Love me good

As I have talked about on countless occasions, I usually hate the term "guilty pleasure." For something to be a guilty pleasure requires there to be a component of embarrassment to go along with the enjoyment of the pleasure, and I'm here to tell you, I'm over all that. When it comes to the things I like, love me of leave me, baby, I'm not apologizing. Or am I? Because the other day on my way to work, something shuffled up on my iPod that really DOES qualify as a guilty pleasure.

Once upon a time (well, more like about 6 years ago), I had a brief but intense flirtation with the music of Michael W. Smith. For those of you that don't know, Michael W. Smith is one of the biggest names in contemporary Christian music. He is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Amy Grant as both had some pop crossover success, although Amy Grant's crossover was much more successful as well as much more deleterious to her CCM career. Outside of the realm of CCM, Michael W. Smith is best known as the guy who gave us "Place In This World" which became a high school graduation song favorite throughout the 90s. He also had another minor hit in 1992, "I Will Be Here For You" which I remember kind of liking in spite of myself. Despite these dabblings, I never really liked him all that much because the nasal quality of his voice really turned me off (says the Stevie Nicks fan).

I don't really remember what it was exactly, but in 2002, I really started to consume his music. This was weird for me because really, even I can see that 99.9% of CCM is not all that good. Most of it is too earnest, too over-the-top and just plain too much for me. I have always preferred my religion more subtle than that, but Michael W. Smith was the big exception to this. My re-discovery of his music came at a time when I was taking a lot of comfort in religion and prayer. I was a new dad, just turned 30 and doing the obligatory "what the hell am I doing with my life?" Some of this had to do with the fact that I was participating in an online men's group which, while not explicitly religious in tone, definitely had underpinnings of Christian spirituality. Looking back, there were many times that it was almost fundamentalist in its discussions, but there was enough talk about relationships and sex and what not that I ignored the worst of it, taking what I needed and leaving the rest. I also had read up a bit on Smith's backstory, which is replete with stories of drug and alcohol addiction before the eventual (and very literal in this case) come-to-Jesus moment. I found this inspiring and felt like this was someone who was doing more than just talking the talk and someone who, I felt, had more than a bit in common with me (minus the drug and alcohol addiction.)

So why is this a guilty pleasure aside from the fact that I am probably would classify myself as agnostic? The reason this is a guilty pleasure is because of Smith's political beliefs. I find his fundamentalist, very conservative beliefs to be reprehensible and anathema to everything I believe in and stand for. I scoured the net trying to find an example of just a softening of his conservative ideology but I was unable to find it. What I did find is that he has associated himself with Sean Hannity. I'm sure that Smith is a very nice person who truly believes what he believes, but in the words of that classic 70s song, we just disagree. I just feel like someone who went through what he did should know better. I expected better. So whenever I listen to his music, I do feel a little bit guilty.

I do not listen to his music often - I think that Sunday was the first time I've listened to him in at least a couple of years. After he played at the 2004 Republican National Convention, it was pretty much over for us. But the song that came around quite by accident on my iPod, "Love Me Good" from his 1998 CD Live The Life still manages to strike a chord in me. It is, not surprisingly, one of his more secular songs with only a brief allusion to anything religious.



Look at Smith being all metro and cool at 40. I will admit to hoping that I look as good as that at 40, even without the team of stylists and assistants. I love how positive this song is and how it addresses the feeling of being on a hamster wheel. The line I love the most is "I conquer the world for a moment/Then the moment is gone." That could be a tag line for this blog - THAT'S how much I relate to that lyric.

There are days that I do miss the comfort that I got from organized religion and especially prayer. I kind of ride a sine wave when it comes to religious feelings, cycling back around and through all levels of it which is why UU is such a good fit for me. Perhaps Carl Sagan is right when he argues that science loses out to pseudo-science because of the comfort that the latter gives. I know that I can't follow a blind faith like I once did. Heidi mentioned the other day that we live in a world where we have our kids believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and then tell them it's all a lie, but then we still expect them to believe in something like God which is equally fantastic.

But I still have a soft spot for Michael W. Smith and especially "Love Me Good", even though I can't stand his politics.

(I'll admit to being more than a bit nervous about posting this because Smith's fans are rather Lamb-like in their devotion. No offense was intended. Live and let live.)

Don't mess with Texas

I was out raking leaves the other day, and God help me if this song wasn't going through my head. It's not often that one can legitimately claim to having a Dom DeLuise song stuck in their head, but it's true. (and now our own Melvin P. Thorpe singers!)



