1. Have you heard of Choir! Choir! Choir!? (That's what it's called, I'm not just shouting it three times at you.) It's a sing-along where you practice the back-up harmonies to a song for an hour and then you sing it all together, sometimes with a famous musician on lead vocals. I'm dying for them to come to LA. I miss singing with strangers. Well they had one recently where David Byrne sang David Bowie's Hero and you guys, if ever there was a moment where a Wealthy Benefactor would have come in handy it would have been this moment so I could have flitted off to New York to sing back-up with David Byrne. I would have BEEN THERE. Because I love sing-alongs and I love David Bowie and I love David Byrne. So much in fact, that a few months ago I had this really depressing realization that kids today don't know who the Talking Heads are. And I started to panic about that. The internal monologue went something like this: (A Talking Heads song shuffles on) "Man, I really love the Talking Heads. Does anyone not love them? Wait, that would assume that everyone knows the Talking Heads. They're old. People my age surely know them, right? But kids? I found them in the 80s because they played Psycho Killer on KROQ all the time but kids don't listen to the radio these days. And I'm sure KROQ doesn't even play them anymore. Kids are certainly not googling '70s and 80s new wave groups' when they're looking for new music. And what if their parents don't know the Talking Heads?! It's a parent's responsibility to introduce kids to old music they would otherwise miss. KIDS TODAY WILL NEVER KNOW THE TALKING HEADS!!! (end scene.) I'm going to start driving around town with my windows down and Mr. Jones blaring from my puny speakers so that the Youth of America can be informed. I'm around the Youth of America all day long for crying in the mud. From 6 AM to sometimes 6 PM I am with the young. I should be doing my part. My seminary kids are going to be so well versed in the Talking Heads catalog. Anyway, here's David Byrne and several really lucky ducks singing Hero:
2. Have you seen The Post? It was a great movie. But the best thing about it, by far, was Meryl Streep's caftan.
Behold the glory of it! This isn't doing it the least bit of justice because you have to see it in motion. It's like she's wearing a shimmery cloud. She wears it for quite a few scenes and the whole time I kept thinking, "This is as close to perfection as any shapeless lounge-wear will ever get." It is magnificent. I hope to be wearing something similar when you visit me in my retirement in Palm Springs in 25 years.
3. You know how loads of girl names were once boy names. Leslie and Tracy and Ashley and Beverly were all once 100% boy names and now are 100% girl names. This is a trend that has gone on forever and will continue to do so. But names are skewing older now. Which means that parents who follow the trend of giving their daughters traditional boy names are now giving them old man names, as shown by this article Katie came across. You should really see the whole list but I'll give you the highlights and then you too can wonder, "Were they high or something?" (all from births in 2015): there were 205 girls named Ezra (like the Old Testament prophet?), 97 named Ira (was she born with hair coming out of her ears and eating a tuna sandwich?), 65 were named Asa (I hope she got 500 heads of cattle at her christening). There are some Declans, which, I don't know why you would name your daughter after the Irish exchange student you had a crush on in high school but okay. And some Reeds, who will definitely all become accountants who wears polos every Friday, even though very few women actually look good in a polo. But my personal favorite is Uriah. There are 28 2-year-old girls toddling around America with the name Uriah. We could just assume that these parents really love the Dickens classic David Copperfield and connect on a deep level with the villain Uriah Heep. But I'm not sure even my love for Dickens would bring me to give any child, let alone a daughter, a name that sounds like something you'd have to have your urologist check out.
