Random Thoughts For Today

Annie Walker on Covert Affairs drives exactly the same car as I do, except it's a different color. So technically I have a spy car. Which means I am way cooler than people realize.

It is time for the annual Birthday Cake Test. Every year kid #3 gives me specific, detailed, precise instructions for her birthday cake. I dutifully write them down, drive to the bakery, and dutifully recite them and have them read back to me. When D-day arrives, I pick up the cake and carefully transport it home. It always looks great to me, just like she asked for. But it is never, never, never right. The stripes are too thin, the trim is the wrong shade of black, the hearts are pink, not hot pink, or -- famously, once -- they mispelled her name. This of course means that I never really loved her enough and all she will have to remember is a broken, empty childhood. I have yet to successfully pass the Birthday Cake Test. Maybe this is my year!

Kid #4 has tried out for drama club and been awarded the part of a squirrel in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. If you knew kid #4, you would realize this is blatant typecasting.

Serendipitously, I managed to escape watching the pilot for The Event on NBC. They didn't play it on our local affiliate so they could broadcast the Saints game instead. Magically, I feel no obligation to hunt down the missing episode, thus being able to remove it from the TV I MUST WATCH database. Small victories. I will pretend it wasn't happenstance, and that I actually chose not to watch it because I learned my lesson with Lost, Persons Unknown, and the Brit version of Life on Mars, said lesson being that if something sounds intriguing and mysterious, the writers will find a way to fuck it up and make you wish you'd never gotten involved in the first place.

Thank god for college radio, because regular broadcast radio SUCKS. Just found April Smith and the Great Picture Show, which is seriously, seriously cool. Sampled the new album and ordered it off Amazon. She is amazing and manages to pull together the best of every musical decade from the '20s onward (except for the '70s, which everybody knows musically was useless except for David Bowie; the late, late entry of ska/new wave; Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds). She's like nothing else out there, and trust me, that's a good thing. You can find April Smith here.