Balloons and beavers and record players

I have a fondness for old vinyl album covers - there's just something about them that a CD cover or (God forbid) an mp3 album artwork file cannot capture. I'm usually not one for "holding the music in my hand" but I will admit to loving the feel of a 12" record album in my hand. Perhaps it's because I had so many of them when I was growing up. I bought vinyl long after it was on it's way out - the last vinyl album I bought new was Bananarama's The Greatest Hits Collection in late 1988 - and even then, I'd gone almost exclusively to cassette tapes. Christmas of 1988 saw the arrival of the CD player so who in the hell needed vinyl?

I've turned a lot of the vinyl albums I have into artwork in my home office (see the post "Vinyl trim") but that's left me with a lot of vinyl albums that I can't play. Usually this is no big whoop as most everything I have on vinyl I have on iTunes. But for some reason, I've really had a hankering recently to get a record player and play some of those vinyl albums. I haven't had a record player in 20 years and although vinyl's making a comeback, I just could never justify the expense of buying a turntable to be able to play records again.

Yesterday we went down to Indianola where our friend Jeff was hosting a party for the National Balloon Classic. He has a front row seat to the Mass Ascension of the balloons. The whole thing sounds vaguely religious to me, but trust me, with the company we were keeping, it was as irreverent as ever. Last year was highlighted by the presence of the Beaver Balloon.

Attack of the killer beaver!!

This year, the Beaver Balloon was back, but it turned it's back on us. You can see it in this photo - it's the lowest balloon about 2/3rds of the way across the picture.


That's right, we were snubbed by the beaver (ironically enough, also the title of my college memoirs.) As we said, if there are any beaver jokes that are not inappropriate, we're not interested in knowing them.

But more than that, Jeff was having a garage sale of sorts - selling stuff he had painted as well as some of his personal belongings. One of those was a complete stereo system WITH TURNTABLE (and speakers) for a lousy 20 bucks. I hemmed and hawed as per my usual and then ultimately purchased it after he assured me that the turntable still worked. I set it up today and have not turned on iTunes all night. Here I sit with 21,000 songs in iTunes and I'm happy as a clam to be sitting listening to record albums, just like I did 30 years ago. No, the sound isn't like it is from a CD or an mp3, but there's just something about it.

Click to make it bigger! It's Stevie Nicks!

I've also listened to Barbra Streisand's Stoney End and it's just made me more determined then ever to get more Barbra vinyl. If nothing else, I need to get the People album and probably Simply Streisand which are both albums I had on CD in college, in addition to Stoney End. Jeez, having had all those albums in college, it's not surprising no girls wanted to date me! (not really true, but boy I sure couldn't see through the fog of self-doubt and low self-esteem enough to see it.) It's truly amazing my wife said yes when I asked her to marry me.

Barbra crimped her hair and went down the stoney end. She never wanted to go down the stoney end!

There's something about vinyl, especially the really old albums, that just seems so right. The acquisition of the turntable for the rock bottom price of twenty bucks makes me want to head to ZZZ Records in Des Moines and see if I can score some Joni Mitchell vinyl, or Laura Nyro's Eli & The Thirteenth Confession. As I've said before, if there's an album that begs to be played on vinyl, it's that one.

So everything old is new again. The only thing I wish it did is keep track of play counts. I guess you can't win 'em all. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll listen to some Bananarama. ON VINYL.

Doing something right

Those of you in my most intimate circle may (or may not) know that the last couple weeks have completely kicked my ass. Work's been stressful, there was the whole tire debacle, and then there's other shiz going on that I'm not going to go in here. But when you combine it all with the fact I'm just starting to burn out after having taken my summer vacation in May, there's no denying that I've been going through a bit of a rough patch. The other night when Heidi and Anna came out to have supper with me at work, Heidi must have really noticed it and I told her that I'd "talk to her when I got home." Her eyebrow arched and she wondered if something specific had happened and I assured her no but that I just "wasn't feeling very good about myself."

Anna must have heard me say this because this is what I found when I came home from work that night, exhausted and spent.


As Heidi pointed out, I shouldn't feel bad about myself because I had a hand in helping mold this child who knows enough at age nine the thing that I still frequently forget at age 39 - always like yourself! Much of that for me is an old pattern that I'm working on changing, but still, I'm glad that I've helped arm her with that kind of internal monologue.

So here's to a reboot today. We're going down to Indianola for the National Balloon Classic and good times with friends and may-as-well-be-family. I slept till 10:30 and skipped my cardio because clearly, I needed the unconsciousness more than the aerobic workout. There's always tomorrow.

The Book of Awesome

I don't even know where to start with The Book of Awesome. I guess the best place to start is how I acquired this book. My friend Mary sent it to me in the mail last week, thinking I might like it. This isn't the first time that Mary has recommended a book to me, but it is the first time she's ever given me the book she was recommending, with the instructions to pass it on to someone else that might enjoy it when I was done with it.

I can see why you'd want to pass it on after reading it. It's not really rereadable - once you've read through Neil Pasricha's list of awesome things, you really don't need to go back and read them again. My understanding of how this book came to be is that it grew out of the blog 1000 Awesome Things which Pasricha started in order to chronicle the little awesome things in life that often get taken for granted but are, nonetheless, pretty fantastic. When I started the book, I rolled with it and enjoyed it, but he started to lose me about 20 pages in when I realized that every single entry is going to end with the the one word sentence (in all caps, no less) - AWESOME!! And it wasn't long before his writing style started to irritate the hell out of me. You can tell that these things are lifted from a blog as you can pretty much hear Pasricha talking when you read the various items. It was as if the words just poured out of him without so much as a second read through to make sure that his writing didn't sound douchey. Actually, I take that back because he must have gone through it a second time so that he could put in random bold face type that made little to no sense.

I think that's my biggest trouble with this book. Even though I have never met the author and who knows, if we did meet or we had a history together or something, I might feel differently, but this book made me feel like there's no way on God's green Earth I could handle being in his presence. I got this image of him sitting at his computer, rubbing his hands together and laughing uproariously at his latest play on words, made up word (gasholenorememberitis is one that springs to mind), or appropriating of dude culture in his writing. By the end, I was seriously skimming because I just couldn't handle him being not as funny nor as clever as he thought he was being.

*sigh* I kind of feel like an asshole for not liking a book that is all about celebrating the little things in life that are great. There's no doubt that many of the things he mentioned are awesome. I love the cool side of the pillow, finding old mix tapes and let me tell you how I watched The Price Is Right religiously every time I was home sick. However, to be frank, if I hear anyone use the word "awesome" for a while, I may start twitching. I stand behind my assertion that it's the writing style of the author that turned me off to the book. That, and the fact that all these entries are still posted on his blog so you could read them for free on the internet and not content with 36 million blog hits, he cashed in on his free material by putting it in book form. I can't say that I blame him, but it still kind of pisses me off.

Maybe I'm just being cranky. I have to admit that I'm mildly intrigued by the parody The Book of Awful, but even I'm not that cynical. Plus it might be written in a style to approximate his and really, I can't handle that!

(Sorry Mary - if it hadn't been for his writing style, I would have totally eaten this book up!)

Seven songs from my summer (so far)

The one good thing about having a computer crash that requires you to completely reinstall everything is that, even though you lose your iTunes play counts *sob*, you find yourself in the unique position of totally shaking up the Top 25 Most Played playlist. Some of the most interesting songs are in mine right now - the top song has a mere seven plays. So I thought, what the hell, let's do another seven songs post. They're always fun and if you aren't careful, some of you might find a present in your inbox. Here we go.

