Tuesday, September 09, 2008

The weeks in culture: August something - Sept. 7

Watched:
Quigley Down Under
Mamma Mia
No End in Sight
Shooter
Ridicule
and, as I said, Tropic Thunder

Heard:
ABBA, Ashlee Simpson, and Shania Twain. It has not been a particularly highbrow few weeks.

Read:
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Yeah, I wanted to see how she'd end it. I never got particularly into the series, but I do appreciate how an author creates a story arc and sees it through to the end. How their vision is realized, what it culminates in. I didn't love it, but I did think the very end -- just the last couple pages -- had a nice twist.)
Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott (Harlots in turn-of-the-century Chicago. Good times.)

The weeks in soccer:
I'm pretty sure they went like this:
1) Great game -- a hat trick by me, though I can't really remember the details.
2) Decent game -- maybe I scored? Maybe we won?
3) Crappy game -- so hot and too few players. I scored, but we lost by a lot. Frustrating and exhausting, other than my goal, which was pretty. Even the ref complimented me on it. :)

Friday, September 05, 2008

Do you believe in magic?

I just grabbed a glass of club soda from the cafe before holding office hours today. And they were playing the awesome/awful song "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band. You know, the once that rhymes "abracadabra" with "I wanna reach out and grab ya"? That one.



It's just one of those songs that fills you with delight even as it makes you kind of cringe.

The title of this post, however, just makes me cringe -- it reminds me of a period of McDonald's ads that were set to the "do you believe in magic" song. I think they lyrics went something like

Do you believe in magic? And I hope you do,
you'll always have a friend wearing big red shoes


while a creepy Ronald McDonald bopped around a group of kids like a killer clown with a penchant for fresh child-meat. I remember Sar and I, kids ourselves at the time, emphatically stating to each other that we most certainly did not want a friend wearing big red shoes.