I saw this story on another friend's blog and thought I'd share it with you. It's about a 4-year-old painter named Marla Olmstead, who started painting before the age of 2 alongside her father. According to her father, Marla quickly showed a talent for painting, and easily moved from 11X14" pieces of paper to full canvasses larger than herself. She garnered international attention when The New Yorker did a piece about her first showing, and has since been featured on The Today Show, 60 Minutes and Time Magazine. Her original artworks are limited editions and have been bought up by collectors worldwide (to an amount totaling over half a million dollars, by the way).

When I first read the story on the other blog, I thought, "What a bunch of crap." I figured it was one of those situations where someone is taking advantage of this poor 4-year-old girl by convincing people that her finger paintings are important and worth paying for. Then I looked at her website and checked out her art. I have to say, I really liked it and it certainly shows a maturity and ease far beyond that of a child, even though when you watch her paint, she does paint like the young girl she is. Look at the work and decide for yourself. If you like abstract art, you might like it.




The song of the day is "Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh off his 1978 album But Seriously Folks. It pokes fun at the rock star lifestyle, and the lyrics to this song have always made me smile, right from the opening line: " I have a mansion, forget the price, Ain't never been there, they tell me it's nice..." And of course the very classic: "My Maserati goes 185, I lost my license, now I don't drive..."

After Wally's little bone-stealing stunt from yesterday, the other editor decided to just give Wally the rawhide bone after he took his dog home at lunch. It seems his dog wasn't very interested in it. Not so with Wally! He sat and ate half of it in about an hour before I finally took him home. I must admit, I forgot that those things sometimes upset his stomach. This is why I was somewhat surprised this morning when I woke up to find approximately 10 different areas in my house where he had vomited during the night. I took him out for light fetch, he came in and threw up again. I gave him a Pepcid A/C which seems to have helped, but he just threw up his breakfast when I was outside with him a few moments ago. Needless to say, Wally will be staying home from work tonight while I have friends come by and check on him. Poor boy. I guess it's karma for stealing the bone in the first place.

About 4-6 weeks ago, when I tried to look for work, I was told by pretty much everyone that everything had already been staffed. Needless to say, I was surprised when I got a call a week ago to interview on a new show. The producer got busy and ended up canceling on me a couple of times, but I finally got in to meet with him today. However, he was running late, which caused all the editors being interviewed to sort of pile up on one another until there were 4 of us sitting there waiting together. That was uncomfortable, trying to make small talk with people you're competing against to get a job. I asked one of the guys what he had worked on and he said he had done all 10 seasons of JAG. What was I supposed to say? "Umm...I did 4 episodes of BL. And House Hunters." The interview seemed to go well, so we'll see how things go. Coincidentally, not two hours after I got home from that interview, I got a call from a producer on another show checking on my availability and wanting to set up a meet. I guess it's true that when it rains, it pours.

The song of the day is "Working for the Weekend" by Loverboy off their 1981 album Get Lucky. Man, Loverboy was cool back in the day. Mike Reno had some real stage presence. I've seen him on tv since then and he looks like he may have eaten his former self. According to their Wikipedia entry, Mike Reno announced recently that the band had reunited and were recording another studio album due out this year. Says Wikipedia, "The new album is titled Back for More and scheduled for release in June, with a clip of the first single "The One That Got Away" available on the band's MySpace page." Wow...from arena rockers to "check out my MySpace page."

I brought Wally with me to work today. We were on our own until another editor showed up around noon with his very cool dog, Max. Max is some sort of mutt that appears to be part Dalmation part who knows what, but he and Wally generally have a good time together. The other editor showed me a big rawhide bone he had brought in and said, "If this is a problem, I'll just put it up." I shook my head. "No, Wally's pretty passive about that sort of stuff." The guy set the bone on his desk and went upstairs with Max to make himself some lunch in the kitchen. I went back to work in my bay, and a few moments later, I heard Wally chewing on something out in the hallway. I poked my head out and found him, much to my dismay, chewing on the big rawhide bone that belonged to Max. He had clearly taken it off the other editor's desk. "Bad dog!" I took the bone from him and put it on my desk. When the other editor came down from the kitchen, I said to him, "As it turns out, this might be a problem, considering Wally stole it off your desk." "No problem," he said, then returned after a moment in his bay. "By the way, he ate all the food out of Max's food dish, too." I looked at Wally who gave me that innocent look of the Labrador retriever. I just can't seem to trust him with anything anymore!