1) Carrie Newcomer / Before & After
Very much in the vein of Mary Chapin Carpenter, this is so much more a fall song than a summer song. If you listen closely, you'll even hear MC squared on harmony vocals.
Choice lyric: I've lived on fumes and religious corn flakes.



2) Madonna /Run
If the "Broken" demo didn't exist, it'd be the hands down best Madonna demo out there. A nice mix of William Orbit blips and bleeps with a very rocky guitar. Straight forward vocals by Madonna make this better than anything on Hard Candy. I read somewhere once that Madonna's voice is remarkable only in its familiarity and I feel like that's so true here.
Choice lyric: Don't ask me to slow down/I don't wanna go down/You won't catch me lookin' back/Coz people like me don't live like that.



3) Annie / Me Plus One
Probably my favorite song that spells (which is a post all its own), I've never cared much for most of Annie's other stuff, but this is perfection.
Choice lyric: Mrs. D, Mrs. I, Mrs. F-F-I, Mrs. C, Mrs. U-L-T. If ever there's a girl that could rock your world/Then that girl sure is me.



4) Blondie / Love Doesn't Frighten Me
My favorite song on Blondie's fanfuckingtastic new album (I like it 100 times more than No Exit and The Curse of Blondie combined), I still can't get over how little Debbie Harry's voice has aged.
Choice lyric: All this nothing is real something/It's time spent.



5) Duran Duran / (Reach Up For The) Sunrise
I have gone on record in several places that Astronaut is my favorite DD album - heresy in DD circles, I'm sure. But there simply isn't a bad song on that album and the first single is very indicative of the album as a whole.
Choice lyric: You can touch the sunrise/Feel the new day enter your life.



6) Erick Macek / Aries Man
I have my friend Bess to thank for introducing me to Erick Macek. He's kind of a cross between Jason Mraz and Eric Hutchinson and although that's kind of the last thing this world needs, his stuff really works for me. I downloaded this on a whim because of the astrology reference. Now if someone would just do a song called "Gemini Man."
Choice lyric: You gotta learn to be patient/And feel the pride/Cuz I'm an Aries Man inside.

7) Chesney Hawkes / The One & Only
Total soft spot for this song. It feels like an 80s song even though technically it's 90s. We never heard from Chesney Hawkes again, but this was enough for me. I always love a song that makes you feel good and this one does it for me. I remember listening to it during my darkest moments trying desperately to make myself believe it. And what do you know? It finally worked.
Choice lyric: No one can be myself like I can/For this job, I'm the best man.

Flat tires update

A quick follow-up to last night's car shenanigans.

The car is fixed. 443 dollars, two new tires and an alignment later, it's like the nothing never was. Funny thing is I just got a bonus at work and although it's not poetic and exactly 443 dollars, it does put a serious dent in it so it proves the adage "easy come easy go" quite nicely.

In any event, it's done. As my father says, "don't get money ahead, because a kid will get sick." Or you'll run your car into a median and trash two tires.

Double flat

I have to be up at 5AM tomorrow but this story must be told - partially because it's too good not to tell and partially because I have to own it in order to stop the negative monologue that is trying like crazy to go at full bore.

The short version is that I went to Hy-Vee tonight to pick up some milk and coffee. I added some Diet Rite Zero to the list as well, then swung by Hy-Vee Gas and got my 8 cent per gallon discount. After that, I headed northbound on Grand Avenue and that's where the fun started.

Somehow, some way, I ended up hitting the median right by the Ames Veterans Memorial and flattened both my driver's side tires. Like most car accidents, looking back on it is like looking through etched glass into a foggy night. I can't, for the life of me, figure out HOW I did it. Clearly, I was driving too close to the median (you think?) but I hit it and the next thing I know, I'm pulled off to the side of the road with two flat tires. I'm lucky I didn't hit a sign, or careen into oncoming traffic. This, of course, makes me sound like someone who routinely drives recklessly which, let me assure you, I am not. The worst part was that I was mere blocks from home, but far enough that I can't make it without doing more serious damage to my car.

So I get my car off Grand Avenue and pull it onto 5th Street. At this point, there's no doubt that I'm going to need a tow. Finally, AAA is worth more than just hotel discounts. They send me a guy from the local Amoco who takes nearly an hour to arrive. He puts the donut on and tows me to CarX which is who does all our car work. Once we get there, I ask him if he can give me a ride home and he either couldn't or wouldn't - I can't figure out which. He said he had another call to go to and acted like driving me a couple miles back home was like driving me from the south side of Chicago to the northern outskirts. WTFE, I walked from CarX. He was kind of a jerk, but a jerk that towed my car so he gets points for that.

It was at about this point that my evil twin really started in on me. He started with the old reliable "stupid" and then moved on to "klutzy" and "absent-minded" and "you just don't pay attention!" For him, it's like the word "accident" doesn't exist. I did it deliberately and because I was an idiot. At other times in my life, this evil twin, who really is a shithead to me, would have won the argument. I would have felt terrible and awful and beat myself up for something that was clearly accidental. Yes, it's a big deal, but no, I didn't do it on purpose and just because I had an accident does NOT make me "stupid." Nice try. Moron.

Anyway, the best part of the story is that I was texting Heidi this whole time. As I started to walk home, she tried to get someone on Twitter to give me a ride home since Anna was already in bed. By the time I noticed this, I was nearly half way home, so I texted her to let her know this. I must not have turned my phone off before I slipped it back in my pocket because the next text I got from her was "??" As it turns out, I had pocket-texted her and as random pocket texts go, this one was a doozy. Of all the possible letter combinations, the text I sent her was "Fu" which made her think I was saying "f*** you." We had a good laugh about that.

So yeah, it sucks. But it could be worse. At least I didn't get hurt. At least I didn't hurt someone else. At least there wasn't any more damage to the car. It probably won't be cheap, but as I always say about money, easy come, easy go. My dad always says you don't want to be the richest guy in the graveyard and at the rate I'm going I'm sure that will be no problem. I did, however, get the great joy of drinking Diet Rite Zero right out of the 2 liter bottle while sitting at the Ames Veterans Memorial. I know - classy.

A losing game

As a friend of mine said on Facebook today, "Today I learned that the internet is only for insensitive assholes. That's nice." While that's a bit of an overstatement, I have to say that I agree with the sentiment.

As we all know, Amy Winehouse met an untimely end at the age of 27 this afternoon. I was at the gym when I found out - actually I was in the locker room sweating from every pore in my body. While I had been on the treadmill, my Twitterfeed exploded with news of her death. There were tweets galore, many expressed sadness combined with a lack of surprise - understandable considering her very public struggles with substance abuse. But it didn't take long for the jokes about rehab to start and the judgmental "why should I feel sympathy for her" tweets and posts to start to pile up. Many people, rather than understanding that a 27 year old woman with family and loved ones - someone's daughter for Pete's sake - had died this afternoon, insisted on providing a snarky commentary based on their own presumptions and the version of her story that they created in their head. Perhaps their version of events may ultimately prove to be true. But at the time, it was completely inappropriate.

I was sickened by the jokes and snarky comments people made, by people's selfish behavior and refusal to understand that while Winehouse's death was certainly not surprising, it is no less tragic than if it had come as a complete surprise. A tremendous talent (admittedly, one that I didn't appreciate completely) was silenced and, as I said before, a woman not even 30 has had her life cut short.

