It goes on and on and on...

Why am I obsessed with Don't stop believin' by Journey?

Is it that Family Guy episode where the guys have a karaoke night at the Drunken Clam and they sing it?

I didn't grow up listening to Journey and it wasn't in my consciousness until that episode of Family Guy, so it isn't warm and fuzzy memories.

It's not all that great of a song, so it's not that.

Yet here I am listening to it on my iPod and thinking how much that songs rocks.

Huh.

A truth

I will always choose to listen to a Duncan Sheik song when presented the opportunity.

Also, if I know the words well enough, I will probably sing along.

Good news for people who (don't) love bad news

It's been a rough week for The Dude and I.

Okay, now I'm going to envision The Dude as played by Yul Brenner.

Imagine how excited I was, then, that the The Dude emailed me to tell me that Modest Mouse is coming to the StL.

I am so overjoyed that I might cry.

Seriously.

Things I didn't like at all and urge you to avoid at all costs: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

About two years ago, I read the book I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.

It was awful.

I knew it was going to be awful when I started it, based on all of the terrible reviews it got.

I read it anyway.

It was amazing how terribly wrong an 80-something year old man got the college experiences of a teenage girl.

I chalked Wolfe's inability to encapsulate the "college girl" experience to the fact that it was too far out of his realm of experience.

You'd think, then, that Curtis Sittenfeld, a twenty-something year old woman, could do a better job of relating to a teenage girl's prep school experience.

You'd be wrong, though. Really, really wrong.

Prep tells Lee Fiora's prep school experience, giving us 4 years in 403 pages.

Lee, the child of middle class working people, has a hard time fitting in at a school where most of the students are the children of wealth and privilege.

Well, duh.

It's hard to tell, though, if Lee has a hard time fitting in because she's "poor" or because she's so unbelievably self-conscious and socially stunted.

In the end, I'm not sure it matters.

Throw in a couple of storylines that don't make any sense and you've got a recipe for disaster.

I didn't like anyone in this book, not even Lee's likable friend Martha.

It took me about a week to read this book and I want all of that time back.

Ah well, I'd probably just waste it anyway.

BSC Headquarters

If you're a woman of a certain age, you remember reading The Baby-Sitters Club books. I spent many an hour with Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne. Later, Mallory, Jessie, and Dawn joined the group.

I always found myself identifying with Mary Anne--geeky, quiet, and sweet.

Anyway, if you find yourself filled with pangs of longing for days gone by, you should stop by BSC Headquarters. Tiff, a librarian, is re-reading the BSC books and blogging about them.

It is, in a word, hilarious.

How cool is this?

A coffee table with a magazine rack built into its "belly."

It's $160.

I think I'm in lurve.

Thanks, Boing Boing!

Things I kind of used to like: The Jessica Darling books

I try to keep the tone positive over here at A few of Mrs. Dude's favorite things. My aim is always to highlight things that are good in the world and to keep the negativity to a minimum. Yes, I bring the snark. But I don't want this to be a blog where I snark about everything.

But I am seething with rage, so I have to get this out.

Kat(ie) at Kat with a K alerted me to the fact that Megan McCafferty was planning to write a 5th Jessica Darling book.

I was suspicious, but cautiously optimistic that maybe that wasn't the case.

I now have confirmation that Kat(ie) was right.

I've read all four of the Jessica Darling books. It could be argued that Jessica and Marcus are the greatest romance of our generation, literarily speaking.

For teens and twenty-somethings everywhere, Marcus Flutie is every guy they crushed on in high school. He is brooding and sweet and hot as can be. Jessica is all of us--insecure, snarky, and unable to decide what to commit to.

They are Veronica and Logan for the bookish set.

Fourth Comings was terrible. Maybe it was a necessary evolution for Jessica, but it stunk to high heaven. It was tepid and uninspired at best.

It was as if McCafferty couldn't leave well enough alone.

Now we get word that McCafferty is writing a fifth book.

I liken it to going to the hairdresser and getting a really bad haircut. The hairdresser cuts too much off of one side of your hair. To make it "right," she cuts hair off of the other side to even it up, but she manages to make the other side even shorter. She goes back and forth, desperately trying to even things up and you walk out with a dorky haircut that you paid way too much money for.

Maybe the ending of Fouth Comings didn't feel "right" to McCafferty. Maybe it was her plan all along to make a fifth book to resolve things. Maybe she just gots to get paid. I don't know know.

