ADDED: I can't say "say no more" without thinking of this.
Showing posts with label festivities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label festivities. Show all posts
Nina Totenberg: "I Was At – Forgive the Expression – a Christmas Party at the Department of Justice...."
Brent Baker at NewsBusters does not understand why Totenberg said "forgive the expression." In his headline, he uses the same quote I've used in my headline, but he puts the ellipsis 5 words before I've put mine.
ADDED: I can't say "say no more" without thinking of this.
ADDED: I can't say "say no more" without thinking of this.
"When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop..."
"... there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes. I do remember the first time I saw bright orange lawn trash bags decorated with smiley pumpkin faces, which was about ten years ago; I thought they were kind of clever and festive, if a bit commercial. Now they seem quaint, compared to, say, yard decorations like Demonica Zombie Baby ('a latex skin foam filled child with sound and motion activated flashing eye lights,' in stock and ready to ship for $39.99) or a life-sized Hellraiser Pinhead Animatronic (a big investment at $279.99)."
That's Susan Orlean, who also bemoans the trend toward Halloween as a time for adult revelry: "when I was young, Halloween was a holiday celebrated only by children." That made me look up Orlean's age — 54 — and city of origin — Cleveland. The trend toward Mardi Gras-style street parties and parades for adult revelries goes back to the 1970s. That's when Freakfest began here in Madison, Wisconsin and the time of the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in NYC. I remember those parades in the late 1970s, when I lived in Greenwich Village. It was a continuation of the counter-culture of the 60s, isn't it? They called us Baby Boomers, and we internalized the concept of "baby." You'll just have to deal with it now.
ADDED: Orlean... Mardi Gras... Maybe that has something to do with her annoyance at the migration of adult revelry to the autumn holiday. That and the fact that — as she reveals in the article — Halloween is her birthday.
That's Susan Orlean, who also bemoans the trend toward Halloween as a time for adult revelry: "when I was young, Halloween was a holiday celebrated only by children." That made me look up Orlean's age — 54 — and city of origin — Cleveland. The trend toward Mardi Gras-style street parties and parades for adult revelries goes back to the 1970s. That's when Freakfest began here in Madison, Wisconsin and the time of the first Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in NYC. I remember those parades in the late 1970s, when I lived in Greenwich Village. It was a continuation of the counter-culture of the 60s, isn't it? They called us Baby Boomers, and we internalized the concept of "baby." You'll just have to deal with it now.
ADDED: Orlean... Mardi Gras... Maybe that has something to do with her annoyance at the migration of adult revelry to the autumn holiday. That and the fact that — as she reveals in the article — Halloween is her birthday.
The perfect day is here at last: 10/10/10.
What are you going to do about it?
Gizmodo says: "In binary, that's 42. And 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Or at least, that's what Douglas Adams says."
Gizmodo says: "In binary, that's 42. And 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Or at least, that's what Douglas Adams says."
Look! It's Rush and Elton John at the big wedding!
A lovely couple. Rush married a woman, though. Maybe next time. If he finds he really wants a Chevy... Camaro.
"a 2 A.M. snack of grilled cheese sandwiches, brownies and popcorn..."
Offered to the guests at Chelsea Clinton's wedding....
It's nice to think that the hyper-glamorous affair went humble and comfy as the night wore on. Or am I being a chump to consume this PR that's intended to make people — face it, women — think the Clintons are just folks?
It's nice to think that the hyper-glamorous affair went humble and comfy as the night wore on. Or am I being a chump to consume this PR that's intended to make people — face it, women — think the Clintons are just folks?
"[T]he ceaseless obsession with and exultation over Chelsea's upcoming nuptials is emblematic of how our culture rewards women who marry...."
Hyperventilates Rebecca Traister about the way other people are hyperventilating.
I don't mean to be the Matrimony Grinch. Weddings are joyful and great. What they are not is the apotheosis of the human, the romantic or, more pointedly, the female experience.Oh? Why not?
