Baby it's tonight

It's a fact of my life - some songs stick around forever while others get buried in the years that pass between first listen and the present. One of the latter type of songs recently bubbled up - pretty sure it was during my last bunch of overnight shifts. The song was Jude Cole's "Baby It's Tonight." It had been so long since I had heard the song that I had to Google the lyrics to remember who sang it.



Liking a song like this is kind of indefensible, even though it is catchy and has a good hook. But what's worse is going and buying the entire album that the song is on (A View From 3rd Street, for those wondering.) But it was on eMusic and I swear, buying music from eMusic feels like stealing - although it isn't - so it's never hard for me to justify getting music from there. I mean, it wasn't all that long ago that I went on a Samantha Fox buying binge, all thanks to eMusic.

When I first picked it up, I didn't really like anything on it, aside from "Baby It's Tonight." It just didn't click with me for some reason. But for some reason, in the last week, the clicking has commenced. It's good pop music - a bit Bryan Adams-ish for my taste, but I still enjoy it more than is probably legal. As the allmusic review insinuated, there are several good songs that even a couple years earlier would have been all over the radio. The songs are actually pretty smart considering it's just pop music from the dawn of the 90s. Although this may be a bit of a slam, it reminds me of Alannah Myles' debut record which contained the ubiquitous "Black Velvet." Straddling the line between rock and pop, it is actually quite satisfying.

Yeah, the video screams 90s, but he's kind of cool in a douchebaggy (props to Matt & Lance - just doing my part) sort of way which is, oddly enough, the coolest kind of cool there is.

Still trying to save the princess

After months of eyeballing it, today I finally purchased Dragon's Lair for the iPod Touch. For those that don't know, Dragon's Lair is a Don Bluth animated video game from 1983 in which you control the movements of Dirk the Daring through an enchanted castle in an attempt to rescue a princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. When I was a kid, this was the creme de la creme of arcade games. Instead of herky-jerky graphics, it was pretty much a full fledged cartoon that responded to your controls. What could be better?

In all honesty, a lot. I think most of the times I played Dragon's Lair as a kid, the game lasted an average of 1.3 minutes. This was especially distressing because instead of costing a single quarter, it was 50 cents per play which ate up your Adventureland pocket money twice as fast. I could never figure it out. The technology drew you in, but control of the character was so different from every other arcade game we blew our money on that it never gave me a good game playing experience. Mostly, I walked away from it with a bad taste in my mouth and feeling cheated out of my money.

After my early 80s experiences, I never really thought much about Dragon's Lair until I bought a PC version of the game in the mid-90s. It was only then that I really figured out how to control the knight and even then, it was after massive amounts of fail. I managed to maneuver Dirk past all the main obstacles and make it all the way to the dragon's lair, but try as I might, I could never defeat the dragon, and since 90s technology is pretty much incompatible with late 2000s technology, I figured I had missed my chance at ever beating the game. But as is so often the case these days, Apple saved the day.

I spent quite a while this afternoon playing Dragon's Lair on the iPad. Even though it's an iPod app, it looks pretty good on the iPad. I actually can't imagine playing it on something as small as an iPhone, but hey, any port in a storm. Gameplay is just like I remember it except instead of a joystick, there's arrows and a sword button on the screen. In a turn of events that would have made my quarters last a hell of a lot longer as a kid, the controls light up in the direction you're supposed to move Dirk just before you need to do so. This kind of ticked me off at first because after all I'm way too cool to need help! But after a few rounds of getting my ass kicked even WITH the controls that light up, I rethought my position.

Could it get repetitive? Oh sure. Is it frustrating as all get out in some places? Definitely. But it still takes me back to days when my biggest problem was running through my allowance in 15 minutes in the back of Hy-Vee plugging quarters into video games. And the best thing of all? The app is only 99 cents. That's right - for less than the price of a cup of coffee, you too could be playing Dragon's Lair.

Oh, yeah, except you have to have that pesky Apple technology which costs decidedly MORE than the price of the most expensive cup of coffee.

This sweater is old and faded

I was going through some old photos the other night - we were a total fail in making a baby book for Anna and as soon as we get done doing the scrapbook of our vacation from last year, we're going to try to do the same thing for Anna's infancy. Anyway, I found a bunch of pictures from Anna's first Christmas. This one blew my mind.

Every now and then you see a picture of yourself that just makes you think "Damn, when did I get old?" I look at that picture now and can't even remember having that much hair that was NOT gray. But from the some-things-never-change file, I still can dice green peppers like no one else.

But it wasn't even my relative youthfulness and the actual presence of color in my hair that got me - it was that sweater. Man, I LOVED that sweater. I remember that I got it at Kohl's - it was on a mannequin right at the front of the men's department. I had had my eye on it for a while but never felt like I could afford it. Then magically, one weekend, the sweaters were all on sale and I decided I wanted it. Sadly, they didn't have it in my size except for the one on the mannequin. So I had one of the employees take it off the mannequin. They probably were all "what the hell" but hey, they were making a sale.

I'm pretty sure I still have that sweater - I think it's at the bottom of the cedar chest. I don't really wear sweaters as much anymore and I know that it's not in the best of shape but I think I might have to figure out a way to resurrect it next winter.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to dye my hair. I like the gray just fine.

