The title above is a link to an item on the A.V. Club blog that presents the following meme:
Here's a totally random way to make your new random band's new random album cover. Post one! Go to “Wikipedia.” Hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days” and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
If you're like me, this sounds like a totally fun way to kill an hour at work when your boss is out of town and half the office is out sick not that I would ever do that.
So here's my cover, put together totally on my own time I assure you:
In my imagination, boat-billed heron (we were too cool for majuscule letters) was a No Wave band living in Alphabet City in the early 1980s. We played some killer shows at ABC No Rio, put out contemplate what is happening in 1982, and were asked by Thurston Moore personally to open for Sonic Youth on the Confusion Is Sex tour, but tragically our lead singer was found frozen to death in his squat just a few days before the tour was to start.
Did you know that the boat-billed heron is an atypical member of the heron family? That's vital, because I would never have a band named after a typical heron. They're so fucking typical, you know? I have totell you that the article on the boat-billed heron was actually the third random article I clicked on, because, totally improbably, the firsttwo were actual musical acts.Also, I cheated on the photo, because my first one was a lovely shot of a mourning doveamongspring blossoms, and I didn't feel right about using it. Mourning doves are my favorite birds, and I feel like I have a spiritual connection with them. Don't judge me. So I refreshed the page to get the photo above, but I'm glad I did, because how well does it work with that title?
A couple of years ago, journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote a piece for Vanity Fair titled "Why Women Aren't Funny". As he no doubt intended, it stirred up a bunch of shit and prompted lots ofrebuttals (just a sample from the first page of Google results), including one in VF itself. To me it seems like the kind of thing that's hardly worth the time and energy rebutting, since it's 1) clearly meant to provoke ire rather than thought, and B) stupid. I haven't read a whole lot of Hitchens's stuff, but what I have read has led me to think of him as the male Ann Coulter (insert, if you must, your own joke about how Ann Coulter is the male Ann Coulter): a writer who needs massive amounts of attention and has decided that being a humongous asshole is the way to get it
Anyway, he's certainly not the first guy to suggest that women aren't funny, a notion that's always mystified me. Besides the fact that there are lots of famous funny women, I've known plenty of non-famous ones personally. In fact, I dare say the funniest person I've ever known was a chick. But of course, I'm a chick. Hitchens is not, and it can't be coincidental that the only people I've ever heard claiming chicks aren't funny have been dudes. The real issue is not that women aren't funny, but that a lot of men--the majority of men, perhaps--think that women aren't funny. Of course, humor is totally subjective anyway, so how many people have to think you're not funny before you can be deemed objectively unfunny? I don't know. How many licks does it take to get to the center of the patriarchal paradigm? How many misogynists can dance on the head of Christopher Hitchens's tiny, flaccid penis? And while we're at it, why does the word "flaccid" only ever seem to be used in reference to penises? These are all unanswerable questions.
Hitchens does admit that "it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals." I believe this is true. I think most people believe it's true, whether consciously or (more likely) unconsciously, and it's the playing out of that belief that causes the general perception of women as unfunny. (I'm about to speak in rash generalizations here, but since that's the general tenor of discourse on gender relations, let's all just play along.) Men tend to view being funny like they view most things, as a competition. Moreover, it's a competition that every man believes he can win. Something like, say, physical attractiveness is largely a matter of genetics, so there's not a whole lot a man can do to change his place in the hotness hierarchy, but being the funniest person in the room is something every guy can aspire to. (Some of them, in my experience, aspire to an annoying fucking degree.) It's bad enough that they already have to compete against every other dude out there; adding women to the mix doubles the odds against any one dude being the funniest person he knows. The solution is denial and dismissal: women are not funny, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Say it loud enough and long enough, and it becomes the truth. Or, I should say, "the truth".
For their part, women are culturally inculcated with the belief that their value is determined by how much attention men pay to them. They learn that they should never enter into direct competition with a man or men, as this will wound the fragile masculine ego--there is literally nothing worse for most men than to lose to a woman in any endeavor--and cause male attention to be withdrawn. It never fails to amaze me how even the funniest women tend to eschew humor when in the company of men. This, of course, only strengthens the proposition that "women aren't funny".
I'm thinking about all this in light of a movie I watched this weekend: The House Bunny. I rented it, even though the critical reaction to it was mostly negative, for one reason: Anna Faris. Actually, let's make that one and a half reasons: Faris and Emma Stone. Stone counts as half a reason because the only other thing I'd seen her in was Superbad, in which she had a minor role but definitely caught my eye as someone to watch. Based on her adorably dorky performance in THB, I now think she's a pretty good reason to watch a movie in her own right.
Anna Faris came to prominence (if you can call it that) in those Wayans Brothers Scary Movie movies, of which I have seen nary a one, but she first garnered critical notice in Lost in Translation, one of my favorite films of the last decade. Her role as a ditzy actress (purportedly based on Cameron Diaz) was small, but her performance was dazzling. Wanting to see more of her, I actually watched--and I know I risk being openly mocked for admitting this--the execrable Rob Schneider vehicle The Hot Chick not once but twice when it was on FX one weekend. Then, based soley on the fact that Faris was the lead in it, I rented the little-known and even-less-seen stoner comedy Smiley Face. As stoner comedies go, Smiley Face is no Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, but it was at least as funny as Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and as far as I know it's the only flick in the genre with a female main character (and heaven knows ladies like the wacky weed just as much as gents).
Which brings us to The House Bunny. As I alluded to above, my expectations for it were pretty low going in, so I was quite surprised to find myself laughing loudly and often throughout. Mind you, I'm not here to claim that it's on a par with Dr. Strangelove or Some Like It Hot or [insert other acknowledged comedy classic], but it's one of the funnier films I've seen in the past couple of years, and I watch a lot of comedies, because I like to laugh, and there's not always a lot to laugh about in quotidian life.
This woman is hilarious.
Given my reaction, I thought it would be interesting to do a little comparison between THB and a few of the more high-profile and better-reviewed comedies of the past few years. I went to Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates the reviews of major critics and assigns movies a "freshness" rating that represents the percentage of reviewers with a favorable opinion of them. While I was at it, I also looked at each movie's total box office gross. The movies I looked at were the aforementioned Superbad, Knocked Up, Tropic Thunder, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I picked these because I had seen them, and because I thought The House Bunny was funnier than all of them.
The critics, of course, disagree. I already mentioned that THB was largely panned; it has only a 40% freshness rating. And audiences pretty much stayed away: its total gross was $48 million. On the other hand, Tropic Thunder gets 83% and earned $110 million; Sarah Marshall scores 85% and took in $63 million; Superbad comes in at 87% with $121 million; and Knocked Up is the comedy king with a whopping 91% favorable rating and receipts of $148 million. That is one hundred freakin' million dollars more than THB, kids.
