Small confessions

I like ABBA.

What are your secret shames?

Ugh.  We can't be friends anymore.

My secret confession: I cried watching "Sleepless in Seattle" on TV last night.  I cry every time I see that movie -- or "While You Were Sleeping."

No secret there, NoCo. You have mentioned that before.
And I am still flummoxed by it.

I also don't understand the scorn heaped on ABBA by those who don't like them.
I'll grant that their music may be "lightweight", but they do have talent. Which is more than you can say for most of the so-called musicians who have dribbled their garbage on us for the past few decades.


But there are a great many things that confuse me.

I think I would explain the general disdain for ABBA this way -- but bear in mind I'm certainly no expert on their music or career:

They were consummate musicians and performers, but their music was relentlessly upbeat and simple, in an era where complex and dark music predominated.  They smacked of the "manufactured pop" sound of Up With People.  They probably were sincere in their love of white bread, bologna and processed cheese spread but the world was still trying to recover from Agent Orange and Abbie Hoffman.

In the UK, at least, and probably elsewhere in Europe, there was disdain for their achieving recognition through the Eurovision song contest, because (essentially) pretty much everything coming out of that contest is crap. But as they themselves said, "we were from Sweden. How else were we going to get worldwide exposure?". And that's pretty fair comment.

Eurovision must be something like "American Idol" or "America's Got Talent" -- where 4 washed-up has-beens listen to housewives trying to mimic the latest manufactured no-talent diva.

I don't know if this is a "secret shame" or not, because I don't feel the least bit guilty about it, but I love the Chet and Bernie mysteries.

These are six(?) books by Spencer Quinn (a pen name for Peter Abrahams) about the Little Detective Agency. The Little Detective Agency consists of Bernie Little, a kind of washed up small-time PI who's a cross between Columbo and Jim Rockford, and his dog Chet. The stories are told from Chet's point of view, which is always changing, always short on details, always quickly distracted by food on the floor, always alert to other dogs in the room. The writer does a marvelous job of putting you inside the head of the dog, with hilarious results. Chet and Bernie somehow always manage to solve their cases, usually by accident and always with a few key discoveries by the supreme nose on Chet.

They're funny, they're seriously dog-centric, they read as fast as you can stand it. Often they have to be devoured in one night.

Like a week old bag of Cheetos under the bed.

_Howard wrote:

I like ABBA.

What are your secret shames?

Brittany Spears (Work Bitch is a great workout song.)
audio books (you know, cuz audio is cheating)
wearing my jammies to the drive through teller

Brittany Spears, huh?
I feel vindicated.

_Howard wrote:

Brittany Spears, huh?
I feel vindicated.

Glad to be of service.

I have no scruples when it comes to music. I am musically slutty. I'll listen to almost anything at least once.

Don't you feel dirty afterward?