(post title inspiration here)

Headless

So the other day, I was doing a little bit of rearranging in my office. It's been a long time since I reorganized the shelves upon which so many of the pop culture/horror figures I've managed to collect over the years stand and I figured why not now? I had decided that I wanted to try to group all the Alien figures in one space on a short bookshelf next to my desk. I had just enough room and they were all standing comfortably next to Doctor Octopus my mom found at a flea market and the glow-in-the-dark zombies that I got for Christmas.

Standing comfortably until the other morning when I came back in from my shower to discover one of the Aliens had taken a head-first dive to the floor and gone from this:


to this:


I have always been a little bit disappointed with this figure even though he is highly detailed and very cool looking. It was a constant battle to get him to stand up, always trying to find the magic combination of standing on one foot, patting your head and rubbing your stomach in an effort to encourage him to stay upright. Up on the high shelf, he was very precariously balanced. He actually seemed to stand up better upon relocation to a lower shelf, but I can only assume the magnified vibrations of footsteps in the floor (not to mention the trains that go through several times a day) proved to be too much.

It's probably nothing a little super glue can't fix, but it still kind of sucks. I have half a mind to super glue him to his base to prevent this from happening again. But such a quick fix didn't stop me from looking for a better, more sturdy replacement. Sadly, there is not much to be had that doesn't cost a pretty penny. (The Dog Alien is especially coveted.)

So I guess until I get my lazy butt to Hy-Vee to buy some super glue, in space, no one can hear HIM scream.

Not gonna give in to it

For whatever reason, today just never really seemed to start. And oddly enough, it's not because did what I normally do on my day off from work - sleeping easy, doing nothing. (It's attractive.) I was oddly productive today, getting out to the grocery store pretty much first thing, followed by mailing a package and depositing a check. I also finished my proof from Dreamspinner that I've been working on. But for whatever reason, I just can't shake the funk off today.

I think a lot of it has to do with the weather. It's COLD today. 51 degrees for May 10th is unseasonably cold. It FROZE the other night - something that while not unprecedented is also not common. It's gray and rainy and were this a fall day, I'd be reveling in it. But instead, it's supposed to be spring and it today feels like a step backward. From what, I'm not sure, but a step backward nonetheless.

Another thing that is really getting me is that despite having 8 days off of work, I am still operating on a significant sleep deficit. And I've finally figured out where my sleep deficit comes from - it comes from my early shifts. It's not so bad getting up at 5AM, even though I vowed when I was in college that I would never have a job that required me to report to work prior to 9AM. Life never goes quite like you expect it to and your ability to adapt to it is directly proportional to your success. But getting up at 5AM requires me really to not only be in bed no later than 10PM but honestly, I need to be sawing logs by 10PM. That just doesn't happen. In my younger days (read: my early 30s) I could handle this, but it's been one of the first real signs of aging that I've felt. So I end up going to bed at 11:30PM or midnight and wondering why I'm tired the next day.

Of course, all this sets me up for failure because not being well rested affects pretty much every other aspect of your health - both physical and mental. It messes me up and takes the smart part of my brain offline and puts the more primitive parts of my brain in charge. This is exactly what leads to anxiety, depression and general crabbiness.

I went out with Heidi to the chiropractor this morning and I was listening to Olivia Newton-John, having been put in the mood by last week's Glee, and the song "Not Gonna Give In To It" came on. It's a latter day Olivia song, recorded long after her hit-making days were behind her. It comes from the album Gaia, which was written almost wholly in response to her experience with breast cancer. I love this song because it has a positive message without seeming like a platitude - this isn't "a smile is a frown turned upside down" territory. I like the honest confession that we really are alone in our troubles. Others can support us, but we're ultimately the ones that have to do the work. Witness:

And I feel so alone
For although you care
No one else can share
It's my own misery
In the end it's all up to me

I never even knew this song until I saw Olivia in concert with my sister Wendy in 2005. The performance of this song was electrifying and fit in well with all the oldies. While this performance isn't quite as good as the one we saw, it's the best one I can find on YouTube.



Really, I live a charmed live. I'm amazingly lucky, but much like everyone else in the world, it's not always a walk in the park. It's times like these that I remember what my grandfather always used to say "Life is great as long as you don't weaken." And to tell you the truth, that's really just another way of saying "I'm not gonna give in to it."

Grandpa and Olivia - what a strange pair they would have made!

Chrissy

So can you tell I'm not on vacation any longer? Gone are the days of 2 posts a day and we're back to the once a week blogging that seems to be customary these days. Vacation was good - not stress free by any stretch of the imagination - but still good. In many ways, it was good to be back at work.

The biggest unintended excitement of last week was the demise of one of our water heaters. Mid week last week while I was washing the dishes, I noticed that while the faucet was only half way between hot and cold and the water was so hot that I couldn't put my hand under it. Now I don't know much about things like this, but I do know that wild fluctuations in water temperature are a sign that the water heater is about to go. It seemed to calm down over the course of the week, but by the weekend, there was no hot water on that side of the house. It came back eventually, but it was intermittent throughout the weekend. Also telling was the presence of a water around the base of the heater. It was leaking and yeah, it was dying.

So we put a call in to the plumber to have them come take a look at it. It didn't take long for us to get the diagnosis - new water heater needed. Before too long , we had a new water heater to replace the old dying one and all was back to normal. I really didn't know how old the other one was - I just knew that it was OLD - so I asked the plumber to look up and see how old it was. Turns out it was installed in 1972! That's right, the year I was born, making it 38 years old. The fact that a water heater lasted 38 years just tells me that they don't make 'em like they used to.

