More than you know

I figure that today's a day that a large percentage of the blogosphere will be blogging about Lady Gaga's new video, which I find to be a classic spectacle video in the grand Madonna tradition. But I decided that rather than blog about Gaga, I'd blog about Martika instead.

I don't know what reminded me of Martika today. Actually, scratch that - yes I do. Last night at the Oscars fete we hosted, we were listening to my Genius playlist based on Regina's "Baby Love" and Martika's "More Than You Know" was on that playlist. Martika's one of those late 80s artists that many mistake for a one-hit wonder. Her song "Toy Soldiers" was inescapable in the summer of 1989. In all honesty, I was never terribly fond of that song and it's "step by step, heart to heart" refrain.

I actually owned Martika's debut album for a while before it was sold off in one of many many attempts to streamline my CD collection. True to form, a few months after I sold it, I found myself wishing I hadn't because when it comes to late 80s pop songs, you don't get much better than "More Than You Know." It was the first of Martika's songs that I ever heard even though it took until the third single release (a cover of Carole King's "I Feel The Earth Move") to convince me to buy the album, one listen to it and you'll recognize exactly why it connected to me. It practically screams Dan.



I remember searching like CRAZY for "More Than You Know" back in the Napster days, but it proved so elusive that I almost gave up. I eventually did find it as well as "Toy Soldiers" and "I Feel The Earth Move." I even came across a "remix" (more like an extended version) of "More Than You Know." Really, it was all the Martika I figured I needed.

So why have I spent tonight blowing the last of my eMusic credit finishing out the album? Well, it is pretty solid late 80s pop. Only a couple songs are cringe-worthy - I'm still holding out on "It's Not What Your Doing" and "See If I Care" but yeah, the rest of the album is in my iTunes now. The production, while dated, still somehow manages to sound good and even though Martika's voice is wafer-thin, it's certainly better than Paula Abdul who was churning out #1 hit after #1 hit at that time.

Martika has kind of fallen off the face of the Earth - as a lot of those artists did - but she did make a follow up album that contains the Prince-penned song "Love...Thy Will Be Done" which I know almost completely due to Casey Stratton's cover of it. This video is only a partial, but he nails it.



Saying so makes me sound old, but sometimes I really miss music like this. It was music that made you feel good. When it comes to music, I'm kind of of the opinion if it doesn't feel good, don't do it. Now how many things in life do we really get to say that about?

Portrait of the blogger as a young boy

I've been going through all these old photo albums that my mom has, slowly but surely scanning the pictures in so that they have a little more permanence. One of the albums that she has was from my grandmother's house and has a lot of pictures that I had not seen before. Anyway, this was one of them.


When I think of myself as a young boy, this is how I remember myself. I had a school desk that I would sit at and do math workbooks, if you can believe it! Funny thing is I see a lot of Anna in that photo. I can't imagine getting my child to do something like that, although she does manage to spend a lot of time at her computer (although she's spent more time with the Wii since she got Zelda for Christmas.)

That's the part of ourselves we have to take care of because those of you that know me well probably recognize him in the adult me. I know I sure do.

Decade old Oscar mix

Oscar weekend is nearly upon us. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have seen 60% of the Best Picture nominees which is a sight better than last year when the only Best Picture nominee we had seen was Up. The Oscars are kind of a Big Thing around here. It's probably less about the awards and more about the company and camaraderie that have come to characterize every year's Oscars. I enjoy the core group of people that we always get together with - they truly are family. We are always open to more people coming in (if they dare) because honestly, the more the merrier. I work this weekend but it's day shifts so it should be okay, plus I have Monday off so I won't have to worry about having to get to bed at a decent hour.

All the talk of Oscars got me to thinking about the year that we made an Oscar mix CD for everyone. I don't think we've done that in years, and let me tell you how it's NOT happening this year as I haven't the time to put something together like that. Anyway, I dug through my big old CD wallet that houses all my burned CDs from the early 2000s. I kind of quit burning CDs en masse when I got an iPod, and it's kind of fun sometimes to look through them as they all have cover art thanks to Microsoft Publisher. It didn't take me long to find the Oscar mix CD which was creatively titled "Oscar Mix 2001."


If that is not a motley mix, I don't know what is. A few points:

• The video mix of "What It Feels Like For A Girl" was undoubtedly a Napster of Audiogalaxy acquisition. A full mix of it was released on the CD maxi-single, but the edit is still unreleased on CD.
• The themes from Mommie Dearest and Supergirl are nods to movies that had been viewed at previous Oscar parties as it was our tradition to watch a movie that had been "snubbed" by Oscar.
• Two mash-ups in a row and four Madonna songs? My mixing skills have improved in ten years - that would never happen now.
• Any CD with "Pump Up The Jam" and "The Bad Touch" (do it like they do on the Discovery Channel) can't be all bad, right?
• I still kinda love that Samantha Mumba song.
• It kind of blows my mind that Heidi was probably very very early in her pregnancy with Anna when we made this CD.
  

I think I might have to make this into a playlist for my iPod. But first, I have to get my tax shit together. I'm not remotely ready for our tax appointment tomorrow.

In the Heart of the Sea

Wow, what a difference a month makes. While I read seven books in January, I'll be lucky if I make even half that this month. So far, I've actually finished ONE book, but I am reading four right now, so there might be hope. I'm giving myself the excuse that February is the shortest month of the year, so in addition to screwing up my budgeting by being only 28 days, bringing next month's bills into this paycheck, it also makes it impossible to live up to January's impressive book consumption.

The book that I managed to finish this month is Nathaniel Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. My biggest challenge I had with this book was not referring to it by the name of the blue diamond from Titanic and calling it In the Heart of the Ocean because, as everyone knows, it all goes back to Titanic. As is mentioned in many reviews, the story of how the Nantucket whaleship Essex runs afoul of a angry sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is like an 19th century Titanic story, only without the Celine Dion bombast and nifty CG.

I wasn't sure I would like this book because I was afraid I would drown in a litany of unfamiliar sea-faring terms, indistinguishable characters and dry prose. I should have known better - it did win the National Book Award after all. Any book that can inspire a story like Moby Dick (no matter how impossible Moby Dick is to actually read) can't be all bad. What I got was a story that grabbed you instantly and really didn't let go of you at all. You learn a lot about whaling in the 1800s, the social system that existed on whaleships, as well as life back on Nantucket - which apparently consisted of plaster dildos since the men were gone to sea for sometimes as long as two years. (If you don't believe me about the plaster dildo, believe me, it's in there. Found hidden in a chimney of a 200 year old house on Nantucket. Truth is truly stranger than fiction, folks.)

The thing I really took away from this book is that no matter how bad you think your job is, being on a whaleship in the 1800s was worse. As if keeping a wooden sailing ship seaworthy wasn't hard enough, the killing of the whales really took the cake. I always thought that the harpoon killed the whale. Heck NO. Once harpooned, the whale had to be stabbed repeatedly, close to a cluster of arteries near the lung. Once these blood vessels were pierced, the blood would start blowing out the spout (referred to by whalers as "the chimney's on fire"), covering the crews in the small whaling boats that pursued the aquatic mammals. Harvesting the blubber and oil from the whale was enough to make your stomach turn.