The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas was probably one of the first R-rated movies that I was allowed to watch as a kid, and it was almost certainly the first that I was allowed to watch that had nudity in it. Oh, I had seen breasts before both on TV (we did have HBO after all) and in print as my dad had a stash of Playboy magazines in the basement that he had confiscated from high school students over the years. (They brought PLAYBOY to school?) But Whorehouse was the first movie with nudity that had the parental seal of approval. Looking back, I probably begged because of the Dolly factor, and my folks more than likely just threw up their hands and caved rather than listen to me go on about how I had to watch a Dolly Parton movie. After all, it's not like it's a hardcore porn or anything!

Dolly has spoken in the past about how hard the filming of Whorehouse was for her. A lot of bickering, constant script rewrites and a revolving door of directors only compounded the physical and emotional problems she was having at the time. However, you'd never know that by watching the movie, which is either a testament to her ability as an actress or her dedication to getting the job done and done right, regardless of what's going on with her personally.

The movie is certainly not great - it's passable musical-comedy - although we watched it like crazy as kids, and not just the "boobs flashing" parts (as Dolly referred to them). Perhaps my favorite part of the whole movie comes after the eventual closure of the Chicken Ranch - the name of the whorehouse of which Dolly's Miss Mona Stangley was madam. The ladies are all packing up and getting ready to move on with their lives when (because this is a musical) they feel the need to spontaneously break out into song. What results is the song "Hard Candy Christmas". The version of the song on the soundtrack was a Dolly solo, omitting the rest of the female voices, and it just doesn't work as well. The death of the Chicken Ranch affected them all, not just Miss Mona who you knew was going to get married to Burt Reynolds anyway.



I'm pretty sure I recorded that song onto a cassette by holding the cassette recorder up to the TV. THAT version of the song probably had my mom talking in the background.

RuPaul actually did a version of "Hard Candy Christmas" for his Ho Ho Ho! album about 10 years ago, but it was eclipsed by the excellence that was his cover of a Dolly Parton holiday original, "With Bells On." (horrible quality recording, but you get what you pay for.)

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I had amazingly good intentions of doing a post tonight. One is half written, and the other has been writing itself in my head for part of the day.

Then, I worked from 7AM till 6:30PM and I carried my brain home in my hands and the rest was history.

The reason for the post about why I'm not posting? It's pretty simple actually. I'm doing my own version of NaNoWriMo but instead of trying to write 50,000 words of a novel, I'm trying to do a blog post a day for a month. I wasn't talking about it at all on the blog and I won't make a big deal out of it. I almost didn't mention it at all because were I to fail, I would (as the unnamed narrator in Bright Lights, Big City says) have the shabby nobility of failing all by myself.

Failure averted. It may not be much, but it's more than I thought I would have after nearly 12 hours of work.

Maniacs and Merchant

For as much as I loved 10,000 Maniacs in their Natalie Merchant incarnation, I really never much cared for Natalie Merchant's solo material. There was a song here and there that I really liked, but nothing she did solo-wise ever connected with me like her best work with 10,000 Maniacs. I think some of it had to do with what I perceived as a huge ego driving her toward a solo career, especially as 10,000 Maniacs were having their first ever Top 10 hit with "Because the Night." I couldn't believe that she was leaving the band that really made her who she was just as they were starting to break out into the mainstream. I can't help but think that the remaining Maniacs were more than a little bit ticked at her solo success.

My friends looked at me puzzled when I said I wasn't sure if I could listen to Natalie's solo material. After all, it was just like listening to 10,000 Maniacs wasn't it? She was the voice of 10,000 Maniacs, so their response to me was to chill and close my eyes and pretend I was listening to the band and not just the singer. This works sometimes, but as it turns out, listening to solo Natalie Merchant is NOT like listening to the band. It seems like something that was essential to the success of her music with 10,000 Maniacs is missing in her solo music. I imagine it's how many people feel about Stevie Nicks' solo career. Without Lindsey Buckingham around to rein her in, Stevie kind of goes batshit crazy. For me, that's batshit crazy in a good way. But without the Maniacs, Natalie goes so internal that no one can break down the door. She's like a friend that you know can cut loose, but insists on being stoic and serious all the time.

For all my supposed dislike of her solo music, I will say that there are a few songs that I really like - mostly from her solo debut Tigerlily. I really liked the song "Wonder" mostly because it sounded like a long lost Maniacs track, and I did like "Carnival" some, with its "Secret"-ish video.