Of course, I have only one association with 38 years. For those in the dark, that's how long Dorothy and Stan Zbornak's marriage lasted before ending in a bitter divorce. Dorothy references the length of her marriage in many a Golden Girls episode, so it's only natural that it's the first thing I would think of. When Heidi e-mailed me to inform me of the new water heater, I e-mailed back with "38 years of memories and laughter and fighting!" Man, that show still holds up after all these years.

So in honor of that, I've named the new water heater "Chrissy" because that was the name of the woman for whom Stan left Dorothy after 38 years. Let's hope that our relationship with this Chrissy lasts longer than Stan & Chrissy's relationship on the show did.

Year of 25 Books: #8 - Warriors: Into The Wild

When Anna heard that I was trying to read 25 books this year, she 1) thought that sounded pretty paltry because she had to read 100 chapter books in order to get her iPod touch and 2) jumped at the chance to pick one of the books when I gave her that option. What she came up with was the first book in Erin Hunter's Warriors series, Into The Wild. She had just finished it and had been regaling me with tidbits from it and thought I would enjoy it as well.

The Warriors series is told from the point of view of wild cats that make up four forest clans - ThunderClan, WindClan, ShadowClan and RiverClan. The clans coexist rather uneasily, with the forest hunting grounds divided up amongst them and rules in place that keep them from hunting in each others' territories, with specially trained warrior cats patrolling the clan boundaries. But times are hard in the forest. Prey is scarce and hunting grounds are shrinking due to "twoleg" (human) encroachment. ThunderClan in particular is in trouble as they are outnumbered and lacking in kittens to train to become warriors in comparison to the other clans. Into all this comes an ordinary house cat, Rusty, who enjoys his "kittypet" status but also longs for a freedom that he can't articulate.

After getting into a skirmish with a ThunderClan cat on the edge of the forest, clan leaders Bluestar and Lionheart invite Rusty to leave his privileged life behind and join the clan. He does so, is given the name Firepaw, thus setting the stage for the rest of the book.

Into The Wild is, for the most part, pretty well written. It has a strong narrative but I'll admit that I had a hard time getting into this book. However, I'm not exactly the target demographic. I can see why kids like it, especially those that like animals (cats in particular.) It's a quick and easy read that's filled with action and adventure while making sure to get some good lessons on loyalty, friendship and facing your fears in for good measure. In many respects, it reminded me of a cat version of Watership Down, a book I have never read all the way through but watched the animated movie of a million times as a kid.

A couple things bothered me about the book. The first was the excessive use of strange names for the cats. For example, we have Bluestar, Lionheart, Firepaw, Ravenpaw, Graypaw, Tigerclaw, Runningnose, Yellowfang, Longtail and Brokenstar, just to name a few. How kids can tell all these cats apart is beyond me. Even toward the end of the book, I was having a hard time figuring out who was who. It reminded me of when I was reading Lord of the Rings and trying to navigate all the similar names in order to figure out why I should care about any of these people. The second thing that bugged me a little bit was the amount of violence. Several cats do die in this book, frequently rather unexpectedly. The descriptions were not graphic by any means, but frankly, I was surprised that didn't bother Anna more than it did. I can see a sensitive kid being disturbed by it.

Anna is trying to get me to read the next book in the series, but I think I'm going to take a pass on that one. I have more books than I can ever possibly read in my to-be-read pile, and 272 pages of talking warrior cats was more than enough for me.

Even less than zero

So it took me all the way until April, but the first rejected book of the 2010 Book Challenge has arrived. It was Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero and that thud you heard was me chucking the book across the room. I should have known better - really, I should have.

Less Than Zero is kind of a companion book to Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, a book that I love and would rank in my top five favorite books. It follows the adventures of Clay, an 18 year old college student back in L.A. for Christmas break as he navigates the party/sex/drug scene of mid 80s Los Angeles. He and most of his friends are beyond wealthy and are consequently neck deep in that scene. I tried reading Less Than Zero when I was in college, and based on its association with Bright Lights, Big City, I figured I would love it. Turns out I didn't get past the first 20 pages. I remember not really liking it, but then I was reading something about it on Goodreads or some place and thought I'd give it a go. Maybe I just got distracted the last time I tried to read it and it was better than I was giving it credit for. And really, it seems like an "important book" for our generation so I felt a little bit obligated to try it again.

It took me 50 pages this time to give up on it, but give up I did. I just got to the point where I couldn't stand to read about these whiny, unhappy people one more second. Their lives were bad, yes - Clay and most of his friends are drug addicts and morally depraved by most everyone's definition. I don't mind a book that is "unhappy" so-to-speak, but I just found nothing in the book worth pressing onward. The plot was barely there and there were so many characters that all seemed the same that I really had trouble telling them apart. Ultimately, I decided that life is painful enough without voluntarily subjecting yourself to it and cast the book aside. After reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, I'm glad I threw in the towel when I did. Jesus God.

I guess one emo book about a young adult trying to survive in a large city is all I have room for in my life.