But what really is at the heart of this book (pardon the pun) is the story of survival - or lack thereof - after the Essex is sunk by the whale. With the crew divided into two small whaling boats, they sailed some 3,000 miles around the south Pacific, with precious little food or water. I will always remember The Perfect Storm's gut-wrenching description of death by drowning, and in many ways, the descriptions of starvation and dehydration matched that in terms of detail. Throw in descriptions of the inevitable cannibalism on top of it and, really, how can you go wrong?

This was one of those books that I picked up on a whim and I sure am glad I did. If you're trying to decide between this and Moby Dick, trust me, Philbrick's book may not be as famous, but it's infinitely better. The only thing it was missing was Celine.

Orbits, suns and planets

Winter's Bone was on last night's agenda. It was the last of the Oscar movies we had a prayer of seeing, which would have left us with only Black Swan, The Fighter and 127 Hours unseen (as far as Best Picture nominees go) as we head into next weekend's Oscar show. We bailed and watched last Monday's House instead. Honestly, I think it was a better choice because I'm just not in the mood for depressing movies. Real life, it seems, is depressing enough as it is without actively seeking it out.

The other reason it was a good choice was because it fit into what seems to be an overriding theme of the week. As House gets a bit long in the tooth, the medical mystery of the week is less and less intriguing and I'm more frequently drawn in by the secondary storylines of the episodes. As Heidi pointed out, putting House and Cuddy together really should have ruined the show, but for some reason, it works better than ever. This week's episode was really all about loneliness. The patient, who could inexplicably remember every single memory since puberty had isolated herself due to her inability to forgive anyone for indiscretions. Wilson, still burning from his breakup with Sam, gets a cat rather than jump out into the dating fray again. Taub has failed a pathology certification exam and is sentenced to having Foreman as a tutor, only to realize that, when Foreman extends the offer for him to stay at his place, living by himself in a fleabag motel in the wake of his separation was not the most ideal thing in the world.

A song played at the end of the episode that I had to go and search for the minute the credits rolled. It took a little bit of Googling, but eventually I figured out it was Wilco's "How To Fight Loneliness." I liked it because it was of the indie ilk that seems to always make the unofficial House soundtracks but don't frequently make my own personal soundtracks. I also liked how it could be interpreted in more than one way - the most obvious being that fighting loneliness is all about faking it, putting on a veneer for the world to see while inside you feel exactly the opposite. However, I think the more accurate interpretation (at least for me) is that if you smile all the time, laugh at every joke and fill your heart with smoke, you may actually end up attracting the very things that counter it, bringing more people into your orbit and taking the edge off the lonely feelings that seem to affect many of us, whether we admit to them or not. I think things like Facebook and Twitter, while helping us to connect with each other have, oddly enough, left us feeling more lonely and more out of touch. I can say for myself that there are many times I've thought about taking a week off of both FB and Twitter, just to see how I felt. Maybe I'd focus more on other things? Or would I be pushing away the things that "How to Fight Loneliness" urges you to attract?

Whatever the answer, I'm not convinced that's entirely right either. Really, the best commentary on this sort of thing comes from Stevie Nicks...like that should surprise anyone. It's another song that has been in heavy rotation recently - "Planets of the Universe." It's one of my favorite Stevie Nicks songs, one that has been around forever but finally found a home on Trouble in Shangri-La. It is angry and biting and, naturally, mostly about Lindsey Buckingham. Not having been in a relationship with LB, it has broader meaning for me. When I am at my loneliest, when it feels like the world has shut off just when I'm wanting interaction and there's just no having it, I take an incredible amount of solace in this song. Because here's what Stevie says:

And the planets of the universe
Go their way
Not astounded by the sun or the moon
Or by the day
You and I will simply disappear
Out of sight
But I'm afraid soon there'll be
No light

What it says to me is that we are all just like those planets. Sometimes our orbits cross or approach each other, but in the end, we are all on our own path. The best that we can hope for is to share a sun and that we stay in each other's sight, because ultimately, we have to do it on our own. I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that others will fill that gap that almost everyone feels. Maybe for some, it does. But I think for the vast majority of us, the other people are really like the other planets - in their own orbits. I think the best marriages are made of two people whose orbits intersect but remain their own, bouncing off an energy that encourages them to live their lives while still keeping the other in sight.

In last week's episode of House, House says to the patient who is looking at certain death without a kidney transplant, "it's ok, everyone dies alone anyway." Of course, he stole this from Cher who famously sang "sooner or later, we all sleep alone." I'm not sure if he's right or not, but I don't know if that's the point. I think the best we can do is make peace with it and welcome those that enter our orbits, no matter for how little time it might actually be. I don't think I'm there yet, but maybe someday I will be.

(I double dare anyone to find a blog post that mentions Wilco, Stevie Nicks AND Cher.)

Jackpot

Today was one of those days where I needed to have a label on me that said "Caution: Not for human consumption." It really has been one of those days. Efforts to shake the funk off were mostly in vain, although I will say that the Pat Benatar book Between a Heart and a Rock Place has been pretty good tonic. Not being a huge Pat Benatar fan, it's filled with little tidbits that I didn't know and the writing, while not great, is highly readable. Not surprisingly, it's also made me want to listen to her music.

Heidi made beef stew for supper tonight and it was especially good. After supper, I still had serious munchies so I went looking for something else. I settled on one of my favorite after school snacks - chocolate milk and graham crackers. Boring? Yes, but beyond good. What you do is fill the glass up about 3/4ths full of chocolate milk and dunk the graham crackers. It's always a bit of a gamble because your timing has to be just right. You don't want to the dunk to be too long lest the cracker break off and fall into the milk, necessitating rescue with a spoon.

When I was in junior high, I would come home from school and sit at the kitchen table in front of the black & white TV set with chocolate milk and graham crackers. I would watch half-hour after half-hour of game shows. I kind of miss the 80s game shows but everything changes. The one I most associate with this time of my life was on the USA Network - Channel 7 back in the day. The show was "Jackpot" and it featured 16 contestants, 15 of which were seated and had envelopes containing riddles that were worth varying amounts of money. One of the contestants stood at a podium and selected numbers 1-15 and tried to answer the riddles. One of the envelopes contained the "jackpot riddle" and if answered correctly, the jackpot was split evenly between the two contestants. Much like contestant's row on "The Price Is Right," everyone had a chance to get up to the podium, but many didn't.

As I ate the graham crackers and milk tonight, I got to wondering if "Jackpot" was on YouTube. I shouldn't have even had to ask because of course it is.



As it turns out, the one I watched was a syndicated (and Canadian) version of the game show, the original being from the mid 70s. My father always hated game shows - they were in his list of shows he wouldn't watch ("I don't watch game shows, doctor shows, lawyer shows, police shows, soap operas or situation comedies!"), leaving pretty much "Nova" and "Market to Market" for him to watch. I remember old game shows fondly and the new crop from today just don't have the same feel.

Now, back to Benatar.