I'll admit that back in 1994, when Kurt Cobain met a similar end, I was probably among the snarky ones. It didn't help that I was certainly no fan of Nirvana and I'm sure my take on it was "he was a junkie that deserved it." Well, I was 21 then, and with the benefit of 18 years, I'm ashamed of my behavior then, just like I'm sickened by those implying Winehouse "deserved" her fate or that somehow Winehouse's drug use made her death worth less or not worth mourning. To those people, I only have to remember the internet mantra..."too many anonymous internet assholes, not enough time." Only this time, they weren't so anonymous.

The world is full of pain and shit happens on a daily basis. Life is full of tragedies, large and small. It's how we deal with them that defines us. But more than that, it's how we feel for other people's tragedies, even if they don't seem that big to us that make us human. As I so frequently say, we just need to treat each other a little nicer. I wish I could say that in death, Amy Winehouse has received that respect that the dead deserve. Instead, it's been mostly vitriol and jokes that are simply, way too soon.

Her music will live on forever and there will certainly be a spike in interest. She won't be the first artist more celebrated after her death than while she was alive. Her short and tragic life is a reminder of the destructive effects of addiction and how, even though it shouldn't be, sometimes the addiction is stronger than the addict.

Solo Blondie?

There are only a few artists left on my bucket list of people I really want to see live before I die. I'll have checked at least two off the list by the time the year's out (Kylie and Janet Jackson) and between those two concerts and Lady Gaga earlier this year, I figured I had already spent beyond my concert budget for the year. But when I found out that Blondie was going to be playing at Harrah's Council Bluffs (I always kind of laugh a little bit when I say that), I was seriously tempted.

Technically, I've seen Debbie Harry perform live once and that was at the True Colors concert in Chicago. However, she was a bit disappointing as she played no Blondie hits at all and most of the solo songs she did perform were from her at-that-time unreleased new album. Talk about a prescription for a disastrous set! She didn't even play "I Want That Man" which would have gone over like gangbusters! Plus, she had a very unfortunate hairstyle and, as Heidi so classically put it, looked like "Anne Murray gone hard."

I couldn't help but wonder how different her performance would have been had she been there with the rest of Blondie and because I've been listening to Blondie's music for 22 years now, I really gave it some thought. Then I found out that it was general admission. Strike one. And that it was at an outdoor venue. Strike two. I am too freaking old for general admission shows. I just don't have the energy to fight people for 1 sqaure foot spot of property to stand all night. The National, who we saw at First Avenue in Minneapolis, would have been million times better had it not been general admission. Kylie's first U.S. tour was general admission at the Chicago date, which was one of the biggest reason we didn't go. And my experience with outdoor venues has been decidedly mixed. Most of the time, the weather works out great, but the times it doesn't, it's miserable. But the ticket prices were appropriately adjusted - 30 bucks and some change. Still, I decided against it.

This last week though, I really got it in my head that I wanted to go. At 65, how much longer is Debbie Harry going to want to tour with Blondie? And seriously, Blondie with no Debbie Harry is no Blondie at all. They're not one of those bands that can just replace their lead singer and go on touring a la Journey. During Blondie's heyday, the common catchpharse was "Blondie is the name of the band" so that people took in the whole package vs. just Debbie, but I think there is definitely something to her being the frontwoman of the band.

So I set about trying to find someone to go with. I was pretty sure that Heidi wouldn't want to go, so I asked my friend Matt who pleaded not being a big enough fan. Fair enough, I can get behind that. Then I asked my sister, who has always been a bit of a Blondie fan, but she texted me back this morning saying that she wasn't sure she'd be around that weekend so had to pass. Again, fair enough. My friend Kyl had been the one that alerted me to Blondie's Iowa presence, and I still haven't heard back from him, but I'm starting to think I'll have to go to this concert alone. That is, if I go at all.

I would have no problem going alone if it weren't a general admission show. I do not want to awkwardly hang around the venue for two hours (at least) from when the doors open and the show starts. And also, it's more fun to do stuff like this with a friend. So who knows what will happen. I may ultimately decide against it. I'm still not sold on this general admission shit.

Still, it's Blondie. They're no spring chickens, but Debbie's voice has magically not aged a bit.

Madonna...at her most underrated

I have been a VERY bad blogger this summer. Too much to do, no time to do it in. However, hopefully what I'm about to offer makes up for it just a little bit.

You might remember back in March of 2010, my friend and stalwart Madonna fan Jeff and I did a podcast about what our most memorable Madonna moments were in our lives. We were clearly amateurs at it, but we had a good time and the plus side was we got to spend an hour plus talking about one of our favorite mutual interests. That podcast is still up and available so if you weren't around then and are so inclined, feel free to download it.

Last week I got a wild hair to do another podcast with Jeff. This time, I decided that the topic would be the most underrated or underappreciated Madonna songs. I split it into three categories - songs that we thought were underrated by Madonna, songs that are underrated by Madonna fans, and songs that are underrated by each other. As I say in the podcast, so much of the time, when there is substantial discussion about Madonna, it is not about her music but rather about her image and her controversy. This, I believe, does a disservice to the mammoth amount of work that she's managed to put out over the course of nearly *gulp* 30 years now.

So if you have an hour and some change to kill, I'd say definitely give us a listen. I even got all professional and added some song clips so hopefully Madonna doesn't send me a cease and desist letter (and if she does, I hope she hand signs it.) If you are a fan, you'll probably enjoy it. If you know one or (better yet) both of us, you need to download it and listen. This is what happens when you talk Madonna with someone for 25 years.

Here's the link - get to listening! I would love to hear what you think, even if it's negative. I thought about doing solo podcasts in the future, but I have no idea what I'd talk about and honestly, it's easier to play off Jeff.

Download the madness that is Jeff and me here.

Papa, can you hear me now?

I don't know what made me do it, but last night while doing dishes, I got a huge yen to listen to the soundtrack from the 1983 Barbra Streisand film Yentl. When I was a kid, Yentl was the butt of a thousand jokes, none of which really progressed much past "Barbra Streisand is playing a man!!" Whether or not she pulled it off successfully is up for debate, but there's certainly no doubt that Streisand OWNS that movie. I never saw the movie during the 80s but when I started listening to Streisand's music in earnest in the early 90s, I found myself really wanting to see it. I can't remember which came first - buying the soundtrack or watching the movie. It really doesn't matter in the final analysis because I took no end of grief from my brother and sister (mostly my brother) for buying the soundtrack.

The funny thing is, when you think about Streisand's bazillion albums, Yentl is probably one of her finest. Granted, it's not the folky fun of Stoney End or even the cheesy bombast of Guilty. It is, however, what I feel to be Streisand at her vocal peak. Simply put, she sounds great on this album. Heidi always prefers Streisand's 1960s albums, saying that anything much past the early 80s sounds like someone's grandmother singing, albeit someone's exceptionally vocally gifted grandmother. I don't really agree with her assessment - the grandmotherly voice wouldn't arrive until the early 2000s and I would argue it's more of a change in the timbre of her voice but whatever. One listen to Yentl and you can hear just what a gifted vocalist Streisand really is. An actress who sings? Who is she kidding?

