I am very glad, indeed I finally return home
05 Mar 2010 4 Comments
in Cinema, Music, Strange Tags: 70s, awesome, cheesy, corny, lip syncing, Russian, singing, TV, USSR, youtube
I’m sure this will be the next big thing to rock the interwebs, so it’s my pleasure to share it with you, gentle readers. The only clue I have as to its origins is the barely noticeable “1976″ printed in the bottom left corner, and the Russian title, which, according to Babelfish, translates to “I am very glad, indeed I finally return home.”
My mother once said that nothing good came out of the seventies. The fashions, the hair styles, the color schemes, the architecture, the cinema… This video is the culmination of all of the bad aspects of the seventies. Yet, somehow when they are all put together something truly corny and wonderful is created, which is greater than the sum of its parts.
I vaguely recall seeing reruns of variety shows from the seventies where the musical flavor of the month would come on and “sing” their latest hit. By “sing” I mean move their lips to a prerecorded tape. Why should the USSR be any different? To me, the lip syncing makes this video all the more awesome.
Tales from the potty
06 Jan 2010 8 Comments
in Strange, WTF Wednesday Tags: cell phone, restaurant, restroom, strange people, toilet, WTF
The restaurant was full, but the three-stalled restroom was unoccupied, save for the woman about ten years my senior who had entered just seconds before me. We chose the stalls on opposite sides of the room, leaving the middle stall as a buffer between us. Standard restroom etiquette.
Just after I had gotten myself situated, I heard a voice, loud and resonant:
“Hi, Ruthie, it’s Mrs. Lasky. Is your mom or dad home?”
When you hear another person’s voice in a public restroom, the first thought is usually that someone is addressing you personally. It wasn’t until she finished her question and waited for Ruthie (whoever she was) to fetch the person to whom she wanted to speak that I realized she wasn’t actually talking to me. A minute later she continued:
“Hi Carol, it’s me. Yeah, I’m out with Allison and her friends after some Girl Scout thing…”
Why is this lady talking on the phone in a public restroom? It’s not as if she was standing in line by the sinks, killing time while waiting her turn. She was actually on the toilet. And it wasn’t as if she was making some urgent call about work or some personal emergency involving forgetting to turn off the stove. She was chatting. Just chewing the fat with a bud. While sitting on the toilet. In a public restroom.
After careful thought and the eventual realization that I wasn’t going to overhear the plotting of a mob hit (and the completion of my own personal business), I decided to go on my merry way. I got myself together and reached around to flush the toilet. Just then, the woman, who had until that moment completely ignored my presence, turned on me.
Now would probably be a good time to add that, being a restroom, the woman two stalls over who was carrying on an innocuous conversation with an apparent friend was making some noises that belonged in a men’s restroom in a bean eating factory. I have never before heard so much or such loud gas being passed within such a small timeframe, especially when the person knows of my presence. So, it’s not as if this woman wanted to conceal the fact that she was in the restroom from her friend. She wasn’t even trying, and she certainly didn’t apologize. Surely the person on the other end of the connection had heard the sounds of this woman’s terrifying flatulence long before the flushing of my toilet. Perhaps that is why I was so surprised at what came next.
“Do you MIND?? I am on the PHONE!!!“
She yelled at me. She actually yelled at me because the sound of a flushing toilet in a public restroom interrupted her phone conversation. Stunned, I rushed out of the stall and over to the sink, secretly hoping I could get out of there before she could raise her voice at me again.
As I left the restroom, I heard her say, “Sorry about that. Some people…”
Megan Dancing
03 Dec 2009 4 Comments
in Childlike, Cinema, Strange Tags: dancing, Delaware Special Olympics, Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, telethon, VHS, youtube
Back in 1985 or so, when I was about four years old, I took “dance” lessons. I put “dance” in quotation marks because while we wore dance shoes and tights, we didn’t exactly dance. It was more of a coordination class. Well, apparently, our dance teacher thought we were so fabulous that she volunteered us to perform on live television, for the Delaware Special Olympics Telethon.
