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Whoa, Mexico. On the two cross-country road trips I’ve taken that have involved a swing through southern California, I’ve tried to convince my companions — TGOTS in 2000, the fella in 2006 — to make a little dip into Mexico. Both were wholeheartedly against the idea, for reasons of logistics and security and wisdom and who knows what else.
In reality, the kind of visit we would have made — waiting in line at the border for who knows how long, ducking into Tijuana for 30 minutes just to say we’d been there, absorbing the rich cultural experiences inherent in a strip of tourist shops and bars — would not have added measurable joy to either trip. I can recognize that. I also recognize that I have a tendency, which I must battle, to do things or go places just for the sake of checking them off a sort of imaginary life list, which gives short shrift to said things and places.
But I do find Mexico tantalizing. So close, yet so … different. I feel the same way about Quebec, which I’ve visited a number of times. There aren’t too many chances to hop into a car and find yourself in another country, surrounded by people speaking a different language (who all, of course, know English too, because it’s that kind of world). I like the idea of this proximity to other cultures very much.
But I don’t know if I’ll ever make it to Mexico. These days, my closest experience comes via the wonders of Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico, a full-length “film” that indulges in all possible stereotypes in service of a classic Scooby ghost story — and that also includes, entertainingly enough, a lengthy wait at the border in the Mystery Machine. Hm, maybe I should give Freddie a call!
Here are bands I keep hearing about but not hearing:
The Head and the Heart
Iron & Wine
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Anyone got anything on any of these folks? I see them discussed in contexts that suggest I might like them (recommended by people I admire, mentioned alongside people I like, etc.), but I have never (to my knowledge, at least) heard them on the radio.
Anyone? Anything? Should I seek them out?
Instead this morning I got some Van Halen doing “I’ll Wait” and some Fleetwood Mac doing “Rhiannon.” Despite the shocking lack of conjunctions in those bands’ names, I enjoyed both — even if I’ve got no particular story about either one.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Stevie Nicks and David Lee Roth in the same place, though. The wavy locks and flowing scarves alone would be dang impressive.
OK, I don’t know what the butt(-related) gods are trying to tell me, but at this very moment I can hear some earnest person — presumably an eight-year-old, but you never know — practicing “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder. Ah, memories.
I cheated on the blog today, and let my iPod shuffle up what it wanted instead of letting the radio scan. This meant I got some gems.
First was “Old-Fashioned Wedding” from Annie Get Your Gun, a song which I’m pretty sure I sang daily during the years MK and I lived together. It is fun and funny and basically of an attitude I like to think I share even if I really don’t. But: hearing the song lets me pretend for a few minutes that I am sassy and adorable.
The following is a medley, with “Old-Fashioned Wedding” starting at 1:49, but I had to use this clip because it’s Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat — whose version of AGYG MK and I saw together on Broadway in … um … I think 1999.
Bernadette Peters! WOPAT!
Also I got “Henrietta” from The Fratellis — who I LOVE but have not listened to in ages. I know I’ve raved about their album Costello Music before, but I was reminded today what a great nice weather, windows down album it is. Just clangy and groovy and so much fun. I spent at least one summer listening to nothing else.
It’s possible I’ll spend this summer doing the same. Unless someone recommends something equally awesome, and quick.
Tush, that is.
I’m here today to write about my butt. Thanks to ZZ Top for the inspiration, and for the world’s cheesiest song. Just that word alone is enough to make me shiver.
But today it got me thinking about … well, one of my more prominent features. I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with said body part, though I’ve come to peace with it in recent years. Because, really, what can you do.
Also, the fun thing about being really, really pregnant is that suddenly your ample posterior looks relatively delicate. As I really, really inappropriately told a friend of my fella’s younger sister on Easter Sunday. But seriously. It’s fun to see all your proportions shift.
Anyhow I’d now like to share a sampling of butt-related memories:
- When I was somewhere in the 10-12 range, with a changing body and soaring insecurity to go with it, my dad’s cousin and his wife whisked my parents and me off in their motorboat, all spontaneous-like, and we ended up at a huge diving rock. As I stoody ready to dive into the cool, clear water below, I heard the cousin’s wife’s voice waft across the water: “Guess we know where she got that body.” Later, I confronted my mother: “I heard what she said.” My mother, who — in case this somehow wasn’t clear — is indeed the source of my generous child-bearing hips* and rump, was hurt. “I don’t think she meant it as a criticism.”
- In my early 20s, I worked at a small weekly newspaper staffed by vaguely lecherous men in their 30s and 40s. TGOTS was always horrified by them, but I found them entirely enjoyable. Except for the day I walked by one of their desks, in my favorite jeans of that moment — a little tighter than my usual style, and buff-colored — and a question rang out along the lines of, “Hey, where does your body store the extra food you eat?”
- A couple of years later, my sister and I were visiting family in California, and my five-year-old nephew uttered in classic singsong style: “You’ve got a big butt.” As it happens I was wearing those same jeans. Anyhow, I knew that as the older, more mature relative, it was my duty to keep a cool head and take the high road. So I shot back, “You’ve got big ears.”
Oh there’s more, so much more, including my mother’s attempts to bond and/or sympathize with me by remarking at various times over the years on how I had inherited the family’s “Gould bottom.” I don’t know who Ms. Gould was. But I grew up despising her.