Mad about Troi

In the last two days, I've had two completely unrelated events cause me to reference Counselor Deanna Troi of the Starship Enterprise. Honestly, I had kind of forgotten about good old Counselor Troi, but each time I invoked her name it was kind of to make fun of her seemingly relative uselessness aboard the Enterprise. Troi was a half-Betazoid (a telepathic race of humanoids from the planet Betazed), half-human empath and her lineage seemed to make her perfectly suited to be a ship's counselor. But, as Marie Sexton pointed out to me on Twitter last night, her most common line was "Captain, I'm sensing that something is amiss." My response to that was take off the "is amiss" and you'd be more accurate. For some reason, I always liked her, even though her nickname could have been "Captain Obvious." I'm sure that the fact that she was blazingly hot had absolutely nothing to do with the fact.

I always liked the Troi episodes, and there were never ever enough of them for my liking. In many ways, she had a lot in common with my other most-favored-female-sci-fi-TV-character Dana Scully. It never failed, whenever it was a Troi episode, she was always going to be in mortal peril, or at least in serious jeopardy. And since, like Scully, she was a main character and not just a random ensign, you could always rest assured in the fact that she was going to make it out alive, free to be aggravatingly vague (and massively attractive) another day.

My favorite Deanna Troi episode is probably "A Fistful of Datas" in which she, Lt. Worf and Worf's son, Alexander, are taking part in a holodeck simulation of what Troi calls "the Ancient West." And by the Ancient West, she means "the Old West." An experiment that Data was doing causes a malfunction in the Holodeck and suddenly, all the bad guys have Data's face. Not only that, all the safety features of the Holodeck have been overridden and now the holographic bullets are deadly. Surprisingly, this is not a Troi-in-jeopardy episode - she's actually quite crucial to the outcome. In spite of all that, it was the outfit and Western drawl that Deanna put on for most of the episode that sealed it for me. I really need to get that disc of ST: TNG from Netflix and watch it again.

I also always loved the episodes that Deanna's mother, Lwaxana Troi showed up in. Lwaxana was played by Gene Roddenberry's widow Majel Barret and was the closest any character came to being a drag queen on that show. She was outgoing, overbearing and had a not-so-thinly-veiled thing for Picard. My father always hated the Lwaxana Troi episodes, but I'm thinking that it would behoove the makers of ST:TNG to bundle up all the Lwaxana episodes and sell them as a piece, kind of like they did the Borg episodes. But I imagine that before long, all the episodes from TNG will be available for individual purchase through something like Amazon Video on Demand. In essence, that would be the same thing.

Deanna was never very respected on the show, at least not until the final season when she took her bridge officer's training test and they covered up her cleavage. You would think that someone as shallow as I seem to be when it comes to Troi would have found great issue with this, but in fact, I don't. I love the evolution of Troi's look through the seasons, especially when it comes to her hair. What started as the tragic-phallus look in season one transformed into the tumbling curly locks of the majority of the series. Then for the final season and all the TNG movies, she looked positively beautiful, sporting a newly straightened do. An empath never looked better.


Heidi and I tried to watch the first season of ST: TNG a couple years back and we were shocked at how bad it was. Wooden acting, plodding stories, it's kind of amazing it made it through one season, let alone seven. But it did get better and is the Star Trek that I grew up initially hating and then loving. We watched it every night at 10:30PM in my dorm room at Iowa State until we'd seen every episode so many times we wanted to barf.

I have no idea what Marina Sirtis (who played Counselor Troi) is up to now, but I'm grateful that she gave the world the character she did, even if we mostly think of her as sexy but mostly ineffectual. What I wouldn't have given to have seen her traditional Betazoid wedding.

EDIT: You can follow Deanna Troi on Twitter. You know I did it. The internet is truly a wonderful place.

Tall people

Apparently, Friday was Hug a Tall Person Day. Normally, I don't get into these fake, made up holidays but as someone who is fairly tall, I must say that I didn't get nearly the hugs I was hoping for. But hey, win some and lose some. It did, however, get me to thinking about my favorite tall people. Naturally, my 6-foot-tall wife and my tall-for-her-age daughter are far and away my two favorite tall people. But of course, there are some others. Who knows, maybe I would have hugged them today. No particular order, as usual.

1) Robert Wadlow
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, he was the tallest person that ever lived, measuring 8'11" (or something like that.) I can't even imagine being that tall. Anyway, Wadlow grew so tall thanks to an overfunctioning pituitary gland that secreted wild amounts of growth hormone. He only lived 22 years, dying from a cellulitis caused by a leg brace, but even then, he showed no signs that his growing had stopped. I remember Wadlow being one of the subjects of the HBO special Some Call Them Freaks which was on when I was a kid. It kind of freaked me out, as did Wadlow.

2) The Tall Man (from Phantasm)
Jesus Christ, is Phantasm one fucked up movie or what. I've seen it several times and I still don't think I could give a synopsis of the plot. That said, the Tall Man is one scary m.f. He runs Morningside Mortuary and, as near as I can tell, is using human bodies as slaves on his planet (dimension?) He has super human strength and yellow blood and well, what can you say. I hope that Angus Scrimm has squeezed every last ounce of coolness out of playing such a titular character. I think it's probably high time for a rewatch of that entire series.

3) Treebeard
While technically not a person, you can't deny that Treebeard is most certainly tall.

4) Jack Skellington
I never saw The Nightmare Before Christmas until just last year, and I have to admit that it was better than I expected. It scared Anna (of course) but the influence it had on Corpse Bride, which I think is the better of the two pictures, is palpable. I have no idea how tall he is in his world, but man, he seems like he'd be the tallest thing around with legs that just go on and on. I totally should go as Jack Skellington for Halloween some year, it would be a piece of cake.

5) Wonder Woman
Again, don't know how tall she actually is, but she's an Amazon so she must be tall, right? She will forever be Woman, Wonder to Jeff and me (that's pronounced Woman Comma Wonder), and the ultimate potrayal of her will always be Lynda Carter's in the TV show from the 70s. She'll make the Axis fold, stop a war with love, make a hawk a dove and make a liar tell the truth. You're a wonder, Wonder Woman!

So if there are any tall people in your life that you didn't hug, get to it! Even though Hug A Tall Person Day is history, as a wise person once said (Kylie, I think), it's never too late!

Training day

I will be embarking into the great unknown tomorrow morning at 9AM.

On December 20th, Jill Daiker gave me my last haircut. After about 5 years of haircuts, she has left Ames. In January, she got married and moved to Ireland with her husband where the pastures literally ARE greener. I knew that it was coming for quite a while, but the reality of it really didn't sink in until tonight. Tomorrow when I go to get my hair cut, I won't just be able to sit there, confident in the fact that it's Jill and she knows what she's doing. No, instead I'll be in unknown hands, the result of which could exceed my wildest expectations. Or not. Because tomorrow is training day. To be totally honest, I'd rather be in the market for a new doctor because finding someone I trust to cut my hair correctly is not something I take lightly.

Now, before you all jump to the conclusion that I'm kind of dramatic about my hair, let me assure you that, yes, I kind of am. When I was a kid, my hair was stick straight. Then I hit puberty and the curl turned on. It was at that point that I began my lifelong battle with my hair, trying to force it to do things it didn't want to do and be things it wasn't meant to be. My defense for the longest time was keeping it extremely short. I got my hair cut every 3-4 weeks like clockwork. When I first moved to Ames, I went to someone that almost did it right. I put up with it because I really didn't know where else to go. When she moved away, I ended up with Jill. It was a match made in heaven. She knew just how to cut my hard-to-cut curly hair and recently, I've been going as long as 8 weeks between haircuts. Not only that, she was down-to-earth and easy to talk to. The icing on the cake was that we were from the same hometown, so whenever we would meet for my appointment, we would always swap stories of what was going on and who was dating who, etc. etc. Perfect.

