johnrobe

If it feels a bit colder, I think it's because heck just froze over.

Last night, at Matej and Chelsea's, Timmi came out of the kitchen, happily drinking a big amber mug of frothy cider.

The feeling of heck freezing over was a false positive, because I thought it was beer, which despite my efforts which have ranged from friendly peer pressure (”Come on! COME ON!”) to outright coercion (”Drink this beer or else… I’ll…. um… have to drink it myself!”) she has always refused to give much of a shot. Turns out it was cider, but still, this is from a woman who has a very limited set of beverages she'll drink.

The good part (or the scary part depending on your perspective) is that she liked it, a lot. There may be a lot of apple-related “Woo!”-ing going on in the future.

John Food, Love

Chris and Tash’s wedding was last weekend, and it was wonderful. I had a great time from start to finish.

My favourite moments:

• Wedding pie instead of wedding cake. If you know Chris, you understand.
• Timmi and I dancing all by ourselves to “Friday I’m in Love” by the Cure. Not sure where everyone else was, but their loss was our gain.
• Having a hotel room a 2 minute walk from the dance floor.
• Having the whole dancefloor to ourselves again for “Maybe I’m Amazed” while Chelsea ran circles around us like an enchanted butterfly.
• Tyla, who is so tiny and so pregnant, getting down.
• Butter tarts!

John Love

Channel 26 - “Naked” (A look at social and political activists who used nudity for media coverage.)

Channel 27 - “How to Look Good Naked” (Gok helps a stay at home mon revamp her style.)

It’s apparently naked night!!

You’re wondering what was on 28 aren’t you?

It was Seinfeld.

John Television

Here are my favourite photos from our trip to New York. They aren’t necessarily the best ones, but they’re the ones that I like the most either for stylistic or sentimental reasons. You can see the whole set here if you’re a masochist, but the pictobrowser below has the highlights. I can’t figure out how to control the order of the photos, and that’s why it starts on a weird photo that people unfamiliar with Flight of the Conchords will not understand. Persevere though!

If you have a favourite — let me know!

John General

Ever since my cousin’s wedding, I’ve had the Chicken Dance on my mind. It was one of the 3 least country songs played at the wedding, and that’s more or less by default, but enough of that.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a wedding where they played the Chicken Dance, but when I think about it, I’ve probably been to a hundred weddings where they DID play the Chicken Dance, and it got me thinking…

Why???

I mean, it’s a fun song, especially for kids, and it gets everyone out there doing silly stuff on the dance floor, but how the heck did it become popular in the first place? It all started when a Swiss accordion player named Werner Thomas from created the song. It didn’t catch on until the lates 70s though and eventually became a popular song at weddings and Oktoberfests. Imagine back to before you ever knew how to do the Chicken Dance — imagine learning on the Lawrence Welk show from these guys:

I love how it’s described as “one of the most popular dances in America”.

Doing a search on YouTube for the Chicken Dance gives you some pretty funny hits.

I tried to get Natasha to play the Chicken Dance at her upcoming wedding, but she wasn’t down with the La Danse Poulet, so sadly it may be a while before I get to awkwardly stand on the side of the dance floor and watch people do it.

Now, if she plays “2 Legit 2 Quit”, I may be able to bust out my version of this chicken dance:

John Music

Last night I went to my cousin Regan's wedding in Exeter, and it was great. Reagan is on my mom's side of the family and his family and ours were always very close. It was a really happy day, and I had a fantastic time.

It was also my first time exposed to that side of the family's musical taste in a while, and wow…. I had forgotten how country they are.

I think they played about 20 country songs in a row, then switched to Elvis for a couple of songs before going back to the country. It's not my cup of tea for the most part, but the really surprising part was how much everyone else there loved it. They were all singing along, all dancing to the various routines in the songs. I felt left out to be honest.

This was apparently the chorus of the most requested song of the evening.

'Cause I'd like to see you out in the moonlight
I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks
I'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
And I'd like to check you for ticks.

It's funny when you're expecting it… sort of scary when you're not. For the record… I was not.

Congrats to Cheryl and Regan, I hope you're as happy every day as you were at your reception.

John Love, Music

In the ever-continuing list of touristy things we’re doing in New York, tonight we took in a Broadway play.

Again, it’s a challenge with this sort of thing because Timmi’s eyes roll even harder at Broadway-style musicals than they do at modern art, but I convinced her to go, mainly by buying tickets on the sly while she was hanging around with a friend today.

I was worried that Spamalot might be disappointing in several ways — as a musical, as comedy, as a rip-off of one of my favourite movies of all time — but it wasn’t. It was delightful and hilarious.

