9 Lizards Walk Into A Bar

NaNo Time

2011-11-01T20:12:00.000-05:00

First person: Today, I start writing my second novel.

Third person: This is the first day of NaNoWriMo and Debbi bends her head to the task of writing her second novel.

... If only she could figure out what Person she should be writing it in.

My first novel, Cassidy, was written in First Person. I am very comfortable writing in First Person because I enjoy the unique perspective one person's mind applies to the world and those around him or her. There may be three sides to every story but I think the First Person's version is by far the most compelling.

That said, not all stories thrive within the confines of a single, flawed, human head. Sometimes, the world and what is happening in it is much bigger than one simple human's take on it and deserves a broader perspective - a god-like one, if you will. The Third Person.

So this is where I (Debbi) am stuck now. Which is more important in this new novel: the human or the world? What will I lose if I choose the challenge of Third Person? Or should I take a glass-half-full approach and ask myself what new challenges will I face and have to overcome if I accept the opportunity to grapple with something new.

Very interesting breakdown on the whys and wherefores of First Person vs. Third Person. Doesn't answer my question but gives me even more to ponder while I procrastinate those first, magical words that I hope will carry me enthusiastically to the end of a great, new story.

Stop! It's NaNo Time!

Off Topic - An Anniversary

2011-08-10T21:20:00.002-05:00

Just realized, with 3 hours left in the day, that today marks an important anniversary in my life. 15 years ago today, I saw my first Phish show.

Alpine Valley, 1996. A very large group of friends from the Chicago/Galesburg, IL area trucked it up to East Troy, WI - passing by the Mars Cheese Castle and promising to stop there on the way back - and set up camp in some campground whose name is long forgotten by this swiss cheese memory. It was my first time camping since I was a kid, or maybe it was my first time camping ever - my parents aren't exactly the roughing it type, if you dig what I am saying.

Aaaaaaaaaaanyway.

I don't remember too much from that night but I do remember long-stepping down that hill in Pavilion as the band took the stage and went into "My Friend, My Friend". I remember the whistles following "Reba" (which they abandoned for so long and to my delight and surprise, picked back up this summer at Superball IX) and I remember "Rift", the title track from the album that introduced us all to this amazing group of guys. And how awesome was it to get a "Hold Your Head Up" (HYHU) > "Whipping Post" > HYHU series with Fishman running around onstage like a damn fool in a ridiculous moo moo? And the encore of a silly little song called "Contact" ("The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road") followed by a hot cover of "Fire".

Great show. We went back to our tents that night with ear-to-ear grins and the next day, I got online and started trying to find a ride to the Clifford Ball festival the next weekend. I almost got there. I had the ride from Detroit to Plattsburgh, NY but could not find a way to get from Chicago to Detroit in time. That was one of the few times I regretted selling my '68 Bug to move to Chicago.

The next summer, I promised myself ... the next summer I'll go all the way to the end.

And I did.

Happy Anniversary to me.

This is a Writer's Blog

2011-08-07T11:20:00.003-05:00

I know this has been sitting here simmering for a long time - again. The soup has mostly boiled away and the bottom of the pot is now probably permanently lined with a black sludge in all my inattention to my blog.

I started this blog to talk about myself. Which is why most people start a blog. We think we're fascinating. I mean, my life must be exciting because I'm still in it, right? And what subject do I know better than that of myself?

But clearly, my life isn't really that interesting because I can't even find the time to post nothing little tidbits about myself or my daily doings. I intended to transform this into a writing-specific blog because that's where I want my attention to be these days. Enough of the day job, enough of television's mindless banter ... get to work and do what it is I love to do. Or feel, in some way, compelled to do anyway.

But then I languish. How many topics on writing can I possible write? I mean, really. I'm not an English teacher and while I may be adept at using the language, I can't expound upon all the little frillies and functions within it. God how boring! I mean, I had a non-published post on 'Foreshadowing' sitting waiting for me to press Publish Post. You know what it was about? Game of Thrones. Yea, okay, there was some exposition about Foreshadowing in it but let's be honest. I had just finished watching the entire series thanks to Xfinity's on-demand and absolutely loved it and wanted to talk about it. And so I found a "writely" thing to couch it in, and created a post. Thank god I never published it because it was stupid :)

So, in the meantime, I received an invitation to a new social website called Google+ - thank you, Krazy Karl - and have been building up quite a network of other writers around the world and getting oodles of inspiration. Literally, oodles. And realizing that just because I am a person who likes to write, that doesn't make me a writer. Only writing makes one a writer. And I still neglect that whole "writing" thing too much. Unless you count long emails detailing what I did the night before and what I plan to do once work is done that night to my friend Mel. If you count those, then I am definitely a writer. (I count those, shhh.)

So what does a writer write about in a writing blog if not the nuances of writing?

Who cares.

My friend Peter writes about things that remind him of or inform his writing as well as movies he loves and things he does with friends. And he's a writer. And I would consider that his writing blog. He markets his books in it as well as lets his readers know what he's currently working on.

So here's the rundown of the things I am currently working on (besides emails to Mel which are ongoing and probably not interesting enough to note here):

Cassidy. My first novel. A defining piece of me, if there ever was one, in my opinion. I am in the third draft and finding it somewhat hard to commit to sitting down and working through the noise and distractions this house offers me. That doesn't mean that I don't want to work on it, it merely means I am easily distracted
9 Years. A short story I wrote about a year ago that stands ahead of most of my other shorts in story and skill and one I hope to get published in an online story site. Pretty much done but with some read-throughs and possible tweaks still before I'm comfortable sending it out.
Prudence. Another short story, this one unfinished but with great promise. Very much character-driven by a psychotic little girl in pigtails. Not sure where exactly it's going to go but I bet Prudence has an idea. Another one I would consider for online publishing once done and edited and read-through and tweaked.
The story I woke up with this morning. Yes, another distraction from Cassidy. What can I do - the entire first paragraph was in my head when I opened my eyes. Not like I could just jot the paragraph down and not pursue it any further today. Not yet sure if it's a short, a novella or a novel but rest assured, it is apocalyptic and therefore quite capable of holding my attention

So what am I doing now? A blog post. Hey! At least I'm writing something.

Past Perfect Progressive

2011-06-19T14:26:00.006-05:00

Past perfect progressive tense describes a past, ongoing action that was completed before some other past action. This tense is formed by using had been and the present perfect of the verb (the verb form ending in -ing).

from http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/tenses.html#past%20perfect%20progressive

Does that make any sense to you? Do you remember learning about that verb tense in school? I sure don't and, as an English major in college, I've had four more years of English classes than most. Regardless, Cassidy is chock full of Had Beens and one of the chores I've set myself in this third draft editing is eliminating at least 70% of them!

I am by no means alone in this: my friend Peter is running into the same issue, as are countless other authors - no doubt. It's funny, I don't find myself talking in the past perfect progressive (hardly perfect, by the way) in daily conversation but writing seems so much more formal a conversation and therefore, apparently, in need of tenses that are not commonly taught in most English classes. My goal in this third draft will be to give Cassidy a more daily conversational tone and less of a formal, elevated (snobby writer) tone.

This draft is going slowly for now as I split my free time in helping my husband with his business accounting but as soon as I can get that to a weekly maintenance stage, I intend to tackle this imperfect, non-progressive language issue along with all the other notes I have amassed (thank you, Mel!) and hope to have a completed draft within a month. And with my hubby strongly considering a solo jaunt* to Phish's Superball IX festival in NY for the weekend of July 4th, my chances increase considerably!

*I have to keep myself excited over the possibilities of completing the third draft in those days home alone to avoid the tears that come from having to miss a guaranteed good time with friends that long weekend. Blame moronic American work standards for that piece of silliness and I will take it as motivation to remove myself from that silliness as soon as humanly possible!

Restart

2011-06-11T12:16:00.003-05:00

New Design, New Purpose.

This started out as a writer's blog and went off into Me-Land. Not that there's anything wrong with Me-Land, if you like endless plains and long stretches of prairies bounded on either side by hundred-year old oak trees. It's a nice place to visit.

Let's get back to the original purpose of this blog.

I wrote a book. I.actually.wrote.a.book. Yes, the same one the previous entries ended on. I completed the task and not only soared past the requisite 50,000 words to win NaNoWriMo, I also finished the book. It contains a beginning, a middle and an end.

I set down the book, after November, for five months. Thought about other things, caught up on reality TV. I let myself forget the story.

Then in March, I picked the book back up and read through my November words. Not surprisingly, it bordered on atrocious. What can I say, I wrote it in 30 days.

So, after a prolonged read-through with extensive note-taking, I set about fixing it. I am still in that phase.

I have a finished second draft, using Microsoft Word's mark-up features, and still a long, long way to go. In this case, I have much more to add than subtract - at 60K some-odd words and a lot of missing information, I am slowly but surely slogging my way to the end goal.

End goal: publication. How to get to that goal: hunkering down.

Name of the book: Cassidy

1,000 Words

2010-11-28T17:50:00.002-06:00

Here, on November 28th, I am. About 1,000 words to go to "win" for the second year in a row. Of course, the story is a helluva lot more than 1,000 words from completion so I may have to do some serious truncating, here in the first draft, to just reach the end. For me, winning this year has nothing to do with word count (especially now the count is so close) and everything to do with beginning, middle, end.

Just wanted to crow.

Midterms

2010-11-03T20:12:00.003-05:00

I spent much of the day writing an in-depth blog post about how I feel about yesterday's Midterm Election results. Oh, it was a good piece - full of descriptive words and palpable emotion. It had everything: rants, history, quotes. One of my best, if I do say so myself.

Then I read this piece in The Busy Signal by JA MYerson and decided mine wasn't nearly good enough - this one says it all to me. I am sorry, Wisconsin, for your loss and for those in your state who were blinded by money and lies.

http://thebusysignal.com/2010/11/03/the-loss-of-russ-feingold-lamentable-and-shameful/

1,667 Words

2010-11-02T20:01:00.001-05:00

That's the magic number I need to write everyday. Well, I need to account for every day. If I happen to write 3,334 words in one day, then I have accounted for two days worth of writing.

But that's only if my goal is 50,000 words - no more, no less.

In fact, my goal is two-fold. Demolish the 50,000 word barrier - preferrably before Thanksgiving so I'm not worrying about it all that weekend. And complete the novel. Preferrably before the 30th when the fever is still upon me. If I go past 50,000 words by November 30th, then I am technically a winner but will it continue to hold my attention past the 30th if I don't finish the novel? That's the $60,000 question.

So yesterday completed Day 1. I started the day off, right after midnight, by writing a 500+ word prologue from the point of view of a wolf. Yes, that kind of wolf. It's like that.

Then last evening, as I simultaneously watched my beloved San Francisco Giants win the World Series, I passed the 1,667 word mark still in the narrative section of the first chapter. And as it was growing late and I'd only gotten four hours of sleep the night before, I submitted my word count to the NaNo website and hightailed it off to bed.

Tonight I hope to account for two days of writing at least; my husband is working and much of television tonight is a repeat.

Happy Day 2!

Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants! Thank you for beating Texas.

Leechblock

2010-10-31T13:36:00.005-05:00

If you are a Firefox user (PC) and a Nano-er, Leechblock is an excellent tool for providing a proverbial slap on your hand for wasting time online in all the millions of ways there are to waste time.

All you have to do is install it as an add-on to your Firefox browser and then configure it to block your time-wasting websites for specific hours of specific days or beyond a certain amount of time each of those days - your choice.

I have it blocking Facebook, Phantasy Tour, CNN and other mind-numbing websites and message boards that could prevent me from stacking up 50,000+ words in the next month.

I can override it if necessary but I will use that ability only in the event of a surprise Phish show or terrorist act.

The Day Before Nano

2010-10-31T12:09:00.001-05:00

'Twas the day before Nano and all through the house

The piles of clothing lay strewn all about.

The dishes - none rinsed - lean, waiting to be cleaned.

My hope is to give them all one last shiny gleam.

For come the next morning, my time'll be taken

With plot and character and themes, not baking.

For the next 30 days, my ass will be planted

In front of my laptop, as I make myself candid.

The novel this time will be dear to my heart,

about a daughter I'd have had if I had played the part.

So to wrap up this abomination

Let me just say

It's Nano time once more

And I am once more excited to play.

(Jesus, good thing I'm not using my 50,000 words for poetry.)

Bullfighting

2010-07-28T11:31:00.001-05:00

I have what I consider to be two favorite books of all the books I've ever read and presumably, all the books I will ever read. Which isn't to say that I don't expect to fall in love with other books; on the contrary, I both hope and expect I will at least a hundred more times. But there are two books that are automatically on the desert island list and will remain on that list as long as the minute possibility of me landing of that desert island (apparently with enough foresight to bring a couple favorite books, a couple favorite CDs & a couple favorite movies) exists.

One of them is, of course, Stephen King's It. I spent an entire semester in high school hiding that book (unsuccessfully, it's a behemoth) in various textbooks. I don't remember much about that semester - I didn't get too much sleep. That was, at that point in my life, the longest book I'd ever read and the first time I had ever immersed myself so completely in a fictional world. My dreams of being a writer and creating fictional worlds that readers could so easily immerse themselves in began that semester. When asked the question about my favorite author, invariably, and due in great part to this book, I will point to Stephen King as the one.

I encountered my second favorite book after college, one bored Saturday when I lived with my mom in San Francisco. My mom is an obsessive reader. Her favorites range from SciFi-Fantasy to Biographies to Mystery to Philosophy to Nancy Drews. She will read just about anything. Her favorite author, though, is James Michener. I can recall her curled up in her orange chair, set on a forest green carpet and backed by forest green velvet drapes reading thick black-covered books with the names of states like Hawaii, Alaska and Texas and other regions like Caribbean, Chesapeake and Space. She devoured those books, one right after the other. And after each one, she would hold it out to me and ask me if I wanted to read it. I declined every time. Despite my burgeoning love for epic fiction, I was never enthralled with the concept of the historical fiction that he was known for.

But one bored Saturday, after having read through the majority of Mom's SciFi and Fantasy books, I pulled out James Michener's The Drifters. It lay at the end of her line of Micheners, the dust cover torn and frayed and the only one with a non-location title. In fact, the character-centric title is what stopped my finger on its spine and made me pull it out for a second look. And the description on the inside flap, about six young people traveling the world in the Sixties is what made me carry it across the room to Mom's orange chair and curl up with it, a curtain-less picture window with a view of the Inner Sunset behind me.

The plot is as simple as it reads on the inside flap of the dust jacket: six young men and women (three of each) who randomly meet in the resort town of Torremolinos, Spain and together, embark upon a journey across Europe and northern Africa as they discover each other and themselves. I could totally write book jacket synopses! In fact, that may be exactly what the jacket said. The instigating character in the story (the unmoved mover, if you will) is an older gentleman, an investment analyst whose job entails traveling across the world to meet with the clients of Switzerland's World Mutual Bank, a job I very much wanted to pursue after reading this book while on the bus and streetcar commuting to my vapid position as a glorified receptionist at an ad agency. George Fairbanks coincidentally knows four of the six young people through dealings with their parents and grandparents and therefore is welcome ingratiating himself in their lives and journeys.

It is those journeys that captured my then-young and restive imagination. At that point, I had never left the continental United States with the exception of an afternoon in La Playa de Rosarita on the Baja peninsula. I had long dreamed of backpacking across Europe, just me and my thoughts, but that was a dream that was not to come true for me. I was destined for college and the working world, how droll. I am still trying to escape those shackles.

One of the places the drifters visit is Pamplona, Spain. There, they meet up with Mr. Fairbanks and his friend Harvey Holt who is a technical representative on radars in remote locations, a job I decided was better suited to me than investment banking and still full of travel and intrigue. Harvey is a man's man - he works hard and then he plays hard. Every year, he travels to Pamplona, Spain for the Running of the Bulls and Mr. Fairbanks talks the young people into meeting him and Holt there for one of these visits.

Up till reading this portion of the book, I had never given much thought to bulls, running or in the ring. I'd seen pictures of matadors in their fancy outfits and red capes, in impossible positions as a large bull bears down on them and the crowd cheers but that had been the extent of my exposure to the tradition. But Michener, the man who builds an island up from the first amoeba to a multi-generational modern family, was not going to give the subject a light treatment. From the moment the six drifters meet up with Harvey and Mr. Fairbanks in the fictional Bar Vasca and are treated to Bull Ball Stew, not the technical name but the general idea, the tradition is thoroughly explored in the Pamplona chapters. Things I learned from Michener:

*The Running of the Bulls is actually a multi-day event with runs happening each morning and the fights each afternoon.
*There is a hospital at the bottom of the hill that excels in goring wounds, as one might expect
*The danger in the Run is in the stray bull who doesn't keep up with the pack and arrives late on the scene, frenzied and therefore much more dangerous
*Another danger in the Run is inexperienced runners who think they are man enough until the moment they see the bulls and then create a danger for themselves and those around them, sometimes pulling a more experienced runner in between them and the charging bull, putting him in much greater danger
*The most dangerous of the bulls are drugged and heavy weights are dropped on their kidneys so that they are weakened and less of a danger to the runners and the matador

While I enjoy the Pamplona chapters - there is so much more going on during those chapters than merely the Running and the Fights - they have certainly had a hand in bringing out my inner indignation at the treatment of the bulls. So much so that when I hear of the Running coming around again, I always, always shake my head and say aloud to no one in particular: I hope they gore the whole lot of 'em. There was a story earlier this year of a matador, Julio Aparicio, being gored in the throat and though the pictures were far more gruesome than I prefer to see, I felt only justification at his injury - he didn't die. I know, it's not nice. I shouldn't wish for harm to come to other humans but I am so disgusted by the tradition and the fact that they cheat in order to make sure the humans win that I want, for once, the humans to not win. I want the bull to win. In our recent history, we have done such a great job of recognizing our many and varied inhumanities and learning and progressing out of them - abolishing slavery, giving equality to all citizens (western world) - we have a great deal to be proud of in our growth as a species but we still have that nasty little habit of dominating the other species, as if it stems from a bible of some sort. We are still working on the full equality of all humans so maybe I'm jumping the gun in hoping we can start having a little respect for all Life, but can we start that soon please? I know I eat meat and I know I have some leather in a closet and I don't have a non-hypocritical way of explaining that other than the Food Chain so we'll not address my hypocrisy just yet. Suffice it to say, I am learning to enjoy more and more vegetarian meals and maybe one day will be able to eliminate an animal or two from my diet. And I really don't mind faux leather so long as it holds up like the real thing. But anyway ...

CNN has a story this morning that gives me hope for the respecting all Life dream which is where this whole rambling blog post comes from. It seems that despite the deep tradition of bullfighting in Spain, the Catalonia Parliament voted 68 to 55 to ban it. This landmark decision won't apply to all of Spain, only to the Catalonia region which encompasses the western portion of the Spanish mainland, including Barcelona. It is nonetheless, a huge blow to the "sport" and one that I hope is only the beginning. In the article, a young Catalonian bullfighter laments the possibility of the end of the career he has just begun but you know what, he can go back to school for something less ... cruel and ... inhumane. Become a software engineer, you don't need to drug or dominate anyone in the IT industry and you can make a lot of money. Sure, there will be less girls flocking around you but the upside is you won't have to wear such flamboyant and sequin-infested outfits and that can only be a good thing, right?

I doubt that I will see an end to red-belted men in white shirts and pants feeling as though they have something to prove every July in Pamplona in my lifetime and that bullfighting will continue to flourish and excite in Spain and Mexico but all great progresses in human history have begun with a single step and I am so happy to see Catalonia take this step.

My Life in Fiction

2010-05-13T11:18:00.001-05:00

My audio books as of late have had a habit of mirroring, or at the very least, commenting on my own personal current events.

Starting with The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet in which a young Chinese boy befriends and falls in love with a young Japanese girl in WWII Seattle. I began reading this as I started planning our few days in Seattle this summer to precede the take-off of our Alaskan cruise. Not only did I enjoy the story very much, but I also planned an afternoon of our Seattle adventure to be centered around the hotel in the title of the book, the Panama Hotel.

A book or two later, I embarked upon the story of a lifelong friendship between two women that, in that genre, is always destined to end badly. And it did, right around the same time and in much the same way as my friend Lisa's life ended. So for the long rides up to her house and back, the ending of that audio book added to my already healthy fall of tears.

And now, another book about female friendships - not sure why I landed on this genre as of late; the library seems to always be out of the other books that I'd prefer to read. It too is apparently following the familiar pattern of ending in tragedy and this tragedy is too much like Lisa's. A cancer that has metastasized to the liver but the primary node cannot be found. And now I understand the trepidation that came along with Lisa's chemo treatments, that without knowing what cells to attack, the chemo needed to be more general which is a danger to healthy cells as well as unhealthy ones.

What next: a book about camping in Indiana? Hopefully it will be more light-hearted - it's damn hard to drive with tears in your eyes.

It's Time

2010-05-04T09:33:00.001-05:00

I've been struggling to write this next blog post and have written a few different versions already that I've then subsequently closed without saving. Perhaps this one will make it all the way.

Both Jason and I received a Facebook message from a friend a few months ago letting us know that she had been diagnosed with lymphoma. The news was less shocking than you'd imagine as this friend has had a passing acquaintance with various forms of cancer for the entire time we've known her. While we didn't reconnect with her as often as we should have, it seemed like everytime we did, she had just gotten out of the hospital for this or that. Her health was shaky, at best.

It turns out that lymphoma wasn't the correct diagnosis and that the situation was much more dire than any of the previous cancers she'd had. Within a month, she was undergoing chemo treatments for a mysterious form of cancer that began as a large tumor in her stomach and had started to spread to her liver. Her boyfriend, Jake, kept us informed of her progress when she was too weak to talk and one night, when Jason was out at a consultation, my phoen rang and it was her. I picked up immediately and turned off the television. We had an amazing conversation full of positivity and hope and liberally sprinkled with cold, hard facts. Her first round of chemo had gone well and the doctors were very pleased with how much the tumors had been beaten back. They would continue the same path and hope for even better results the next time. We made a date for me to come up the next week and I hung up from that conversation feeling full of hope for Lisa's prognosis.