So yeah, I puchased the Yentl CD on winter break in 1993 and I listened to it like crazy during January of that year. I think it's pretty safe to say that I was the only straight 20 year-old male college student listening to the Yentl soundtrack in his dorm room at the University of Iowa, although at that point I had not made the connection between Streisand and her legion of gay male fans of a certain age. It was music that spoke to my soul and, much like I do now, whenever I find that, I hang on tight to it. The cool thing about the CD is that listening to it, you almost don't need to watch the film. Why watch the 2+ hour film when you can get the Cliffs Notes version in ~40 minutes on the CD. Thanks to the liner notes, a lot of the gaps are filled in and now, looking back, the CD must have come first because I remember learning the story of Yentl via those liner notes.

The story, for those that don't know it takes place in late 19th century Poland. Yentl is the only daughter of a rabbi who is teaching Yentl the Talmud and other religious teachings, despite the fact that women are not allowed to do so. When her father dies, she disguises herself as a man, takes the name Anshel, and enrolls in a yeshiva to continue her studies. She meets Avigdor at the school, who is engaged to marry Hadass. As Anshel, she gets to know both of them, but falls in love with Avigdor. When the engagement between Avigdor and Hadass falls apart (a silly reason that could only happen in the late 19th century), Hadass's parents conspire to get Anshel and Hadass together. During the time, however, Yentl has fallen in love with Avigdor. Oy vey!

As you might imagine, Hollywood didn't exactly jump on this idea. I remember reading in a Streisand biography that after she finished filming Funny Girl in 1968, she brought the idea for Yentl to her agent or somebody and said "I've found my second film role." Their response was "you just got done playing a Jewish girl, now you want to play a Jewish boy?" The film was in development hell for 25 years, but eventually Streisand got it filmed, starring Streisand, co-produced by Streisand, co-written by Streisand and directed by Streisand. It's starting to sound a little bit like Lindsay Buckingham credits on a Fleetwood Mac album. I'm pretty sure that the movie got turned into a musical at the insistence of studio heads. I can't imagine that they would be willing to take a chance on this kind of material without Streisand music to push.

Thankfully she agreed, because, as I've said, the story is told so well through the songs by Michel LeGrand and Marilyn & Alan Bergman. In many ways, it's like a Broadway libretto, with themes that recur throughout and, most importantly, lyrics that push the plot forward and are not simply musical interludes to endure. The best known of the songs is probably "Papa Can You Hear Me?" which was exposed to a whole new generation when it was used on Glee last season. And like the best music, you can take your own meaning from the lyrics that tell the story of Yentl/Anshel, Avigdor and Hadass. Without that universality, it wouldn't have the appeal to me that it does.

You can take a lot out of this story and its music. I think the most obvious one, listening to the lyrics, is that the entire story could serve as an allegory for a "coming out" experience. When Yentl becomes Anshel and falls in love with Avigdor, her feelings for him (as a female pretending to be a male) that are expressed in the songs are what I could imagine a young gay man (or woman, for that matter) would think. The song "The Way He Makes Me Feel" is a good example of this - with lyrics like "Why is it that every time I close my eyes, he's there/The water shining on his skin/The sunlight in his hair/And all the while I'm thinking things that I can never share with him." "Tomorrow Night," in which Yentl describes her feelings as she's about to wed Hadass screams to me how a man marrying a woman might feel if his heart was not really in it, so-to-speak. And the song "No Matter What Happens" plays like the best song of self-assurance after the eventual coming out occurs. I've always felt like this story of a "repressed love" speaks to that kind of situation. But maybe it's just me because a quick and dirty Google search turned up only a few message board results that agree with my assessment.

For me, the song that always got me in my early 20s was "Will Someone Ever Look At Me That Way." My story of being a lonely early 20-something who felt like he had nothing in common with most men and no qualities that would make members of the opposite sex want to date me is well documented in this space. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, I had many friends and actually, there were more than a few women that liked me and were probably waiting for me to make the first move - some of whom I actually had crushes on or whatever. The fact that my self-image was in the ashcan and I struggled with undiagnosed depression is probably why I saw my life through the lens that I did. When you don't even like yourself, it's really easy to concoct a narrative in your head that no one else does either. Even now, at nearly 40 years of age, on my worst days I can see vestiges of that. In any event, the line in "Will Someone Ever Look At Me That Way" that always resonated to dateless Dan was "Even though it's crazy, still I can't help wondering if I'll ever live to see the day/When by some miracle of miracles/You'll turn around and look at me that way." As I saw everyone pairing up, especially late in my college years, I felt like that would never happen and wondered what I was missing that everyone else had. As it turned out, I just hadn't met the right person yet. Fortunately, in November of 1995, I did just that.

Anyway, I will always view the Yentl soundtrack with a little bit more fondness than most guys at my age and station in life might. Maybe this post helps explain that. Maybe it just confirms your suspicion that I was REALLY weird. Whatever. This is who I am. Like it or not. Never gonna stop.

And honestly, every time I hear the Lady Gaga song "Paparazzi" I wait for her to sing "I'm your biggest fan/I'll follow you until you love me/Papa-papa-papa can you hear me?"

Red white and bluegrass

Well, for most everyone else, it's a three day weekend. The weather here in Iowa is going to be hotter than blue blazes but that will be a welcome change from the last few years of rain and 60 degree highs. Although our strategy of walking down the street to watch fireworks has seemed less and less smart since they moved the fireworks just slightly further away, we'll probably still do that as we don't want to fight traffic even if it IS just Ames traffic.

I said it's a three day weekend, but not for me. I work both Saturday and Sunday, but at least I have the 4th off, having worked Memorial Day this year. With the rate I've been blogging these days, it's likely I'll let the 4th go by with no fanfare here at all. To be honest, it's not my favorite holiday. I'm not one for standing out on the sidewalk in 95 degree heat while a parade full of uber-patriotic stuff passes by. There's usually a block party on our street that's pretty fun, but most of the time I don't like forced socialization and would rather do it on my own terms. And naturally, this weekend is going to be colored by Bingley's imminent death from lung cancer. So really, I'm not looking forward to the weekend very much.

I have been listening to the new Dolly Parton album Better Day which is full of positive messages for these not-so-great times (speaking generally, not specifically.) Overall, it's a much better album than Backwoods Barbie, and that album was no slouch either. The problem with it was that it felt so forced in so many places, like Dolly was consciously trying to figure out a way to get back on country radio. She may try to look like a 30 year old, but there's no denying that Dolly's 65 and there's no way that she is going to get played on country radio. This album blends the great success she found on her bluegrass albums with her attempt at a more mainstream country sound.

The combination of that and the upcoming 4th of July made me think of the only Dolly album I have never purchased - For God and Country, Dolly's response to the 9/11 attacks. It was an album full of traditional patriotic songs along with a few Dolly originals. By the time she got around to releasing it in 2003, the flag had been co-opted by the Bush administration and the radical right (although the radical right of that time looks damn tame compared to the radical right of today.) Anyway, I never bought it because it seemed like the soundtrack to the Republican National Convention, which I'm sure was not Dolly's intent. She never publicly speaks about her politics - she prefers to say she's "not political but very patriotic." However, I always assert that you can't have as big of a gay fan base as Dolly does and be too conservative. Anyway, even though I never bought it, I always did kind of like one song on it - "Red, White & Bluegrass."



Of course, there's a lot of things to that the U.S. does that are not things to be proud of, but I sometimes think that on the 4th of July, even someone as jaded as I am can be a little bit proud.

Happy three-day weekend everyone. I hope it's a good one. And buy the Dolly album - it's her best since probably Little Sparrow. When Dolly dies, I'll probably have to call in sick to work.

