One and Done Sunday #19

Hey, Happy Fathers Day!

Welcome to One and Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

First, your picture, from the what-the-hell-happened-to-me category:

How many things can you find wrong here?

1) mini van

2) with paving stones

3) and flowers; flowers that are still alive in spite of me owning them for an entire hour already.

The only two things in this picture I ever could have predicted are the zombie stickers in the window and the packing blanket underneath everything.

You know, minivans get a bad rap. Lots of people are all like, “Oh, I’ll never own a minivan. NEVER!” Whatever. I get it, stigma schmigma, your life is over when you get a minivan, you get stupider when you buy one, they’re so unsexy for God’s sake.

You know what else they are? They’re really goddamn convenient. We whipped that puppy from an 8-passengers-can-sit-comfortably-and-smack-each-other-while-listening-to-their-iPods vehicle to one ready to receive stone, cement and dirt in like 45 seconds. Bam, bam, bam.

But I don’t have a whole lot of my identity wrapped up in the car I drive every day like it seems most of America does.

Because no matter who curses my minivan for either going the speed limit in my neighborhood or cutting them off on the Turnpike, or what names they think as they judge me with a van full of kids making the school rounds, or if people automatically (and hilariously, knowing both my kids’ soccer skills and my own cupcake making track record) categorize me as a cupcake-making-soccer-mom, there are two things they can’t change:

– I dig the minivan

-I also have a ’66 Mustang convertible.

Here are your links.

A hilarious article from down under about mums: Mother Bashing- It’s All the Rage! (thanks Team Oyenyi for the link!)

You can’t hate a baby elephant playing in the ocean. I dare you to look at these pictures and try not to smile. Karyn at Kloppenmum Because Play is the Work of Childhood.

One very specific use for a dead cat.

I don’t drink, so this guy could actually be full of crap, but he has been great to me and writes this wine blog and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Since there are a lot of moms here, and since a lot of moms drink wine, you should check out JVB Uncorked. If you’re a mom who prefers to drink bourbon, you should crack open another bottle of Baker’s and click his link.

Elizabeth Reep is a kickass stepmom who created Camp C.O.P.E. for children of deployed, injured, or fallen US service members. I started reading this article in my doctor’s office and had to stop and get tissues because I was openly weeping, and I had to finish reading it at home. I wish I was half the stepmom she is.

Oh, and one extra, because this is really frickin’ cool. 32,000-Year-Old Plant Reborn From Ancient Fruit Found In Siberian Ice.

Happy Sunday, and do something awesome for your dad today.

One and Tony Sunday

It’s that time again. That night when most of America tuning in to CBS at 8pm EST is expecting to find. . . Blue Bloods (I had to go look that up, and I’m totally guessing purely based on next week’s schedule) and instead finds the full frontal song-and-dance assault of the Tony Awards.

If this is you, resist the impulse to go channel surfing for the latest public display of ineptitude of reality TV. Stay and watch. I promise, there will be no ineptitude. There are some ridiculously talented people on Broadway- like, sick! The Tony Awards are when they get to play to their largest audience ever. That’s you!

Neil Patrick Harris is hosting again, and he’s actually funny. Last year’s Best Musical winner Book of Mormon is performing, just because they’re awesome. And, at 8:45pm you’ll see Tony-Award-nominee and total badass Josh Young sing the song Jesus Christ Superstar live, with the whole damn Tony-award nominated cast of the eponymous show– if you stay tuned in, which you totally should.

If I ran the Tonys, I would give out some extra awards and they would all go to my show. Here’s my list.

-Hardest-Working, Least-Jaded, Full-Out-Every-Show, Never-Phone-It-In Ensemble.

This production of Jesus Christ Superstar originated at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The majority of this cast is making their Broadway debut. There is nothing green about their performances; their debut-ness (for lack of a better word) shows in their enthusiasm, the way they’re always smiling when they’re at work, and in the way the get maybe a little star struck when they meet people like Ben Vereen, Whoopie Goldberg, and Matthew Broderick. That’s refreshing.

They’re also mostly Canadians. This is truly the hardest working ensemble I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. Their energy is contagious and it’s like that every single show, eight times a week. I am also told they do a pretty great Broadway yell, which happens every Saturday night at the five minute call when they line up at the dressing room windows that face 52nd street and scream at Jersey Boys across the street.

-Best At Making Believers Out Of Agnostics in a Single Song

This would go to Paul Nolan, aka Jesus, for his performance of Gethsemane every night. He sings the crap out of that song. It also has my favorite guitar riff off all time in it, right after the line “I will drink this cup of poison”.

And? He looks totally hot in the loin cloth on the cross.

Yes, I said that.

