avablog

Our friend Ken was nice enough to invite the kids out to see his beehives last evening. It was just about as perfect a day as you could imagine out at the orchard where Ken has his setup. The bees, as you might guess, were busy flying in and out of the hives, oblivious to […]

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Listen, we’re friends, OK? And if you like the Charmin ads featuring the adorable bears running around, picking clingy pieces of TP off each others’ asses, that’s fine. Just don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know. I don’t want that information to color our relationship. Let’s just agree to disagree at the […]

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This is not a political blog. I’m not talking about that most fragile of all kinds of hope, the kind that you put in a man to end the appalling policies of his predecessor on unlawful detention and torture. I’m talking about that larger hope, that hope that the next generation — and all generations […]

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If you hated the Dallas thing I put up recently, don’t bother viewing this; you won’t get it.

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I cannot pretend to be offended by these ads. Young men are coarse, callow, emotional imbeciles with suicidal dietary habits. In other words, from a marketing perspective, these ads are perfection itself, practically verite. Meanwhile, if I put on my magic deconstructing spectacles, I can see neo-feminist subversion in these messages. Note the tagline of […]

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I mean, really. WTF? Leah and I saw this last night and couldn’t believe our eyes. Is there a target audience here? Why is an ad for a kid’s meal running at 10 p.m.? Kid’s meal? Sir Mix-a-lot? Baby Got Back? What the hell’s going on around here? EDIT: My indignation and anger increase each […]

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I got this one from Kevin and have enjoyed it so much I thought I’d pass it on. If you’ve never seen Peep Show, well, hang in there; it’s only a matter of time before someone at NBC gets a hold of it and produces a less funny, crappy U.S. English version (I’m so looking […]

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This is not a political blog. And maybe this post isn’t really political. I’ve been bugged mightily lately by our new President’s recent comment on Jay Leno’s show equating his bowling skills with something you’d see at the Special Olympics. I’ll make this brief: I know that people sometimes screw up and say things they […]

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embark on a blog post if you don’t know what you’re going to write. That’s my advice to you, should you ever happen to find yourself with a blog.

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Fire up your VCDVRs for Friday night, as The IT Crowd is making its triumphant return to the BBC. Catch it before NBC ruins it forever….

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Leah’s finishing off bed time with Ava last night, and I settle in downstairs in front of a fascinating profile of Richard Nixon showing on PBS. As my better-educated readers probably already know, the story on Nixon is that he was a fairly vicious, often spiteful political opponent who never met a sleazy campaign tactic […]

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I love this site. It’s so sweet. It transports me back to a more innocent time, when teenagers were married in matching striped polo shirts. In case you don’t recognize that strapping lad in the photo, that’s Josh Duggar, one of the soon-to-be 18 Duggar children.

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I watched five minutes of this show once, and it was pretty lame, but then I have a low tolerance for Hummer drivers, in general.

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I watched Hillary’s speech at the DNC last night on NBC. She looked pretty good in HD. I hope her words were enough to convince her supporters that this election is not about Hillary or Barack but about the country. We’ll see in November, I guess.

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Watching the Olympics here. Women’s beach volleyball. I don’t follow the sport, but I do like watching and playing volleyball, so when the pros are playing in the Olympics, well, I’m there.

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Refer to it in your advertising as a “ginormous yum rocket.” Who comes up with this stuff? I think this was an ad for Subway that ran last night during either Law & Order or Project Runway (do NOT get me started on Suede. Just don’t.). In any case, it was a truly gag-inducing bit […]

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So I’m quickly reading through one of my favorite blogs this morning, and I come across the news that Laura Lieghton turns 40 today. I was never a big Melrose Place fan, but that’s the show on which Laura made her big break. Anyway, she’s from I.C.; I think she went to West High. I […]

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I mean, I never miss an episode of The Hills, either. I wonder if McCain knows the show isn’t named after Heidi’s chest. I wonder if he cares….

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Leah and I are viewers of Top Chef, a show on the Bravo network that pits chefs against each other to see which is the best. I’m sure I’m not exhibiting any great prescience when I say I picked Richard as a finalist from the first episode. He seemed more polished, imaginative, and skilled than […]

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