Well, an old-style cartoon, not The Simpsons so much

Remember the opening to the Wonderful World of Disney, when Tinkerbell would come out and use her little wand to splash beautiful colors all over the sky? No? Well this is the closest online image I could find, taking the risk that Disney lawyers won't hunt me down to sue me for unlawful use of a copyright (Unintended consequence - it might just double or triple my readership!):

Anyway, that is what it felt like driving down rte 282 from up near Glenmoore and Lyndell down to Downingtown this morning. It feels like every corner I rounded (come to think of it, how can one "round a corner"?!), there was a new splash of incredible colors. I felt like I was in a cartoon practically.

Oh, and any Monkees album obviously

I hate to jump late onto a bandwagon after everyone else has already discovered a new person or TV show or movie. I also have been proud and somewhat snobbish never to fall in love with the Josh Groban types - who sound really good but have no real edge to them. Sort of like an artist who is technically perfect at painting a scene so that it practically looks like a photograph, but has no feel to it, no soul, no creative interpretation.

So, if only for those two reasons, i'm embarrassed to admit that I have yet to hear Adele sing a song that I don't really want to hear all the way through. That girl can sing.

And the previous times someone new or perhaps I should say someone current has come out with an album I've felt similarly about were:
Eminen - The Real Slim Shady album
Pink - M!ssundaztood
and especially Green Day's American Idiot.

And in each case, they went on to win Album of the Year.

So, thinking about that, I went on to pck my top albums of all time, not in order:

American Idiot - Green Day
Born to Run - Buh-ruuuce
Deja Vu - CSNY
Any Beatles album pretty much, but if I had to choose one, it'd be Let It Be, since I bought it for like .50 in college and played it over and over and over

Some are just barely not on the list, including only a few that come immediately to mind, like Mizundaztood, Good Vibrations, and a bunch of soundtracks:
- Oh Brother Whereartthou
- West Side Story
- American Graffiti

I'll bet her dress is pretty though

Cheryl gets a kick out of my appreciation and borderline attraction to women of an advanced age, who don't smother themselves in bright red lipstick and big ovals of rouge on their cheeks and who dye their hair colors not normally even found in a crayola box.  I think it probably stems from my upbringing and being surrounded by Quaker women, for whom there is no shame in letting their hair go gray and leaving their house, or even their bathrooms in the morning, without caking on the makeup.

I don't even understand what it is these doyennes are trying to accomplish. Are they trying to look young? The whole recapture the beauty of their youth sorta deal? Or do they just think that is a good look?

I was reminded of this whole subject by this recent story in Huffington Post:

"The beauty of being 90 is that you stop caring -- what people think about you, who you might offend, how crazy your clothes look.

Which is why Iris Apfel, the lovable nonagenarian doyenne with the oversized spectacles and the priceless bon mots, is totally worth listening to. The "geriatric starlet" spoke to the Telegraph and had some choice words about the current state of fashion:


"Now when I walk down Fifth Avenue in the summertime I just want to throw up. It seems that the fatter and uglier people are, the fewer clothes they wear. The shorts and flip-flops and tight jeans on butts that go from here to Poughkeepsie."


The feisty fashionista added:


"I always say they should put people in jail for wearing clothes like that. Especially stretch jeans over size 10 -- they should be outlawed. Ten years ago people were starting to look like slobs in New York, now it's an epidemic."


We'd say that Apfel is being unusually harsh, but she has been around to see a bad trend or two. And these days there are some particularly bad ones, she says, on the red carpet:
"At the Golden Globes and Oscars they all look alike - it seems like they're all wearing the same nightgown and this year nobody had any jewellery at all. Only Helen Mirren was wearing a beautiful necklace, but even she got it wrong because the necklace just ruined the dress. I think the designer must have wanted to kill himself when he saw her."

OK. So that's fine. An older woman with a sense of style and a strong opinion. All good so far...until we see a recent photo:
 

 
Ach!

Not sure I could handle the heels though

Who needs Paris to set fashion trends? I vote we let Christina Aguilera decide for all of us:

(click to enlarge, tho judging the size of her thighs...oh never mind)

And although I don't have a picture to prove it, there was a young West Chester University Co-ed walking through town this afternoon, who was wearing a pair of what - tights? something incredibly thin and skintight, that revealed pretty much every little curve, bend, and crevice of her very attractive lower-half as she walked into the Student Housing office on High Street, and I would just like to personally thank her for that, I mean, here, not face-to-face, dear!

The headline we've been waiting to see for 10 long years

'AMERICA'S WAR IN IRAQ WILL BE OVER'


Obama Announces Iraq Troops Will Be Withdrawn By End Of This Year

Thank you, Mr. President.

"Now" is my favorite time of year.

As much I love snow, and I do, and am consistently overwhelmed by the wonder of it all, I finally realized today on my drive into work that I am even more awed by the fall colors.

It made me think of fireworks and how this season is kind of like the grand finale of a fireworks show, after its starts slowly in spring, is consistently beautiful through the summer, before it goes really nuts in the fall. Then the metaphorical white (ashes?) falls back to earth through dead of winter.

Anyway, it all sure is beautiful.

There was an old woman who lived in the media spotlight...

I don't know why it took me so long to figure out why Michelle Bachmann is so batshit crazy, when she includes the answer pretty much every time she answers a question in these uproarious "debates" the Rs have been having, and when it's right here in her wiki bio:

"Bachmann and her husband have five children...(and) Bachmann and her husband have also provided foster care for 23 other children, all teenage girls."