Panorama of the Green from the top of Baker. Was pretty much a perfect summer weekend.

'yesterday, the best afternoon of the year, we spent on the river'

Baker

pics from the cape

cotuit harbor on the 4th

the ice cream boat traveled around from boat to boat during the fireworks. we literally screamed for ice cream

firework pic improved by camera+'s editing options

lobster at the raw bar

long beach on a perfect cape cod day

$3MM View

view from the house where Diana and Evan got married

points to ponder

loved this. hat tip to katie fahey via maynard:

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. - joan didion

               

thoughts i've had this morning (primarily complaints)

• the next place i move will absolutely have laundry in the building. it will be a requirement. i am so fricking tired of having to plan when i'm going to do laundry around my schedule. i realize there are people that would love to be able to send their laundry out but i am not one of them. since the beginning of the 'lyon load' at age 11 when my dad told us our mom didn't have time to do laundry for four kids, i've liked having my laundry done, my bills paid and my room clean on my own schedule. #typeaawesome
  

• attempted to have my roth ira (aka post tax retirement fund) auto funded from my paycheck. was impossible to do. and people wonder why no one saves for retirement in this country

• really liking 'love you like a love song' by selena gomez. slightly embarrassed to admit this, as i kind of hate her, but would put her in the category of her disney sister miley, where her songs are pretty catchy. incidentally, i first heard this song while watching 'ratatouille' on the disney channel last night.
  

• had indian for dinner on sunday, thai on monday and mexican last night. my lunch of leftovers today is quite international.

girlfriends forever

was in the city this past weekend for the first time in awhile, and spent most of it with girlfriends.

saturday afternoon i spent with taylor doing wedding-related things. we went to 'bella bridesmaids' to try on dresses, as apparently it's getting to be time to order dresses for a december wedding. tay tay is still deciding on colors and styles, but we do know that they will be long, so me thinks i need to start a sit up regimen in preparation.

after dresses we hit up the momofuku milk bar in midtown to treat ourselves to some crack pie and do some cake sampling. sat in the park by the plaza to do our research and thoroughly enjoyed the hustle and bustle of nyc. it was great running around nyc and discussing wedding details with the soon-to-be mrs. bennett and already looking forward to december!

sat afternoon/evening cody, ceppos and i grilled on cody's roof deck. she's got a fantastic little outdoor area on top of her building, so we threw together a picnic of sorts and chatted until the sun went down. was so in the mood for some low key chilling, and this fit the bill!

was super surprised to get a text from vin late night on saturday night asking what was going on. she and her bro had been at a wedding and were ready to rage. we have plans to do dinner and drinks on thursday but didn't realize she was available to hang out over the weekend, so it was a fantastic surprise. she came and met up with us at dorrian's on the ues, and we did some shots and caught up for a bit. 

also grabbed coffee with celeste on sunday afternoon for a quick catch-up. she's been super busy studying for tests and with work-related socializing, but hopes to return to the world in august.

lovely to spend time with the lovely friends, and so excited to have even more gf time this weekend when we head out to california for diana's wedding. expecting to see maynard, karla, allette, laurak, glassman, whit and ceppos in monterey. can't wait to meet back at the local saloon. it's supposed to be beautiful out that way, but it's going to be chilly! weather forecast is low in the 50s, which will be a welcome change from the heat wave in nyc, but i left my fleece on the cape a few weeks ago, thinking i wouldn't need it for awhile and apparently i was wrong. i have packed a few sweaters and a vest and maybe we'll get lucky. at any rate, the outdoor pool is heated.

also this weekend is swanny's wedding, in whitefish montana. i won't be able to attend, but will be thinking of skips, mulley and polly pocket, as well as some of the other crew girls, who are heading out that way. hoping to catch up with that group in august at zana's wedding in seattle.

love the lovely friends!