LDS (Latter Day Stevie): The Other Side Of The Mirror

I'm fond of saying that being a fan of Stevie Nicks' solo work would be so easy if her solo output had stopped after three albums. If any set of albums really represents a trifecta, it's her first 3 solo albums: Bella Donna, The Wild Heart, and Rock A Little. While this is not strictly true - 2001's Trouble In Shangri-La came closer to the brilliance of those first three album than anything in the interim - there is something about that set of albums that just really hits the mark. There was a natural trajectory from the acoustic folk of Bella Donna to the synth-laden Rock A Little, with The Wild Heart being an amalgam of the two, almost as if it were the offspring of those two very different albums.

The trouble comes with the albums between Rock A Little and Trouble In Shangri-La. The Other Side of the Mirror (1989) and Street Angel (1994) are really hard to love. As a fan, I feel like I end up making more apologies for them than anything else. They have only a handful of good songs between them, but as albums they really miss the mark to the same extent that the first three hit the mark.

The Other Side of the Mirror is the first of Stevie's albums that I experienced in real time. I remember hearing about it while eating breakfast over MTV on January morning in 1989, with Kurt Loder reporting that it would be released "sometime this year." In podunk Iowa, our primary music retailers were K-Mart, Pamida and the local department store chain (now defunct) Sernett and none of them were ones that you could count on for accurate information on new releases. This was pre-internet and the information was not simply at your fingertips! It was eventually released in May of that year after great anticipation on my part.

Maybe it was the anticipation, but I have always been less than crazy about this album. It's WORK to like The Other Side of the Mirror. In a word, the album is overbaked, a victim of the worst of cliched 80s production. Whereas Rock A Little has aged well despite its completely 80s production, Mirror barely sounds like a Stevie Nicks record. She is spaced out and not really engaged in the songs at all. The lead single, "Rooms On Fire" is uninspired, buried underneath layer after layer of turgid production. Sub-par songwriting doesn't help her case either. And what in the world is Kenny G doing on a Stevie Nicks album? For me, TOSOTM is to Stevie Nicks as Hard Candy is to Madonna in that it's an album I really tried to talk myself into liking. Both albums have some strong songs but do not hold together as albums very well.

It's not all bad though. "Long Way To Go" rocks pretty well and despite the fact that it's relatively tuneless, I do still like the song "Juliet" which found a home on this album after being rejected from Fleetwood Mac's Tango In The Night. I think it's the reference to the blue lamp that pushes it over the edge for me. And I have a soft spot for "Fire Burning" even though it sounds like she's barely present.

Years later, we'd find out why she was barely present. Instead of being strung out on cocaine or some other illegal substance, Stevie was growing more and more dependent on the prescription drug Klonopin. She's on record as saying that she really has no memory of the Mirror tour due Klonopin use. As she herself said "The fabulous Stevie that everyone knew just disappeared."

But if you thought Klonopin colored The Other Side of the Mirror, just wait till you listen to Street Angel. You ain't seen nothing yet. But that's the next post.

(part one of a three part series)

My rhythm's (not) mow mow mow

We know that it's officially spring because tonight, I mowed the yard for the first time.

I'm a bit late to the party the year as far as mowing goes. I have a couple friends who have mowed a couple of times. My neighbor has mowed his yard at least that. Apparently on Sunday, when I was at work, the whole neighborhood was filled with the sound of mowers cutting grass. Heidi told me she felt like going out and starting the lawn mower just as a show of neighborhood solidarity.

It's not news that I hate mowing. I get no satisfaction out of it AT ALL. All things being equal, I'd rather be snowblowing - and after the winter we just had, that's a very strong statement. Part of the trouble is that lawn mowing in April is deceiving. Sure, it's all fine and dandy now when it's 65 degrees and 10% humidity. If it were like this all summer, mowing would just be a minor irritant. But give it another 6 weeks and I can guarantee you that I'll want to be mowing naked because I will be mowing in Dagobah. It never fails - one hour of mowing and I am a completely soaked and sweaty mess at the end of it.

I also think that a lot of my disdain for mowing has to do with my yard. We don't have the greatest yard ever, and I would say that it's not for lack of trying except that it really IS for lack of trying. Much like mowing, I get no satisfaction out of yard work of any kind. Mostly, I'm just hot and sweaty (again) and then add in dirty. Where do I sign up? Heidi used to do a lot of that, but with her pain issues, we're really leery of her doing that kind of work, so it falls to me. We also have this front yard that has what I refer to as the grass equivalent of a comb over. Grass barely grows because it's so shady so consequently when you mow, the grass isn't really tall enough to give you any indication as to what's been mowed and what hasn't. So what you end up doing is trying to get as much of it as you can and hope for the best. The good news is that the lilies of the valley that Heidi planted are finally starting to spread like the weed that they are, so our front yard actually looks better this year than it has in years!

I was worried about the mower as well - first of all because I couldn't remember the oil to gas ratio needed for the two cycle engine. I wrote down the model number and manufacturer and went in to do a Google search which gave me nothing. I went back out to look to see if there was a serial number on it and, lo and behold, the directions for mixing oil and gas were right there on the mower. Also, toward the end of the season last year, the mower started getting very temperamental - mostly in the form of not starting. Well, I'm happy to report that not only did the mower start this year, but it started on the very first pull of the cord.

No matter how hard I try, I'll never be a yard geek.