So what's up with this? Why did I enjoy the movie everyone hated (or at least was indifferent to) more than the ones everyone loved? Some of it, I'm sure, has to do with the heightened expectations I had for the well-reviewed movies, and the lowered ones for THB. Some of it could be due simply to the fact that humor is, as I said above, subjective. Maybe my sense of humor is just different. But I can't help thinking that the whole "women aren't funny" thing plays a role here. After all, THB focuses on female characters, with men relegated to small roles as potential love interests. The other movies are, as is the norm, just the opposite. (Tropic Thunder is pretty much just dudes, though that's understandable given its milieu.) Did THB flop, critically and commercially, solely on its merits (or lack thereof), or did the fact that it's about women--who you will remember are not funny--color viewers' perceptions, causing some to see the film itself as unfunny and many others not to see it all? I think you can probably guess where I come down on that question. Oh, it's also worth noting that the majority of film critics are dudes, and that one major defender of the film was Salon's Stephanie Zacharek (a chick, if that wasn't clear).
I don't want to belabor my point (and I know my posts are already too long), but just as a side note: when you look at the channel guide on Comcast, the movies that are listed have star ratings, OK? Well, did you know that Drop Dead Gorgeous gets only one star? That ticks me off every time I see it. Forthose who haven't seen it,DDG is a mockumentary about a Minnesota beauty pageant. Since Christopher Guest is the acknowledged king of mockumentaries, I tend to compare other entries in the genre to his films. DDG is not as funny as Waiting for Guffman, Guest's masterpiece, but it's as funny as Best in Show and funnier than A Mighty Wind. All of those get three stars from Comcast. Their casts are gender-mixed, but skew toward the male (and were written by a male--jeez, I haven't even gotten into the gender of writers. Suffice it to say that the two writers of The House Bunnyhad probably synched up their cycles by the end of the project), while DDG's cast is populated almost exclusively by women (and it was written by a woman). COINCIDENCE?! I think not. Plus, come on, there is no way a movie that has Denise Richards dancing with a life-size Jesus doll gets only one star.
I don't know, man. Maybe I'm making misoygnist mountains out of innocent molehills here. All I do know is that Knocked Up sucked ass, and that I'm looking forward to watching The House Bunny again.
Not really. Well, you can see half of my face in one crowd scene if you know exactly where to look. But that's not important anyway. What's important is that Girls Rock!, the (tritely-titled, but still totally rad) documentary about Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls that was filmed in 2005 and released theatrically last year, is out on DVD today. I know Netflix has it; presumably local video stores will as well. It does a pretty good job of capturing the heady atmosphere of Rock Camp and its transformative effect on the girls, and you should watch it.
A few months ago I bought a pair of motorcycle boots. I didn't need them, and I really couldn't afford them, but I bought them anyway. See, the building I work in is across the street from a mall, and for one reason or another I end up walking through the mall at least once a week. Most of the time I'm literally going through the mall to get to someplace on the other side--bank, grocery store, what have you--and I avoid actually going into any stores. The one exception is Nordstrom, because as it happens, the mall entrance that is closest to my building leads directly into it. More specifically, it leads directly into the shoe department. This is dangerous.
I am by no means a shoe freak, especially compared to...well, the majority of women, if you believe the movies. On a shoe-craziness scale of one to ten, I'm a two at best. Still, I am not wholly immune to their charms, and walking through Nordstrom's shoe department on a regular basis means I am frequently exposed to the siren call of footwear. In fact, right now I can picture the exact location on the sales floor of a pair of silver-sequined Chuck Taylors, and can even hear them faintly calling: "Jenny...buy us...buuuuuyyyyyy uuuuuussssss...."
Ahem. So yeah, I kept passing by these motorcycle boots--the real deal, hand-crafted, built to last--for weeks on end, and I'd always wanted a pair, and I finally broke down. I don't regret it, even though I'm still having to cut back on discretionary spending to defray the expense. They're fucking awesome.
I'm wearing them today specifically because I have a hair appointment later and I want to show them off to my stylist. I'm also wearing jeans--my office is very casual--which are being held up by the only belt I currently own, a black one encrusted with silver studs. I have a nice black top on, so I still look professional, especially since I sit at a desk and most people only see the top half of me. Except, it's really cold in the office today, so I put a hoodie on over my top. It's a Harley-Davidson hoodie. It's black and says "H-D Riders" across the chest in bright orange letters. It also says "Live to Ride" down the right sleeve. I just took a walk to the mail room, and as I was waiting for the elevator I suddenly became conscious of the fact that, with the boots, the jeans, the belt, and the hoodie, I totally look like a biker chick right now.
Oh, the hoodie also has lettering on the back: "Chick's Harley-Davidson, Albuquerque, New Mexico". I got it when I took riding lessons there. They didn't go so well.
It all started with Justine Shapiro. Do you guys ever watch Globe Trekker? It's a travel show on PBS. It was inspired by the Lonely Planet series of guidebooks, so it's hipper than the average travel show, and the hosts try to dig beneath the touristy surface of the places they visit to get at the real culture. Justine is one of the hosts. She's also an actor and an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. She's smart, funny, very cute, a bit of a snob, and I'm totally in love with her.
One of the shows she hosted covered the Southwestern US. She seemed less than thrilled about that particular assignment, and was hilariously bitchy about it at first. Eventually she came around though--it's so beautiful there, how could you not? At one point she rented a motorcycle to drive between Santa Fe and Taos, which I found both really sexy and kind of inspiring. I'd never felt the desire to ride a motorcycle before, but watching Justine do it I suddenly did. I started thinking about how cool it would be to ride a bike through the desert, and the more I thought about it the more I started to really like the idea.
So I looked around for a place where I could learn to ride, and found Chick's, the only local dealer that offered courses approved by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Their Basic Rider course is a three-day affair: four hours of classroom training on a Friday evening followed by sixteen hours on a bike over Saturday and Sunday. I signed up, and a few weeks later, ridiculously early on a Saturday morning, I found myself in a huge empty parking lot, astride a motorcycle for the first time in my life (excepting the couple of times I'd ridden behind someone else, which doesn't really count). The bike they use for the course is the Buell Blast, a small(ish), relatively lightweight American-made cycle.
Sort of goofy-looking, but you've gotta start somewhere.
At first everything was great, as we learned to start and stop the bike, put it into gear, and drive slowly in a straight line. Things got more complicated as we worked on turning, using the complex and not-at-all intuitive method called countersteering. Nonetheless, I got a basic feel for it, and started to feel pretty good about myself and my fast-growing skills. Unfortunately, to that point we'd been doing everything in first gear, and the next part of the course was shifting. This was my downfall.
My dad once tried to teach me to drive a manual transmission automobile, an experience that proved highly frustrating for both of us. My problem was letting the clutch out too quickly, causing the car to lurch and stall. I ended up having the same difficulty with the motorcycle. I started to get really stressed as the other women got the hang of it (I forgot to mention that this particular class was women-only) and went flying around the lot, while I stalled my bike over and over. Eventually I started having trouble even getting it into first, and at one point I ended up falling over with the bike on top of me. Remember when I described the Blast as "relatively lightweight"? Well, when it falls on top of you, you really understand what they mean by "relatively". The instructor had to help extricate me, and I had a couple of lovely bruises the next day.
As the class was winding down for the day, we were called upon to put all of the skills we'd learned so far to use. When I stalled the bike for about the forty-kajillionth time, the stress finally became too much and I started crying. Man, I do not like crying in public, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because I am an ugly crier. My nose turns bright red, my face contorts spastically...it's gross. It had to be quite a picture, a grown woman sitting on a motorcycle sobbing hysterically. I was too embarrassed and upset to go back the next day, and so I never finished the course and never got the motorcycle endorsement on my license.