Her solo music really fell off my radar after Tigerlily. I knew the song "Kind & Generous". It mostly annoyed me, but listening to it again today (I picked up the album it is on, Ophelia, from the library yesterday) it's not as grating as I remember. And as far as anything after that, what I have heard is not listenable. Her voice is gone, stripped of its once distinctive quality and reduced to (sorry to say it) bleating. One need only listen to the song "Just Can't Last" to know that her glory days as a vocalist are likely behind her.

But I will always have the Maniacs. When I watch live concert footage of 10,000 Maniacs on YouTube, I always wish I could have seen them during their 1988-1992 heyday, back when they were singing the happiest song in the world about seasonal affective disorder. Not surprisingly, "Like The Weather" is one of my all time faves.

Sleeping or not

So yesterday I finally decided that I had just about had enough of this not being able to fall asleep bit and made an appointment to see my doctor. I don't frequently go to the doctor - mostly just once a year for the physical that my insurance pays for and the random time or two when I am so sick that I can't get well without some form of antibiotic. But this not sleeping well thing, well, it finally pushed me over the edge.

I pretty much live my life (as do many people) on a chronic sleep deficit. I go to bed too late, get up too early - sometimes by choice, sometimes out of necessity. The last month has been especially bad with me working a string of three overnight shifts and then a whole shitload of evenings, which resulted in one messed up sleep cycle. I don't mind working evenings - it's not a bad shift and there are about a third as many people there, but what I really need to do is sleep in till 9:30AM or so before I go in. That doesn't happen very often as those mornings are among the few mornings that I can actually take Anna to school. So what happens is I get up at 6:30. And then I wonder why I hit the wall at 9PM with 90 minutes left to work.

But then, without fail, I get home from that shift and I'm not tired. So I'm up till midnight or 1AM and then have to be at work at 8 the next day. It just sets me up. I should be tired, and I am, but I'm not. All of this leads to needing caffeine the first thing in the morning and liberal doses throughout the day, just to prop myself up enough to be able to function like a normal human being. Of course, all this caffeine leads to disruptions in the sleep cycle, which starts the whole dirty process all over again.

And then, you throw in my own personal wrinkle. I lay in bed at night trying to sleep, and the worry turns the volume up to 10. I think about things I might have left undone at work, things that might happen either tomorrow or in the near (or even distant) future, other people, other things so far out of my sphere of control it's not even funny...the list could literally go on forever. And it's not just that I think about it, it's that I pick it up and run with it as if I'm trying to make the winning touchdown. The other night I had to come back downstairs and was up till nearly 2AM when I had to be up at 5AM the next day. It wasn't pretty.

So because of all this, I went to the doctor. I was not looking for a quick fix - I know that there are many things that are buried beneath this, things that only I can unpack, things that no pill can fix. I got a lot of advice - things I already knew - like cutting out caffeine, exercising more regularly, melatonin, Benadryl, meditation, etc., etc., etc. And all those things I am willing to try. I complain constantly that I don't have time in my life for exercise which is bullshit because if I cut back my internet time even by an hour a day, I would have the time necessary. If it's important, you make time.

But the root of all of this is the worry. The nagging feeling that something is undone or that something horrible is in the offing. It relates back to my anticipation post. Heidi always tells me not to invite that kind of energy in which is her way of saying not to borrow trouble. She is, of course, right. It's not quite that simple. You can't rationalize with that part of your brain. It is chock full of emotions and all the types of reactions that go along with them, so calmly telling them to shut the fuck up doesn't really work all that well. But I know there is a way to short circuit the cycle and to stop it from feeding on itself.

I left the doctor's office with a bunch of literature and a prescription for Ativan. We'll see how it goes. I don't anticipate having to use much of the medication - I got a prescription for 20 of those last March at my physical and still have a fair number left. But to get over the hump, I'm not afraid of a little help. Better living through chemicals as my doctor friend always says.

So a few days of that to get myself back to normal and then after that, I'm crackin' skulls. (well, not really, but you get my meaning.)

(photo credit)

Bend and break

I've been enjoying the hell out of the video contest over on Keane's website promoting the release of the deluxe edition of Keane's debut Hopes & Fears in which the band has asked fans to make videos for songs from the album. Some are certainly better than others, but really the whole thing has a very Madonna "True Blue" make-my-video feel to it.

