Mikey thinks burping is hysterical. He likes to poke his finger into his chest and make a fake burping noise. He expects that you will do the same if he pushes his finger into your chest.
Mikey is very ticklish especially on his neck. He sometimes asks me to tickle him under his chin and will struggle to stop me. And then he signs “more”.
Mikey is not a great eater. He would gladly live on nothing but yogurt and crackers. For awhile we were thinking of putting him in the KKI feeding program but then he was eating better and putting on some weight.
Mikey is a peanut. His two cousins who were born a month after him tower over him. But they still get along great even though Mikey likes to push them around. They play hockey so I think they are used to it.
Mikey worships his sister. He loves to sit on her bed and watch her do her homework. He always wants her to sit next to him on the couch.
Mikey loves cuddling when he is tired. He sits me on the couch, climbs up on my lap, and wraps himself around me. Mikey likes to give what Michel calls, “full body hugs”.
Nightmare of You is doing three shows in Great Britian and I am hoping that they are all hugely successful. I saw them in a show here on Long Island and they were great. I even met the lead singer’s grandmother. So if you are near one of their three shows, please get tickets or bug some teenage girls to go to the show because the boys are cute. In fact, the lead singer looks a lot like Beth’s boyfrind although I seem to be the only one to see the resemblance. Here’s a video for the song I want to Be Buried in your Backyard.
Murder, She Wrote on DVD
The Complete Second Season (1984)
Starring: Angela Lansbury, William Windom
Every Saturday night for the last five months, my daughter and I have been pulling out a DVD from this collection and watching it together. Although there have been many complaints about the Season Two DVDs not working, we did not have any trouble with them, much to our dismay because as I wrote with my review of the first season, this series is utterly dreadful.
First things first… the collection has no bonuses of any kind. No interviews or special features or commentary. It’s just the 22 episodes making up the second season of the show. What you can expect from these episodes are stereotyped characters (the crotchety country doctor, the angry black man, the hard-boiled private detective) and lots of washed-up actors from TV shows of the 70’s (WKRP in Cincinnati, St. Elsewhere, One Day at a Time, The Match Game). Poor, uninspired writing characterizes the show. Every episode follows the same formula… introduction of a bunch of characters, a murder about half way in, the police are confused, and Jessica solves the case with the culprit eagerly confessing, followed by some not funny joke.
Although you can’t expect every episode in a season’s worth of a TV show to be perfectly written gems, some of these episodes are so boring and poorly acted that it is a struggle to get through them. The episode, Murder Digs Deep, which takes place on an archaeological dig and stars Robert Vaughn as some kind of nutty millionaire is particularly unwatchable but there are others just as bad. Jessica Behind Bars with Adrienne Barbeau and If the Frame Fits with John de Lancie are both fine examples of over-the-top acting at its worst. Even Angela Lansbury gets into the over-acting mood with her performance as Jessica’s identical cousin in the episode, Sing a Song of Murder. (Does anyone on the planet really have an identical cousin?)
It amazes me that this show was ever popular and managed to stay on the air for as long as it did. I can only assume that the audience for this show was desperate for anything attractive to their age group and drove up the ratings. Perhaps watching these shows today brings back some nostalgia for the long lost 80’s. If you have watched these shows on the Hallmark or Biography channels and find them enjoyable then go ahead and pick up these DVDs. But then you didn’t need my review to tell you anything about these episodes, did you?
In the odd news of the day, a shark was pulled out of a river in Iraq, 160 miles from the sea. Although it is unusual to find a shark that far upriver, it is not completely unheard of for a shark to swim up a fresh water river.
But it is the end of the Reuters story that reminds me of how well things are going in Iraq in our efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people:
Locals blamed the U.S. military for the shark’s presence. Tahseen Ali, a teacher, said there was a “75 percent chance” Americans had put the shark in the water.
“This is very frightening for us. Our children always swim in the river and I believe that there are more sharks. I believe that America is behind this matter,” said fisherman Hatim Karim.
You are sitting at home watching TV when a commercial featuring a rock song that you know catches your attention. “What the f***?,” you think. “How could that artist let their song be used to sell that crap!” But is it really shocking that the artist let their song be used? Is the artist really a sellout? Now you don’t have to wonder because Bill Wyman, formerly of NPR, has developed the Moby Quotient to remove any doubts.
The Moby Quotient is named after the musician Moby who sold every single song from one of his albums, achieving a feat that few musicians are capable of achieving. The formula is explained in detail in the article, but I’ll explain the basics. The most important features are the “sacredness” of the song and the un-rock-and-rollness of the advertiser. So Led Zeppelin selling Cadillacs is a lot worse than Fallout Boy promoting Circuit City. The next important features are the artist’s underground roots and (to a lesser degree) the artistic reputation of the performer. So The Ramones would be much more of a sellout than Kelly Clarkson. The remaining features of the formula are the wealth of the artist and amount of time since the song came out. Old songs by wealthy artists (Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan) are less of a sell-out than new songs by poor artists (Modest Mouse).
