Damn you, Procter & Gamble

All of the P&G Thank You Mom commercials shown during the Olympics have been very touching, but this one really got me (I should note that I tear up at the slightest provocation. Hallmark commercials. Maxwell House Christmas commercials. Parades. I’m a sap). I sang this song in college glee club but our rendition lacked the touching visuals. I especially love the scene of the mom changing her own tire in front of her daughters. I couldn’t change a tire if my life depended on it.

The song is from Rodger and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical Carousel. It is also used as an anthem by the Liverpool Football Club, among others. If you go to the YouTube site for the above commercial there are some hilarious comments by soccer hooligans who are up in arms about P&G appropriating “their” song. Apparently they were not aware that its origins have nothing to do with football, although it is well documented, and actually gives more credence to P&G’s selection of it as a theme for this commercial.

One of these things is not like the other

At the beginning of the wave of good magazines going under, a little gem called Cottage Living was the first to go. I was among the many who mourned its demise, and also to receive what publishers Time Inc. thought was a suitable replacement: Southern Living. FAIL.

No offense to the legions of SL subscribers, but a mag that “celebrates the best of life in the South” and where every cover features food instead of charming decor does not fill the void. I would think a better fit would be another sister publication, Coastal Living. Or even Real Simple, both of which have more in common with Cottage Living. And PS, last time I checked, Connecticut was not considered to be in the South. Except maybe if you are in Canada.

Among the most recent publications to hit the skids was Metropolitan Home, one of the last bastions of contemporary design in the shelter mag world. I had hopes that Hachette Filipacchi Media would replace it with its lovely sister pub, Elle Decor:

Silly me. I received a postcard yesterday welcoming me to my replacement subscription:

Woman’s Day?

FAIL. FAIL. FAIL.

Some New Year’s resolutions require new shoes

One of my Christmas gifts this year was this fabulous Shoe-A-Day Calendar, based on Linda O'Keefe's international bestseller Shoes. Every day is a new piece of eye candy. Some are from recent collections (such as the above (“Pippa” vegan faux patent leather mary jane by Natalie Portman for Te Casan, 2008) and some are vintage. My favorite so far (and it’s only January 12!) was a red satin number with rhinestone heel and beaded daisy toe clip from the late 1950s. Very Mad Men.  Do my people know me, or what?

I’m off to Minneapolis this week for work. And my trip involves spending considerable time at The Mall of America.  For. Work. It’s like the mother ship is calling me home.

Merry Merry and Happy New Year!

‘Tis the Seventh Day of Christmas, and my true love gave to me 12.1 megapixels and 4x optical zoom, which is not as melodic as seven swans a’swimming, but will mean much better pictures on this ol’ blog o’ mine. So everybody wins!

Wishing a healthy, happy 2010 to all my dear bloggy friends, and you lurkers, and you Google Readers, and people who find me by googling “Sara Richardson’s baby Robin” and “Rockin’ Robin” and “handsex game” (and no I don’t know nor do I want to know what that is. Or how it relates to my blog). Also, given my web stats, a LOT (and I mean a LOT, like in the hundreds) of people got White Trash Ghetto Toffee for Christmas this year, so Happy New Year to them, as well. Thank you all for stopping by my little corner of the interwebz and being a part of my life.

I sign off for the year with this serendipitous photo smackdown:

My 2009 Christmas card* vs Yours Truly, circa 1968:

No wonder I was so attracted to the card in the store!

*That is NOT me, that is a photo from 1935. My parents weren’t even born yet!

Orson Welles to the principal’s office please

Rival high schools in Shoreline, WA are duking it out on YouTube with two clever “lip dub” videos, each filmed in one continuous shot, one take, and a cast of hundreds.

Shorecrest threw down the gauntlet with Outkast’s “Hey Ya”:

And Shorewood came back with Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True”:

The first one is very fun and clever, but the second one is quite amazing. The lip sync is a bit off but consider that they were doing it backwards! We never did anything this cool when I was in high school…

More here.

The Orson Welles remark in the title references the opening shot in his film Touch of Evil, filmed in one continuous take (my college film professor would be amazed that I remembered this bit of cinematic lore). Scorsese also used the long tracking shot extensively in Goodfellas, and Hitchcock filmed the entire movie The Rope in ten total shots. Geez, I’m a geek.