The song of the day is "Cuts You Up" by Peter Murphy off his 1989 album Deep. I think this is the only song I know by the so-called Godfather of Goth. I'm not much of a goth person, but I do dig the sound of this song. And this is one of those songs that has KROQ written all over it for me. Peter Murphy formerly sang for Bauhaus, another band I don't think I've heard. (Or have I? Does anyone know any songs?) His wife's name is Beyhan, and his two children are named Hurihan and Adem. I can't tell if those are boys or girls. At first I thought, "Oh - typical worldly rock and roller with the stupid names." Then I noticed he's been living in Turkey since 1992. I imagine those are all Turkish names. My bad!

Seen in a house while working this week:

Not sure I see ANY need for a bidet when I have the option of showering should things get unnecessarily bad in the bathroom.

Movies watched over my "weekend" when I was trying to do nothing and get over this cold or whatever it is I have:

Flags of our Fathers - Better than expected. I guess with all the buzz and Oscar nods I should have expected a lot, but I've never been much into war films, especially when they're hard to follow and everyone looks alike. However, I found this film to be heartwarming and an interesting story about the famous Iwo Jima photograph that I'd never given a second thought to. Ryan Phillipe does a great job (as usual), and it was nice to see Canadian Adam Beach in a big film role, after he's done so much Canadian TV and film. I hear Letters From Iwo Jima is even better and I look forward to renting that soon.

Premonition - OK, I should have known what to expect after reading Mishy's review some time ago, and I seem to remember giving her crap for having watched it. But...I was sick...and feverish! And I'm a sucker for movies that play with time, and I like that guy from Nip/Tuck. I will say the movie wasn't half bad, but there was no real payoff for all the time tricks. This could have been a much better movie if it had had a much better ending. Why do I still find Sandra Bullock interesting enough to rent when she hasn't been in a decent movie since Speed? I do give her bonus points for doing that role in Speed. All in all, not bad if you're sick and half asleep.

Apocalypto - I admit, the reason I wanted to see this movie was so I could confirm that Mel Gibson has, in fact, lost his mind. I also admit I was surprised to find the movie rather enjoyable. It tells the story of Jaguar Paw, a young man living in a peaceful tribe in ancient Central America, who is captured and whisked away to the world of the new and mysterious Mayans. Driven by the power of his love for his wife and son, who he left behind in hiding, Jaguar Paw stuns his captors by escaping and outrunning them. Powerful love story, good against evil, blah blah. The thing is, I'm not sure I understand why this movie needed to be made. We've seen love stories of this caliber 1,000 times in other films. The only thing that makes this one unique is the time in which it takes place, and that it's done in yet another dead language necessitating sub-titles. Thank you Mel. I was unable to nap while watching this because I had to read! This film is like celery - there's nothing gained or lost by watching it.

Someone mentioned yesterday in the comments section that I should use Neil Diamond for the song of the day. I could swear to god I used him before, but Blogger says that is simply not so. "Sweet Caroline" was recorded by Diamond on his 1969 record the Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show. According to Wikipedia, the title song from the album was released and reached #22 on the charts. When Diamond recorded and released "Sweet Caroline" four months later and the song reached #4, it was added to the album and the record was renamed (after that song).

