Mr. Bean at the Olympics!

So, I was watching the London Olympic opening ceremonies last night ... I have to confess that these types of shows are not really my thing. I love watching the competitions, but the ceremonies? Not so much.

Anyway, they announce that the orchestra will be playing the theme from Chariots of Fire and I immediately yawn. Boring ... or so I thought. Don't get me wrong, I actually like orchestras. I'm a fan of classical music and had they said the orchestra would be performing the Brandenburg Concertos or something, I'd have been excited about it. But this particular piece is not one of my favorites.

The orchestra begins playing and the cameras pan in on a musician seated in front of a keyboard and ... it's Mr. Bean! How awesome is that? Now I'm sitting straight up, completely rapt in the scene before me. I LOVE Mr. Bean (and Rowan Atkinson in general, loved him in Black Adder and The Thin Blue Line). And it was classic Mr. Bean. The look on his face when he flipped his sheet music over only to see that he had one note to play throughout the whole piece while the pianist next to him was jamming away (and kudos to that guy for keeping it together with Mr. Bean next to him) was absolutely priceless. I think that's one of the things I loved most about Rowan Atkinson playing Mr. Bean - his ability to act almost exclusively with his facial expressions, a great talent in my opinion.

Also, the queen and 007 parachuting into the stadium was pretty cool.

To conclude, great to see you again, Mr. Bean - one of the coolest beans ever!

The Good ... ahem ... Bad Old Days: Radio Stations

Having lived through the transition to the digital age, every once in awhile, I am struck by how much different ... and most times better ... aspects of everyday life are now than they were just a mere twenty plus years ago.

I will attempt to convey my feelings on those from time to time. Today's realization was about radio stations. Nowadays, if you hear a song you like, many of you can simply check the handy-dandy digital display of the device streaming your radio station to see the name of the song and the band performing it. Very nice when you hear a new song you like and you'd like to hear again. Me likey ... very much.

When I was a kid (and no, I'm not about to regale you with tales of walking to and from school uphill in both directions that would lead you to believe that, by the time I graduated school, I surely must have lived in some sort of angelic villa located in the heavens because nobody could consistently walk uphill that much and still be earthbound), radio was so much different. For starters, my first car only had an AM radio (it's okay ... you may gasp at the horror of it all). That meant news radio and talk radio, maybe a pop station if you were lucky. But where was a hard rock junkie like me to get music from? I couldn't afford a car stereo at first, so I settled for an FM converter. That was a little piece of junk that let me get FM stations and a lot of static through my AM radio. It sucked.

When I hit my early twenties, I was finally able to buy a car stereo (and there was much rejoicing ... trust me). Now I could make cassette tapes (CDs came a short time later, but it was years before I could burn one) to listen to my favorite music in the car because I found, with very few exceptions, that the FM stations played the same songs over and over (read that as the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones). Hell, they even had Fab Four weekends when they would advertise that that was what they were playing!

My only true happiness was over the weekends when the college radio stations would play real heavy metal and hard rock (and of course, there was the MTV Headbangers Ball on Saturday nights, too).

But I digress, the true revelation this morning was due to the fact that in 'the old days', when you heard a new song on the radio that you liked, you had to sit through blocks of music until the DJ came back on the air to announce the songs that had been played. This invariably meant listening to songs you didn't like - you didn't dare change the station because that surely meant the DJ would cut in with the information.

Nowadays, even if your listening device doesn't display the name of the song, you can note the time and go to the radio station's website to look up the artist and name of the song that they were playing at that time. Do you have any idea how great that is? Do you know how many times I would not have been late for work or class if we'd had that back then?

So, new innovations in radio/web technology? Frozen Beans! (That's cool beans +++)

Black Art, an Awesome Beer

Last summer, I noticed a beer in the corner of my local distributor. I am always in search of new beers that seem interesting and this one was well-priced, too. I picked up a six pack and I've been drinking it ever since (not that same six-pack as it was gone pretty quickly).

It's called Black Art. There is a Gold variety, but I'm not a fan of lighter beers, so I stick to the Black Art Dark.

I'd try and describe the flavor for you, but frankly, I only judge beers in terms of love/like/dislike/hate. Occasionally, I notice some flavorings, such as coffee, vanilla or cinnamon, but mostly not. And don't get me started on wines. I've gone on these wine tasting tours and the proprietors are going on about oak barrels vs. steel ones and wood flavoring (here's hoping that refers to those oak barrels they mentioned because I'm not keen on drinking trees), but my taste buds are only putting out yum/mm/eh/yuk responses.

Anyway, back to Black Art. Check out the history on their website. This beer has survived World Wars, Soviet Occupation and German Reunification! Definitely worth checking out.

Why Must Dogs Eat Everything?

Okay, I have a blog for cute cat pictures, a blog for my Siamese cats, a blog about green cleaning, my author's blog, and of course, Fred's Evil Plan to Take Over the World. It's too much to keep track of which has resulted in my not posting, so I've decided to compile all of my random thoughts and remarks about my interests in one spot.

Why cool beans and cats? Well, cool beans is one of my favorite expressions and I love cats so ...

As for Fred's Evil Plan, sadly after a year of problems, he has now been diagnosed with diabetes. I confess to feeling like I'd be jinxing his delicate health to post in his blog right now.

I've been busy taking care of Fred and Daphne, the epileptic dog who, by the way, managed to get hold of a bunch of velcro wire tires last night and proceeded to chew, mangle and eat them. After frantic calls to the Emergency vet (why does this stuff always happen on the weekends), we gave her hydrogen peroxide so she'd throw up - which she did. Her dinner ... her snack ... some grass ... but no velcro! It now seems that she probably only chewed them into the unrecognizable remains we found. Nonetheless, we sat outside with the dog-slobbered remains trying to reconstruct the original strips to at least get a count.

But that brings me to the question of the day. Why must dogs eat EVERYTHING? I mean, really. Velcro? Maybe it's the taste - no, I don't think that velcro could taste good, even to a dog. Perhaps it was the wonderful feel of the little velcro hooks on her tongue? Nah, I can't see that texture being pleasing to any living being with working nerves and taste buds. So velcro joins a long list of chewed up household items: 3 telephones, the plug and cord for my curio cabinet, the slats from the Futon, the frame of my bay window, the coffee table legs and the sofa cushions.

In an attempt to further understand this issue, I have taken a canine poll. Now admittedly, my sample size is very small, having limited myself to polling dogs of my acquaintance (both of necessity due to availability and of a fear of asking strange dogs silly questions about their consumption habits), but the uniformity of the responses leads me to believe that the margin of error in this poll is so small as to be insignificant.

Human Reasons to Eat Something:

• Hunger
• It tastes good
• Stress
• Nutrition
• On a dare

If you exclude the ludicrous (and quite possibly testosterone-driven) response of 'on a dare', you'll note that the human responses were either indicative of very sound reasoning, e.g. hunger and nutrition, for enjoyment, or due to some other psychological factor.

Now for the dogs:

• Because it was there
• It fell on the floor, I'm supposed to eat everything on the floor
• It was there
• It was in my way
• It was there

You'll notice a recurrent theme in the dog responses, all of which more or less say the same thing.

After completing the survey, it became apparent to me that the problem wasn't with y dogs, it was with me. I shouldn't expect human logic from a canine. This new revelation should keep me satisfied for a day or two, at which time I will most certainly go back to attempting to apply human reasoning to canine behavior. You cannot teach an old human new tricks.