While my parents drove me to the television studio, which they tell me was many, many miles away, a neighbor offered to record the telethon so that my television debut would be forever saved for posterity. It was saved on a simple black VHS labeled “Megan Dancing,” which I have just transferred to the computer using my brand new Roxio Easy VHS to DVD.
A few notes about the performance, which may be more clear after you watch it:
- The quality is a little wonky, but that should be expected considering the tape is almost 25 years old.
- I was the line leader.
- We were supposed to stop in the middle of the stage, not at the far side.
- We did actually have a routine prepared.
- Despite what happened, we were not part of the Special Olympics.
Recent reviews of our performance raved:
So cute and a little scary!
Don’t quit your day job!
Even after all these years, it makes me laugh til tears are in my eyes.
And so, gentle readers, without further ado I present “Megan Dancing.” Enjoy!
NASA attacks the moon!
09 Oct 2009 4 Comments
in Strange, Technology Tags: bomb, God, moon, MSNBC, NASA, Otto von Kotzenmeister, tax payer, weather, Yakety Sax
Gentle readers, I am feeling particularly lazy as of late. So lazy, in fact, that I have asked a friend, the distinguished Mr. Otto von Kotzenmeister, to write a guest post for me. Enjoy!
I can live with the headline “NASA attacks the moon” or “NASA to bomb moon.” I mean, it did catch my eye enough to have me read the article. But when you get a smug newscaster from MSNBC with raised eyebrows prefacing a report with “…and there’s this item, we’ve decided to bomb the moon” it gives off a totally different vibe. He goes on to show the computer simulated video of what will happen when NASA crashes it’s rocket into the moon (spoiler alert: it blows up), although with the amount of reverence they gave this story it would have been more than appropriate to play Yakety Sax in the background while showing it.
Of course, like any other red blooded American, at this point you must be thinking, “Yeah, sure, water on the moon, future missions, space exploration blah blah blaaaahh, how much am I paying for this?” Well, MSNBC is right there with you wondering the same thing; they end the video with “This ‘moon bombing’ mission, by the way, is costing tax payers 79 [pause] million dollars.” And I’m left wondering, do they really need to say that? Are there comparable stories about the most recent mission in Iraq where they add that it has cost tax payers 900 billion dollars at the end of the story with a skeptical look on their face? Someone did the math (not me, I don’t do math) and this experiment cost each tax payer 26 cents if the cost were evenly distributed across the U.S. population. That seems pretty worth it. But no, let’s just rile people up instead until we are left with comments like these:
Why NASA spent alot of money to strike the moon even though our economic in the world is in trouble. If hit the moon, earth’s surface and weather will be changed worst. Sciencists [sic] know nothing but God knows. Does God allow?
I don’t think this is a good idea at all. What if something goes terribly wrong? The moon should be left alone.
And my favorite:
Is money all that you all think that is important! The moon sound be left alone, NASA has to put their noses in everything and in somethings that should be left alone! WTF is your all’s problem get a life! It’s people like NASA who think that they know everything about outer space when really they don’t know diddly crap. LEAVE OUTER SPACE ALONE!!!! Up with space down with NASA!!!
Well, the attack on the moon happened early this morning and the earth and moon seem to be intact, and it’s raining now so I can only assume that the weather is still working. But I’m 26 cents poorer, and so are you – I expect my moon house and hover-car before the world ends in 2012.
Hi, my name is Ninja Assassin and I’ll be your waiter tonight.
10 Sep 2009 8 Comments
in Photos, Strange Tags: bar tab, check, ninja assassin
I think our local brewpub may be hiring its waitstaff from outside the normal pool of potential employees.
WTF Wednesday
01 Jul 2009 9 Comments
in Photos, Strange, WTF Wednesday Tags: action figure, crazy cat lady, WTF
I’ve decided to start a new segment here at Melodic Insomniac: WTF Wednesday. Basically, I’m posting about one of the many, many things that I see during my week that make me think or say, “WTF?” I think I’ve got enough subjects to keep this going for quite a while. That’s pretty scary.
