Funny or Sad

So on my way to school every day I pass this seedy night club and for about two weeks now, it has had a simple message on its tiny marquee: "Midget Dancers August 23-25." Every day I would drive by the sign, look up, and be just a little bit sadder for having read it, and look forward to the 25th of August when they would take it down.

Then August 23rd came and the sign had been changed. Now it read "Little Sisters August 23-25." And I thought for a second about how that change must have happened and I imagined the scene that must have taken place when the "Little Sisters" drove into town and looked at the sign that had been billing them as "Midget Dancers" for two weeks and they were probably upset, I figure, and had a few words with the management. It's still a sad story, but at least it's a story, and a sad story is always better than a sad nightclub sign.

Dream band

I can't believe I've never seen Animal Collective live yet. It hurts to know that. Some days I have trouble getting out of bed just because I know that I have missed that experience in my life so far. Seeing video like this convinces me that, given a choice, it's the one band I'd like to be a part of. It's just sublime. B, my two year old, goes crazy when their song "Purple Bottle" comes on and he starts egging me on to yell along to the "Whoa! Get that!" part toward the end. You have to be born with great taste like that, I think.

Last of the Summer Wine

I think that's the name of an awful BBC comedy that they run on PBS here, but it fits. Here's a snap of one of my favorite summer rituals: eatin' outside. We finally dragged the picnic table out of this low kind of holler in the back yard and put it somewheres where we could actually use it, so we did. I made lots of fish tacos this summer, for example, to varying degrees of success. It always hurts the flavor of the fish for me when, right before I take my first bite, C always says "are you sure this fish is still good? I thought it smelled funny." Oh, but I exaggerate.

Anyway, if I am picking ultimate summer moments, this has got to be one of them. That's J yakking to Papaw about going to the dentist or something. I think we're eating some homemade spaghetti that he brought over. It's the simple things, right?

The Wire

When you're out of town for three weeks in a summer and you are in places that don't have television, you get out of the habit of watching television. Then, when you come back home, you try not to watch television to see how long you can hold out. You don't have cable, so that helps. You don't work at a job where you need to watch television so that you have something to talk about with your co-workers. So you are doing okay and you don't miss television. You see your teevee-free future spread out in front of you and you can see that it is going to be okay. You will eat better. You will sit down at a table and write a letter to an old friend. You will learn the names of trees.

And then they release the third season of The Wire on DVD.

Oh, I was so close to living life of value. But it's worth it really. I mean, c'mon. The Wire is the best thing on television and if it isn't please don't tell me because I don't need to know about it. And, if you know, please don't tell me what happens in this season because I have no idea. The first two episodes are just so good, though.

A funny thing happened to me while watching the first episode, though. One scene takes place at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game and I'm sitting there watching it and I think to myself "it would be nice to go to a baseball game." Where did that come from? Sure, I used to go to Detroit Tigers games all the time when I was a kid, but I kind of fell out of baseball when I stopped being any good at it and I haven't followed it for years. And now this? We'll have to see where the urge takes me. The last baseball game I attended was in Evansville at the minor league stadium where they filmed the Madonna movie A League of Their Own. It was such bad baseball that we left after three hours and it was only the fifth inning. Maybe I need to try a real baseball game. We'll see.