And then he started to sing ...

No time for a real blog post tonight ( I still have a long unfinished "Parenthood" blog post in the pipeline, and I will eventually get to Neil's 30 questions ), but I just want to make a quick observation or two.

Last night before going to bed, I was flipping through the channels and noticed that Mamma Mia was on HBO. This isn't really a movie I have *any* interest in watching ( though I do like some ABBA songs, especially Dancing Queen ) , but it was near the end of the movie, so I decided to see how the movie ended. The scene I was watching was a wedding scene. There was some pretty good acting in it, and Pierce Brosnan's character did something that reminded me of the end of The Philadelphia Story ( which is a movie I *really* love ). So, for a brief moment or two I thought to myself "Hey, maybe this isn't such a bad movie after all!".

Then Pierce Bronson opened his mouth and starting to sing ...

Shortly after that, my ears started to bleed.

Good Lord! Words cannot describe how bad a singer Pierce is. You are just going to have to see ( hear ) for yourself ...



If you don't think it's *that* bad, then think about this ...

It wasn't as if he was doing a live performance. He clearly recorded this in studio, and was given as many chances as possible to get things right. He was probably given months of voice training, and they probably used all sorts of fancy recording equipment to make his voice sound better.

And *that* was the best they could do!

I mean, what was the casting director thinking? Sure, Pierce is a good looking guy and all, but if the producers wanted a good-looking guy in his 50's to attract middle-age women to the movie, they should have gone with somebody like Richard Gere. Gere is about the right age for the part, and his work in the movie Chicago proves that he's a passable singer.

Anyway, contrast the video above to the video below ...



This is one of the many amazing performances in the movie "A Mighty Wind". Eugene Levy is particular amazing in this movie. If you consider his body of work ( I guess his most well-known role is probably the Dad in American Pie ), you would never guess that he had that singing talent in him. He actually wrote this song, and the performance you see in the video was performed live in front of an audience.

Speaking of amazing singing performances, check out the Michael Jackson cover below:



The guy on the right is Gabe Bondoc, who has an amazing voice, and the girl on the left is Jane Lui. I discovered Jane a few weeks ago when I saw her "You are not alone" cover ( I included a link to that video in this blog post. ). She's got a real kick-ass voice, and I must admit that between her glasses, her dimples, and her ultra-high cheekbones, she definitely has a little bit of swoon-ability. Anyway, check out Gabe and Jane's channels and enjoy!

A boy and his cookie

This is another lazy post. I just loaded some photos from my Lake Compounce trip, and I couldn't help but post this one to my blog. However, as I love to get comments on my photos, and the comment system on Blogger sucks, I've decided to post the rest of the photos ( plus this one ) to facebook. So, anyway, you know where my facebook link is folks. Please check out the rest of my photos when you get a chance.

For Neil

This little lazy blog post is for my follower Neil. Neil seems to like my blogs about swooning, so I figured I'd point him to a vlog I made on the subject of swooning about a year ago. Yeah, I know I'm not really providing any original content, and this blog post is probably just an exercise in self-promotion more than anything else, but hey, even the best TV shows run "clip shows" every once in a while. Anyway, behold my "Who's Hot" video!



BTW, just so nobody thinks I was being disrespectful, I made the video above a month before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated ( may she rest in peace ).

I actually think I was inspired to write this blog post because I read a newspaper article yesterday that mentioned Lisa Loeb .


After all these years, I think I still have a little crush on Lisa Loeb, and of course, that crush started with the video below:

"The Wiggles" on YouTube

Well, it took me a while to upload but here is the footage of "The Wiggles" performance during Peter's 4th birthday party.

Photos!!!

After a few months of not posting to facebook, I've finally added some new photos. I've posted the photos from my company's annual summer party. The photo below is just of sample of all the fun stuff you can see my kids doing if you click on the facebook link to the right.

Rich

P.S. If you like the photos, you can thank my wife Ruth. She took all the photos in this album.

Bloggin' from the road

I'm writing this from my hotel room in Bristol, Connecticut. We've actually got free high speed internet access in the room ( I guess this is getting more common. We're not really at a high-end hotel ( We're at a Holiday Inn Express ), and the only other time I had free high speed internet access in a hotel room is when we were at a luxury resort in Hawaii last summer for my sister-in-law's wedding . When we were at Disney last year, we had to pay about 10 bucks a day for internet access, and it really wasn't true high speed ( it was only halfway between dial-up and high speed ). It's really a nice to get high speed internet access in a run-of-the-mill chain hotel.

Anyway, considering that I've got internet access, I couldn't resist writing a little blog entry. So, Lake Compounce Amusement Park really exceeded my expectations. It's really a wonderful little park. It the perfect size for a family, has water rides and kiddies rides, and has decent and reasonably priced food ( All soft drinks are free. ). It also has a couple of nice roller coasters. Normally, I don't have time to ride roller coasters when we go to an amusement park with the kids. However, the lines were really short, and everything is close together in the park, so I actually had time to hop on a few coasters while the boys were on the kiddie rides.

The weather wasn't perfect today ( It was cloudy most of the day, and we had a few thunderstorms ), but the sun came out long enough that the boys were able to spend some time on the water rides. I'm definitely looking forward to going back to the park tomorrow.

I noticed one rather random thing during the day. The carousel there was playing some really unusual songs. At one point when I was walking by it, I noticed it was playing an instrumental version of the theme from "Welcome Back, Kotter" ( I doubt that most of the people reading this have ever heard of "Welcome Back, Kotter". It was an American TV show in the 1970's. It's actually the show that gave John Travolta his first big break. It was a decent show, but you wouldn't expect the theme from the show to be played on a carousel 30 years later. ). If you are unfamiliar with the song, just play the YouTube video below.



Rich

Rain, Rain, Go Away.

I'll going to on vacation to Lake Compounce this weekend. Unfortunately, it's supposed to rain on Friday, and the temperature isn't supposed to reach 80 degrees Fahrenheit all weekend. This summer ( and late Spring ) has really sucked so far. By this time last year, the boys had already enjoyed the water rides at Sesame Place 3 or 4 times, and I had set up the backyard kiddie pool about 4 or 5 times during weekends. This year, the temperature has rarely gotten over 75 degrees, and it's rained almost every day ( and certainly each weekend ) since late May. We've only had one Sesame Place trip ( no water rides, just the dry rides ), and I've only filled the kiddie pool once ( last Sunday during a few hours of sunshine - and it really wasn't warm enough for the pool that day ). When Ruth and I arranged this vacation earlier this year ( we decided to go to Lake Compounce so we could pay my uncle ( my Dad's brother ) a visit in his nursing home. ) we never though it would be this cold in July. I was really hoping the boys could try the water rides. I hope we get enough sunshine tomorrow so they can at least try the water-slides a little bit.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep. We've got a long drive on Friday morning.

Rich

P.S. A copy of Roxio Toast 9.0 arrived at my home today. After I RTFM, I should be able to use it to get those Wiggles videos up on YouTube soon.