There’s a great toy store in my mall that sells mainly toys from my childhood. That means board games, Lincoln logs, those cool cardboard blocks painted to look like bricks, and more of the like. Electronics are at a minimum. The majority of the dolls are of the nameless teddy bear and baby doll variety, but there is a small selection of action figures. There are some Indiana Jones action figures, but they look nothing like Harrison Ford.
On the other side of the store, completely alone from the rest of the action figures, hangs a set of the following:
Crazy Cat Lady: The Action Figure. How many cats do you have?
I’m sorry, but who in their right mind needs an action figure of a crazy cat lady, complete with six cats (in addition to those that are already peeking out from beneath her hair and from her sweater pocket) to accessorize her?
What really cracks me up is that this toy seems to be completely independent from any TV show, movie or game. She is a stand alone crazy cat lady. Not to knock the cray cat lady, but I thought that most action figures that do not emulate movie stars or teeny bopper singers encourage children to pretend to be some worthy profession, like a firefighter or a policeman.
Seriously, WTF?
Current events
25 Jun 2009 4 Comments
in Blogging, Childlike, Cinema, Music, Strange Tags: brothers, celebrities, clapping games, dance, death, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Miss Susie, music video, NPR, Theology Girl, Thriller, youtube
Once upon a time, I regularly checked in on a blog that was maintained by the wife of a friend of my main squeeze. Her posts were witty and hilarious, covering everything from the mundane and ordinary to the spiritual and all that is Josh Groban. Over the course of some months I developed a feeling of oneness with this woman who, despite being friends on Facebook, I have never actually met.
Then one day the posts stopped. There was some lame excuse for not blogging. Something about a doctoral dissertation and birthing a small human being. Every once in a while (read: every four or five months) a new post would show up in my RSS reader, letting the world know that she had not in fact fallen off a cliff and perished a horrible, bloody death, and that someday soon the posts would return with their previous frequency.
It seems that someday soon has arrived. Theology Girl has been updating with alarming regularity over the past week. (You hear that, Adrienne? Now everyone on my blog knows about it, so you have to keep updating. How’s that for peer pressure?)
Although I had planned to take a short break from the internet, I hadn’t expected it to go on for quite as long as it has. I wish I could present a cute baby from my loins as proof that I’ve been busy with other things, but that would be a vicious lie. The truth is, I’m just plain lazy.
The good news is that almost two weeks away has given me plenty of blogging fodder. Here’s hoping I can maintain my resolve and follow through with posting the weird shit I saw last week.
I’m sure that my return to blogging after my brief hiatus, though, will be completely overshadowed by the big news that has just overloaded all the airwaves: the death of Michael Jackson.
Tokyo time
11 Jun 2009 1 Comment
in Strange Tags: alarm clock, coffee, insomnia, internal clock, night owl, sleep, sleeping in, Tokyo
My internal clock seems a little off these days. I’ve found myself waking up later and later each day. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t bother me, because it’s always nice to sleep in. But this morning I woke up at 11:30. In the morning.
I’ve never been a morning person. I’m more of a night owl. I do my best work in the afternoon, so I’m quite sure I chose the right profession of teaching kids piano lessons after school. I’ve had a couple jobs that required me to be at work at an ungodly hour, like 8:30 in the morning, and they were the worst jobs I ever had. Certainly, they were not my most productive.
While I don’t like waking up before the sun rises, I also don’t like sleeping the better part of the day away. I do believe it’s possible to get too much sleep. Too little sleep and too much sleep have the same effect on me: grogginess for my waking hours that even coffee won’t relieve.
It’s not as if I go to bed incredibly late. Usually I’m in bed by 11:30, asleep by 12:30. Last night was no different. It’s also not as if I’ve been starved for sleep lately. A good seven hours will usually do for me, and, with the exception of a sleepless night here or there, I’ve been getting that. So, I’m a little confused about the eleven hours of sleep I got last night.
I think my internal clock is resetting itself for Tokyo time.
I’m curious, gentle readers, what is your sleep schedule like? What is the latest you’ve ever slept in?
say what?