Just Do-Rag It

The latest happy meal (or whatever a happy meal is called at Subway) toy: the Naked Brothers Band do-rag. Because Naked Brothers + ham sandwiches = marketing wizardry.

Right?

Things That Make John Lennon Roll Over in his Grave, Part 2

Oh. My. Hell.



First of all, I don't buy that Michael Johns is 29 years old. If he is 29 years old, I am a size 2. Secondly, nearly everything is wrong with this performance, right down to the length of his sleeves.

I don't ALWAYS agree with Simon, but in this case, I do. His assessment, and mine: "It was a mess." (And I KNOW that he dedicated the song to a friend of his who had recently died, and I KNOW he was wearing an ear monitor for the first time, and I KNOW that he's got a fabulous Aussie accent, but sadly, none of that excuses his incredibly poor performance.)

But again, I must point out that not everyone blew it. Carly Smithson is kind of becoming my favorite.

First Hand

I was in downtown Atlanta yesterday and today for meetings, right in the thick of the storm damage, although the building where I was meeting was completely unharmed. While I didn't get to walk the 'hood with my camera as I had hoped (because tromping through downtown in heels, carrying a big purse and a laptop bag, gawking at the tall buildings with boarded windows, and taking photos lends itself to many varieties of criminal activity), I did get a few shots from inside our building and from behind the wheel of the minivan while stuck in traffic.

The Westin Hotel:



CNN with boarded windows, taken from inside the building where I was meeting:



Georgia Pacific and the Equitable Building:



It was an eerie sight to see, to say the least.

Rockabomma!

Both our sons have, at times, pointed out a person in line at the grocery store, at the park, or at the next table in a restaurant whom they mistook for someone familiar. Heavyset men with white hair and a beard are excitedly labeled "Santa!" Old men with humongous cars are called "Grandpa!" And 30-ish bald men have been shouted out as our good friend "Dale!"

But lately we've encountered a new visual stereotype. Ralph now identifies handsome black men (especially those with big ears) as "ROCKABOMMA!"

That's Barack Obama, for those of you not fluent in 3-year-old speak. This has resulted in a number of awkward encounters for me lately. Luckily, most of these men have been flattered to be mistaken for Obama.

I hope someday soon that we will meet the real Barack Obama, shake his hand, take his picture, applaud his campaign speech. But by that time Ralph's reaction will likely be "Ehhhhh....you? Dude, I see you ALL THE TIME."

American Idol as an Effective Model for Federal Elections

That (AI as an election model) was the topic of our dinner discussion last night. But it devolved into new and sometimes violent ways to eliminate American Idol contestants who get the lowest vote count. That was what I had planned to write about today.

But just before heading to bed, we turned on the TV and saw some of the early coverage of the tornado that hit downtown Atlanta last night. The CNN Center and Olympic Park (two of my favorite tourist spots) are near the center of the damage. It was eerie watching the scenes of buildings and streets that we know fairly well, and learning that such massive damage had occurred just 20 or so miles from our home without us even realizing it.

I was planning on being at a training/meeting in a building that overlooks Olympic Park on Tuesday and Wednesday, but right now I'm not entirely certain it will be happening. I've gotten email and pictures from a few friends and co-workers who live near downtown, letting us know they're okay and showing some of the damage (or lack thereof) in various areas. So far, the messages have all been good news. "Look! Our home office is intact! Yea!" and "The roof was blown off the store across the street from my apartment, but we're perfectly fine." There have been pictures of trees down, cars crushed under them, debris caught on power lines and fences, and traffic lights dangling precariously over the empty streets.

It's hard to see a city that I love so much in such a mess.

Here is David Cook (whom my husband refers to as "GooGoo Dolls") singing "Eleanor Rigby" on American Idol. Ouch.



Letting the AI top 12 into the Lennon-McCartney songbook was like letting my kids eat lunch off the good china. On live television. With a band.

But the night wasn't a total disaster. Behold Brooke White:

Meta Mess

(A post which is written almost entirely in parentheses.)

Yes, I know that forwarding to my custom domain stopped working a week go. And some of my feeds are not working. (And yes, I've tried fixing all this. But it's not working.) Please excuse the mess.

(For those of you not familiar with blogging or the perils of Blogger as a platform, this means that any links to pages on lovelydavis.blogspot.com are not automatically forwarding to thelovelymrsdavis.com as they had been for the last several weeks, and many of my most treasured links are broken. BROKEN! And I need them to work!)

(And if, by some miracle, you normally read this blog through a feed/reader and you managed to make it here this week, please update your feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/thelovelymrsdavis/tLFE). And tell your friends.)

Now that this insanely busy week is over (a week in which Walter turned 8, smoke came out of my vacuum cleaner, my lovely MIL visited from Iowa and spotted Sanjay Gupta at the CNN Center [without me! gah!], Hillary made a comeback, I learned that "Hmmmm" paired with a raised left eyebrow is the best response to an inappropriate remark, Danny Noriega got voted off American Idol, work was crazeeeee busy, and yet I found time to go to the mall this evening to buy TWO NEW PAIR OF AWESOME CROP PANTS and a pretzel dog -- just before our county's tornado sirens went off), I hope to fix the problem ASAP. Because awesome crop pants rank slightly higher in priority than my blog these days.

In the meantime, please enjoy my new favorite site, Stuff White People Like.

Nine Planets, Eight Years

Walter turns 8 tomorrow, so today I made his cake.

Just Call Me The Lovely Mrs. Hussein Davis

This* is dedicated to Bill Cunningham, in honor of the MOMocrats meme that was launched here.

People used to make fun of my maiden name. In second grade. Because my maiden name was the same as the little boy in this commercial, which (I believed at the time) was going to ruin my life. It didn't, but it did make it pretty miserable for a few months.

The whole "Edgar, this is your tummy speaking" campaign is exactly what came to mind when I heard the news about Bill Cunningham taking jabs at Barack Obama's name last week. To see the same tactics employed by some mean second graders back in the mid-70's now being used by a middle-aged conservative talk show host is kind of laughable to me. If Bill Cunningham were a second grader today, he would probably be sent home from school for this -- not because it's "politically incorrect" (that would be his story) but because it's mean.

* "Billy the Bully" is one of my favorite Justin Roberts songs; sound sample courtesy of CDBaby.