Why am I talking about this now? I guess 'cause of the boots. But also because Portland Community College offers rider courses, and I'm thinking about trying it again this spring. I get a little stressed just thinking about it, but I still want to ride a bike through the desert one day.
Well, it's a new year, and time to clear a little junk out of my brain. Although considering the spectacular amount of junk that's in there, this will barely make a dent, but still.
At any given moment I've probably got a dozen or so potential Top Five lists floating around my cranium. Some are new (or newish) and need time to be fleshed out, some are essentially done except that I keep rearranging the order or swapping out also-rans, and some have been floating there, incomplete and likely never to be completed, for far too long, and I'm tired of thinking about them. Therefore, in order to get rid of a few of them, I present my
Top Five Unfinished Top Five Lists (Music Edition)
5) This one. Hah! I got all meta on your asses.
4) "Top Five Videos That Creep Me Right The Fuck Out." I'm trying to remember when this one started, and I feel like it must have been when I was writing that post about The Puddle Flick, but that was just a few months ago and I could swear this list has been around a lot longer than that. Anyway, in that post I talked about visiting my grandparents in the summer, which I, my sister, and our cousins did every year when we were kids. Nana and Pop-Pop had cable, which we did not have at home, and cable had that once-most-glorious of channels, MTV. (Insert head-shaking comment about how MTV actually used to play music videos.) Cousin B. and I, the music obsessives of the family, would set up camp in Pop-Pop's den and watch until we were bleary-eyed. In the wee hours of one particular morning, we saw for the first time Eurythmics' video for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", which now seems almost tame (almost--nothing that involves Annie Lennox can ever be truly tame), but at the time was easily the freakiest thing on MTV. We were so creeped out by it that we actually turned off the TV and went to bed, where I promptly had a nightmare involving a cow.
Thinking about creepy videos reminded me of Catherine Wheel's "Waydown", which I'd always thought was one of the few videos that attempted to be creepy and succeeded, and thus was the seed for this list planted. Unfortunately I couldn't really come up with anything else to add. I flirted with Dr. Dre and Snoop (Doggy) Dogg's "Deep Cover", because that was the first time I ever heard Snoop (it was his first appearance on record, actually) and his sing-song delivery--"Cuz it's one-eight-seven on the undercover cop"--did, in fact, creep me right the fuck out. But that was more the song than the video, so it didn't really fit.
3) I'm not even sure what the title for this one would be. Something to do with comeback songs or late-career hits that I liked, but there's too much dissimilarity in the items...like, it includes Duran Duran's "Ordinary World". Now, I fucking hated Duran Duran in the '80s. I hated all of those poncey British synth-pop bands, but DD was the worst because they were the biggest and therefore the hardest to avoid. So when they made a comeback in the '90s with "Ordinary World", I was rather surprised to find that I quite liked it.
On the other hand, I was a huge fan of R.E.M. at the beginning of their career, but later soured on them (and I can pinpoint the exact moment things went south: I was in a bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that was full of frat boys from Columbia, and they kept playing "It's the End of the World As We Know It" on the jukebox and singing along at the top of their lungs--or attempting to sing along; it was more like, "Drunken mumble drunken mumble LEONARD BERNSTEIN!"--and I was like, wow, I kind of hate R.E.M now). I didn't pay much attention to their career after say, 1987, but in 2001 I heard their then-new single "Imitation of Life" on the radio, and found myself really moved by it for reasons I can't quite pin down. I still tear up when I hear it. It also has an excellent video.
Finally, the song that was the catalyst for this list came from the greatest vocal duo in rock music history. Known for their exquisite two-part harmonies, they had a long string of hits before enduring an acrimonious breakup. At this point, if you're thinking of Simon and Garfunkel, deduct 100 internet points, for I am speaking of Phil and Don, the Everly Brothers. My love of the Everlys was fostered by my parents--"All I Have to Do Is Dream" was their song when they started dating in high school, and they would often favor my sister and me with their rendition of that and other Everlys songs on long car trips. As I said, the Brothers had a string of hits in the late '50s and early '60s before fading away, but in the mid-'80s they attempted a comeback with a single penned by Paul McCartney. Now, I give McCartney a hard time at every opportunity, but only because he's a prodigiously gifted songwriter--as a melodist especially--who chooses to waste his talents on kitsch, schmaltz, smarm, and pastiche. (I think that was also the name of Lee Eastman's law firm.) Obviously though, he can write the fuck out of a pop song. His tune for the Everly Brothers, "On the Wings of a Nightingale", is a real thing of beauty, a two-and-a-half-minute pop miracle. And the video, featuring Phil and Don restoring a vintage car, is really sweet. (Note: the video I originally linked to has been removed. The sound quality on this one is not great, but it's all there is.)
2) "Top Five Well-Known Songs By Well-Known Bands Featuring Amazing Vocal Performances By Women Who Got Little If Any Credit And Whose Names You Probably Don't Know." Inspired by my irritation with someone who claimed that Dark Side of the Moon was his favorite album but did not know who sang on "The Great Gig in the Sky". I was forced to school him on how Clare Torry improvised her vocal during a single take. Also on the list: Ellen Foley on Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" (her vocal infamously lip-synched by Karla DeVito in the video) and Merry Clayton on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". (Check out Merry's funked-up solo version of the song here.)
At number one was to be, at least initially, Darlene Love on the Crystals' "He's A Rebel". Now, I love the girl groups of the early '60s, and there were so many great vocalists. I love the impassioned soul shouting of Martha Reeves of Martha & the Vandellas. I love the eternally heartbroken wail of Mary Weiss of the (so awesome) Shangri-Las (there are few more nakedly emotional moments in rock than the beginning of "Leader of the Pack", when, after the hummed/spoken opening, Marge and Mary Ann Ganser ask, "By the way, where'd you meet him?" and Mary bursts in with the first sung line, "I met him at the candy store," making that simple declaration sound like the most profound words in the history of Western civilization. Chills, every time I hear it). And of course I love the throaty throb of Ronnie Spector, sounding like nothing so much as liquid sex poured into the shape of a seven-inch record on tunes like "Be My Baby", which I will forever insist is the greatest pop song ever recorded. But there's something about Darlene Love that makes her, for me, the cream of a very good crop. When I was younger I always used to fall asleep listening to the radio, and I remember once hearing "He's A Rebel" while I was in that twilight state between waking and sleeping, and thinking, "Holy fuck. Listen to her. Every syllable she sings sounds like her entire life depends on it."
So, "He's A Rebel" was going to be number one on this list, but then I thought maybe I'd swap it out for another song that featured Darlene, uncredited, on the lead vocal, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' "Not Too Young To Get Married". The singing is just as great, but the song is even more intense--after a slow intro, it kicks right into high gear and doesn't let up until it's over, said intensity making it clear that "not too young to get married" was code for "not too young to do stuff that society deems only OK between married persons". But then I thought that neither that group nor that song were as well known as the Crystals and "He's A Rebel", so that didn't jibe with the theme of the list, and then I could never come up with a fifth entry that was satisfactory anyway, and so I'm giving up. But let's give "Not Too Young To Get Married" a spin anyway, because it fucking rocks.