I've been trying to become a responsible adult lately. Financially, at least. I've always been good with money as far as paying bills and keeping my debts low, but I've never done well understanding things like investing. Some more responsible friends have gotten me, over the past two years, to do a couple of things, one being that I opened up a high yield savings account and have a reasonable chunk of change in there. However, most of that money is in reserve for the day my show gets canceled or I'm out of work for a long time. It's also, for instance, a good reason why I was able to take a month off and go to Australia. The other thing I finally did (just this year, by the way) is open an IRA. So, I've got the savings account, the IRA, and whatever retirement fund is headed my way from my union. Lately, a few different people have recommended the idea of buying things and paying all bills with a credit card, while my paycheck sits in the high yield savings account accruing interest. Then, at the end of the credit card statement period, before any interest is accrued to the account, paying it back out of said savings account. This actually makes good sense to me except for one thing - I pay my bills online at B of A's Billpay. As far as I can tell, I can only pay my bills from my checking account. Anyone know how to pay bills with a credit card, without having to go to every company's web site and manually pay there with it?

The song of the day is "Money" by Pink Floyd off their 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon. I have to admit, I never made it to the Pink Floyd party. Roger Waters left the band in 1985 when I was only 14. But I have come to appreciate much of their music in my more recent years. Someday, I'll have to actually buy some CDs and see how much I like them. Especially Dark Side, so I can try playing it along to Wizard of Oz, like Diane suggested.

Yesterday I wrote about embarrassing finds in my record collection. Today, I have some memorable finds in my CD collection. My CD collection is actually quite good (for my tastes), as I didn't really start buying a lot of CDs until the last 15 years or so. However, I still managed to find some that made me wonder what I'd been thinking at the time:

I remember how I got this one, and I get off easy here. This was from not returning the card to the Columbia CD club in time. Since I have a hard time ever getting rid of music or books, I haven't quite brought myself to dump this on some poor soul.


Somehow, near the end of high school, I found myself listening to some purely musical artists, such as David Sanborn, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Patrick O'Hearn. I used to actually keep this in my car to listen to. I can't explain how I got into this type of music, and can explain even less why I feel the need to keep it in my collection.

Warrant's Dirty, Rotten, Filthy, Stinking Rich. I know for a fact that I am not the only person I know who has this in their collection. I do recall that I lifted this from a radio station I worked for, but it still begs the question WHY?

Still, I have to admit that out of all the CDs I own, these are the only three I found to be embarrassing. Oh - and the Michael Damien disc that featured "Rock On." Not sure why I didn't take a photo of it. I did like that song, apparently enough to buy the CD. Sigh.



The song of the day is "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch off their 1991 album Music For The People. That's right - I'm pulling out Marky freaking Mark for my song of the day. Some people would be embarrassed to say they liked this song, but not me. I still have it in rotation on my iPod. It's just the kind of clean white boy rap that I dig sometimes. The song actually reached #1 on the Billboard charts that year, and included samples from Loleatta Holloway's Track "Love Sensation" - she received credit for her performance in the song. The most I remember about Marky Mark is that he looked spectacular in those underwear ads. I have to say, who knew he'd grow into actor Mark Wahlberg?

Thanks to Dan for reminding me that it's Wally Wednesday! Wally's hot spot is now healing and he's been leaving it alone, so he's cone free. I felt bad for him with that satellite dish around his neck, and a friend told me about a new, inflatable "cone" that goes around their neck and gives them more range of motion to eat and such, but still limits them getting their head around to chew on their body. As you can see, it looks like a life preserver:

Good idea, but it doesn't work. Not only could he still manage to get at his hot spot, but he could easily remove it. He would at least wait until I left the room, so that when I returned, I would often find him naked. The dog's regular collar gets looped inside the inflatable collar and it meant to help keep the collar on. I tried to outsmart Wally by tightening the interior collar up. It stayed on and on. Then he asked to go out and I opened the door so he could hang out in front for awhile. When he came back through the door - naked! I went out front in my garden and found his inflatable collar wedged in a space between the condo's foundation and the ground. He had shoved his head in until the collar became wedged, and then pulled as hard as he could until he got free. And people say Labs aren't the smartest dogs!

