Miss Piggy Lunchbox

For those of you interested, which should be all of you, in the outcome of the pick-a-CD-for-fetus task I was assigned by My Baby, I have the results.

I didn’t make it through the 80 CDs I had picked out.  The deadline buzzer rang as I was about in the I’s.  And even then I couldn’t settle on just one, giving My Baby no fewer than three: one jazz, one classical, and one pop/rock.  The winners are…

Bach: Brandeburg Concertos 4, 5, & 6 (thanks uncle J-mez for Our Baby’s first gift!)
Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue
Beth Orton: Trailer Park, which got me through the last couple of days of thesis writing, so it was front of mind.

I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t end up with a male vocalist in there, but the kid’s got plenty of time for that, I suppose.  Besides, if she’s anything like her dad (don’t read too much into that, I don’t know the sex and we’re pretending it’s a girl this month), she’ll take an instant liking to them anyway.

The kid’s a regular music critic, already strongly preferring Bach to Miles Davis, My Baby reports.  I love that the kid’s right.  I mean, Miles Davis is great, but I’m not sure I’d put any musician in front of Bach.  Besides, the Davis and Orton CDs are definitely intended to be the sleepy-time CDs and, apparently, Bach will now be how she gets her exercise.

The other night in childbirth preparation class, between watching explicit videos of birth and practicing breathing, my offspring got the hiccups.  It was bothering him as well as My Baby.  He’d move violently with each hiccup and thrash around after each one; My Baby attributed the secondary thrashing to him being upset by the hiccup.

But never fear, Daddy’s here.  I applied some pressure to My Baby’s abdomen with my hand and rubbed firmly and slowly.  From the minute I started rubbing his hiccups stopped and they didn’t come back.

My accelerated path to World’s Greatest Dad continues.  I’ve got this s**t down.  Bring on the teenage years.

I can’t remember why, but for some reason over Thanksgiving my mom turned on her cell phone, something she never does unless she’s on a road trip.  When she turned it on the phone made an audible alert.

Mom: Oh, somebody’s calling just as I turned it on.

Me: It’s probably just telling you you have a voice mail.

Mom: Oh.  No, wait…it says ‘new voice message.’  What does that mean?

Me: …

Mom: Is that the same as voice mail?

Me: Yes.

As My Baby pointed out, what’s odd here is that “mail” in “voice mail” is really a misnomer.  There’s nothing mail-y, in the postal service sense of the word, about receiving a voice mail.  But here they’ve tried to be more accurate in their naming and it’s only confused things.

Someday I will be old.  This fact is often presented to me in such stark ways that there is no way I could overlook it.

My Baby’s pregnant.  Due March 22nd.  (title reference here)

A Tale Of Three Reviews

The first review lived in my head. It was based on a few listens to this CD and a conversation with My Baby. It told of how, yeah, Sinatra’s fine, but come on, folks…he didn’t even write these songs, Dean Martin’s voice was better, and all these songs really do is evoke a mood, like you should be watching some When Harry Met Sally knock-off romantic comedy, especially the in-love montage where the guy trips and falls in Central Park or they’re window shopping at Christmas and they’re so so ridiculously happy, and you know they are because Sinatra is playing over their silent antics. The real reason Sinatra is Sinatra, the review said, is not the music as much as it is the rock star persona. He had wealth, women, and both legitimate and illegitimate power, setting the archetype for the late 20th-century rock star before we even knew what rock and roll would be. The songs were the dredges of big band music, sucking all the life out of the already quick-to-be-shlocky genre and pandering to the lowest common denominator with cavity-causing string riffs. “And what’s with these liner notes?” the review concluded. “Why is this egghead drowning me in superlatives, trying to convince me that Sinatra had some kind of artistic rigor and aesthetic supremacy my ears tell me is missing?”

The second review was published almost three years ago. It starts a lot like the first review, complete with the Dean Martin comparison and attribution of Sinatra’s stardom to his aura instead of his singing. The review then went on to talk about how some of the songs on that album were pretty good…or at least that many of them had good parts.