There are a lot of people who don't get married. There are a lot of people who can't get married....
The fevered fetishization of the marital day is not just irritating, it's destructive. It reproduces attitudes about personal -- and especially female -- achievement that are far past their sell date....
You know what weddings are? They are parties.... Who knows how tasteful or how extravagant the marriage of the only Clinton daughter will turn out to be? Who -- besides those who really love her and her future husband -- really cares?
Distant fireworks.
Seen — last night — from across the lake. No explosive sounds, just crowd murmurs...
... and the sound of a boombox somewhere tuned to the radio channel that plays the official "Rhythm and Booms" soundtrack. Earlier, pop tunes played. "Man in the Mirror," for example. Meade said they needed some more patriotic songs. And then, as if on cue, the final set of songs began — "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder," "The Marine Hymn," "Stars and Stripes Forever," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".... All played and I heard no Madisonian dissenting opinion from this crowd. Many noticed "Taps" and stood.
... and the sound of a boombox somewhere tuned to the radio channel that plays the official "Rhythm and Booms" soundtrack. Earlier, pop tunes played. "Man in the Mirror," for example. Meade said they needed some more patriotic songs. And then, as if on cue, the final set of songs began — "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder," "The Marine Hymn," "Stars and Stripes Forever," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".... All played and I heard no Madisonian dissenting opinion from this crowd. Many noticed "Taps" and stood.
Happy 4th!
This was the scene on the Terrace last night, watching the big fireworks show across the lake...
What a throng! It was like fireworks Woodstock. Replete with nudity: When the show was over, and much of the crowd, including (we will assume) all the children, had cleared out, a few young guys shed their clothes, dove into the lake, swam around, hopped out, ran to the end of the pier, and dove in again. One display and then another.
What's that brown ooze?
And why all the egg cartons?
Wait. This is nicer. Or is it? The evil you don't see is scarier, perhaps. I'm getting a "The Shining" vibe from it.
Maybe this one will make you happier.
Wait. This is nicer. Or is it? The evil you don't see is scarier, perhaps. I'm getting a "The Shining" vibe from it.
Maybe this one will make you happier.
"Something very important happened here."
That's the title of this picture in my Flickr photostream:
It was blogged as "Althouse on the road" a year ago:
Beyond the edgy excitement, it's even more beautiful. Cozily married. A weekend in Indiana. Bliss!
It was blogged as "Althouse on the road" a year ago:
Somewhere in America. In the heartland.It's the Greyhouse Coffee & Supply Co. in West Lafayette — the site of the momentous second date of Althouse + Meade. We're here now, for our Valentine's Eve anniversary.
Beyond the edgy excitement, it's even more beautiful. Cozily married. A weekend in Indiana. Bliss!
"It went over well except for one person who thought it was blasphemous and tried to knock over our Festivus pole."
"He refused to come to the potluck, was forced to, came, ate all the food and left without saying thank you. Grievances were aired about him."
Are you participating in the feats of strength and airing of the grievances?
Are you participating in the feats of strength and airing of the grievances?
"The enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region..."
"The assigned subject of this article is the 56th Annual MLF, July 30 to August 3, 2003, whose official theme was 'Lighthouses, Laughter, and Lobster'":
Putting "lobster" through a Google news search just now, I see that "Lobster fest starts today in Rockland." An odd coincidence:
2003 Festival highlights: concerts by Lee Ann Womack and Orleans, annual Maine Sea Goddess beauty pageant, Saturday’s big parade, Sunday’s William G. Atwood Memorial Crate Race, annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths, and the MLF’s Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of fresh-caught Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker near the grounds’ north entrance. Also available are lobster rolls, lobster turnovers, lobster sauté, Down East lobster salad, lobster bisque, lobster ravioli, and deep-fried lobster dumplings. Lobster Thermidor is obtainable at a sit-down restaurant called The Black Pearl on Harbor Park’s northwest wharf. A large all-pine booth sponsored by the Maine Lobster Promotion Council has free pamphlets with recipes, eating tips, and Lobster Fun Facts. The winner of Friday’s Amateur Cooking Competition prepares Saffron Lobster Ramekins, the recipe for which is available for public downloading at www.mainelobsterfestival.com. There are lobster T-shirts and lobster bobblehead dolls and inflatable lobster pool toys and clamp-on lobster hats with big scarlet claws that wobble on springs.I'm doing a lobster theme today, following the pattern of previous theme days on this blog, which is to work a theme only after I've perceived an accidental theme present in the first 2 or more posts.
