Song of the Day 6.27.08

Richard Butler wrote "President Gas" during the Reagan administration, but it could have been written yesterday.

don't cry, don't do anything
no lies, back in the government
no tears, party time is here again
president gas is up for president
line up, put your kisses down
say yeah, say yes again
stand up, there's a head count
president gas on everything but roller skates
it's sick the price of medicine
stand up, we'll put you on your feet again
open up your eyes
just to check that you’re asleep again
president gas is president gas again




Get out and vote this year.

Throwaway culture.

This morning I praised Annika for her very appropriate use of the word "separately." She'd asked me what it meant several weeks ago, and I supposed she'd filed the definition away, waiting for the perfect opportunity to bust out some great new vocabulary.

But then my bubble was burst.

Annika continued, "You know like on Qubo? The commercial says, 'each sold separately.'"

Hang the DJ.

Is this not the greatest cover?

And we have Naomi to thank for this endeavor, if in some small way. She put out Spoon's first single back, well, a couple of years ago.

Show Naomi some Internet love, will you?

OOops. I thought she was their first manager from back in the day.

I am SO sick of this.

I am glad I'm not the only one who is disgusted with the preschooler obsession over the likes of High School Musical and Hannah Montana. We don't even get Disney Channel at home, but Annika knows alllll about it.

This weekend, Annika wanted some Hannah Montana hair extensions that she saw at a toy store. Gross.

Talk about the blues.

I miss you already, George. Thank you for your fearlessness. Thank you for making us all laugh so hard at the truth.

Song of the Day 6.20.08

This month, we purchased a house(well, a crapload of paperwork that says we're buying a house). This is a decision that fills me with equal parts of happiness and dread. It's a lovely, lovely house. A lovely house that will take up our nonexistent free time with maintenance and improvement projects.

I feel slightly queasy.

In good company.

I was looking at some stills from the Sex and the City movie the other day and came across a picture of Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) wearing a modified version of my High School Reunion Dress(TM).

Hooray! So I'm not the only one to appreciate a dress with a print reminiscent of Evel Knievel's helmet.

This is not a picture of me, by the way. I'm pasty and all, but not that pasty.

Song of the Day 6.13.08.

Of Montreal's song "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" may be the most right-on song ever written in that oh-so-expansive genre of songs about depression (and possibly anxiety about treating said depression with SSRIs). When Kevin Barnes sings, "Chemicals, don't strangle my pen," is he singing about the depression or maybe the side effects of treatment? Both? Hmm..

Though I'd never thought much before about exhorting my serotonin to BEHAVE and get with the program, this song has given me some much-needed license to envision my internal struggle with some stubbornly non-compliant and dysfunctional molecules.

The video is Dada genius. Bravo.



Aw...must admit seeing familiar Athenian faces makes me a little melancholy...

The way you look you'll qualify for next year's old age pension...

A friend of mine who works as the marketing director of a ballet company just sent the transcript of this tragic exchange he had recently. He titled it, "We're Old Old Old (#983)".

We had our end of the season party last weekend and some of the dancers put together a slideshow of photos from throughout the year ­and used "Ant Music" as an accompanying soundtrack. I thought that was awesome, which led to this unfortunate conversation between myself and one of the organizers immediately afterward...

"That's so cool you guys went with Adam Ant!"
"Who's that?"
"You know, that song you used for the slideshow."
"Oh, that was just some random thing we found on the Superbad soundtrack."
"Oh...well, uh, I used to listen to him in high school a lot."
"Really? I¹ve never heard of him. When was that?"
"Mid-80s."
"Dude, I wasn't born yet."


Those kids. They know not what they're missing.



Thank you, ejo.

Song of the Day, 6.6.08

Not many girls get hot and bothered over a double-neck guitar, some fancy fretwork, and an array of effects pedals, but I must confess "My Only Swerving" by El Ten Eleven makes me feel a bit woozy. I was thinking of running off with the guitarist. Sure, I'm probably almost old enough to be his mother, I'm married, I have a kid, I live in Wichita (am I sounding hot enough yet?), and the guy's primary daytime source of income is probably from Whole Foods, but maybe we could make it work.

Yes, I'm an effects pedal whore.



But is this not beautiful? This song just sounds like summer happiness.

You can find "My Only Swerving" on the self-titled El Ten Eleven album on emusic. It's practically free. I love emusic.