(and while we're at it, let's see the video for the song that inspired the title of this post)

Carrying a laser

I have been REALLY into the song "Kyrie" by Mr. Mister these last few days. It all started when I had to completely reinstall everything on my computer and lost all my Genius playlists in iTunes. To get started again, I randomly created a Genius playlist based on the Go-Go's song "Lust To Love." iTunes populated the list with the expected (Belinda Carlisle's "Mad About You" and Madonna's "Physical Attraction") and the not-so-expected (10,000 Maniacs' "Cherry Tree"? WTF?) But "Kyrie" ended up on that list as well.



Anna and I were listening to it in the car on the way back from her piano lesson last night and she said to me, "Dad, I can't sing along with this song because I can't understand what he's saying!" Well, when I was a kid, I really didn't either - although I did know what a kyrie was thanks to my Lutheran upbringing. But her comment made me think of a friend of mine had misheard the lyric in the chorus - Kyrie Eleison down the road that I must travel - as "carrying a laser down the road that I must travel." Thanks to her, whenever I listen to this song, that's what I hear.

And talk about a band that was white-hot and then completely disappeared. The follow-up album to Welcome To The Real World was a commercial disappointment and the band broke up shortly thereafter. I wonder if it was any good - surely three Mr. Mister songs in an iTunes library is enough?

Grown up for grown ups

I stayed up late last night for the sole purpose of being able to do the digital equivalent of midnight shopping at a record store. I think the last time I actually went to a midnight release was 1998 when I went out to Wal-Mart in Iowa City to pick up Ray of Light. Midnight releases may seem antiquated in light of the rise of digital music, but there I was last night in the moments leading up to midnight, refreshing the Amazon.com page that would hopefully contain the download of Mary Chapin Carpenter's The Age of Miracles.

This has been one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the year so far for me. I have written about Carpenter so much on this blog that those who are not fans are probably sick of it. But guess what, it's my space and my rules so here we go. I've been reading all sorts of reviews of the album this morning in an effort to gather my own thoughts and decide which direction I want to go with this post. Many of the reviews said much more eloquently what I was already thinking, and to simply regurgitate what other folks have said seems disingenuous at best and outright plagiarism at worst. In a way, there's a danger in talking about this album on the day of its release. It's almost too early to review the album as I've only listened to it all the way through once.

But I can't put this review off. There are albums that take their sweet time to connect and then there are others that do it instantly. The Age of Miracles is very much the latter type of album. Part of the reason for that is because Carpenter doesn't mess with her formula much. You know exactly what you're getting into and while there aren't tons of surprises, it is as I have said before, like reuniting with an old friend and the conversation picks up right where it left off the last time you met.

All the reviews I've read this morning have hit the same notes. This is a somber outing for certain, and many of them are still pining for Carpenter to cut loose like she did back in her Nashville hit-making days and do another "Down At The Twist & Shout" or "He Thinks He'll Keep Her." She seems so resolutely uninterested in doing that. Read interviews with her and you'll see that she is a profoundly thoughtful person, someone who's been through the music industry machine and is now comfortable with the path she's on even if it doesn't make tons of money or generate chart hits. My favorite review of the album - and the one that resonated most with me - is the one at PopDose. Reading the review, you can tell that the reviewer really gets Carpenter. He makes brief mention of the hits, but then says something like "...at their best, Carpenter’s songs fill you with a bittersweet melancholy that somehow leaves you with a smile." I couldn't have said it better myself.

Simply put, her music is a balm for my soul and that's no overstatement. I remember being 22 and just getting into her music and being almost embarrassed by how she was reading my mind. It's good to know that 17 years later, she still has that capability. I will admit to liking the songs with a bit of a punch vs. the languid ballads because I've always admired how she can marry the her obvious intelligence and way with a lyric with a catchy melody. And oddly enough, for those wishing for a follow-up to an earlier hit, she does this of sorts with the song "I Put My Ring Back On" which serves as a bit of a sequel to "He Thinks He'll Keep Her." Both songs speak to the difficulties that can plague even the best of marriages although the songs couldn't end any more differently. It's definitely my current favorite track. That's not to discount the ballads though - "I Was A Bird" and "Iceland" rank up with some of her best work.

I always say that Carpenter is thinking man's country. Make no mistake, this is a grown-up album for grown-up people. Heidi always says that despite the fact that I'm in the later part of my 30s, I'm still a consummate boy. She's right you know, and that boy has kept me more grounded than you might expect and I'm very fond of him. He's the part of me that is still giddy over Madonna releases and loves the thump-thump of a Freemasons remix. He's the part of me that spent 2 bucks on a Q*bert game for the iPad yesterday. But I also like the grown up I've become, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Carpenter for that - as unintentional as it was on her part. Reconciling the two is not always easy, but I think the last line of PopDose's review sums it up best.

I think [the album is] full of that bittersweet melancholy that makes Carpenter’s work so great. It feels like traveling — heavy with the loneliness of not yet being where you want to be, and brimming with the hope that you’re almost there — and it moves you with a grace that makes the whole thing sound easy.

And that, folks, is the miracle of Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Year of 25 Books: #7 - 1959: The Year Everything Changed

Whenever I read a book that is devoted to a single year, it is so frequently accompanied by the implication that no other year could possibly match it in terms of change that I really don't believe it any longer. There is, in fact a book written about 1969 that uses the exact same tag line as Fred Kaplan's intriguing 1959: The Year Everything Changed.