An example is the Iggy Pop song Lust for Life which is used for a cruise line commercial. Iggy Pop, of course, has a reputation as a nonconformist and the song is pretty high on the sacred front. Pop isn’t hugely wealthy but he is doing OK and the song is from the 70’s so that lowers the Moby quotient. The result is a fairly high number in the high-70’s or low-80’s. But beyond Iggy Pop being a sell-out, it is funny that Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines is advertising using a song about heroin addiction. That alone makes me willing to forgive Iggy.
Mikey doesn’t like the stairs at home. He will not go up more than four or five steps on our stairs. When I took him to Molloy College, he had no problem going up and down the stairs but at home it is totally different. He will go down the stairs sliding on his butt or he’ll walk down the stairs if I hold his hand but he won’t go up which means I have to carry him to bed every night.
Mikey has a Dynavox for communication. This is a computerized device that talks for him. He is actually very good at using it and can build sentences with it.
Mikey loves Sponge Bob crackers. When I take him grocery shopping, all I have to do is hand him a box and he is as happy as a clam. When I took him to the grocery store today, he was in fine form. He was waving to everyone that we went by. I asked him if he was running for office but he denied any political ambitions.
Mikey has been very tough to get to go to sleep until we started him on Melatonin. Now he goes to sleep without any trouble.
Mikey loves going for rides in the car. No matter what he is doing, if I say, “Want to go for a ride?,” he will run right to the door. He doesn’t like shadows, so he insists on turning on the interior lights if we go for a drive at night.
One of the effects of Michel’s illness is that it gives her narcolepsy. I was out most of the afternoon taking Mikey to his music therapy and driving Beth and her friends to the mall. When I finally got back, Michel was asleep standing in the computer room. I was able to get her into a chair in the living room where she is still asleep.
She frequently falls asleep standing or kneeling or sitting or basically where ever she happens to be at the moment that sleep overwhelms her. She sometimes falls asleep in mid-sentence when she is talking to me. She takes medication to help her stay awake but it doesn’t always work. Today has not been a good day for staying awake.
Aunt Tina sent me an email a few months ago (notice a theme here?) about a website called FreeClassicAudioBooks that has mp3 and m4b (iPod) versions of classic books that are downloadable for free. Some of the books featured are, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and many others. I am going to try downloading a book for my iPod tonight.
Do you know of other free sites to download books?
Update: I downloaded Heart of Darkness and put it on my iPod. Update 2: I found another site with free audio books - LibriVox
A few months ago, my friend Stephanie, who I met through downsyn.com, sent me an email about an article in the Bucks County Courier Times. For some reason, the email got pushed to the side and I never read the article… until today. I was cleaning up my gmail account and found this email and the link to this article. I am glad that I finally read it.
OK, so he discovered the structure of DNA and won a Nobel prize but that doesn’t mean James Watson isn’t a horse’s ass. He thinks we should be genetically selecting for pretty women, that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, and that if we find a gay gene then parents should abort their children if they carry it.
When Watson said in an interview in 1997 (the same year Mikey was born), “We already accept that most couples don’t want a Down child. You would have to be crazy to say you wanted one, because that child has no future,” no one cared. But when he says that black people are genetically inferior to white people, he is suspended from his position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (which is just a few miles from my house) and universally condemned.
I’m not surprised that Watson finally said something that made people take notice. His 1997 quote revealed the type of man he is and sooner or later he was going to say what he really thought.
In the odd news of the day, a 
You are sitting at home watching TV when a commercial featuring a rock song that you know catches your attention. “What the f***?,” you think. “How could that artist let their song be used to sell that crap!” But is it really shocking that the artist let their song be used? Is the artist really a sellout? Now you don’t have to wonder because Bill Wyman, formerly of NPR, has developed the 
One of the effects of Michel’s illness is that it gives her narcolepsy. I was out most of the afternoon taking Mikey to his music therapy and driving Beth and her friends to the mall. When I finally got back, Michel was asleep standing in the computer room. I was able to get her into a chair in the living room where she is still asleep. 
A few months ago, my friend Stephanie, who I met through 
OK, so he discovered the structure of DNA and won a Nobel prize but that doesn’t mean James Watson isn’t a horse’s ass. He thinks we should be genetically selecting for pretty women, that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, and that if we find a gay gene then parents should abort their children if they carry it.