Diane posted earlier in the week about how she recently went through her CD collection to find something, only to come across some discs that made her wonder what the hell she'd been thinking when she bought them. I thought it might be interesting to take a gander at my own collection, and here are some of the things that I found in my record collection. First, let's start with the compilation records:

I didn't know where I'd gotten this until I saw my friend Robert's name written on the back. It's an actual K-TEL album. I'm not sure what compelled me to borrow it and then not return it. It features "Let My Love Open The Door" by Pete Townshend along with "The Tide is High" by Blondie. Then again, it also contains "Hot Rod Hearts" by Robbie Dupree and "Who'll Be The Fool Tonight" by the Larsen-Feiten Band (who???).



I'm pretty sure I lifted this off one of my sisters. If you look at the full size photo, you can see it actually includes some decent music. '83 was a very good year - see Adam Ant, The Police, Pat Benetar, The Thompson Twins and Bryan Adams among others. Still, I'm perplexed as to why I would want this when I have most of the albums by said bands.

Now for the Do I Really Have These In My Collection? records:

Yes, he was super charming in Moonlighting, but I actually paid for this record because I liked the song "Respect Yourself" THAT much.




This is possibly one of the most embarrassing records in my collection. First off, I didn't buy it. I can see from the smudged stamp on the front of it that I lifted it from a radio station I worked for. Which means that at the time, I was willing to lay my job on the line for a used copy of this so I could...listen to "Wake Me Up Before Yoo Go Go" over and over again? Keep in mind, I didn't work at that station until 1990.

And then there's this. Sure I was a huge Huey Lewis fan, but did I HAVE to have the two sided picture disc of Sports. You bet I did!














Finally, from the geeky but sort of cool that I still have this category, a narrated record of The Hobbit including full sound effects and soundtrack from 1977:


Since I mentioned it earlier, I might as well use it as the song of the day. "Let My Love Open The Door" by Pete Townshend off his 1980 album Empty Glass. I've never been much of a Who fan, and am one of those unusual people who prefers Townshend to Roger Daltrey. There are several Townshend songs I'm fond of, but this is the most memorable.

TGIF! For me, anyways. I think I'm coming down with something, so I'm looking forward to two days off. Since I've spent most of the day napping (I'm about to leave for work), the blog today will be short and simple.

Remember how I cleaned up my front garden about a month ago, and then noticed the weeds were growing back recently? These are photos from June 21. These are photos from today. WTF with all the weeds and my jungle-like rose bushes?


And in case you were wondering, an update on my thumb:

One of my goalies is a doctor and he said I could take a small drill bit or a razor blade and puncture the nail to let the liquid out to relive pressure. I said maybe HE could do that, but I most certainly could not. He said it will take about two months before I lose the nail.

The song of the day is "All The Love" by the Outfield off their 1985 debut album Play Deep. This is a great album and this is one of the many great songs on that album. Unfortunately, as much as I love the band, I don't think they ever really followed it up with anything worth mentioning. But this, like the rest of their early music, is true Brit-Pop, pure and simple.

Thanks to everyone who has made a donation to my 5k run for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America next month. Today, I surpassed my goal of $2500 in fundraising. Of course, if you still want to contribute, please do. I'm still about $100 behind 7-year-old Mason and it's pissing me off. I suppose he does have the cute factor. A friend and I were chatting about it online the other day. He and his wife had donated to my fund, and when I told them about Mason, he looked him up on the web site. His wife, walking up behind him as he looked at Mason's web page, said, "Ooh..he's so cute!" She felt bad for him and donated $50.

So far today, I've woken up with a really bad stress headache (or perhaps from the change in pressure since it rained last night), and have what I believe is the beginnings of a chest cold. I've been laying around all day trying to decide if I want to go to work tonight or not. Since I really don't want to have to make up the missed day on one of my regular days off, I'll probably suck it up and go work tonight.

The song of the day is a little more recent than my usual picks, but it came up on my iPod today and I remembered how much I like it. It's "Love and Happiness" by John Mellencamp off his 1991 album Whenever We Wanted. This was Mellencamp's 11th album, his first after the 80s were done, and also the first that was credited solely to his given name. I always dug his stuff back in the day, but this song really struck a chord with me with it's harder, more serious edge. Check out the lyrics. They're still pretty meaningful with what's going on in the world today.

