Can't stop listening to Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys. This is not surprising, as I have a longstanding - if juvenile and unoriginal - thing about the high seas, as it were. Chalk it up to finally getting the best novel, Moby Dick, about 8 years ago. And then realizing that Jaws is probably the best of late 20th-century American film.*
Here is what I would like to say about this collection and the fact that I've had it playing a good 4 hours a night since Tuesday (for the uh... record, there are 43 songs). If you must be unrepentantly maudlin, do it well.
If you hit the iTunes and buy one or two of these, you'll want to go for both Baby Gramps pieces ("Cape Cod Girls" and "The Old Man of the Sea"), "Mingulay Boat Song," the two John C. Reilly (yes, that John C. Reilly) pieces, and... well, I'm taken with most of them. I keep forgetting this is sort of a novelty thing.
* It occurs to me that I've never used this medium to put together a defense of these two claims (Moby Dick and Jaws as the respective peaks of their categories). Maybe someday.
Jason has tagged a few of us with this five-things-you-don't-know-about-me meme.
Obviously, an exercise in knowing how much to show without getting in trouble. Kind of like striptease, maybe?
1. ...was prom king in high school.
2. ...am incapable of walking across campus without completing this one little OCD tic.
3. ...watch way more television than seems appropriate.
4. ...am a comparatively slow reader.
5. ...was pretty much written off as a newborn. My parents were told not to hold out much hope. (I don't mean to take this last one lightly, and it's likely that the sentence fragment approach comes of as flip. I have long been told that I had heart failure, and the story was repeatedly pretty regularly. Doctors explained that the odds of my survival were very very low, but I apparently wound up under the care of an uncommonly good neonatal physician who made it happen, much to my relief. As a fifteen-year old, this biographical note was easily picked up for all too obvious ends - the high drama of adolescent self importance, e.g. Now, it's a story with different valences).
So, I'll tag Alianora, now.
Went to Georgia for Christmas, and the long drive didn't seem so long as last time.
Drove back from Georgia after Christmas, and This American Life podcasts made the drive sort of rewarding.
Took the train to Philadelphia for the LookHowSmartIAm conference, and we're all very smart. Some smarts are more sanctioned than others. Silliness aside, four of the sessions I took in were absolutely worth the trip. Also, some day I'll see more than the conference center, three hotels, and three restaurants/bars.
Took the train home from Philadelphia, and many of the buildings you can see from trains are abandoned. Some look like big red-brick foundries with chains hanging from the ceiling. Like from one of Kerouac's Lowell novels.
Hosted a New Year's party, and, as ever, had great fun. One should be careful when one gets pushy about themes and gimmickry at one's party. Let's say you decide to give a quiz on the preceding year, for instance... Just be cautious, is all.
Did as little as possible on 1 January.
Here we are.