-Best Band. PERIOD.

There really, really ought to be a Tony for best band. Our guitar player alone is worth the price of admission. And the other guitar player. And the reed player. And the drummer and the bassist and the organ and the french horns and. . . yeah, all of them. It’s a band full of rock stars and they blow me away eight times a week.

-Set Piece That Makes the Rest Of The Crew Happy They’re Not Carpenters

This would go to the diving board, or as I like to call it, the Nordic Track. It’s the ramp that does some pretty complicated automation moves and Jesus rides it during Superstar and it comes out over the first few rows. It’s a pain in the ass. The carpenters do a lot to it every day to make it work right.

-Best Understudy

Jeremy Kushnier, who understudies Judas, Jesus and Pontius Pilate. He may do Mary too, I’m not sure. He’s amazing and he totally owns whatever part he’s thrown into at the last minute. I loves him.

-Hell Yeah I Can Do Judas With No Rehearsal

To Nick Cartell, one of our swings who joined the company in New York. Early in previews when Josh Young was out, Jeremy Kushnier was badly injured in the matinee and couldn’t perform the evening show. Nick had never had even so much as a blocking rehearsal. He went on and knocked it the hell out of the park.

-Best Preshow Workout Partner

Matt Stokes. One of our swings, he warms up next to the sound board every day and has inspired me to work out a little bit while I’m waiting to check mics. We’re thinking of making a workout video and calling it something like “Five Feet of Floor Space: the 20-minute New York Workout”.

Your links this week are internal–did you find them? Here’s your picture:

Oh, that’s the ramp/diving board/nordic track. I found this photo uncredited online but it must be the work of the incredibly talented Joan Marcus. She’s THE Broadway show photographer and does excellent work. Check out her website here.

CC and I were invited to three Tony parties, but this year we’re heading home to the heathens. We’re doing an at-home Tony watching party with just us, complete with high calorie snacks and lots of shouting back at the TV. Think of it as a Superbowl Party, with jazz hands.

Happy Sunday.

One and Done Sunday #18

Welcome to One & Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.

When you tell stories that are not your own, often things get lost in translation. Details may be embellished or forgotten, significant bits left out, and complete fabrications can occur.

This is not the case with the following story. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless and without any identifying characteristics, is having problems with squirrels getting into her trashcan. They have chewed through the fastening mechanism on the lid to reach the contents. They are not thwarted by mothballs, bleach, or anything she can think of to secure the lid.

No one else on her street is having this issue.

She’s one of those moms who does too much, but she’s usually in the flow and pretty organized. Monday morning she woke up and was checking out her schedule and saw that she was completely booked. She always makes Monday’s dinner the night before. (I know, right? Sunday night I make something from the freezer section for the kids and then throw lunch money at them Monday morning so I don’t have to deal with making lunches on my day off).

As she remembered she made meatloaf for Monday’s dinner, she also remembered that she’d never taken it out of the oven Sunday night.

Bummer. Bye-bye, meatloaf.

She threw it away in secret, neatly avoiding a conversation with her husband about wasted meat and what’s for dinner tonight.

Some time later her husband said, “Do you know anything about a squirrel out here with a meatloaf?”

There was a squirrel, trucking across the powerline with some difficulty, carrying damn near an entire meatloaf that he had liberated from the trash can.

Here’s your picture (sadly, not of a meatloaf-carrying squirrel).

CC was out slaughtering the overgrown wisteria and mulching our dangerously raked “back yard” and the puggles were beside themselves and would not leave me alone until I put them out with him. They have 20-foot leashes that let them explore a little bit under supervision.

Casey managed to climb up on the little stone wall into the flower pots while simultaneously getting herself all tangled up and stuck. The part you can’t see are all the branches her leash is wrapped around.

Here are your links.

A beautiful, tiny essay by a great writer: Tragedies

Reminiscent of that Moe the bartender Simpsons quote I was born a snake handler, and I’ll die a snake handler: Paul Johnson at The Good Greatsby If It was a Snake It Would Have Bitten You.

On Michael Ruhlman’s excellent food blog, Anthony Bourdain So You Wanna Be A Chef.

Seinfeld Episodes That Wouldn’t Work Today – Jenny at Caffeinated & Random

Beth Howard makes pie. She also lives at the American Gothic house (yeah, that one in the Grant Wood painting. I mean, the actual one that he painted, she doesn’t live in the painting. She’s a real person). She has a hell of a story about coming back to life after her young husband died suddenly. Here’s her Real Simple article Miss American Pie.

Also you should check out her book Making Piece, a Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie.

So technically that’s six links.

Happy Sunday. May your trees stay up where they belong and your squirrels keep their damn hands off your meatloaf.