YOU MAD, BRO?

Wow, they really know how to milk it, don't they? First they halve season 7--the usual 14 episodes--just to stretch the last season over two years. And then these trailers. Using "Love Hangover" by Diana Ross is a stroke of genius. Was that Don's idea?



I will officially go into mourning after the series finale. This show has meant so much to me over the years. That said, this last-last season better be EPIC, because part 1 of season 7 was sort of a let-down.

I admit, I got choked up over these clips....



Premieres Sunday, April 5th. Not that I'm counting the days or anything.

Rescued From Obscurity: A Rod Stewart Double Shot

How YOU doin'?

While Rod Stewart definitely isn't obscure--I think by now even his detractors would agree that he's reached "legend" status--the following two songs could definitely be categorized as such. And since I was going to post both videos on here anyway, I figured I might as well use the RFO tag, even though it's just the tracks themselves that are relatively unknown and not the artist.

I get a lot of flak for being a Rod Stewart fan. One reason is because, well, he's Rod Stewart. At best he's seen by non-fans as sort of a campy old relic from the seventies. At worst he's viewed as a musical whore who sold his soul several times over, first by abandoning his "respectable" rock roots and embracing pop in the mid-seventies ("Tonight's the Night"), then from pop to disco in the late seventies ("Do Ya Think I'm Sexy") then synthesizer-infused pop rock in the eighties, ("Young Turks," "Passion") and then from about 1990 on sliding steadily down the adult contemporary slope and straight into old fogey/Vegas territory with his Great American Songbook series. 

It makes me wish that some of Rod's "deep cuts" were in the public consciousness. "In a Broken Dream" is just one of many breathtakingly awesome songs that are pretty much known only to Rod's hardcore fans, and that's a shame. If "In a Broken Dream" had the fame it deserved, I don't see how anyone aware of its existence could sneer at anything else Rod recorded, no matter how cheesey. The song is truly sublime: it manages to be sad and angry and darkly funny all at the same time. It could be argued that while "In a Broken Dream" is great song on its own, the lyrics and music comprise only about 20% of its awesomeness. The remaining 80% is all ROD. It's in his voice and his delivery, and it makes my knees go weak.           

While it's hard to imagine "In A Broken Dream" being a commercial success in any decade, I feel like "Leave Virginia Alone" could have been a hit had it existed five years earlier. As luck would have it, Rod Stewart's seventeenth studio album A Spanner in the Works was launched into the world in May 1995, smack in the middle of a musical period where watered-down grunge and Top 40-approved gangsta rap ruled, leaving no room for anything that fell outside those two dismal categories. No surprise then that "Leave Virginia Alone" barely got any love at all, peaking at #52 in the US charts. It shouldn't have been that way, dammit, because it's an amazing song. It was written by Tom Petty, who (to my knowledge) never recorded it himself. I like Tom Petty, but there's no way his voice could do justice to the song's whimsical, melancholy lyrics. No one does whimsy or melancholy like Rod Stewart--see "Maggie May," "You Wear It Well," "Some Guys Have All the Luck," and pretty much every hit he's ever had. The video is beautifully shot, too (by director Zack Snyder, who I guess is a big deal these days) and it fits the track perfectly. I love the vintage shabby chic New Orleans-y feel of this clip, particularly the giant papier mache heads that look like something out of a Mardi Gras parade (and the throwaway shot of that one head breaking into dance at the 3:29 mark is fabulous). 



And because I'm such a fan of Rod the God, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention his new album--his first one of original material in several years--just dropped last month . I got my copy the day it was released, and it's fantastic. I'm so glad that Rod is back in the game and that he has (for now) gotten away from the old standard covers he kept cranking out over the last decade. I mean, I loved hearing his voice on songs like "My Funny Valentine" and "That's All," but seriously, it was time for him to move on from all that.

It was "time" for him to move on....get it?

Birds do it. Bees do it. And so do chickens, apparently.

I think I must have been about 4 years old when I asked The Question. My family was living in Greensburg, Indiana (this was before we made our big move to "The City" - Indianapolis) and Stuart, my buddy next door, was about to become a big brother. Stuart's mother was the first pregnant lady I'd encountered and, as the months went by and she grew steadily larger and wider, I must have been curious. I'm guessing that's what prompted The Question. I don't actually remember asking it, but I do remember The Answer, and it came in the form of a real doozy of a book: How Babies Are Made.



My mom, naturally, was the one to proffer the book and broach this delicate subject with me. She was the typical 1970's earth mother, quite different than the conservative mothers of my friends, and definitely more "with it" than the small-town mothers of Greensburg, so it makes sense that she would have used How Babies Are Made, a Time-Life book first published in 1968. Apparently it's quite famous (Judy Blume even mentions it in Superfudge) and pretty much the go-to book for forward-thinking parents of the era who wanted to teach their kids about the birds and the bees. The images in the book--crafted entirely from construction paper--have a sweet, touchy-feely quality, but at the same time are rather explicit (check out the equipment on the dog, for starters). I don't remember the details of "the talk" but--as the cliche goes--a picture is worth a thousand words. And this book had a lot of pictures.

Here are a few highlights....


Here we have the artist's rendering of a bee pollinating a flower, but I can't even pay attention to what's going on inside that flower because, seriously, that bee is AWESOME! And it's made completely out of construction paper.


A mommy chicken and a daddy chicken doing...well...The Funky Chicken.
But wait...there's more! Turns out that dogs do it too. (YOU probably thought I was going to make a joke about doing it doggie-style, didn't you? Well, ha! I resisted the urge, so there.)



Look, it's Angelina Jolie's wet dream! (Sorry, I had to.)


And here are the babies, all grown up! I was mistaken, that's not Angie's brood. Clearly it's (clockwise from upper left) Zac Efron, Jessica Simpson, Barack Obama, Adam Brody, and John Cho (sporting an unfortunate haircut and a seriously groovy shirt)!


This is how humans do it. Under the covers, missionary-style. End of story.
Note: I like that the woman seems to be enjoying herself; that's a sure sign that this book was crafted in the late 1960's. In the 1950's such a notion would have been soundly mocked and quickly dismissed. Women enjoying sex? Hahahahaha! Surely you jest!


After the mommy and the daddy get nekkid and lay in bed and kiss for a while, a baby comes out!


Awwwwww! I can't even make fun of this picture, it's too sweet. I'm gonna go call my mom now.

While searching for images from this book I came across other people who had blogged about it. Check 'em out:

One of a Kind Wisconsin -- I really loved this post and the writer's commentary!

Teri has a highly entertaining blog and a great story about how she discovered this book.

Jennifer blogged about this a few years back. Check out her recollections of How Babies Are Made. (Her current blog, btw, is here.)

Do you have memories of this book? How did you find out about the birds and the bees? Tell me about it in the comments.

And speaking of books, here's mine.