Anyhow. I’ve finally come to peace with my piece. It helps that two pregnancies have rearranged my body in such unrecognizable and lasting ways that all previous perspectives I had have gone out the window. It also helps that I am older and wiser and all that. And if ZZ Top ever came looking for me, I’d proudly … well, OK, I’d probably hide in my house until they left. Those guys are creepy.
* Turns out those come in handy.
This is a story about TGOTS, my brother, my fella, and Ray LaMontagne. Aren’t they all?
There’s not much to it, really. Except that I moved to Seattle right before my 30th birthday. As previously documented, I left the fella behind, drove across the country with my brother and mother, and leapt into more than a few great unknowns.
It was so exciting! And so painful! And so everything!
And for my birthday, TGOTS sent me Ray LaMontagne’s Trouble, c/o my brother, at whose house I was living while I looked for my own space. I had never heard of artist or album, but as soon as I popped it into the CD player in my brother’s kitchen, I was entranced.
I’m not sure which track it was that inspired the following moment, forever burned into my brain. It was not “Forever My Friend,” which I heard this morning — I think it was one of the first three on the CD. All I know is, I was innocently opening the double-doored pantry next to my brother’s refrigerator, looking for peanut butter or something, when I suddenly and quite unexpectedly found myself crouched down, sobbing, my tears falling on the cold linoleum floor. (Oh it’s probably imported Mexican tile or something, knowing my dear brother.)
Soon enough I pulled myself together and went on with my day. But I can’t forget the power of music, and of Ray, to bring everything swimming to the surface. That CD became one of my favorites over the next few months. In fact, I think I need to go listen to it now.
And PS, TGOTS gets to hear him in person soon enough! So fabulous.
First, a follow-up on yesterday’s Blue Monday: As I noted in a later comment on that post, I ultimately realized that I DID have a song stuck in my head, and that it was due to the latest episode of “The Office.” WHICH I highly recommend checking out, if only for the musical moment.
Today, though, I lucked into Run DMC’s “It’s Tricky.” WHICH I’m not sure I actually knew when it was released, but WHICH I’ve absorbed in later years and enjoy very much. Even if I can never remember that it’s Run DMC and not some low-rent Beastie Boys wannabes who sing it.
And WHICH made me remember that there’s apparently a new Beastie Boys song I need to hear, and a new Beastie Boys short film I need to see. Yay! Beastie Boys!
I might just have to go play some “Sabotage” or something right now, while I’m still the only one in the office. If that won’t get Tuesday off on the right foot, I don’t know what will.
This morning the radio gods brought me a song I must have heard before, yet don’t recall even knowing existed: “Please Come to Boston,” by one Dave Loggins.
First of all: I spent half the song thinking it was Kenny Loggins, before my brain slooooowly said, “Hey what? Dave Loggins? Who he?”
But mostly: I spent it thinking about farflung friends, and how I wish that everyone I know and love could live within about a twenty-mile radius. There’s TGOTS, of course, ensconced in her northern New York home, which she makes seem very driveable with all her back and forths to Maine, but which I shamefully admit feels very far away when I think about getting in the car.
And then there are legitimately far away people — some of my other dear friends live in Portland and Oakland, and I occasionally beg them to move back to New England. Even as I do it I cringe, knowing how wonderful it was when I got away to the West Coast and how much I resented the clawing tentacles of those who would ask me when I was coming back. For Pete’s sake, I’d think. Can you just let me be for a while?
But now I’m the one who can’t let people be. I did it again just a week or two ago, to my aunt and uncle. They live in Santa Fe and are coming to Maryland for a memorial service and New Jersey for some other family visiting. We were emailing back and forth to figure out whether we could connect along the way, and when I reluctantly concluded that my very, very pregnant form was going to make that unrealistic, I asked them if they’d consider swinging up to New England.
It wasn’t that far-fetched — they, like TGOTS, think nothing of hopping in the car and driving for 12 or 13 hours, and this would have added a mere 4.5 hours to their itinerary. But it won’t work out, for various reasons.
It leaves me feeling a bit like I think I’m the center of the universe, except the universe doesn’t regard me that way. The easy answer should be to do more visiting — a prospect I enjoy, but one that gets harder as the realities of having young child(ren) settle in.
So I don’t have much point, except I guess this is how life goes, and you find a way to either go to the people you love and/or be happy when they come to you, and accept that it won’t be as frequently as you might hope, and I suppose incorporate Skype into your life (though I find that usually leaves me sadder about the far-awayness). And know that the universe is ever shifting.
Friends, I have not started this work week off on the right foot.
As I write it is not yet 10:00 a.m., yet I have already had enough work annoyance to drive any tune from the morning’s commute far from my mind. The music, it is not so much with me at present. Unless it’s the theme for Miss Gulch / the wicked witch of the west.
Yep. That’s about the look on my face right now.
Music, I need you! I need you to relax the muscles in my face and shoulders and put a song in my heart. It’s only Monday morning! I can’t be Miss Gulch all week long!
I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes trying to figure out what kind of musical medicine I need. Perhaps a little Beyonce? Or some old-timey Broadway magic? Or something silly and spirited?
Nothing I’ve tried so far on the YouTube has done the trick. Of course, it might help if I could actually listen to clips at something resembling normal volume, instead of at all-but-mute (a necessity given my office situation).
Ah, well. Just whining is helping. Nothing that’s happened is fatal, it’s just annoying, so I can get over that. NO REALLY I CAN.
But if you want to recommend some spirit-lifting tune-age, I’ll be happy to take the suggestions.
HAUNTING. ME.
And I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a SUPER CREEPY (a ha ha ha) thing.
