my cousin kate has a story from her childhood that exemplifies the practical/repressed mindset of our parents when we were little. it was summer vacation and she had slept over at the neighbor’s house, hung at the pool with them, had pizza and cake and was invited to sleep over a second night in a row. kate was thrilled by the prospect of extending the party another day, but her mom said no. kate did what any 8 year old would do − she asked why not. her mom’s reply: “it’s just too much fun.”
i might have received similar castigation for the way i conducted this weekend. here are some things i did:
got blonded at blow and tried to convince my pal david that paul mccartney/wings wasn’t all terrible. i even burned him a cd … he was nonplussed and tried to rope me into an either/or situation comparing post beatles paul to post beatles john. i told him to shut it — that if paul had died too we’d not been having this convo, and hell why does everything have to be compared to the prior body of work? he said john was on track to being perennially cool and i said okay fine but why do we have to put someone (paul) down?
mailed several letters with shiny heart stickers on them.
went down the shore with my girls. we laughed our asses off. sat amongst jersey’s finest tattoos, piercings, guido talk. i swam in the ocean and the water was peeeeeeeeeerfect. when my hair dried i looked like spicoli and ali quoted him and i twittered it.
i left my wallet in new jersey (safe in a phyll’s car but still – tres inconvenient).
i went for a bike ride (sans helmet − rebel yell!) and saw a rainbow.
i bought one can of cat food ($.75) with some loose change so aretha won’t starve and talked jill into meeting me for drinks (that she’d buy) at the piggy.
the douchebag of the day award goes to the guy who wore the tshirt that said: “my labradoodle loves me no matter what my golf score is.” the runner up was a passive aggressive biker who snottily yelled out to a band of tourists as he rode by, “thanks for blocking the path!”
if a life this fun is wrong, i don’t want to be right.
i love music and music videos containing OTT sexual innuendo. here are a few of my faves, mostly plucked from the R&B genre, all of which i believe are from the late 90’s/early 2000’s … a time when i still used to listen to the radio and Napster was in its heyday.
Adina Howard - Freak Like Me. Cause it’s all about the dog in me-eeee. I love love loved this song, and still do … cause i don’t give a damn about a thing.
Slum Village − Climax. Gettin’ live like we at the mardi gras … SV was an amazing act. RIP j dilla.
Choclair − Rubbin. You fronting like I ain’t ’bout to knock it … I got a rocket in my pocket. Saw these guys at cat’s cradle in chapel hill in 1998. it was an awesome show. no idea where they are now — their music isn’t even on iTunes.
Aaliyah – Rock the Boat. Go ahead and put that thing in over drive. Think this was the video she went to shoot when the plane crashed
D’Angelo − How Does it Feel. Listen girl I have something I wanna Show U .. I wish you’d open up cause I wanna take the walls down with u. I was totes obsessed with this entire album when it came out. And the previous album (Brown Sugar). D’Angelo’s so talented. And hot damn, is he a beautiful human being. Zoinks!
H-Town − Knockin the Boots. Somebody rockin� knockin� da boots.
There are many more … like Pony by Genuine, Too Close by Next. And countless others i’m hoping you’ll point out …
In my house growing up, every family party ever held … after dinner, and many drinks, out came the Irish music. When I was 8 my parents even forced me to take Irish step dancing lessons in the back of a bar (Davey’s Locker in Montvale, NJ to be precise. ) … And no, I did not love that. But I did love the music, and still do (albeit in small doses). It makes me feel at home, among family.
Of course, it also accentuates a sense of gloominess in the Irish-American sensibility. A pal once referenced someone she knew who read “the Irish sports pages” every day without fail. She was talking about the obits. Man was that familiar. Between my Grandma, Nana, Mom, Aunts and Great Aunts’ worrying, I was surrounded by adults who were obsessed with mortality. And the craziest part is, all that worrying was done silently. There was always a dark cloud of fear hovering over us, but no one acknowledged it. No one talked about death, dying or anything “unpleasant.”
