Top 10

From the Church of What’s Happening Now:

1. 6th Grade ’50s Dance — The girls are running around in the best approximations of ’50s skirts they can dredge up, and lots of scarves. Hannah had a shirt with a poodle on it — we figured, “Poodle skirt, poodle shirt — one letter difference.” The next-to-last song is “1985,” a catchy little number by Bowling For Soup that the kids all love and which has nothing to do with the ’50s or the Aughts, but the last number is “We Go Together” from Grease, which prompts Hannah to run out of the gym and demand that we must have both the movie and the soundtrack.
2. Presidents — The Presidents of the United States of America, a forgotten band whose “Pure Frosting” disc both we and the kids, then much younger, played an awful lot about 6 or 7 years ago. An energetic cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star,” “Lump,” “Old Man on the Back Porch” and of course the Drew Carey Show theme, “Cleveland Rocks.” Last night’s weak joke: What do they show at the Cleveland Geological Society? I got nothing but groans.
3. You’ll Never etc. — Many many years after it actually came out, I finally got around to reading Julia Phillips’s “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again.” I think she could and easily should have replaced “Eat Lunch” with “Do Blow.” Apparently there were a lot of drugs in the entertainment industry in the ’70s. Did you know that? I did not know that. It’s entertaining, at least, but I can’t help but feel a little dirty wasting brain cells on it.
4. Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood — I’ll have to write more about this once I’m further into it, but I picked up a copy for the train the other day, and so far, it’s brilliant. Brilliant. And scary. But this is a girl who really understood her love of the bottle. (Syracuse enters into it, which is what pricked up my ears when I heard her interviewed. Which leads to . . . .)
5. Lucky — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked up this book with the intention of buying and reading it. I have heard her interviewed many times, I understand the story, and I think it’s probably an important book. But every time, I simply cannot get over the fact that her terrible rape took place in what was one of my favorite places in Syracuse, the amphitheater in Thornden Park. It was a place that, in the depths of my own desperate love of the bottle, sometimes reminded me that there was a healthy, fun world of sunshine and grass that I ought to be checking out. We used to go into the amphitheater often to play frisbee or, even better because its scale was just perfect, wiffleball. We played many long wiffleball games there in Syracuse’s fickle springs and hot, humid summers, and I really loved that place. And reading about what happened to her there is just impossible for me. Sorry, Alice.
6. Coupling — This is quite simply the funniest television comedy ever. Ever. That they tried to ruin it by making an American version (with the inevitable, pointless comparisons to Friends) does not matter. These are the original British shows, and there is nothing funnier. BBCAmerica plays them, if you get that.
7. Survivor — Stephenie is my new Ami.
8. Bicycling is coming! And I’m sure my regular readers couldn’t be more thrilled. Listen, you’ll take my endless talk of skiing and biking and like it, see? Two buyer’s guides came this week, whetting my appetite. The Cyclysm begins on OLN on Sunday, with Lance racing Paris-Nice, the first Spring classic. And, I got my new wheels assembled, and if it weren’t 19 degrees out, I’d be on them right now!
9. Viewers love legs — Lee’s legs (the 1984 vintage) are now my most-viewed photographs at Flickr, edging out the girls at the Hall of Fame.
   
10. Not to wish my life away, but I am totally living for the weekends these days.