Well now she's gone. I e-mailed Jill a couple weeks back asking her to tell me exactly what I need to tell the new person. I'm going there on Jill's recommendation, but I have been spoiled by years of her just knowing what to do. She sent me a description filled with technical terms, which included the highly questionable term "recession line" (she apologized for using it.) Hopefully, Wendy (the new person) will be able to figure it out. I'm a bit nervous because I'm going in at 9AM and I work at noon, so it doesn't give me much time to figure out what to do with it if it comes out terrible. Which it won't. I hope.

I know, I know. It's just hair. That's what I keep telling myself, even though it IS kind of a big deal to me. But more than that, I'm kind of dreading the 30+ minutes of idle chit chat. Finding a new person to cut your hair is a little like dating - if the chemistry is bad, nothing else matters. I'm not interested in all the questions about where I work and what my wife does and how old my child is. It won't be her fault, that's for sure. She'll just be doing her best, which I'm sure will be fine. Jill wouldn't have recommended her if she didn't have full faith in her. She reiterated that confidence in her e-mail.

But mostly, I miss Jill. However, I will try to pick up the pieces because boy do I need a haircut like no one's business.

Thirteen Reasons Why

I read like crazy in January. At the end of the month, I found that I had read seven books. For comparison, when I was doing the Year of 25 Books last year, it took me until April to get the the seventh book. Admittedly, one of seven in January was kind of a cheat because it was so easy to read, but it still counts! So stepping away from the computer and actively trying to read more actually DOES work.

The last book I read in January was Jay Asher's young adult novel, Thirteen Reasons Why. This book had been recommended to me by my friend Bess last year. (EDIT: As it turns out, it wasn't Bess, and I'll be goddamned if I can remember who it was!) All during 2010, I kept meaning to read it but it is constantly checked out of the library and my to-be-read pile was always threatening to fall over anyway. I finally decided to put it on hold at the library and naturally, it arrived while I was reading something else. I swear, that's how it always works out for me. But I did manage to finish it on the last day of January.

High school student Hannah Baker has committed suicide. A week or so later, a box of tapes ends up on the front step of her classmate Clay Jensen's house. On these tapes are Hannah Baker's last "fuck you" to the world. She says that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to kill herself. All of them are people and all of them must listen to these tapes to find out why. They must then pass them on to the next person on the list like a demented chain letter. If the chain is broken, a duplicate set of tapes will be released to the public and well, nobody wants that to happen.

Let me be honest, Thirteen Reasons Why has teenage angst leaking out of the page and all over the floor. And it made me absolutely crazy. I'm fond of saying that teenage angst should be measured in angstroms because that's how big it really is vs. how big it seems. Trust me, I've been there and I know. I have a sneaking suspicion that Asher wanted us to feel bad for Hannah but honestly, I really didn't. I found her to be self-centered and annoying and not as smart as she thought she was. She was not a sympathetic character at all. The things that happened to her were bad, yes, especially what happened with the thirteenth person, but when it was all taken into account and looked at as a whole, was it really worth ending her life over it? I suppose that's the point. It's never as bad as it seems and suicide is never the answer. Hannah's victim mentality just never really jibed with her story and made her seem like a big drama queen. If anything, she was more a victim of her own inner thoughts, ascribing a bigger meaning to events than they really had.

I'm sure this makes me sound like an insensitive boor that hasn't a single iota of compassion for the problems teenagers face these days. Actually, it's the opposite, especially as my own daughter approaches her teenage years. We're still a ways off from it, but it'll be here before I know it and already, I have to bite my tongue a little bit when she comes home from school with something that is the end of the world as we know it because I know full well it's not. I remember feeling the same way as a teenager, except most of my visions of the apocalypse were internal and, like Hannah, I tended to see one psychological drama after another in everything - something followed me well into my 30s.

As I read the book, I wondered if I would have felt any differently about it had I been 17 when I read it. This is, without a doubt, a book I would have lapped up at that age and probably even into my first few years of college. Maybe it's similar to how you perceive Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. If you meet him in high school, he's an anti-establishment hero. A whole lot later than that and he comes off as a big fat whiner. Maybe that's why I didn't connect to this story. If anything, I felt bad for Clay who was incredulous as to his involvement in Hannah's suicide for her really actually liked Hannah quite a bit.

So I guess I'll chalk this up to not being the target audience of a book. For me it's like Carly Simon says, "melodrama never makes me weep anymore."

Roundabout fandom

I've been delinquent in blogging, and I had such a good January! Oh well, I guess it's back to reality as they would say after the opposite sketches on You Can't Do That on Television. I worked this weekend but have tomorrow off so I am really hoping to sleep in. Getting out of bed has been a real feat these days.

One thing I must say though, I have been in a HUGE Kylie mode these days. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the reality of actually going to see her live is just starting to sink in. And in such a small venue! And with such close seats! Yeah, it's a 13 hour drive, but who cares? WE'RE GOING TO KYLIE! Whenever the day starts to go south, I just think WE'RE GOING TO KYLIE and almost immediately, things look better. Much like St. Patrick's Day, it's a ready-made excuse to be happy.

I was getting ready to take off for work yesterday and realized that, to my great dismay, I didn't have the entirety of Kylie's first CD on my iPod. Kylie was among the first 10 CDs I purchased back in late 1988/early 1989 and I purchased it on the strength of two songs, her ubiquitous cover of "The Loco-Motion" (which, oddly enough, was the last vinyl 45 I purchased) and "I Should Be So Lucky" which was a much smaller hit in the U.S. but was one of my favorite songs of the summer of 1988. I was actually quite surprised to see that it was a U.S. Top 40 hit for Kylie which is something that has pretty much eluded her for the vast majority of her career.

I'm pretty sure that the first time I heard "I Should Be So Lucky" was when I saw the video for it on Night Tracks. It was cheesy female pop so how could I resist it? But who was this woman singing this song? And how the hell did you say her name? Well, with an earworm of a chorus such as the one found in "I Should Be So Lucky," it really didn't matter. I remember calling up the local radio station and asking them to play it (I had heard them play it once before.) They did and I still recall the DJ butchering her name, calling her something like Kee-lay Minogue. Once "The Loco-Motion" became a hit, DJs were forced to pronounce her name right.

Kylie is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's got some great singles. But man, the filler is FILLER. It's a Stock-Aitken-Waterman production so consequently, a lot of it kind of blends together. Many of the songs have aged very badly, partially due to the production and partially because they are some of the cheesiest songs you'll ever hear. "It's No Secret" is one song that I feel has especially not stood the test of time although I remember liking it a lot at the time. Most of the songs I enjoy kind of in spite of myself. For example, the song "Love At First Sight" is cute in a late 80s way, but let me count the ways in which the 2001 version from Fever is superior. Mostly though, it's throwaway pop.

