An Embracer of All Technology

An imaginary radio show is in charge of my life. Which worries me a little because does that mean my life is also imaginary? I’m scared. Hold me?

So anyway, TBTL recently decreed we all should save our relationships by wearing watches. Done and done. Thanks, Luke and Jen! My relationships feel better already.

P.S. The existence of an imaginary life is further confirmed by my empty Google+ stream. Although, to be fair, I only have like…two people in my drum circle.

Oh, it’s not called a drum circle? OK. Whatever.

The Handbags and the Gladrags

Once upon a time I created a Facebook group to reinstate the LONG Timmy Time theme on the Tim Conway, Jr. Show. Yeah, that didn’t really work.

However, I still firmly believe in the importance of theme songs.

Luke, Sean, and Jen on TBTL recently did a fantastic show entitled Why It Matters: TV Theme Songs. You should totally listen to it.

And then you should make a list of your top five TV theme songs. Here are mine.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
Best theme song of all time. Also best TV show of all time. Completely sophisticated and wonderful. Did you know Johnny Costa played the music LIVE for every single episode? (Yeeeeeesssss, I-know-I’ve-written-about-this-five-times-but-some-people-don’t-read-every-day, my brotha.)

Bosom Buddies
Reminds me of faking being sick, staying home from school, playing Super Mario Bros., and studying for Academic Decathlon. I know, I know…nerd.

Mary Tyler Moore
Sorry, it is NOT hacky to love this song. It’s awesome. Also, I still need Lou Grant to come over when I have insomnia and sit with me until I fall asleep.

Gidget
Bathing suits, the beach, surfing, cute boys, hot English professor single dads. If you grew up in southern California, this is your anthem.

The British Office
If ever a theme song perfectly matched the tone and feeling of a show, this is it. Its melancholyness and desperate longingness makes your heart feel like it’s being squeezed by that guy you love who won’t love you back.

GOD, that is sad. Go listen to the Bosom Buddies song again before you slip into a Dees-pression.

How.about.a.nice.game.of.chess?

Here’s a list of awesome things I’ve learned from Jen Andrews of TBTL fame.

• Always keep a bottle of champagne in your fridge.
• Keep a big box of Kleenex in your car. In case of emergency, you can pee in it, then throw the box away.
• If you’re sick but have to go to a party…one shot of peppermint schnapps plus two Advil and you’re good for exactly two hours.

So…Jen is kind of in charge of me right now. I’ll do whatever she says. And she spent Valentine’s day eating pizza with her husband and watching Ken Jennings and Bruce Rutter play Jeopardy against Watson, an IBM computer.

She also reminds us that in WarGames it only took Joshua a few rounds of tic-tac-toe to prove the futility of global thermonuclear war.

And that reminded me how much I love that movie. I love how David knows how to make his computer dial every number in Sunnyvale. I love how Jennifer is a little bit slutty. I love the WOPR. It’s all very, very, very awesome.

So take that, Ken Jennings?

My mother loved to twirl

You know how sometimes things are unexpectedly disappointing? Like…

Someone else bought the cabinet you so desperately wanted from HomeGoods so that you could upgrade your lifestyle by pretending you’re Kathleen Kelly. And now it belongs to someone who will most certainly NOT pretend to be Kathleen Kelly whilst using it – probably for something stupid like fake ferns, rusty watering cans, and candles they never light. Not awesome wine, IKEA napkins, and fresh cut daisies from the farmer’s market like you were going to. Or…

Your landlord decided to install a new mailbox and not give you a new key so you’ve been waiting with increasingly annoyed anticipation for six days to receive The Wire, Season 3 Disc 1 from Netflix. And you’re kind of forgetting about that crush you had on Stringer. Which is unfortunate because he is HOT. Or…

Your totally nice, Japanese-made car needed new brakes and a bunch of other stuff, which added up to $518, which you didn’t have so you had to lay a card down, which made you laugh a little bit to yourself when you used the phrase ‘lay a card down,’ but not enough to offset the unexpected disappointment of having to pay $518, which you would have had if you had listened to Dave Ramsey and had a $1000 ‘starter emergency fund’ instead of a ‘spend $1000 on a computer and new Coach bag’ plan.

Right?

Well, today was kinda like that with podcasts.

Too Beautiful to Live – No Jen.
Tim Conway, Jr. – Bryan Suits fill in.
Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me – Clip show. SPORTS clip show.
Heidi and Frank – Stay or go.

Meh.

Perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are.

“You know, if you don’t have a jones for Egypt, it’s a pretty slow news day.” ~Tim Conway, Jr.

I didn’t think I had a jones for Egypt. Yes, I’d like to have a general sense of what’s going on. Of course. But yeah, I don’t need to hear Walk Like an Egyptian or King Tut one more time. And I certainly don’t need to hear interviews with people who went on vacation to Egypt two years ago (ahem…Rob Marinko).

So I planned to fast-forward through Marc Germain’s interview with Kholoud, a 24-year old Egyptian chick. I’m so glad I didn’t – she’s awesome. I totally heart her. Download and listen please. (But also please ignore Marc when he tries to set her up with Justin Levine. Creeeeepy.)

“Who I think is the most fascinating person in the whole world, is a person who lives in North Korea.” ~Jen Andrews, Too Beautiful to Live

I don’t have an Egypt jones. But I kinda do have a North Korea jones. So I’ll be spending my free time drinking champagne and sending inappropriate texts reading Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. Wanna read it with me?

I Heart Luke and Vanessa

I really, really love them.

So I kinda get the feeling that even though I write about Too Beautiful to Live fairly regularly, I’m the only one in SoCal who’s listening.

This is a tragedy.

