I got the new shoes, the weather has cooled down, summer hols are over, but I still haven’t got my mojo back. Ran a 10k in Windsor the other week which ended with undignified waterchundering [thanks for the sponsorship, nice people]. Then I came down with a nasty cold. What’s a girl to do?
How are you all doing?
Nobody could doubt for a second that we’re well and truly in the ’80s now. Let’s Dance is Bowie’s best selling album, but does that necessarily mean that it’s the best?
Modern Love is a song that doesn’t really do anything too challenging, the drums sound like a pattern from my first Casio keyboard. It’s certainly a popular song, but under a critical eye there isn’t really much to it. The saxophone is really the only instrument that’s doing anything particularly interesting here.
China Girl is a song that seems to divide opinion, and I think that for me it’s actually a thumbs up. There’s quite a lot of dynamic variety in this song, with Bowie’s voice going from soft to a scream and back again, the bassline sometimes just straight 8th root notes, and sometimes arpeggiating up and down all over the place, and I’m quite a fan of the guitar solos too.
Aaaah… aaaahhh…. aaaaaahhhh… aaaaaaahhhh… Let’s Dance! Under the moonlight! The serious moonlight! I fucking love this song. It’s probably partly thanks to the utterly delicious bass line. I find it hard to listen to this song without reaching for the nearest bass guitar and joining in, which can get a bit awkward in traffic. One criticism about the 7m37s album version, though, is that it’s 7m37s long, and I find myself reaching for the skip button two minutes from the end. Even the best houseguests can outstay their welcome eventually.
The first album track to rear its head is Without You. It’s all exceptionally ’80s sounding, and though there are a couple of melodically interesting lines in here, it’s lyrically bleh and musically uninspiring.
No idea what to make of Ricochet, it’s at least got some weight and drama to it, it’s not exactly easy to listen to. It’s strange how this album seems to go from one extreme to another. Bowie has remarked, in interviews, that Nile Rodgers basically screwed this one up. It was supposed to have a more flowing rhythm than the ungainly syncopated stagger that reminds me of a 7-legged baby giraffe learning to walk.
Criminal World starts off as a somewhat sleazy sounding ballad, rich in ’80s heritage with all the accoutrements that you’d expect, but then the chorus picks up the pace quite tastily. The song then drops into a guitar solo, which basically sounds like an entirely different song again. This song’s actually a cover version, the original being by a band that I’ve never heard of before called Metro.
Cat People (Putting Out Fire) is quite awesome, it’s great to hear Bowie really belting it out. Musically speaking, it’s not the most artfully constructed song, but the performance here has a really compelling energy that gives me a smile.
And then the album closes with the ridiculous Shake It which just drips with cheese. Cheesy keyboards, cheesy backing vocals.
From what I read, Bowie left a lot of the making of this album to Nile Rodgers, and the result has a certain directionless to it. I expect that Bowie was probably surprised that it sold so well, I certainly am. The consequence of this album’s success is that Bowie then had a new customer base to keep happy, but we’ll get to that with the next album.
Hits from this album: Modern Love, China Girl and Let’s Dance were all huge hit singles.
My favourite song from this album: Let’s Dance, by a country mile.
Next up: Tonight, and I’m not much looking forward to it.
I won’t be serving a second round today as I’ll be on my way to Aston for the NCT conference, featuring Ben Goldacre as a keynote speaker, and me running a workshop that I haven’t really planned yet. I also haven’t mentioned my stinking cold to the two people I’m sharing a car with.
Conference cocktails have been tried before and nobody likes them. I’m pretty sure we’ve also done sickday cocktails. Let’s be topical and have Human Rights cocktails instead.
At the age of 8, I would come home from school, eat a jam butty, and go off to play out with my friends. I am pretty sure I never had homework. Of course, we are talking about the previous century, and things are different now; but I’m starting to feel very pressured by the amount of homework I’m expected to encourage Bernard to do.