My hockey team had another win last night, and I believe we've clinched our spot in the playoffs, even though there are 3 more games left in the season. The best part of the game was my spectacular goal (the first of the game) from a spectacular pass. We may have been on a mediocre streak before, but we've won two games in a row and are looking to the post season. Unfortunately, because it's summer, a few of our better guys already have plans to be out of town during some of our games, including the playoffs. It would only be too perfect for us to be in 1st and 2nd place all season, only to lose in the playoffs.

I also subbed in with my old Pasadena team tonight. I'm not playing with them regularly this season, but they call when their bench is looking short. It was actually a fun game, and instead of the usual ass-kicking we get in that league, we won by a fair margin. We played a team that is new to the league called the Blades. The Blades were the first openly gay and lesbian hockey team in the United States and first formed in 1985. Now, they have teams that compete on several levels and also play in the Gay Games (I'm not sure if they use straight players or not). My point is, this was their very Novice level team, and they were far more horrible than us, but they had a decent attitude about losing, so it was fun. Also, the best part of this game was my wicked fast break away goal in the 3rd period.

Last week I finished reading Michael Ondaatje's book Divisadero. I think I've read everything Ondaatje has written and have thoroughly enjoyed his work. In case his name is not familiar to you, he's the man who wrote The English Patient, which the film was based on. I find his prose to be addictive and poetic and fluid in a way that separates a real writer from someone who happened to write a book. Divisadero is no different. It tells the story of Anna and Claire, teenage sisters who live on a farm in Northern California with their father in the 1970s, along with a neighbor boy named Cooper who the father took in when Coop was left orphaned as a child. A unique set of experiences between the growing teenagers sets off a spark of violence from the father that the family will never recover from. Years later, scattered across the globe and living separate lives, we learn who these three have become in the aftermath of their youth. Ondaatje simultaneously tells the story of Lucien Segura, a turn of the century French poet whose history has become entangled with Anna's present. It's all very interesting, and I enjoyed it until there was no type left. Unfortunately, the story never reached an ending. It felt truncated, as if cut off mid thought. I suppose everything doesn't get tied up in a neat little package in reality, so why should it in fiction? But it seems like Ondaatje got so involved in the second story, he completely forgot about the first.

The song of the day is "Do You Believe In Love" by Huey Lewis & the News off their 1982 album Picture This. While this wasn't their first album (they put out a fairly unmemorable first album in 1980) it was the first to spawn any hits. "Do You Believe In Love," written by producer Mutt Lange, became a huge hit and put the band on the map. A lot of people don't remember Huey Lewis & the News prior to their breakout with Sports, but Picture This has a lot of rawer, more innocent songs on it.

Although I wrote about watching the John Lennon documentary last week, I'm generally not much of a documentary watcher. Sometimes I'll get sucked into the history channel, but I'd much rather watch something fictional and entertaining. Or better yet, a fictional retelling of history, so I can better imagine what the Revolutionary War might have been like for Heath Ledger. That being said, I've had An Inconvenient Truth sitting on my counter for weeks and I can't seem to motivate myself to sit down and watch it. However, when Jesus Camp came in the mail yesterday, I felt compelled to watch it immediately.

For those of you unfamiliar with the film, it follows a group of extremely evangelical kids as they attend a sort of summer camp called Jesus Camp. We learn about the individual kids, and hear from their parents and their pastor about their faith and what God means to them. All I have to say is...wow. Seriously. Wow. It is very frightening. Although the film lets you make the decision yourself. It's not narrated, it simply follows these kids around as you see into their world as young evangelical Christians being called upon to fight the good fight in the name of Christ. I think if anyone in the film saw it for themselves, they would probably be proud of the way it tells their story. For me, I found it chilling and worrisome. I believe my favorite part was when a large group of kids was praying loudly and in tongues at a lifesize cardboard cutout of President George W. Bush so that he could be a strong Christian and outlaw abortion and such. I really recommend it for anyone interested in religion in America.

