A Twitter-Size Monday Update!

I do not currently "Tweet", but I am told Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so I am going to try my hand at blogging on several topics in Twitter-size chunks!

Obama wants GM Chairman Jeff Wagoner gone? I have no problem with that per se, but am I the only one who feels the government is getting dictatorship-ish?

Tiger Woods truly DOES walk on water. He comes back from 5 shots down to win his first event since knee surgery. You know Tiger's cool when my wife will sit and watch!

Large crowds turned out at the Tidal Basin over the weekend to see the Cherry Blossoms. I spent my weekend beating my head against the wall. I think I got the better deal.

I received a form letter from NPR this weekend, thanking me for the application I sent 8 months ago! I won't hold my breath waiting to hear from them again!

Good thing I went out early to get the newspaper off the driveway this morning. The Washington Post is getting so thin, it could have just blown away!

The kids are home, so we're going to see "Monsters vs. Aliens", despite lousy reviews. We're seeing it in IMAX 3-D. If you're gonna watch mediocrity, I say do it BIG!

I drove out of my way to save about 10 dollars at the supermarket, then took my son to Five Guys, and spent 15 dollars on lunch. So much for saving money!

I don't know if I'll blog this way again. Writing short takes far more time than writing long. Stick that in your Twitter and shake it!

Tuesday Tidbits

Just a few random items today!



I received yet another reminder this week that I am, indeed, the parent of a teenager, and that, as a whole, teenagers are not nearly as innocent in thought as we would like to think they are. My 15-year-old were discussing his friend group - perhaps 8 to 10 strong - who like to hang out on weekends at various town centers and go to movies and whatnot. It's more or less an equal mix of boys and girls, so naturally, I asked him if there are any boys in the group who "like" any of the girls in the group. He told me he doubted it, because two of the girls are self-proclaimed lesbians, and one is bi-sexual. O-kayyy. He then found it incumbent to inform me that HE is straight. Not that there's anything wrong with that.



I considered doing a full-blown piece on Nadya Suleman, aka "Octomom". But I realized as I read some news stories about her that there's no real need to blog on her, because the woman is a media whore and just plain nuts to boot. I find it hard to believe that most people don't already have the exact same opinion of her, so what would the point be in blogging? Her children are going to grow up with significant developmental delays and psychological problems, and she's out there trying to pitch a reality show out of it? Spare me... and spare the rest of us, too!

Speaking of reality TV, the newest season of "Dancing With The Stars" debuted last night, and for a show that had made its fame by going after C-list celebrities, let me tell you. Producers have sunk straight down to the D-list. You might not find some of these people even if you googled their names! I always enjoy watching the competition, and frankly, I watch more now for my favorite pros (Julianne, Mark, Cheryl, Maks and Derek) than I do for the stars. But the casting has become predictable. I can tell you now that 3 of the final stars will be Shawn Johnson, Lawrence Taylor and the girl who just got dissed on the Bachelor. Everyone else - lambs for the slaughter.

Finally - this may be funny to no one but me, but I made a ha-ha, and I have to share it. My former boss posted this as his status message on Facebook on Saturday:

Chris Berry is in Chicago for Paul Harvey's funeral and memorial service.

If you are at all familiar with Paul Harvey, you know how he opened every broadcast... So, with that in mind, knowing that Chris would be spending several hours in church, I responded with this:

Stand by - for PEWS!

You may or may not find that to be funny, but I think it is... and I think Paul would have as well.

John Matthews... Good Day!

"Heroes" - A Worthy LOST Substitute!

Here's one more item that I had meant to include in the previous "Odds and Ends" post... I just finished watching seasons one and two of "Heroes", the NBC sci-fi series about a group of otherwise-normal people who discover they each have a unique set of superpowers. I had managed to ignore the Heroes phenomenon when it debuted, but with the regular TV season over in May, I needed something to satisfy my boob tube sweet tooth, and Heroes did the trick.

Now, some people have compared Heroes to LOST, the best show on television. "Heroes" is not as good as LOST... Its story arcs are shorter and not nearly as intricate as those on LOST. However, the two are similar in that they tend to end each episode with a cliffhanger that leaves you anxious to watch the next episode, and with Heroes returning to NBC's fall schedule, it will make a nice substitute as I await LOST's return in February. And until Heroes returns, I'll have "Mad Men" to keep me going! Kinda like methadone filling in for heroin, huh? All the same addiction without those nasty withdrawal symptoms!

Friday Odds and Ends (Mostly Odds!)

If you have school age children, you know there's nothing more "fun" than "helping" your kid finish up a major school project. Our 10-year-old son, Spencer, had a social studies project due today - the class is doing biographies, so who do you think he chose? You get one guess, and here's a clue. It's a Matthews family obsession. OK. So we (sorry, I meant HE) had to make a lifesize representation of Walt... Most kids pulled out the crayons and went to work. Mrs. Matthews, being the perfectionist uberMom she is, pulled out the construction paper, and together we (HE) cut a suit for Walt... I tied one of my Disney ties, and scanned it at real size for the chest, and Robin gave him suit pockets and cuffs for the pants... Oh, and his "shirt" was real fabric, too. We spent the entire night constructing it on the island in the kitchen. So, what do you think of our creation? We (HE) better get an "A", that's all I've gotta say!

After more than a year of being pestered by me, my friend and former work associate Jen Richer, has joined the TiVo universe. As readers of my new website already know, I consider TiVo to be one of the great turn of the century inventions. Note, I endorsed TiVo, not your generic cable company DVRs... TiVo is simply more user-friendly and has better search functions than brand X, and those enlightened enough to have it connected through wifi also have access to a full array of nifty features, including the ability to send and receive home movies, view snapshots on your TV, download movie rentals, listen to internet radio and a bunch of other stuff you can't do with other DVRs. If this sounds like a paid endorsement for TiVo, unfortunately it isn't. It is an endorsement, but I wasn't paid!

Finally... When we moved into our current house four years ago, I made Robin get rid of all of our old record albums, because we had not played a single one of them in the 13 years we lived in our old house, and we had long ago replaced most of them with compact discs. However, I did save ONE album... a 1981 recording of Syracuse University's Hendricks Chapel Choir (Hear a clip of the 2007 version of the choir here). If you look at the liner notes on the album, you will see my name in the choir directory, along with that of Jonathan Greene, one of my best friends and the guy who introduced me to my wife! My friend, John Patti of WBAL has one of those turntables that can hook up directly to a computer, and he has agreed to transfer that old album to digital music files for me, so I can annoy the family by playing 18th century music on road trips. And I'm sure you'll soon be able to hear some old clips here at Life on The Beach as well! Lucky you!