New York City

This new video for the late Joey Ramone's "New York City" is pretty damned amazing. Thousands of stop-motion shots merged together for a great little tribute to the man and the city that he loved so much. Featuring dozens of famous and not-so-famous New Yorkers in classic leather jackets all over different neighborhoods of the city. You should check it out. It's great. And check out JoeyRamone.com for the full story on the video.

But my favorite thing about the video? The guy up there in the screenshot and appearing at the 2:56 mark looks freakishly like a certain Verdant Dude that you all know. His name is Ed Stasium and he is a record producer who worked with The Ramones. We really don't look that much alike if you see other pictures of him. His hairline has receded much more than mine and he is about 20 years older than me, but in that video? Yup...dude looks like the Dude. And I'm okay with that.

Rock on, kids!

ZOMBIE BEES!!!

This story started as as kinda cool. I mean in a "parasite that is endangering honeybees which in turn will endanger crops" kinda way.  Which is not cool at all, by the way. Not cool at all.

Then it goes on to describe the way that the parasitic flies injects eggs into the bee's abdomen. The eggs turn into maggots. The maggots eat the bees...FROM INSIDE OF THEIR BODIES!!! After the host dies, the maggots enter a pupa stage and later emerge as adult flies. I just want to vomit.

This has a fucking horror story plot written all over it. I'm officially horrified.

Source: I dunno...some Swedish website

Wu

We watched all 3 seasons of Deadwood from HBO in the past month or so. Loving HBO-Go, by the way. And some of our favorite scenes include the local leader of the Chinese immigrants in camp, Mr. Wu played by Keone Young. Always hilarious, but even more so to us as our nickname for our cat Wolowitz is Wu (or Woo). So we've been known to borrow lines from the Wu scenes in Deadwood here at the cat ranch, and yell them randomly at our cat.  Don't judge us! Especially the lines from the scene below featuring Wu and Dan.

Enjoy. Or don't. Have a great weekend either way. NSFW language here, by the way. Lots and lots of NSFW language.

Bourbon In Your Eyes

The temptress is Colleen Duffy out of Cleveland, OH. The outfit is Devil Doll. Her music, well...I let the words from her website tell the tale. "Devil Doll is the punk rock torch singer your father warned you about, weaving tales of sex and sorrow, pleasure and pain. A cold drink is thrown into your face at the same time you feel the velvet creeping up the back of your neck She will not apologize and she will not ask for forgiveness. But she will write her name in lipstick in the most unlikely places."

To use a creepy expression, Daddy like. Punk rock/rockabilly sound and pin-up model aesthetics. I may have found my new favorite thing.

Here is her song "Bourbon In Your Eyes". I wanna slug Jim Beam and listen to this on repeat over and over and over again tonight. Yeah.

Dig.

Irish

It was a joyous weekend for the sports fan that is me.

Excuse me, miss*...who does your hair?

Notre Dame beat Michigan State and all was well in the world. Meant I got to wear my ancient Irish hat with unrestricted joy. Add two victories for the Yankees on Saturday and Sunday to the equation and all was...fabulous. And I'm using that word as a man with a strict heterosexual resume. Was a fabulous weekend all around.

Next weekend is the Pickle Festival (see heterosexual resume referenced above), and then the hits keep on coming. I love me some weekends in the Fall.

Quick aside about the sports fan that is me. I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm kind of a fair-weather sports fan. I'll always root for Notre Dame football and NY Yankees baseball, no matter how well or poorly they fare. I just have a hard time watching them when they are in the crapper. The Yankees have been tough to watch for the past month or more. And Notre Dame, while always finishing with a winning record, have had some real clunkers these past few years. Here's to hoping for a great year for the Irish. Beating Michigan State was a great moment for them.

*Just got a few inches trimmed off last week too. I don't know how you ladies do it all your lives. I've had long hair for 3-4 years now and it can be an awful pain sometimes.

The Pack a.d.

Music for you on this lovely Thursday. Today it's The Pack a.d., a Canadian garage rock duo featuring Becky Black on vocals and guitar and Maya Miller on drums. Very cool sound, if you ask me.