Also delightful was my day walking through Chelsea exploring Chelsea Market and various art galleries followed by a walking tour of the lower east side. For people who haven’t been to New York before, those two areas aren’t that close together, especially when you have a side trip to the South Street Seaport in the middle to pick up Broadway tickets. My feet, they are sore.

John General

As I mentioned in a previous post, I love modern art, but sometimes I have difficulty as it gets more, I won’t say obscure, but … modern. Unlike my lovely ladywife, I don’t have any issues with very abstract art like Mondrian or Pollock — in fact, I love it. Once the art starts becoming more installation-y and very abstract and starts feeling pretentious that’s when it becomes harder to relate to.

During our second floor of modern painting and sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art, things were starting to get rough. We had left the Van Gogh and Matisse and Klimt and moved into and then past Mondrian and Pollock and Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. It was getting harder to keep Timmi’s eyes from rolling, but I was doing my best.

I was telling her about Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut, and the lengths it goes to to describe what is art and what is not in the abstract expressionist movement, and just when I felt like I was making a little headway, we came around the corner and saw the piece to the right, called “Eurasia Siberian Symphony 1963 by Beuys”. Maybe the picture isn’t clear, so I’ll describe it…. it’s a goat/donkey on stilts with a balance beam attached to its fur and a triangle dangling from it in front of a blackboard with a polygon and some words written on it.

Obviously, it’s considered a master work of art, or it wouldn’t be in MoMa, but from a timing perspective, it couldn’t have been worse for me. It’s pretty hard to argue the deeper meaning of art, turn the corner, see this puppy, and still be able to continue your conversation with a straight face.

We decided to go to the photography floor after that.

We had a great day overall, which I suppose is getting repetitive and boring to read about so I’ll tell you a story from dinner that is at least a little weird.

We were in a pizza place in Little Italy enjoying a simple pizza and trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation going on behind us, but it was impossible.

The guy behind us had a lot of theories about a lot of things and he loved to talk. The one that I remember though was his rant about the way the NFL has been treating Michael Vick. It was way too harsh. After all, he figured, all Vick had done was kill some dogs … and pit bulls at that! Have you seen pit bulls, he asked, they’re the meanest ugliest dogs there are, and they’re just dogs!

After all, in this country, and I will go into quotes here, “You can kill a man. You can string him up and hang him. You can drag him in chains from the back of a car. OJ Simpson, he killed those people. But you can’t kill some dogs?”

I wanted to turn around and say that I was pretty sure that you couldn’t kill a man and drag him behind a car and NOT get suspended by the NFL, but I really didn’t think the point would hit home.

John General, Sports

Today was yet another great day. We started off by getting up early and going to the Empire State Building. Touristy, yes, but when it comes right down to it, you can’t beat the view.

For lunch, we walked through midtown and went to Daisy May’s chili cart. I just wish there was a place like this in Toronto … it was classic texas chili and so delicious. After that, we went to the Museum of Natural History.

Nowadays, every little kid is into dinosaurs, but when I was a kid, it wasn’t like today … there hadn’t been a Jurassic Park, and at least around Woodstock, they weren’t really something that any of my friends had ever heard of or gotten into. In fact, when I was in grade 5, I gave a presentation about dinosaurs to my public school — yep, the geekiness started really early in my life.

The first time I went to the ROM and saw the dinosaurs, it was a dream come true, and I wanted to become an archeologist. It wasn’t really until second year of university that I finally decided to go the route I went instead of archeology. Today, walking around the Museum of Natural History, I experienced that feeling I had when I was a kid, again. What an amazing museum, and not just because of the dinosaurs. It’s boring for you guys to hear me keep gushing, so I’ll just leave it at that unless you’re unlucky enough to bring it up again in my presence.

After the museum, we walked around the upper west side, visited Zabar’s and H&H Bagels, then went to the Dakota where John Lennon lived and was killed, then we went into Central Park to Strawberry Fields. Interesting, historical and moving.

Now, my feet are killing me, but my mind is zinging around the inside of my head. It was so worth it.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what the photo is… it’s of the thing that made me laugh the most today, from the NBC store in Rockefeller Center. Monk golf balls.

John General

Looking across under the Brooklyn Bridge

Today was a fantastic day weather-wise, but the city was quiet because of the holiday, so we decided to spend it in Brooklyn. Our hotel is in Tribeca, so it’s easy to walk across the island to the Brooklyn Bridge and then walk over to Brooklyn itself. It was a great walk with great views.

Unfortunately, we forgot to put on sunscreen, so we’re both a little pink.

After spending the day walking around Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights, we came back to Manhattan and walked through Chinatown again, where a dream of Timmi’s was finally fulfilled. For those of you that know her, you might be able to guess what it is, but in case you can’t, I’ll spell it out…

Chinese takeout in those little paper takeout containers. She’s as happy as a clam. A very pink clam.

John Food, General