I’ve done a decent job shedding that mindset but the weight of generations still bears down on me every once in a while. But then I can’t forget − there are positive aspects of the Irish-American sensibility. Wit. Sarcasm. The ability to laugh ourselves through seriously ugly shit. And to fight like hell when we need to.
am really diggin’ albert hammond jr.’s 2nd LP “como te llama.” if you’re not versed, he’s from the strokes, one of my very fave bands. am a coupla months late in this discovery, but alas … who gives a crap about release dates anymore — movies, tv, music … what’s the urgency? good stuff abounds, and is there whenever you want it.
recently my ipod got wiped out due to my carelessness. cousin jack, one of my MVC’s (most valuable curators) re-jacked it. out of the thousands of new songs, movies and shows he put on it, como te is my fave collection so far. it speaks to how i feel right now. ironically, my favorite song on the album is “feed me jack. ” cousin jack not only feeds me music — he also cooked for me the night i picked up the ipod (bonus!).
and as if alberto and his tunes aren’t sexy enough (you may recall, i have a major thing for rocker boys and musicians in general), he had to go and have one of his videos directed by haunting hottie joaquin phoenix:
then there’s also this amusing rough around the edges homemade one, which reminds me of the early days of MTV when all videos told very clear stories. actually, it must be from his first solo album, yours to keep,which i did have at one point, before another, previous ipod wipeout (note to self: back that shit up!). anyways, worth a look … and a listen:
Don’t send ‘em. Unless you’re a publicly traded corporate behemoth like Live Nation or you’re an old wave band, owned by the media, that has no idea who its fans are.
If everybody was reading the newspaper, why has circulation dropped? Ditto with “Time” and “Newsweek”. And network TV has abysmal ratings, certainly compared to the days before cable. Why do you keep sending a zillion arrows into this abyss?
I know why, it makes you feel good, it makes you feel like you’re doing something. But you’re not. You’re just wasting time.
bob’s on to something, and i think you can apply his ideas to all consumer sectors, not just music. i don’t agree with all of what he says, though.
people are actually watching MORE television than ever
they are reading MORE content (newspaper/mag/online) than ever
aggregate circulation, ratings are going UP across the board, but down among individual outlets.
the attention’s all spreading out.
the ubiquity of content makes all messages less impactful.
that’s why NEW brands struggle — whether they’re bands, TV shows, soft drinks. there’s no central place to force people to pay attention and take note.
ATTENTION, not content, is a scarce resource.
All communications must become all the more deft, targeted and un-templated.
my dad always loved george carlin. him and richard pryor. and as a kid i didn’t quite get the appeal but i grasped the sense that these guys were cool badasses who cut through the BS in a way that made lots of grown ups love them. as the years unfolded, i never did develop much of an appreciation for george’s standup. i saw him as a sort of creepy, cranky negative guy. a hard-edged complainer, which didn’t sit well with my good girl sensibility and rosy demeanor. but as i became more authentic, allowed myself to get angry about all the shit in the world, i’ve begun to dig on george more. there was a great interview with him in the november 2007 issue of interview magazine where he defines success as “finding something you love, finding that you’re good at it, and being recognized for that.” simple and true.
and here’s another one of his quotes i once posted here on col’s blog that i think is worth rehashing:
“I don’t like ass kissers, flag wavers, or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn kids, somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘there is no i in team.’ What you should tell them is, maybe not. But there is an i in independence, individuality, and integrity.” –George Carlin
hot, smart, tough, and a bit sad. the thin lines between space time love and hate. that’s what the long blondes’ second lp couples invokes. feeling all the complications of dating, independence and being a timeless, sensitive woman in a world that favors egoic alpha males … it’s what my ears like to hear. not linear. it’s messy… sexy messy. new wave, brit pop, punk, rock … chrissy hynde meets logan’s run meets the harajuku girls. when she made uk music magnme’s cool list, long blondes front woman kate jackson said, “they probably thought they didn’t have enough girls. it was so overrun with boring boys, they needed someone to bring a touch of glamour.”
well said sister. i love this record. it’s got the montage-collage sound of the world we’re living in right now. not old, not new. very now. makes me long for an atari as much as a guitar hero. makes me wanna dance, drink, give someone the finger and have a scandalous affair before settling into a state of complete zen detachment. it’s like liz lemmon saying: “suck it monkeys!” in one episode and then having a baby jones in the next. we’re all inconsistent …. it’s just that some of us deal with it better. some even make it look good.
zen col’s not the only one out there looking for the goodstuff. seems these days we all are. here are a few lists i’ve enjoyed in the past week or two.
my cousin kate has a story from her childhood that exemplifies the practical/repressed mindset of our parents when we were little. it was summer vacation and she had slept over at the neighbor’s house, hung at the pool with them, had pizza and cake and was invited to sleep over a second night in a row. kate was thrilled by the prospect of extending the party another day, but her mom said no. kate did what any 8 year old would do − she asked why not. her mom’s reply: “it’s just too much fun.”
am really diggin’ 