That was the last time I spoke to her. The date we'd made ended up having to be cancelled because the doctors had pushed her chemo up to more aggressively attack the tumors and after that second and final round, they discovered that the cancer had gotten smart and dodged that which threatened it. It began to consume her liver, a much more important organ than I'd ever realized which was needed to process the toxins in the chemo. They called her in and told her the bad news. I wasn't there, I don't know how she took it other than through other people's words. I can only imagine how I would have taken news like that, so add a healthy dose of grace and dignity to my conjectured response and that's how I imagine her reaction. The thought of processing news like that devours me.

Jason and I made plans to go see her Sunday April 25th, to say goodbye. On Saturday, Jake called Jason and told him we needed to move it up. Jason had a couple of consultations that early afternoon so we made arrangements to meet up at an Oasis on I-94 since we'd be coming from two different directions and continue on together in one car.

When we got to Lisa's parents' house, we joined a large crew of family and friends who rambled between her room, the living room, the kitchen and the breezeway for smokes. Lisa was unconscious and had been since about noon, right before Jake called Jason. She was never to regain consciousness.

I met three lifelong girl friends who were there originally for a fun sleepover that had tragically turned into a death watch. June, who has known Lisa the longest - since kindergarten - is a petite blond with the bluest eyes and sunny disposition. Nicole shares Lisa's love of all things hippie and is powering through supporting everyone while pregnant. Julie is a constant tower of support for Lisa's mom and Jake as they helplessly watch their girl die. Lisa's friends are vehemently supportive of the process as only intelligent, accepting individuals can be. They massage her feet and hold her hands and hug her mom and fight back their own tears. Truly an amazing group of women to be surrounded by.

Less than twelve hours after we said our goodbyes, Lisa peacefully passed from this world.

I still get teary with a phrase like that. Facebook suggested that I reconnect with my old friend Lisa Rosemann last night. Talk about a rock in the pit of your stomach. I'd give anything to do so, thanks for bringing it up, Facebook. And yet it gets away with it because it is a program and no one gives a program a dirty look when it puts its foot in its mouth.

We followed through the entire process. Went to the wake on Tuesday night. The funeral home was crowded almost the entire evening with friends and family and neighbors and acquaintances and even the mayor of Antioch showed up at one point. They had an open coffin and had put a wig that Lisa chose for her open casket as the chemo had worked well enough to take her beautiful head of hair away. Another thing I can't fathom: choosing your own funeral look at this age.

The funeral was Wednesday. Jason was a pall bearer and told me in the ride up that Catholic tradition is that the pall bearers are the messengers and that they should have a hand on the casket at all times possible until the priest has duly sent the soul up to heaven. I'm not a religious person, at all, but I thought that was particularly poetic in a time like this.

I've been to a couple Catholic wedding ceremonies but never to a Catholic funeral mass. There was much more singing in grief than there is in celebration. I hope the pomp and circumstance of it all comforted Lisa's parents - I found it to be entertaining in those moments when I forgot why we were there. I found the incense swung over the casket to be cloying and not unpleasant. And in the end, I cried. And cried. And cried. I cried quite a lot last week. As did so many others.

I took away from it all: Love and mortality. Both are bound to get ya. Hopefully with several decades between them.

Much love, Lisa.

My My My ... How Times Change

2010-04-19T10:13:00.001-05:00

Killing some time, waiting for a vendor to show up at one of our satellites. Decide to look up Flunk Day to see if there are any rumors pages I can access and stumble upon The Knox Student website. TKS is a weekly student newspaper for Knox College. They had a couple of articles about Flunk Day but nothing with a link to rumors.

So I clicked around and started reading other articles and came across one entitled ,a href='http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/article/all-plugged-knoxs-laptop-controversy/'>"All Plugged In: On Knox's Laptop Controversy". My interest piqued, I clicked through.

First off, I was shocked there is a controversy. I thought it was a bygone conclusion that laptops are everywhere and thus belong everywhere. I know in my day, laptops didn't even exist. But then again, neither did color monitors. And our printers were very, very loud. When I went off to college, my dad asked me if I wanted him to buy me a computer for school and it being 1989, I said no thanks, Dad. I'll get a word processor - that's all I need. And I was right. With the exception of a stupid Apple computer that corrupted my floppy disk right before senior finals, I rarely used much more than my word processor.

Had I been born 10 years later and entered Knox the fall of 1999, my answer would have been different, although I doubt the question would have even been asked. By that point, more than likely, I would have gone through an entire junior high and high school career using a computer and my dad would have known that I expected to do the same in college. And by that point, I may have been gifted an IBM Thinkpad 600 with a 300 mHz processor and 5.1 GB of storage. And I would have been on the cutting edge with a machine like that.

When I was a student, the only way to take notes involved ink (or graphite) and paper. Professors spoke fast so it also involved copious amounts of unreadable scribbles stretching across the lined sheets in front of me. The process of going over those notes later for a test inevitably ended in headache.

It seems a little odd that Knox is having this controversy now. Laptops have been in students' hands for over a decade so I have no doubt they have been in the classrooms just as long. Why carry a 4oz notebook when you can haul a 6lb laptop from SMaC to CFA?

Of course, the answer is Facebook. And Twitter. And old fashioned email. “We’re starting to get a generation of students who have always been multitasking ... What a lot of students are weak on now is the ability to focus.” How times change. And how I stay the same. I have always had a problem with focusing - clearly, I was born 20 years too soon. I am of the wrong generation and now know why I have been unable to focus all my life. Facebook. Twitter. Email. It is apparent to me, I have been social networking in my head all of these years, waiting only for a machine that could provide an actual connection to real people rather than the imagined connections to no-doubt the pretend-people in my head. I am so thankful that it has finally caught up with me and given me a forum to truly be my multi-tasking, unfocused, inattentive self.

Thank you Bill Gates! And thank you, Facebook.

Pet Peeve #543.3: The Elevator

2010-04-16T10:31:00.001-05:00

They keep us in the basement. Us being the employees in the IT department, the basement being a secure zone that requires a keycard to access. So in a building of three floors, four if you count the basement, the elevator is a necessary means of transport when an executive on the 3rd floor is in dire need of an installation of software he will never use. So, being in the basement, I am the first one on the elevator and, being of moderate intelligence, I press the appropriate floor number.

Now, we are a public business and while I am insulated from the public by the security of the basement, I am still likely to run into a member of said public on the elevator or one of the floors above, where they are allowed. I don't relish these moments; I am a relatively anti-social, shy individual. I like the basement - I like being secured away from the public, I presume for their protection from me. I smile at the old ladies getting off at the 2nd floor but that's only because I know I will one day be one of them and hope that when that day comes, someone will smile at me. I smile at the old men because my dad is an old man (sorry!) and I think the world of him so all old men must be pretty good people. For anyone without white in their hair, well, yea, I generally ignore them. I will give a very brief upward curl to the corners of my mouth and then return my stare to the nicely tiled elevator floor as they get on and push their buttons. Or as they get on and see that I have already pushed the button for the floor they need.

But then there's the ones who see that the button they need has been pushed, it is the only lit button on a darkened panel, and they deliberately push the lit button. Once, perhaps twice. Some even hold it in, to make sure it gets the message. Take me to the 3rd floor. I really mean it, unlike the incompetent person who is already on the elevator with the lit 3rd floor button. It is for those people that I reserve a not so unnoticeable rolling of the eyes. Are you kidding me?!? I am not, in fact, chopped liver, standing here in front of the elevator doors you just walked through. I am an intelligent being who knows how to push a fucking elevator button. As you can tell, by the fact that the button is lit! So stop pushing the same button as if you're the only person in this hurtling metal box, you idiot, you!

Phew. That felt good.

Art of the Short Story

2010-04-09T09:57:00.001-05:00

When I wrote my 50,000th word during last November's NaNoWriMo, I earned myself a CreateSpace proof copy of my book. In the middle of the month, when I strained to find time and inspiration to continue, this reward kept my feet (or in this case, my fingers) moving ever forward. It won't get me too much closer to The Dream of being a best-selling author but it does - technically - get me part of the way there by being a published author.

The problem is, there is a limited time to receive this reward and despite having written just beyond 50,000 words, the novel was nowhere near an end. My motivation to complete it, however, was ... at its end, that is.

If I haven't mentioned this before, I'm a terrible Closer - a fact that drives those near and dear to me absolutely, insanely bonkers. I'm really good at starting, but that's little consolation when what you've started sits in a closet for two years, waiting to be completed.

I had this idea to make these reusable grocery totes from fabric that had always captivated me when I'd wander the aisles at Joann's or Hancock Fabrics. I didn't need a pattern; I'm actually pretty good at fashioning things like that from scratch. I made a decent amount of money a few years back creating "poster pouches" for the die-hard Phish poster collectors who had to run in and grab the show poster and then worry about its safety for the remainder of the show. So I created these long, slender bags that held poster tubes of various sizes. I lined them with vinyl to help resist water and covered them with cool fabrics like corduroys and interesting patterned cotton and sewed a shoulder strap on so they could be comfortably worn throughout a show for those people who were just too nervous to lay their paper booty on the ground. I created the pattern from scratch on a scratch piece of paper that I've long since lost and went and bought a whole bunch of different kinds of fabric and vinyls and went to town. I created the first one in about four hours and got so I could do one about every three hours.

I don't know exactly how many I made but we sold all but two of them for barely enough money to cover the fabric and supplies, much less labor. It wasn't a very lucrative business given the time it took, the money spent and the limited client base, most of whom only needed to buy one. My husband convinced me to create a wider, longer pouch for tapers but again, limited client base and even more money for more fabric. That may be the one project I started that I actually chose to finish rather than finished without ever making a cognizant choice.

What I'm getting at is I have a short attention span. I'm like a puppy. I jump from thing to thing with a wagging tail and when I grow bored, I jump to the next thing. Or I take a nap. Taking on a novel was a huge thing. My mistake, I think, was making my goal 50,000 words rather than actually finishing the novel. I made my goal, I didn't need to continue. But that's not entirely true. I really did need to continue.

So I have this free proof copy I can use, but I only have till July 1st to claim it. I have an unfinished novel that no longer interests me and a few short stories that keep me happily writing. What to do.

Why not use the proof copy to compile my short stories? I have many. Some will never see the light of day, even with this proof copy - they were practice stories and read as such. Some of them, however, are actually really good. I'm a good writer, better even than I am at creating bags. But I am a short story writer. Besides the 50,000 words I threw together in November, the longest thing I've written before is a 100 page novella that bored me around page 60. Somehow, I persevered and completed the novella but never completed the idea - it was intended to be a series of novellas with a common character.

The beauty of the short story is in its compact nature. I can get in, right in the middle of the action and end it within 25 pages. If I have an afternoon and inspiration (and the ability to block out Facebook and the various other online distractions - the Leechblock add-on for Firefox is great for this), I can write the entire story. Or if not in one day, certainly two or three days is no problem. Because it doesn't drag on, because there are a limited number of words to go from the beginning to the end, the story is all action. There is no need to describe the banister which has been in the family 107 years and polished to a sheen by the sliding asses of generations of rambunctious boys and girls. If a description of a non-essential element of the story goes beyond one medium-length paragraph, it can be edited.

So I started with a story I wrote a couple of years ago. I have no idea where it came from - it evolved from a name that popped into my head. That one is definitely in the proof copy; it just needs a final edit for schlock and it's done. Then a story I wrote a couple of weeks ago inspired by an email I received from myself. That one will need more editing, but it's sitting and I'm forgetting for now. And another story I started a couple of days ago - again, I had a name in mind and wrote a sentence with that name in it and the story began. I found a couple of really old stories on my website that I think I can put in as well; they need a little updating and a lot of editing but they're still really good stories, even from so long ago.

The goal is to get nine stories. I know Salinger already did Nine Stories but nine is my number and I don't have to call it the same thing. But it will be the same thing. Nine stories. I read Salinger so easily because I write a lot like him. So why the hell not.

I just need four more. By July 1st.

America - Fail!

2010-03-24T14:45:00.001-05:00

After 16 Years in Prison, a Whole New World

To sum up the story, Greg Taylor was freed from prison, 16 years after being wrongfully convicted of murdering a prostitute. The State of North Carolina dug deep upon his release and handed him a $45 check for a room that night. I should imagine it took him at least seven hours to find a motel that would accept only $45 for a night and no credit card for a security deposit.

The disgusting thing about this story - okay, the most disgusting thing about this story then - is that it further proves that we have completely lost sight of one of the most fundamental ideals of the original America in favor of the one of the most common sins of the current America. The prosecutor who so zealously made the case against Mr. Taylor was fighting for what amounts to be no more than a notch on a bedpost. A deep notch, to be sure, but a notch nonetheless.

An upwardly mobile prosecutor advances his or her own political cache with each successfully fought high-profile case. He or she is commended on their numbers alone; the quality of work behind those numbers is beside the point. The same thing can be said for the police officers who “solved” this case and so many cases like it across the country. Their job is to get their man. Their man may not be the man who perpetrated the crime but that’s not really their concern. Their concern is decorations and commendations. Which have more to do with numbers, again. We’re obsessed with numbers but could care less about the truth behind those numbers.

The phrase Innocent until proven guilty has become an empty idea that no longer matters to the ever-increasing empty heads of our fellow countrymen and leaders. Never mind the fact that it is one of the most basic tenets that we built this country on. I know, it’s a shock - we did not, in fact, build this country on mass-manufactured plastic flags in which to wave and proclaim a patriotism we don’t actually possess because we don’t even know what our country stands for anymore.

America began as a statement. As an English major and a lover of philosophy, this is my favorite part. In what once were a few colonies of settlers still beholden to a far-away and unpopular king, a germ of an idea for a just and progressive society began. Our forefathers had grown weary of and had chosen to escape a fading world in which the Few heaped a lifetime of overwhelming injustices upon the Many. The migration began in the name of religious freedom which is merely a nuanced subset under the very large umbrella of Freedom of Thought.

In the foundation of this new freedom, the architects planted a few basic kernels that seem simple on the surface but have power enough to suspend and sustain America indefinitely. One of those being the utterly modern concept of the presumption of innocence. Up till this point, the basis of a guilty verdict was made almost solely on a person’s social strata rather than the merits of the case. If a man of wealth accused a destitute woman of a crime, the prosecutor didn’t need to bother with burden of proof. The wealthy man won. The destitute woman’s morality was in question merely because her parents and her parents’ parents ad infinitum didn’t have the money to live on the right side of the tracks.

The concept of presumed innocence was a large leap for civilization in the 18th century but our forefathers saw it as an important declaration for the kind of country they hoped would flower under their feet. It gave an ordinary citizen rights that he or she hadn’t had before and it put the priority on fairness over fear. It says that we are more concerned with the crime of punishing an innocent person than we are with the retribution of a guilty one.

This isn’t an easy concept, and for anyone who has been a victim of crime - especially any form of violent crime - this may be downright impossible to grasp, but the fact of the matter is, in a country that is as concerned with the freedom of its citizens as America claims to be, that freedom can’t come with self-serving exceptions. Oh, except when someone falsely accuses you of a crime. Oh, except when an ambitious prosecutor needs another notch on his bedpost. Oh, except when an apathetic cop found you standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and came to the wrong conclusion. That’s not freedom, that’s luck. Luck doesn’t belong in a progressive society anymore than slavery does. Nor should we rely upon it.

In many ways, the America of today bears little similarity to the America that was borne of high-minded ideals. It’s a shame, perhaps even a crime, but it is what it is. We are a different species these days, more hungry for power and fame than for thought and process. Mr. Taylor is not the first guy to spend 16 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, nor will he be the last. We have willfully returned to an age where our society prioritizes fear over fair, greed over good, so it should come as no surprise that our prisons are rife with innocent people who can only hope that they will one day be exonerated and all the better if it comes within their lifetime.

It’s not even safe to be a law-abiding citizen these days.

hope everything with the house went well hope you and Jason are fine and have some great kids don't forget where you came from and never pretend to your kids that high school is a wonderful place

PastMe

I had a couple moments of wide-eyed fear reading this. Who knew this stuff about me?? Then as I re-read the first line in the email, I began to understand.

This is an email I wrote myself almost exactly five years ago – 20 days before we closed on our first condo and three months and some-odd change before our wedding in Jamaica. While I don’t remember the details, clearly I stumbled upon the site FutureMe.org and thought it would be a kick in the pants to write to the Me in 2010. And knowing the Me of 2005 – who isn’t really all that different than the current Me – 2010 must have seemed like a lifetime away. Could I make 5 years of marriage? Would I have kids within those 5 years?

Other than the surprise at having mentioned kids in the positive five years ago, the brief email sounds like me. And while I don’t remember having written those words, I can’t deny they would be my words.

So, to answer it: I have stopped smoking, for the most part. Everything went well with the condo and we have lived there – mostly happily – all this time (I had a clue in 2005 that the bottom would drop out of the real estate market, but I didn’t think it would have affected us as it has and ensured that we have spent more years at the condo than originally intended). Jason and I are fabulous. We have no kids – great or not – but Terry is still swimming strong and we’ve added a psycho cat to the mix. And I still have not forgotten where I come from although, in the intervening years, I have actually gotten back in touch with many of my former high school classmates through the magic of Myspace and Facebook.

So of course, after reading the email from PastMe to FutureMe, I returned to the FutureMe website to pen another email to another FutureMe, five years further down the road. And provided the Mayans were wrong, I should get it and hopefully will have fulfilled many of its expectations by then.

Stuck in the 1900s

2010-02-24T11:21:00.001-06:00

For being the techie that I am, it is surprising even to myself how little I have actually entered the 21st Century. I mean, sure, I have a cell phone with internet access - that came about more from necessity than mere desire: at my job, much of my internet wanderings are blocked by my own department policy, including personal email and it just wouldn't do for me to be blocked from Facebook all day long.

But when your mom tells you in passing that she has a new HDTV and Blu-Ray disc player and you are still gathering around your 27" tube television and hoping that your $50 DVD player doesn't crap out again, you know you're in danger of dinosaur-hood.

I was reading a friend's blog today about instant gratification in the 21st Century and realizing that I am living the life he fondly remembers before the days of Netflix On-Demand and it really isn't so bad. In a less-is-more kind of way, the pomp and circumstance of my once-yearly viewing of The Wizard of Oz endeared me to the story of Dorothy's strange journey (no, it wasn't just a dream, silly!) and it is still one of my favorite movies.

Of course, less isn't always more but with so many channels, I can choose for myself which needs less and which needs more. I own the DVD for Independence Day, my husband bought it for me for one of my recent birthdays because I have a tendency to watch it whenever it is on television, which is a lot. It and Dazed and Confused and several other movies that tickle me in some retro way (or in my sick fascination with the Apocalypse way) will always have the ability to stop my hand on the remote. And despite the fact that I now own several of those DVDs, I will still stop on those movies whenever they appear on television, even as the DVDs gather dust.

It's a Freebie. Same thing when WXRT plays "Backwards Down the Number Line" on my morning commute. Sure, I could queue up Phish's Joy album when I get to work and hear the same version of the same song but it won't make me nearly as giddy as when it randomly appears on the radio without any intervention of my own. Same thing with movies on TV. How many times have I been in a frustrated, I-just-want-to-kick-back-and-lose-myself-in-Hollywood kind of mood only to find The Day After Tomorrow on FX and - voila! - the destruction of New York is upon me?

And while I can be envious of those of my friends who have TIVO or DVR technology (or working iPods, or iPhones or fast computers or HDTVs and Blu-Rays), I know that I would still stop and watch Independence Day every single time I saw it on TBS and that I would only watch The Wizard of Oz every once in a blue moon when the mood hits me just right. That's just the way I'm built.

Holden Caulfield

2010-01-29T11:17:00.001-06:00

I found the reaction yesterday to the news of the death of J.D. Salinger interesting to watch as threads appeared on various message boards I frequent.

The news first hit the message boards made up predominantly of men - this was of little surprise to me. The Holden Caulfield effect, the privileged young man rebelling against the very privilege that gives him a platform to rebel, speaks most loudly to teenage boys trying desperately to escape their fathers' fates. Many of the posts in these threads expressed true, deep grief for the man who had been virtually invisible for the last 50 some-odd years. Many touting his one novel as being the best book they ever read.

With keen interest, I closely observed another message board, one populated most predominantly (say, 98-2) by women my age or very near. This is a board of media-savvy people who often break celebrity deaths the second after TMZ or Perez has. I was actually quite surprised to find no mention of this literary great's death even thirty minutes after I'd heard. In fact, the R.I.P. thread that was finally created didn't appear for a good six hours after the first thread (of many) on the first message board - the one of mostly men. And in that one and only R.I.P. thread, there are still only seven replies, most of which are of the generic sad smilie type.

I lean more with the men on this one, than the women. Now, part of this, obviously, is that I am enamored of great writing more than just about anything in this world (with the exception of great music) so that certainly fuels a lot of my sadness. But also, I identified with Holden Caulfield, much as the men on the first message board did, when I was a less-privileged - but not unprivileged - teenager and first read the book. Adults were phonies! They dressed a role Monday through Friday and acted nice toward people they hated and thought nothing of sucking up to someone they had no respect for. I was never going to be like that! I thought Holden Caulfield was, perhaps, the greatest character ever written and hell yes, I wanted to be like him. Gender divide be damned!

I'm a bit of a tomboy. Only slightly less now than when I was a younger. And to say a bit of is actually a bit of an understatement. I'm a tomboy, even now. I have no opinion on shoes nor purses, my favorite hairstyle is bedhead and I will never understand how psychotic some women can get (although, to be fair, I will also never understand how placid some men can be, even in the face of a psychotic woman). I'm not a traitor to my gender, but I am not really a full participant in it either. A part of me does want to be James Dean or Holden Caulfield, to push out against the expectations and actually experience the parts of life that passed me by while I was too busy doing the things I was supposed to be doing. I never believed in the life track that many women dream of: college, career, marriage, kids, grandkids, etc. College, sure. Career, only if it's fun. Marriage, whatever. Kids, no thank you. Grandkids, well, see Kids. That path is too predictable. All paths are too predictable. Much better to abandon paths altogether and go where I go, when I go. Find out when I get there where it is I went. That would have been my ideal. Of course, I might have required a little more privilege to reach it, but that would have been my ideal.

Perhaps this is why Holden Caulfield had such a hold on the men reflecting on his author than the women. Why the woman merely acknowledged another celebrity death* and the men truly mourned it. The men have been fighting against pre-conceived paths while the women have been dreaming about them. Holden Caulfield took up the banner for leaving the paths behind and forging new paths of nonconformance. This is antithetical to the stereotypical dreams of little girls. I can attest to this, simply thinking back on high school and the expectations of women's wardrobe choices. And how I chose not to fulfill those expectations. Then or now.

