first efforts

Finnfam New Year's Media Extravaganza!

Just can't get enough of finnfam? Fear not, sweet friends, the New Year's holiday will be simply teeming with finnfam, available on your television from the comfort of your own living room. That's right, friends, all of your finnfam needs can be met without even moving your big fat butt from the couch! It all starts on New Year's Eve, when you can pop a bottle of champagne and tune in to PBS for a performance of "A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor," live from Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Wait, what's that you see? Why, it's me and my beloved, in the tenth row, enjoying the show! Wave to us -- you never know, we just might wave back!

And nothing cures a New Year's Eve hangover quite like settling in with the Rose Parade on New Year's Day. We just can't get enough of flowers, floats, and inane banter from hosts whose primary claim to fame is a recurring role on "The Young and the Restless." Watch closely, just behind Grand Marshal George Lucas, and you'll catch the Lakeville North High School Band, where Kelsey (Niece #5) and Thomas (Nephew #5) will be found trumpeting and saxophoning their way to Hollywood stardom.

Now what could be a better way to start 2007 than that?

[Update: The lineup for the Keillor show has been announced. Among others, we get Emmylou Harris. EMMYLOU HARRIS! Sorry, now I'm just bragging...]

Finnfam xmas, part two

Here is what we might call the Zapruder film of the Christmas pinata "lamp incident"; look closely, you may catch a glimpse of the rumored second shot coming from the grassy knoll...

And here's what happened when Oscar Dog met Grandma's mechanical singing cats:

(double-click on images to see movies)

Finnfam xmas, part one

Okay, here's the thing you need to know about finnfam and Christmas. Every year since 1968 we have whacked the holiday cheer out of a pinata on Christmas Eve. There is no reason we should do this, except that my parents went to Mexico a long time ago and brought back a pinata. They hatched the inspired plan to make it a Christmas Eve tradition, figuring that a houseful of kids needed something to do on Christmas Eve besides wait for Santa and eat Swedish meatballs and lefse till they puked.

All of which goes part of the way toward explaining the photo above, which is this year's pinata. Or was this year's pinata, before the grandkids made a fine mess of it (and Niece #5 deftly whacked a living room lamp in the process). The pinata has taken many forms over the years. Name every pop culture character from the past thirty years and it has been represented in the finnfam pinata -- R2D2, Kermit the Frog, Garfield, Smurfette, Spongebob, even the Golden Snitch from the Harry Potter novels. Every holiday figure imaginable has been there too, from the Grinch and Santa to the Nutcracker and the Leg Lamp from "A Christmas Story." Then one year when the nephews and nieces were really little they all collaborated on what I hope remains the only "concept pinata" -- a representation of "thumbs up". Yeah, I didn't get it either...

So what was this year's pinata? Maybe another photo will help you figure it out:

Yep, it's Alien Baby, my irascible alter ego who keeps watch on this blog (see above right). Which made it an odd Christmas Eve, watching my alter ego getting beaten mercilessly with a laundry stick while my nephews yelled, "Hit her, hit her!" Believe it or not, this was not all that weird by finnfam pinata standards. Alien Baby isn't the only family member to have been given the honor of being pinatafied; years ago, Sissy 1 and Nieces 1 and 2 made a pinata of my dad. That one even had socks that matched his tie, just like real life. Classy.

Ho-ho-home

Really Warm Springs

Two nights near Warm Springs during a December heat wave. Hiking in shorts (shorts!). Fulfilling our geeky need for history tourism. Lovely trip all around. This whole wedging a getaway between finals week and Christmas week is inspired.

Just outside of Warm Springs you can tour the FDR Little White House Historic Site, where you can see his specially adapted, hand-controlled cars, watch a decent 14-minute film (narrated by Walter Cronkite, natch), view the famous "Unfinished Portrait" and walk through the room where he died.

And when you're all done you can ask yourself, "Hey, wasn't Lucy Mercer with him when he died?" Oops, guess they forgot to mention that. Ah, history. To be fair, the museum is really great; lots of artifacts that contextualize FDR's experiences at Warm Springs as well as broader issues related to his presidency. Apparently people sent him a lot of canes as gifts; there were four separate cabinets of canes. And gavels; lots of ceremonial gavels. And hey, look who I came across in the exhibit room!

