the shrewdness of apes

when i was about 7, i was dancing around my bedroom singing along to Hall & Oates' "Your Kiss Is On My List". only i decided for some reason to replace the word "Kiss" with "Tits" (and of course changed "Is" to "Are" for subject-verb agreement). my mom overheard me, and needless to say she wasn't terribly pleased. i don't remember a major punishment and i honestly didn't even know what the word meant at that point. it was just a word i had overheard somewhere along the line. but i was forbidden from using it again.

earlier today, the once and former Hand-washings sent out a link to 23 homemade Hall & Oates videos that are part of some contest their website is running. i kind of wish there was a video of the 7-year old me jumping around. or else video of me and the wife dancing like fools to "I Can't Go For That" at Chris Larry's wedding - something that she just reminded me of. because stuff like that would fit right in with this collection.

H&O always had a certain cheesiness to them and no matter what kind of cheese you like, it's represented here. goofy premises? try #10. cover versions featuring over-emotive closeups? #11 got it in spades. needless distracting visual effects? perhaps they'll keep you from notciing the horrific dancing in #16. deep cuts + puppets? #12 has you covered. unintentional comedy? pretty much everywhere, but #5 seemed to go above and beyond the call of duty with the woman lip synching and then jumping into her PT Cruiser and then giving a kid a ride on the handlebars of a bike and then riding in the back of a pickup truck, all to a really bad song. you really have to watch it. or watch them all, really. it's all there: bad outfits, bad wigs, bad lip synching, women in drag, glorified wedding bands, highbrow, lowbrow, Stew "the man of 1,000 voices" and a whole, whole lot of instrument miming. you'll lose an hour, but it's a fun hour. a lot of it felt like watching a Mr. Show sketch (David Cross seems like he would make an excellent Oates).

of course, then you get to vote for your favorite and for me it came down to #8 vs. #19. 8 featured a non-obvious choice of song ("Head Above Water"), a keytar, and an apartment complex swimming pool. 19 featured two women in ridiculous outfits re-purposing themselves as "The Maneaters" and doing a decent job of singing the song while adding a few new flourishes (harmonies! acoustic guitar solo!) and dancing terribly. in the end i went with #8, so here is your t.s.o.a. approved winner:

Posted by Jamie at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

for the first time in almost 14 years, i think i am experiencing a return visit from my old nemesis: Poison Ivy. in my youth that pernicious weed, that insalubrious inflamer of the epidermis, that nefarious ruiner of summer was the annual price to pay for long days spent traipsing through woods and chasing errant baseballs into the underbrush. (don't get me wrong, i played video games and watched TV, too). i even got it so bad once in high school that i actually had to miss school for a couple days- it clustered on the backs of my knees and in my crotch to the point where it was one huge blob of blisters that eventually popped and oozed. i remember sitting around the house with napkins everywhere to try to keep from covering everything i touched with a slime trail. i eventually had to be put on an oral steroid that fucked so badly with my already roiling teenage hormones that my parents would find me crying in my room for no reason at all.

in 1993 i returned to college for my sophomore year with a rather mild case by my standards. i was back a few days before most of the rest of campus for reasons that i no longer remember, and by the time my roommate showed up, it was pretty much done with. i don't even remember what i did with those days to myself back in the halcyon days before the internet beckoned at every slack tide in the daily planner. the point of this is that that was the last time that i had poison ivy. after about 12 straight years of affliction, i managed to avoid it. this despite several backcountry camping trips in Shenandoah National Park, hikes in the woods, a summer spent as a counselor at a day camp, etc. for a while i thought that maybe my body had even built up a tolerance to it, learning that it was better to let sleeping histamines lie rather than endure a week or more of itching and furtive scratching.

so it was with some shock when i began scratching at the back of my leg yesterday, thinking that maybe i had become the victim of yet another mosquito bite (they've been particularly fond of me this year) when i started to feel multiple bumps close together in a pattern that was decidedly more regional. upon closer inspection, it appears to be confirmed: looks like i brought something else home from Fire Island besides a sunburn.

Posted by Jamie at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

with baseball on the All-Star break, i've been watching a lot of soccer. both the Copa America and the Under-20 World Cup have been well worth tuning in to, even when the only option has been a Spanish language broadcast (ESPN picked up the U.S. vs. Brazil U-20 match, but left tonight's U.S.-Uruguay quarterfinal on ESPNU, which ain't available on Time Warner here). the U.S. beat Uruguay in extra time, while Argentina destroyed Mexico in the Copa America semifinal. and right now Brazil is about to take on Spain in another U-20 quarterfinal. and the U.S.-Brazil match - won in fascinating fashion by the U.S. - might be the best game i've seen in a year.

but my real point in posting tonight was baseball related because i was incredulous at the news that the Mariners are considering giving Ichiro! a 5-year, $100-million contract extension. i mean, are they on crack? are they that wowed by his performance in an exhibition game? sure, right now he's having his best season (as measured by OPS+), but he's a 33-year old, singles hitting outfielder and there is almost no chance of his being worth $20 million a year at age 35, let alone at age 38. i understand that he's the face of the franchise, but it's unbelievable that some owners in baseball are still willing to ignore all common sense and logic as they piss away money on idiotic contracts.

Posted by Jamie at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)