It was the last Kylie album I would buy for 12 years. She completely and utterly fell off my radar after that song and then her albums weren't even given US releases. At the dawn of the mp3 revolution, I remember downloading a couple tracks from Light Years off the internet, but it wasn't until "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" took the planet by storm that I picked up Fever and I've purchased pretty much everything since as well as going back and acquainting myself with the stuff I missed, assimilating it into my life's soundtrack. In many ways, it's been kind of fun to have a roundabout fandom, one that started out on the ground floor but then disappeared, only to come roaring back over a decade later.

But as songs from the debut album goes, not much touches the glorious cheese of "Got To Be Certain." I really REALLY hope she sings this live on the tour. And with Kylie, you never know. Unlike Madonna, there seem to be no "off limits" songs and I adore how she embraces her back catalog with such enthusiasm, as if she really does realize that people come to shows to hear songs they know. Not that being Aphrodite heavy will be a bad thing, but I can pretty much guarantee we'll hear a crapload of Kylie classics.

I love this video so much. It's so cheesy but Kylie looks good in the black dress. There are apparently four different edits of this video and the one I always remembered was the one with Kylie on the merry-go-round at the beginning of the bridge. It took me a while, but I finally found it on YouTube. It starts at about 1:56.



Don't mock me because even if you do, I won't give a shit.

The right thing to do

The last 24 hours has been a jumbled up mixed bag of emotions. We headed down to Des Moines last night in less than ideal weather to attend the Public Hearing on House Joint Resolution 6 at the State Capitol. The house was packed as we expected and many, many people were signed up to speak both for and against a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would strip not only marriage rights away from LGBT Iowans, but also make any union that they could possibly aspire for unrecognized in the eyes of the state. Some of the testimony was so uplifting and some of it was downright disgusting. Iowa at its best and worst was on display last night. That said, everyone in the gallery was civil to each other for the most part, despite the fact that we vehemently disagreed on the subject matter. That, folks, is what Iowa is all about.

Both sides got equal time and although she had signed up to speak, Heidi did not get a chance to. She did publish her prepared remarks on her blog which I encourage everyone to read. I was even interviewed very briefly by the Des Moines Register and made the article in this morning's paper. I expressed my doubts that any minds were changed by the testimonies given that night, all the while hoping beyond hope that perhaps some of those that had declared support for the amendment would have a change of heart.

I knew that this wouldn't happen. With 56 Republican co-sponsors, the bill was a shoo-in to pass. What I didn't expect were 3 Democratic representatives to join in with the GOP and vote for the resolution, passing 62-37 with one Republican representative absent. These three representatives are, in my eyes, more worried about saving their own political skins than they are about doing the right thing. When it comes to this issue, those that won't stand up and do what's right are no different from the Republicans.

Conversely, we have our own Beth Wessel-Kroeschell who has fearlessly and consistently led the charge against the amendment. She has a solidly Democratic district so I'm not sure that politically such a stand is much of a risk to her, but my appreciation of her continued support cannot be understated.

Still, despite the fact that the outcome was expected and I knew Beth would be a loud and vocal advocate, I reacted poorly to the outcome. I was sad and depressed after work. I wondered if it was even worth it to go down last night. Clearly, if these legislators could not be moved by these stories, is there anything that will work? Was there anybody that could voice support of the amendment without quoting from the Bible or referencing the Judeo-Christian God? There were times last night that I felt like I was in Sunday School, being forced to listen to Bible verses. It made me want to say a la Eddie Izzard "Corinthians letter to St. Paul, Chapter one, verses one to a million. FUCK OFF!" Tonight, I wanted to throw in the towel because it seemed like it just wasn't worth it anymore. We can't change their minds and they can't change ours. And now that they're in control, what can we possibly do?

But no, that's not what we do. The other side will work tirelessly and now they have momentum so they have no reason to let up. That means we have to keep working and educating and speaking our minds. I've been thinking a lot this week about the phrase "having the courage of your convictions." And that's what it boils down to for me. Talking the talk at this point is not enough, at least not for me. I have to be willing to give up a weeknight to drive down to Des Moines in a snowstorm to be one more body in support of all my LGBT friends. I have to be willing to be interviewed for the paper and not care who might see it. I will likely annoy a lot of people and sound like a broken record but damn it, this is too important.

As Heidi said, my marriage will never be voted on - who are you to say that some people's should be?

Two steps forward, one step back. That's how this kind of stuff goes. I know that ultimately it's going to take an US Supreme Court decision to settle this once and for all. Until then, I will continue to work tirelessly in the ways that I am able. What I will not do any longer is listen to any argument in this debate that invokes religious fundamentalism or the Christian God. At this point, it should be like using Nazis in an argument. You do it, you automatically lose.

This is my last word on this particular chapter but you can bet your last dollar I'll still be fighting for it. The problem with being passionate is you open yourself up to being hurt, but it's better than not feeling at all. And as Carly Simon says, it's the right thing to do.

King Tut

I will admit to not knowing a terrible amount about what's going on in Egypt right now. I'm actually quite eager to ask my native-Egyptian coworker tomorrow what her take on all this is. It seems like the world is just going to hell in a handbasket these days. Even a couple of years ago, that would have caused me great anxiety. Now I can look at it from a comfortable distance, recognize that it's probably a big deal, but then realize that nothing I can do - least of all worrying about it - can alter what is going to happen. If only I had been able to do that in late elementary/junior high when I was sure that Russian nukes would rain down on us in the middle of the night! From the sounds of it, events over there are shaping up to be similar to the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, minus the Islamic component. But then again, who really knows?

It was with great interest that I read about the security of all the Egyptian artifacts in the Cairo Museum, which is not far at all from the epicenter of the riots and protests. I remember seeing a documentary once that mentioned how a lot of the artifacts were not under the most ideal of storage in the museum to begin with due to structural defects in the building, but I could see something like what is currently going on over there causing irreparable damage to things that represent 4,000 years of history. Like many other people, I thought of all the treasures recovered from the tomb of King Tutankhamun as many of those are among the most iconic of Egyptian antiquities.

I remember seeing a touring exhibit of The Treasures of Tutankhamun in 1977 when I was five years old. If memory serves me correctly, my dad had gotten discounted tickets through either his work or somewhere and even though we were living on a teacher's salary in the 70s, we found the money to go. It was showing at the Field Museum in late summer and this trip to Chicago is one of my earliest memories of a vacation. My brother got to stay with my grandparents, but I was lucky enough to get to go. I still remember my dad carrying me around on his shoulder, sharing the earpiece with me so that I could listen to the descriptions of the various items. You couldn't take any photos in the exhibit itself, but I can remember the golden funeral mask like it was yesterday - it was the centerpiece of the exhibit. When another exhibition toured the U.S. in the mid 2000s, stopping again at the Field Museum in 2006, I really wanted to try to get to it again but time and circumstance really didn't allow for it. As it turns out, the previously mentioned golden funeral mask was not on that exhibition, as the Egyptian government has decided it is to fragile to withstand the rigors of international travel. So I guess I'm glad I saw it when I did, as the chances of me getting to Egypt are pretty damn slim.

So far, looters have smashed a couple of mummies and damaged some displays. It was initially thought that the artifacts of Tutankhamun were untouched, but this blog shows that this may very well not be the case. The museum is now under 24 hour armed guard, but who knows if it can withstand angry rioters and looters.