1) "Top Five Videos". I know, sounds really simple, right? But that's kind of the problem. Trying to do a list as simple and straightforward as my all-time favorite music videos inevitably leads to overthinking and fatal vacillation. Do I include stuff that I love because it's hilarious (hello, "Sabotage") or just stuff that I love "seriously"? Do I include a simple performance video that for me is fraught with meaning and emotion, but for others is probably just a simple performance video?
Plus, I just read a piece--maybe on the A.V. Club?--about how the internet and sites like YouTube are allowing us to reconnect with our fuzzy memories in concrete ways, and how that can take the shine off of things we thought we loved, which, totally. I thought that Men At Work's "Overkill" was one of my faves, due mainly to its evocative entre chien et loup atmosphere, but that was when I hadn't seen it for years. It's still pretty good, but it doesn't seem as magic as it once did.
I'll tell you what, though, I knew for sure what number one would be. Let's have a look, shall we?
Just an amazing synthesis of sound and image, right there. The song is a masterpiece to begin with, the apotheosis of Mazzy Star's somnambulistic take on psychedelic folk and blues, and like much of their music it evokes (for me, at least) a soft kind of heat, and dust filtering through slanted sunlight, and the torpor of late afternoon. The flitting, bleached-out desert images of the video complement it perfectly. Those images, so evocative of the great West and all that it symbolizes in the collective American unconscious, combine with the iconic motifs of train, car, and rolling pavement to resonate through the decades and recall everything from campfire songs and hobo tales to The Grapes of Wrath and Thelma and Louise. Plus, Hope Sandoval looks really hot in that black tank top.
I also love the moody shots of the band playing, all indigo blue and dark shadows, and that one shot of the guitarist sitting and playing on the roof of the car while the train rolls past in the distance is killer. But the shot that stops my breath every time, and that I have to imagine was achieved through pure serendipity, is the two crows sitting on the telephone wire under the moon (at about two minutes and 15 seconds into the video). Something about that image stirs my soul in a way I can't put into words, and don't really want to.
So I had a bit of a health scare recently. I went to the gynecologist for my annual exam, and he found a lump in my breast. I’ll cut to the chase here and tell you that it turned out to be a benign tumor called a fibroadenoma, but of course I had to go through a bunch of crap before getting that diagnosis. First the gyno sent me for a mammogram, and based on the results of that, the radiologist sent me for an ultrasound. Based on the results of that, they sent me to a surgeon for a consult on a biopsy. I ended up having what’s called a vacuum needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure during which they stick a large needle into the breast and literally vacuum out several samples from the lump for testing. This all happened over the course of several weeks, during which, of course, the possibility of cancer was hanging over my head, and it all proved somewhat taxing both physically and emotionally. The biopsy in particular kind of sucked; although I’ve definitely endured worse things, having a giant needle shoved into your boob--and I do mean shoved, as apparently I have very dense breast tissue, and the doctor had to apply considerable force to get the needle where it needed to go--is no fun at all. It’s been about a month and a half since I had it done, and it was only last week that the bruises finally disappeared, although I still have a lovely scar to show for it. I held off on telling anybody about all this while it was going on, because I had a strong feeling it would turn out to be something benign, and why make people worry unnecessarily? And now that it’s over and doesn’t really seem blogworthy on its own, I’m tucking it into this seemingly unrelated entry. Because it does lead into the subject at hand.
Having endured this minor ordeal, I figured I deserved a reward, and I decided to buy myself something from my Amazon wish list. I ended up getting the box set of Freaks and Geeks DVDs. Obviously I cannot tell you that F&G is my favorite show of all time (see previous entry), but I can tell you it’s in the Top Five. Probably also in the Top Five would be the only other shows I own on DVD, The Honeymooners and My So-Called Life. One notable thing these shows have in common is that they all ran for only one season, which means I can own the complete series without spending a small fortune. This satisfies both my obsessive-compulsive side and my miserly side. F&G actually lasted only 18 episodes, while MSCL managed 19, but of course they share more than just the ignominy of early cancellation: both were brilliantly conceived and written shows set in high school and featuring memorable, richly-developed characters. MSCL was more introspective and dramatic in tone, while F&G was essentially a comedy, but both explored the complex landscape of late adolescence, perhaps the fulcrum upon which our emotional lives pivot, with wit, heart, and unflinching honesty. Which one outranks the other on my list probably depends on which day you ask me.
I can tell you that while I solidly identified with Angela Chase’s navel-gazing and existential angsting on MSCL, it was F&G’s Lindsay Weir whose life more closely paralleled mine. I mean, just for starters, she was a high school junior in 1980; I was a sophomore that year. She was the “golden girl” who got straight As and always did what was expected of her, until she began to wonder if there was a more vital existence outside the prescribed boundaries and looked to hanging with the “freaks” (or burnouts, as they were called at my school, though the difference was in nomenclature only) as a way to venture beyond them, and ultimately to discover what she wanted from her life rather than what others did. That’s my adolescence in a nutshell right there.
So anyway, I bought the DVDs, and finally busted them out and started watching over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I hadn’t seen the show since it went off the air nearly a decade ago, but I’m happy to say it’s aged very well. (I almost wrote “like a fine wine” there, but that is one dusty-ass cliché. What else ages well?) I’m only four episodes in (I’m concurrently viewing the fourth season of The Wire as well as the British sitcom Spaced, and I tend not to watch more than two episodes of any one before rotating in another), and I may have more to say about the show as a whole when I’ve rewatched the entire series, but one thing that’s become immediately apparent is what a fucking amazing performance Busy Philipps gave as Kim Kelly.
First off, Kim may be my favorite character on F&G. For those of you completely unfamiliar with the show--and if you are, then get familiar! Did I not mention it’s on DVD?--I don’t know that I can do her justice. Some would likely call her “white trash”, most would likely call her a bitch, but if you called her either to her face she’d just as likely tear your head off and throw it over a fence. Loud, crass, ill of temper and sharp of tongue, volatile occasionally to the point of becoming unhinged, Kim Kelly is tough as hell and frequently, unquestionably mean, yet strangely likeable through it all. The show offers glimpses into her home life--the somewhat stereotypical neglectful mom, jerkwad stepfather, and do-nothing brother, the scent of stale cigarettes, liquor, and all manner of abuse hanging heavily in the air--no doubt as a way of explaining her demeanor and earning her sympathy from the viewer, but it isn’t really necessary. Everything we need to find her sympathetic is in the way her character is written and the way she’s played--especially the way she’s played.
All of the actors on F&G did fine work. Standouts for me would be Martin Starr as übergeek Bill Haverchuck and Jason Segel as goofy, rheum-eyed Neil Peart-wannabe Nick Andopolis. But Busy Philipps embodies Kim Kelly so thoroughly that when she’s onscreen I sometimes become conscious that her co-stars are acting. I find this to be particularly so in her scenes with Linda Cardellini. I’m not saying that Cardellini is a bad actor, and this contrast is never so great that it takes me out of the show, but obviously, since I’ve noted it, it’s notable. Maybe it’s the fact that I knew girls like Kim growing up--that I was afraid of them, that I was bewildered by them, that, like Lindsay, I at first disdained but eventually befriended and came to understand some of them, that makes the character resonate so strongly with me. But it’s exactly that familiarity that would make any false notes in Busy’s performance stand out, and there aren’t any. She is totally, scarily real.