I mock the drama of implying that the history of the world hinged on a single year - really, it's never that simple. But 1959 was a unique year, one that I really didn't know all that much about until I read this book. In truth, while I am fascinated by later 20th century history, the 50s don't interest me much. I'd much rather read about the turbulent 60s or the stagnant 70s. I was a bit suspect of this book, figuring that it might start out with a bang and then peter out quickly or worse, be full of facts and figures that I couldn't care less about.

What I got instead was a interesting run through some of the highlights of the year. While many books of this ilk limit themselves to talking about either politics or world affairs or cultural events, Kaplan discusses a wide array of topics. You get the obligatory chapters on US-USSR relations, the space race resulting from the Soviet launch of Sputnik and how the seeds of the race riots of the 60s were actually well planted by 1959, but there is also a healthy dose of the unexpected. There is a whole chapter on Motown and how it came into being as a direct result of African Americans drawn to Detroit by the promise of jobs in the auto industry. The origin of indie film is traced (somewhat spuriously, in my opinion) to John Cassavettes' improvisational film Shadows. Finally, at least three chapters were devoted to the evolution of jazz music.

The Beat Generation plays a large role in the book as well. I've always been only mildly interested in this topic - the antics of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg just never really held all that much appeal to me. That said, the chapters about these men were fascinating. It almost made me want to go and try to read Kerouac's On The Road again - a book I have started twice and abandoned twice. I know better than that though. On The Road is just a book I will die not having read.

1959: The Year Everything Changed reminded me a lot of my favorite book on the 70s It Seemed Like Nothing Happened in that it gave a really good overview of the time period, sprinkling in just enough detail to keep me engaged but not so much that I was overwhelmed. It painted the era in wide brush strokes, covering a lot of ground in a short period of time, but I also didn't feel cheated. Ultimately, recent history is hard to write about because we're still too close to it. I would argue that we're just starting to get enough distance between us and the 50s such that our experiences now are not coloring our recollection.

Despite that fact, I really do recommend this book to those that are interested in not just recent history but pop culture too. It may not have really been the year everything changed, but it's certainly a year worth reading about.

Tomorrow's news

So the first day of my time off hasn't been as productive as I would have liked. Granted, it's only 1:00 and I can turn that around pretty quickly. But mostly, I've been content to sit around in front of the TV, which is odd for me because I so rarely do it. The show I've been spending my time with today is the unlikeliest of candidates - the late 90s Saturday night drama Early Edition.

Early Edition has a very simple premise - regular guy Gary Hobson (Kyle Chandler) gets a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times delivered to his door every morning. The catch is that it's tomorrow's paper. He spends most of each episode going around trying to change the bad headlines before the day is out. I always kind of liked this show, although I have to say that I rarely ever watched it. Mostly, I just watched it sporadically if it happened to be on, never deliberately tuning into it. Even by 1997-98, being devoted to a TV show was quickly becoming a thing of the past. I'm not sure how or why that happened, but somewhere along the way, I decided I just couldn't be bothered with remembering when a show was on TV and that pretty much continues to this day. The big exception to this is Glee, and that's because there's three of us remembering when that show is on. So more often than not, I missed it even though, as I said, I did really like it when I watched it.

Thanks to the brilliance that is TV on DVD, I finally have the chance to rewatch all these old shows that I just didn't watch back then. And after watching three episodes of Early Edition this morning, I realized that I had actually underestimated my fondness for this show and also marveled (much like I do when I watch The X-Files on DVD) why I didn't watch it when it was on TV. What sets this show apart from something that hasn't aged as well (i.e. Quantum Leap) is the writing and characterization. Even three episodes in, you can tell the writers are paying attention to character. If someone is going to get a copy of the paper a day ahead of time, it couldn't happen to a more likable guy than Gary. He's just such an "aw shucks" guy that you can't help but root for him. He does good without being a do-gooder. What I especially like is how Gary is just an ordinary guy who has had something extraordinary happen to him. Yes, he stumbles with it, he screws up, but don't we all? As an everyman hero, he works. He's the kind of guy I'd want to be friends with.

That said, his choice in friends is a bit uneven. I take no issue with Marissa, the receptionist at his office (a job he promptly quits after the pilot episode.) She is the angel on his shoulder, providing the moral compass. It's his "best friend" Chuck Fishman that I have serious problems with. I don't remember him from the few times I watched the series and apparently he leaves after two seasons, but his presence, even after three episodes, is beyond grating. His function is clearly to be the foil to Gary, and in so doing, is everything Gary is not. I'm trying to think of adjectives that describe him, but I keep coming back to selfish. He's like a weasel - one that is completely and utterly harmless - but a weasel nonetheless. When it comes to the paper, he thinks of nothing but the potential ways to make money off of it, usually in the form of knowing the sports scores so that he can safely bet on them, the outcome completely secured. But what bothers me most about him is that he's basically a beta-male pretending to be an alpha, whereas Gary has a healthy mix of both. Nothing bothers me more than someone walking around pretending to be something they aren't and the overcompensation that Chuck does in the guy-ness department just makes me shake my head in complete exasperation.

But no one's perfect. Gary does follow in the late 90s tradition of wearing approximately one pound of product in his hair.

