<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Monday, July 25, 2005

The more things change... 

Well, having two weblogs certainly doesn't mean I'm posting twice as much. I spent the whole weekend without even looking at my blogs. We've managed to find renters for the house-- ha! listen to me. "Find." By a miracle from above, suitable renters answered an ad and found our house acceptable. (Whether it was because of the view or because our heating oil bill was about a third of what they were paying, I don't know.) Anyway, we got renters and so painting became a lower priority. Instead I did a variety of deskwork and packing tasks.

Of course, it wasn't all business. One project I undertook was the totally frivolous digitizing of a tape I had recorded back in 1974. I had just received a casette recorder that year and some friends and I recorded a spoof of radio and TV programming. I had not listened to the tape in years--so it was somewhat interesting to compare the actual tape with my memories of the same. One distressing aspect of this was the fact that most of the other kids were funnier than I was. Another was discovering how much of my childhood was influenced by Cheech and Chong.

One thing that really struck me was how often we spoofed the news: three times in a 45 minute tape. Of course, maybe I shouldn't be surprized. Mock newscasts are a staple of sketch comedy. Whether that's because it's fun to mock "authority", or that newscasts lend themselves to short gags, I don't know.