I have to admit that I haven’t really seen her in much else. Post-F&G, she was on Dawson’s Creek for a couple of years. Never watched that show. She was on a UPN sitcom called Love, Inc., but it was a sitcom on UPN. No. She was on ER for a while, but do you know that even though ER actually began in the late ’50s, I have never seen a single episode? It’s true! Her filmography is limited, but would make a good start to a list of Top Five Movies I’d Have To Be Clockwork-Oranged Into Watching, including White Chicks and Made of Honor. Recently she had a small part on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which she filmed while apparently about 14 months pregnant, but it was not exactly a juicy role. (She gave birth in August to a girl weighing nine pounds, seven ounces, which…yeah, that’s a big baby.) The thing is, she’s not quite pretty or petite enough to be a leading lady in Hollywood, so she’ll probably be forever relegated to smaller parts and crappy movies. It’s a shame, because I’d love to see her in something really good again.
Still, we’ll always have Kim Kelly. Let’s take a look at a scene from the Freaks and Geeks episode titled “Kim Kelly Is My Friend”, the one in which we meet Kim’s family. This is the end of the episode, when Kim’s boyfriend Daniel comes to find her at the Weirs’ home, after Kim spotted him being a little overly friendly with Karen Scarfoli. Nice work from James Franco here as well.
Per Amy, “list six book-related things about [your]self….”
Really? That’s it? That seems awfully…unstructured. Or something. Not sure why that bothers me, but it does. Maybe because it makes it harder to judge whether I’m completing the assignment satisfactorily, and if I can’t judge myself--harshly--what kind of life am I leading? A better one, you say? Sssshhhhhh.
Anyway, here are six random things that come to mind when I think of the word “book”:
1. As a kid, I loved reading more than anything, with the possible exception of my stuffed animals. I read constantly and never went anywhere without a book. My parents actually used to get annoyed by it--my mom was forever telling me that it was a beautiful day outside and I should be out there enjoying it, and my dad was convinced I was going to ruin my eyesight. (I know that my dad’s point has no basis in science, but considering the crummy state of my vision, it’s hard not to wonder. Even so, I’d do it all again.) Speaking of animals, stories about them--stuffed or real, I suppose, but mostly the latter--were my first reading passion. My grandmother had a large collection of Thornton W. Burgess’s animal stories, which were among the first books I ever read. (That page describes them as “charming stories of well-dressed loveable creatures that captivated little boys and girls”, which pretty much sums it up.) I loved reading them over and over whenever I was at her house. That was the beginning of a lifelong fondness for animal fantasy, which I’ve written about before, with Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH being one of my adolescent faves and Watership Down one of my adult ones. But I also liked more realistic fiction, like the dog stories of Albert Payson Terhune (I thought it was cool that he was from New Jersey, and I thrilled when local landmarks like the Palisades turned up in a story; also, even though I adored our German shepherd, Sargent, I totally coveted a collie as beautiful as Lad) and, of course, Jack London. And then there was nonfiction: for several Christmases running, the aforementioned grandmother gave me one of James Herriot’s books from his series that began with All Creatures Great and Small; thanks largely to that series I wanted to be a veterinarian for the better part of my childhood. (That idea was briefly supplanted by the notion of becoming an astronaut, which lasted until I was 13, when it was in turn supplanted by the desire to become a rock star, which lasted until…well, pretty much now.) But my absolute favorite childhood book, without question, was Born Free. I could never hope to adequately convey the depth of my love for that book and for its leonine heroine, Elsa. Even though tigers were my favorite animal, I dreamed, literally, of having Elsa for a friend. Born Free is such a beautiful and amazing story that it seems like it should be fiction, but it’s all the more poignant for being true. I don’t know how many times I read it, but I do know that it’s the only book I’ve ever begun re-reading immediately after finishing it. I just couldn’t stand that it was over. Even today, even now as I’m writing this, just thinking about the ending, when the now-wild Elsa brings her new cubs to meet her human “parents”, makes me choke up.
2. One genre that I loved as a kid but never read as an adult is mysteries. I remember going to the library and walking down the rows of books looking for the skull-and-crossbones logo on the side that was the marker of mysteries. (I also remember being mad that you could only take out five books at a time from the children’s section. I’m telling you, I was voracious. Why can’t I recapture even a fraction of that passion now?) I would pull them out and scan the front flap to see if the protagonist was male or female. I would read stories with boys as the main character--I read all of my dad’s Hardy Boys books--but I definitely preferred books with girls leading the action. One that I clearly remember was by Phyllis A. Whitney and was called The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost--and look, it was set in New Jersey, too, amongst the horse farms in the northwestern part of the state. Another that I’m perpetually trying, and failing, to remember the name of was set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina--one of my favorite places in the world--and featured the ghost of Virginia Dare. I’m always fascinated by anything that has to do with Virginia Dare and the Roanoke Colony in general. Oh, and speaking of the tony northwest of New Jersey…
3. I’ve sold books to several famous--or at least semi-famous--people. The first bookstore I ever worked at, in the late eighties, was Brentano’s, in Bridgewater in Somerset County, NJ. Somerset County and the adjacent counties of Hunterdon and Morris all rank among the top ten wealthiest counties in the nation--basically, a lot of very rich people live in northwest New Jersey. While I worked at Brentano’s, I sold books to John DeLorean and Malcolm Forbes. Some years later I worked at Borders, also in Bridgewater, and there I sold books to Forbes’s son Steve (this was in 1996, when he was running for President) and to the then-governor of NJ, Christie Whitman. Finally, when I worked at Barnes & Noble on Astor Place in Manhattan, I sold books to Kyle MacLachlan. One time Madonna bought some books there, too, but I wasn’t working that day.
4. I don’t really have a favorite book. I mean, there are plenty of books I’ve greatly enjoyed, but while I’m OK with saying that Born Free was my favorite book as a kid, there’s no one book I feel comfortable calling, as an adult, “My Favorite Book”. It bugs me a little bit, because I feel like it’s a datum I should have on hand to present to people when asked. Things like a favorite book, or movie, or animal, or ethnic cuisine, or quote from The Simpsons, or Scandinavian footwear, or member of FDR’s Cabinet--what, you don’t have one? What’s wrong with you?--are pieces of information that others can use to quickly get a picture of who we are. Which I suppose is a large part of why I find it difficult to name a favorite, as I know I’m likely to be judged on it, and so concerned am I with how others perceive me that the idea of even trying to choose a favorite anything produces instant intellectual paralysis. (One notable exception: if asked my favorite album of all time, I can confidently reply that it’s the Clash’s London Calling. This is because I not only love the music and the band, but have carefully considered how this pick makes me appear to others and am satisfied with the result.) There are a few books I know I’ve referred to as “my favorite” at least a couple of times: James Joyce’s Dubliners is one, but that’s a collection of short stories, and I feel like one’s favorite book is supposed to be a novel. That also leaves out a nonfiction book I’ve tried on as a favorite, Susan Brind Morrow’s The Names of Things. (I do definitely recommend it to anyone who shares my love for linguistics, travel narrative, and lyric prose.) One novel I did call my favorite for a while in my twenties is Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf; while it passed the “How does this make me look to others?” test, I eventually decided that any book I’d read in translation could not legitimately be called my favorite, because no one has truly read anything unless they’ve read it in its original language, of that I’m convinced. Which brings us to number…
5. I’ve only ever read one book in a language other than English, and I’m inordinately proud of having done so. That would be The Stranger by Albert Camus. Or, to give it its true title, L’étranger--and having read it in French, I always refer to it as L’étranger, because I feel I have a right to, and because I am just that pretentious. As far as French novels go, it’s unquestionably one of the easiest to read, as it’s brief, and Camus deliberately aped the short, “muscular” sentences of Ernest Hemingway. It’s definitely no Hugo or Proust, but I’m still proud of having read it.
