Three of our kids wrapped up their school year yesterday. Our daughter Leah has a Latin exam today (sounds like fun!) and will be finished before noon. That means I’ll have three glorious months of no kiddie wake-up duty.
And if you’ve never tried to wake up a teenager, I suggest you go poke a rattlesnake nest with your bare hands, it’ll be less painful.
Oh sure, I’ll still get up at the crack of dawn. I’m a 52-year-old guy… nature calls early and often for me. But it’ll be nice to have just a few minutes to spare.
Now that the kiddies are ready to sleep in, I just need to work on the kitties
Sunday is Senior Discount Day at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop near my house. While I’m not a full-fledged, card-carrying, early-buffet-eating member of AARP just yet, the discount applies for anyone 50 or older. (“Fifty is nifty!”) And I can’t resist a 25% discount, especially when my vinyl crate-digging unearthed this gem:
Yes, the masterpiece of Rupert Holmes oeuvre, the seminal Partners in Crime album, featuring the earworm entitled “Escape” but better known and loved by millions as “The Piña Colada Song.”
Don’t act like you don’t know it. Don’t act like you don’t like it. Don’t pretend that you’re not hearing it in your head right now, and singing along at the top of your inner-voice lungs.
It may not be the best song ever put to acetate, but it has its own unique charm. And it is, hands down, the single most unrealistic song about a relationship ever. Let’s recap it, shall we?
In the days before Tinder, when newspapers were still a thing, folks would use the “personals” section of the classified ads to find love. But wait, our Escape protagonist already has a lady. She’s sleeping right next to him… and he’s perusing the personals. Yet somehow he manages to absolve himself of any guilt or shame in the first couplet:
I was tired of my lady, we’d been together too long/Like a worn-out recording, of a favorite song
Ergo, ennui is justification for cheating on your significant other. Who knew? So he sees a personal ad that piques his interest. Perhaps it’s a shared predilection for piña coladas and/or getting caught in the rain and/or intimate encounters in sand dunes. Or a mutual hatred of yoga/health food. So while his current “lady” is sleeping, he channels his inner Robert Browning and writes a reply, suggesting a rendezvous at an Irish bar (because those are the best kind of rendezvous – sidebar, the word “rendezvous” is plural – those wacky French!)
When the woman arrives at the appointed place and time – plot twist ahead – it’s his current paramour (a.k.a. “my own lovely lady”). And both of them laugh off the fact that they were trying to cheat on each other. Yes, that’s correct, in this song, there’s no righteous indignation, no hurt feelings, no screaming/yelling/divorce-attorney-calling. They laugh it off, presumably have a drink or three (when in O’Malleys…) and in all likelihood head to the Cape for an assignation. It’s not really a song so much as it is a fairy tale.
So when I saw the album in the thrift shop, I had to have it. Especially because it had held up rather well considering its 1979 release date. It still had the poly wrapping, it still had the record sleeve with liner notes, it even had the original receipt from the purchase:
Guess it wasn’t Senior Discount Day at Music World back in the summer of 1980. They paid $5.75 but I got the album for 37 cents. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me (and The Village People) to introduce the world’s favorite non-philanderer, the inimitable Rupert Holmes:
My wife Tina is a registered nurse, and works in a wound care clinic at a local hospital. She actually enjoys the gorier aspects of her job… she is a self-proclaimed “picker and popper”… whereas I get squeamish at even the mention of a blood draw, much less an actual blood draw.
She comes home from work and wants to tell the kids and me all about the latest and greatest (read: grossest) wounds she had to treat that day. I immediately go into full ‘ear muff’ mode.
May 4 has nothing to do with Star Wars, other than sounding like the start of a famous line from the movie… if Obi-Wan Kenobi and friends had just had some dental work done, perhaps.
Or did I miss the sequel that starred Mike Tyson and/or Sylvester the Cat?
But now “May the Fourth” is a thing, apparently, complete with its very own novelty t-shirt.
I have only seen the first Star Wars (I know, it’s Episode 4, back off nerds) so excuse me while I go to sleep.
Doctor Byrd… Doctor Robin Byrd… please report to the I.C.U., stat!
“Thank goodness you’re here, Doctor Byrd. We’ve suddenly been hit with a massive outbreak of avian flu and we’ve got to find the source ASAP!”
(Sorry for the fuzzy photo – needless to say National Geographic won’t be calling me anytime soon.) You’ve gotta admire this bird’s courage and ingenuity. The heck with dozens of trips to collect twigs and straw… if s/he can get this surgical mask back to the tree, the nest is practically built. It’s the avian equivalent of a pre-fab home.
Wow, free sushi! At a downtown magazine box, no less!
What will they think of next? A pizza ATM? Whoops, that already exists (at my alma mater, no less).
Visitors stand beside a Pizza ATM machine at Xavier University, Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in Cincinnati. The university partnered with French company Paline to install the first Pizza ATM in North America. The machine holds 70 pizzas at once as customers will be able to use a touch screen to pick one of the $10 pizzas, which will be heated for several minutes, placed in a cardboard box and ejected through a slot. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
How about a vending machine that dispenses fishing bait? Wait, that exists too.
Guess the only thing left to invent is a soft-serve machine that dispenses Cheez-Whiz instead of ice cream.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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