gunk'holing

gunk'holing is the art of getting a boat into any small, shallow cove forbidden to boats of deeper draft and out again, without running aground much over a dozen times
- j benjamin - cape cod life magazine, june 2001

dirty pop

enjoyed this article from the most recent issue of ny mag about pop music and its changing social role from 1980 - today.. some interesting findings:

Here, for instance, is a chilling fact about the nineties: In any given week of the decade, there was a 10 percent chance the No.1 song was by Boyz II Men. Add Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Bryan ­Adams, and chances hit 24 percent. Americans spent a quarter of a decade listening to this sort of thing: big, lavish ballads, built to charm middle-aged and middle-school listeners alike. Try to picture an environment or purpose for these songs, and the mind drifts to graduations, school-gym talent shows, Olympics montages.

In the aughts, there was still a one-in- four chance that any given week’s chart-topper came from one of four artists. But those artists were Usher, Beyoncé, the Black Eyed Peas, and Nelly, and their hits were pointed at a very different kind of public environment: They were club songs. The old-school, all-ages ballad spent much of the decade reduced to a tiny corner of the charts, populated by nice-guy crooners like James “You’re Beautiful” Blunt and Daniel “You Had a Bad Day” Powter.

One simple explanation for this develop­ment: We now have access to a ridiculous variety of media. The music we spend our private time on, and use to build our identities, varies more wildly than ever from person to person. But there’s at least one kind of music that needs consensus to function, and that’s the stuff we dance, party, and strut around to. “The club” might be the last remaining space where strangers are all forced to pay attention to the same songs. And whether it’s an actual club or just a bedroom, it tends to be a space where people enjoy feeling fabulous.

Another change that’s swept through the charts since 1980 is the steady disappearance of white men. In 1980, more than half the artists at No. 1 were white men; in 2010, the only white guy in the top spot was Eminem. Today’s pop world is female, African-American, and Latino, dance-pop and hip-hop and R&B. The audiences it’s usually associated with are female, African-American, Latin, gay, and young. And the music running through the charts is filled with qualities that look a lot like the aspirations and survival strategies of people who’ve felt marginalized—people for whom ego and self-worth can be existential issues, not just matters of etiquette.

Pop, however, remains stubbornly public and resistant to impressionistic thought-spilling—right now, it feels like the music that’s most explicitly committed to real-world social matters. Hit club tracks are built for dancing and courtship; R&B and country singles catalogue, in precise and unflinching detail, every last swoon, sob, and smashed-up car window that results from people, narcissists or not, getting involved. Scan down the Hot 100, and the songs talk with increasing frankness about ego, beauty, money, cheating, posturing, partying, and every other element of solid gossip.

worth a read.

Music Video-Burn Notice

loved this season 5 promo for 'burn notice'. love the show and 'blow' is a great song. well done.

Music Video-Burn Notice: "'Blow' by Ke$ha"

Somewhere other than here

Where I wish I were @ now: Long Beach, Centerville, MA

Fireworks

It's Bastille Day in France. 7 years ago we sat on a bridge and watched fireworks over the Seine. In memory of that, I'm posting a firework from the Oyster Harbor 4th of July bash a few weeks ago.

Incidentally, I think there are few other things that make me feel as special and celebratory as fireworks. And maybe champagne but they kind of go hand in hand.

Lightandlove

barn dance

if you know me/read this blog, you know i was brought up on PBS. sesame street, square one, ghostwriter and reading rainbow clips, dialogue and songs have stuck with me, even after all these years.

there's a gorgeous full moon over the city tonight - after yesterday's crazy rain storm the humidity is down and it's amazing out. when i saw the moon as i got off the subway i was reminded of a quote from a reading rainbow episode

full moon shining, shining big and bright. pushing back the shadows, holding back the night

i remembered it was from a book they read during the episode called 'barn dance' and i was thrilled to discover the entire episode, including the reading of the book, in video format online. so if you're in the mood for some childhood nostalgia, and a book that captures the mystical way the night can feel, i suggest you 'take a look'. :)