6. When I’m sick, I like to read plays. I don’t just read them, either--I put them on in my head. I cast them with people that I know and imagine them fully produced onstage. It’s just now occurring to me that this might be very weird. Anyway, it’s a good distraction when you’re feeling ill. It started when I was a teen--my mom was very active in community and regional theater, and as a result we had tons of scripts and collections of plays on our bookshelves. Also, I was active in the drama program at school and most of my friends were drama kids, so casting was never a problem. Comedies were preferred; specific plays that stick in my head are some of Neil Simon’s early works (The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, The Star-Spangled Girl, et al.) and Woody Allen’s one-acts “Death” and “God” from his collection Without Feathers. I also liked absurdist plays: Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is one I remember, and I swear I still recall some of my imaginary blocking for Arthur Kopit’s “Chamber Music”. Kopit is not what you’d call a household name, but he should be just by virtue of having written a play called Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. Also, it has nothing to do with plays, but one book I always loved reading when I was sick was called The Reader’s Digest Treasury of American Humor. It was an anthology that included writers like James Thurber, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker--classic stuff, mostly from the first half of the 20th century. Over the years it somehow disappeared from my parents’ house, which makes me sad. My favorite story in it was called “Yvonne”, and I can’t remember who wrote it, but it was freakin’ hilarious. I’m going to briefly describe it on the off chance--the very off chance--that anyone knows who the author was, because I’d like to read it again. The narrator lived in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and there was a little girl with a deep bass voice who would stand on the corner of his street and shout, “Yvonne!” endlessly. He naturally became quite curious about who Yvonne was and why the little girl was looking for her. He’d hear her yelling and would try to run down and talk to her, but she’d always be gone by the time he got there. Over the course of the story his sanity slowly ebbs as he becomes obsessed with helping the little girl find Yvonne. Of course that description doesn’t do it justice, but you’ll have to trust me, it was funny.
Isn’t it weird how sometimes, apropos of nothing, a random and seemingly inconsequential memory just pops into your head, with surprising clarity? That happened to me the other night. I’m sure it was at least partially triggered by having watched Mad Men earlier in the evening, what with all the smoking that goes on.
In the summer of 1982 I was 17 and had just finished my junior year of high school, the year in which I began my illustrious career as a juvenile delinquent. I failed two of my classes for the year and had to go to summer school to make them up. If you’ve never had to go to summer school, let me tell you, it bites. The only good part about it was that I could drive there: I was a newly-licensed driver and had inherited from my mom a red 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, which is a really great car to have as your first set of wheels. I loved that Bug, man. I could cruise for a week on two dollars worth of gas (of course, it was regular leaded gas and cost about 49 cents a gallon, but still), and park it anywhere, although the manual steering meant that parallel parking was a test of upper-body strength. I could even push it by myself if I had to, and sometimes I did. The dashboard had exactly two buttons on it, one for the lights and one for the wipers. It had an AM-only radio and a top speed of about 50 miles per hour. My favorite thing was the little triangular window in front of the regular window, which you could aim right at your face when cruising on a hot day. Like, for instance, on your way to summer school.
Awesomeness in vehicular form.
My first class of the day was English (yes, I’d failed English), and it was pretty much filled with other delinquents. The teacher had a “this is summer school, you don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, let’s just get through this with a minimum of effort” kind of attitude, so it wasn’t tooterrible. I constructed all of my vocabulary-test sentences using the names of bands or songs (I remember that one of the words was credence, which I turned into a sentence about Creedence Clearwater Revival, which for some reason impressed the teacher), and I wrote a book report on No One Here Gets Out Alive.
My second class was Analysis & Trigonometry. There were only four other students, and they were all taking it as an advanced course, to get a jump on their next year. In other words, they were there--in summer school--voluntarily. Like, on purpose. The part of me that remains an eternal adolescent still cannot wrap her head around that. So there I was, the sole delinquent in a class of math nerds who actually wanted to learn. The class was like, two and a half hours long, so the teacher would periodically give us ten-minute breaks, before which he’d always say, “We’re gonna take a break, so go outside, smoke a cigarette, whatever.” It struck me as odd, because there was no way those goody two-shoes mathies smoked. I, however, did.
I’d taken up the habit the previous summer, when I was visiting my grandparents in upstate New York along with my cousin B., who had already started smoking. After they’d turned in each night, B. and I would steal some of Nana’s cigarettes and a couple of Pop-Pop’s beers, and we’d walk up to a church at the end of their street, where we’d sit against the wall and smoke and drink, and talk about how exciting it was to be cartwheeling on the brink of independence. Not explicitly, of course, but that was the underlying theme.
I’ve always said there’s only one reason people start smoking, namely to be cool, although I’m sure that’s not really the only reason. For instance, there are places, cultures, or times when smoking is simply de rigueur, like the early-’60s advertising world of Mad Men. In my case, however, I started smoking because I desperately wanted to shed my image as a bookish nerd. I wanted to be cool. So I kept smoking when I got back home that summer, even though it’s not an easy habit to get in the swing of. Seriously, you have to really want to smoke, because it is so gnarly at first. But I really wanted to.
Coolness didn’t come from simply being a smoker, though. There’s a process involved in smoking, and every part of that process contributed to the amount of coolness conferred upon you. None of it was ever made express, of course. You just had to figure it out as you went along. Obviously, the brand of cigarettes you smoked was first on the list, but that wasn’t too difficult to suss out: pretty much everybody I knew smoked Marlboros. Marlboro Lights were also acceptable, but definitely carried fewer cool points. So I started smoking Marlboros, which was nice because my dad also smoked them, and I could steal a couple from him when I ran out. I started out buying the flip-top boxes because that’s what my dad bought (and I have to point out that a pack of cigarettes cost 85 cents at the time. Eighty-five cents! Change for your dollar! It seems crazy now that something that brings so much pleasure could cost so little), but quickly learned that soft packs were cooler. To open the pack in the coolest way, you would pull the red tab around and take off the top part of the cellophane, but leave the rest of the cellophane on so you could stick a book of matches in there. The top of the pack was foil with a band over the middle, and you’d unfold one side of the foil and then tear it off, leaving a hole big enough for maybe four cigarettes. To get one out, you’d put your index finger over most of the hole and do a quick flick of the wrist that, if performed correctly, caused a single cigarette to slide about halfway out. You’d then put the end of the cigarette in your mouth and smoothly pull the pack away.