Last Wednesday (1/19/11) they posted the second installment of – Making Dinner with Luke and Vanessa. (Or, we kinda don’t have a show today, let’s just press Record while we make dinner.)

I’m totally serious, you guys. These shows are AMAZING. And I’m pretty sure I need to be them when I grow up. And when I say grow up, I mean go back five years, move into a house in Seattle with too many steps out front, listen to NPR, watch Antiques Roadshow, drink Chateau Ste. Michelle wine, and make recipes out of the New York Times.

Also, I might have to get super wasted at karaoke and start fights with people. We’ll see what happens.

Inside a Sardine’s Dream

Hi! How are you? How was your vacation? Mine was…fine? Yeah, I’ll go with fine. It was kind of like this.

Yay vacation, I forgot your gifts, I’ll go home and get them, oh sangria, Roku!, two breakfasts, omg fancy Williams-Sonoma meatloaf sauce, drive, rain, cold, shopping, COLD, balloons, freezing, boys do too like The Princess Bride, accidentally (a tiny bit on purpose) look a picture that makes me burst into tears, I need to buy a wine cabinet for my two bottles of $4 wine, I can’t throw away my tree cuz there is an entire kitchen’s worth of cabinets in the dumpster, apartments suck, stop it – The Princess Bride is not a girl movie, lost all my saved text messages, I know it’s probably a good thing but I’m sad anyway, work tomorrow.

Oh, and also one super awesome podcasty thing happened. And it happened in the form of the 12/29/10 episode of Too Beautiful to Live.

A show which was recorded impromptu-like in Luke’s kitchen. The concept simple. A man and his new fiance drinking wine, making dinner and following a recipe from The New York Times, all the while discussing AM radio and making clever comparisons between Wes Craven and Wes Anderson. Punctuated with the occasional sound of water as the sink faucet is turned on and off. Mixed with just a hint of vomiting.

You guys, I listen to a lot of podcasts. And…um…I’ve listened to this episode three times. I love it. Love.

P.S. I scrawled the title of this post – Inside a Sardine’s Dream – on a Post-it at work. So I didn’t forget the phrase. Problem is…the Post-it is still on my desk. What if someone sees it? What will they think it means?

And so the conversation turned

So now we know that Sarah Palin, Justin Bieber, and the cast of Jersey Shore are the most fascinating people of 2010. Of course, I totally agree. I’m a huge Justin Bieber fan.

Luke Burbank and Jen Andrews from Too Beautiful to Live, however, do not agree. They believe there are dozens of people  more fascinating. Like, for example, someone living in North Korea.

Or…themselves?

I guess they couldn’t reach anyone in North Korea, what with the time difference and everything. Also, I don’t think North Koreans have iTunes. Or Skype. (But I could be wrong about that.)

Anyway, Luke and Jen decided to be extra fascinating by conducting a fascinating interview with each other. And I thought…I should interview some fascinating people on the old blog here.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach anyone in North Korea to interview either. (Mad props to Lisa Ling in this department. Maybe I should interview her next year.)

And also, I don’t have a fascinating blog partner to interview. So, unfortunately for you (again), that means I have to interview myself.

I apologize.

When are you happiest?

I am happiest on day one of Fun Camp, when there’s a week of fun and educational adventures waiting for me.

What is your favorite curse word?

Meh. I don’t like to blast away with the major terms. It’s way more funnier to say eff or ess or em effer. It’s even more way more funnier to spell them like that.

What occupation would you like to attempt?

Professional blogger.

Favorite quality in a man?

These are hard questions! Um…caretaking?

Favorite quality in a woman?

Independence.

What is your biggest source of pride related to I<3TR?

I’m crying now. Damn you, Barbara Walters! My biggest source of pride is that you guys read what I write and send me nice emails and leave thoughtful comments. And ask me out on dates.

Is this the most self-obsessed blog post you’ve ever written?

Indeed, it is. (Please don’t hate me.)

We have to write an essay on Stanley Miles.

When my son was seven years old, he spent his Christmas money on a box set of NASA DVDs. He cherished them, insisting they be kept locked in a fireproof safe when not in use. For months he would tell me, “It was so nice of NASA to make these DVDs!!! I’m just SO thankful!!!”

It’s that kind of simple and innocent gratitude we should all have this time of year.

So in addition to being super thankful to NASA for their totally awesome DVDs, I’m also thankful for…

Jen Andrews from TBTL for writing:  If you don’t get why Harry Potter matters, I would remind you that Dobby is a free elf, that “expelliarmus” is the spell used by someone who knows that love is always the answer, and that Percy can always come home.

Trader Joe’s for the sweet potato fries. And the pumpkin butter.

Steve Martin for joining Twitter and for writing another book. Oh, and for tweeting about Leo Laporte. More than once.

Dina Losito and Barry from Omaha for the alternate show during the show.

Randy Wang and Tim Conway, Jr. for the awesomest promos in talk radio.

My MacBook because…obviously.

Adam Shankman for loving dance.

Kelly Dylla and Suzanne Boxdorfer for making the symphony so much fun this summer. #pstweetcert

Wayne Resnick for taking care of us on holidays. And also, just because.

And, of course, everyone who reads I Heart Talk Radio. You guys are all major studs and hot chicks!

Mandate get it on

Or, my worlds are colliding again.

If you’ve got yourself a decent Adam Carolla jones, listen to Adam on my favorite imaginary radio show – Too Beautiful to Live with Luke Burbank. (5/28/10 episode)

If you’re not from Germany or Florida, you should be listening to TBTL anyway because it’s an amazing combination of FM Talk and NPR with newsy-talk, personal stories, and nonsense. Perfect.

(Plus, long-time TBTL producer Jen Andrews and I are totally soul mates.)