As I've grown, I've followed a few well-defined paths and I don't regret it. I do wish I'd forged a few more, but I think I've chosen nice paths. I think it was nice to have the luxury to imagine a life wherein all the choices came solely from me, but reality bites hard. And I bet, if Holden Caulfield had been a real boy, he would have discovered that too. I guess that's the bonus to being a fictional character.

*As per usual, there are exceptions to every rule and this is no different. My friend Mel and a few other women have reflected on the Holden Caulfield in themselves and turns out, I am not alone and that is a very nice feeling. Especially when it is my friends keeping me company.

An Explanation on Markings

2010-01-15T12:17:00.001-06:00

No doubt you?ve seen the ?s* peppering my past several ? though random and certainly not consistent ? blog postings. You can blame the I.T. department for that.

Working for the government brings with it many restrictions, one of which is online access. It?s a fluke, really, that I can even access blogs, much less post to mine ? thank you iGoogle, for doing your utmost to give me access where access should have been blocked. (Of course, part of me, the I.T. employee part of me, says shame on you iGoogle, for doing your utmost to give me access where access should have been blocked. I try not to listen to that part of me, but sometimes that droll monotone just bores into my brain and I can?t help but to listen.)

So, when I post using iGoogle, there is a bug of some sort that transforms hyphens, parentheses, apostrophes and other punctuation heroes into question marks. It may even transform my favorite ? the ellipses ? into a question mark. Let?s see ?

Sure, I could write blog posts from home, but then that takes away precious home time. Why not do my blog posts when I am here at work, desperately avoiding work? No, my boss does not read my blog. I hope. Well, we?ll find out, won?t we?

(Actually, and I?m not saying this just to save my butt in case someone is watching, there aren?t many moments that I avoid work. I spent nearly 13 years screwing around in my previous position ? not literally ? but this isn?t one of those jobs. I get to do a lot of things I enjoy doing naturally, so I do manage to keep pretty busy. I use my rare non-busy minutes of the day to post blogs which might help to explain how few and far between the postings have been.)

So, to return to the original subject, my apologies on behalf of iGoogle for the infestation of the question mark. I may or may not return to the post and edit it. If not, just know that hiding behind that ? is a ?, or an (, or an -, or even a ?

* with my luck, the question mark I typed turned into something else entirely

P.P.S. Now I?m wondering if the asterisk I typed turned into a question mark as well. Oy

The Year of Gettin? Shit Done

2010-01-12T14:44:00.001-06:00

Okay, it?s January 12th ? I think I can finally acknowledge the new year here.

Happy New Year!

So, 2009 wrapped up with my 18th Phish show in one year ? number 80 overall, I think. I remember thinking, back when Phish first announced their comeback, that I was older now and living a more adult life with more responsibilities and that I could never tour for 3.0 (post-hiatus, post-breakup) the way I did for 1.0 (pre-bullshit).

Haha. Yea. Right. Um. Yea. Previous to 2009, my most Phish-dense year was 1998 (13 or 14 shows). Really adult there, Deb.

So, come the turn of the decade, I found myself in Miami, FL for the first time in my life for shows 15 through 18 of this incarnation. Jason secured a P.I.M.P. condo rental less than three blocks from the venue, towering over Biscayne Blvd with an uninterrupted view of the bay and South Beach across it.

I don?t know if it was luxury that surrounded us that week we were in Miami, or the delicious warm temperatures that allowed me to slip into a pair of shorts and sandals as December came to an end, or the fact that this was my longest vacation from work since my wedding/honeymoon in the summer of 2005 but something turned in me that week. Ever since then, I have been extremely anti-job.

I like my job. I like the people I work with. I think I might actually be doing something moderately worthwhile here ? unlike at my last job which often made me ashamed to admit what it was I was doing with my life since college and which eventually laid me off in the crappy economic climate, thus leading me here. In the grand scheme of things, I think I fell out of a window and landed somewhere relatively soft and comfortable.

But, face facts: it?s still a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 job. I have to wake up somewhere between 6 and 6:30 in the morning, dress in clothes I?m not comfortable wearing, drive 45 minutes to an hour to work (hour and a half when it?s snowing) and earn a paycheck and 10 days vacation, 5 days personal time a year. Some people love this. I don?t. Some people tolerate this. I have. Some people find their way out. I will. I hope.

So I declare 2010 as the year of gettin? shit done. In 2009, I motivated myself to come back to writing fiction and won NaNoWriMo with just over 50,000 words written in the month of November. I?m giving myself January and perhaps a tiny bit of February to actually finish that book. The rest of February, March and April to ignore it and start on something new, May to go through for a second draft while I ignore whatever it was I started in February and June to get it ready to make the proof copy NaNo gives its winners as a reward for making it through to 50K.

I majored in writing in college not because I wanted to avoid the more career-centric paths my father wishes I?d taken but because I have always written. It?s what I do, it?s what I enjoy doing. I just need to do more of it. And consistently.

And if I get everything I want (You know what happened to the boy who got everything he wanted? He lived happily ever after ? Willy Wonka, the original), then I can return to Miami every December and wear shorts and sandals and take showers in large glass enclosures overlooking the bay and South Beach and I can stop counting vacation days and I can go to 19 guilt-free Phish shows and still have time to travel and visit my family and read and write and throw away all work-appropriate clothing.

Lots to do, time to get shit done.

It Begins

2009-11-03T11:46:00.001-06:00

To tell the truth, it?s been a long, long time since I?ve sat down in front of a blank monitor screen and belted out a good ol? fashioned story. Blog posts, sure ? Facebook tirades, of course ? fiction? Wellllllllllllll, that?s a horse of a different color.

Inspired by a couple friends who won it last year, I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month ? nanowrimo.org) in September and have been eagerly awaiting the start of November to finally belt out some good ol? fashioned story. I sought long and hard for the story ? this isn?t short fiction where I can just peer into the crack of the blinds and make a coherent 5,000-10,000 word observation about two people and their dysfunctional relationship to one other. 50,000 words is a lot of words. The story has to be big enough for the number.

I found the story, actually, in an old short story I?d written about a jillion years ago. While the short story was a day slice of life for a distant brother and sister, it was clear enough to me that a much bigger story existed around it and so I decided to take that on.

During the last half of October, after deciding on my course, I bent my head to the task of fleshing out the characters and story arc, with the emphasis on character. If I had to place myself into a genre box, I would confidently climb into the one marked Literary Fiction; I have great faith in my characters and their ability to create story where I falter. So I plotted out a beginning and a middle to my story but chose to not plan out the end, preferring to let my characters who will be fully functional by that point, do so on their own.

So with much anticipation, November began. And I didn?t. Up until last night at around 11:30pm, I have been on vacation for the Phish Halloween weekend in Indio, CA.

(Coincidentally enough, much of the story is located in a town not far from Indio called Victorville where I spent a few years visiting my dad and stepmom. So we?ll call that trip research. LOL)

I did manage to cobble some 2,000 odd words together between the airport and the airplane last night so I?m not starting from scratch. But I look forward to this weekend when I can do all the catching up and pulling ahead that I will need as the month waxes and my attention wanes.

Good luck to all the NaNo-ers!

The Antediluvians

2009-10-05T11:34:00.001-05:00

If you were in a club of obsolete professionals and aficionados, what would you formerly have been?

Oh, Joy

2009-09-10T15:13:00.001-05:00

Phish released their new album, Joy, on Tuesday. I bought the digital files Tuesday night for $3.99 ? Thank you Amazon! I couldn?t listen to it yesterday, of course, because yesterday was Debbi day / Beatles? day and my ears were solely dedicated to another groundbreaking quartet of amazing musicians and writers.

So this morning I eagerly clicked my way to Joy on my poor, aging iPod (:hint: birthday coming ? I could do a lot of things with 160 gigs :endhint:) and, with windows down and car stereo very, very, very loud, I sped off on my way to work.

The first song up happened to be the very first new Phish song I had heard post-Coventry. Trey and Mike played Backwards Down the Number Line at Rothbury, nearly three months before The Announcement that Phish was getting back together. Backwards is a pop-y kind of tune and not really in keeping with the Jamtasticness that is Live Phish but I really like this song. It reminds me of my friends:

Laughing all these many years / We?ve pushed through hardships, tasted tears

If you walked backwards down my number line, you?d walk past years and years of laughter, tears, hugs, shouts, red cheeks and more. And all my friends. We go back a long time, not so much because we started early but moreso because we?ve had many years since. When Phish opened with this song at Deer Creek ? the first show back for all the friends I was sitting with who go way back down the number line with me ? the association became cemented. For me, that song is about Mel and Danielle and Craig and Peter (though he was absent from the show). And that?s who I think about when I hear the song now.

Next song is Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan. My husband really likes this song. I?m meh on it but it does have a really great line that is begging to be turned into a bumper sticker, if it hasn?t already been:

Got a blank space / where my mind should be

This is a harder rocking song, so no wonder my husband likes it. Have you noticed guys generally like their music a little louder and a little faster than gals? I don?t have a problem with that, just an observation. And yes, there are exceptions to Everything.

The title track follows in the third spot. Now, I like this song, it?s a little less loud and a little less fast. My husband, of course, doesn?t like it so much. But this song hits a little deeper when you find out that it was written toward the end of Trey?s sister, Kristy Manning?s, battle with cancer. She died April 29th of this year, less than two months after Phish conquered Hampton. I don?t know if she was an older sister or younger but I assume they were close in age and if he?s 45 years old (and he is, born September 30th, 1964, Happy Almost Birthday Trey), she died too young. Fuck cancer!

-- Sidenote: while looking up his age on Wikipedia, I discovered that the name Anastasio derives from a Greek word for Resurrection. No kidding? That?s poetic.?

So anyway, Joy, the song. It?s funny, I would not have pegged these lyrics to have come from the emotions Trey must have been mired in when he wrote the song but I can hear it in the music. A little bit haunting, a little bit tender with a cheerleader chorus trying very hard to see out the other side of tragedy:

We want you to be happy / Don?t live inside the gloom / We want you to be happy / Come step outside your room / We want you to be happy / ?Cause this is your song too

Phish doesn?t have many emotional songs. They have fun songs and they have story songs. This is a new kind of song. While I?m still firmly in denial of the fact, this song reminds me that we are all mortal and only getting closer to the edge of the coil. And that we can?t just pshaw inevitability. I don?t know if that?s in the lyrics or the music.

The next song, Sugar Shack, is a Mike song and it sounds like a Mike song ? part bluesy, part silly. I like it. I don?t love it but I like it.

Following Sugar Shack is the song that drives my husband nuts: Ocelot. Now, I may be a big reason why he loathes the song. When I first heard, it was catchy enough that I sang it often ? but I only knew one refrain ? so that?s what I sang a lot:

Ocelot, Ocelot / Where have you gone?

To me, Ocelot is a quintessential Phish song and deserves its place in the pantheon of silly Phish-animal tunes. Let?s see ? they have Ocelot, Possum, Llama, Sloth, (Run Like an) Antelope, Bug, Birds (of a Feather), Vultures ? Lizards. And I?m sure I?ve forgotten several and before you say it, Dog Faced Boy doesn?t count. They really like animals.

Following Ocelot is Kill Devil Falls which has earned much praise from fans. Jamworthy is the highest praise a new tune can get and this song has been linked with that word on several message boards. Another song I?m meh about. I get it and Stealing Time mixed up.

The next song starts off completely different than the live versions I?d grown used to; I thought Amazon had snuck a Thievery Corporation song into my shopping cart. I like the song, Light, but it isn?t one that sticks out in my mind. I can?t say I really know the words or the meaning and the tune is fairly generic to my ears ? but I like it.

Following Light is another Mike song, I Been Around, from the sounds of it, all 1:57 minutes of it. It sounds like the lyrics to a country song on repeat and it isn?t long enough to annoy me, so that?s good huh?

Onto the opus. Time Turns Elastic. Phish is a very symphonic band for being the rock band they are. Trey clearly dreams of being remembered for his compositions as much as his guitar greatness. In general I like his lofty compositions, even love some of them. The instrumental portions in songs such as Harry Hood, The Lizards, Divided Sky and Walls of the Cave are many of the reasons I spend as much time and money as I do on Phish. There?s something just otherworldly and yet so succinctly human about standing in a sea of people swaying to perfect music.

Unfortunately, Time Turns Elastic isn?t swaying me. There are, what? Three, four separate sections in this song? And the only part I really like in the nearly 14 minutes comes in the last three and a half minutes. Up to then, I?m just not feeling it. But then again, if memory serves me, when Phish released Walls of the Cave prior to the release of the Round Room album, I felt the same about that song. But I hadn?t yet heard that song live ? it was the live version that reformed my thoughts about it. I?ve heard TTE live, a few times. I really only enjoyed one of those versions and that may have been because I was in the lawn with husband and friends and simply enjoying the company.

I hope this one grows on me because I know they intend to play it a lot for awhile. I?ll keep an open mind and try to find more good in it than just the last three minutes.

Which brings me to the last studio song on the album and definitely my favorite: Twenty Years Later. Okay, is it just me or is practically this entire album about growing older and having memories? Get out of my head, Trey!

This song isn?t so much look back and laugh as Backwards is but rather more of an I-can?t-believe-twenty-years-later-and-I?m-still-upside-down* This is a song that soars. Eagle with outstretched wings circling high over the Grand Tetons, the whole deal. I love the chorus, it sounds like all four guys are singing on it. I have this thing about songs that escape the ABAB CDCD trap. Give me some lyrics that just barely fit into the refrain and only nominally, and not necessarily rhythmically, rhyme and I?m intrigued. This isn?t Britney Spears people! Twenty Years Later will be a welcome addition to any shows I am able to hear, most especially if I am at the shows. I will enjoy it very much.

The album ends with a live version of Backwards signifying that they do indeed expect that to be the one song that would get radio play if they were any band other than Phish. I?m cool with only the one version of the song on the album but they didn?t ask me.

So, since this morning when I listened to this album the first time, I have heard it two more times as I drove around to various locations for work and then at the gym. I don?t usually have the attention span to listen to an album so thoroughly but feel that I got an immersion in Joy today and it was joyful. I really like it. I really do. Bravo and welcome back!

*actual lyrics

Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine

2009-09-09T11:28:00.001-05:00

Anybody who knows me, knows that today, September 9th, 2009, aka 9/9/9, is a Debbi day. Yes, technically, Debbi day doesn?t start for another 9 days (you think there?s a preponderance of 9?s in this post ? you should see my life!) but this year, I get an uber special Debbi day to precede the less special, but hopefully present-laden, Debbi day to come ? and oh, what luck, it?s turning into Beatles? day to boot!

Ok, so my thing with 9. Born in the 9th month, on the 18th day, in 1971. At 4:32pm PST. The 261st day of the year. All of those numbers divisible by 9.

So what does 9 signify for me? Apparently that I?m arrogant & self-centered. Oh, and compassionate, generous, creative, yadda yadda yadda. All true. The first two moreso. I?m a skeptic, always, but if you follow the ?science? of numerology at all, the number 9 is said to be a particularly spiritual number. It is a fleeting glimpse, though, more like a vague impression or d?j? vu that, when analyzed, breaks up into a wispy fog. I know this wispy fog all too well.

9 times any number equals a number that when broken down adds up to 9. Always.

The Chinese Dragon (my favorite animal, real or imagined) is made up of 9 separate animals (head of a camel, eyes of a demon, ears of a cow, the horns are branched antlers of a stag, neck of a snake, belly of a clam, the soles of its feet are a tiger?s soles, its claws are that of an eagle?s & 117 scales of a carp).

Anton LaVey applied the number 9 to Satan. Anton LaVey, a San Franciscan, is the founder of the Satanic Church which is a religion exactly like Christianity, only worshipping downward. Did you know they disapprove of sex before marriage too?

Cats are said to have 9 lives. My cat is down to 3. 3 is a magic number, so sayeth Schoolhouse Rock. 3 x 3 = 9. Thus, 9 is magic cubed.

My best years in my adult life have been divisible by 9: at 18, I began to make the best friends of my life in college; I was 27 when I first moved out on my own and also when I met my husband, 36 when I finally began my career path.

While my favorite band is Phish, my all-time favorite band is the best band that ever is or was: The Beatles. They are often associated with 9 due to their song Revolution #9, so it comes as no surprise that today is the release date for all sorts of new Beatles? swag that I?d sell my mother for. Okay, fine, maybe an aunt (hi Aunt Barbara tee hee). John Lennon, of course my favorite Beatle, was obsessed with the number 9. He was born on the 9th of October, the Beatles were discovered by Brian Epstein on the 9th of November, John met Yoko on another November 9th. He felt that the number followed him so, naturally, it tended to pop up in his music.

Coming at the end of the single digits by which numerology is defined, 9 is symbolic of the end. And this is the end of this post. Coincidence? I think not.

Trudging Through Green Lot with The Lizards

2009-06-26T10:38:00.001-05:00

Last weekend, starting a week ago today, as a matter of fact, I hopped on a little mini Phish Tour: one night at Deer Creek (Noblesville, IN) and two nights at Alpine (East Troy, WI) ? my two favorite venues and so close to home.

There is nothing finer in this world than a summer Phish show. Even 13 years after my first show and 13 years closer to an un-cooperating body, I can still dance and smile my way through the entire first set. And, if I happen to sit down during the third or fourth song in the second set, well, it?s not because I don?t like the song. My feet and my back and my thighs and my calves just have a different idea of fun these days than my heart and mind do. They have been carrying this body around for nearly 38 years and they like it when I lounge; they are top-notch loungers.

However, the true test of my body this last weekend came hours before the Saturday show even started. We had booked a room at the Alpine Valley Lodge, which boasts the advantage of a short walk into the lower area of the venue from your room. Jason had news of the Alpine dates prior to the announcement so he managed to score one of the Lodge?s very in-demand rooms for us, citing the expense as a reasonable cost to celebrate Phish and our fourth anniversary Saturday night.

The disadvantage to staying at the Lodge is that while you have an entrance to the lower area, the parking lot is in the upper area and the lower area doesn?t open till doors open and then, once in the venue, you can?t leave out the other side unless you have another ticket to return. So the only way to experience the parking lot is to walk about a mile around (and wayyyyyyy up) the venue or to drive in like everyone else.

Once we were in our room, we discussed our options because Jason wanted to get in the poster line, which was up in the parking lot. We could walk the mile around (and wayyyyyyy up), or we could just go ahead and drive into the lot and not use the Lodge advantage this night. I was skeptical: I am essentially a frugal person and like to get my money?s worth when I put my money out and other than the advantage of walking in from the bottom, there wasn?t much worth in this particular lodging. Plus, if I remember correctly from wayyyyyy back when I used to follow Phish because Phish used to be a band before they weren?t (and then before they were again ? after, of course, before they weren?t and then were again the first time), wasn?t there one lot at Alpine Valley that really, really sucked? Like, it was a color lot, right? Blue? Did Blue Lot suck? Red? Is there a Red Lot? I don?t know ? all I know is I remember horror stories about this lot even though I don?t think I ever got stuck there.

So, finally, I agree. We will park in the lot this time, so Jason can get his precious posters and we can see some friends we haven?t seen in a long time, and the next night, we?ll walk in from the bottom.

So we pull out of the Lodge driveway onto Highway D and the turn-in for the venue parking is the very next driveway on our left. We follow the waving arms of the yellow-shirted crew and pull into Green Lot.

Once we were parked, near the treeline at the end of a middle row that was quickly filling up with tents and other large obstacles that would be impossible to drive around, and unfolded ourselves out of the seats, I recalled the color of the bad lot. Green. Green is bad. Shit.

I turned to Jason and let him know we just screwed up, but he?s a guy, he?s younger, he?s in better shape and I?m not sure he?s heard the horror stories I have so he looked at me with a blank stare, shook his head and started to walk down the treeline toward the path. And I followed.

So, what makes the Green Lot so bad has nothing to do with the lot itself. It?s grassy and large and they leave enough aisles so that getting out of Green Lot isn?t a horrible ordeal at the end of the night. No, what makes Green Lot so bad is not Green Lot itself but rather, Green Lot?s location. Imagine the Himalayas, okay? You?ve got the picture in your head? Stately peaks rising up so incredibly high, into the clouds, covered in snow and Sherpas. You feel a profound weariness looking up at those peaks because it will take everything in you to ascend them which is why you are just staring up at them from afar because there is no way in hell you would agree to ascend them ? your last name isn?t Hillary! Now, remove the snow and Sherpas. Welcome to Green Lot.

Green Lot runs parallel to Blue and Yellow Lots, but is separated by a river (or creek or swamp, some body of water that is impassable). They are about the same level above sea level but on different peaks. So to get from one to the other, you have to descend for about 10 minutes then ascend again for about 20 minutes, each way.

The lesson I learned from Green Lot, and I think it?s a good lesson for life, is to look down. Don?t look up. Hope is a pipe dream. The ascension never ends so there?s no point in hoping or looking up. Just look down. Keep looking down. Keep saying to yourself: Look down, don?t look up. Sing a few songs to yourself. Hell, you might as well sing the entire Beatles catalog in chronological order to yourself. Just do it while looking down. And when you feel the ground start to level, your body start to come back to a reasonable non-leaning state, then you can look up. But not until that very moment. Oh, and don?t forget to breathe.

Once we reached the other peak, the Blue-Yellow peak, my vision and other senses slowly came back to normal. It was hot over here. So hot. But we were here and this is where we wanted to be and that was great. Jason went and got his posters, stood around and talked to some friends, we mingled and met someone who was taking my extra ticket and then Jason asks me if I?m ready to go back.

Go back where?

To the car?

WHAT?

Debbi, we have that champagne and strawberries and water and ? we have to go back to the car. Fred?s heading that way too and Jim will walk with us.

You can go back to the car. I?m staying here!

Debbi, I?m not going back to the car to celebrate our anniversary with champagne without you. Come on, it?s not that bad.

Apparently, his defense mechanism to that climb was to send his mind somewhere completely different from here. On what planet is it not that bad?

So, of course, I followed the pack of in-better-shape boys down the Blue-Yellow peak (10 minutes) and up the Green peak (20 minutes ? this hill was longer but less steep, so completely equal to the other hill in exhaustion).

