Backstage Pass

For the loan of a spare hair iron, my friend, the immensely talented and fierce MIssy Lipps let me tag along behind the scenes of the Box Turtle Fall Fashion Show on Saturday night. The show has become a big event for our little town (helped by the addition of Project Runway finalist Korto Momolu to the program), with an actual runway and real models, yo. I had a blast following the girls with my little point-and-click, pretending to be a photographer. I worried they might find me a nuisance, but since I only come up to their waists, I don't think they noticed me.

It must be said that a large part of the appeal of Missy's presentation is in the amazing women she chooses to represent her style. They all happen to be stunning, but they are also wicked smart, funny and talented. My friend Emily, for example.

Here are some of my favorite snapshots from the night. Missy's clothes are available through the Box Turtle*.



*Hers are the smokey lavender dresses (with the exception of one fabulous black number, worn by raven-shooter and film/video producer Eva Fleischauer. There are a few shots of some of the other designer's creations that caught my magpie eye. If anyone can shout out the names, so I can give credit where credit is due, I'd be grateful.

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Number One Fan

Here in the morning
things sure look different
You are still beautiful—
I am all gone.

—Bruce Robison, "Go to Your Heart"

This is a photograph of Bruce Robison, one of the greatest country songwriters alive, taken last night at a local nightclub. I am actually in the photo, to the right of Bruce, but if I show it to you, you will know what a blithering dork I can be.

Oh wait, you're reading my blog. You already know about that.



Remember last summer when I bumped into Mary Steenbergen, and explained why I find it weird to talk to strangers I admire?

It must be so strange to be famous, to be on the receiving end of that sense of urgency people feel when they run into you. To meet people all the time whom you know nothing about, yet they feel connected to you, perhaps significantly. You might have been part of their first date, the naming of their child, their Mom's funeral, but the current doesn't flow both ways.

Okay, there's that, but I left out how weird those lopsided exchanges make me.

Someone that normal people might be starstruck by—say, Brad Pitt—could have walked up to my table last night and asked for a light, and I probably would have told him to shush and wait for the break, because this song? Made my husband cry when I put it on a mix for him during a really rough time. And the one that has all the sweethearts slow dancing makes me ache with every unrequited love I never had. And this next one makes me think of my little band of brothers at home and imagine them out on the town together some night years and years from now.

Sit down, Brad. Go away.

But what happens when one of my girlfriends taps someone like Bruce Robison on his Levi's-clad back and sends him over to talk to me? My brain short circuits and trips over into free association mode, and random stuff starts coming out of my mouth. I try so hard to avoid all the fan cliches, that I just start grasping at things. "You write music!" I inform Bruce. "You have children!"

Locked in a supply closet in the back of my brain, my better self starts banging her head on the door.

"You live in Texas!" (Texas. Texas. Think. THINK. Kerrville is in Texas!)

"Ever play Kerrville?"

"No."

Here I prattle on about the Kerrville Folk Festival, to which I have never been, and know nearly nothing about, for several long minutes, during which time the real me looks for something to ram her way out.

"I'm not much of a folkie," Bruce says politely. "I'm more into Johnny Cash."

(EVER HEARD OF HIM?)

At this I panic, and attempt to restore my credibility as a person who knows something about country music.

"Have you ever been to Ireland?" I squeak.

My best hope now is that a beer bottle will come sailing through the air and knock me out cold.

I insist to Bruce that he must tour Ireland, where he will be bigger than Jesus. I promise him that the Irish government will open its treasury to him and hand him all its Euros, and I vaguely intimate that I "know people" and might be able to hook him up with, well, Ireland and its country music loving people.

And then?

I hand him a card with my blog on it. Passport to the world, baby.



Far down my winding & twisted neural pathways, I can still hear weeping.

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Props

I haven't seen Juno yet, but it tickles me how references to scriptwriter Diablo Cody in traditional media are being breathlessly preceded by the descriptor, "blogger/ex-stripper." As if it's sort of incredible that either one could turn out to be a person of intelligence and wit.

And as if they are virtually THE SAME THING.

The shoe is mine. Comes with the gig.

---

Hey, Leah had lunch with Cody this week. Leah couldn't be any more special in my eyes no matter who she passes the salt to, but Cody wins points with me just for smiling so warmly at someone so dear.

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Perhaps I Over-Reached

I caught a little sound clip from the new Apatow film Walk Hard (trailer above) the other day, an excerpt of a song called "Let's Du-et." I can't wait to see it. I adore the musical genre that number so lovingly mocked. Tammy & George. Dolly & Porter. June & Johnny. The hurtin'-er, the better.

A few years ago, I was driving somewhere with my middle son buckled in his car seat behind me, belting along for all I was worth to Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis' "When I Loved You." After the last note was unfurled from the very depths of my gut, there was a perfectly timed, delicate moment of silence. Then a little voice piped up from the backseat.

"Maaaybe you should just sing the Muffin Man."

---

If you or someone you know shares my fondness for Du-ing-Et, John Prine's tribute cd In Spite Of Ourselves is a must-have. "Let's Invite Them Over Again," featuring Iris Dement, is one of our favorites.

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Men Who Rock My World

• Dan
  
  
• Jemaine

I would leave here with either of them tonight (but I'd be back in a week or two, honey).