Which brings us to the third review…this review. It starts with the first review, then merges into the second review. It doesn’t back away from anything in the first two reviews, it’s just that I’ve already said everything in those two reviews. Except, really? These are the 20 best songs you could get from eight years in the prime of this icon’s career? Gee, overrated much? But anyway, beyond the infectious melody and the Lawrence-Welk-with-good-looks schmaltz, what’s left to discuss?

Well, let’s talk songwriters. Specifically, let’s talk about the Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn songwriting team. How in the world are these guys responsible for the two worst songs on this disc as well as two of its three best? “Love And Marriage” plods with its obvious nods to the overzealous, righteous censors and arbiters of Hollywood values of the day as well as its just plain phrasal plodding. “High Hopes” suffers from the saccharine treatment as well…I think the song is a carcinogen. Its only redeeming quality is that it’s not “Love And Marriage.” Meanwhile, “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” survives its pro-marriage cornball lyrics with a grooving sax line that seems to imply you don’t have to give up the single life when you get married (wink wink) and the catchy-as-hell “Come Fly With Me” is only not a mixer because its lyrics are just too cute.

That’s it…that’s all I’ve got that’s new. Maybe in three years I’ll go through the same struggle with Sinatra. Or maybe by then I’ll have some more insight into the multiple personality mystery that is Jimmy VanHeusen. Either way, it’s probably safe for me to now say that, while I still think he’s drastically overrated, I like Sinatra, though this album (the 50’s) helps his case a lot, just by being far superior to the last Sinatra CD I reviewed (the 60’s and 70’s).

Rating:

Mixers: “(Love Is) The Tender Trap,” “Witchcraft”
Keepers: “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “Learning’ The Blues,” “You Make Me Feel So Young,” “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “Come Fly With Me”
Filed Between: The Simpsons – Songs In The Key Of Springfield and the Singles soundtrack

First, sorry for my prolonged absence. It started because I attended Seattle Opera’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle, which is four operas, three of them very long. All told it was 18.5 hours if you count just the time from the start to the end, including intermission, but not including commute, parking, etc. time. I thought I would blog that week by writing up reviews of the operas, but it was hard enough just to get my work done in time.

And then last week I got sick, which put me further behind and left no time for blogging. Plus I can’t stand listening to music when I’m sick…it just leaves me with negative connotations of whatever music I listened to at the time. I still have very negative feelings about Nirvana’s very good Incesticide, which was a gift for me when I got my wisdom teeth taken out. I know music is supposed to have healing qualities and ameliorate pain and discomfort, but for me it’s the other way around: the pain and discomfort and up coloring my impression of the music. I guess that’s me in a nutshell, huh? Always able to find the cloud in that silver lining.

So anyway, this last weekend My Baby headed out of town for the weekend to the family cabin because she knew I’d need the weekend to catch up. And I did. And I had an entire holiday weekend lined up with nothing but Getting Things Done on the docket. So imagine how thrilled I was to fire up the machine and find out that the server on which all of my work is at school is down for the weekend. It’s hard to describe how overwhelmingly depressed I was. So, an illness during the week and no server availability over the weekend. Somebody up there really wants me to fail.

I won’t be able to post much this week, either, but more on that next week. Sorry.

For an explanation of what’s going on, you can start tracing back the re-stating of the vows tradition with last year’s post.

This year we went camping near Cle Elum, a city 80 miles east of here that gets 300 days of sun a year where we’re considering getting some property.  Well, we were going to go camping but every campsite was filled so we ended up at a resort.  It was like Frasier and Lillith go camping.

Anyway, here is the public re-statement of my wedding vows.  This year’s addition is in bold.