But I wish that she'd stop picking at the scab that is Marcus and Jessica. After all, there is such a thing as saying too much.

You know what the sad thing is? I'll read the fifth book. And I'll probably bitch and moan on my blog.

Graduation by Kanye West

Let me start by saying how thrilled I am that he didn't include any of those skits on this album. I hate the skits. They always mess with the flow of the album.

Overall, I thought it was pretty good. It was certainly a solid B effort.

Biggest (pleasant) surprises:
Everything I am
Big brother

Biggest disappointment:
Homecoming (with Chris Martin of Coldplay)

I liked:
Good morning
Can't tell me nothin'
Stronger

I could have lived without:
Drunk and hot girls
Champion

I felt like this album was way too overproduced. There was too much sampling, I thought, which is funny because I usually end up thinking that West does a pretty good job with making the sampling seem effortless.

This album reminded me a lot of Jay-Z's The Black Album in its tone and level of polish. Clearly West had a lot to say.

Drum Corps International: Marching Music's Major League

A hearty huzzah goes out to The Concord Blue Devils. Their "A" corps won the Gold Medal for DCI's world championships back on August 11th at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

I am late in extending my congratulations, frankly, because I had no idea. I saw it tonight on ESPN2.

If you're not familiar with drum and bugle corps you should try to catch the DCI World Championships if they play again on ESPN.

I saw the Blue Devils' performance and it brought tears to my eyes. It was amazingly executed and almost flawless.

I am happy to give credit where credit is due, even if I'm a Cavaliers girl at heart.

Drum and bugle corps is an amazing thing to see. It's the percussion and brass sections of a marching band coupled with the color guard. These kids, between the ages of 17 and about 22 or 23 give up their entire summer to travel with a corps. They practice together, eat together, travel together, sleep on gym floors and on buses, and perform on football fields across America.

And they do all of this for the love of music and performance.

Oh yeah, and they audition and pay for the privilege of doing all of this.

The best of the best get invited to DCI to perform for a crowd of thousands for a gold medal.

And even on television, the excitement, the heart, the soul, the drive are all evident.

I never did drum and bugle corps, but my cousin did. He was a member of The Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps. For five summers my family drove to high schools in the tri-state area to see him perform. We even went to DCI for his age-out year performance which, by the way, was a DCI-winning performance.

There's nothing like it in the world. So huzzah to the Concord Blue Devils. You certainly earned that Gold Metal.

San Diego Dispatches

My friend Jessie has a blog called San Diego Dispatches.

Jessie is funny and smart and likes fish tacos. She is also a librarian. Take that, librarian stereotype!

You should go read her blog.

She writes about everything from stuff to do in San Diego to knitting to her adorable kitties and her husband who knits, too, according to her blog.

Also? Jessie is an aspiring writer. So if you wanted to, you know, give her a 2-book contract based on how fabulous her blog is I'm sure it would be much appreciated.

Anyway, Jessie rocks!

Mrs. Dude gives a history lesson

If The Dude objects to this post, I will most certainly remove it...

Once upon a time in Greenwich Village, there was a coffee house called The Gaslight Cafe.

If you know Bob Dylan, you undoubtedly know The Gaslight Cafe.

Anyway, in 1961 a man by the name of Clarence Hood bought The Gaslight Cafe and his son, Sam Hood, ran the joint.

According to this story, Clarence sold the Gaslight in 1968 to a guy named Ed Simon after Sam left to open his own club in Florida.

Sam came back, though, and continued to run the club until its close in the early 1970s.

Thus endeth Mrs. Dude's history lesson.

What have I been doing lately?

I saw Superbad. It was pretty good and very funny. I loved Michael Cera in it, which isn't surprising.

I caught up on Season 3 of Top Chef. Casey grew on me. I hate Howie. Sara M. is rad. Sarah has a heart of gold. Brian is funny. Tre is cool. Daryl is a cutie. And I have mad love for CJ. And Ted Allen loves bacon.

I read the latest (and last?) installment of the Jessica Darling books. I don't find Jessica Darling very sympathetic as a character. I love Marcus Flutie, though, so I guess it balances itself out.

I listened to Icky Thump, the new White Stripes disc. It was fantastic and made me love them even more.

I know it's a drive-by update, but I wanted to stop by and tell y'all what was up.

Summer Movie of 2007

We have a winner for Summer Movie of 2007. A hearty congratulations to Transformers who beat out Superbad to win the title.