Putting "lobster" through a Google news search just now, I see that "Lobster fest starts today in Rockland." An odd coincidence:
Lobster lovers and others come from all over the U.S. and other countries to the volunteer-run festival, which [the prez of the festival] estimated generates as much as $2 million annually for the area economy.That's from today's news article. The quote that starts this post is from a much darker account of the festival, David Foster Wallace's 2004 essay "Consider the Lobster." Wallace has a lot to say about the World’s Greatest Lobster Cooker:
“It’s gained so much national and international recognition,” she said.
She said many of this year’s showcase activities — such as the crowning of the Sea Goddess from a court culled from local girls — are tried-and-true crowd pleasers which have been around for decades. Others, such as Sunday’s “Real Maine Man” pageant, are relatively new.
Last year, organizers had a “Real Maine Man” cooking contest, but they’ve upped the ante this summer. Cash prizes totaling $225 will be awarded to those who can prove their Mainely manliness after competing in categories such as Best Real Maine Man Outfit, Talent, and Feats of Strength and Endurance....
There also will be a parade, an art show, Navy ship tours, and a lobster crate race, among many other activities planned over the five-day festival.
But the star of the show, Kolmosky emphasized, is everyone’s favorite sea creature.
“I think the highlight of the festival is the delectable Maine lobster,” she said.
One must-see is what organizers proudly refer to as the “World’s Greatest Lobster Cooker,” a behemoth that can cook 1,600 pounds of lobsters every 15 minutes at its peak capacity.
“It’s a show in itself,” Kolmosky said.
So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the U.S.: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?...He's just getting rolling at that point... just getting roiling. It's a festival of agonizing over there at the link.
[T]he whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable. It is, at any rate, uncomfortable for me, and for just about everyone I know who enjoys a variety of foods and yet does not want to see herself as cruel or unfeeling. As far as I can tell, my own main way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking about the whole unpleasant thing. I should add that it appears to me unlikely that many readers of [G]ourmet wish to think hard about it, either, or to be queried about the morality of their eating habits in the pages of a culinary monthly. Since, however, the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions.
There are several reasons for this. For one thing, it’s not just that lobsters get boiled alive, it’s that you do it yourself—or at least it’s done specifically for you, on-site. As mentioned, the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, which is highlighted as an attraction in the Festival’s program, is right out there on the MLF’s north grounds for everyone to see. Try to imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killing Floor or something—there’s no way.
"Am I the only one who thinks a big wedding is inappropriate for two people who have been living together?"
A post I wrote exactly 4 years ago — when, unlike now, I had no thought of getting married myself — reread this morning — after someone left a new comment. I still agree with what I wrote there and am still amused by all the pushback I got in the comments.
20 million.
Some time today or so, this blog will receive its 20 millionth visitor. (That's visitor, not page view. I've got over 30 million page views already.)
Just letting you know. I don't have any special plans for celebrating. Not quite yet anyway.
UPDATE: The 20 millionth visitor came from Philadelphia at 9:50:00 pm Central Time. They arrived on "Is Rush Limbaugh really that hard to understand?" and left — 1 minute and 57 seconds later — from "Why has 'Crash' topped the Netflix most-rented list since 2005?" Was that you?