We have an ongoing literacy project where he has to complete a piece of creative work every week, an A4 page of maths questions handed out on a Monday to be handed in on Thursday, and “spellings” which isn’t a list of words to learn (that would be easy) but, for example, “write 12 sentences explaining the meaning of homophones.”
We are not the sort of family that has activities every day after school, but goodness knows how one gets all this done if you have to fit in extra curricular ballet and tennis as well. We have swimming on Tuesdays, and a five minute violin practice to fit in most days, and a child who wants to play with his friends and has no inclination to sit down for half an hour after school and do more work.
As a parent my options seem to be to ban the fun until the work is done (a good life lesson, perhaps?); put him to bed later so he can do it after tea; or teach him to rebel (a better life lesson, perhaps?)
Oh parents of Team Uborka! What do you do?
Today the bar has a well-padded floor, resembling nothing so much as a mattress. Pete programmed ubotka to provide an appropriate setting for a pyjama party, and then we had to go in and remove all the satin bedding, which constituted a slip hazard.
We are particularly thankful that we did this, since so many of our guests are naked, and we don’t really want to see them go arse over tit. In fact we felt so bad that some of you didn’t own any pyjamas, that we raided M&S on our way over here, and can provide PJs to the PJless.
However, we did only bring the rack of onesies.
So, Lyle, this is your wild onesie, note the cute 3/4 legs and playful tongue-out roar. Later on we want to see who would win between you and Gordon, to whom we gift this onesie, which clearly has more teeth. We tried to find something similar for Graybo, but ubotka got his code in a tangle and this leopard print was all hu could manage.
Similarly lacking in nightwear, Asta and stroppycow can have warm dressing gowns and a copy of this to watch under a blanket.
And so to the few guests today who did manage to comply with the terms of the invitation. Here at Casa Uborka, “to pyjame” is a verb, and expression of the intention to pyjame indicates an abdication from any responsibility outside the home for that day. All members of the Casa strive to do this at the earliest opportunity, and two of us didn’t get dressed at all yesterday (though it was a sickday, so that’s allowed). Pete owns two extremely disreputable pairs of pyjama trousers, so we will be replacing those with this natty pair. This was not the image I originally intended to use. Be thankful. I prefer plain black pyjamas so that I can pretend I’m not really in my nightwear, but some sort of slinky loungewear.
Lori really did it right, modelling her own pyjamas and an excellent scarf for us right here. And Abby kindly offered pyjamas to anyone who needs them, but as it turned out, we already had it covered. For her future reference, here are the top ten women’s pyjamas.
Nightcap, anyone?
It’s a pyjama party!!!
Sophia wants me to tell you that she doesn’t like brown bread.
Who’s Sophia?
She sits next to me at lunch and she says she really, really doesn’t like brown bread.
But you’re not giving your sandwiches to Sophia, are you?
No, but she really, really can’t stand the sight of them. So can you stop using brown bread please?
No.
The club has had a long summer hiatus. It’s been too hot, and time has been difficult to find. August was my lowest mileage month in a long time, and my legs have been getting more stiff and sore as the weeks went on. We spent the last two weeks of the holidays in France, where the running routes are either spooky woods or busy roads, except for the closed-off road that goes past Pete’s mum’s house. This is uphill for half a mile, back down to the road, and repeat. The elevation chart on RunKeeper looks like boobs. I managed that twice and then compensated by swimming many, many lengths of their ten metre pool instead.
School’s back, and my two-year runniversary was on Sunday. I didn’t go for a run. On Monday morning I dragged my feet for a mile before my legs gave in entirely and I walked home feeling very sorry for myself. For a few weeks now I’ve found that if I run in my A shoes (240 miles), I get pulling pains in my left leg for hours afterwards. Not so much with my older B shoes (unknown mileage, but a lot, including a lot of walking), so I’ve been using them but feeling uncomfortable. Meet the new A shoes:
How has your summer been?