Nothing I say or do can change what will happen, but I can only hope that 4000 years of history isn't flushed down the drain during what looks very much like an Egyptian revolution. All of that history is irreplaceable and if it is lost during this time of unrest, it will be a sad state of affairs.

I will say, that if the golden mask had looked like this when I saw it in 1977, I would have been scarred for life.

Kings of the Dead

The UU Church we attend has a small group that meets Wednesday nights that, if memory serves, used to be called "The Gospel Group." Looking to revamp itself for the New Year, they rechristened themselves the "Heretics & Spirituality Group." One of the co-leaders is my friend on Facebook and she encouraged me to attend based on my zombie interest as they were going to be discussing zombies and spirituality. Only if you threw in a trashy 90s Eurodance beat could you have something better suited for me. We have two books we're working from right now and one of them is the book I just finished today, Tony Faville's Kings of the Dead.

Kings of the Dead is the story of the zombie apocalypse. Yes, I know. You're thinking "Dan, how many stories of the zombie apocalypse can you possibly read?" My answer to that question is "how high can you count?" The thing is, despite the fact that all the zombie novels and movies tell more or less the same story, it's how they tell it and the specifics that matter. The source of the zombie apocalypse this time around was the H1N1 vaccine. I'll admit that when I stood in line for mine in the fall of 2009, I couldn't help but think "This is how the end of the world in the movie I Am Legend came about! The cancer vaccine turned everyone into zombies!" The use of H1N1 was both effective and timely and clearly Faville is not the only one with that idea as a book called Mad Swine is on my to-be-read list for the year. Most of the normal zombie rules apply. These are reanimated dead people that shamble around slowly. A bite will infect you and they can only be killed with a shot to the head. As everyone knows, that's the cardinal zombie rule - kill the brain, you kill the ghoul.

The story is told in the form of 91 journal entries by a guy named Tony. It was an interesting way to tell the story but was ultimately rather limiting. Apart from a few journal entries made by others in the group, Tony's is the only head we're allowed inside of. And he's not a terribly sympathetic character - at least not initially. Also, the journal entry way of telling the story made it hard to fit in what I lovingly refer to as "hot zombie action." The zombie encounters were necessarily told in the past tense and lacked the immediacy of a third person omniscient that most of the zombie novels I've read up to this point have adopted. I also found that it made it hard to really flesh out the characters. These are people we were supposed to care about but it was hard for me to care about them when I didn't really feel like I knew them that well.

There was also a tremendous amount of time spent on the weaponry used to fight the zombies. Whenever we got to the parts that involved detailed descriptions of weapons that were being plundered, be it from an abandoned military base, a sporting goods store or wherever, I found myself going "blah blah blah blah guns blah grenades blah blah bazooka." That's certainly not the fault of the author. Tony was a gun guy, so it was only natural that he would be interested in and have a great deal of knowledge regarding firearms and other weapons. I just didn't find it that interesting and certainly not essential to my enjoyment of the story. But do remember that this is coming from a guy that has never even held a gun and has a hard time keeping track of who frequently feels like the most clueless person watching a James Bond film.

Kings of the Dead was written as a NaNoWriMo book (hey, I know another book that was written as a NaNoWriMo book that ultimately got published!) and was self-published by Faville, although it has recently been picked up by Permuted Press which is apparently a house that specializes in allowing you to read about the end of the world to your heart's content. Apparently, Faville has taken a lot of heat for being self-published but you know what? This is a changing world and it looks to me like publishing is changing as fast as the music business has and clearly, the old rules of distribution really no longer apply. I applaud him for writing a book and getting it out there, which is more than most of us will do in our lifetime.

Kings of the Dead had a great beginning and end, but the middle was a bit of a struggle for me. I had a hard time staying engaged with the book and I'm not sure I would have finished it had it not been for the Heretics & Spirituality. But to be fair, I might not have even heard of it had it not been for them either. So I guess it's a three-star book for me. A fairly decent entry into the large amounts of zombie fiction that is out there now but not one that I will be rereading. That said, I'd be open to reading another of his books. Recommended for zombie fans only.

Dating in the cell phone age

Heidi and I had made plans last week to hire a babysitter and go out on a real live date tonight. Originally, we were going to go have dinner and then hit one of the Oscar nominated movies. Then we both slept for shit last night (I probably got 2 hours) and despite the fact that both of us napped prior to going out tonight, we nixed the movie and just decided to go have dinner. We've been like ships passing in the night this week as I've been gone every single night and the idea of sitting in a dark theater watching some depressing Oscar movie when we could be talking to each other was not all that appealing.

The babysitter we have is the older sister of one of Anna's friends and Anna just LOVES to have her come over. I was always a bit less excited to see the babysitter when I was growing up. I remember one time when I was probably 7 or 8 that I cried so inconsolably that my dad ended up coming back from wherever the were (I'm pretty sure it was the Pin Oaks restaurant in Carroll, now defunct) to try to get me calmed down. Naturally, age and the advent of a babysitter that brought Atari cartridges when she came over warmed me up to the whole concept of a babysitter. Then I got old enough to babysit my siblings and we never had another sitter. But Anna is just like Heidi in the respect that she loves having the babysitter come and requires engagement the entire time. Fortunately, Morgan doesn't mind a bit.

Anyway, before we left, we wrote our cell phone numbers on the board in the unlikely event that she would need to get a hold of us. They are also programmed into Anna's new cell phone - a Christmas gift from my parents. To my great surprise, my phone range not once but twice tonight. Both times it was not the babysitter. Instead, it was Anna, calling from her cell phone. The first conversation went something like this:

Anna: Hey Dad. I was playing Zelda on the Wii and my ears got red. They went back to normal but now they look pink. Should I be worried?
Me: Well, what exactly were you doing?
Anna: Well, I was jumping up and down trying to kill this spider on Zelda and was all active.
Me: Well, there you go. Do your ears hurt?
Anna: No.
Me: I think you'll be fine.
Anna: Well, I just wanted to call and make sure.

The second one was even less critical.

Anna: Dad, hey, the Wii Nunchuck isn't working and even though we tried to tell the game to quit, it wouldn't do it.
Me: Did you try unplugging the nunchuck from the Wi-mote?
Anna: No, I didn't. But we were getting kind of tired of Zelda anyway so I think we'll just do something else.

Honestly, I didn't really mind the calls. They were kind of cute and caused us to muse about how heaven forbid if she really DID have something to worry about. It struck me as so different from when I was growing up - like so many things are. Calling is just so easy now, whereas back then, you had to call the place where the parents were, then they would have to be paged or whatever and God help you if it wasn't an emergency.

I think a part of it was that Anna just likes using her new cell phone, but I think next time Heidi and I go out on a date, we'll talk to her first about what good reasons for calling are. Note: the babysitter never once called us, but I certainly don't blame her for not being able to talk Anna out of it. That child has an iron will. Heaven help me when she's a teenager.

(Of note, this is the 1,500th post on this blog! YAY! That is what I call perseverance. Or maybe just plain stubbornness and an undying desire to hear myself talk.)