An annoying character and excess hair product aside, I'm going to keep on going with this show. The stories are tightly written and almost always satisfying. And there's always a happy ending, which I am a sucker for, regardless of how cool or uncool that might be. One other bonus is the abundance of Chicago scenery. It just makes me want to go live in Chicago! New York City might be fun to visit, but Chicago is probably the only big urban area that I would actually consider living in.

But that's enough TV for now. I'm going to go read till it's time to go pick Anna up from school. Heidi's disappeared into her office and is back in writing mode.

Early Edition is available from Netflix. Sadly, only two of the four seasons are available.

Vacation

As the Howard Dean shirts said back in 2004, it starts here and it starts now.

Tonight starts an 8 day spring mini-break. It couldn't possibly come at a better time for me. So far, I haven't overplanned it and I hope to keep it that way. I have a few house projects planned. I'm meeting Matt & Bess for lunch on Wednesday at the incomparable Fong's Pizza. I'm going to try to get back on the exercise wagon. I want to try to finish both of the books I have going right now. I have an unspecified date with my daughter. And there will be blogging - oh will there ever be.

But most of all, what I want out of this vacation is to get my balance back. I am really out of whack and need to reset myself. If my computer were behaving like I am these days, I would have rebooted it a long time ago. Sadly, I don't have a power button so rebooting a person is not as simple a task as rebooting a computer, but I think this might be just the ticket.

Here's hoping.

Countdown to Chapin

I blogged it way back in February, but the day is nearly upon us. Next Tuesday, Mary Chapin Carpenter's new album, The Age of Miracles, will be released and in anticipation, I've been spending way too much time watching MCC videos on YouTube.

Everyone knows "Down At The Twist & Shout" (a song I feel like she regrets) and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her." But there is so much more to her than her hits - some that people might not know. Here's a couple that really hit home tonight. Carpenter's official YouTube channel has smartly allowed embedding. Sony/BMG however, where a lot of her videos are found, are still so worried about the possibility of piracy that they have not yet figured out that it's free publicity.


"House of Cards" is from her 1994 album Stones In The Road and is, as I have said frequently, the most upbeat song I've ever heard about broken homes and the facade of suburbia cracking. It's also one of the few truly uptempo songs on the album. How Carpenter marries the serious subject matter with the easy country-pop music is just amazing to me. And the video is such a product of its time. It's a wonder to me that anyone still bothers with videos.


I just love "You Win Again." As one of the YouTube commenters said, it's one of the best "I am someone!" songs out there. This video isn't as good as the one for "House of Cards" - but Heidi, you should watch it because it's set in VEGAS BABY. She has a tragic haircut but lyrically this song is just fantastic. My sister always used to mock the part at about the 2 minute mark where she sings "Last night I dreamed we were standing here at the corner of love and heartache." Dramatic? Yes. But who cares? It works.


The video is nothing special, but "Almost Home" is one of my favorite of all of Carpenter's songs. It came in between A Place In The World and Time*Sex*Love - albums that both disappointed for their own reasons - but this sounded the more like classic MCC than we'd had in a while.

I was talking to a friend in e-mail tonight about Carpenter's new album - sound samples are up on Amazon MP3 - and while it sounds like it will be a bit more subdued than its predecessor, it sounds great and I can't wait for Tuesday.

I hold the lock and you hold the Glee

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The future is this moment

I had plans for several more blog posts this weekend. But here it is, Sunday night, and that's obviously not going to happen. So you'll have to settle for a catch-all post.

Anna had her very first equestrian event today at Canterbrooke Equestrian Center here in town. She has been taking lessons for at least a couple years now, but changed instructors last fall. This is the first year that she's really had enough skill to be in a show, and she was VERY excited about it. We got there at 8:15 this morning and, while Anna was on her practice walks on the horse, another horse got off of its tie and ran free. This agitated all the horses in the area, including the one that Anna was riding which started trotting off. Fortunately, Anna had the sense to get it under control, but the instructors in the area were of great help. There's nothing like seeing your kid on a spooked animal and being completely unable to do anything about it. She recovered pretty well, and it taught a valuable lesson about how sometimes, when you're scared, you just have to go through it anyway. Here she is, doing her best "Madonna-from-the-first-set-of-the-Confessions-Tour" (well, sort of.)


Heidi is going to have a table at Capital City Pride this year (June 12th/13th) - representing not just her own books but the whole of Dreamspinner (they paid the table fee!) There's a good chance that another Dreamspinner author will be coming in for the weekend as well, so it should be a good time. Between now and then, we probably should figure out how to procure a tent (Jeff tells me that Sam's Club should do the trick) and we'll have to order some more paperbacks of Heidi's three books (4 by the time Pride gets here.) Anyone in the area is encouraged to come out (no pun intended) and see us! We'll be there both Saturday night and Sunday during the day.

In related news, I was looking for a good shirt to wear to Pride this year. I determined it would be SO much easier if I were actually gay. The shirts that I've found on various web sites are just great. There are so many I would wear, but they just don't apply. I'm a bit annoyed by the "Not Gay (But Supportive)" T-shirt because I feel like it makes too big of a deal out of not being gay. Ultimately, I'll probably settle on something like this or this. Because you know, you can't wear just anything to Pride. I will admit to being slightly attracted to this one, but bromance is so last season.

I have the week of April 26th off of work and it can't come quickly enough. I'm going to play at being my father that week and try to get one little house thing done each day. Nothing big, nothing earth-shattering, but something each day. We're also going to be heading to Iowa City that week to see my sister and the Daddy-Daughter dance is that weekend as well. I'm sure there will be news to report from that.