Just in case you're feeling a bit flushed after "My Only Swerving," you can sample another song..."Hot Cakes" feels a bit more like Trans Am to me, but whatever. I'm in love. I can't be denied.

For Chris.

I read yesterday that Ted Kennedy had surgery to operate on his brain tumor. Since hearing that Ted Kennedy had brain cancer, I've been thinking about a dear friend.

In what could have been a completely aimless year following my attempt at being a high school teacher in northeast GA, I lucked into working for a colorful, small-town, southern lawyer. Think of Matlock, but with a bad-ass attitude and the most irreverent sense of humor.

In the nine months I worked with Chris, I learned that people make a lot of really bad decisions. I learned that men handle divorces much worse than women do. I learned that some people really have no integrity. We worked with people who had lots of money. We worked one woman who had very little money and paid in chocolate cakes. Her ex-husband was a deadbeat dad and that bothered Chris, so he couldn't NOT help. As part of a fee agreemeent, one police officer offered to take me to the range and show me how to operate a firearm. We worked with alleged drug dealers who were the nicest people you could imagine. I soaked up this crash course in human nature. I was fascinated, and somewhat relieved to know how flawed we all are--one step away from doing something really stupid that can have you in front of a judge.

Chris taught me about navigating bureaurcracy of the court system with no other weapons than using someone's first name and admitting cluelessness: "Oh, Melissa, I'm like a lost ball in the high weeds and I really need your help with..." I learned to always respect administrative staff because they hold the keys to the kingdom. I've applied this technique in various scenarios and it's worked like a charm.

In the time that we worked together, which was just under a year, Chris became a dear friend, a mentor, and even like a dad. We made the craziest pair. He chided me for my hyphenated name and liberal yankee politics. I chided him for his blind support of the NRA. But he was not afraid to say, "I love you, kid."

Chris had a seizure in the office one day and was transported to the local ER.

Later that day, we had the bad news. It was a tumor and Chris probably had about 6 months. Chris had initial surgery that week to operate on the tumor. He wasn't quite the same after that. Maybe the techniques are better now, or hopefully Ted Kennedy's tumor isn't as big as Chris's was, but there was obviously some negative effect on some memory areas and other intangible sectors of the brain ("colorful southern lawyer sector?") that couldn't be fixed. And maybe this was the cruelest thing of all--to have the person you know and love disappear one day and be replaced with someone else who was a faint copy of the person you knew before.

I moved to Atlanta shortly after Chris got sick, and kept up every now and then to see how he was doing. Eventually, though, I kind of lost track, and truth be told, maybe I wanted to lose track. It was too painful. I knew he did make it way beyond the 6 months, though. One day, however, I had to make a call to my auto insurance company located in the same town I used to live. For some reason, my statement didn't arrive in the mail that quarter and I needed them to send me a new statement. Chris held his auto policies through the same company, so I talked about Chris with the person who assisted me with getting another statement sent. Chris was still hanging in there. I was glad to hear that.

That evening, I had the most lovely dream. Chris was his old happy, healthy, gregarious self. He gave me a huge hug. He told me he was OK. In some dreams, you are aware you're having a dream. This dream wasn't like that. It felt intensely real. I woke up thinking I'd really seen Chris.

Two days later, I received a call at work from the insurance agent. "Since you knew him so well, I thought you might like to know that Chris just passed away last night," she said.

I think Chris checked in on me. I think he wanted to say goodbye, because we'd never really had that opportunity.

And then a few months ago, when I was on the plane from Wichita to Atlanta on the first leg of the trip to my high school reunion, I was seated next to a man who was on his way to northeast GA to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Chris's family. I'd talked about this great guy I used to work who lived in that area, and suddenly it occurred to both of us, we were talking about the same small-town southern lawyer. And there at 36,000 feet, he asked me:

"Do you believe in destiny?"

"Yes I do." But maybe I wasn't sure until that very moment.

So...as much as I think we make our futures, I think events and connections happen that we can't always explain--like when you meet someone and you can't breathe for a second and your stomach drops out.

As I'm following Ted Kennedy's story and hoping for his recovery, I'm thinking of Chris and how much I still miss him, how grateful I am that I knew him, and how amazing it is that our connection has continued to make itself apparent, some seven years after his death.

And so I also go on the record saying that I do believe there's some type of spiritual mystery to the universe we can't readily explain away. I don't need an exact explanation. It just makes me feel comforted to know it's there.