For your aural pleasure.

youtu.be/zZljPX5DSD8

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My Mother's sister has chided me for not posting often enough. She says she reads my blog when she wakes up in the middle of the night. She has asked for more really long posts so that her eyes will get extra tired and close themselves. Wriphe.com: Boring People to Sleep Since 2002!®

So let's see, what things have I encountered recently that can be used as soporific fodder?

• I'm already suffering from Olympics withdrawal. I love the Olympics. I watch all I can, and I'm always sad to see them go on hiatus. While I hate the corporate and political greed that always accompanies them, that's just a sideshow for the main event: athletes from all over the world competing for little blocks of electroplated precious metals. I love the bonhomie between athletes and especially their ability to take a loss — essentially the destruction of their lifelong dreams — gracefully. (Speaking as a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan, I firmly believe learning to lose is the single most important thing in any sport.) Of course, I like seeing happy winners, too. The Olympics are our biannual reminder that people are what is really important in this life. Life could be a paradise if we'd just let it.

• “Bon-hommy,” went on Eeyore gloomily. “French word meaning bonhommy,” he explained. “I’m not complaining, but There It Is.” †

• The notifications on my telephone stopped working over the weekend, so no sounds when I get texts or phone calls. Not that I get a lot of phone calls. But if you call and I don't answer, now I can say that I didn't hear it without lying. (It's a software problem, not a hardware problem. For example, I can still watch YouTube videos. My notification sound effect is the sound of a Star Trek [TOS] communicator incoming call chirp, but my ringtone is a default system sound, and neither works. I have the phone turned off for recharge and will turn it back on tomorrow in the hopes that it just needs a good nap to get things sorted out. That sometimes works for me.)

• Update: It's working again. Which means that if I don't answer your call, I'm probably ignoring you on purpose again.

• Update Update: It's not working again. Which means it's time for me to buy a new phone. (This Google Pixel 7 lasted just a year and a half. I bought it because it was cheaper than a Samsung Galaxy, and, well, you get what you pay for.)

• If you're looking to go to sleep, do not click on this YouTube link. That's the song I put in my CD player and turned up REAL LOUD while I was dressing (because I had started singing it in the shower). There's a reason that I have never used Huey Lewis and the News in my "new years" posts: their lyrics are actually good. Ok, to be perfectly honest, the song I started singing in the shower was Lindsey Buckingham's Time Bomb Town, which is the second song on the Back to the Future soundtrack album. You know the one: "There must be about a million / single ways to go down." I'm sure you recognize it as the song playing on the clock radio when Marty wakes up in bed in 1985 (the first time). Once I realized what I was singing, my brain automatically clicked over to "Please don't drive 88 / Don't wanna be late again." Which, of course, I'm sure you recognize as the song playing on the clock radio when Marty wakes up in bed in 1985 (the second time). And that's why I buy soundtrack albums: so I can wash out the earworms I pick up in the shower.

Are you asleep yet, Kelley? If not, I can start talking about my dreams. Nothing is more boring than someone else's dreams. I had one recently where I worked up the nerve to ask Natalie Portman out on a date... and she said yes! (Although I got the impression it was a pity date.) We went out for coffee.

† Milne, A. A. "Chapter VI, In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents," in Winnie-The-Pooh, pg. 72, E.P. Dutton & Company [New York], 1926

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I've been going through an ELO phase lately, collecting all of their studio albums. (Judge me if you want to, but you can do a lot worse than ELO.) And that led me to this animation that used tracks from ELO's 1981 album Time as an unauthorized soundtrack.

Don't blink, or you might miss Batman and Robin!

youtu.be/-840keiiFDE?si=5m6GVCx8y04l6uQn

Believe it or not, that animation was originally created 40 years ago by university students for a 1983 Japanese science fiction convention DAICON IV. I'd say it stands up about as well as ELO's music does, which is to say "Very Well."

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Mark Evanier, who has written a few comic books in his day, recently posted on his website, newsfromme.com, a YouTube of a Japanese take on Neal Hefti's familiar Batman television theme. Since I don't have time today to come up with anything better, I'm reposting it here.

youtu.be/N947b4GF4Ag?si=1rdgeztzi3zbBBTg

Enjoy!

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This Batman and Football month has been a little light on the Batman so far. That shouldn't come as a big surprise. They literally don't make Batman comics like they used to.

These days, the trend is to focus more on the incredible wealth, the impossible physical feats, the extended family of once-were-Robins, and the acrobatic sex with bondage-geared Catwoman (and her whip). Think of it as Batman for a prurient HBO audience.

I like my Batman to lean a little more on the cerebral side, with a heavy dose of "Detective" in my comics. He's genuinely determined to make the world a better place through his force of will, and for him that means solving crimes that the police can't.

The fact that he dresses like a bat professionally should be treated like a personality quirk grown from a damaged childhood, tolerated by others because of Batman's great genius. (Consider that Scotland Yard never built a Sherlock Holmes signal.)

While it increasingly seems that "my" Batman belongs to the past, I can live with that. I'm sure everyone's favorite characters are the ones they grew up with. I hope I'm wrong, and one day a better Batman will come along, but in the meantime, we've always got yesterday.

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I often say that I'm completely impervious to advertising. I'm too intelligent and too set in my ways to fall for such blatant manipulation.

And then came this.

https://youtu.be/yOOb52AJOzo

I got as far as the keytar, and I immediately ordered a dozen pairs of women's soccer shoes.

Seriously though. If someone ever made a video like this about me, I would have it playing on every television in my house until I died. And then I would find a way to have it play on my tombstone.

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I just listed to Haim's "Want You Back" on repeat for three straight hours, and I don't regret it.

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youtube.com

Looks like it's time to buy a Roku.

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Speaking of quotes that have gotten stuck in my head over the years:

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

I first heard that in my 20s, and now I'm in my 40s. And it *still* applies to me.

For more information about the song that contains that quote, visit wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen.

For the song itself:

https://youtu.be/sTJ7AzBIJoI

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We recently changed cable providers, and for the first time in a long time, we have some "premium" channels. Skinemax has gotten a lot more explicit than I remember. Back in my day, Shannon Tweed used to parade around topless and simulate a lot of foreplay. There's not a lot of "simulating" in what they air now. These days, they seem to only hire Method actors, if you know what I mean.

This is not an exaggeration. Wicked Pictures hardcore DVD Thief of Hearts is currently airing on my television as Showtime softcore Stealing Lust, fundamentally the same movie with the most revealing shots and camera angles edited out. (And before you ask, no, I did not know that either film existed off the top of my head. It took no small amount of creative Googling to uncover they were the same movie. Blogging sure can be hard work.)

I'm not complaining, exactly. If you didn't know that the modern actors were doing less acting, the biggest on-screen difference between softcore then and softcore now is mostly a matter of presentation style. (Does anyone know what a merkin is anymore?) And tattoos. So many tattoos now.

If I really miss anything about the softcore films of old, it's the music. I think I first saw The Joy of Flying in 1990. I can't tell you much of anything about the movie (other than that there was a lot of topless frolicking), but the soundtrack left a lasting impression.

https://youtu.be/cfQs5-oqSVY

All choreographed sex scenes could use a little more big band action if you ask me.

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