We spent about an hour to an hour-and-a-half at our car. I drank three waters and toasted with a red plastic cup of champagne. I had some baby carrots thinking the vitamins would help me negotiate the mountain heading back, then I remembered that carrots are great for your eyesight and I stopped eating them because I didn?t need better eyesight to look down.

Then the dreaded moment came when Jason asked me if I was ready to head back. It was about 6 at this point and he wanted to get into the venue a little early. I laughed ironically to myself and then began the process of psyching up for the descent and subsequent climb. I knew the pot of gold awaited us at the top and whereas posters didn?t hold much motivation for me, the band did. So I nodded and fell in line.

The walk back up was as grueling but less horrific since I had, by now, become quite the expert at looking down. I was midway through ?Don?t Let Me Down? when I felt my feet hit ground that wasn?t at a 55 degree angle. Jason and the other guys smiled benevolently at me and I?m afraid I may have growled in their general direction. Had Jason made any mention of forgetting something and needing to go back at that moment, divorce papers may well have been served. Stupid Green Lot!

The good news is, the mountaineering was well worth it. That night?s show rivaled some of my favorite shows in Phishtory. The highlight came deep in the second set as I sat through the ending strings of Ghost (second set, on the lawn, had to sit) and the beginning notes of my most favorite Phish song tinkled out over the audience. I?ve mentioned the song in this blog, of course - http://9lizards.blogspot.com/2009/02/me-music-part-ii.html ? and perhaps the name of the blog itself derives in part from this song, definitely from the reason I attached this song to myself so many years ago. I immediately jumped into a standing position. This was only my third time hearing this song live and I had not expected it ? they?d already played it once on this early summer tour and I had thought that audience very lucky to have gotten it and assumed that would be its only show. Sometimes I am very glad to be so wrong.

I sang out loudly, though not as loud as I could since the volume wasn?t so high on this part of the lawn; I didn?t want my nearest neighbors to hear my voice over Trey?s. And when they got to the oh-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-umby-downt-downt-downt-umby-downt-downt-oh-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-whoa-oo-WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, I closed my eyes over my budding happy tears and enjoyed the perfectly played instrumental section that has always made me so glad to have found this band and stuck with them through the funk years and the all-night sets and the hiatuses and the drug years and the break-ups. That moment of closed eyes, perma-grin smile, thinking about all my friends and how much they have been around me all these years and being so grateful to have my wonderful husband standing behind me, no doubt smiling ear-to-ear for me ? that is the moment I am always looking for and always so blessed to be able to find, even if it?s been a few years since I last found it. You don?t want that moment everyday ? it would lose its luster fast. So long as I can get it every once-in-a-blue-moon, I am thankful.

At the end of the night, as I was descending from Blue-Yellow peak, preparing to ascend Green peak, I had that Lizards to buoy my tired bones as I gave them one last, great workout of the night. In some philosophy or theatre theory class in college, I had become fascinated with Aristotle?s Poetics and his theory of the necessity of bad in order to know good (he used the terms non-musical and musical, which is very fitting in my life sometimes). That you can?t know what good truly is without having had bad to compare it to. Which is true ? try defining the word good without using a single synonym or antonym. You can?t. You have to have the bad to know the good ? and vice versa, yes. I have lived that philosophy and it has gotten me through some of pretty harsh things life has throw at me. And while Green Lot might not be all the way up there with some of the more depressing moments of my life, as I ascended Green peak, I infused myself with the musical so as to get through the non-musical and the path was so much easier than it had been before.

Flunk Day

2009-05-06T11:25:00.001-05:00

Most of my Flunk Day memories are at the bottom of a Kwik-Stop squeeze bottle, along with my sobriety; memory and vodka don?t mix well (nor, for that matter, does blue Kool-Aid mix well with vodka ? just a friendly little piece of advice from a former Flunker).

Nonetheless, over fifteen years later, I still vividly remember the rude wake-up, the instant perma-grin, the rush to mix a drink, meet with friends, head to South Street and start the day. Flunk Day is Christmas, birthday and St. Patrick?s Day all rolled into one fabulous 16-24 hour random day each year.

The worst thing about Flunk Day ? in fact, the only bad thing about Flunk Day, unless you?re one of those people who have the alcoholic version of Foot-in-Mouth disease ? is that I only had four years to truly celebrate it. After that, my days belonged to someone else and usually, that someone else frowns upon open containers in the office.

So, I am left with dwindling memories of hazy events as I sit here in my nice clothes and wish that the email had arrived fifteen minutes earlier.

I could use a day off. I could use an opportunity to flunk. And God knows, I could really use a drink!

H1N1

2009-05-01T14:22:00.001-05:00

I got a memo from work today, a general email sent to every employee. If we call in sick, one of the Public Health Nurses will call us and our absence will be monitored to determine if we are sick with H1N1.

I am officially OVER this pandemic.

This will make a great movie someday, though.

Hey, I Know You - You?re The End

2009-04-29T09:23:00.001-05:00

With this early-rising job of mine, I have had to develop a morning routine just to successfully get out the door on time. I get up, use the restroom, feed the cat, put in my contacts (that?s a new move and not one I?m entirely sure will stay on full-time ? my new, un-broken glasses should be ready this week), get dressed, make coffee (if Jay didn?t already set it to go off), make breakfast and sit down to eat while watching the morning news on Fox ? the local Fox channel, not the national ?news? outlet (in quotes because the terminology is in question in regards to that channel). Chicago?s Fox channel is nothing like the national Fox channel and I like the anchors and the traffic lady and weather man are usually pretty spot-on.

While watching the local Fox news yesterday morning, I had an eerie d?j? vu.

Jan Jeffcoat and Patrick Elwood, the anchors of Good Day Chicago, spent much of my viewing portion of the newscast discussing the Swine Flu epidemic sweeping through Mexico and starting to pop up in various other countries, including America, while, at the same time, the same news monopolized the ticker at the bottom.

I?ve seen this before, somewhere. And no, not on 9/11.

I racked my brain till the second I turned the TV off and headed out to work, but came to no conclusion. It was most likely a misplaced d?j? vu, as most are. And my mind swirled around larger issues ? I had an appointment in court that morning for a speeding citation (46 in a school zone ? my invisibility cloak is no more).

After court (the cop never showed, the citation was dropped), when my mind had cleared, I remembered the d?j? vu and I realized where the memory came from. I had seen a very similar TV broadcast scene in I Am Legend, and perhaps several other end-of-the-world movies, like The Day After Tomorrow or 28 Days Later.

(Perhaps one of my favorite genres in film ? the Apocalypse, sans religious connotations, of course. I don?t know why but the end of the world fascinates me, and if New York City is, in any way, shape or form, involved, all the better. Which is not to say I have anything against New York. I?ve been to the city, once, over a span of 20 hours, on New Years Eve, for a Phish show, their first in over 2 years, my now-husband asked me to marry him there, at the Phish show, one of the best shows I?ve ever seen, and I?m not saying that because of the music. I thought New York was exciting. Of course, I was in Manhattan ? roaming around Madison Square Garden before and after the show ? and that is probably one of the most exciting 22.7 square mile regions in the world. I think what gives me the extra thrill boost when the Entertainlypse happens in New York City is that it literally takes the region from one very vibrant extreme to another. Face it, if you showed the effect of an apocalypse upon Sapulpa, Oklahoma, the entertainment value would be far, far less.)

So, once I realized where the memory came from and the outcome in that memory, I started to wonder if I (we, but I always think in I because I?m a narcissist) was witnessing the start of an apocalyptic snowball. The signs were there ? sober newscasters, ticker full of dire tidings, people wearing surgical masks in public. This could very well be The End. Fini. Fin. I?m so glad I realized that before it actually got here. It would have sucked if I had been surprised. At least now, I have time to take up smoking again. I?d hate to die of a pig virus without a cigarette on my lips. Phew. Thank you Good Day Chicago!

Hold it, you mean I probably won?t die?

Shit.

Pass the Nicorette.

Pins and Needles

2009-03-23T08:34:00.001-05:00

This is the state of my mind today. I have six outstanding bids in for two sets of four-night passes to what will be one impossible ticket. (You don?t need to know math to puzzle through that last sentence.)

Fingers crossed, Jason and I will get tickets for all four nights of Phish at Red Rocks this summer. More fingers crossed that our friends Fred & Jewel and Jim & Kate also get tickets. Hell, for that matter, all fingers crossed that scalpers and haters are shut out entirely and only those most deserving get tickets.

But wait, would I be on that list?

Scratch that, let?s just go with Plan A.

The Roller Coaster

2009-03-19T09:23:00.002-05:00

Last night, Jason and I spent the evening at a funeral home saying goodbye to his Grandma who died Saturday at the amazing age of 94. It is customary for Catholics to have open casket wakes the day before a funeral and today is the funeral so last night, Grandma was in attendance. I spent most of the evening in the kitchen of the funeral home. Lifeless bodies make me nervous.

Everyone from Jason's family was there except his brother and sister-in-law in Arizona who had very good, job-related reasons to be absent. Jason's grandma had two children and he hadn't seen the family branch from his uncle's side since he was in his single digits so I was a little overwhelmed by the Whole Family Reunion thing.

The members of the family who organized the wake brought out some old family albums from his grandmother's life with pictures of family life that ranged from, I would say, the late 1800s up to a picture from our wedding and Jason's younger brother's wedding. Some of those older photos were Fabulous. We think our digital point-n-shoots now take good pictures? These pictures were just as good but with less technology. And back then for some of those old pictures, you paid a pretty penny to have them taken so that you could have only one picture of yourself to pass down. How many pictures of myself have I thrown away while spring cleaning?

While sitting in the kitchen, avoiding the room with Grandma in attendance, Jason began receiving urgent phone calls from various friends. He ignored a couple of them but then got curious as more calls came in, so he stepped out to answer one of the calls.

Within a few minutes, he appeared in the doorway and gestured for me to come out with him.

"They're releasing 4-day Red Rocks passes on TicketMaster now!"

Turns out that someone, at some point this evening, had pushed the More Info button on the TicketMaster page for the Red Rocks onsale that is supposed to lead to information about when the tickets go on sale. That button will turn into a Find Tickets button next Thursday at 10 a.m. But instead of leading to information, it led to a Captcha page where TicketMaster is supposed to weed out the Bots from the Humans with a word or phrase that you have to type before moving on to a waiting screen. And once the Captcha was entered, the waiting screen appeared and after about a minute or so, the Purchase Tickets page came up.

Was it intentional? Was it a mistake? Two biggest questions of the night, only asked After people got the confirmation page and email that they had just purchased 4-day passes.

One of the calls Jason received was from a friend who assured us she had us taken care of but we knew of a couple of friends that needed to be taken care of so I ran out to the car to grab my phone. I thought I might have a chance at getting through TicketMaster on my Dare but Verizon's web service isn't accessorized enough to get through Java and Flash requests. So I called my friend Stacey.

"Are you by a computer now?"

"Yes, why?'

"Can you go on TicketMaster and search Phish Red Rocks? People are getting tickets now - there's some sort of mistake or something."

So she heads to the page and sees the More Info button. As a TicketMaster veteran herself, she knows that means that it isn't onsale yet so she tells me so. I tell her to click the More Info button. She is more and more shocked at each subsequent page that comes up that she shouldn't be able to get to but can. When she pushes the Submit button with my credit card information, neither she nor I expect it to go through, but it does.

Holy Crap, I have 2 4-day passes to Red Rocks. Holy Crap.

I head back into the funeral parlour, avoiding the front room where Grandma is, with a huge smile on my face. Totally incongruous to the surroundings and our reason for being there. I managed to duck my head in time to avoid being seen by a mourner, but couldn't erase my smile.

For the next two hours, Jason and I talked quite a bit about the possibility of this going through. Ever the realist, I presented a pessimistic viewpoint and gave reasons for why I thought this way. Jason is much more of an optimist than I but even he was questioning the likelihood of this actually sticking. Despite our personal views on whether or not it would stick, however, we were both very excited and hopeful that yes, it would actually be *that* easy.

When I got a chance, I checked out bank account online (my phone can do that, at least) and the money was listed as pending. Holy Crap.

I was heading off to bed when the cancellations started coming in for our friends and acquaintances. I haven't yet gotten mine - the email went to Stacey since she completed the transaction under her own account - but I know I will. According to a TicketMaster-employed source on one of my message boards, this was a huge error in event scheduling and, as soon as it was discovered, TicketMaster's I.T. Department scrambled immediately to correct it. Supposedly, the source is going to fill us in more around lunchtime when he can escape from the all-day meetings (oh, to be a fly on those walls today) and let us in on details. It doesn't matter much; the upshot is that it was, in fact, a mistake and that all orders are canceled, all monies will be returned and all of us will have to return to stroking our lucky idols whilst placing our lottery orders. And when/if those come back unfulfilled, all of us will be taking a break from our jobs a week from today at 12 p.m. mountain time to overload TicketMaster's server in an attempt to get those damn tickets back in our hands.

I have various people helping me place lottery orders because I know my chances with TicketMaster on the work T1 next Thursday are very, very slim. I would love to have more. If you have about $450 room on a credit card and want to help me out, I would love you forever and ever. Or if you have a lucky idol you want to throw my way, that works too. Sigh.

The Cover Song

2009-03-17T12:58:00.002-05:00

How many of my last posts have been about music? As you can see, I am clearly a music junkie. I am obsessed with Sound. So, I figure, I might as well continue in the same vein and return to the almighty soundtrack. It's only about half-burned now, we need to fill this sucker out.

___________________

One of my favorite things about music, both recorded and live in concert, is the way in which artists express their respect and appreciation for other artists: The Cover Song.

I have several albums devoted to this genre on my iPod - various artists singing Elton John & Bernie Taupin tunes on the great album Two Rooms, various other artists putting their own voices to the epics from the Grateful Dead on one of the first CDs I ever purchased: Deadicated. I've got an entire album covering Cole Porter as well as a live recording of the Jamband supergroup Brain Damaged Eggmen covering the Beatles and Pink Floyd. It's a win-win situation for me: I get to hear Brendan Bayliss of Umphreys McGee singing Dear Prudence from The Beatles. Buy one, get one free.

As well, it's always interesting to see what spin a band or singer will give to the cover song. Will they play it true to the original artist or will they make it their own frankensteined version that is just as good but not the same?

Phish - I'm sure you've heard of them, perhaps I've mentioned them a time or two in this blog? - has devoted an entire holiday to this genre four times in the 90s (and I can only hope will continue the tradition a fifth time in 2009). They don a "musical costume" on Halloween, paying their deep respect to an entire album for the second set of their typical three-set Halloween shows. And while they attempt to play the album true to the original artist, it isn't ever difficult to hear Phish in the music.

In 1994, the first year of the musical costume, Phish started out at the very top covering The Beatles' White Album. The next year, a couple of my friends attended the Halloween show in Chicago to experience The Who's Quadrophenia after some teasing of Michael Jackson's Thriller. (I know I am a child of the 80s, but I applaud Quadrophenia and the decision to merely tease Thriller. They could not have pulled off Michael Jackson's opus and that is not necessarily meant as a criticism.) In Atlanta, in 1996, they covered The Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and then the last one, in Las Vegas, the only one I attended, they covered Velvet Underground's Loaded. Many of the fans in the audience were disappointed that they didn't cover Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (they covered it a few days later - tongue-in-cheek, raised eyebrows and all that - at the very under-attended show in Utah), but I felt that I had received a little gift I hadn't expected at all: previous to that show, I didn't know a lick of Velvet Underground but with that particular costume, Phish introduced me to and helped me gain an appreciation for something I likely would not have otherwise heard. That's the very best outcome of The Cover Song.

One of my three favorite cover songs, I heard as a cover song first.

Back in the 90s - oh so long ago - when I lived with three roommates in Chicago, I shared an obsession with a couple of my upstairs neighbors: the Indigo Girls. I had been listening to the Girls since I'd lived in San Francisco and randomly purchased their self-titled album on cassette. I wore that cassette out, I enjoyed their music so much.

When I met and got to know my neighbors, I discovered this about them also. In order to expand my Indigo horizon, one of the neighbors, Missey, loaned me her 1200 Curfews double CD (a mish mosh of many of their best tunes, live, studio, in-studio) and I fell head over heels for one of the songs in particular, a cover of Bob Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue.

I don't know how I hadn't heard this song before. After hearing it that first time, I seemed to hear the Dylan version on the radio at least once or twice a month. It is possible I had heard it but it hadn't registered because I find Dylan's voice worthy of changing the channel? But I consider the first time I heard the song to be credited to the Indigo Girls.

I will give Dylan this: he is by far, the very best troubadour modern America has. Tangled Up in Blue is a sad kind of story about two people who once had great passion but over time drifted apart in time and space. And barely recognize each other when they have a chance run-in later in life. Like many of Dylan's best, it isn't a short song. If he has a story to tell, he needs the time to tell it and this song can linger, but that's a good thing. I want to keep listening to it.

The Girls definitely put their own mark to this song around the fourth refrain when they push the song into an intense, slow blues rhythm and Emily sings the stanza - where the two characters in the song find themselves at the place they left off but older and as different people - with a raw voice not holding back. By the end of the song, I feel like I've been lifting weights for an hour: dog-tired and head-high. Every time I listen to it. Still.

I've heard Tangled Up in Blue covered by another band, another great version. I would choose the Indigo Girls' version for the soundtrack because theirs was the first version I heard, and still my favorite. And this other band sings another of my favorite covers that I will attribute to them even though I mention another band covering this song earlier in the post.

Of course, I had heard Dear Prudence before. I've owned The White Album on CD since high school and if my mom hadn't "stolen" it from me when I went off to college, I probably would have worn it out by now. On the album, Dear Prudence was one of those songs that contributed to the Whole but didn't so much stand out on its own to me.

But when I heard the Jerry Garcia Band play Dear Prudence on their Live album, oh wow. It's a completely different song. Paul and John are the ultimate lyricists. Their music is good, but it exists as a background player to their amazing lyrics in The Beatles' catalog. The Jerry Garcia Band realized this and brought that background to the front in a nearly-twelve minute live version of the song.

I can remember the Where of discovering this song, if not exactly the When: the apartment I shared with three roommates in Chicago. One of them owned this CD and occasionally interrupted the constant stream of Phish to play it. Oh how I wished for many years that I had stolen that CD from him when I moved out but it's never a good idea to get Tim angry so it was probably best I didn't. And after so many years apart from that beautiful song, I found the CD at a Disc Replay and purchased it. That version of Dear Prudence is now safely permanent on my iPod.

One evening not long after the purchase of the long-sought album, I set the iPod to wake me up in the morning with this version. I'm a snoozer - when my alarm goes off, unless I have very exciting reasons to wake up that day, I hit that snooze button four or five (or seven) times till I can finally motivate enough to rise. All the while, waking my husband who doesn't need to get up nearly as early as I do.

That morning, the iPod went off and I heard the first few notes of Dear Prudence, and I just stopped my hand that was reflexively heading for the snooze button. The volume was at a perfect level to enjoy the song without - hopefully - waking my husband as well. I laid there for the nearly-twelve minutes dreaming through the bouncy rhythm and Jerry's perfect voice, smiling and waking gently rather than the usual blare and jump weekday mornings tend to be.

At the end of the song, when my hand softly pushed the Alarm Off button, my husband turned to me and said That was very nice before falling back to sleep.

We went to Jamaica in December, for the Caribbean Holidaze festival put on by Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits. The best memory from that week comes from the last night, the Brain Damaged Eggmen show. Each night before, we had arrived a little too late to the shows to grab a lounge chair and enjoy the music from a horizontal perspective and my great hope was that we could do just that for this last show which I knew would be heavy on The Beatles and I really just wanted to listen and not be body-conscious as I sometimes am when I am standing or dancing.

We got there a little late this evening as well and would not have found extra lounge chairs if not for the brief downpour that chased off many of those formerly lounging. We chose two chairs a-ways back, nearer to the crashing waves than the stage. I'm a huge fan of ambiance.

Five songs in, the Eggmen play exactly what I was hoping and expecting to hear. I leaned back, closed my eyes, concentrated on the combination of waves and music and let go. They played a shorter version of the song than JGB but with added ambiance, it became a different song to love just as much. A cover of a cover.

When I was a kid, I was allowed to stay up late for only two television events each year. The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music. Now, this was back in the day before HBO or even VCR -gasp!- so if you wanted to see either of these movies, you had to wait till ABC or CBS had their yearly television event. I still have a love for each of these movies because of their associations with the good parts of my childhood. I own the CDs of both of these soundtracks. I randomly find Oz and Sound songs in my head throughout the day. I don't mind them there.

Perhaps the best of all these songs, certainly the most famous, is Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It is a sweetly sung melody that captures peoples' hearts even as it annoys them dreadfully. I have always liked it for that ability. Part of me would like to think I have the same qualities.

Watching the television show Scrubs one day, I heard a version of this song that knocks out the annoyance factor and actually makes me want to put this song on a soundtrack. And when it catches in my head, I don't want to bang my head into a doorjamb till it's out. Because I love the song, and I love Judy Garland, but I don't so much love Judy Garland singing that song.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is the singer of the version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that I love. I don't know who he is, I have never heard anything else by him, but his version pulls the song up off the ground and sends it soaring above the rainbow as the lyrics have been requesting all these years. After listening to this song on my iPod, I have sometimes pushed Back and Play because this is a song I can listen to twice in a row. Even though it is a cover, it isn't faithful to the original and thus stands entirely on its own. I would never listen to Judy Garland's version twice in a row voluntarily.

I think when an artist performs a cover song, s/t/he/y are openly flattering the original artist or writer of the song. And whether they have intentions of being faithful to the original or quite the opposite, there's nothing in the rule book that says the original version must always be the best. Sometimes a person may start a work of art that another person is supposed to finish. It may be the original artists' destiny to simply put the framework out there so that the artist performing the cover can make it beautiful. I have many more examples of this but these three are definitely on the soundtrack as the best.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

2009-03-16T10:44:00.001-05:00

I know ? it?s Monday, Monday, Monday today. I missed matching a Sunday event to a Sunday blog. But I didn?t want to cheat you of the Sunday story so better late than never huh?

I had a feeling Sunday would be the bust-out show of the weekend. A lot of people were talking about hitting Friday/Saturday and heading back home Sunday so they could be at work Monday morning. Hell, I had to be at work Monday morning and gave it brief thought but I had the tickets and I can?t miss a Phish show I actually have tickets for. That?s wasteful. There are music-starved children in Africa and I must think of them, it?s only right!