Solid gold camp

I was thinking about Dwayne's comment in the Dionne Warwick post and how her 80s career was helped immeasurably by her appearance as the host of Solid Gold. I watched Solid Gold quite a bit when I was a kid growing up in the 80s and I had completely forgotten that she had hosted. I, for one, remember Marilyn McCoo hosting and too bad it didn't resuscitate her career like it did Warwick's. Anyway, because my brain works this way, it got me to thinking about Wayland Flowers and his puppet Madame that also were on Solid Gold. A quick YouTube search of "solid gold madame" turns up a ton of videos from her time on the show. I was also reminded of her show "Madame's Place" which ran briefly in the early 80s. Who knew frickin' Corey Feldman was on that show?

As camp goes, you don't get much campier than Madame. Nowadays, there would be no secret of Flowers' sexuality but back then I'm sure it was not mentioned in polite circles but I highly doubt that Madame's humor was meant for the polite (or the easily offended or the faint of heart.) I was surprised to find out that Flowers actually cleaned up Madame's saucy, suggestive language for TV - what would a REAL Madame performance be like?

Flowers died from HIV-related cancer in 1988, but he lives on - like everyone will - on YouTube. I had read once that Madame was buried with him, but as it turns out, that's not true. In any event. here's Madame with Bea Arthur talking about Rock Hudson and how he would never EVER take advantage of a woman. It's quite possibly the campiest thing I've ever witnessed on the entire internet.

Her love is stronger than the universe

I am on a Dionne Warwick kick these days that kind of came out of nowhere. Actually, it didn't come out of nowhere - it was the result of me looking for Gladys Knight songs on eMusic and Dionne Warwick was a "similar artist" which I subsequently clicked on and well, the rest is history. I also blame my mom because I remember listening to her 45 of "I Say A Little Prayer" when I was growing up, probably sitting at a desk doing math problems or something. Anyway, I am not a Dionne Warwick fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a couple greatest hits collections, one that has all her 60s Bacharach/David songs and then another that has more of her 80s adult contemporary hits. I think a Dionne Warwick studio album would be pretty superfluous - she's mostly defined by her hit singles.

Anyway, one of my favorite Dionne Warwick songs is 1982's "Heartbreaker." The album of the same name was produced by Barry Gibb, who worked music gold on so many artists in the 80s - Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross - when he found his own singing career in a bit of a shambles after the disco backlash of the late 70s/early 80s. Anyway, my favorite part of "Heartbreaker" is the chorus because you can hear that trademark Bee Gees falsetto. It makes you forgive the horrendous album cover.



And seriously, those cliched 80s synthesizers do my heart good. Barry Gibb also recorded his own (inferior) version to serve as a demo of sorts to Warwick and then performed it with his brothers in a live concert that was probably on VH1.

The only other thing I have to say about Dionne Warwick is I can't think of her song "I'll Never Love This Way Again" without thinking of an autistic kid that was at a summer day camp at which Heidi served as a counselor very early on in our marriage. I had it on a mix tape in our car and every time it came on, he would sing it at the top of his lungs. It was also rather rudely used on Rush Limbaugh's radio show as the introductory music for AIDS updates. Asshole. I have a soft spot for it as it's one of those late 70s adult contemporary songs that my mom loved (and probably still loves) so much and I absorbed by osmosis. Little did I know that 30 years later, I'd still be listening.



And so ends the first (and likely last) post about Dionne Warwick on this blog.

Insignificant Others

I haven't read any Stephen McCauley in a long time. The only other book of his that I've read is The Object of My Affection. I read it after I saw the movie starring Jennifer Aniston and the always-great and guy-I-wish-I-were Paul Rudd. The movie version was a cute little romantic comedy with just the right amount of bittersweet infused. Just thinking about it makes me want to watch it again. The book was another animal altogether. It is a well written book and certainly worth the read, but I was in no way prepared for the incredible melancholy that inhabited the book. Even for someone like me who is ok with melancholy and bittersweet, it was too much and mostly made me depressed. But I saw his latest novel, Insignificant Others, on Amazon and thought that I'd give it a whirl. Surely, it couldn't be as depressing as The Object of My Affection was.

Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong.

The plot of the book revolves around two coupled gay men, Richard and Conrad and their "insignificant others." Richard, the narrator of the story, is a 50+ man that is obsessed with fitness and oddly matched with the narcissistic and moderately younger Conrad. In the book's first chapter, Richard discovers a text message to Conrad from someone with an Ohio area code. Conrad, whose business requires him to travel quite frequently, has been making more and more trips to Columbus, OH. The arrangement of their relationship allows for dalliances, but they are never allowed to become anything that would threaten the main relationship. As it turns out, this Columbus rendezvous of Conrad's is just that.

Not that Richard is blameless, sitting in the middle of the room with a halo over his head. He has an insignificant other as well in the form of closeted married guy Ben. They meet for "long lunches" every now and then at a leased apartment that Richard has close to his work. The trouble is that, despite his assertion that Ben is an insignificant other, now he's beginning to wonder.

I made a big deal to Heidi about how this book was sad and yes, it really was. I was really caught up in the story and the characters but I couldn't shake the feeling of despair that hung over them as well. All the relationships seemed so unsustainable. They were fraught with all the problems that go along with intimate relationships and then complicated by the insignificant others. Richard was also an eternal pessimist, always able to find the flaws in everything. He assuaged this part of himself by keeping an "at least..." list i.e. "at least I'm not doing this...or that..." He had a lot of wry observations in life that were depressing but also rang at least slightly true. Although perhaps the only reason they rang true was because I was stuck in Richard's head which wasn't always the best place to be.

The character for whom I felt the most empathy was Ben, the closeted married man that Richard was having an affair with. This is impressive because how can someone whose life is basically one big deception of those he claims to love - his wife, his children - be sympathetic? He's basically a shithead for doing this, right? Well, I don't think it's quite as simple as that. No one knows him completely - not his friends, not his family, not even Richard (although he probably comes closest.) Basically, his life is a well-constructed lie built on sinking sand. By compartmentalizing himself so much, he's living as less than a whole person and living like that will eventually catch up with you. It's this kind of thing that I mean when I talk about how we're the sum of all of our parts, even the parts we don't like. Yes, he's a shithead for lying to his wife and deceiving her all these years, but the way his character is drawn in the book, you really can understand why and you end up really feeling for him.

The book wrapped up tidily at the end after I had been afraid there would be no resolution at all, especially the Richard/Ben relationship. Ultimately, this book was less than adept at balancing bittersweet with just plain bitter and for that reason it loses points with me. I was still very engaged in the book and the characters even though most of them were not very redeemable, but I was kind of glad when it was over. I'm not sure I could have taken any more melodrama.

I simply MUST find something happy to read.

Karaoke as bravery

A few weeks back, I watched several people that I follow on Twitter tweet about being at a karaoke event in Des Moines. I remember trying to figure out if this was a big thing or if it was just a bar that was having karaoke that several people happened to be at. I have never done karaoke - not even one time, but it's one of those things that I wouldn't mind doing some day.