Here's their video for "Sirens", in which the ladies wait until the very end to show up.

And a non-video for their song "Wolves and Werewolves", which is the song that Pandora found for me that led me to check this duo out. Kick-ass song!

Shower

Took a nice, long, relaxing shower the other afternoon. I know, shocking right? Go ahead with your jokes, but I do shower every day. And this isn't meant to be one of those "too much information" posts. It isn't the frequency of showering that I want to discuss. It's the quality.

You see, normally I either take a shower first thing in the morning or right before headed out for some social activity. And those aren't the optimal times to enjoy a nice, long, relaxing shower. I'm pretty much brain-dead first thing in the morning. So I need that shower to wake my silly ass up. And I'm generally running late most of the time, so that shower before heading out isn't a relaxing one either.

But the other day I woke up early and immediately jumped into some work. A couple of cups of coffee and a morning session of putting out some figurative fires and all of a sudden it was around 1PM. Had a stretch and decided that I had plenty of time for a shower.

And I reveled in it. Just enjoyed the incredibly hot sauna-like experience for around 15 minutes. No drought warning in our neck of the woods, so I didn't feel guilty at all. Just wallowed in the luxury. Something we don't often think about or do that since hot, running water is something we all take for granted. But I really thought about it in that quarter of an hour. And I used that time to remind myself how truly blessed we all are even if we don't think about things like a nice shower that often.

Even if it's something as easy as enjoying my daily shower, I'm gonna try to take a bit more time to enjoy the simple things that life has to offer. Sometimes those simple things make all the difference.

Note: The above tripe written late last night to avoid the BIG topic of the day. So there. 

_NC

Fill in the blank up there with either a D or an R. Doesn't really matter to me which one you prefer. I've watched about as much of the Democratic National Convention as I did the Republican National Convention. One to watch what the other side is cooking up and the other to watch in hope that my team steps up their game a bit. You may have done the same thing.

But, honestly, it all seems like a bunch of bullshit to me.

The Republican challengers get to go first and outline their attack game-plan against their adversary. The Democrats get to afterwards, attacking those attacks. None of that really interests me, and the discussion of actual issues seems pretty damned sparse.

So the President will accept his nomination tonight. Great. Did we need a three-day dog and pony show to get that done? The party would never allow it, but wouldn't it be wonderful if he just made his acceptance speech from the White House Press Room and concluded with "Now, let me get back to the business of running this country the best possible way I know how, and I look forward to your support in November." Three days of bullshit could be wiped off the ledger if the party allowed it.

I mean, I guess I understand the need for the challenging party to hold a convention. Not that there were any surprises in order. The Republican candidate was decided months ago. Seems to me that these convention are multimillion dollar boondoggles for the delegates, analysts and whomever else benefits from these things. And who, exactly, is paying for all of this? I've read that it comes from donations to the parties themselves. But what does that mean? I can't help but feel that somehow these things are screwing somebody over somewhere.

In this day of the the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet, do we really need these conventions anymore?

Fallen

I know that Autumn is still a few weeks away on the calendar, but it seems to have hit early this year on the weather front. Not that it has been Autumn-like chilly exactly. In fact it's been quite pleasant. A little too pleasant for the last week of August and the first fiew days of September. Usually we are sweating through heat and humidity and Autumn is the furthest thing from our minds.

But this year, the weather and the calendar conspired together to remind us that Summer is quasi-officially over. And my heart and my mind are both torn over it. I do love me some Summer, especially with weather like we've been having for the past 2 weeks. But I might love me some Autumn even more. Especially late September into early November. Once you need a jacket everyday, I'm done with it. But a light sweater or sweatshirt and I'm fine. Even better are the nights when you can prance, yes prance, around New York City still wearing shorts, sandals and a sweatshirt to keep out the evening's chill. 

We've got a lot going on over the next few weeks, but I'm hoping we find some time to make it into the city to enjoy New York in it's finest season.

Now listen to some Billie Holliday, fer crissakes.