I realized in using Don Henley recently and Fleetwood Mac yesterday that I've never used "Leather and Lace" by Stevie Nicks & Henley as the song of the day. It was recorded in 1982 for Nicks' album Bella Donna. Henley had just broken out on his own from The Eagles, and Bella Donna was Nicks' first solo album. I know they dated, so I assume they were dating at the time they recorded this song. It's still a classic today.

Someone asked a question about editing, so I thought I'd try and answer it. After viewing the list of Emmy nominations, LA was curious about the difference between multi-camera editing and single-camera editing. She couldn't understand why someone would shoot with only a single camera, and wondered it it might be due to monetary constraints. I'll try my best to explain, but since I've never actually worked in multi-camera editing, I could be partially wrong. Anyone who can correct me, please jump in.

I'll start with multi-camera editing, which I know the least about. The best example of a multi-camera show is nearly any sitcom, especially if it has a laugh track. These shows are shot on a stage, I think generally with an audience, so they have to run the show sometimes from beginning to end. I believe they do two full run-throughs of the show, and then grab any pickups they might need. The point is that all the actors are up there acting their hearts out at the same time. Since there are several cameras shooting at once (I think typically four), every actor has to have good makeup, hair, wardrobe. Everyone has to be lit correctly. The director has to be directing ALL of those actors at the same time and everything has to happen at once.

For example, think of Friends. If there are 4 cameras, one's on Chandler, one's on Joey, one on Monica, one on Phoebe. If there are more than 4 people, I assume they cover with two-shots on the lesser actors for that particular scene. While that scene is playing out, every actor on that stage is conceivably on camera at all times, so they all have to be "on." Since everything is shot at once, run through twice, there isn't much footage. I'm just making assumptions, but for a half-hour sitcom, I imagine there might be 6 hours of footage. That's 6 hours, and a couple of takes for every camera for every scene. I think that's a pretty liberal assumption.

Now, let's talk about single-camera editing. A one hour show runs at about 44 minutes without commercials. The typical shooting schedule for a show that length is 8 days. Remember - a sitcom - a couple of run-throughs. A single camera show shoots for EIGHT DAYS. I sitcom will shoot a full 22 pages in a day. A single-camera show will shoot about 6. With single camera shooting, only one or two actors are on the spot. Only one person has to be lit, made up, dressed, and hitting all their marks and lines at the same time. The director can concentrate solely on that single actor and his performance. It doesn't matter if the off camera people are missing or flubbing their lines - he'll get to them when it's their turn. And he may run certain actors or angles again and again and again creating a ton of footage to be looked at by the editor.

Here's the confusing part - single-camera shows often use more than one camera to shoot at one time. On BL, we did this a lot, especially for big scenes with a lot of coverage like a courtroom scene. But if there were two or three cameras going, they were still all pointed at the same person. In this case, the multiple cameras are used to save time. If a director wants to do a ton of set-ups, he can do more than one at the same time. The one actor is still the only one on the spot, but one camera may be head on, one may be a 3/4 shot, and one may be a profile whipping between the actor and the person on the stand (pretty typical for BL). On an 8 day shoot, for 44 minutes of edited picture, we regularly shot around 30 hours of footage. That's a lot more takes to look through.

So, I won't say one or the other type of editing is better than the other, they're just very different skill sets, which is why they are separated into two different categories in the nominations. And just so it's clear - feature films are single-camera. In answer to the money question, I would guess that the opposite is true. Multi-camera would be less expensive, I would think.

A fun movie to watch about an editor (if you can find it) is Modern Romance with Albert Brooks from 1981.

The song of the day is "Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac off their 1982 album Mirage. I have to say, I've never really followed them, but I've always liked them and this album is really good. When I was working in radio, someone did one of those spoofs which was a fake radio ad (a la K-Tel) selling a Stevie Nicks greatest hit record. Everytime it would play the sound of the song, her lyrics were totally incomprehensible. They selling point was that it had been "digitally remastered for stereo inaudability."

As you know from reading my blog, I'm quite the gadget girl. Perhaps it comes from my 1/4 Chinese background. You must have noticed that the Asians go to a whole new level when it comes to electronic gadgets. Here's a couple I've come across on the web this week.