As I mentioned on Twitter this weekend, I was in the mood to search through my heavily archived Gmail and I put in the search term "TMI." This brought up some amazingly funny results, both in e-mails I sent and in ones I have received from friends. I tell ya, there's a reason I archive everything and delete nothing.

I was doing up dishes tonight and the old Tina Turner song "Paradise Is Here" came on - I hadn't heard that song in forever. It was the live version from Tina: Live In Europe which I have always preferred to Break Every Rule version. There's an energy about the live performance, even though it's a ballad. More recently, Cher's version from It's A Man's World has co-opted Tina's version in my brain. I have no idea if Tina did the song first (I have a feeling that someone else did it before her) but for years, I thought hers was the only version out there. It was a late (and poorly charting) single from Break Every Rule, and up until tonight, I thought the only video out there was the live one (embedding disabled, rat bastards.) Not so.



The future is this moment, and not someplace out there. Words to live by.

More to come this week. I'm going to try to kick my blogging output into high gear.

Musical History in 3 videos

Apparently, this meme has taken LJ by storm (I saw it on Casey Stratton's LJ.) Anyway, how could I resist? I'm going to tweak his categories just a little bit to suit my needs.

Age 4-8
My mom had the Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits 8-track. Even when our 8-track player broke and it played everything at chipmunk speed, I still listened to it.


Age 9-13
This time period belonged to ONJ. This was one of her last big hits.



Age 14-18
How could it be anything but? From early on in this period, but still, a classic.


This would be the point at which Heidi would turn to me and say "...and you turned out straight exactly HOW?" What can I say? I'm complicated.

Feel free to play along if you're so inclined.

Year of 25 Books: #6 - Double Blind

For those of you that are not our Facebook friends our follow us on Twitter, Heidi's third full length novel in 4 months, Double Blind, was released today. Of course, I read this book in its beta draft and then was required had a chance to do the galley proof a few weeks back. It hit the internet a week ago Friday in both paperback and eBook format and already, it's already climbing the Dreamspinner best seller charts (#9 overall today.) I thought since 1) I just got done working overnights and 2) I'm a bit behind in my challenge to read 25 books in the year I would do something on the blog to celebrate its release.

Double Blind is the sequel/spin-off to her well-received novel Special Delivery. When she finished writing Special Delivery, Heidi declared to me that Randy really needed his own story. Randy enters Special Delivery towards the end of its second act, and I'll admit, the first time I read it, I didn't really find him incredibly sympathetic - at least not initially. But I was willing to go with it - her instincts are rarely wrong when it comes to her writing. And so Double Blind was born, written in November of 2009 - the month to which we are used to losing Heidi to NaNaWriMo.

Double Blind opens in Herod's Casino in Las Vegas with Randy watching a video feed of Ethan Ellison at the roulette table. He is betting on black over and over again, and he is also losing over and over again. Randy is well known for his ability to read people, he makes a bet with Billy Herod, the owner of the casino, that he knows exactly what Ethan's story is. But has Randy finally met his match in Ethan?

While the book is, as most of Heidi's books are, a romance between two people - and, more abstractly, four people as Sam and Mitch from Special Delivery are back for an encore performance - it also throws Mafia machinations and Vegas' games of chance into the mix. There's quite a bit of poker in the book, and for those that might be afraid to wade into it because of the poker - trust me, you don't have to worry. The rules of the game are explained very well and in such a way as they contribute to the story. Somehow, even when explaining the rules to a game, Heidi still manages to show rather than tell.

I mentioned that Double Blind is a sequel of sorts to Special Delivery, but what I love about Double Blind is that it doesn't suffer from what I refer to as "The Mummy 2 Syndrome." It resists the temptation to take what worked in its predecessor and dress it up with more bells and whistles until it collapses under its own weight. Rather than rehash the past, what happens is that the familiar shows up and goes off in new directions. Consequently, it's not essential to have read Special Delivery to enjoy Double Blind (although reading the former is highly recommended.)

As I said when I reviewed Libby Drew's State of Mind, I really like it when the main characters in m/m fiction read like real guys as opposed to (as Mrs. Giggles said in her review of Special Delivery) "little girls with a pee-pee." Nothing bugs me more than seeing these men act as if they were somehow not men - as if by virtue of their orientation, their masculinity necessarily has to be ratcheted down several notches. This bounces me out of the story and mostly just makes me angry. So when the characters seem authentically written as men, I'm in. The flip side of that is that the emotional connection between men, regardless of orientation or the presence of absence of sex, is the draw for me in these novels, and that can sometimes seem not-very-mannish. Randy even thinks this during a particularly intense scene with Mitch "What the fuck, guys don’t talk like this, not even gay guys!" But as I have said a million times, although that may be the rule, it doesn't mean that it HAS to be that way. In fact, I feel like we would all better served if we banished the kind of statement that Randy made from our collective definition of masculinity. Men of all orientations have so few examples of real emotional connection and if m/m fiction can provide this, so much the better. Too bad that straight men (who, arguably, could use the education the most) will be the least likely to read it. If anyone ever asks me why I enjoy reading m/m fiction, those are the reasons I cite.

And even if I weren't married to the author, I think Double Blind is a more than capable entry into the genre.