Long time gone

It's been a little bit quiet in these parts recently. It was not a deliberate decision but now, trying to get back into it seems hard without acknowledging the 10 days of silence that have elapsed. Truth be told, I haven't felt much like writing. It's kind of as simple as that - nothing dramatic. It really was a simple case of I wasn't in the mood to write. I don't know that I am in the mood now, but here I am anyway.

A quick update to those of you that kept stopping by and/or wondered why their RSS feed had not been bold for so long.

1) I've met twice with a personal trainer at the gym. She's very good and a good fit for me. She's given me three different cardio workouts to do and it's really important that I get in each one at least once a week. We've been doing a lot of work with strength training (which was what I really needed her help on) and today, she worked me hard. But I feel like I'm getting a good handle on what I need to do. It's interesting to match the exercise with the muscle group, even though I famously got a D on the muscle test in my college anatomy class so it's amazing I know anything at all about muscles. It feels good to be active again and to be doing something positive for my physical health. I spend a lot of time trying to be mentally healthy because my past struggles with anxiety and depression have always seemed to be more important. Taking time out to work on my physical health has been just as rewarding and also helps with the other stuff too. I'm not naive enough to think that I'll always love to go exercise or go to the gym, but hey, it's a start.

2) I'm up to 27 books so far in my 2011 book challenge. I am not trying to read a set number of books, although my current goal on Goodreads is 40. I upped it from 30 when it became quite clear that I was going to blow past 30 around midyear. That said, it's really important that the next book I read be a good one. I've read two dogs in a row now and reading bad books makes me feel like I'm back in high school trying to read The Grapes of Wrath in May. I'm currently beta-reading Heidi's latest book and it's definitely breaking the bad book run - I'm always amazed by the fact that the woman I married has such a way with the written word. I'm always kind of like "wow - you wrote this?" even though duh, yeah, she did. I'll be blogging about my latest disappointing book (Robopocalypse) probably sometime this week.

3) I got the yard mowed tonight but what made tonight extra special was I got out my brand new weed whacker that I got for my birthday this year. There are parts of the yard that I just can't reach with the mower and, finally tired of just ignoring it, I asked my dad if he would buy me one for my birthday. Never one to pass up an opportunity to bequeath home improvement items, he found one that he liked and sure enough, I got it for my birthday. So after a little bit of work tonight, the yard looks better than it has since last October when, oddly enough, my dad was here to help me with the yard. I've also found that since I've been exercising, mowing the yard isn't nearly as big of a deal as it used to be. Positive effects all around.

It's not a terribly exciting life I lead, but exciting is overrated. Thank you to those who stopped by looking for updates, only to find none. I will try not to repeat that, but I'm not promising anything.

For now, let's have some Dixie Chicks.

It didn't make a sound

We had a doozy of a storm blow through on Monday around noon. Because I work in a windowless room, I had no idea that it even happened until it was over. Heidi was out and about with Marie Sexton during it, but when I asked her about it, she didn't really remember anything spectacular. Anna was at her two-week long class at the middle school (NOT summer school, I'm sure she would point out.) So no one was home.

The other night, our neighbor came by and mentioned to us that it must have been a heck of a storm. I asked her if she lost anything and her reply was no, nothing but the branch on your maple tree. WHAT? I followed her out to her back yard and, sure enough, this was the scene that greeted me.


While we marveled at the fact that it miraculously missed her house, I was faced with the fact that yes, it was my responsibility to clean it up. I cannot be trusted with a chain saw, so I did what I always do. I called my dad. So in a few hours, he'll be on his way over with a chain saw and we'll get that sucker chopped up.

I'm still kind of amazed that it took someone pointing out to me that we'd just lost a major chunk of tree. I chalk it up to life being so busy that I (naturally) haven't mowed the yard in about 10 days and so I've really had no reason to go out back. Also, between her yard and ours is a large row of bushes about 6-8 feet tall, so our view of her backyard is blocked.

A little bit embarrassing, but hey, what's life without something to shock you out of your complacency every now and then. But clearly, if a branch falls in my yard and no one's around, it doesn't make a sound.

A few more pictures - my dad asked me on the phone the other night if I could drag it out of her yard. Um, not without the help of a superhero.

Bones of the Earth

When I picked up Michael Swanwick's novel Bones of the Earth from the library, my wife asked me what it was about. I said "it's about time travel! and dinosaurs!" To this, her reply was "...And? What's the hook?" She didn't seem to get that time travel and dinosaurs WAS the hook. What else do you need? You have time travel granted to scientists so that they can go back in time to the Mesozoic and see real living and breathing dinosaurs. This, by itself, is a can't-fail set up. Throw in a dash of atheism vs. creationism and you're off and running. Seriously, you can't screw this up.

Somehow, Swanwick screwed it up. Not just a little, but a LOT.

There are a lot of things wrong with this book. There are too many characters that aren't fleshed out well enough to differentiate them from other characters. There's the constant appearing of characters "future selves" in the present to mess with your head. The amazing resistance to the idea of "keep it simple, stupid" just astounded me. An event that could be told in a straight forward manner was always told as if there were sixteen different angles from which to approach it. Sure, there's some cool dinosaur stuff, especially in the last third of the book and for that I'm thankful that I persevered even after the "throw the book across the room" moment that was the orgy.

Yeah, they lost me at the orgy. A Maastrichtian Age orgy - with people, not dinosaurs just in case you were confused, which I was through quite a bit of this book. Plot lines are started and then forgotten, only to be quickly wrapped up as if Swanwick suddenly remembered that he had started an arc way back on page 78 and now here we are 10 pages from the end of the book and it's still unresolved. The characters are not particularly likeable, especially Gertrude Salley, a conniving and ruthless paleontologist who seems to enjoy deliberately messing with the time-space continuum, to the detriment of her fellow scientists. The fact that I could not see her as anything other than Sue Sylvester from Glee made her character simultaneously more disturbing and more comical.

The book is decidedly less-than-kind to religious fundamentalists generally and creationists specifically. A crucial event that would have lent credence to creationists' theories of the origin of the species is dangled in front of us early in the book and then never mentioned again. A plot involving domestic terrorism on the part of the creationists dominates the first half of the novel and forces the events of the second half - including the orgy.

As I mentioned, the dinosaurs they see are pretty cool. Despite its cheesiness, I do love the Jurassic Park trilogy of movies. Again, it's lifelike dinosaurs on the screen, how can you go completely wrong? Maybe it's just me, but hot dinosaur action does not translate as well in the written word as it does in CGI on the movie screen. Still, they posit some interesting theories on dino communication and behavior. Not being a paleontologist, I have no idea if any of it holds any water.

But back to this orgy thing. Stranded in the Maastrichtian Age by the creationist-inspired act of terrorism, the group of scientists and graduate students initially split into two camps. Much infighting and bickering ensues. What brings them back together? Spontaneous group sex. Yep, believe it. I know when I was reading it, I really couldn't believe it. It's not that I'm prudish and can't stand reading sex (far from it) but it seemed so out of place and very much like we were indulging the author's personal fantasies rather than furthering the plot of the book. And if there's any one thing I've learned from reading Heidi's m/m books, the sex always has to further the plot.

I can't really recommend Bones of the Earth- it's probably about a 2 and a half star book. Despite a promising start and a strong premise, the material was wasted and the story really didn't do it for me. I'd say you'd be better off reading Jurassic Park again or, better yet, go watch Jurassic Park 3. It's the best movie in the series because it's the one with the least to lose, had flying dinosaurs and most importantly did not star Jeff Goldblum.

