preceding year.
About the end of January, Dimples said, “Hey! Where’s my Christmas c.d.?”
I gave her what I imagine to be my You’re Kidding look.
Every month since then, about once a week, Dimples has asked where her c.d. is. Since it is now April, I’m thinking she might actually be serious. So, I made her a new c.d. on Easter Day. It still had the title, “Merry Christmas!”, and the year, 2011. She deemed the song choices, “very good”.
Last night, as I was reading to her before bed, Dimples interrupted to say, “I’m going to listen to the old c.d. one last time.”
Boom Boom Pow right to the kisser.
Why My Flights of Fancy Can’t Get Off the Runway
Sometimes I imagine, when my toe begins to itch in the middle of the night, that I am an international spy who is being tortured for information, and I must resist, at all costs, the urge to give it all up. I last about 5 seconds.
When my daughter sings the same five words from a song over and over again, I again imagine that I am a spy being tortured – but in this case I have no information to give up.
Sometimes I imagine that I am a gifted singer singing a duet with Adam Levine on my car radio, and that a recording executive happens to be in the car next to me and will do anything to get my name, including executing foolish maneuvers on the road to get my attention. I am the only one driving insanely.
Conversely, I also like to imagine that I am a horrible singer and that my voice has completely paralyzed the stalker who is crouched in the back of my car.
When I buy a toy for a future birthday/holiday, etc… and hide it in my closet, I imagine a family member discovering it after I’ve died from a tragic accident (perhaps when the recording executive cut me off in his zeal to sign me to a record contract) and crying hysterically over my thoughtfulness.
When I fling a piece of laundry into the closet, missing the hamper, I imagine a family member discovering bits of lingerie and various stages of embarrassing fat pants in the nooks and crannies of my closet after I’ve died from a ridiculous freak accident (like jumping in front of a recording executive’s car so he would sign me to a record contract) and posting the evidence of my slovenliness on FaceBook.
I don’t use FaceBook. One reason is that whenever I imagine myself as a famous dead author, I worry that people will hunt down my Facebook posts and invent elaborate explanations of my writing from the seemingly boring pictures of my mundane existence.
Another Reason Not to Use Facebook - It Makes it Harder to Be an Undercover Spy
Whenever I reflect on my prosaic life story, I imagine that I would make a great spy because seemingly boring people are perfect undercover operatives.
Then I try to go to sleep and my toe begins to itch.
Note to self: Do NOT EVER AGAIN Look Up “Big Toe” on Google Images. Gross!!!!!!
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7876912@N07/6439755299/”>bubjay</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>cc</a>
Tag, You’re It
The above was the recent tag listing on one of my favorite blogs, Twinfamy.
I think he forgot to include a “sarcasm” tag.
According to WordPress, the less tags you use, the better. However, I noticed that Twinfamy ended up with 108 comments on that particular post, and 8 and 13 on the ones before that. Personally, I think a whole bunch of people have been searching “inauthentic Dada”, and couldn’t believe it when they finally hit the jackpot.
I have been doing a little research on tags. In my continual quest to boost my stats I notice that the tag that gets the biggest hits is the News tag. I did give one of my posts this tag. And it was a legitimate post about noodling – very educational, too. I don’t think it was truly appreciated by the News tag surfers however. I briefly considered doing it on every post just to get some more visits to my site, but figured that would violate some kind of blogging etiquette. It probably doesn’t increase your stats very much if you tick people off.
I surfed some of the posts that appeared under the News tag and started to fall asleep. I mean, do people really seek out this stuff? All you have to do is open Yahoo, read six headlines, and you are caught up.
So I then checked out the second biggest tag – Music. I perused some of those blogs and couldn’t even understand them. They were throwing around names of bands and singers that made less sense than the news posts.
One of my most viewed posts had “Porn” in the title. Thus, I felt that it was perfectly legal for me to add it as a tag. I have a feeling that porn seekers might have felt a bit differently after skimming through my announcement of my intention to participate in an Adult Spelling Bee. Interestingly enough, according the Word Press Cloud of Tags, Porn does not appear to be one of the top ten. I think there’s some deceit going on here.
After looking at the top ten tags, I realize that I’m really not writing about anything that anyone desires to read. Where the heck is the animal tag, or bulldog, or dogs? And, for heaven’s sake, why isn’t there a Wonderbutt tag?
It just occurred to me that maybe WordPress’ tag page is showing the tags that are used the most by bloggers, not necessarily searched the most. In which case, I need to aim to hit a tag that’s on the page, but not too big because the bigger your tag is, the more competition you have. But I certainly don’t want to do one of the measly little tags, like Libya. I know less about that than I do about Music.
After careful consideration, I have settled on the following topic for tomorrow’s post: Miscellaneous. Surely I can think of something to go with that. I can feel my stats rising already.
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