Hot Enough To Boil A Monkey's Bum!

Summertime and the living is, indeed, easy. I have a love/hate relationship with summer. In the depths of winter, when icicles are hanging off my nose, I pray for the warmth of the sun. Two days into prolonged hot spell, I'm sitting in front of an open freezer, cursing the sun. What is it with people? Being white and Anglo Saxon, I tend to treat hot weather in the same way that a vampire treats daylight-I try to avoid it! In Britain, you will often hear people complaining about the weather: It's too cold, too wet, too dry, too hot, not cold, but not hot either! It's a national pastime. I've heard people yearn for the sun and when it arrives those same people complain that it's too hot. Hot weather is different in Britain, they say. It's a nicer kind of heat in Greece. The 95° heat in Florida is much more bearable...which is nonsense. The sun doesn't do anything different, it's just that very hot weather is so much more bearable when you are walking around on holiday, sipping a chilled drink and the only thing you have to worry about is whether the Germans have taken all the sun-beds around the swimming pool! Ok, before I get inundated by amateur Meteorologists, yes, humidity plays a part as well-but not in this story!
Next week, the most important competition in the English Cricketing calender begins. It is called the Ashes and I wrote about it a few months ago. England will play Australia in 5 test matches over the next few months and I will be praying for continued hot and sunny weather. But in the meantime, I'm off to the local KBC bank with a book and a deck chair because they have the best cool air con in town!
To accompany this post, you can find a special summertime playlist on Radio Free Belgium.

Video of the Day

Michael Jackson.
1969 - 1995 King of Pop
1995 - 2009 Wacko Jacko
Sad, but true.
I wouldn't name Jackson in my top 50 favourite recording artists, I shouldn't need to repeat my mantra of " I don't like that sort of music," especially after writing my most recent post. But driving down to Dunkirk last year Studio Brussels here in Belgium were playing a compilation of his hits to promote the release of the King of Pop cd and I turned to my fiancée and said, "he made some good songs!"
On hearing the news this morning, I rather cruelly said to her, "see, that's what dancing does to you!"
MJ now joins, not only that long list of stars who died too young, but also that much shorter list of icons who transcended Superstardom. Unlike Monroe, Morrison, Lennon and Dean he did reach his potential. But like that other icon, Elvis Presley, we can expect things to get pretty stupid. The similarities are there for all to see. Both men were wildly popular, both men were...eccentric. How long before the first sighting of Michael Jackson serving fries at a McDonalds in Asswipe, Nebraska? How long before the first sighting of him swinging on a vine in a jungle somewhere in Africa with Bubbles the Chimp clinging to him? Or, come to that, how long before reports of him running a second hand record store somewhere, with Elvis?
But, I think, more importantly than all that nonsense, like Elvis, his best years were behind him when he died. We did see the best of Michael Jackson.
A few hours before the news broke of Jacksons death, the headline news on CNN was the death of Farrah Fawcett, famous for appearing in 70's show Charlies Angels. There is a certain synchronicity to celebrity deaths and just as people in Europe were waking up to Jacksons death, news started to circulate that actor Jeff Goldblum had fallen to his death whilst filming in New Zealand. Within a few hours, Google announced that Jeff Goldblum Dead was the 3rd most popular search on the net. To paraphrase a certain Mark Twain, "News of his death had been greatly exaggerated." The power of the Internet!
As a footnote to that, it has been pointed out that celebrity deaths seem to come in groups of 3. I don't know what research there is to qualify that, but if it is true, then who is next?

Video of the Day

Rhythm

I love music, any kind of music, I love music just as long as it's...not disco. I have to make some compilation discs for a wedding, which includes background music and the full blown disco later in the evening. I think I have already nailed my colours to the mast in an earlier post when I explained about the sort of music I like. It isn't Disco music. It is as far removed from Disco as you could possibly get. I have no love of the drum machine, the repetitive hand clapping and the instrumental break which includes a whistle being blown by someone who obviously has no concept of the word annoying. If your child was to go around blowing a whistle like that, it would soon end up being introduced to a hammer. The whistle, not the child. I have spent the past few months trying to come up with a few hours worth of music that will please everyone and it has been hard. A few weeks ago I was finally happy with the 4 x 1hr and 20min cd's I had made. However, the experience left me with music burn-out, having to listen to the full 14 minute of Rappers Delight by the SugarHill Gang and More, More, More by the Andrea True Connection left me with a twitch below my right eye and an aversion to Hotels, Motels and indeed Holiday Inns. I think my man gene kicks in sometimes. My formative years in the 70's were spent watching my sister standing in a line with other girls performing intricate moves to songs. Every record seemed to have a dance that went with it. I can remember desperately wanting to be able to do 'The Woodpecker," which was performed to Tiger Feet by Mud, but the one time I attempted this dance an ambulance was called because someone thought I was having a seizure.
It wasn't too long before I came to the conclusion that dancing is for girls. So, I got into music that you didn't have to dance to and if you did want to dance then all you had to do was jump up and down. I can do that. Nowadays, I am as nimble as an armchair. I still can't dance, I may tap my right foot, and maybe my left as well if it's a long enough song, but that's about it.
Bill Hicks said that real men don't dance, they just sit, sweat and curse. I concur with that sentiment.