So the plan was: sleep in Sunday, enjoy a leisure lunch with friends, mosey on over to the line, get in and get good seats, rock out at the show, head back to the room and quickly pack, get a couple hours of sleep, wake up at some ungodly hour, get in a taxi headed to the airport and get on a plane so I could get back to Chicago in time for work (well, a couple of hours late but in time to be at work).

Sunday went according to plan.

There, that?s my blog post. A day actually went according to plan. Isn?t that exciting enough for the interwebs?

Oh whatever.

The dramatic highlight of Sunday, and I think I may have mentioned this in the very large blog post that began this, was of course the near-fight I got into with a large, shirtless man over an entire row of seats. Okay, if you know me, imagine me at my stubbornest, which I know is not a word but let?s make it one today, ok? I set my legs over shoulder-width apart, set my jaw and look you square in the eyes with a glare that says you don?t stand a chance with me. That was totally me last Sunday.

Fred & Jewel got in separately from me and after (I tried to grab Jewel and put her in front of me in line but the security guard got me before I could squeeze her over) so it was run for the seats and hope I could find them when I did (I didn?t have either cell number and would have had to coordinate with an absent-Jason in the chaos). I ran immediately for the lower Page-side towards the back of the venue seating thinking that it had the best head-on view without being all the way at the back of the venue. Unbeknownst to me, Jewel and Fred were thinking way, way forward and had I known, I might have saved myself some grief.

So I run in and see an entire front row empty except for one guy ? one large, shirtless guy. So I head down there thinking it?s about 14 seats, no way he?s saving all of them.

As soon as I reach that level on the stair and start into the middle, he comes barreling over from his side of the row with his hairy chest thrust out in some animalistic, territorial, instinctual ? thing. It strongly resembled any number of nature films where the leader of whatever pack of growling animals confronts the brazen intruder. And no matter how many seats the row held, he had every intention of ridding his land of this intruder: me.

So I set myself. I know when a large, shirtless man comes at you with his chest thrust out, there is a chance of violence and I also know that you?re less likely to get bowled over if you set your feet just right.

Okay, let?s pause here because something is bothering me. And this is one of those issues that kind of has two sides of me at odds but it was something I thought much about that day. Chivalry. Now, normally, I scoff at chivalry. I think the very idea of sitting in a car while the man turns off the car, opens his door, gets out of the drivers seat, closes the door, walks around the car and opens your door for you to get out is silly and a waste of time. If you have a 7 o?clock movie to get to, there?s no time to wait for that crap. And does the woman not have arms? Is she completely unable to open a door?

But then, in times such as when a man is barreling towards me with seemingly violent tendencies, I wonder whatever happened to the world in which men bore a gentle respect for women and even if they disagreed with them, handled their opposition in a respectful, if slightly patronizing, manner.

After this incident, this is what bothers me the most. Had he turned, saw me, saw I was threatening his territory ? which was not actually HIS, by the way ? and come toward me at a normal pace, with his shirtless upper body in a relaxed pose and said, I?m sorry, I?m saving these seats for my 13 friends ? I still would have argued (nicely), I still would have been irked at the audacity of it, but I wouldn?t be nearly as PISSED as I am about it. The dude came barreling towards a girl. It isn?t right. It isn?t respectful. I should have kicked him in the balls without saying a single word just for that; taught him that if he can?t be a gentleman, then he shouldn?t even have the equipment to be a man. And yes, that isn?t very respectful of me to say or even think that but he made the first impression that he did so I can?t help but to react in the way I do.

So.

In the end, I gave up the fight. Pragmatic me surfaced and reminded me the goal tonight was to get good seats and enjoy the show. I would likely not have succeeded at either if I had stayed and fought any longer. As it was, my fledgling voice was losing even more decibels, the more I yelled at him.

With one last extended middle finger and a choice phrase I won?t utter here, I took to my heels and ran up the steps to the next level up and managed to secure five seats on that front row. I threw my hoodie over three of them and paced across the section, happy that I got front row in a section, still fuming over the encounter.

Not long after I found the seats, I spotted Fred?s red cap, blue shirt coming in and called him over. He was impressed with the seats but once he called and talked to Jewel, he said we might have better seats, he?d go check.

While Fred was gone, I watched the venue fill in. The best seats were gone so people started simply looking for enough seats together. I had a few looks my way but they saw the hoodie and they saw me standing in front of the seats not yet covered and they got the idea. In the second row, I heard a couple of guys talking about the number of seats they would need and perhaps they could grab some from the row above them to get the number they needed. I spotted a few friends and waved.

Fred returned in a few minutes saying Jewel had much better seats. Front row also, and much further down, closer to the stage. And in his opinion, we should pick up stakes and move.

No sweat off my back, I just wanted to be in good seats with good friends so I turned to the guys behind me and let them know they had five seats in the front row if they wanted them. See the difference between me and Cro-Magnon man? Respect is the most valuable tool we have and it isn?t in limited supply so there?s no need to dole it out with caution. Be free, use it anytime you want. Respect Away.

Still steaming about that guy over a week later. Not that I would remember his face because my eyes were seared by his massive, hairy chest, but I do wish I could run into him again, when I am able to quell pragmatic me. I have a few things to say.

I did manage to forget the incident that night. As I had expected, Phish played the best show of the weekend, ending with a spectacular Tweezer Reprise after releasing the XXL balloons hanging above the audience. The best part: we were seated close enough to see their faces and they wore a perma-grin all night long. As did I.

Thank you, Phish!

Saturday

2009-03-14T15:28:00.003-05:00

Saturday was the toughest day of the run for me. After a mind-numbing Friday that didn't end till 3 a.m. and an alarm blaring at 7 a.m., I knew I would have to rely on adrenaline to get through Saturday.

The reason for the early rising was the poster/art show Jason had organized at our hotel. Approximately 850 tickets had been sold to see Jim Pollock, Ryan Kerrigan, Fred Hosman, AJ Masthay, Tripp and several other well-known artists in the scene and, while much of the basic setup had been done already (thank you Fred, Jewel & Jim&Kate!!), we needed a few hours to get artwork up and ready to sell.

Jason asked me to assist Pollock in his room, so after a quick breakfast of free cereal, I began putting thousands of dollars of art prints into mylar sleeves to safely hang on the 8' x 6' cardboard sheets lining the back and one side of the room.

Around 11:30, Jason opened the doors and the immense line that had been building since 9 a.m. surged in.

Previous to the doors opening, I had penned a sign to be placed very prominently letting people know that we had NO Show Pollocks available. It was understood that without that sign placed so prominently, we would waste an hour of the day simply answering that one question from every person not within hearing distance that last time we answered the question. And even with that sign placed so prominently, I probably spent a total of 10 minutes that day answering that very question.

The people in line were patient and very excited to meet Jim. I heard one complaint about the time in line all day and if you know the Phish crowd, you know that a one-complaint day is a very good day indeed.

The hardest part of the day for me was simply standing in place all day long. When you walk, you are giving one foot a rest, even if for only 5 seconds or less. When you stand in one place, you are placing all your weight on both feet, all the time. It hurts after awhile. By the time the show was done, I felt as though I'd never had any arches in my feet. And I couldn't believe I still had to go to a Phish show. Yes you heard that sentence correctly: had to go. Saturday night, following Saturday, the Phish show actually became a bit of a chore. Any other band, even Umphrey's McGee, and I would have told Jason to sell my ticket, I'd be staying in. But it was Phish. I went.

I actually liked the show that night better than the first night. I got quite a few of my favorite songs and Phish seemed to be very sympathetic to my feet; they played plenty of songs I could sit down to. The promise to myself from the night before was made; tonight was about staying within my abilities and strength.

I was stopped three separate times Saturday night at the show by people who had seen me at the show. Each one asked, hey aren't you the poster lady? Jim was only stopped two times at the show, that I saw. That night, I was more famous than he!

Saturday night marked the first night of the end of my voice. I refused to hold back my exhiliration which meant that I was yelling and singing full volume each night. Friday night started to affect my voice but Saturday night really brought it to a croak. By the end of the night, my voice was as bad as it has ever gotten ... and I still had one more night.

Before bed, we decided to hit up Waffle House for an actual meal, my first since arriving in Hampton. It was greasy and it was good.

I went to sleep that night with a smile on my face. And I slept for seven hours.

Phriday Stories

2009-03-13T10:21:00.002-05:00

I'm looking back fondly on events a week ago - do you ever do that, take a vacation or have a really great day that you memorialize by weeks gone past? - and, while I already posted about my BWE yesterday, I didn't necessarily go into individual stories, for lack of time or space. So thought I'd tell some Phriday Stories here, seeing as how today is Friday.

So, this was my first time at Hampton - actually, I don't think Jason or Jim Pollock had been there before either - so, on the walk from the hotel to the venue Friday night, I was playing the role of Tourist. I had my phone out and using it to take pictures and videos (my phone rocks). I made a joke when Jason stopped to take a video and Jim and I kept going that he had my tickets, he'd better keep up.

So, we get to the chaos surrounding the venue and I want to take a picture of the cardboard robot in the front fountain. So I stop, take my picture, put my camera/phone away and start walking in the direction we were headed. Except Jason and Jim were no longer in front of me. I stopped. Looked around. Nowhere. Gone. I felt like I was five years old, lost in the mall again. I have a tendency to do that. But Jason has my ticket. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

But aha, I have my phone. I get the phone back out and text him. Where are you?? He responds within a minute: Right behind you.

Doh!

So then, I'm antsy to get in. I want a decent seat and not to be stuck up in the nosebleeds or separated because there are no three seats together. But Jim has an extra (the Phish organization set aside 2 for Friday and Saturday for him) and we're trying to get in touch with any number of people we know who are there and ticketless for that night. Of course, they must not be too desperate; no one is answering their phone or texts.

Eventually, it comes down to two possibilities. One, we sell the extra and pay the security deposit for the poster show with it (the person who was supposed to pay the security deposit forgot and the manager had mentioned it a couple of times). Problem with this plan, of course, is that it is illegal to scalp on property and Jim Pollock being arrested for scalping wasn't a good story. None of us liked that idea and immediately rejected it. Which left the ol' miracle someone. I always like this; I love seeing people happy and I love seeing people amazed into speechlessness. A miracle to this show would catch the height of both of those emotions and I thought it'd be a great way to start the night. It was agreed.

So then, who to miracle?

We tossed ideas back and forth. Jason had his point & shoot which had video capability so he wanted to capture the transaction. Which meant we needed light. We walked to and fro, trying to find the right opportunity, the right light. It was nearly full-dark by this point and my antsy had by this time, turned into hyperactivity. I needed to move, to progress towards the doors, to get inside. When was the show supposed to start? If I miss that lights down, I'm gonna be PISSED.

Finally, we're standing in a decent pool of light next to some glass vendors when Jason takes off at a run. I turn to Jim wondering what the hell that was about (because of course, I stopped paying attention to anything but the doors by this point). He tells me that Jason heard someone singing a Happy Birthday song and wanted to see what that was about. Cool. Cool.

Two minutes later, Jason comes back with this smiling, but confused man and his entourage.

It's true. It is his birthday, Jason says, handing Pollock the drivers license in his hand.

So while Jason captured the video, Pollock miracled a birthday boy from Hampton. Which turned out to be really, really cool because the birthday boy's wife had One ticket. Which meant that only one of them would get in. And no husband is going to tell his wife that she can wait out alone in a dark parking lot for him or even head back to the hotel/home without him. Husbands aren't geared toward putting their wives in that kind of potential danger. Birthday or not, I have confidence he would have insisted she take the ticket and he wait outside. But the choice didn't even need to be made: with Pollock's miracle ticket, both Steve and his wife got to celebrate his birthday inside The Coliseum for the reunion show.

That was awesome!

Phishing in Hampton, VA

2009-03-12T16:30:00.006-05:00

(Fred in the red hat and Jewel front and center, front page picture of the Hampton Daily Press Saturday March 7, 2009 - Love this picture!)

I know I'm a few days late on this - chalk it up to an attack of The Ick (awww, just like old times) - but I must interrupt the regularly scheduled programming (which for me is usually silence, is it not?) to gush about this last weekend, a weekend I heretofore dub: The Best Weekend Ever In The History Of The Whole Wide World or, BWE for short.

Okay, cut to the chase - if you didn't know already, Phish is my favorite band. Now, sometimes, I will say The Beatles are my favorite band because I believe they are Rock-n-Roll's quintessential Adam & Eve (don't give me that Elvis crap!) and I *so* appreciate their existence but to be completely honest: Phish is my favorite band. Phish shaped my mid-to-late twenties and early thirties as no other non-child-of-my-body entity possibly could have.

In 2004, when Trey announced they were kaput, I was bereft. What the hell would I do with my summers, how would I ever again enjoy music? I couldn't make every show they played after The Announcement but I certainly did my best! If they were going to make me say goodbye, I wasn't going to miss it.

Their last shows, in Coventry, VT, were a debacle. As if God mourned their goodbye as much as we did, the endless summer rains leading up to the festival so drenched the former cow pasture that non-economy sized cars were in danger of becoming mired in the festival for good. Saturday morning, a day after we pulled in and set up camp, I was awakened by The Announcement Part Deux on The Bunny, Phish's festival radio station: if your car hadn't yet left the highway, you weren't going to be able to drive in. The grounds were either puddle or mud, or both - it was by sheer luck that Jason spotted a hill when we pulled into our area Thursday night/Friday morning at 1 a.m. and forced me to help tote our gear up that hill to set up camp. The area behind our rental car - a non-economy sized car - glistened in the sun, as water will, and with my tendency towards laziness, our tent and gear would have been submerged in that, as many of our neighbors were. Thank God for sensible husbands!

The music at Coventry matched the conditions; the members of Phish mourned as we did, the end of this livelihood. Together, the fans and the band had enjoyed many years and the end wasn't just tearful on our side of the stage. I still have very strong emotions at the memory of Page cracking and breaking into a sob in the middle of Wading in the Velvet Sea. And when Mike and Trey handed their one-man trampolines out into the audience - the depth of the sadness that still hits me is kind of surprising even to me, especially given the events of this past weekend.

So. On October 1st, 2008, The Announcement Part Trois: We are coming back.

Getting tickets to the Hampton shows for March 6-8 was a little like getting your name called in the NFL draft. Good luck with that one. We did not have good luck. We were denied "mail" order (quotes around mail because it hasn't been Mail order since, like 2000?) and the TicketMaster onsale was a joke. If you didn't have 6 computers running consecutively on separate T3 lines, you didn't stand a chance. Or if you were a broker. That almost undid me.

So I failed to get tickets to Hampton and I was again, bereft. I couldn't miss the reunion show; I hadn't missed the first reunion show, how on earth could I stand to miss this one?! But, without a solution and multiple thousands of extra dollars and the lack of morals required to buy from a broker, it certainly seemed as though Hampton would go off without me. And in the meantime, Jason made other plans to help run an art show for Jim Pollock (Phish's main poster artist) for that weekend in Miami and it really seemed to be the end of the dream.

Then in January, I got a PM from a friend on a non-Phish message board who had managed to get 2 3-day passes to the shows. Turns out she and her husband couldn't make the shows and they wanted to offer me the tickets for only slightly above face before taking them to eBay.

Well, you can imagine what I did. I'm not even sure I got through the entire contents of the PM before yelling out a hearty Hell Yes!

From that point on, everything fell magically into place: Jason's art show plans in Miami fell through due to the cancellation of the Langerado Festival scheduled the same weekend as Phish's Hampton shows (you had to know that was going to be a problem!) so his anguish at possibly missing the first night (aka The Show) disappeared. Then he came up with a plan to have the art show anyway - in Hampton. Which then resulted in a free hotel room within walking distance of the venue. We found very inexpensive airline tickets to Norfolk, VA from Southwest Airlines. And my boss gave her approval for me to take off the Friday of the first show, asking only that I be back the Monday after the last show (another coworker in my 5-person department had already scheduled off for that Friday and Monday so getting even one of the days off was a gift).

By the time we had reached the seats our friends Jim & Kate saved for us Friday night, we were trembling with equal parts excitement and exhaustion. Jason had spent a hectic three weeks planning an art show from scratch and I had spent three weeks listening to his woes and trying to add insightful advice when I had it. And gotten four hours sleep the night before due to tapas and a Tea Leaf Green show with a friend. But mostly excitement.

Then the moment came: pre-show music faded quickly out, lights instantly down, the moment I had waited for for so long and been so lucky enough to get to experience when others, just as deserving or even moreso than I, were not as lucky. I had my phone out so that some of them could at least know the first song back practically when I did.

Fluffhead. Frickin' Fluffhead. NO WAY! How apropos. How long had people been clamoring for a Fluffhead and apparently, Phish had been listening. I quickly texted the name off and began a very long night of dancing. I had made a deal with myself that I wouldn't sit while Phish was onstage Friday night. Saturday and Sunday weren't part of the deal but my ass had no business cuddling up with a seat at the first show back. And I kept that promise to myself. They played a nearly two-hour first set, which sorely tested the promise, but the music selection and lack of Type II Phish jamming certainly helped. 17 songs were played in that two hours and I tried a mnemonic device to remember them all without the aid of paper or pen but eventually failed. I can remember a little bit still, though:

Fluff divided the chalkdust sample from his stash - aaaaaand that's where I decided to stop being a geek and just enjoy the moment (Fluffhead, Divided Sky, Chalkdust Torture, Sample in a Jar, Stash)

So, anyway, who knew buildings sweated? By the end of the show, the first time I ventured away from our seats up high Page-side, every surface of The Coliseum was moist, if not downright puddled. I avoided falling on my ass the entire weekend long (contributing, of course, to the BWE designation). I can't even do that in real life! Phish is magic. Okay, well lots of other people fell so maybe Phish's magic only extends to me and those with me. Fact is, I stayed upright all three nights and I count that as a resume-worthy achievement.

That first night back at the hotel, we (Jason, Jim & I) further plotted the poster show the next day. The hard work had already been done with the help of our friends Fred, Jewel, Jim M. and his wife Kate who all arrived in Hampton Thursday and could spare the time to help Jason set the stage and plan. But we still needed to plan Jim's room and so, stayed up till 3 a.m. doing so. Leaving us approximately 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up to finish setting up and run the show.

Due to the invisible partner's negligence, Jason had to take on the role of overseer of the whole show so I stepped in to assist Jim in his room. Luckily enough, the questions I fielded that day were ones I knew the answers to and we weren't in need of the particular insight that Jason or another person might have had on some of the pieces. My primary job was simply to take the money and keep the table full of prints, and I like to think I did an excellent job on the first, though I was remiss on the second (I forgot about the stash in the portfolio behind the cardboard until two hours before the show was over). Other than that, though, it was a very successful day for all the artists involved.

The show wrapped up late, as we knew it would, so we had to rush to break down Jim's room in order to get to the show on time with a little time to rest between - we had all been on our feet since 8:30 that morning. We made it in time, we found seats with some friends who had a nearly head-on view of the stage, and I enjoyed much of Saturday night's show sitting down, without any guilt. It was a great show and there were several parts I couldn't help but stand and dance, but there were several parts that made it easier for me to justify sitting down and resting my very tired feet.

Walking out of the Saturday night show, we stumbled upon a scene straight out of a nightmare: a group called the Nitrous Mafia from Philadelphia has lately become a gritty fixture at concerts and festival in the East and Midwest. They have backpack versions of nitrous tanks and can pick up and set down shop on an empty patch of earth and everywhere they land, wastoids follow. Saturday night, we chose the wrong path back and ended up walking right through a crowd of balloon-sucking shufflers, hisses of tanks and carnie calls snaking out into our path from the left and right. Jason grabbed my hand and veered us off the path and out of the uselessness and into some streetlights and we both made a mental note not to walk that way again. Wah-wahs make people dangerous.

Nearing our hotel, we met up with Jim and all expressed our great hunger so we ventured over to the Waffle House in our hotel parking lot and ended the day with some late night grease.

The next morning, we -gasp!- slept in. It was awesome. The bed in the hotel was very comfy. And yea, we did have to wake up to an alarm but not one set for two or four hours later. We managed to get a good seven to eight hours sleep and that was juuuuuuuuust fine.

We met our friends Fred & Jewel at the tavern across the street for lunch and ended up running into just about everyone else we knew, to boot. There we made our plan. Jason and Jim would go sell Jim's remaining prints in the parking lot and Fred, Jewel and I would go grab a spot in line and go for great seats. After I ran back to the room to get some necessities, we walked over.

By Sunday, the security working the lines had their job down. Friday it was pure chaos, Saturday, it was approaching some semblance of order and Sunday it was a no-brainer. We joined the left-most line and enjoyed a warm day in the shade.

Once it got close to doors opening, the order began to disintegrate a little. People from the back or people who hadn't been in line at all, attempted to move forward and circumvent those of us who had been waiting but we were ready. We heckled, jeered and outright blocked most of the rudeness coming forth. But when it came right down to it, trying to get good seats at a Phish show is no different than trying to get home in rush hour in a timely manner - you have to be out for yourself and you have to be willing to move past the slow people in order to get what you desire. I grabbed a guy I knew had been in front of me in line and told him I didn't mean to cut him off so he better keep moving but everyone else, especially the group of kids who successfully cut in ahead of us, I swept past. In this day and age, niceness is a luxury if you ever want to succeed. Sad but true.

And thanks to this attitude, both Jewel and I found perfect seats and it was up to Fred to choose which ones were more perfect. Jewel's seats won but I got the story:

Running in I saw a whole front row in the lowest seating Page-side and one large, shirtless guy guarding it. Now, chances are, he was trying to save the whole row, but it couldn't hurt to try, right? So I run down there and when he sees me, he pushes his hairy chest out and bumbles over.

"These are saved!" he bellows.

"You're saving a whole row?"

"They're saved! Move on."

"No, it's a whole row."

"I've been here since 2:30, get out!"

"Doors just opened, Dude. You obviously haven't been here since 2:30."

You can see where this is going. I'm like a little Yorkshire Terrier who thinks she's a German Shepherd; it makes life interesting. I'm not afraid of a fight because I'm not afraid of a little pain. That night, the only thing I was even slightly afraid of was getting mediocre seats when I'd had them the last two nights. That's what finally got me out of there with a "You're a fucking asshole you Goddamn prick, hope you fall headfirst - can't be any worse, right?" thrown over my shoulder loudly for good measure.