Just around the corner

There's a rainbow in the sky! Was having drinks at the outdoor bar at the Top of the Standard hotel when a crazy tornado storm blew in. We had to run downstairs to seek shelter and after the storm had passed there was a gorgeous rainbow over the Empire State Building :)

how bostonians view massachusetts

too good not to share

True Story: How Bostonians View Massachusetts: "No Seriously, Wicked True Story ."

like father, like . . .

life with my dad (jl):

email sent 7/2 - 9:45 am:
from: jl
to: lyon
subject: [lyon] please show me how to pull songs from your hard drive asap (editors note: i brought my hard drive of music home at my dad's request)

email sent 7/2 - 6:14 pm:
from: jl
to: lyon
subject: it can wait 'til tomorrow but i can not get to your music with this hard drive

email sent 7/2 - 6:19 pm:
from: jl
to: lyon
subject: i am now set and have figured out your music.

email sent 7/2 - 6:31 pm:
from: jl
to: lyon
subject: actually, I tapped in to about 25 songs, but obviously not the 4000. Show me tomorrow.

second editors note which i am allowed to do b/c i am the editor: none of the emails had text in the body of the email, and my dad did eventually access my 4k worth of songs. i also showed him how to rip songs from youtube. ah technology.

there's no place like home

hi friends. apologies for the extended silence. i've been home on the cape since last friday - relishing my vacation. needed a break from nyc, from the world, from life, and that includes the blog. those of you that read this blog know that sometimes life can be so daily, so it's been wonderful to have some downtime.

it's a gray, foggy, rainy day on the cape today and i'm home babysitting the dogs while my parents are out. speaking of dogs, when your parents have three and their lives revolve around them, you get to know them pretty well. for instance, sasha, the only female dog, loves riding in the car. my parents call her 'bear' and she rides around with them all the time. she also likes to do what i'm calling the 'sasha wake up call' - aka run up the third floor and leap on the bed at 6:30 in the morning.

kaiser - the puppy - is as adorable as ever. my parents call him 'kaiser cashew' because he puts his ears down and starts curling up like a little cashew when you go to pet him. he likes ice cubes, and dunks his entire face in his water bowl like he's bobbing for apples. he has a little clydesdale trot when he runs up to you or chases a ball in the back field. i keep singing 'trot trot to boston, trot trot to lynn' :). he's so little and cute but make no mistake, he is going to be one big dog.

i've had a pretty active vacation - rowena and i drove up to the cape last friday via long island - we met her parents at the train in her home town and drove to the tip of the north fork of long island to catch a car ferry that took us across long island sound to new london. we had kind of a funny experience in that we noticed a white pick up truck with a new hampshire license plate 'PWR HSE' on 84 in connecticut while driving to jimmy buffett a few weeks ago. last friday on the long island expressway we were amazed to see the truck again. and then even more amazed when we ended up parked next to the very same truck on the ferry. turned out we were right - it was the same truck we saw en route to jb. what are the odds?

we did boating with christine last saturday, and were out on her boat for the oyster harbor fireworks. we were literally right below them - never had to crane my neck to see fireworks before. we were so close to the barge that i was mentally reviewing my emergency plan in case the barge exploded. the plan involved flinging myself in the water on the opposite side of the boat ala james bond in 'tomorrow never dies'.

sunday rowena and i headed down cape to brewster to rent bikes and ride the cape cod rail trail, which i'd never done in all my time on the cape. we hopped on our bikes and biked down to chatham, where we took the scenic route around chatham, down to the chatham bars and chatham light and then had a delicious seafood lunch on main street.

rowena headed back to nyc on monday after lunch at the raw bar and i've spent the last couple days at the beach, taking care of business and reading. as usual, it's so hard to believe that i have an apt and a life back in nyc when i'm here. there's plenty going on when i get back - but i still get a few more days before i have to deal with it i'm glad to say.