Lighting a cigarette coolly was a bit more complex. Your choices for lighting were, in ascending order of coolness, cardboard matches, disposable lighters, wooden matches, and refillable metal lighters. There were exceptions, though—if, for instance, you were one of those people who could light a cardboard match not by plucking it from the book and using three or more fingers to hold and strike it, but by leaving it attached and folding it over so that the match head met the striking surface, then flicking it with just your thumb to light it, you were awarded substantial cool points. (I was not one of those people.)
Once the cigarette was lit--well, then things got really complicated. The different ways of holding a cigarette, putting it in your mouth, inhaling and exhaling, flicking the ashes, etc., all of which probably seem to a non-smoker fairly straightforward, are in fact so byzantine that to enumerate them and their attendant coolness points here is a greater task than I’ve set out to accomplish. Let’s move on to what’s actually relevant to this post, which is putting the cigarette out. Again, to the uninitiated it probably seems pretty simple: stub out the butt and walk away. And indeed, you could do that. But where do you stub it out? In an ashtray? Sure, if there’s one around, but if not, where? On the ground? Against a wall? On the bottom of your shoe? In your hand? I’m kidding on that last one, nobody does that in real life. But all of the other ones are viable options, and there are many others, all with varying degrees of coolness.
Do you see how overwhelming all of this can be? Most of the time, I went with the “throw it on the ground and crush it with your shoe” tactic. A classic, to be sure, and nothing to be frowned upon in those days when no one cared about the planet except Woodsy the Owl and the Crying Indian--but nothing special, either. I wanted something better. Something cooler. I wanted to execute The Flick. And I don’t mean just any flick, either. Anybody can do a basic flick: rest the butt on the pad of your thumb and hold it in place with the nail of your middle finger, then flick your finger forward and send the butt arcing through space. Easy, right? But with The Flick, there’s no arc, and that’s the key: The Flick sends your smoldering remnant of tobacco-y goodness rocketing into the Earth with the speed and truth of an arrow from the bow of a fucking Amazon, to explode in a shower of orange sparks. It is, in a word, cool.
Making it even cooler was the fact that the people I knew who regularly discarded their butts using The Flick executed the maneuver in a totally casual manner. They barely seemed to impart any energy into their Flicks, yet those tiny cylinders were launched as if they’d been Flicked by the Incredible Hulk. And they’d always start to turn away even as they were Flicking, as though they’d become so accustomed to successful Flickage that it wasn’t a big deal. “What’s that, a cigarette smashing into the pavement at 90 miles an hour and creating a mini Fourth of July display? Like I haven’t seen that a million times. Have they refilled the vending machine with Ho-Hos yet?”
A variant of The Flick was The Puddle Flick. A Puddle Flick was executed just like a regular Flick, but was even more impressive in that the Flicker had to hit a clear target, namely, a puddle or other nearby collection of water. Properly done, The Puddle Flick instantly extinguished your butt with a satisfying fssst, and carried the bonus of insulating you from the opprobrium of indignant hippies concerned by a burning stub left on the ground: “Hey man, you could totally set the grass on fire, man.” It was my burning--pun totally intended--desire to one day execute a perfect Puddle Flick. I practiced often, but could never quite get it down. I think I focused too much on imparting enough force to achieve the necessary velocity, and not enough on finger mechanics, to the detriment of the entire operation. Typically it seemed that most of the force was directed at my thumb. Either that or it was directed too far to one side of the butt, which just sent it spinning miserably to the ground a few inches from my feet.
OK, so here’s the actual memory I was talking about before this enormous digression: I was at summer school, in Analysis class, and the teacher called a break. The math nerds all stayed inside to like, do extra credit or something. I went out to cop a smoke. When I got outside, there was a dude with a boombox. I don’t know if he was listening to a tape or the radio, but I clearly remember that the song playing was “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne. There was also a chick sitting on the steps. They were both smoking, of course. I didn’t know either of them--something I forgot to mention back at the top is that my high school didn’t offer summer classes, so I was taking them at another school--but this chick was like, a perfect specimen of genus Newjerseyus, species burnoutus, subspecies metalheadus. She had the look that I totally coveted but could never hope to achieve: her dark hair was feathered, as was the norm, but like most burnout chicks, and in opposition to the general female populace, who styled and shellacked their ’dos to within a inch of their lives, the feathers hung lankly in her face. Her eyes were lined heavily in black, but the rest of her face was bare. She had the kind of full-lipped pout that always looked sexy when smoking. Purple feather earrings hung from her lobes. She was wearing a faded baseball jersey, white with periwinkle sleeves; soft, well-worn Levi’s with big holes in the knees; and black moccasin boots with fringe that, oh my god, I totally saw on sale at Nordstrom the other day! I can’t believe they’re back in style after all these years! Since she was sitting down I can’t be sure, but I’m willing to bet there was a bandanna, probably red, in her back pocket.
I sat on the other side of the stairs and smoked my cigarette. I probably exchanged burnout-style pleasantries with my compatriots, but I don’t actually remember if I did. What I remember is that when I was finished, I stood up and prepared to extinguish my cigarette butt. As I did so, I realized that there was a small puddle perhaps six or seven feet away from me. My mind started racing; I knew that this was a perfect opportunity to attempt a Puddle Flick. If I failed, I was subject to unspoken derision from Boombox Dude and Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be. But if I succeeded, here were two people who had never known me as that bookish nerd, and would forevermore recall me only as a totally cool person. I teed up the butt. Straining to appear as casual as possible, while secretly freaking out with every molecule in my body, I Flicked. As if loosed from the bow of Hippolyta herself, the tiny missile flew speedily and unerringly to its target. Fssst. A perfectly executed Puddle Flick. Tens all around, except from the Soviet judge, of course. So stunned was I by the sheer perfection I had achieved that I almost forgot to turn immediately and head back inside. But I did, and as I turned I caught the eye of Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be, and she gave me the subtlest of subtle nods, as though to say, “I, who am indeed very cool, acknowledge your similar coolness.” Looking back on it now, I think it may have been one of the finest moments of my life.
I bought a turntable this weekend! I don't know what it says about my life, but this is easily the most exciting thing I've done in a while.
I've been meaning to buy one for a long time, and now and again I'd stop in at various secondhand electronics stores looking for a good used one, but I could never find one that wasn't outrageously expensive given its condition. Apparently the hipsters are digging vinyl now, which I guess is driving up the cost of "vintage" turntables. I finally figured that function mattered more than form, and decided to just buy a new one. You can now get turntables with USB connectors and audio-editing software for digitizing vinyl records, which I thought was a nifty idea, so I went for one of those.
Now, I haven't actually owned any vinyl in nearly 20 years. You may have heard the sad, sad tale of how my entire collection--well over 300 LPs--was stolen from my apartment when I lived in Camden, NJ in the late '80s, a psychic wound from which I'll never recover. Since vinyl was putatively moribund at the time, I switched to buying cassettes (possibly the worst medium ever concocted for transmitting sound) and eventually, with deep reluctance, CDs. (Over the years I've come to a grudging accord with CDs, but my experience of them will forever be colored by the first one I bought: 10,000 Maniacs' In My Tribe. I remember bemusedly staring at my speakers as I listened to it, trying to figure out what was wrong. It sounded airless and cold, like each band member had been hermetically sealed in plastic during recording. And that possibly the recording had been done on the space station from 2001.) But I've been looking forward to the day when I could start amassing a collection again.