To his credit, he didn't chase me and kick my ass - the seats were that good!

So, Jewel's super spectacular seats were close enough that Jason & I could finally see the band's faces (Fred & Jewel had Rail first night so they enjoyed the seats). I do wish we'd put more effort into good seats on Friday night but at least we got them Sunday. At least I got the chance to see just how much fun the guys were having and how sincere their thanks was. All the joy we felt out in the audience, Trey and Page and Mike and Fish felt onstage.

So they opened that night with one of my favorite songs, a tongue-in-cheek older tune called Sanity and closed with one of my favorite songs, Tweezer Reprise, a call-back to the first night when they played Tweezer. By the time the last song finished, I was finished. I can't imagine having the energy I had in my younger days to go from show to show, spending all day in a car and all night at a show. Those were many, many years ago.

So, after three days and thirteen hours of sleep (4+7+2=Oy), what I hoped would be a good time but not the same as it ever was, was a BWE and I can't wait to go back. Farewell paycheck, farewell vacation days. I hope you saw enough of me in the last four-and-a-half years, Family 'cause if they ain't coming to your town, I'm probably not either.

The Boys are Back.

(my husband's video of the making of the official poster and some of the lot scene, including Pollock miracling a birthday phan)

2 Sleeps Till ...

2009-03-04T08:20:00.001-06:00

... Hampton.

Oddly, I?ve been hoping lately that when I see Phish in two days, I will not be as impressed as I know I really will be. Meaning, I hope I am pretty Meh about the whole thing. I could surely use all the money and vacation I will continue to spend on this band for other things. Sans Phish, I could release myself from the chains of debt or afford a larger, more convenient home or go someplace fabulous every year for vacation.

I estimate, very roughly, that I have spent over $25,000 seeing this band. When you count the tickets, the plane fares, the hotels, the gas, the rental cars, the purchases in Lot ... it comes up to an insane amount of money that could have been a down payment on a condo back when I was single and prices were reasonable.

The reason Phish is back, of course, is that they want my money. Phish's return isn't quite so noble as missing the music ... they need the money. Times are tough for us all, even the rock stars. And you know what ... I'm going to end up beefing up their bank accounts because what do I need with my hard-earned money? Food? It goes right through me. A roof over my head? Why - summer's coming and I have a large tent. Why shouldn't I invest my portfolio in a prospect so promising as Phish?

I know, I?m aghast at my cynicism too. What is Debbi talking about? She Loves Phish. And I do, I really, really do. But 4 ? years ago, I said goodbye to them and hello to all the other really cool things I could do with my life. I got married in Jamaica, we bought a condo, I got a new, awesome job ? hell, I got a cat! And in that time, I have also managed to visit my family on my own schedule rather than around Phish?s tour dates in the area. When I told my parents that Phish had announced their return, I could hear in their voices a resignation: they knew they would soon be relegated to decreased visitations. What kind of daughter am I?

But let?s face it, I?m not going to get the change I kind of want because you know what I most wanted in these 4 ? years without Phish when I could have been embracing so many other non-musical things? Phish?s return.

Clearly, I am my own worst enemy.

2 More Days!

Me Music Part II

2009-02-27T10:32:00.001-06:00

Having had my eyes opened by The Dead and how much fun really great, live music can be, the next summer I joined my friends in getting tickets to see the Jamband heir apparent, Phish for one show at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. We had all been listening to Phish for a few years thanks to the intriguing cover art on Rift, but most of us hadn?t yet seen them live and I wanted to have an experience like the one I?d had with the Dead at Soldier Field.

Alpine Valley is a ski slope in the winter and the trek between the parking lot and pavilion seats is steep ? down into the show, back up at the end when your energy has been completely drained from dancing through two sets. My friend and I were just leaving the beer platform at the border of lawn and pavilion seating when the band took the stage, and I have the most wonderfully vivid memories of taking long, smooth strides down the steep slope to our seats to the beginning notes of My Friend, My Friend.

At the end of the night, after having had the single best time to that point in my life, I realized that the Grateful Dead was just a very wonderful warm-up act for me. I came home from the concert completely rejuvenated and ready to hop on tour.

At the time, I lived in a three-bedroom with three friends from college, one of whom has a fascination with all things shaman. He had a set of animal medicine cards and profiled each of us with them, much as a Tarot reader profiles a client.

I don?t recall each of the individual animals that made up my profile ? perhaps *pt* does? ? but the reading as a whole was pretty spot-on in many ways and my totem animal, the Lizard, was damn accurate for who I was at that time. The card reads as such:

___________________________________________________

Lizard sat lolling in the shadow of a big rock, shading himself from the desert sun. Snake crawled by, looking for some shadow to coil up in and rest. Snake watched Lizard for awhile as Lizard's eyeballs went side to side behind his enormous closed lids. Snake hissed to get Lizard's attention. Slowly Lizard's dreaming eyes opened and he saw Snake.
"Snake! You scared me! What do you want?" Lizard cried.
Snake spit his answer from his forked tongue. "Lizard, you are always getting the best shadow spots in the heat of the day. This is the only big rock for miles. Why don't you share your shade with me?"
Lizard thought for a moment, then agreed. "Snake, you can share my shade spot, but you have to go to the other side of the rock and you must promise not to interrupt me."
Snake was getting annoyed. He hissed, "How could I bother you Lizard? All you are doing is sleeping."
Lizard smiled knowingly. "Oh Snake, you are such a silly serpent. I'm not sleeping. I'm dreaming."
Snake wanted to know what the difference was, so Lizard explained. "Dreaming is going into the future, Snake. I go to where future lives. You see, that is why I know you won't eat me today. I dreamed you and I know you're full of mouse."
Snake was taken aback. "Why Lizard, you're exactly right. I wondered why you said you would share your rock."
Lizard laughed to himself. "Snake," he said, "you are looking for shade and I am looking for shadow. Shadow is where the dreams live."
Lizard medicine is the shadow side of reality where your dreams are reviewed before you decide to manifest them physically. Lizard could have created getting eaten by Snake if he had so desired.

Lizard is the medicine of dreamers. Whether dreamers smoke you or dream you, dreamers can always help you see the shadow. This shadow can be your fears, your hopes, or the very thing you are resisting, but it is always following you around like an obedient dog.
___________________________________________________

Not long after the Phish concert at Alpine Valley, during the days of my roommate T blasting Phish everyday for a couple of hours after work, I first heard the song The Lizards. This was one of the songs comprising Gamehenge, a rock epic written by the lead guitarist for his college thesis.

Not surprisingly, given the elevated levels of my ego, I quickly adopted this song as My Song. Of course, in doing so, I had to ignore lines such as:

The Lizards were a race of people
Practically extinct from doing things
Smart people don?t do

Which isn?t at all difficult to do when the band stops singing and starts into the melody of the last third of the song. Like Harry Hood, like Divided Sky, like so many other songs they have written that don?t depend on the 3-refrain formula, the melody makes the entire song. Whereas the Dead excelled in poetry, Trey Anastasio?s gift is clearly in the notes between the poetry.

I have the most amazing time behind closed eyes at those moments.

The song is one of the rarer songs to catch at a show but I have lucked out and caught it twice, once at a show I brought my Mom to, which I thought was very nice of them. While I don?t feel much like a Lizard anymore, I still feel like the song is My Song and if they were to bust it out at the upcoming Hampton shows next weekend (starting a week from today EEEEEEEEEEEE), I would count myself even luckier than I already am.

Me Music Part I

2009-02-26T16:27:00.003-06:00

I don't know if this is something unique to me and my overwhelming narcissism or if most people think about themselves this much, but I have a tendency to adopt songs that speak to me, that mean Me to me. They are my identity songs.

Throughout high school and into college, my identity pretty much escaped me. I adopted songs but they merely defined the amorphous shadow that teenagers still in flux tend to be. From Bruce Springsteen to The Beatles to Depeche Mode, I found plenty of songs I identified with, but no songs that necessarily identified me.

Once my identity really started to solidify and I looked more and more like the person I have eventually become, a completely different kind of music than I had previously enjoyed stepped forward and actually has taken quite a predominant role in molding my adulthood. Thus, no surprise, many of the songs of this genre have become the music I want to walk down the street to.

If I had to choose one definitive action that turned my ears to this other sound, I would have to choose my ill-fated membership to Columbia Records. Don't laugh, this is real, and you know you had the same ill-fated membership!

After college, I moved back to San Francisco and in with my Mom. Most of my college friends had moved on to Chicago but I wanted to finally live in San Francisco as a sentient being, having been whisked away to Tulsa, OK in the middle of the night when I was a mere four months old. Okay, maybe whisked is a little dramatic and perhaps it was in broad daylight, but the fact of the matter is, my whole childhood in Tulsa was spent yearning to be in San Francisco. And after college, I had my chance and I took it.

I quickly became seduced by repeated tear-outs in magazines and newspapers offering 13 CDs for a penny. A Penny! Good lord, do you KNOW how valuable an offer that is?! I was on my own (separated from my peers) and bereft of their combined music collections and had spent my teenage years becoming dulled to my Mom's music collection. God damn, I needed fresh blood! So I sent in the card with 13 CDs checked off and anxiously awaited the new infusion of tunes.

When choosing my 13 CDs, I ran out of must-haves around #10 and began just picking things that seemed like they might have promise. Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead was one such choice. I hadn't been a Grateful Dead fan at all; I strongly dislike the song Truckin' which of course is one of the few Dead songs that made it to radio. I was generally meh about Touch of Grey when I saw the video on MTV. I had nothing really pulling me toward the Dead other than a need to fill out my 13 CDs for a penny, so I checked it off.

Most of the CDs I received in that shipment are gone now: given away or traded for better ones. Deadicated, The Smiths' Greatest Hits and the Indigo Girls' self-titled album are the only three that remain. Oddly enough, The Dead and The Girls are two that were throw-away choices for me - I really wanted The Smiths' album because it reminded me of high school.

Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Deadicated CD and gained a healthy new respect for the band. The one song that stood out to me, the one I fell in love with before ever even hearing The Dead sing it, is Cassidy. The poetry in Cassidy simply knocks me over.

___________________________________________________

I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream
I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream
Oh, child of countless trees
Oh, child of boundless seas
What you are and what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to be
Born to me, Cassidy

Lost now on a country mile in his Cadillac
I can tell by the way you smile he is rolling back
Come wash the night time clean
Come grow the scorched ground green
Blow the horn and tap the tambourine
Close the gap on the dark years in between
You and me, Cassidy

Quick beats of an icy heart
Catch-cold draws a coffin cart
There he goes and now here she starts
Hear her cry

Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly

Faring you well now
Let your life proceed by its own design
Nothing can tell now
Let your words be yours, I'm done with mine

Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly

___________________________________________________

The song is about Neal Cassady who was on his way out of this world ("There he goes...") and Cassidy Law, the newborn daughter of one of the Merry Pranksters, on her way in ("...and now here she starts") and is absolutely brilliant poetry that just makes my head and heart soar like the seabirds.

The irony is, of course, that this throw-away CD choice put a musical fork in the road that I have followed wholeheartedly ever since. Two months after I moved to Chicago, after two years in San Francisco (I whisked myself away, this time), I went to my first Dead concert: 7/9/1995. When tickets went on sale, I hadn't yet found a job and the money I'd moved out there with was dwindling away much faster than I had expected, so of course I made the extremely logical decision to buy a ticket and join my friend who had jobs. I'm nothing if not logical.

After the amazing concert, I experienced a flood of understanding that in this universe music would be enormously significant to me and that this band was The One and I should endeavor to see them as much as humanly and financially possible. Unfortunately, my first Dead show was the last Dead show with Jerry. I had a job by this point, less than a month later, and I remember leaving for the day and walking home crying to So Many Roads playing on repeat.

I have only heard Cassidy live one time, despite the number of Dead and Dead side project shows I've seen. For our wedding party, my husband asked the two guitarists/singers entertaining everyone if they would learn to play Cassidy for me. They played a wonderful rendition that brought happy tears to my eyes and loved the song so much, they continued to play it for themselves at future shows.

(to be continued ...)

My Soundtrack: The College Years

2009-02-23T09:45:00.003-06:00

It just so happened that the transition from high school to college for me and my classmates paralleled the end-transition from the 1980s to the last decade of the millennium: from glam to grunge. The hair bands stopped teasing their bleach-blond tresses and let them tangle and return to their natural color. I contemplated attending class in my pajamas. I love how the world imitates my life.

This is not to say that as the 80s turned into the 90s, I caught up to the music of the age ... that didn't happen till the 2000s and I haven't gotten there yet.

The soundtrack of my college years was greatly influenced by my friends and my weekly attendance at various fraternity parties across campus. Though I surrounded myself with people who had similar backgrounds and experiences, the collection of music that came to that collaborative table could not have been more varied despite the fact that it consisted of at least 98% rock and 2% everything else. From one end of the group, we had an obsession with U2 & REM while another person built their collection around Men Without Hats and Pet Shop Boys. Add to it my 60s retro collection-slash-Bruce-slash some few 80s MTV gems and throw in a few (several) drunken frat parties blaring dance classics such as Joy and Pain and Baby Got Back.

The songs that take me back to those days, like Joy and Pain, each have their individual memories attached so that when I hear the songs, I can propel backwards to that moment, that person, that time. I actually only own one of these songs, relying otherwise on the radio to transport me randomly.

I am not a Led Zeppelin fan. Chalk it up to being inundated with Stairway to Heaven throughout most of my high school years. I have a teeth-clenching reaction to that song and will leap tall buildings to turn off a radio when I hear those first few notes. Given this extreme reaction, I expected that I disliked all of Led Zeppelin and never bothered to buy any of their records. Until TKE.

TKE, Tau Kappa Epsilon, was a favorite frat of mine at Knox. I had been involved with TKE since freshman year when I in my yellow VW Rabbit helped kidnap 8 naked pledges and a shoe. Did I mention the yellow VW Rabbit? ... that comfortably held 3?

TKE wasn't as famous for their parties as, say, the Phi Delts were, but I enjoyed them ever so much more; I attended as many as I could which, to tell the truth, was probably all of them. At a Phi Delt party, you would hear Joy and Pain and be crushed on the dance floor while trying to keep the beer in your cup. At a TKE party, you would hear Misty Mountain Hop as you strolled through the empty dance floor from one conversation to the next, upstairs through the various rooms and eventually settle into an Indian squat up on the top floor bobbing your head the entire time.

In my opinion, Misty Mountain Hop is the finest of the Led Zeppelin catalog. Yes, the bulk of this reason is because it takes me back to TKE. That's what art is. It takes you back to something you fondly remember because you spend all of your time moving forward and you need something to take you back every now and then.

When Misty Mountain Hop comes on the radio, I am back to being 20 years old with schoolgirl crushes and little responsibility (honestly, looking back, I could have taken a little more responsibility but that's not the kind of taking me back art does for me) and a Saturday night that could go all weekend. These days, by Saturday night and the weekend being half over, I'm already anticipating Monday but back then, Monday was a million beers away.

College wasn't all classes and frat parties. Often, my friends and I would congregate in a room or a suite (or an apartment Senior year) and talk, nurse beers, listen to someone's CDs. Two separate friends owned the Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volumes 1 & 2 CDs. Often, these CDs would be in the carousel.

Coming into college, I knew Billy Joel for Piano Man, a song I don't like much more than Stairway to Heaven for the same reasons, some poppy 80s tunes he wrote after Christie Brinkley actually fell in love with him (oh to be an unattractive, wealthy man), a few songs I like very much such as Pressure and Allentown and not much else.

A favorite song on these CDs for many of us was Captain Jack. While not my favorite on the CDs - that would be Scenes From an Italian Restaurant - this is the song that takes me back to those conversations and relaxations so long ago. I was told the song is about cocaine and the lyrics bear that out. Perhaps in college, that was more akin to our lives though none of us ever strolled down that road. But the nihilism that is suggested by heavy cocaine use isn't rare among late teens/early 20s kids and with or without the expensive habit, that nihilism is what always attracted me to the song and still makes me smile when I hear it now, when I am far less self-absorbed. I enjoy remembering the carefree parts of college most, I think. And if I were ever to have a kid, which is not in the plans but God has a funny sense of humor sometimes, I would insist s/he have a few of those years themselves.

The one song that I expect will always draw me back to college and I hope we play every time we reunite is Layla by Derek and the Dominoes.

Speaking of self-absorbed - we suspected, while in college and I think not entirely jokingly, that our group, self-titled Idiots, was being filmed as a reality show by aliens. Now, this seems like less of a leap these days in which 60% of the shows on TV are reality shows but back in 1992-1993, the only reality show on TV was MTV's The Real World and none of us really watched it ... television in college is both a luxury and a waste of time; I didn't own one and rarely watched until Senior year when Jen Clark moved into my room with her TV and all I remember watching is the Waco showdown.

But we were half-convinced in our narcissistic group-think that we were so fascinating, we must be television fodder to someone, somewhere. Thus, The Idiots. Thus, the theme music, Layla. Not the whole song, just the instrumental portion that is also in the Goodfellas scene where all the bodies of Jimmy Conway's former colleagues are turning up. I've always enjoyed that irony, by the way.

What that piece of music has always meant to me (besides dead mobsters in pink Cadillacs and freezer trucks) is friendship. I had some of the greatest friends in college and while there were plenty of bad times with them, I couldn't have had good times without them. Paraphrasing Aristotle, one cannot have the good without the bad and vice versa. Without bad, it is impossible to discern or define good and good relationships need bad times to be really and truly good. That pretty well sums up my college friendships and even after. And I cherish them more for it. It has been an honor to see these friends grow and learn and love and live. Layla reminds me of that every time I hear it and inevitably puts a smile on my face. And inevitably makes me sit up straighter and smooth my hair ? just in case the aliens are still watching.

Okay, so apparently that worked

2009-02-20T15:59:00.001-06:00

Google has provided me a way to blog from work without being blocked at work (stealthy iGoogle, how I love you!)

Of course, I still have to worry about people walking up behind me (stupid cubicle, how I hate you!) so I can't exactly posit out the meaning of life but hey, beggars can't be choosers, now can they!

I will get back to the ultimate soundtrack, I swear.

My Soundtrack

2009-01-04T12:36:00.005-06:00

Got to thinking about this as I finally acquiesced and purchased an album I have been dying to have on my iPod the last few months. Everybody has their own soundtrack, the songs that they truly, truly love and the songs that speak to them. Well here are mine:

in no particular order other than slightly chronological ...

"It's Raining Again"

My teenage years gorged themselves on MTV, I think I can claim having been in front of the television as it first kicked on with perhaps one of the most 80s sounding songs of the 80s: "Video Killed the Radio Star". I definitely remember spending my summers and afternoons after school with the VJs of channel 26, MTV's home on Tulsa cable. I was an air-guitar wonder, thrashing through years of great pop hits as face-painted singers ran through Indian bazaars on the tv screen.

When I hear Supertramp's "It's Raining Again", I am instantly transported back to the dark-ish living room of my childhood, propped up on elbows in front of the wildly colorful videos flashing on the screen less than three feet from my face. While I neither danced nor air guitar'd to this particular tune, it is the one that always brings me back to MTV before it became anything but Music Television.

"Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"

Bruce Springsteen was my first huge celebrity crush - another thing I owe to MTV. When I first saw the "Dancing in the Dark" video with him in a white t-shirt and pegged jeans, a guitar strapped around his beefy upper body and those beautiful dark curls held up from his face with that trend-setting red bandanna ... well, let's just say, I hit puberty at 99 miles per hour that very second.

Looking back, I never really liked the "Dancing in the Dark" song, nor very much on that seminal 80s album Born in the U.S.A. If there is a pattern to life, then my discovery of this hunk began in order for me to find Born To Run, a solid #2 or #3 on my top albums of all time. The story laid bare on that album is quintessential Bruce Springsteen, a man who came from totally normal and made sure he landed both feet in totally normal (with that one badly-placed sojourn into celebrity when he briefly married the briefly famous Julianne Phillips - her cameo in his video for "Glory Days" ruined that song for me).

"Rosalita" comes from his even earlier album, The Wild, The Innocent, The E-Street Shuffle. This is a song made for an air guitar hero such as myself. The video eventually run sporadically by MTV consisted solely of concert footage which was just fine by this lusty girl. I can't imagine they ran the entire song which clocks in at 7:05, far too long to hold the average viewer's attention but whatever version they showed, however long it played, it quickly soared to the number one spot in my Springsteen countdown. And I would be entirely remiss if I didn't mention the miracle that is Clarence Clemons, the saxophone god who wails through this entire song. Most bands use a saxophone as a bridge instrument, but Clarence Clemons can't wait that long to play.

"What a Piece of Work is Man"

This song helped me get extra credit in my 11th grade English class, thus boosting me up to an A for the semester. Using Shakespeare's speech from Hamlet, this is a lovely, lilting song on the Hair soundtrack immediately following the chaotic "Three-Five-Zero-Zero" (take weapons up and begin to kill/watch for long-gone armies driting home). The song doesn't follow the speech perfectly, it starts in the middle with What a piece of work is man/how noble in reason/how infitine in faculties/in form and moving/how express and admirable/in action how like an angel/in apprehension how like a god/the beauty of the world/the paragon of animals ... and then skips upward in the speech with I have of late/but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth ... then skips even more forward with a sentence fragment: this goodly frame/the earth seems to me a sterile promontory/this most excellent canopy/the air look you/this brave o'erhanging firmament/this majestical roof/fretted with golden fire/why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. With this chunk long-memorized (my mom has been playing that record my Whole life long), the order and rest of that speech earned me the highest extra credit in the class. See, music can teach you things, wonderous things.

There is so much more, truly, but I won't get to that just yet. Suffice it to say, these three take you through my childhood, for the most part. Later on, eventually, I will do my best to take you through the next phase.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-01-04T00:50:00.006-06:00

Yep, I'm back

I actually have something to blog about tonight/tomorrow morning/this morning.

I have just returned from seeing one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen ... I know the word-of-mouth on it has been phenomenal and I can't disagree. Not one little, teeny, tiny bit.

Slumdog Millionaire deserves, but I'm sure won't get, the Best Picture Oscar this year. Hands down. Not that I've seen any of the other choices or even know what they are for I am not nearly the devotee as my friend Mel. But I'm still 99% sure SDM must be the very best of them all.