Thermodynamics and fitness

It's no secret that I've been trying to increase my activity over the last few weeks. Before we left on vacation in May, we joined a gym here in town (see the post where I complained about the showers) and I've been pretty good about going. I know that I'm still in the honeymoon phase of it and at some point - read: any minute now - the bloom should fall off the rose and I'll find some excuse to not do it any longer. I'm pushing past that and I think that's as much of a success as anything.

When we joined, you got one free session with a personal trainer which Heidi and I both signed up for. She went yesterday morning and I went yesterday afternoon. In many ways, it was a bit of a let down because it felt a lot more like a sales pitch than anything else. I get that they have to make money - as I say, I don't work for free and neither should anyone else. But it was hard for me to believe that the person I talked to would be as interested in my personal fitness if they weren't trying to sell me a pack of personal training sessions costing in the hundreds of dollars. Still, she was very nice and listened and answered some of my nagging questions about the equipment, like how accurate are the heart rate monitors on the treadmills (quite accurate) and do you really burn more calories on an elliptical than a treadmill (no, the calories burned on an elliptical is not based on any type of formula and is more of a guess.)

Still, I can't shake the feeling that it really is something I should do, sales pitch or no sales pitch. There's so much I don't know about getting active, and there are so many things that I need to learn how to do to make sure that what I'm doing is what I need to be doing. Additionally, there's so many things that you can do that if you do wrong, you can end up really hurting yourself. I'm thinking mostly about strength training. My dad's showed me over and over again, but for some reason, it never sinks in. And I HAVE hurt myself using free weights in the past. Not terribly, mind you, but I really don't want to experience that again. It put me off any kind of physical activity for a year and it hurt like a motherfucker.

So for my birthday this year, I'm getting three sessions to start. The first thing I do will be to take a cardiovascular fitness test to see where I am right now. I know that I regularly get myself to maximum heart rate for my age and weight without much trouble - it's good to know I could pass a stress test if I took one - but I want to know what my baseline is. I know there are all sorts of ways to do cardio and that there's really no wrong way, but I really need help knowing what's best for me so that when I go on my own, I know what I'm doing and that I'm doing it right. The same thing goes double for weight training which I know I need to add in as well but am very nervous to do so. I am such a weakling! I'm very glad there's no sand in the gym for someone to come kick in my face.

But with the help of the personal trainer, at least to get started, I think I can really figure out what it is I need to do to maximize my cardiovascular fitness as well as throw off some of this pesky extra weight I've managed to put on since my metabolism downshifted somewhere in my mid 30s. I was at the pool the other day and as usual, was very self conscious about how I looked. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the locker room and decided that for a guy pushing 40 that is just now starting to get active, I don't look too bad. And just think of what I can do if I actually start working at it.

It reminds me of the thermodynamics and every systems tendency toward entropy and disorder unless energy is used to counteract it. And since I can tie fitness to thermodynamics, my geek cred is still intact.

Three worthy albums

Let me just say that 2011 has NOT been the year for new music that 2010 was. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty out there worth listening to, but as far as album releases go, I haven't been all that inspired. Granted, last summer was a tough act to follow. The one-two punch of new Scissor Sisters and Kylie Minogue - and the fact that they actually delivered - started things off right. A handful of great singles from Marina & The Diamonds, Keane and Goldfrapp (among others) rounded out the edges.

I suppose it didn't help that the Stevie Nicks album was so anticlimactic. I keep thinking I'll go back to it and give it another try, but in so many places, it just doesn't sound like Stevie. Thankfully, there have been some album releases that have caught my attention. Here are three that are in heavy rotation right now.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor / Make A Scene
Let's get one thing out of the way - Sophie is not much of an album artist. Like Bananarama, I think of her more for memorable songs rather than albums. Yes, pretty much everything on Make A Scene sounds the same. Even though I've listened to it many times, I still have a hard time knowing what the song is without looking at my iPod. This, however, is not a bad thing when you make dance-pop music with as much reckless abandon as Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Even though she's one of those people that, when I'm listening to her, I find myself wondering "exactly HOW are you famous?" I don't really care.

This album doesn't deviate terribly from the formula that made Trip The Light Fantastic a damn fun listen back in 2006. Again, if it isn't broken, why fix it? I think the thing that endears me most to Sophie is her very pronounced British accent in her singing. It's not "Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer", it's "Heartbreak Make Me A DAHNCER." Any "-ance" word you can think of Sophie turns into an "-ahnce" word. Highlights for me are the previously mentioned "Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer", "Homewrecker", "Off & On", and "Not Giving Up On Love." She won't win any awards for variety, but for pure pop dance fun, you can't go wrong with Sophie.

Lady Gaga / Born This Way
The year's most hyped album was bound to disappoint, right? Well, it depends on your expectations. If you were expecting a masterpiece and piece of Very Important Work from Born This Way, then yes, you were probably disappointed. It's not your fault entirely though, because that's how Lady Gaga has been billing it since February. But if, instead, you were just expecting a very solid pop album, then your prayers were answered. Yes, the Gaga album is solid, with only a few throwaway tracks - and even some of those are growing on me. I initially liked the ubiquitous title track, and then really didn't like it very much. I've always kind of felt that the problem with "Born This Way" the song is its production. Too clunky, not sleek enough. It kind of broke under its own self-importance. Some of the remixes, the Grum remix in particular, took care of this little problem. "Judas" was kind of a misfire, but works better as the album track it probably should have stayed. But there are so many great pop songs on Born This Way. I'm not going to review it - many have done so much better than I ever could - but for me, the standout song is "Electric Chapel" in which Gaga channels Debbie Harry, the woman to whom all the female divas owe at least a small debt of gratitude. Other favorites include "Hair", "The Edge of Glory" (thumbs down from Heidi, though), and "Government Hooker." Even though Lady Gaga wanted it to change the world, it won't. But it is a great summer record.

Blondie / Panic of Girls
This was the most unexpected fantastic album so far this year. Panic of Girls has been gestating for over a year now. The cover art came out LAST summer. I figured that anything in the can that long has overcooked and won't be any good. It also doesn't help that I have only sort of liked the last two Blondie albums. No Exit was mostly good but befouled by a few really bad songs and I disliked more of The Curse of Blondie than I liked. Debbie's solo work has been equally uneven - 2007's Necessary Evil had some high points but was only okay in the end. So I was more than a little worried about Panic of Girls.

My worry was for nothing. Panic of Girls is easily Blondie's tightest and most focused record in ages. It's accessible pop but also has a touch of light reggae in it. Debbie, who is 66 freaking years old in a month, sounds just like she did in the late 70s and early 80s. Much like Dolly Parton, her voice has not aged a single bit. The first six songs are among Blondie's finest latter day work and for my money, there isn't really a dud track on the album. Not surprisingly, my favorite tracks on the album come from those first 6 tracks, with the best song on the album being "Love Doesn't Frighten Me." It's so fantastic when a band can come together and deliver an album like this, especially after so many missteps. It's especially reassuring because with Blondie and Debbie Harry (and so many of the artists that I like who are getting a bit long in the tooth), you never know when an album might be their last.

What we really need now is a new Madonna album. It's time for her to come roaring back and show everyone how it's done. But until then, I'm sure these three albums will get plenty of play this summer.