I've read that some bands are now forgoing CDs altogether, and releasing their new material on vinyl along with a code that allows the buyer to download the record in digital form as well. May I say that I am kind of in love with this idea? It's absolutely the best of both worlds, and I plan to buy all my new music in that form if it's available. (May I also take a moment to delight, as others have, in the fact that it appears vinyl records will outlive CDs after all, and the sweet, sweet irony therein?) But for the time being, all I really want to do is haunt every record store in Portland and sort through the bins of used LPs.
In fact, after setting up my new turntable, I immediately made a beeline for Everyday Music, which, along with Music Millennium, is where I generally do most of my shopping. I had $20 in cash on me and I made a deal with myself not to spend more than that, but considering that the average cost of a used vinyl record seems to be about two to six dollars, I figured I could get five or six albums with that. I started flipping through the stacks, and instantly I was flooded with memories of the endless hours I'd spent doing the exact same thing as a teenager. Just the sensation in my hands as I held the upper corners of the records and flipped them forward one after another made me weirdly happy. Real records!
The first thing I came across that I wanted was the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East. Ooooh, how long has it been since I've heard "Stormy Monday"? Gregg Allman can sing the blues like no other white dude, and his brother Duane was one of the few guitarists who could make a ten-minute jam seem too short. Alas, it was new and not used--and "audiophile quality" at that--and would have taken all of the money I had to spend. I was too excited about leaving with an armful of records, so I moved on.
I made it up to "H" before I reached my spending limit, and here's what I walked away with:
-The Association, Greatest Hits. I've recently become interested in baroque pop--in fact I'm listening to Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra as I write this--and someone recommended the Association as worth checking out. I know their big radio hits--"Cherish", "Never My Love", etc.--but I'm looking forward to digging a bit deeper into their catalog.
The Bangles, All Over the Place. This is one that I used to own. The tale of the Bangles is a sad but all-too-typical tale: this, their first album, was a flop, and after it flopped their record company gave them a makeover (by putting them in garish outfits that were hideous even by 1980s standards, which is really saying something), pushing Susanna Hoffs as the main focus onstage and onscreen, and "polishing" (read: crapping synthesizers all over) their sound. I hate everything the Bangles did post-makeover, but I love this record. It's a great hybrid of garage rock and jangle pop, and would be worth buying even if it only contained their dreamily sublime cover of Katrina and the Waves' "Going Down to Liverpool".
Blondie, Eat to the Beat. Another one from the old collection, and probably my favorite Blondie album. "Dreaming" is such an incredible pop song, and--speaking of dreamily sublime--"Shayla" still kills me every time I hear it. I'm so glad to have this album again.
Ellen Foley, Nightout. Foley was known, if she was known at all, as a musical foil to the likes of Meat Loaf and Ian Hunter rather than for her own work. I've never heard this record but I've always thought she had one of the most amazing voices in rock. More on that in a future post.
Heart, Dreamboat Annie. The Heart that I knew growing up was the '80s Heart, with their gross power ballads and videos that used camera tricks in a vain and sad attempt to hide Ann Wilson's weight. Classic rock radio played their earlier hits from the '70s, of course, but it was impossible to extricate that past from the then-present, and...well, long story short, I never liked Heart. Then one day, several years ago, I was at a vintage clothing store in Berkeley and I heard a beautiful song playing. I asked what it was, and turns out it was the title track to Dreamboat Annie, their 1976 debut. I've had a mental note ever since to pick it up when I got the chance. This was the record I put on when I got home, and I must say it makes a perfect accompaniment to an autumn afternoon in the Northwest.
I never realized how much I missed the ritual of putting on a vinyl record. Pulling the sleeve out of the cover, slipping the record out of the sleeve and balancing it with my thumb on the edge and fingers on the label, slipping it over the spindle....
And then, lifting the needle. Hearing it drop with that deeply satisfying ka-thunk, followed by the greatest three seconds of silence in the universe. The silence in which I wait, electric with anticipation, for my soul to be filled with real music once again.
Dear Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day,
I don’t remember when it was that I first took notice of you, but I know that it was your style of dress that caught my eye. With your vintage/thrift store dresses, tights, and ballerina flats, you remind me of this girl I had a crush on when I worked at Brentano’s in the Bridgewater Commons Mall, some twenty years ago. Urgh, what was her name? It escapes me now. She worked a couple of doors down at the store that sold fancy stationery. Actually, you know what, when your hair was long and all one length, you reminded me a lot of early-’80s Natalie Merchant, and let me tell you, that’s a major compliment. I thought she was the coolest chick in the world back then.
Then you got your hair cut, shoulder-length and layered, with side-swept bangs. At first I was all, “Wha-huh?”, but then I saw how it enhanced your Eastern European features. Seriously, you have the most amazing face. You look like a lost member of the Romanovs--like you should always be sepia-toned and wearing a high lace collar. I wonder what your ethnic ancestry really is.
But mostly what I wonder about you, Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day, is why you are always late for the train. We take the same train every day, and every day it arrives at our stop at the same time. Yet every day you come speed-walking along the platform, heading for the ticket machine, while the train is already bearing down on the station. I have to admit I get all angsty on your behalf, especially knowing how peevish those machines can be. Sometimes as I step onto the train I catch a glimpse of you at the other end, bending over to collect your ticket from the tray, or even still feverishly pushing buttons, and I have to turn away, because I can’t stand the thought of that robotic voice intoning, with its grave finality, “The doors…are closing,” and you furrowing your side-swept-bang-covered brow in frustration as you stand there, freshly minted ticket in hand, while the train pulls away and its work-bound riders look dully on. This morning you were even later than usual, and actually had to run the last half-block to beat the doors. My breakfast of shredded wheat, banana, and soymilk was burbling around in my stomach as I nervously but silently cheered you on, and I was thrilled that you made it--but then I started to worry that because you hadn’t bought a ticket, you’d get a citation from a fare inspector. Fortunately (?), there’s almost never a fare inspector on our train. Thank heaven for TriMet’s poor planning, right? By the way, I liked your purple umbrella, and I made a little joke to myself, asking where your fifty-cent hat was.
But again, I’m wondering: why don’t you leave your house just a minute or two earlier? Look, I’m forever running late myself, so it’s not like I’m not sympathetic, but I know exactly how long it takes for me to walk at a comfortable pace from my house to the station, and no matter what, I make sure I’m out the door in time to arrive before the train does. Also, why do you continue to buy single tickets from the machine? Those machines were built by the minions of Mephistopheles. Since it appears that you work downtown, why not stop in at Pioneer Square or PSU and pick up a ten-pack, or better yet, a monthly pass? Seriously, I’m not saying this just because I work at a place that sells passes. It’s not like I get a commission or anything. But trust me, you will love having that pass in your wallet and knowing that you can hop on a train, bus, or streetcar anytime it strikes your fancy, without having to worry about buying a ticket. And this month they are a lovely pumpkin orange.
I know I work in alternative transportation, Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day, but I am not proselytizing. I am thinking only of you.
