matthearn.com

We had a fantastic time at the Greek Festival at Holy Trinity on Tuesday:

Sarah and Josephine met Charles and me there, and my parents showed up later, so that we could all enjoy Greek beer, lamb sandwiches, Spanakopita, all that good stuff. Delicious, satisfying, and fun. Charles even picked out a cheap bracelet to give to his mommy, which was amusing. It even matched her shirt, somehow. That boy has STYLE.

The only complaint is that, just like every other year, the hired some half-idiot DJ to provide musical entertainment. The church has speakers on the outside through which they play light traditional Greek music (or so I assume; I’m not particularly versant in the genre), but apparently they decided to ramp up happy hour so we got to listen to two idiots do soundchecks while we ate. For 20 minutes. “Check…check one…check two…check-check…check one…” Then they put on mindless dance beats and fiddled with the volume, turning it on and off, adjusting God knows what because it all sounded like bass and hi-hat. Then they went back to “Check..check…check one…check one two…” until finally I had enough and yelled over “IT WORKS! STOP IT!” Which, despite my complete and utter lack of authority, they did, at least until about a half-hour later when they started playing Greek pop music at a volume designed to interfere with internal pacemakers.

If you’re not familiar with Greek pop music: it’s not very good. It’s mostly modern American pop instruments (guitar, synthesizers, drum machines), but intensely modal. It’s like if Schönberg and Justin Timberlake had a baby together, and that baby had Tourette’s.

Anyway, aside from that, the festival was great fun, just like every year, and we even managed to arrive just after Tuesday’s microburst storm, which cooled everything down and lightened the crowds nicely. You’ll find the usual lines at the gyro tent, but why would you bother, anyway? You can get a gyro anywhere.

Are marching band geeks athletes? Heck yes. I do have some experience with this; I can report that my first year of college, after I stopped doing marching band, I gained roughly 40 pounds. Of course, most of my meals that year consisted of Corn Pops, but still.

Most of my readers are aware that I was in an a cappella group in college, the frequently-apologized-for University of Delaware Y-Chromes, which was obviously much fun and had some bearing on later musical endeavours (warning: ’tis an mp3). As an alumnus, it’s my responsibility to try and help the boys out whenever I can (it’s like being in a frat, but less stupid, albeit with a roughly similar amount of homoerotic behavior).

Another alum, Colin The Black (to distinguish him from a contemporary member, also named Colin, who is labelled The White), found out in March that he has leukemia, and has spent the bulk of his time since in the hospital getting radiated, chemo’d, and generally poked and prodded. A friend of his is running a lengthy charity race to raise money, in Colin’s name, for a search for cancer cures. If you have a few loose bills laying around, it’d be nice if you could chip them in.

Also: love to Colin, who’s fighting like a gladiator against a grizzly bear. Get well, doggle.

While we’re on the topic of vice and mood-altering substances, here’s a short video on the Sweet Sweet Cheeba that details its interesting history, courtesy Andrew Sullivan:

A fun little survey of what people are drinkin’, and why. Kinda fun, particularly if you like booze. (I like booze.) My favorite so far:

Gin and Tonic
“The first and last time I drank vodka, I woke up in a military graveyard in Denver. So I started drinking gin, and I never looked back.” —Josh, 27

Hey, we all just had us a baby and whatnot, so posts will be…few. In the meantime, you can always go check out Josephine’s homepage. The latest update is crazy cute.

UPDATE: 7:00: heading to the OR in 10. Sarah’s mood is “freaked out, man.”

UPDATE: 6:13: the nurse is having difficulty finding a useful vein in Sarah’s arm, mostly because Sarah is a ZOMBIE. Sarah: “Braaaaaiiiiiinnnnns…”

Up at 4:30; at hospital at 5:30; going through medical history. T-minus 90 minutes, people! Who has an iPhone and is ready for a baby? Moi.

Updates throughout the morning.

Hilarious account of a dude doing his first Broad Street Run. A braver soul than I. Also he apparently murdered a fellow runner:

I like cars. Specifically, I like fast cars. It goes without saying, therefore, that I’ve never really owned one, because if I did I would be imprison’d and/or dead. But because I’m, frankly, reaching for ideas today (24 hours until GO BABY), here is a list of cars that I’ve had. (Not necessarily owned, but cars for which I have been the primary driver.)

• 

  The Barge

  1972 Pontiac Grand Ville. This was my “first,” the car I drove almost exclusively after I got my license in 1994. We called it “The Barge,” because it is quite literally the largest sedan I’ve ever seen. It handled like a sponge, but had a HUGE engine and could hustle. It lasted until early 1996, my senior year, when the engine problems finally killed it, and my dad sold it to a guy who wanted to take the massive 454 engine block, rebuild it, and put it in a GTO. I still have dreams in which I’m driving this car.


• 

  The Benzo

  1983 Mercedes Benz 240D. After The Barge died, I got to drive The Benz, off-and-on, until the end of senior year. It was a nice car, built like a tank, but it had a diesel engine with all the acceleration of a mule. Gas mileage was good, but the car would not go faster than 83 miles per hour, and it took like 3 minutes to get there. Had a nice Benz suspension, though, so it handled nice. It met a sad end in the summer of ’96, not long before I went off to college, when my sister bounced it off another car and a rock.


• 

  The Saturn

  1996 Saturn SL2. My mom purchased this while I was away on Senior week in 1996, for the simple reason that I had the Benz in Rehoboth, my dad had his white Saab 9000, and Mom needed wheels. Also my sister was getting her license, so they really needed a third car again, even with me going off to school. After my 2 year sentence at Peabody Conservatory, I transferred to UD and needed a car to get to jobs/rehearsals/gigs, and my sister went off to college herself, so the Saturn was transferred to me. It was my faithful ride through three years of college, until I traded it in on my truck.


• 

  Mine was black.

  2002 Ford F150. Another vehicle I dream of at least once a month; I loved this truck. I had just graduated and had my first real job, so I felt I deserved a high-end automobile; to that end, I went to the Ford dealership and had mine custom-designed. Mostly this was because I wouldn’t drive one with an automatic transmission, and apparently no dealer in the country had a V8 available with a stick, but this meant I was able to pick every option I wanted, down to the hot stereo, 4×4, color, and pimpin’ alloy wheels. It was a fantastic truck, but after a while, gas prices were going way up, and my wife was having to drive all over the state for her job in a rapidly aging Mazda. So, we traded in the truck for a brand-new Honda Accord, and I started driving Sarah’s old car.


• 

  Izzy

  1998 Mazda Protege. This car served us well for 10 years, by far the longest of any car we’ve had. Sarah got it in late 1997 when she was driving down to see me at Peabody every few weeks, and continued to be the primary driver until I took it over in 2005. It was cramped, underpowered, automatic transmission’d, and handled like a lawnmower. Sarah was sad to see it go, but when I got my hands on the Saab, we gave it to a car donation company, who sold it and gave the proceeds to the Choir School.


• 

  Current Whip

  1997 Saab 9000 CSE Turbo. Actually an older car than the Mazda I gave up for it, but manifestly bigger, and faster. Also safer; it’s got airbags all over the place, and weighs nearly as much as my truck did. Plus it’s a stick-shift, so I feel like a man again. I managed to acquire it through the benevolence of my father; he bought my mom a new car a while back, but wasn’t offered a significant amount in trade-in, so he kept both his Saabs, the 9000 as the daily commuter, and the 900 convertible as his “man about town” car. When he started working from home, he no longer needed a commuter car, and donated it to, um, me. EPIC WIN!

Those are my cars. What do you be drivin’?