oh dear

Last night, we had the pleasure of eating dinner with my very favorite professor from Tulane. Dr. Ramer teaches Russian history, which I took. Often. And, it turns out, with Caroline, though we didn't particularly know it. He convinced me to go to Paris over Oxford or Dublin, and told me that I should be friends with "Miss Hecker," as she seemed like a nice person. He set us up well, and we sent him a picture of us together in Wenceslas Square in Prague as a thank-you.

Anyway, in addition to convincing Lindsey to teach the Federalist Papers to 11th graders, he also suggested looking up Hugh Laurie on Youtube. We did that this afternoon. Oh. My. Gosh. That man is hi-LAR-ious, as Natalie would say. I loved House, but had to quit watching it after the Australian guy kissed the little girl a while back. Anyway, Youtube the man. He did some funny stuff in the 80s in England, and sings, plays piano, and plays guitar, and does all of that well. And hysterically. And intelligently.

Dr. Ramer also recommended looking up the Proms, which are a serious of concerts held all summer in London. The last night, there is an audience sing-a-long, complete with waving Union Jacks, and everyone singing Rule, Britannia, and Jerusalem. It's very moving, right up there with Casablanca, when Victor Laslo has the band at Rick's play the Marseillaise after the Nazis start singing beer hall songs. That led me to a recording of the 2001 last night of the Proms, which was on September 15. Necessarily, it was more somber than in previous years, and they played Barber's Adagio for Strings, which you will recognize from a great number of movies. The video on Youtube has video from the concert interspersed with footage of the towers, Lower Manhattan, the rescue effort, firefighters, etc. Lindsey came home just in time for me to be bawling at the computer. Do not let it ruin your night, but it is definitely one of the most powerful things I have seen regarding 9-11. I told him to show it to his kids; I think it would be very useful for middle schoolers, who were little kids in 2001. It's not gory, especially, and it's graphic enough to be heart-rending, without sounding like a video game.

In order to get me to stop crying, we then looked for my favorite SNL skit of all time, which Chris Parnell & the other guy rapping the "Chroni-WHAT-cles of Narnia." You cannot find it on Youtube, (it's at NBC.com, thank you Google), but you can find the West Coast response, which is also brilliant and hilarious.

The point, you ask?

I am now afraid I might be addicted to YouTube. I sat down at 4:45, and it's not 7:22. Lindsey was dispatched for Chinese for dinner.

Oh, dear.