For me, karaoke is one of those things that would require me to be extremely brave to do it. It's not that I've never sung in public before, it's just that the last time I did that I was in 6th grade and playing Santa in the school Christmas play. My voice hadn't changed yet so it sounded like Santa was a eunuch. I remember having to sing a song about a Super TV Set that would broadcast Santa's travels to the entirety of the North Pole. There was also a part that required me to pretend that I was on the phone and I put the microphone up to my ear instead of my mouth before I started talking. I was mortified because, naturally, that was the performance that was recorded and that we had to watch in music class after the program was over.

I sing in the shower, in the car and around the house doing chores. Anna and I take turns singing on Guitar Hero. Heidi always says that she can tell I'm doing well and feeling good by the amount of singing in falsetto that I do. It's true. I don't know that I sing particularly well, but it's fun. I don't really remember my dad singing around the house when I was a kid. He famously didn't like to sing hymns in church or anything like that. I want my daughter to have as one of her childhood memories a dad that sang in the car with her or around the house or whatever.

I've toyed with the idea of going out to do karaoke many times. In 2003, I went to visit a friend in Cincinnati and that was totally on the agenda. Well, I got sick with a cold toward the end of the trip and for a million other reasons, it didn't work out. My friend Jess, whose bravery I admire on a nearly daily basis, does karaoke quite a bit. She's a really good singer though and even does it in places outside the confines of her own home. She has even invited me out with her several times when she has gone but for whatever reason, it just has never worked out.

I always used to say that I would need to consume a considerable amount of alcohol to do karaoke. The trouble with that is that alcohol may be liquid courage but it's also liquid brain mush. It also causes me to talk non-stop and for those of you that know me, I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. How can you be expected to do a decent job singing a song when you're sloshed? You can't. It's just impossible. Some people would say that performing a song badly is the point of bar karaoke. I would disagree. If you're going to do something, why deliberately do it badly? Even the people that made Mommie Dearest thought they were making a classic - that it turned out to be a camp classic is beside the point. And if I ever do karaoke, I would hope to God that it sounds something like the episode of House where Chase, Foreman and House all sing Gladys Knight & The Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia" at a karaoke bar. The actual video from the show is fucking embedding disabled, but watch it here (really, do it. It's worth it and essential viewing.) Here's the audio of it that is embeddable. Chase is Gladys and Foreman & House are the Pips.



I suffer from no delusion that I would sound as good (or look as good) as Chase does in that clip. But I'll admit it - there's a Chase in me dying to get out. I push him to the side or squash him down with relative frequency, because it doesn't fit in with the image I've cultivated over the years. But you know what? Fuck that. Heidi and I have been talking a lot about bravery lately and really, to be brave means you really have to take the chance. I may be pushing 40, but I'm not dead yet.

The thing I've learned over the last year is that, like it or not, I am the sum of all my parts, even those parts I would rather bury in a tub of cement a la True Blood. The trouble with that is that even when you do that, it's still a part of you. Better to just embrace it all and be a whole person. I would love to not have to deal with anxiety issues. I would love to be more outgoing and less tentative. The fact of the matter is that those things are who I am. Period. That doesn't mean I can't change them, but at this point in my life, those things are pretty hard wired. And if there's something like a songbird version of Chase ramming around in me, I'd best pay attention to it as well as the parts of me that I'm accustomed to dealing with.

So who's with me? Who among you are ready to be the Pips to my Gladys Knight? I know that if my brother Ryan were here, he'd totally do it. But he's been singing the Pips' part of "Midnight Train To Georgia" for the better part of a decade now. Now that I've done shots, maybe I need to cross karaoke off my list as well. And who knows? I might just like it. And then again I might not. Regardless, it's called living and I intend to be doing more of that.

One more gay diva down

We secured tickets to Kylie's live show in Dallas, TX this morning. I had put in for time off the week of the show when we were first debating it (glad I did, I narrowly beat another time off request and would have likely been denied.) We have friends in Dallas where we can likely stay while we are there and if you put in one day of serious driving, you can get there in a day from here. I was still not completely sold as I was doing my required waffling on whether or not we could afford it and whether or not I wanted to travel that far. I had concocted all sorts of scenarios that would be deal breakers - shitty seats being the biggest one. Let me tell you, I'm not driving all the way to Dallas just to sit so far away that I can't even see the stage.

We decided this week, after passing on the kylie.com presale that we would give it a try and see what we got. If it worked out, great. If not, we were just going to chalk it up to it not being in the cards this time around and we wouldn't be too disappointed.

Tickets went on sale this morning at 10AM and despite discussing this with Heidi last night, she completely forgot. Clearly a higher force was at work because I woke up & looked at the clock saying 9:52AM and I leaped out of bed, a man on a mission. On my way downstairs, I told Heidi "Kylie tickets in T-minus 5 minutes!!" I loaded the page to get ready. 10AM passed and still no opportunity to buy tickets. Refresh, refresh, refresh. I always hate the purchase of concert tickets, it's high stress when really, the 2010 version of buying tickets beats the heck out of how we did it for our first Madonna concert with everyone on the phone a half an hour prior to tickets going on sale hoping you didn't get off hold before the on-sale time.

When I finally got in and put in my request and front and center (but back a ways) reserved seating came up, we wasted no time. At $80 a ticket, it was a bargain. The cost of three of us to go is slightly less expensive than my one ticket to The Confessions Tour in Vegas in 2006. So YAY. We're going. I guess we were in that 25% chance of going that I predicted. This will be Anna's very first "grown up" concert so she's especially excited.

I'm excited to go to Dallas. My blogging friend Robbie, who I met up with in 2009 in L.A., will be at the show as well. It'll be fun all around. And we're going to try to sneak in a trip to see Heidi's sister in McAllen, although that will require me being able to get just a little bit more time off work.

So with Kylie, I can add one more gay diva to the list that I've seen live (and if there's any doubt about her being a gay diva, one need look only at the fact that LOGO TV is cosponsoring the American leg of the tour.) That got me to thinking about how many and which gay divas I've seen live. With the help of my friend Kyl (who I will be seeing Lady Gaga/Scissor Sisters with in March) we came up with this list.

1) Madonna (x4 - 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008)
2) Cher (x2 - 1990, 2002)
3) Dolly Parton (x2 - both in 2008)
4) Deborah Harry (2007)
5) Olivia Newton-John (2005)
6) Whitney Houston (1991) - admittedly a bit of a stretch, but Kyl thought she qualified pre-crackhead. I would agree.)
7) Stevie Nicks (with Fleetwood Mac x2 - 1987 and 1997)
8) Cyndi Lauper (x2 - opened for Cher in 2002 and then on the True Colors tour in 2007)
9) Lady Gaga (coming soon, March 2011)

Who's left? Well, there's Donna Summer, Diana Ross, Janet Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Bette Midler, and of course, Streisand. But as Kyl said, you have to be willing to sell a kidney for a ticket. Also, I can't help but think that a Streisand show would be a bit of a let down as I'm used to "spectacle" arena shows and the thought of her standing in place all night is not super-appealing. But if she lets loose with the F-bomb, I'm totally there. Of those listed, the one I would pay to see in a heartbeat is Donna Summer, but who knows.

Did we miss any? It doesn't really matter because we are going to Kylie!! The Sam Keller in me is over the moon (because you know she got the Kylie fanaticism from somewhere.)



(all the footage is from other tours but is pretty indicative of what to expect from the Aphrodite Tour!)