Whether that was you or not, I thank you for reading! I am endlessly happy to have readers — and commenters! I've gone 5 years, 3 months, and 3 days, posting every single day, and I have never lost the great, energizing feeling of knowing that someone is reading. In the beginning, I hoped to get to the level of 60 readers a day that my colleague had and looked with envy at another lawprof who'd worked his way up to 400 readers a day. I remember in my first year thinking how great it would be to hit the 1 million mark and not quite making it. Anyway, now I've hit 20 million. That's pretty cool! Thanks!
Just letting you know. I don't have any special plans for celebrating. Not quite yet anyway.
UPDATE: The 20 millionth visitor came from Philadelphia at 9:50:00 pm Central Time. They arrived on "Is Rush Limbaugh really that hard to understand?" and left — 1 minute and 57 seconds later — from "Why has 'Crash' topped the Netflix most-rented list since 2005?" Was that you?
Whether that was you or not, I thank you for reading! I am endlessly happy to have readers — and commenters! I've gone 5 years, 3 months, and 3 days, posting every single day, and I have never lost the great, energizing feeling of knowing that someone is reading. In the beginning, I hoped to get to the level of 60 readers a day that my colleague had and looked with envy at another lawprof who'd worked his way up to 400 readers a day. I remember in my first year thinking how great it would be to hit the 1 million mark and not quite making it. Anyway, now I've hit 20 million. That's pretty cool! Thanks!
If you were getting married, would you want a wedding?
If you had a wedding in the past, do you wish you'd skipped it? Do you wish you'd scaled it way down? OhioAnne thought I should ask — a propos of my impending — to use the word everyone seems to want to use — nuptials:
As for that wedding, we're talking about a second marriage for both of us, and we're pretty old. I don't think I could put on a good enough show to justify forcing a lot of people to travel, dress up, and celebrate or give the impression of celebrating, and I don't see the fun in putting myself in the position of wondering whether I need to fret about whether I can. Some people who read my blog (or watch me on Bloggingheads) might think I'm a glutton for attention, but why do you think I've found such satisfaction in on-line expression? Putting classroom teaching to the side, I'm no exhibitionist. I live a very private and unusually secluded life here in my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin.
How many would do what they did again if given the choice? How many wanted to do it in the first place?I think honeymoons should be questioned as well. So much pressure! And you're exiling yourself in a strange place, away from everyone you know, wondering whether you chose a resort with the ideal romantic scenery and obsequious staff. Personally, I love normal life, really seeing and experiencing the details of it, and the cool thing about being married should be that you are sharing it with the one you love.
Personally, the last thing I want to have to think about on such a day is whether the DJ showed up or not. I would opt for my fiancee, the minimum witnesses required by law and the officiator. (I have no kids, but, if I did, I would add them - especially if they could function as the witnesses.)
Then I would go on an extended honeymoon in a warm location.
Six months or later, I would have a party for the masses to thank them for the well wishes. Hopefully, it could double as a housewarming party.
I love my family, but the focus on the day should be on two becoming one — not on making some nameless relative happy about who they are seated next to on the occasion.
As for that wedding, we're talking about a second marriage for both of us, and we're pretty old. I don't think I could put on a good enough show to justify forcing a lot of people to travel, dress up, and celebrate or give the impression of celebrating, and I don't see the fun in putting myself in the position of wondering whether I need to fret about whether I can. Some people who read my blog (or watch me on Bloggingheads) might think I'm a glutton for attention, but why do you think I've found such satisfaction in on-line expression? Putting classroom teaching to the side, I'm no exhibitionist. I live a very private and unusually secluded life here in my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin.
The scourge of bachelorette parties in gay bars.
"The gay men are there because, well, they don't want to be around a lot of women"/"Gay men don't go to gay bars because we don't want to be around women."
Hey, Dan, he said "a lot."
Do I need to make an "a lot" tag?
Thanks to Peter Hoh for emailing that link.
Hey, Dan, he said "a lot."
***
Do I need to make an "a lot" tag?
***
Thanks to Peter Hoh for emailing that link.
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