Baby,
I promise you that I will always be the things that made you fall in love with me: honest and transparent, funny and witty, open-minded and creative, adoring.
I promise you i will never stop pampering and courting you.
I promise you will always be my muse, and I will draw daily inspiration from you.  I promise to return the favor by trying to inspire you daily.
I promise to work on being a better husband: to talk to you, to tell you what I’m feeling, and to engage in continual self-evaluation.
I promise to prioritize us, without sacrificing you or me.  I promise to always make room for us in my life, and to make sure you know when I think we need to adjust to get to the right level of us in both of our lives.
I promise to try to love the things about you that are just in your nature, such as the telltale hair monster left behind everywhere you’ve been.
I promise to make a fuss over you when you’re sick, to love you and support you and take your side when you’ve had a bad day.  I promise to listen to you tell me about your bad day and to refrain from giving you unsolicited solutions.
I promise that I will do my best to learn how we are as one, and to take into account how my mood and actions affect you.
I promise to try to recover quickly from disagreements.  I promise to do my best to stay on the high road.  And I promise to forgive and forget mistakes said and done in the heat of the moment.
I promise to be stubbornly filled with determined, creative solutions to the most gridlocked, vexing situations we encounter
I promise you that I will help you and support you to achieve your dreams.  And I promise that, with your support, I will pursue my mine as well.  I promise never to stop taking new risks and adventures with you.
I promise you physical, emotional, and mental fidelity.  I promise that you will always be my baby that i adore completely with my mind, body, and soul, and i promise to trust that you adore me as well.
I promise to be vigilant in never letting you forget that you are the most wonderful, most beautiful woman in the world.  i promise to set the husband you, as the most wonderful, beautiful woman in the world, deserve, as the impossible ideal i will strive to be.
And above all, baby, I promise to be always on your team.  And I will do my best to make our team the envy of every other team at the party of life.

Today is our five-year wedding anniversary.  For some reason, that really hits me.  Like, one through four were ‘meh’ and early…but five is now a really real anniversary.  Or something.

Anyway, the fifth anniversary is the wood anniversary.  So you know what that means My Baby gets for her present.  Some good old ‘Norwegian Wood’.

Vows on Monday, probably, after they are unveiled this weekend.

After a test drive of a Corolla and a Prius, which costs about $8k more than a Corolla.

Me: So what’s the financing again on a Prius?
Sales guy: Pfft. If you’re all about the financing, then you want a Corolla [at 0.0% APR]. But come on…what car did you like best? It’s too much money to settle for your second choice.
My Baby: We would like a new salesperson, please.

First, a conversation with the sales guys:

Sales Guy 1: You don’t want a Civic. It’s more expensive, plus your insurance will go up: Civics are the most stolen car in the country.
Me: What’s number two on that list?
Sales Guy 1: I’m not sure, but there’s not a Toyota in the top 10.

Later, after much hand-shaking, a conversation with the finance manager:

Finance Manager: Here’s the cost breakdown
Me: What’s this $200 window etching thing? Nobody mentioned that before.
Finance Manager: Oh, that was in the monthly payment I just quoted you.
Me: Yeah, but it wasn’t in the base price and that’s all anybody talked about until now.
Finance Manager: Nobody told you about this? This is great. This is us etching the VIN into the glass so thieves can’t file it off. You want this because Toyotas are the most stolen car in the country.  We put this on because cars kept getting stolen off of our lot.
My Baby: Great…and you passed the cost on to us.

So, when you want me to buy your car, nobody steals it.  When you want me to pay for the security thing you put on to protect your inventory, then thieves are everywhere stealing these things.

(It makes for a worse blog post, but they did take off the cost of the window etching after I complained.)

Update: According to Insurance Journal and IntelliChoice, the National Crime Insurance Bureau’s list of top 10 stolen cars in 2008 is:

1. 1995 Honda Civic
2. 1991 Honda Accord
3. 1989 Toyota Camry
4. 1997 Ford F-150 Series Pickup
5. 1994 Chevrolet C/K 1500 Pickup
6. 1994 Acura Integra
7. 2004 Dodge Ram Pickup
8. 1994 Nissan Sentra
9. 1988 Toyota Pickup
10. 2007 Toyota Corolla

I’d be pissed if I didn’t expect that everything a car salesperson says is a lie.  Of course, nothing stated was really a lie…but I’d surmise a misprepresentation of what was known.  My point was I’d be pissed if I’d based my purchase decision on it.