A Land of Ash/Grants Pass

While I was on vacation last month, I finished off a couple of post-apocalyptic fiction anthologies. Even though it seems counterintuitive, post-apocalyptic fiction is really great fun to read when it's done right. I loved Stephen King's The Stand, but did not care one bit for Cormac McCarthy's The Road (the apocalypse was never so boring.) The two anthologies I read were A Land of Ash, which consists of stories told by survivors of the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera and Grants Pass, which found those immune to three super-plagues trying to figure out how to get to Grants Pass, Oregon based on the blog entry of a young girl who wrote "When the end of the world comes, meet me at Grants Pass."

The tag line for A Land of Ash reads: The Yellowstone Caldera has erupted once every 600,000 years. We’re 40,000 years overdue. It was famously (and expensively) done in Roland Emmerich's 2012, but if you believe the stories in this anthology, the movie would have been over after the eruption. All but one of the stories take place in the United States, which sees massive devastation from the ash-cloud that results from the eruption. As with most anthologies, the quality of the stories varies wildly, but there are some real keepers in there. "Shelter" tells a heartbreaking story of a father and daughter who survived the eruption inside their house. He has sealed up his house against the ash-cloud, only to see his defenses gradually breached. And in "Toward the Storm" a woman travels west toward Yellowstone, in contrast to the thousands who traveled toward the East coast of the U.S. to escape it. Her faith in God is what sustains her although that faith is about to be tested.

A Land of Ash was an incredibly quick read, and it's one I could see myself reading again. There were only a couple of dud stories and I find myself intrigued by the fact that these were all stories of regular people and how they would behave in the days and months after a massive volcanic eruption in North America.

Grants Pass was mentioned in several of the Goodreads reviews of A Land of Ash so I picked it up from the B&N Nook store for $4.95. As I mentioned previously, Grants Pass is the place in Oregon that everyone is trying to get to after a combination of Ebola, superflu and bubonic plague wipe out 99.99% of the human population. To add insult to injury, "the big one" finally hits southern California - as if global epidemics weren't bad enough. In stark contrast to A Land of Ash, most of the stories in Grants Pass were international. This gave the anthology a bit of a different flavor. It really did feel like a global apocalypse. The eruption of Yellowstone would have global ramifications, but it would have nothing on the bioterrorism that wiped out the world in Grants Pass. On the whole, I didn't enjoy this as much as A Land of Ash. In many ways, it reminded me of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books without any of the choosing. Many were chilling and scary - the scariest ones accenting the isolation that an end of the world scenario such as this would bring. But overall, I kind of felt like I was always waiting for "how are they going to work Grants Pass into this?" Sometimes it was convincing, other times it felt very shoehorned in. It also suffered from more proofreading errors than A Land of Ash which is always a pet peeve of mine. So it was a little bit more of a mixed bag than A Land of Ash. Still, it was worth the read because it too was a really fast read.

I think one of my favorite things about the rise of ebooks is that books like these are starting to see the light when they wouldn't have otherwise. I can't see established publishing houses taking chances on books like these, but they still deserve to be out there. I recommend them both to fans of PAF, but I definitely enjoyed A Land of Ash more.

A Land of Ash is FREE in the Kindle store, 99 cents in the B&N store.

Cher shirt

My mom and dad came over yesterday to help us get some belated spring cleaning done. We got the picnic table moved off the porch, the deck furniture down from the garage attic and various other odds and ends that have kind of needed doing for a while but we just haven't been able to muster up the ambition to do them. Every time my mom comes over, she always brings a bit of my past with her, and yesterday was certainly no exception.

In 1990, she, my brother and I all went to see Cher's Heart of Stone tour in Ames. I remember my dad was going to go but he had to teach night class or something, so that's how my brother got in on it. If you know anything about that tour at all, you'll know that it was a little bit of a let down. It was a concert full of cover songs with just a few of Cher's current songs, despite have two full albums to pull songs from. Sure she sang an Eagles song and a Gregg Allman song and a Doobie Brothers song, but why didn't she sing more CHER songs? Isn't that what we paid money for? Clearly, she learned her lesson as the Believe tour was very hit heavy and the only cover was a kick-ass version of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." It was so kick-ass she did it again on the Farewell Tour.

At any rate, my mom found this shirt that we must have bought at the show 21 years ago, and naturally, she brought it to me.


I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with a shirt with a 24" image of Cher on it (wear it to bed? Give it to Anna to use as a nightgown?) and then I decided, much like the Sticky & Sweet Tour shirt, if I can't wear a Cher tour shirt to Des Moines Pride, where the hell else can I wear it?

So if you stop by Heidi and Marie's booth the weekend of June 11th and 12th in downtown Des Moines, chances are you'll see me with a 2 foot image of Cher on my chest.

Oh Danny boy

Because my brain works this way, I had a song from the movie version of the musical Hello, Dolly! stuck in my head the other night. It was the opening number and not "I Put My Hand In" which is the opening song in the show and only hinted at in the movie version. Rather, it was a song written for the movie (and, let's be honest, probably for Barbra Streisand) "Just Leave Everything To Me." I don't know how it got stuck in my head, although my suspicion is that someone at work said "leave everything to me" and well, there you go. Instant earworm if you live with my brain.

20 years ago, I had a brief love affair with the movie Hello, Dolly! One spring break, while the rest of my classmates were probably on South Padre Island or somewhere warm, I was back at home inverting my biological clock by staying up all night working on schoolwork and watching movies. I had made it a goal to watch as many of Streisand's movies as I could. I had read stories about how Hello, Dolly! effectively killed off the big budget Hollywood musical and was eager to see whether I agreed with this assessment. I wasn't really very familiar with much of the story despite having seen a community theater production of it when I was in high school. Naturally, I knew the title song (who the hell doesn't?) but beyond that nothing. Truth be told, it's not a horrible film, but it is a bit of a lumbering dinosaur. There are a lot of things wrong with it, not the least of which is that Streisand, who was 27 at the time, was WAY too young for the role of Dolly Levi. Sure, she sings the hell out of the songs, but she's supposed to be a widow - and an Irish widow at that! But even so, the songs are definitely old-school musical - very cheesy and complete with elaborate choreography and larger than life sets. Witness:



Anyway, having "Just Leave Everything To Me" stuck in my head prompted me to go read the Wikipedia article on the film, as I recall from other things I've read that Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau fought like cats and dogs during the shoot. Because it's the nature of the beast, I clicked on links for other members of the cast. Besides Streisand and Matthau, there's a pre-Phantom of the Opera Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl and Danny Lockin as Barnaby Tucker - two employees of Walter Matthau's Horace Vandergelder who get wrapped up into Dolly's scheming. As I mentioned, I knew that Michael Crawford went on to better things, but what about his counterpart, Danny Lockin? I clicked on his Wikipedia article and found it to be rather brief. And then, I read the final sentence. Lockin was tortured and murdered by Charles Hopkins on August 21, 1977 in Westminster, California. I'll be honest, my heart sank a little bit.

A little bit of investigation (ok, a lot of investigation) brought out the details, but at the same time, many of the details are left out. As it turns out, after appearing on The Gong Show in August of 1977, Lockin stopped at a bar on the way home and left with Charles Hopkins. According to this site, Hopkins called the police later that night to report a robbery. When the police arrived, they found Lockin's body, complete with 100 stab wounds. They also found what was likely the weapon used and a sex/torture magazine as well. Hopkins was charged with first degree murder. However, due to the fact that this evidence was found without a search warrant, none of it was admissible into the trial. Ultimately, Hopkins was found guilty of manslaughter and served four years, which if he did indeed do it with premeditation (and all signs point to yes), justice was NOT served in that case.

