September '06 Ramblin'

The front page story in Saturday's local newspaper was "E. coli threat grows in area". The subhead notes that "stores, eateries remove spinach." Guess what I had for lunch on Friday? A spinach salad. I gather I'm OK, but it is a bit disconcerting, to say the least.
***
My wife got a video called The Wheels on the Bus for Lydia to watch. It's a live action plus puppetry production. It was OK for that type of thing. My favorite song was when the dragon bus driver sang "Fill It Up", a bluesy/R&B-type tune. I happen to catch the credits and diascovered that while the dragon was operated by an actor, the voice of the dragon was provided by Roger Daltry, the lead singer for the Who. He even appears on the "making of" segment. BTW, the Who - is it still a band with two members? - will have a new album out next month, their first in 23 years.
***
I went to Larkfest on Saturday. Sorry, now that it's celebrating its 25th year, it's now LARKfest. So, THAT'S what Everclear sounds like. I'd heard them before, but must admit that I wouldn't have been able to pick out one of their songs. At the event, I saw a girl of about 10 point out to her father some buttons that she wanted to buy. He seemed inclined until he realized they were (GAY) PRIDE buttons. He hemmed and hawed, but I don't know howe the story ended. A real Harold Pinter moment.
***
I was reading GP as usual last week. He wrote about national leaders and others who might need some lovin'. Somehow, when I read "Lucy van Pelt", I practically did a spit take, mostly because it's SO true. Go read it.
***
As a regular viewer of Gilmore Girls, I was interested to see if Luke Danes' predictition of a much poorer season for outfielder Johnny Damon, when he went from being a hirsute Red Sox to a clean-shaven Yankee, because he'd lose the fear factor. Well, he's hitting for about 20 points less, but is showing far more power, with 22 HRs to date vs. 10 last season, so I think it's a wash.
***
Only 13% of the registered Democrats voted in the primary that re-nominated Hillary Clinton to run for U.S. Senate, but only 5.5% of all Republicans voted in the primary to pick the Republican, an all-time low for a major party primary in NYS. Add to that the fact that the winner, John Spencer, the former mayor of Yonkers, had had an affair with his secretary, and this compelled Jay Leno to note that this is the first time a Clinton is the "family-values candidate."
***
Isn't it peculiar that the big issue in the second term of the Clinton administration was "What is sex?", whereas with the second term of the current administration, the issue is "What is torture?" I'm inclined to believe Colin Powell, et al. on this one. An interesting thing Sam Donalson said on ABC's This Week was that National Security Asdvisor Stephen Hadley, who was on the show yesterday, made a rational-sounding argument for the administration's position, but that the President, in attacking Powell and others, seemed a bit crazed. Now that he mentions it, yes, the President did seem a little out of control.
***
Did anyone out there actually watch that controversial ABC-TV movie, "The Path to 9/11"? I've recorded it. My favorite riff on it comes from here.
***
The Manchurian Candidate, the 1962 original version of the movie with Frank Sinatra, is on TCM Saturday night. I will have to record this to watch later. I saw the remake a couple years ago with Denzel Washington, but every critic I've read said it does hold a candle to the older film.
***
I had a "Eureka!" moment about my wife and me this weekend. When she said to me, "Did I tell you I have a workshop Tuuesday and Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:30?" , I thought that I was annoyed because I would have to take off precious vacation time to pick up Lydia. (I generally drop Lydia off during the school year, and Carol picks her up.) In fact, that was only a minor part of it. It was that she never actually said, or preferably led with, "I need you to pick up Lydia," but instead spoke with indirectness. She MEANS, "I can't pick up Lydia. You need to pick up Lydia," but did not actually SAY that. I told her I would prefer, "I need you to pick up Lydia Tuesday and Wednesday, because I have a workshop those days from 3:30 until 5:30." If she's making the request, I don't want to do the heavy lifting of discerning what the request is. On the other hand, I DO like to pick up Lydia every once in a while, because she gets so excited to see me.
I note this so that, in the future, you'll know that I like the direct message a LOT more than the "What dioes he/she mean by that?" message.