That Migrant Mother, she really gets around.

We also did a decent, hilly hike in FDR State Park. According to the thermometer on my day pack, it was 72 degrees. I wore shorts. On December 19th. The hike started and ended with views like this:

The view outside our accommodations was almost as good, and came with a bonus -- this little visitor:

She played hard to get, scampering away when we opened the door to greet her, then settling within a safe three-to-four feet of us on the porch. She preferred our only neighbors at the place, a couple who wrongly decided she was a stray and fed her. This was no stray; just a smart kitty exploiting the kindness of strangers. When she wasn't eating their food she could be found outside our door, on our welcome mat, staring through the glass with large yellow eyes.

FDR State Park was built, surprise surprise, by the CCC. Here's one of those CCC "boys," memorialized in bronze:

Nice abs!

Road trip! er, "research"

     

 

Nap time!

Brooks. Or Dunn.

Yesterday on my way downtown to the Frist I saw Brooks. Or Dunn. I wasn't sure which. All I knew was that the short blonde guy in jeans and a suede jacket, handing the valet-parking guy his car keys, looked famous. My visual recognition skills for contemporary country artists are pretty slim, but I conjured up the possibility that it was Brooks. Or Dunn. I called my beloved and declared that I had just seen Brooks or Dunn. He asked for a description; I described this. "Dunn," he said, and then he laughed at me.

This matters because I've been waiting for several months for a Nashville celebrity sighting and haven't seen a one. Reese Witherspoon brings the kids here to stay with grandma and lick her divorce wounds. Nicole Kidman apparently hangs out at the salad bar at Wild Oats Market. Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora have been in town recording an album and eating at local steakhouses. And Faith and Tim, well, according to the local media they are frigging everywhere. Nashville is teeming with celebrities of all sorts, but yesterday's tentative celebrity sighting made me realize another problem: I have no idea what most of these people look like. There could be hugely famous, incredibly important people all around me, in line behind me at the Kroger or at the gas station or next to me on the bus (okay, maybe not the bus). But I have no idea who these people even are; it's disconcerting.

So for now I will settle with Dunn. (Dunn. It definitely was Dunn). And the more general idea that there are all kinds of musical things happening in Nashville that I really should be taking more advantage of. This NPR story last night told me about one of these things: a group called The Long Players, veteran musicians who started getting together two years ago for live shows where they play an entire rock album from start to finish, using a different guest singer for each song. Thus far their repertoire has included several Beatles albums, the Cars, the Pretenders, the Stones, and Dylan. And when they get to the end of the side A songs, they stop and have a little collective group moment where they imagine lifting up the needle, flipping the record, and putting the needle down on side B. I like that.

One Frist, two Frist

Today I am going downtown to hear one of my fellow fellows give a talk at the Frist. This Frist, not this one. These two Frists have a lot in common, however; they both have benefited from being associated with a family that has a lot of money.

Subliminal messages

I'm a big fan of gmail. I started using it a few months ago as a way to consolidate my professional e-mail. Given that I have two separate campus addresses this year, it's nice to have it all forwarded to one place. There are other benefits, too, especially the huge amounts of storage space, the ability to chat from within e-mail, and the archiving of messages by threads. Handy!

But by far the most amusing feature of gmail is the ads that are generated based upon the content of messages. Every time you open a new message you get a different set of ads tailored to go along with it. It sounds like this would be annoying, and most of the time it is. But sometimes it's just plain funny. For example, here are some of the ads generated by this morning's messages:

ARE YOU KILLING YOUR DOG? Unhealthy feeding habits lead to obesity

DECODE MEN'S BEHAVIOR: Learn How To Understand Men - And Beat Them At their Own Game!

COFFEE EXPOSED: A shocking secret coffee companies don't want you to know

INDOOR DOG POTTIES: Lots of different types, convenient and easy to use