Idear!

When people yammer on about how they wish they were British, they usually offer up a plethora of painfully pretentious reasons. I, on the other hand, usually solely ground my pining in the car-crash television* that the British are so good at packaging in tidy six-episodes bundles.

*My favorite part in their "autobiography" is when they went to Australia in 1985 to set up an ice show, but then Chris broke his leg, so he had to lay around the house they had rented while Jayne and some friend of hers drank a lot of red wine and laughed at him for, like, ten months.

OMG, Is It 1989 Already?!?

When we last left the magnum opus that is Speak, the nation was asking itself, "Will sound match sleeve?"

The answer: track #2 most definitely does! It's ridiculously Teutonic-- it's so late-1980s German pop-metal (or 2005 Swiss Eurovision entry), it demands to be sung in an accent, with a video set in a rough, yet utilitarianly-chic, Berlin industrial estate, the cast clad in the neon clothing of my youth, the sky overcast with the winds of change.

The other ten tracks, of course, su-u-u-u-u-uck.

"You take the plane / I'll take the bus this time"

Well-well, good to hear Mr. Hastert will eventually get around to scheduling a vote on that intelligence bill. Because he obviously had more than enough time this evening to step in front of the (moving) GUTS bus on Q Street, escorting his (presumed) appropriately-Talbot'sed wife to a holiday soiree of some kind, Town Car idling in the middle of the street, blocking up traffic to Wisconsin Aveune.

Safety first, right kids?

Best End Credits Music EVAH!

Ween's "Ocean Man" followed by The Flaming Lips' "SpongeBob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy" on the SpongeBob movie.

Also! The best showing-up-at-work-really-hungover scene, too.

My Heart Is Calibrated 60 Degrees North

I knew they'd make a pit stop here!

Ah, I remember like it was yesterday: five nights on the harbor, eating green apples at ten o'clock at night on deck, the sun hung like a five o'clock East Coast drive-time on Independence Day. Those across the bridge in the Grand Hotel (but do I vouch for Garbo or Bergman? Hint: I stood in Stöde where she wed the dentist) would never have my view of Gamla Stan, Södermalm, and Queen Christina's fishing in the city.

Also! Wintering Icelanders. Like I've always said, if I were the mayor of Reno, I'd make tracks to be Reykjavik's sister city: the biggest little city in the world.