The first weekend in August, Carol, Lydia and I trekked down to Pleasant Valley, NY, not far from Poughkeepsie (where one picks one’s toes, but that’s for another day). What was interesting about this particular edition of this annual gathering was that there were far more children than usual. Generally, there are one or two, including Lydia, but this time there were over a half dozen. Which made the fact that the adults shooed the kids off the badmitton court even more humorous. They wanted to play a “serious” game. The three-on-three match was competitive, and for reasons not even known to me, I started doing a play-by-play commentary: “Ooh, Klonfas lost that one in the sun”, stuff like that. And it’s not like a network announcer in a booth some distance away; these players were as little as 10 feet away.
The next day, we went to visit Fred, Lynn and Julie. Well, we tried. How does Dutchess County have two such oddly named streets, with one a Road and the other a Drive? Anyway we eventually got there, talked, and ate and swam. Fred and I blathered about obscure television shows and even more obscure music. He played for me a great cover of the entire Revolver album that he had gotten from MOJO magazine, performed by various artists that were unfamiliar to me.
Self-portrait of Julie, stolen from her father’s blog of August 25, 2005
Julie goes through music phases; currently, she is listening to Elton John and especially David Bowie. The most notable thing about Julie’s language is her use of language. She has a near-constant use of “emo”, as in “that’s so emo.” Emo I know what that is, but don’t quite understand it in context. I managed to have totally missed the term 420, but Julie assured me it, at least with her and her friends, does not refer to drugs, even though the original meaning did, but rather something that’s sort of funny. I do recognize that the language is fluid.
Julie did a very good caricature of me, which I should scan one of these days.
Anyway, it’s Julie’s 16th birthday today. Happy birthday; it was great to see you. Oh, and your parents, too. Glad we didn’t get to see the bat.
***
I was playing The Best of Elvis Costello this week, in honor of his 52nd birthday today, and I was thinking:
*I wonder how Diana Krall, one of my wife’s favorite singers, is feeling these days?
*Some days, the last line in the chorus of Oliver’s Army reflects how I feel about work.
*Lots of his early songs could be done in different styles and would work. For a long time, I have thought (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding could/should be done as a doowop song. Really.