The storyline you can get elsewhere so in short, it is a love story. Set in India - Mumbai, to be exact. Yes, that Mumbai.

The story starts near the end, as the best ones often do. There's no harm in letting the reader/viewer know that the main character has survived long enough to at least make it to the most interesting part of the entire tale. I am always very interested in the journey, sometimes moreso than the destination.

Jamal Malik is a contestant on India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. His success on the show is surprising, given his upbringing: he and his older brother Salim are orphaned at a young age in the Mumbai slums where lives begin and end under a patchwork of tin roofs blocking the alleys and aisles from the sun. Jamal's ability to answer the increasingly difficult questions posed to him on the game show stem from the various experiences and lessons of his nomadic youth. Of course, it is assumed he is cheating but he has a compelling story for each answer he gives.

The love interest, Latika, is another orphan who falls in with the brothers after a massacre of the Muslims in their ghetto. The three young children run familiar paths past friends and neighbors and just ahead of the nightmares with bats and fire.

While Jamal becomes obsessed with Latika, Salim becomes jealous of the easy connection the two share. Life for the three of them is fraught with panicked separations and tearful reunions. Salim follows an unsurprising path in the hard world they inhabit while Jamal always seems to think his way in and out of the box.

You know ... just your typical love story. Set in India.

Where this movie breaks entirely away from the pack is in the filmmaking. This well-written gem is wonderfully directed and beautifully shot with a soundtrack that pulses to the beat of the running feet throughout several scenes (escape is a running theme). The actors, all three sets of them, are no sloths at their trade. Dev Patel as the adult Jamal has the perfect face for this character: mostly brooding with a rare, shy smile.

I expected quite a lot from the movie given the reviews I had heard and read and I am so relieved that I didn't end up with unrequited high hopes. This is a run-don't-walk kind of film that mere words cannot properly portray.

Don't grab your coat too quickly once the final scene goes still ... in Bollywood fashion, the end credits begin to roll as the cast dance to an Indian pop song in the middle of a train station. I heard a couple of snickers in the audience behind me, but you know what? I am of the opinion that all movies should end with a full cast ensemble song and dance. I would certainly see more movies in the theatre if that were the case.

As God is My Witness ... Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all

2008-11-26T20:21:00.000-06:00

And While We're on The Subject ...

2008-11-05T13:51:00.000-06:00

Of reaction from around the world ...

Suddenly, it may be cool to be an American again

By WILLIAM J. KOLE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 5, 2008; 1:34 PM

VIENNA, Austria -- She was a stranger, and she kissed me. Just for being an American.

It happened on the bus on my way to work Wednesday morning, a few hours after compatriots clamoring for change swept Barack Obama to his historic victory. I was on the phone, and the 20-something Austrian woman seated in front of me overheard me speaking English.

Without a word, she turned, pecked me on the cheek and stepped off at the next stop.

Nothing was said, but the message was clear: Today, we are all Americans.

For longtime U.S. expatriates like me _ someone far more accustomed to being targeted over unpopular policies, for having my very Americanness publicly assailed _ it feels like an extraordinary turnabout.

Like a long journey over a very bumpy road has abruptly come to an end.

And it's not just me.

An American colleague in Egypt says several people came up to her on the streets of Cairo and said: "America, hooray!" Others, including strangers, expressed congratulations with a smile and a hand over their hearts.

Another colleague, in Amman, says Jordanians stopped her on the street and that several women described how they wept with joy.

When you're an American abroad, you can quickly become a whipping post. Regardless of your political affiliation, if you happen to be living and working overseas at a time when the United States has antagonized much of the world, you get a lot of grief.

You can find yourself pressed to be some kind of apologist for Washington. And you can wind up feeling ashamed and alone.

I'll never forget a ride in a taxi in Vienna when the world was waking up to the abuses wrought by U.S. troops at the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

My driver, a Muslim, was indignant. "You are American, yes?" he asked in that accusatory tone so familiar to many expats.

"Uh, no, Canadian," I said.

And it wasn't the first time I fudged where I was from. I speak three foreign languages, so I have a bit of flexibility when it comes to faking. At various times, I've been a German in Serbia, a Frenchman in Turkey, a Dutchman in Austria.

I'm not proud of it. But when you're far from home, and you're feeling cornered, you develop what you come to believe are survival skills.

Last spring, after the Bush administration recognized Kosovo's independence, a Serb who overheard my American-accented English lobbed a beer can at me in central Vienna. He missed, but spat out an unflattering "Amerikanac" and told me where to go.

On another occasion, an Austrian who heard my teenage daughter chatting with a friend pursued her, screaming, "Go Home!"

Physical attacks on Americans overseas are rare. Yet some of us felt vaguely at risk.

Maybe it was just the hostility we'd encounter even in friendly venues such as cocktail parties, when our foreign hosts would surround us and demand to know why U.S. troops were roughing up inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Or refusing to sign the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Or rejecting the Kyoto accord on climate change.

Maybe it was the State Department, which issues regular travel advisories urging Americans to keep a low profile even in tranquil Austria.

My children came of age in Europe, and in a hostile post-9/11 world we had to teach them to avoid being too conspicuously American. Don't speak English loudly on the subway. Don't wear baseball caps and tennis shoes. Don't single yourselves out, guys, and even worldly wise Americans can unwittingly become targets.

We didn't overdo it, but there's always been that tension. That difficult-to-describe sense of vulnerability. That nagging instinct that maybe we'd better watch it, because our government is intensely unpopular and we're not entirely welcome.

I know Americans who at times have felt that way even in laid-back Vienna, where the greatest danger is probably eating a bad pastry.

That's what made Wednesday's unsolicited kiss so remarkable.

I don't want to read too much into an innocent smooch, but it didn't feel particularly pro-Obama, even though the new U.S. president-elect enjoys broad support here. No, it seemed to impart two sentiments I haven't felt for a long time: friendship and admiration.

Obama captured it in his acceptance speech _ this sense that despite holding America's feet to the fire, the rest of the world is rooting for it and wants it to lead and succeed.

"Our destiny is shared," he said, "and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

Overnight, Americans did something their harshest critics in Europe have yet to do: elect a person of color as head of state and commander in chief. That gives U.S. citizens some bragging rights, even if a lot of us would just as soon eschew hubris and embrace humility.

I'm a marathon runner, and I have a red, white and blue singlet that I've seldom dared to wear on the Continent. Marathons are difficult enough without enduring catcalls and jeers from spectators.

But my best friend and training partner _ who is French _ just gave me his stamp of approval.

"Will you wear your Stars and Stripes shirt now? You're allowed!" he told me.

O' Hell Yes, We Did (a post dedicated to Peter)

2008-11-05T13:04:00.012-06:00

At approximately 10:00 pm CST last night, Barack Obama was declared the winner and President-Elect and I couldn't be any happier. I would say the only thing I missed was some really good theme music to dance to ... it doesn't have to be Fleetwood Mac or Ludicris but just a little song to make me smile everytime they play it on the radio. How about Coolio's Fantastic Voyage? I'm just throwing that out there.

Peter says I don't blog anymore. He's right. I am a fantastic Starter. I start things better than most people do. I start more than most people do. I start and start and start. That's what I do. Hell, I started this blog twice.

Now ... continuing or closing ... ending. Yea ... I'm not so terrific at those things. In fact, I rarely do those things. I typically just start something else.

So, for Peter - and our new President-Elect - I will actually continue something. I might even continue it later, who knows. Maybe I just have to change the vocabulary and tell myself I need to start a new blog post.

I'll end with some pics from around the world last night/this morning (courtesy of Spiegel Online):

Cheers.

(newspapers across the planet this morning)

(Obama sand castle in India)

(Obama fans in Japan)

(Obama nesting dolls in Russia)

(the name of this town is Obama, Japan - how do you think they feel about last night?!?!)

(Obama's Step-Grandmother in Kenya)

(Something amazing must have happened last night - French people are waving American flags)

(It is a new world, isn't it? Like the sun is shining, people have perma-grins and hope has been restored. Thank God)

Drive By Phish Post

2008-10-01T21:47:00.003-05:00

(Big Red strutting his stuff onstage)

I actually got a heads-up on the Phish is Back fever a couple of days ago but after so many rumors (both ridiculous and sublime), I pish-toshed this latest one and waited for it to be proven impossible (Trey's on probabtion in Guam or Mike's got a macrame final that day at the local senior center).

Well well, turns out this one is a true rumor and my feelings are almost identical to my friend Mel's. I have a real job now, people. They impose vacation restrictions. It's not like I can just take off and come back later with the cool new Phish shirt.

Oy.

Okay, favorite Phish moment - the 30 seconds between lights down and the first note. That moment of anything can happen, they can play my absolute favorite song right now or they can introduce me to my new favorite song. Whatever happens though, it's bound to be the best night of my life.

How many things in life make you feel like that? I think that's livin' ... L-I-V-I-N

Dare to Blog

2008-09-17T22:25:00.002-05:00

This will be a mobile blog, otherwise known as a MoBlog. I am posting from my new LG Dare phone. Google it, it’s the next best thing to peanut butter (which is far better than sliced white bread IMO). The only caveat to this MoBlog is that it will be sans paragraphs or any other formatting for that matter; the Dare doesn’t Do formatting, so far as I can tell. But I’m not mad; with a QWERTY keyboard on a large touchscreen and Internet access that is not restricted by my work’s Websense Enterprise software, this phone is my new best friend. Thank you Jason for my awesome birthday present! This is the best time of the year ever … today is Constitution Day, tomorrow is my birthday and Friday is Talk Like a Pirate Day. I love mid-September! So shiver me timbers with a bottle of rum drizzled over birthday cake and read up on why the Second Amendment does Not explicitly guarantee us the right to own an AK47 … It’s September!

Note: this blog was originally written on my Dare but the Publish Post and Save Now buttons did not function for the phone so while this was written on a phone, the post is being published on my laptop. God I love the 2000s!

The Meaning of Life

2008-09-10T18:26:00.002-05:00

In yet another "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" moment, I begin to feel that I may have missed my professional calling.

Today, in a unique and awe-filled coming together of physics and philosophy with a little bit of science fiction thrown into the mix, physicists in the foothills of the Alps switched on the Large Hadron Collider housed in a tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border, sending the first beam of protons zooming at almost the speed of light. The LHC, a $9 billion particle accelerator, was designed to simulate the Big Bang that created the Universe in the hopes of advancing various physical theories. Scientists and physicists and those simply interested in the technical side of the meaning of life hope this experiment will answer many questions regarding the possibility of extra dimensions as well as finding a theoretical particle called the Higgs boson, aka the God Particle.

To be honest, this form of exploratory science just makes me giddy. A God Particle? Really? How can that not be fascinating? The Higgs boson, considered to be the Holy Grails of physics, is an elusive particle believed to bestow mass to matter, much in the same way a cluster of autograph hounds surround a celebrity on the move until they have their autographs at which point they peel off as more autograph hounds step in to take their place. In this case, the celebrity would be the matter while those seeking his autograph are the mass. As he moves down the street, the mass surrounding him makes it difficult for him to stop and once stopped, they make it difficult for him to start again.

Peter Higgs’ theory states that the particle named after him gave the Universe its form but it has eluded observation and remains a theory only. Proof of its existence would fill a missing puzzle piece in the dominant physics theory dubbed the Standard Model (particle physics version of the Periodic Table) which has been used to systematically organize all the known entities while helping to highlight and fill in knowledge gaps.

The LHC will send proton beams racing clockwise and counter-clockwise through the 27 kilometer circular tunnel creating millions of proton impacts. At full power, the LHC will be crashing protons together 600 million times per second, after which detectors will scour the subatomic wreckage looking for many of the answers they are seeking.

Many physicists feel that their entire careers have built up to this point, and that the results of this experiment will be the genesis for a “new physics”. Many detractors worry that the LHC will create a black hole large enough to envelop the Earth and that this experiment is an incautious effort to answer questions that are not dire to our survival and progression.

In fact, it is entirely possible that in the course of its run, the LHC will unleash a small black hole or two but scientists aren’t worried about any of them being big enough to cause any harm.

It is expected that the LHC will create anti-matter and it is hoped that it will explain why matter trumped anti-matter though both were created in equal amounts at the beginning of the Universe. It is also hoped that the LHC experiment may answer questions regarding the possibility of other dimensions, dark matter which makes up 25% of the Universe and supersymmetry, a theory that predicts that every particle has a partner, thus doubling up the spectrum.

I can’t find a definitive timeline for how long the experiment will run; it appears that it is open-ended with the possibility of planned equipment upgrades to combat a degradation in machinery. I expect so long as answers are forthcoming, the physicists in charge will continue seeking newer and further answers so long as they can keep the LHC running well.

Fingers crossed the Earth survives.

Palin Conspiracy Theory

2008-08-31T13:49:00.009-05:00

Wow, is Debbi really going to delve into Internet conspiracy theories? Can she possibly be that bored for drama?

The answer, my friends, is actually no. I'm not starved for drama, it's election season - drama Is. But some dramas are so compelling, that I will stop what I am doing to watch the train wreck unfold.

This week, Hurricane Gustav is drama number one. And if not for drama number two, my attention would be solely on drama number one and any blog posting would most probably be on that same subject.

But.

There is, in fact, drama number two.

Now, let me preface this to say that I am not sayin', I'm just sayin' - or rather The Daily Kos and many other sources are just sayin' and I'm just passin' on. The story is intriguing, especially when you get to the last and most damning part of it. Of course there are compelling reasons that dispute the story just as there are compelling reasons that give credence to it.

Let's start with the picture posted above. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska (on the right), mother of 4 children and 7 months pregnant with the 5th child. In that picture. That's what 7 months pregnant looks like. On her.

When Sarah Palin revealed to the public that she was pregnant at 7 months, she was greeted with reactions of amazement. No one suspected, even at 7 months.

Notice that Sarah Palin doesn't look pregnant or post-partum in either picture. But someone else does.

Thus the scandal.

According to The Daily Kos and before that, several Alaskan press sources, the rumor is that Sarah Palin's youngest child, Trig Palin, is actually Sarah Palin's grandson and the son of her eldest daughter Bristol Palin, seen above in both photos to the right of the family. A look at the photos indicates *something* unusual in the torso area of Bristol's images.

Around the time, Bristol was removed from school for 4 months with an apparently raging case of mononucleosis to have lasted 4 months rather than the usual one or two. (Note: mononucleosis cases swelled in the 1950s when parents would use the diagnosis to remove their pregnant daughters from school long enough to give birth and stop showing.)

Of course, the caveat to this, in many people's eyes, is that we all know children of Down's Syndrome are more likely to appear with older mothers. Sarah Palin was 44 when Trig was born therefore wouldn't it be more likely the child is her's? It certainly would seem so but, according to the March of Dimes website:

Does the risk of Down syndrome increase with the mother’s age? Yes. The risk of Down syndrome increases from about 1 in 1,250 at age 25, to 1 in 1,000 at age 30, 1 in 400 at age 35, 1 in 100 at age 40 and 1 in 30 at age 45 (6). Women over age 35 have been traditionally considered most likely to have a baby with Down syndrome. However, about 80 percent of babies with Down syndrome are born to women who are under age 35, as younger women have far more babies.

The final blow, in my opinion, is the circumstances of the birth itself. I will just quote The Daily Kos rather that re-write what has already been so well-written:

On Friday, April 18th, 2008, Sarah and her husband Todd were in Dallas, Texas for a Republican Governor's Convention. They had been in town for three days already, but Sarah had yet to give her keynote speaker address on energy policy. Then early Friday morning at 4:00am, Sarah began leaking amniotic fluid. Instead of checking into a hospital, she instead made a call to her doctor, and delivered the keynote speech.

"I was not going to miss that speech," she says.

She rushed so quickly from the podium afterwards that Texas Gov. Rick Perry nervously asked if she was about to deliver the baby then.

The oddities only grow from here on, as instead of rushing to a Dallas medical facility that could treat a mother who's amniotic fluid has been draining for hours on end (made even more crucial due to the fact that this is occurring a full month prematurely), Sarah & Todd instead opted to... Fly all the way back from Texas to Alaska. A dangerous choice, as with each pregnancy (once again, in this case after four previous), a mother's window of labor to delivery grows shorter and shorter.

Aboard Alaska Airlines, the flight lasted for eight hours, with an additional landing in Seattle. The majority of commercial airlines require mothers seven months pregnant to provide a doctor's letter to fly, but Sarah did not inform the airline of her condition. Alaska Airlines is one of the few airlines that do not require such a notice, despite the possibility of an emergency landings being required in such scenarios. That said, no one on board noticed that Sarah was going into labor:

"We leave the decision to fly up to our customers and their medical advisers," according to Alaska Airlines representative Caroline Boren.

...

"Governor Palin was extremely pleasant to flight attendants and her stage of pregnancy was not apparent by observation as she didn’t show any signs of distress," Boren said.

Eight months pregnant. A 6.2 pound fetus. No one notices a visible trace. By the third trimester, a perfectly fit woman not wearing anything less than a space suit should be easily spotted as pregnant. Not in Sarah's case.

The plane then made a landing in Anchorage, Alaska. Does Sarah then visit a medical facility that can accommodate a premature birth in Alaska's most equipped city? No. She drives 45 minutes away, to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, right outside the small village she used to govern as Mayor, Wasilla. Trig Palin is then delivered one month premature, Friday night. Sarah returned to work after three days.

The inherent need to absolutely have Trig delivered in a remote and possibly ill-equipped facility for premature deliveries, where Sarah would likely have numerous contacts and pull, does not sit well. The doctor, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, approving of all of these actions borders on malpractice. Not treating leaking amniotic fluid causes infections, and time is of the essence after water breaks. Husband Todd Palin simply delivers this winner of a line:

"You can't have a fish picker from Texas," said Todd.

A poor motivation, to be sure. Another motivation began making its rounds in the Alaskan legislature, where everyone was initially shocked to hear the news.

To wrap it up, I feel a bit dirty putting this out there, as I will probably be judged for not only besmirching the reputation of a 16-17 year old girl, but as well, for insinuating that if this is untrue, she is fat.

I honestly am doing neither - my intent is to continue being political until political is no longer cool and this is one of those political stories that is squeaking too loudly to ignore.

If it is true, it says something amazingly bad about Sarah Palin as both a trustworthy politician and a mother; if it is false, well then it falls where all the false scandals and conspiracy theories fall: The Star or Weekly World News. I have read that the National Enquirer, breaker of the John Edwards affair scandal, is up in Alaska trying to break this and in the wake of the John Edwards affair scandal, you know mass media will pay more attention to the Enquirer for a little while now, which means through election season, at the very least.

I'll probably wrap up the RNC afterwards, should it even go on - there is talk of a postponement in order to concentrate on Gustav and if they truly feel that way (as opposed to this being "for camera's sake" only), then I applaud them and thank them because sometimes Mother Nature is more important that any form of government.

Edited to Add: This blog post is not intended to judge a 16 year old girl in a day when pregnant teenagers no longer are newsworthy, so abundant are they, nor is the intent to judge a mother but rather to judge the politician. The other side of the coin to fame and power is people rooting through your trash and telling other people. I am sure the same can be said of most other sources on this story. If this does turn out to be true, John McCain will have to ponder precedence and procedure in replacing Palin with another, better suited running mate and that is the real story behind this.

Sarah Palin

2008-08-30T14:17:00.006-05:00

I will say, the McCain campaign did a great job in suppressing any leaks on who his choice would be for VP up until the last hour. I think I found out, finally, around 9:30-9:45 CST, less than a half-hour before he was to go onstage in Dayton for the announcement. (I wonder, did he manage to get his 15,000 audience he was hoping for even the night before?)

It's a good thing this leak was suppressed too; with a surprise like that, you want some people to still be in shock when you take the stage.

Remember how I was talking about transparency two blog posts ago? And how I dislike it? It shows no imagination, it shows little intelligence and it's very patronizing. The selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP could only have been more transparent had McCain selected Hillary instead, but she might have turned him down in her new-found sense of party unity and that would have tipped his hand, right?

Nothing against Palin, in fact I along with most of America, have never heard of her. We know Alaska exists and we're pretty sure it's way north and to the left of Canada ... oh, and it's flippin' cold. It has a government? Who knew?

Apparently, Alaska is governed much the same way as all the other American states (oh yea, I knew it was a state too) and it has a governor. A woman by the name of Sarah Palin. For a little while longer, at least. She's 44 years old, a mother of 4? 5? Lots of kids anyhow. Married her high school sweetheart (that's in almost every story I read about her and apparently, it's very important knowledge). Youngest and first female governor of Alaska where she was also raised, though not born. She likes to hunt moose. I hope she eats moose as well, the articles didn't say. I don't like sport hunting, it might as well just be called murder. I can get onboard with hunting for food though, although I have no intention of ever skinning anything ever. The idea's noble though and I'm sure there are braver people better inclined to approach the project with less EWWWWWWWWWWWWs.

So, I know all the news-bites about Sarah Palin, is my point. Every article essentially says the same few things because there is only so much the media knows about her. And having met her only once, presumably, there is only so much McCain can possibly know about her. Which makes this selection all the more suspect.

I'll mention a couple other things about Palin. They may have been reasons to choose her, I mean besides the main reason which is that she is a female and that all females are essentially mindless creatures and therefore only voting on the basis of whether or not the candidate or running mate has a vagina as we so clearly did with Hillary.

Palin is a Republican, first and foremost. She is anti-choice - they call it pro-life but let's call it what it really is because a hunter who believes in the death penalty is no more pro-LIFE than I am pro-life. She is supposedly unforgiving when it comes to abuse of power issues but at the same time, she is also undergoing investigation for firing a colleague who refused to fire her former brother-in-law who just so happened to be in the midst of a divorce and custody battle with her sister. Now I'll be honest, I think there is a good possibility that Palin is innocent of this. First, she is unforgiving, as I said, when others do it. Second, she has been Very cooperative in the investigation. I think this might be something she can slip past deservedly so. But, I find it ... odd? ... a little crazy? ... illogical for McCain to tap someone currently in the midst of an ethics investigation. Why not ask Ted Stevens or Jack Abramoff? Innocent or guilty, it all comes down to perception.

I think McCain displayed a touch of senility in this decision AND I think he knows it, in hindsight. His expression was more awkward than usual as Palin spoke at the event Friday in Dayton. And look at this photo from People ... does he look comfortable here?