But this one, for "Bend and Break", which is probably one of my favorite Keane songs is really good and worth a quick blog post. As described on the site:

This one is from Liouba Zhiltsova in Moscow, Russia. As Liouba says, "It's about friendship, making mistakes and gaining forgiveness. I always thought of the song Bend And Break as a song about overcoming hard times and eventually getting to the bright side of life." It's a great effort for a first-time video - with a really nice storyline.

Watch it - it's worth it.

There's something about marriage

I got home from work last night just in time to watch the initial results trickle in from Maine. Although many issues were on the ballot last night, the one we were all watching was the referendum on marriage equality - the so-called "people's veto." The state legislature in Maine approved marriage equality last summer, and the governor signed it into law, making Maine the 5th state in the US to grant marriage rights to all its citizens, not just its heterosexual ones. No sooner did this happen than those opposing it started rallying the troops and put the rights of a minority to an up/down vote.

We all know how it turned out, even though it was a real nail-biter for awhile. 52% of those voting chose to strip Maine's gay and lesbian residents of the right to marry, and in so doing, ripped away the privileges that all those in heterosexual marriages take for granted. Although these results make me sick, the fact that the majority was allowed to vote on whether or not a minority gets to have certain rights makes me even sicker. It is safe to say that most of those who voted yesterday in Maine's election were not gay or lesbian, yet here they are, determining what gays and lesbians should or should not be able to do, many (but not all) driven by fear, misinformation and religion which honestly have no place in making policy decisions.

One of the most frequent arguments I hear against marriage equality is that "it's against God's law!" I'm always amazed to hear that. I do not currently identify as a Christian, so that argument holds not one drop of water for me and the millions of others who do not subscribe to either an institutionalized religion or even to the simple concept of a God. Talk about forcing your beliefs on others. That's not to say that all Christians are against marriage equality - quite the contrary. There are many examples of that in Maine and elsewhere. What I would remind those that would be so quick to judge based on what their religion tells them to do is to remember the Great Commandment: LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. And yes, that includes your gay or lesbian neighbor whether you like it or not.

It is not until people who enjoy the invisible privilege of being in the majority are prevented from deciding that other people are second class citizens or not worthy of the same rights that they currently enjoy that this nonsense will finally stop. I think that will eventually require some kind of US Supreme Court decision which is certainly a long ways off. There was no up/down vote to abolish slavery, nor was there a ballot initiative asking that women's right to vote be rejected after it was granted. Were we to propose either of those, I'm sure it would elicit gasps of incredulousness from those who voted to reject Maine's marriage equality law. But there is no difference. Civil rights issues are civil rights issues.

I hope that the No on 1 people take this through the courts now. It is certainly an option, and one that will likely be heard. It is the job of the judicial system to protect a minority from the tyranny of the majority. While my choice of words may seem overdrawn, you may want to ask a same-sex couple in Maine if they feel that I'm being dramatic in my word choice. Chances are high that they'd feel exactly the same way. And in case you're wondering why I give a shit, as I'm neither a resident of Maine nor gay, and I currently enjoy all the benefits of a legally recognized marriage, it's about being empathetic for your fellow humans, especially those that may be experiencing a different life experience than you. Just because the system is working fine for you doesn't mean that it's working well for everyone.

Maybe it's time to get rid of marriage altogether, to chuck that word on the scrap heap of history so that those that oppose equal rights for gay and lesbian couples can stop being hung up on it. I'll gladly redefine my relationship with my wife so that my gay and lesbian friends can enjoy the same rights I have. But if we did that, those that oppose marriage equality would be forced to look at the real reasons that they oppose equality, which I bet are 100 times uglier than the religious beliefs they hide them behind.

There's no doubt that this will fade from the news cycle by the end of the week, but remember that here in Iowa, we're gearing up for a new legislative session and those that oppose the marriage equality we have here in Iowa will have a new target in their sites. To those of you reading that live within the state, I encourage you to donate time or money (or both) to One Iowa. Hell, do it even if you don't live here. The fight in Iowa is going to look a lot like the one in Maine. Outside money will pour into the state (admittedly, on both sides), and unless our Democratic leadership in the statehouse hold fast, opponents of marriage equality will demand a vote on a Constitutional Amendment here in Iowa, which is a much bigger deal than what was passed in Maine.

Time is ultimately on our side. Opposition to marriage equality will look antiquated in 50 years. But that doesn't mean we have to wait for it. And I will continue to do my small part to make sure that all citizens will be equally protected under the law.