Sliding in just under the wire in the Cook family “birthday month” of March, I’m celebrating my 28th today. My mother noted on the phone when we spoke this weekend that I’ve been with her nearly half her life now. I find that a humbling thought.
In honor of the day, I take it upon myself to post something that brings together my childhood self and my present-day self: Raffi’s “Bananaphone” song, remixed with images from Dr. Who and Torchwood. I find it hilarious and disturbing in equal measure; Hanna declares it deeply, deeply wrong.
Thanks to Diana for disseminating this video via twitter.
And thanks to my family for, serendipitously, discussing Raffi and this song just days before Diana found said video, so it was fresh in my mind.
It’s my mother’s 59th birthday today (“Many happy returns of the day, Mum!”), and since she’s categorically opposed to having her picture in the public eye, I offer this (tangentially) fiber-art related amusement.
At my apartment, we talk a lot about how much we love the British comedienne Catherine Tate, who — among other performances — can be seen as the brilliant Donna Noble, most recent companion of Dr. Who, the titular character of the long-running BBC series that Hanna has lovingly introduced me to this past year. Donna rocks.
Which, by extension, means Catharine Tate rocks.
Duh.
Which means that we were particularly offended when Germaine Greer took it upon herself last week to suggest that Tate is not funny.
Luckily, as if to underline the point, this video surfaced, showing just how unfunny Catharine Tate really is. Particularly when playing the completely not-funny character of schoolgirl Lauren Cooper and paired with Dr. Who co-star David Tennant in a very serious (cough) and high-minded (coughcough) sketch about Shakespeare.
Hanna and I watched the 81st Annual Academy Awards last night, from red carpet to closing montage. Why, we are not quite sure given that between the two of us we had seen exactly two out of the entire slate of nominees (Hanna saw Dark Knight and both of us had the great pleasure of seeing the spectacular Wall-E in the theater). A few others are on the list (eg. I would like to see Milk eventually, and we keep saying to each other, “we really should go see Slumdog Millionaire“) but student schedules and student budgets have conspired to put most of these on the Netflix list.
Still, the ceremony was a fun way to spend Sunday evening. Danny Boyle’s acceptence speech for Best Picture was eclipsed by the way he bounced onto the stage (“in the spirit of Tigger”), and Dustin Lance Black’s acceptence speech for Best Original Screenplay (Milk) was a beautiful, heartfelt piece of extemporaneous oratory — and I say this as someone who finds most speechifying, yes even Obama’s, stilted and dull.
Poor Hugh Jackman seems to have gotten scant mention for his turn as Oscar host, which I think is a shame given the exuberance with which he embraced the role. Perhaps it was just my own childhood ambition to be a broadway musical actress welling back up to the surface, but he seemed to me to be having such a brilliant time. So for this week’s Midweek post, I’m sharing the YouTube video of his opening monologue/song with cameo appearance by Anne Hathaway as Nixon (no, Hanna and I aren’t quite sure why either, but somehow it totally works).
And for the dedicated musical junkie (read: me), his later number with Beyonce, composed by Baz Luhrmann (yes, you could tell), was also thoroughly entertaining.
I ran across this comment by Hanna Rosin at Slate about a YouTube video that’s making the rounds on the internet. It is of a kid recovering from dental surgery and still not completely in touch with reality (as any of us who have ever had dental surgery can identify with!):
It’s taken me a while, and a schooling from a couple of Slate men, to figure out what’s wrong with David’s dad. As anyone online this afternoon knows, his dad posted a video of him freaking out after getting anesthesia at the dentist . . . Probably, in that car, what Dad and David were doing made some kind of sense. But from the outside, here’s what it looks like: David is sitting in the back of the car, suffering.
While Susanna Breslin, also at Slate, disagrees with Rosin, her main argument in support of the video seems to be that “kids say the darnedest things” is a justification for making children’s experience of the world the fodder for adult amusement. The missing element here is knowledgeable participation (informed consent, if you will) of the kids in question: they are being laughed at for experiences and reactions they are often taking utterly seriously. As a former child myself, I can remember vividly the feeling of humiliation that accompanies hearing the laughter of grown-ups over something you’ve done that, to you, is not the least bit funny. I’m not saying that being charmed by the logic of children is never acceptable, but I do think we owe it to them to not turn their lives into public spectacle.
I don’t know where Hanna finds these things.* Here’s stand-up comedian Nina Conti with her puppet friend Monk. (Running time 5:51 minutes, and worth every second).
*except now I do: thanks for the hilarity Cynthia!
I’m at home today with a wicked sinus headache and cold, but thanks to the wonders of technology, I have ample options for coverage of the 2008 inaugural celebrations in Washington D.C. welcoming Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Right now, I’m listening to the BBC news hour streaming on MichiganRadio. I thought I’d mark the day with my favorite bit of campaign kitsch, “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama” by the Corrigan Brothers. It’s catchy, witty, cheerful . . . and as an extra bonus Hanna finds it deeply disturbing ;).
I’ve become quite fond this past year of the long-running BBC comedy Vicar of Dibley, which both the New Hampshire and WGBH public television stations broadcast here in perpetual re-runs. I was trying to explain to my family over the Christmas holidays this particular clip, in which Alice, the totally endearing verger, explains to vicar Geraldine her suspicions concerning I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Since no one can deliver the monologue quite like Alice herself, here she is in full form!
When Hanna asked me earlier this week what my soundtrack would be for a “happy dance.” I came up with the Weather Report song “Birdland” which my brother, sister and I used to rock out to on a regular basis as high-energy children. She’d never heard of it, so I (naturally) had to hunt down a version for her to here (thank you YouTube!) Here it is for a little Friday night jumping and jiving.
the feminist librarian 