From Korean Samsung, the new SCH-B750, unveiled only in Korea thus far. It's the perfect phone for the YouTube crazy world. Now, instead of only being able to shoot crappy video with your phone, you can now shoot crappy video AND edit it, adding music, titles and the like, and then upload it directly to a video web site such as YouTube. The phone shoots 320x240 MPEG4 video, and will cost around $650.

And from Japanese Fujitsu, the F704i. You know how sometimes you're sitting around the pool with your phone, and you think to yourself, "If only I could get in the pool AND underwater and talk on my phone. Now THAT would be awesome!" Well, now you can. In addition to being only 1.8mm thick, the phone can be submerged within a few feet of water for up to half an hour. It also has a camera, a music player, and something called a "bath massage program." I'm not sure I'd ever want to borrow anyone's phone if it was this one.

And finally, a video someone e-mailed me this week. If you haven't seen it, stick with it. It's worth the payoff at the end. It's about 5 minutes long, so be prepared. And turn the volume up so you can enjoy the music!



The song of the day is "What You Need" by INXS off their 1985 album Listen Like Thieves. I loved their older stuff and always thought they had a rather unique sound. Despite memorable early songs like "The One Thing" and "Don't Change," Thieves, their 5th album, is considered their commercial breakthrough. I had a friend who really got into this band when this album came out, and I remember her mom saying, "What are they called? Inks?"

Today, in a special edition of Wally Wednesday, you will get not one but several photos. These are in response to the question about what sort of photos my iPhone takes, so here are some I've taken throughout the week:

Because Wally kept chewing on his hot spot, I had to take him to work last night to keep an eye on him. He was not happy to be locked in the edit bay with me and proceeded to crawl under my desk and mope.


When we got home at 1am, I was forced to put the cone on him. He was even more not pleased and turned his back to me. This is his equivalent of giving me the hand.


He then decided the better tactic would be to face me so I could see how sad he was. It didn't work. He had to sleep with it on.


My neighbor's bulldog, Stryder, playing tug of war with his favorite ball. Remember when he was a puppy? Now he's a big boy. Stryder is basically a couch potato and this is about as active as he gets, but he's damn cute. (Anyone else miss Tater Tot?)


And finally, my thumb. I just took this last night, so it's 4 days after the fact. I couldn't seem to get the camera close enough to get the details, but far enough away to get my thumb in focus. The coloring is about twice as dark as you see in the photo. Ouch!


I've spent all day making a full frontal attack on the fleas. First, Wally got bathed in special anti-itchy shampoo (twice) and then washed with an extra special non-itchy rinse. He is still chewing on himself and I'm getting my hands on a new inflatable collar for him that's supposed to be less intrusive, but still not allow him to chew himself. I then vacuumed and swept the house. I hate this type of cleaning - this is why I have a maid. I changed my own sheets (I haven't done that myself in probably 5 years), including the duvet cover. And right now I'd like to ask, how the fuck does my maid get the duvet back into the cover every week? Finally, I put down powder on all the carpets, scrubbed it in, waited over an hour, and then vacuumed again to get it out. I also sprayed around all the baseboards and over all the couches and chairs. If there's any fleas left, they've got to be some sort of nuclear mutants!

I recently got one of those 20 question e-mails and one of the questions to answer was "Rolling Stones or The Beatles?" Of course, for me, it has always been The Beatles. A friend who loves the Rolling Stones begged to differ, and we've gotten into a long running debate about the matter. I've never liked the Stones other than a couple of songs, but looking through their library on iTunes this afternoon, I realized a few things. The first is, I hate the Rolling Stones post 1980 - they have a lot of great music from before that. The second is, I like them a lot more when I don't have to watch Mick Jagger prancing around like an injured chicken while he's singing. This has been a long lead in to the song of the day, which is "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Rolling Stones off their 1968 album Let It Bleed. The first time I heard it was in the film The Big Chill. I've always enjoyed the lyrics and the message.