To be honest, and I know this is Completely Rude but I'm just sayin', it looks a little like Cindy McCain is controlling him from a very - uh - sensitive location. And yes, I have noticed: Palin's husband is a bit of a hottie.

Anyway, back to the topic.

I am not angered by the choice of Palin, in fact I think it's a stroke of genius ... for the Democrats. McCain just took away his argument about Obama's age and experience with Palin's selection. She is younger and has less experience than Obama although it will be spun that her shorter amount of executive experience trumps Obama's longer amount of legislative experience. Fact of the matter is, most political experience comes down to Who You Know and as a short-term governor of a very-remote state, she doesn't know many people. The 72 year old McCain has an outside chance only of surviving two terms, so Palin's credentials become all the more important. I'm sure she'd do fine if it came to that, but if this is a contest of seniority and experience, McCain just dunked the ball in the opponent's basket.

And it's Game On.

Political Posting

2008-08-30T14:11:00.003-05:00

When I originally started this blog, the second time, which I guess makes it a copy of the original, I had intended it to be completely superficial glances into my life but fact of the matter is, I love politics, I love drama and I love intelligent discourse (these three things don't always go together but more often than not, they do) sooooo maybe for the next few months you can forgive me if I speak more controversially and less superficially?

Cool?

Cool.

Still Thinking About Tomorrow

2008-08-30T11:07:00.006-05:00

Fitting that my last post on this blog was about the Olympics - when they ended last Sunday night, I had but less than one day to wait for yet another uber-hyped, televised event that would hold my attention for the week. Of course, I am talking about the Democratic National Convention, normally an event I would pay little-to-some attention to with sparingly doled-out enthusiasm.

Not. This. Year.

This year reminds me of November 3, 1992, my senior year at Knox and my first eligible presidential election. I had voted by absentee ballot already as my voter registration resided in California; but I went with my friends Mel and Peter to vote that day near school. It had been a first for them as well.

That night, we gathered in Mel's apartment (perhaps in our PJs, my memory is fuzzy there) and we danced along to Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow as the Reagan-Bush years came to an end and a new era stood onstage, arm-in-arm, smiling ear-to-ear. Bill Clinton engendered idealistic visions with an unstoppable imagination for what America, and we by extension, could be. Gone were the days of the rich getting richer and faulty-thinking trickle-down economics and on the horizon would be the days of Progress and Equality and an end to Poverty and all things bad. Or so we thought. Those were my younger, greener years, before I realized that all successful politicians are intrinsically the same but with different talking point priorities, though the talking points always seem to be, also, intrinsically the same.

The night of November the 3rd, 1992 was the first time that I felt I could actually use my vote to better my life as well as the lives of other Americans. I didn't have the cynicism I have now, I didn't read as much as I read now and I hadn't yet entered the real world so I hadn't yet realized that national elections don't have much of an effect on middle-class day-to-day life. Rooting for a favored politician is little different than rooting for a favored football team. You are elated when your favored politician/team wins but a few days later, after the enthusiasm has abated, life goes on as normal. Perhaps if our lives were able to be viewed as a curve on a grid, we could see the effect varying policies and laws and environments have upon our lives as a whole but, while we can do that for historical figures, we do not have that ability for our own selves.

My first lesson in political cynicism was taught to me not very much later by President Bill Clinton, himself, when he signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, making it perfectly clear that equality still had no place in American legislation. After that, I tucked November 3, 1992 away. I thought it would be nice to take out every now and again and look at it and remember it fondly. Perhaps I could take it out and display it again once more. Clinton didn’t turn out to be what he promised he would be but maybe someone else would. I made sure to keep the memory safe, just in case.

* * * * * * * * *

Fast-forward to today, August 30, 2008. Nearly 16 years have passed, I have by now entered the real world. And while I've done everything in my power to avoid wholly committing to this part of life, the full strength of my power is nothing in comparison to the almighty dollar and the conveniences and necessities it affords me. I have become a real world-er now. I, along with the rest of the world, have endured the leadership of a former C student, which we all know means merely competent, and come to find out, he's not even that.

While my day-to-day life is little-affected by the whims and vagaries of the highest position in the country, I have nonetheless felt the bite of the housing crash, the recession and the invasion they call a war. I have been enraged for days on end by this administration and drank away my sorrows on the night they got re-elected with the lowest approval rating in an election year. I have entertained thoughts of leaving America but the reality is, American education is so abysmal, I am limited in the countries I could move to because English is the only language you need to sufficiently know to graduate high school. (I did well in both high school and college Spanish but not nearly well enough to just up and move to a Spanish-speaking country and expect to be able to communicate efficiently from Day One.)

I have looked forward to this election year for the last 4 years but with the caveat that I do now understand that all successful politicians are intrinsically the same and that the best I can hope for is a successor with a better mastery of the English language, a little more compassion for people not yet burdened with an official presidential nickname and the knowledge that diplomacy can sometimes be a solution in and of itself and not just a necessary step to be accomplished by whining and kicking and screaming.

In walks Barack Obama.

As a current Illinoisian, I know Obama. He's my senator, along with Dick Durbin. They're both Democrats and generally, vote the way I want them to vote. Which is good. I, along with all the other Illinoisians, am their boss.

But I am especially proud of Obama. He speaks the English language rather well - he uses big words properly. He carries himself with dignity and manages to show a general respect for all those around him. And he appears to know much about this country, its ideals and the hopes and dreams of its people. In fact, Hope and Dream are two catchphrases he uses often and with great effect.

He has been my candidate from the day he declared his intent to run. I don't give my vote easily. I researched him and the other candidates, both announced and expected to soon give intent. I appreciated many more of his views and stances than the others and I was bowled over by his speaking ability. Speeches have more power in policy that many candidates (generally those who don't speak well) want to believe. The ability to effortlessly speak can often change stubborn minds and get things done without anger or tension or war. A great speaker could provide us the diplomacy these last 8 years sorely needed. Thus, he passed the test where others failed. And I have been an enthusiastic supporter from that day onward.

He had a tough primary season. He was up against Fate. Hillary Clinton - in my opinion, the lesser of the two Clintons - wanted to, was fated to, put another Clinton in the White House. Before Bill's last term was up, she quote-unquote moved to New York in order to be qualified to run for the open senator seat coming up in 2000. This practice is known as carpetbagging and put my first checkmark in the negative column for Hillary. As I've said, I understand that all successful politicians are intrinsically the same but sometimes, some of them forget that some of us understand that fact. This move was completely transparent and I am one of those voters who prefers to be blindsided by political motive. At least then, I have a few exultant days of hopes and dreams before reality crashes down.

The other checkmarks in Hillary's negative column appeared one by one during the Primary season as she displayed what I consider to be True Colors once she realized Fate wasn't necessarily ironclad. I do realize that the never-objective media played a significant role in many of the negative aspects of the Democratic Primary season so not all the checkmarks belong to her but she and Bill played what I consider to be a nasty game brought about by desperation and that too was utterly transparent. I prefer to believe for at least a little while that my candidate is running for the good of the country and not for him/herself. With memories of carpetbagging dancing in my head, at no point did I believe that of her.

Eventually, Obama won through. Fate jumped ship and the Obama voters breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief. Hillary suspended her campaign - that was no less transparent. But for the time being, Obama remained alive and free from debilitating scandal and so long as that status quo remained, her campaign remained suspended.

The Democratic National Convention began Monday, August 25th. I tuned into only two speakers that night: Edward Kennedy, in the midst of a fight for his life and yet insistent that he add his thoughts to the proceedings, and Michelle Obama, speaking about her husband, at that point still referred to as the presumptive nominee. Personalizing Barack Obama to an audience acquainted with his abilities at lofty speech but not yet fully introduced to the man behind the words, Michelle Obama told the story of her completely normal upbringing, the achievements that both she and her brother sought and accomplished at the insistence of their parents and the man she met and fell in love with and what she saw in him that led her to believe that he is the right man to lead us. She is an easy person to like; unlike many actual and potential First Ladies, she is not drop-dead gorgeous (she leans more to girl-next-door pretty), she is intelligent but not snobbish and she is independent enough to cloud visions of Laura-Bush type First Ladies. Her story makes me feel like Obama actually fell in love with the woman and not the woman’s potential. I hope a lot of the fence-sitters walked away from Michelle’s speech with a more fully-drawn, positive picture of Barack Obama.

The next night, Tuesday, Hillary Clinton addressed the crowd. I know a lot of breaths were held for this night. Would she fall in line and be a good Democrat or would she come out bitter and resolved to walk a fine line in order to create her chance for the 2012 elections? I held my breath as well. My opinion, in the end, is that she spent the first half of her speech using the words I, Me, My and Mine a lot and mentioned Obama’s name not a lot. She spoke of her own campaign and her own campaign promises and the people who approached her campaign and told their stories to her in order for her to tell them to her supporters. Like that. She had some great lines, don’t get me wrong (“No way, No how, No McCain”, “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits”) and she did attack the McCain campaign plenty but it took her until the last 5 minutes, I’d say, before she turned the speech to Obama and to his campaign and to the need for a Democrat to win again. Once that happened, then she fell in line. She made comments that were clearly designed to pull her till-now reluctant supporters in line as well. All-in-all, I appreciate her efforts although I think she undercut them in the first several narcissistic minutes of her speech.

The next night, her husband spoke. November 3rd, 1992 all over again; I was giddy. I will always love Bill, no matter what. Despite Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, despite Lewinsky, despite Hillary’s campaign … when I think great Presidents, he will always come to mind because he was my first presidential vote and he was a great President, as Presidents go. And he is still a great speaker. When he compared Obama’s run and the critiques against Obama to his own run and the critiques against him, that’s when I felt the Clintons truly fell in line. He finally admitted that the experience argument had been brought up once before, against him, undercutting all of Hillary’s experience attacks against Obama. I cheered loudly once he closed the speech.

Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden ended the DNC that night with a rousing speech that took the fight straight to McCain’s doorstep. Biden’s role is clearly to be the attack dog for the Democrats this election which I think is a smart move. So far, Obama has played a high-road hand and the second he takes the low road, the media outcry will deafen any explanation he may have for doing so. The outspoken Biden will be the perfect vehicle for that undertaking.

Then, two days ago, Obama accepted the nomination and was crowned the champion of the Democrat party in a massive celebration at Mile High Stadium in Denver. Estimates from 70,000 to 85,000 people witnessed this particular History in the Making in person. Millions more witnessed it recorded live. I became a part of the couch as he spoke, my drink on the table beside me and my laptop on my lap. Through IM, my friend Danielle and I were able to comment to each other real-time without the hassle of having to shush ourselves to hear, though periodically, Jason would shush me for tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard.

Nevertheless, I listened intently to the entire speech and at the end, I felt a little November 3rd, 1992 surge through me - that this man just might be far enough removed from the Establishment that he can separate himself from the rest of the successful politicians long enough to fulfill some of his semi-utopian promises. That he also, is still thinking about tomorrow and hoping that he can be the driving force to returning a little glory and honor to a nation that has been fed on fear and incompetence for what seems like an eternity now. And, I know it won’t happen, but I kind of hope to hear a little Fleetwood Mac at his acceptance speech on November 4th, 2008. Not as a show of respect to the last great Democrat in office but rather as a reminder that progress means never stopping thinking about tomorrow.

More From Beijing (via the 27" television in my living room in Illinois)

2008-08-15T22:06:00.003-05:00

Cesar Cielo (Brasil) - he just finished and won the 50 meter freestyle swim in the Cube ... didn't breathe once in those 21.30 seconds. Which made me twitchy. I tried a flip-n-twist at the pool a few weeks ago and got lost somewhere in the middle, under water. I was surprised just how little air my lungs held and when my feet pushed off what I thought was the bottom and I didn't surface (my guess is I got discomboobulated and I was actually pushing off a wall), I actually began to believe that I was going to have to breath water. I was on my last millisecond when I surfaced. I got out of the pool, dried off and haven't been back. I get a little short of breath every time I think about it - almost claustrophobic, which strikes me as unusual but then again, claustrophobia is essentially the same concept but with solids rather than liquids. Cesar's swim reminded me of that.

Dara Torres (USA) - is 5 years older than I am, on her 5th Olympics (and she skipped 2 in the middle), swam a semifinal in the lane next to a 16 year old (25 years her junior -cough) ... and placed first. Yea, it's only a semifinal, whatever, she had one long vein popping on her perfect biceps.

One last swimming thing: Michael Phelps ... that's all.

Martins Plavins & Alexandrs Samoilovs (Latvia) - started off as the 23rd best men's beach volleyball duo of 24 teams, played the 1st best team ... and beat them. They're so good that they have no equal or near competition where they come from so they practice against teams of 6 on their Baltic Sea beach.

Didn't those Chinese gymnasts look young? Like, really, really, very, very young? I think they looked young.

On the topic of the Opening Ceremonies, a short week ago ... 2008 Fou drummers chanting and thank God they were directed to smile more because that much percussion and that much male chanting coming from a population that dwarfs our nuclear-family citizenry can be quite intimidating ... throw in 2008 white-clad martial artists and you've got a swelling amount of red-state hysteria.

I'm miffed that both softball and baseball were voted off future Olympic schedules - having wasted over 30 minutes watching both the male and female synchronized diving matches, I think softball and baseball got the shaft.

All-in-all though, I am very taken with the Olympics in a way I never have been before and the credit belongs to China. Had the Opening Ceremonies been the same ol' same ol', I would have watched for 10 minutes, turned it off and not probably returned. And perhaps I would have spent all that extra time blogging.

And We're STILL So Much Alike

2008-08-15T19:16:00.004-05:00

I give to you two very solid reasons for much of my lack of posting ... from my friend Mel who apparently is living my life on the western side of this state

Let The Games Begin
MIA For a Reason

As I watched the Opening Ceremonies, I thought '"wow, that would make an excellent blog post". Unfortunately for me, I didn't head into the computer room immediately and someone beat me to it, practically word for word. Hmph.

Things That Make Me Go Ooooh

2008-07-29T23:12:00.007-05:00

Discovered a new beta search engine today that knocked my socks off and no, it's not Cuil. Found a link to this one in an article about Cuil's crash and burn.

SearchMe

It won't replace the functionality of Google but it'll be good for seeing the pages before linking to them.

Music to My Ears

2008-07-27T12:36:00.007-05:00

Our air conditioning is out. Well, not out, per se, but not entirely working, let's say. The ... people ... who put together our condos weren't exactly working on all cylinders (that's me being nice) and so made it practically impossible to reach the filters for our air conditioner. They (the filters) are supposed to be changed 2x a year, we've been here since March, 2005 and this is the first time we've realized we can't reach them because they (the cylinder-less nincompoops - that's me being less nice - that built these condos) put riveted obstacles in the way - to the point where we will have to pay to get these things replaced. It's 86 degrees out there today. Oy.

* * * * * * * * *

On an entirely different subject (I just thought I'd mention the above paragraph so you got a good picture of my environment), I have been inspired to write a post about one of the things closest to my heart: music. But first, let me put some on so I can get further inspired ...

Mmmm Vampire Weekend, hell yea ... let's go.

We'll start with my favorite band of all time and no surprise because in this, I am as normal as a heartbeat: The Beatles. Seriously people, this IS rock music. Everything stems from The Beatles and [rant]don't give me that shit about Elvis or -god forbid- The Rolling Stones. I am firmly in JohnPaulGeorgeRingo camp and couldn't care less about MickDruggie1Druggie2Invisibleman1Invisibleman2 - the Stones would never have left London if not for the initial Invaders: The Beatles.[/rant]

The Beatles are the best selling group in musical history, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame could have been built on them alone. They enjoyed only one year of success in England before exploding into America and starting an audio revolution that would never again (yet) be rivaled. With the exception of Yellow Submarine, every album The Beatles released both in the UK and US held the #1 sales positions for multiple weeks. Between 1962 and 1970, The Beatles songs grew from short, Pop-py sing-a-longs to wandering, mind-bending exercises in existentialism - pretty much, as they grew so did their music ... and so did their audience. A young girl who might have screamed her entire way through a concert in 1964 would later be tripping face to "Dear Prudence" or "I Am the Walrus" as she enjoyed the farther reaches of her wild oats. I believe that is one of the most amazing legacies of The Beatles, that they could grow with their fans and avoid being looked upon as "a band I liked when I was young" of which there are SO MANY. And that they could then speak so clearly to those fans' children, of which I am one.

Despite all the great new bands I've been exposed to and fallen in love with in the years since I first built my appreciation for The Beatles, I will always consider them my favorite because they will always be the best. They are the Michael Jordan of rock and roll.

Holding the second spot in my heart, and a close second at that, is Phish. For this one I have my college friends to thank. One friend brought over the album "Rift" one night in our last week at school. He bought it for the album art and thank God for great album art because Phish pretty much defined my 20s and early 30s and has infiltrated so many parts of my life, I'd be a completely different person otherwise. I think some people find something a little pathetic about that statement but really, it is no different than saying a god or a faith defines you: it's all subjective, it's all opinion and it's all individual to the person and therefore nobody else's business to judge. I am defined by my faith and that is in music and not in air.

All-in-all, I've seen many Phish shows. We'll leave it at that. I could count them down (I have before, I've forgotten before) but the count is for competition purposes only. "Many" is as good a count as any.

My first Phish show was 8/10/1996 at Alpine Valley, WI. It was the first Phish show for many of my friends and, unbeknownst to me at the time because I hadn't yet met him, my husband. The experience and music both had such an amazing impact on me that I came ->thisclose<- less than a week later to heading to Plattsburgh, NY - ticketless and solo - for the tour-ending Clifford Ball Festival. I had my boss on-call, I had a ride from Detroit to NY - I was missing the ride from Chicago to Detroit and that, in the end, was what undid my plans. I still regret that.

Until their quote-unquote end in 2004, I based most of my vacations and family visits around Phish shows which makes me a bad daughter, I know. But they were THAT important to me. I met Jason because of Phish. And when they return (note the when and not if), I will find a way. Despite the facts that I'm in a new job now with a much stricter vacation policy and that we have goals now that require savings accounts and that the economy is such that both driving and flying are financially tough ... I will find a way.

In the meantime, I am satisfying myself with new music that excites me and makes me wish - just a little - that I was in high school now and therefore didn't look quite so silly as a thirty-something woman blasting The Killers or The Raconteurs in public. I have three favorite stations programmed on my car radio that fulfill most of my needs when not on commercial: WDRV for its devotion to the 60s and 70s (and sometimes 80s but only the good 80s), Q101 for its love of the Alternative (which is now mainstream, of course, as alternative must always become one day) and XRT for the blend of both and some new stuff to boot. XRT introduced me to Vampire Weekend which I started playing at the beginning of this (went through that self-titled album then onto Yellow Submarine during The Beatles portion of this posting and now I'm into The Killer Hot Fuss for what probably should be the wrap-up since I am supposed to do other things today).

All-in-all, I would say that of all art forms - even writing, says the writing major - I find more comfort and a Home in music. Some songs can tell a great story while other songs can influence a heartbeat and give my restless toes something to do. When I was younger, I went everywhere with my walkman (yes, I know that is a brand name but, like xerox and tivo, it has become the term for all in its category and, while I never owned a brand-name Walkman, I did own several of its competitors) and I couldn't even begin to impress upon you how exciting it was for me to graduate to a portable cd player and let's just say that my iPod is my 2nd best friend (behind Jason, of course) and, despite a 60 GB capacity, is nearly full with so much not yet on it. I like music too much for 60 GB to properly express.

There is music I dislike, certainly: a flat twang or an overplayed song (cough-stairway-cough) or what I call noodling which is a state of guitar-play in which the tune meanders hither and thither without actually going anyplace, and the only noodling I will put up with is Trey Anastasio because I know that eventually, he will go somewhere.

But for the most part, music is one of those subjects that I like to keep an open-mind on because I don't want to miss the best stuff each era has to offer by being mired up to the knees in my own era. My inspiration on this is my own mom who opened herself up to my music when I was a teenager and even though I won't have a child to do the same for me, I think I will succeed just fine on my own.

The History Boys

2008-07-25T21:57:00.004-05:00

Briefly, my apologies for so long a lapse - it seems that the proxy server (aka The Great and Powerful Censor) is at least partially A.I. and in less than a week "learned" to ban my access to all things Blog and Interesting. It's becoming a challenge; thankfully, I am enjoying the job and colleagues.

Jason's working a rehearsal dinner tonight so I've got the television to myself and Friday is a typical, dreadful night for programming. But I've got free HBO and free HBO On Demand. Scrolling through the list, I ran across The History Boys. I'd only heard of this play/film from a former co-worker who is an anglophile to the nth degree in addition to being a theatre person (said in a snooty aka uppercrust British accent of course) but it sounded very interesting and not something Jason would enjoy so I settled in and clicked on it.

Originally written for the stage by Alan Bennett, The History Boys is a multi-layered coming-of-age story set in 1980s Sheffield, England. On the surface, the story of 8 boys hoping to be accepted at an Oxbridge school (a cute term for the two pinnacles of English educations: Oxford and Cambridge Universities) is about education and the black and white difference between learning and testing. They have been well-groomed by two very hands-on teachers but, while they know an awful lot about a great many things (can recite Auden on call and play-act a transaction with a prostitute in French), they don't stand out. Enter Irwin, a much younger teacher bringing a little bit of a No Child Left Behind theory (minus the complete and total ignorance of the very definition of education, of course) mixed with a healthy dose of salesmanship to these ambitious boys' study plans.

Undulating beneath school boy tales comes the real meat of any coming-of-age story: the sex. In this case, both hetero and homo and a little here and there. The General Studies teacher, Hector, has a tendency towards pederasty which would typically be cautionary Hollywood fare if not for the unique characters of the boys who play along without playing along. It is a laugh to them, something to even the field between teacher, who should normally be of a vaulted stature, and student. At the end of their first classroom scene together, Hector turns to each boy to ask if he wants a ride home on the back of his motorcycle. This is apparently a standard offer and to be followed by an expected grope before reaching home. The boys aren't homophobic and they aren't afraid, it's a joke to them to see if they can avoid the grope while Hector believes he got the grope.

I am very pleased with the movie. The accents can get heavy at times, I made friends with the rewind button, but it's a different coming-of-age movie than I am used to. I liked it very much. The ending almost seemed a little Hollywood to me and not having seen the play, I don't know if that is unique to the movie, but I wasn't upset at it, I just wasn't surprised.