My year in cities 2006

A list of the cities I visited this year (multiple visits with a*).

Montreal*
Atlanta
Maidenhead*
Aylesbury
Cork
Paris*
Toulouse
Arles
St Affrique
Bilthoven
Amsterdam
London*

Much speculation has been made of the kind of wedding my sister Christina would have, most of it predicting that it would be one loud shaker. Christina and Josh did not disappoint. Having been to many weddings I can confidently say this one was the best wedding ever. The crowd, the food, the music, the location; it all came together, like the perfect salad, as Steve Rubell used to say. I think you can judge a wedding by how many people are still dancing at 2am, and when the band pulled the plug at 2am in the McCord Museum, the dance floor was shoulder to shoulder and everyone was screaming for just one more song.

It's not easy to get all 6 of my family on the dance floor but Good Time Charlie did it, perhaps for the first time in my life. I think it was during "500 Miles" that I looked around and saw Christina and Michael, Jamie and my parents all getting jiggy wit it. Normally I'd be kind of embarassed or self-concious, but I guess I have moved past that. it was a celebration, so we were celebrating. Anya and I danced all night, my glass of MacCallan always stowed close by on a table. I think I even got all emotional at the end of the night, after too much whisky. normally, i don't drink it to excess, but since Josh and Tina were laying out the 12 year-old, what was I supposed to do, drink Ex all night?

The speeches were short but heartfelt and genuine, the cake was fantastic and the overall feeling of joy lasted much longer than the hangover. even this cynic is still warmed by the afterglow.

The traffic in Dublin today was ridiculous for a Saturday. The mad gridlock was fodder for my theory about Dubliners all doing the same thing at the same time. If you want to drive anywhere easily then get up early.

I have lost my interest in driving and I think I now prefer to be chauffered around. One thing I love about visiting our UK office is that the new car service usually has a late model Mercedes waiting for me when I get to Heathrow. Now if they could pick me up in a 1977 450 SEL 6.9, that would really be something.

Inconsistency


Due to November being NaBloPoMo, (something I discovered after the contest started so i could not join anyway, I made and effort to post every day. I think I lasted 2 days.

Max is becoming addicted to the DVDs that I play for him on Saturday mornings. I don't want him to be a TV addict like I was, but I also want to read the FT on Saturday and having him staring into the iMac is the easy answer.

His favorite is Pingu, a clever claymation series about a rambunctious young penguin. Just uttering two words from the title song is enough to make him run to the bookshelf and point at the top shelf, shouting "Beenguuu!". The title song is catchy and it is actually quite creative.

The close second is a collection of Sesame Street songs, catchy numbers which stick in my head all day. One of the videos features Ernie in a bath tub of naked men, with a cow in a shower cap.

Mmmmmmmm

I love it when a plan comes together.

How Little Perm Got His Name

How Little Perm Got His Name
Originally uploaded by andrew s.

We called him Little Perm because after his daily bath in this here baby bath thing, Max's normally straight hair would curl into a wavy mat. Not quite a real perm but a little curvy anway.

Instead of Big Perm, I mean Big Worm, the drug dealer in the flim Friday, I called him Little Perm.

This was later shortened to "LP", and then finally to simply "Perm" or "The Perm".

Thumbs Down!

Wimbledon was a low-grade rom-com from the start. While I liked the male lead, Kristen Dunst was just too annoying to watch.

Somehow, I managed to avoid peeling myself off the couch to escape its reach into my brain, dumbing me down on a Sunday night.

Who knows what tasks lay uncompleted or problems unsolved due to the movies inane but enaging plot.

I meant to write this yesterday, or at least last night after we came home from the pub, but I just went straight to bed. With Anya's mom visiting, we are trying to get as much cinema and pub-going in as is possible in the span of 1 week.

We saw two more films yesterday, Borat and Little Children. Borat is the funniest movie I have seen in a very long time, perhaps since I saw Naked Gun in 1990. Little Children was a black and bleak look into the pain and suffering lurking beneath the veneer of American suburban life similar in style to American Beauty.


Dundrum is a funny place on a Saturday night.

So the other night Anya and I are watching The Departed, about the Irish mob in Boston, surrounded by Irish people in Dundrum Cinemas. It was funny watching a film with so many references to Boston Irish-ness; dingy pubs, peodophile priests, drunk fathers, bad hair, bleak outlook, from the very place where these references were drawn.

I had a hard time holding in my glee during the extremely violent scenes. I think I laugh because I am so shocked by the candid knee-capping and head shots. Sometimes I am aware of it while I am doing, but in the dark, crowded theatre I just let the laughter fly.