I haven’t been watching the Olympics much, but I did see Phelps get his seventh, and last night I watched the frame-by-frame replay of Phelps vs. Cavic and the whole women’s 50-meter freestyle.

Michael Phelps vs. Milorad Cavic. One one-hundredth of a second difference between gold and silver. Cavic glided while Phelps took another stroke and came out on top by a fingertip.

Dara Torres vs. Britta Steffen. One one-hundredth of a second difference between silver and gold. Torres glided while Steffen took another stroke and came out on top by a fingertip.

No room for coasting in the Olympics.

What up with this quote, AP?

His Olympics looking lost, Michael Phelps decided to flap those gangly arms one more time.

Lost? His whole Olympics would have been lost had he gotten only seven gold medals instead of eight? Yeah, what a loser, all right. The reporter, that is.

From the Firefly pilot, the current stitch-while-I-watch material of choice:

Mal: “Wheel never stops turnin’, Badger.”

Badger: “That only matters to the people on the rim.”

Mr. Sippican Cottage, that is. Although I’m not sure it’s the kind of music he enjoys. But I love it, and it reminds me of the way Mr. Sippican writes about his wife, about his children, about his life in terms of them.

You know “Ashokan Farewell,” right? Unless you were living under a rock with no cable during the time of The Civil War, the mini-series, you know it. This is by the same composer, Jay Ungar. A cousin of mine who is a dead ringer for Loren Dean and I have talked about who would play me and various other cousins in our life story. The lady at the piano, Molly Mason, would have to be played by Stockard Channing–look at those cheekbones! (Cousin and I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory actor look-alike for me. Go figure.)

I played this in trio yesterday with a couple of great musicians I get to flute around with every few weeks–a fiddler and a guitarist. I flute as aforementioned and also sing–mostly old Peggy Lee songs that Mr. Sippican would probably approve of. “Lovers’ Waltz,” by Jay Ungar. Gorgeous.

I mean, Nathan and Joss are both obviously broiling under the lights. C’mon, what did you think I meant?

A post on the Beatles. I don’t know what this blog is coming to. I blame SarahK, whose ongoing saga “We Can Wiirk It Out” has got the Beatles stuck in my head today, much to my distress.

I dislike the Beatles. I like individual songs here and there (“I Will” leading that category by several lenths), but in general I find them (the group) overblown and overrated. On the “overrated” charge, I am willing to concede that, being far too young to have been around for the furor they caused when they were coming up, I probably cannot appreciate by how far they were the first of their kind. And I certainly have not missed the fact that a lot of my favorite musicians cite them as influences. So I don’t want to be ungrateful. But sometimes their sheer pompousness really gets to me. Have you ever really listened to the words of “We Can Work It Out?”

Try to see it my way,
Do I have to keep on talking till I can’t go on?
While you see it your way,
Run the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone.
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Think of what you’re saying.
You can get it wrong and still you think that it’s all right.
Think of what I’m saying,
We can work it out and get it straight, or say good night.
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Life is very short, and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it’s a crime,
So I will ask you once again.

Try to see it my way,
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.
While you see it your way
There’s a chance that we may fall apart before too long.
We can work it out,
We can work it out.

Wow. We can work it out, as long as “work it out” means you immediately drop your POV and position and embrace mine. Otherwise we’re through.

“You can get it wrong and still you think that it’s all right” is undoubtedly said between many a couple during arguments. If one person didn’t think the other was unutterably wrong, there probably wouldn’t be the fight to begin with. But it’s not a basis for “working it out.” It’s the basis for the ultimatum being given here: Drop it or I’ll drop you. Seems like they’re past the point of presenting arguments with evidence and logic behind them to try to sway the other person or at least get a compromise. So what is there to work out?

The bridge is possibly the worst of all. “Fighting sucks, so stop doing it. Obviously I’m not the one fighting; it’s just you being so very, very wrong.” If you go to war, needlessly, for I did not desire it, then men will be slain. Saruman sez: I didn’t desire the war, I just decided to overrun your lands and lay waste your forests and plunder your people and you were supposed to do nothing. Because you didn’t do nothing … war! See what you did?

This song is the same thing in microcosm. It is horrible, and not worthy of McCartney, the man who wrote “I Will.” Looks like there may have been some personal overtones to it, but once you put a song out there like that it becomes a general recipe, and this is one of the worst I’ve ever heard.

At the rec center.

Young teenage boy: “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Older teenage boy: “No, I don’t need one, man. It’s summer.”

…till the fans quit ticking? How many times does Joss have to say it before people believe it?

There will be no Serenity sequel. Believe it, people.

Chess, the music(al), was written by the two Bs in ABBA.

That explains a lot, not least of which is why I like it so much. Like Bookworm says, ABBA has a lot of songs that just make me “fizzy happy.”

What the hell do you mean, “It’s not Friday?” I’ve had enough week for one week, thanks. And judging by Fug Girl Heather’s take, the mustache of Robert Downey, Jr., has pushed her over into that territory too.

Robert Downey, Jr. Mustache. The man who single-handedly could have saved Ally McBeal (girl and show both) had he been able to stay out of the blow instead of leaving her to fishtail off into “long-lost daughter” and “Jon Bon Jovi” territory. Mustache. As Heather so impassionedly points out, you’re not Tom Selleck, dude.

Not that I needed any more.

2) If you intend the weapon to give you plausible deniability for secret laser blasts, you probably shouldn’t announce, “Hey, check this cool shit out! We have an invisible high-powered laser letting us melt a bitch with plausible deniability!”

–Ace

I know of no other blogger who can say “melt a bitch” with quite the same … gravitas.

And the new Padawan–sort of a Jedi intern–is a girl in hot pants and halter top and do-me boots whose dim one-liners put her right up there with Jar Jar and Ziro in the anti-pantheon.

–Kyle Smith on the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie.

I am beyond tears with this man.

Apparently, a person in my general metropolitan area is Monica Lewinsky.

I don’t even have anything to say. She’s gotta live somewhere.