A Little Bit Ashamed to Admit, but Not So Much I'm Keeping It All to Self

- My mother-in-law left today after a week's homestay with us. She loved Madigan to pieces, as demonstrated by her morning ritual of swaddling the infant under numerous blankets and exposing her to multiple hours a day of classical music. Anytime I turned on the televizzle - even just to check the weather for 8.5 seconds - my mother-in-law would scoonch out of the range of the television. She said she doesn't believe in exposing a child under age 2 to television. Now, I'm not going to dispute that the boob tube is all healthy for body and mind, but it was slightly hilarious to see my mother-in-law take cover as soon as I would touch the remote control, as if huge flaming, radiating orbs of brain blight were going to shoot out of the screen at the touch of a button. Needless to say, I didn't watch a single program in the span of a week. Needless to say even further, by the time mother-in-law was boarding the plane, I had already logged a good hour with Oprah, while breastfeeding, and there's probably something egregiously unparental about that. Heh. Good thing I got that out of my system and will never EVER be tempted to do that again. - I want to see "College Road Trip." By that, I don't mean I hope that sometime I am hanging out with my cousins for whom that movie is age-appropriate and I get the chance to catch a few minutes of the movie to see if there are any funny parts. I mean that I want to go to CVS and buy 2/$1.00 candy, per usual, and then go to Loew's on The Common and buy an adult ticket from the kiosk, per usual, and then I want to sit in a dark theatre with my feet up on the seat in front of me, per usual, and then I want to watch Martin Lawrence and Raven Simone on a big screen with surround sound and have myself some laughs.

- I'm trying to stay away from white flour and refined sugars so I can rebound from nine months of Important Consumer Research in Trans Fats. (Study concluded - they're allll bad and therefore alllll good.) Tomorrow I may work up the courage to post a picture of the toll this research has taken on my body. For now, I'm keeping that image to self.

Babies, Brigham Young

Today marks two weeks that the little munchy-cheeked dumpling was handed to me, all swaddled in pastels, and I still have both my eyes scanning the periphery. I'm waiting for that Stork that dropped her off to come and re-claim her. I just cannot fathom why I've been entrusted to tend to something so beautiful. I've spent my twenties folding cashmere and filling out spreadsheets and deleting the wrong things from the DVR and bungling Mapquest directions. To what do I owe this opportunity? Nine months of gestation and I still can't believe I get to be someone's mother.

Particularly hers.

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Anyone watching "The Mormons" on PBS? Pretty well-made series - a lot of candor from the members of the LDS church, with which I am completely fascinated. Ol' Brigham Young had, like, fifty wives, yo! Don't you wonder if it was all "Sex and the Desert" with that harem? You had your shoe-hoarders and prissy homemakers and academics and nymphomaniacs, but instead of talking about their respective romantic pursuits, they all dished about the same dude? Well, evidently, they didn't all live with him, but he financially supported them. Talk about bringing home the bacon. Do Mormons eat bacon?

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I think my posts henceforth will probably all fall under the categories of Babies and TV and part of me feels ashamed about this and part of me feels like I have a very special corner of culture to relish over here. We'll see what other kinds of exploits I can stir up, besides YouTubing "Ready, Set, Don't Go" and getting teary-eyed for the eleventy-fourth time.

Stoopidity

Occasionally, I must admit that my morning commute sometimes entails listening to radio programs with the tag lines of "Fresh Soft Rock." As if it isn't bad enough that my latter twenties will be spent cutting out coupons for baby butt paste at B.J.'s. Now I have to admit to you that I listen and sometimes sing along to Journey WITH NO SENSE OF IRONY. Who am I? Clinton pre-election? Goodness.

Now that this information is out for the universe to grapple with and find a way to forgive, I will note that whilst I was listening to Fresh Soft Rock this morning (and no, my pants were not tapered nor was I wearing duck shoes from L.L. Bean), the radio host introduced James Blunt's smash hit "Beautiful" as "the top wedding song of 2007."

Uh...Baking powder? One of the top songs? Played at weddings in the last year? WITH NO SENSE OF IRONY?

I just didn't want to believe it, fond readers. I love me a good Brit Pop artist as much as the next bloke, let's be honest. But the people who chose to put that song in their wedding reception playlists -- do they have a modicum of a brain? Because, fair sentimental brides, let's review. "Beautiful" may be how you want to feel on your special day. And nothing makes me so hot and bothered as being crooned to by a Brit boy, please understand. But "Beautiful" is a song about a guy who is rather high, gawking at a girl on the subway, who is rather taken. It is furthermore about this high guy who knows nothing about this girl besides the fact that she is spoken for, but who swears he'll continue to lust after the image of her, which to him bore the similitude of an angel. Which is, like, totally in keeping with the spirit of a ceremony that commemorates the joining of two hearts in a commitment to practice unconditional love until every last unicorn loses its horn and flies away...

But there you have it. Write a song called "Beautiful" and use the word "angel" in it, and you have the top wedding song of the year.