The unspoken subtext here is what is gets me. Clearly, the implication is that Lockin was gay, was leaving a gay bar and that this was a one night stand gone horribly wrong. Whether that's true or not, we may never truly know. Lockin was married and had a son, but as we all know, many married men eventually come out of the closet. This was especially common pre-Stonewall. For some reason, in my mind, the fact that this could be related to sexual orientation makes it even worse and more gut-wrenching. What gets me is that 34 years later, we still see this kind of thing happening, despite all our progress on gay rights and increasing acceptance of homosexuality in our society as a whole. A world with craigslist killers and hate-motivated crimes seems not all that different from the world in 1977. Watching Lockin's performances in Hello, Dolly!, he seemed like a very gentle person whose life was tragically cut short because of either idiot prejudice or self-loathing or something so fucked up we'll never know what the real motivation was.

So on a day when we memorialize people that have gone before us, I'd like to take this time to memorialize Lockin - although many people have done it much better than I ever could. It ripped at my gut to find out the fate he suffered. May this never happen again.

The rush is neverending

It's been a long time in coming, but our date with Kylie Minogue finally arrived last Wednesday night at the Verizon Theater in Grand Prairie, TX. It's not the farthest I've traveled to see a concert - that honor goes to the Madonna's Confessions Tour in Las Vegas - but it's definitely the farthest I've ever driven to see a concert. The fact that Kylie pretty much skipped the Midwest was what caused us to resort to such measures. It was a long way to drive for a concert and the real question is - was it worth it?

In a word, YES.

For the American leg of the tour, Kylie had to tone the tour down a bit. Gone are the fountains and the flying dancers from the European dates . But even without them, the stage was amazing and the costumes as over the top as you would expect. Cher's tour may have been the Cherest show on Earth, but Heidi summed it up well when she tweeted half way through the concert, "this is seriously the gayest, most fabulous show on earth." My friend Steve who had seen the show a couple weeks prior warned me it would be the gayest night of my life and he was right.

This is the first concert I've gone to where the men so vastly outnumbered the women it wasn't even funny. There were probably 9 men there for every one woman. For probably the first time in recorded history, there was a line for the men's restroom but not the women's. And I think there were about 300 gay men there for every one straight man. But really, it stands to reason. Kylie's following among gay men is no secret and I can think of no better people with whom to see a Kylie show. The energy in the theater (which was surprisingly small - 6000-some seats) was amazing and really, the best of any live show I've ever seen. Even Madonna, but more on that later.

Kylie was fashionably late at 8:45 PM but once she started, she didn't stop once. Emerging from a clam shell at center stage like the Venus de Milo, she rolled through a solid two hours of classic hits, album cuts and pretty much all of the Aphrodite album. Only "Closer" and "Too Much" were not performed. What was most pleasant is that, despite the very obvious presence of a backing track, it was also two hours of live singing that I didn't have to apologize for the quality or cringe through the off key parts. Like Madonna, but more on that later.

But like any good artist who's been around for 20+ years, she sang a lot of crowd pleasers as well. The usual suspects like "Can't Get You Out of My Head", "Spinning Around", and "Confide In Me" got their time in the spotlight, but lesser known album cuts also showed up. One of my favorites was "In My Arms" from X, which featured a many tentacled Kylie on the projection screens behind her. Some familiar songs were reinterpreted. "Slow" became a flashy cabaret number until finally becoming the thumping club anthem it always should have been. "Love At First Sight" was mashed up with "Can't Beat The Feeling" and really, it didn't work for me. Both songs were worthy of being performed individually, the mash-up felt forced and in the end, it seemed to me like both songs got the shaft. They deserved better, especially "Love At First Sight" which is a huge crowd pleaser. Clearly, Kylie was not afraid to dig into her back catalog. Unlike Madonna, but more on that later.

Our seats were about 33 rows back, but really, there wasn't a bad seat in the house. Because of the size of the theater and the quality of our seats, I managed to get some excellent photos. The best of the best are below. Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook can see the rest there.



This concert had the distinction of being Anna's first real concert - sorry, the Wiggles don't count. We brought cotton for her ears as I knew it would be loud. Truth be told, I used cotton too. I have walked out of too many concerts in my life with my ears ringing so bad that I could literally feel the hair cells dying. I'm not interested in losing any more hearing than I already have and it doesn't diminish one's enjoyment of the show one bit. Call me old, but hey, at least I'll be able to hear in 25 years. Even with cotton, the show was too loud for Anna. One of the ushers found real silicone ear plugs for her and then she was set. She danced in the aisle. She sang along. She's a lot more familiar with the Aphrodite stuff than she is with Kylie's immense back catalog, but she had a good time. I hope she remembers it and it doesn't become a blur to her. Concerts always seem like a dream to me when I'm in them. The fact that I got good pictures of the concert will help it seem more real when it inevitably feels dreamlike.

It's impossible to go to a show like this and not think of the queen of this kind of show - Madonna. No one puts on as elaborate of a show as she does. For American audiences, Kylie doesn't have near the back catalog or immediate name recognition as Madonna. And Madonna never never NEVER does a tour half-assed. I've enjoyed every Madonna show I've seen, but I couldn't help but notice the big differences between the two. The most obvious one was pointed out by my friend Robbie (aka ChartRigger) at the end of the show. There are just absolutely no diva airs about Kylie at all. She's always so "oh, I'm so glad you like it!" She interacted with the audience, taking a request which ended up being "Your Disco Needs You" which she NAILED. This is a far cry from Madonna whose shows are so intricately choreographed that there is no room for spontaneity at all. Madonna shows are in a league all their own, but sometimes the lack or spontaneity really shows, especially compared to a show like Kylie's which was just as tightly choreographed. For some reason, it was different.

The other thing that made it better than a Madonna show was Kylie's willingness to dig into her back catalog. Madonna always seems to do so a bit begrudgingly, as if someone is holding her at gunpoint. Stevie Nicks points out that when people come see you live, they don't want to hear new songs. Rather, they want to hear the stuff they know. While I don't think I'd go as far as to say that, you do have to have a liberal sprinkling of well known songs to please the non diehards that attend concerts. This applies less to Kylie as I don't know that there is such a thing as a non-diehard Kylie fan in the U.S. But with Madonna, there are many casual fans that may not know her most recent work. I will always feel bad for the casual fans that went to The Drowned World Tour in 2001 expecting a hit parade and instead, got a bunch of album tracks and two 80s hits.

And finally, it cannot be overstated that Kylie can actually sing the songs that she records. I always make a big deal about how being able to appreciate Madonna's live vocals is what separates the men from the boys as far as Madonna fans go. But let's be honest, she's had some moments that are positively cringeworthy. I usually chalk that up to nerves and the fact that her voice is mostly just passable. I also sometimes think that Madonna tries to sing things that are out of her league vocally and the studio magic can wipe away most of the blemishes. Not so in a live show. Why else would the DVDs of her concerts feature so obviously sweetened vocals?

But there's room enough for all the divas in my life. Seriously, how could I go on without them? I'm so glad that I got to see Kylie live. If the Rapture really had come the following Saturday, I would have gone into the tribulation a happy man. I've been to many concerts in my day, but hers will always stand out. It was worth the trip to Texas. When I was debating buying tickets and spending the money on the trip, my friend Matt said something along the lines of "I highly doubt you'll look back and say 'damn, I wish I hadn't gone to Kylie.'" As it turns out, he was right. And I would go again in a second.

(thanks to xolondon for the inspiration behind the title of this post)