Also? I nominate "Business Time" to henceforth be "our song":

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She hangs chairs on the wall

So, anyway, I just came back from lunch with Mary Steenburgen. Well, near Mary Steenburgen. Okay, I walked past Mary Steenburgen in the cafe, on my way to the deck. I just opened the front door to our neighborhood coffee shop and there was Mary Steenburgen.

Mary Steenburgen!, I thought. Act natural!

I played it cool, but I'm pretty sure she was checking me out. I felt the heat of her hot celebrity gaze burning a hole in my back.

I couldn't wait to tell Patrick when I got home. Goin' South is one of our top five favorite movies, and we quote the Jack Nicholson and Mary Steenburgen lines to each other all the time. Well, Patrick quotes Jack's lines and I purse my lips and roll my eyes. Which is what Mary's character mostly does in the film anyway.

"Did you talk to her?" he asked.

"Nope!"

"Did you get an autograph?"

"Nope!"

"A picture?"

"Nope!" (Although I had my camera in my purse).

"Why not?"

"She was eating lunch."

Patrick shrugged in agreement. I'm not much of a celebrity hound. For starters, the famous people I do tend to meet are only famous among graduate students of creative writing programs. The average cocktail party guest is not exactly bowled over by my story about the time I found myself all alone with Gary Snyder in a bedroom at a house party, and instead of throwing him down on the furcoat-covered bed, sitting naked on his chest and reading him my poems like Anne Sexton would have done, I was a tongue-tied stammering idiot who could barely give him clear directions to the bathroom. Dinner hosts don't beg me to tell about the time Georgia and I lay in wait all weekend for Billy Collins at his hotel, only to finally track him down Sunday morning and spend breakfast kicking each other's ankles under the table and cocking our heads and hissing. I'm sure if he noticed us at all, he assumed we had some sort of neuro-muscular disorder.

I did almost bump into Jeff Bridges once. Which would have been cool, because The Fisher King is also in that top five movie list. I was browsing through a vintage clothing rack and a woman was taking photographs of a couple of other shoppers. I was annoyed.

"You're not taking my picture, are you"? I asked coldly, assuming the dress shop was putting together some sort of promotional flyer and trying to get away with free talent. Hah! Not without a signed waiver!

The photographer looked at me like I was a hatrack that had just tipped over. "Uh. No."

When I got to the cash register, the check out girl gushed, "I can't believe they were in here."

"Who?"

"You didn't see? Jeff Bridges and his girlfriend. His personal assistant, too."

Ohhhh.

It didn't really matter, because had I seen and recognized them, what would I do or say? It must be so strange to be famous, to be on the receiving end of that sense of urgency people feel when they run into you. To meet people all the time whom you know nothing about, yet they feel connected to you, perhaps significantly. You might have been part of their first date, the naming of their child, their Mom's funeral, but the current doesn't flow both ways. The imbalance of it must be perpetually unsettling. I would imagine it is a kind of constant energy drain.

Or not. Mary Steenburgen didn't look drained in the slightest. She looked damn hot. For the record, she is far sexier and younger looking in person than I have ever seen her on film. True, "hot and sexy", like "famous", often means something different to me than it does to most other people (just last night I was thinking that John Turturro is hot and sexy). But I think if you were to run down to the coffee shop right now and catch her, you'd agree with me that girlfriend is fine.

But for God's sake, act natural.

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Me Tube

He watched till his eyes were frozen wide, And his bottom grew into his chair. And his chin turned into a tuning dial, And antennae grew out of his hair. Shel Silverstein, Jimmy Jet and His TV Set, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Sheryl of Paper Napkin—who seems to keep abreast of such things—pointed out today that TV-Turnoff Week is just around the corner. She asked readers about their family tv habits/policies and rather than hijack her comments page with my true confessions, I came back here to dump it all on you.

The truth is, my kids watch about a thousand per cent more television than I ever intended or wanted. When people wonder how I manage to work part-time at my paying job, work time and a half at managing house and home, and find any time to write, I tell them straight up, "my kids watch a lot of tv" (also, if they were to come over, they could see that the housekeeping suffers in the equation—hey, something's got to give, and it's not going to be the paycheck or the writing).

How much is a lot? When school is in session, it's not too bad, relatively speaking. Some of my friends who have managed to stick to their guns on the issue would probably find it appalling. Certain of my girlfriends who read this blog would argue that they manage to do all these things and work out at the gym besides without resorting to television. But they are from Australia, where natural selection seems to favor hypermania (case in point: Crocodile Hunter). To hell with them.

In our house, the tv goes on first thing when the boys get up. If we are on time waking up, they eat breakfast and get dressed in front of it. When Patrick picks up our nearly-three-year-old from preschool, it immediately goes on, until I get home at lunch, and depending on what's on my to-do list, will stay on for up to (gulp) a couple of more hours. When the big boys get home from school around four, I encourage them to go outside or play in their room, but if I am preoccupied, often as not, they will turn on the tube. You can count on it being on while I am cooking supper, and depending on how late it is when we get through, they might watch a little before bathtime. Weekends, all bets are off. If any of them are inside, the tv is probably on.

Okay, it is bad. If you are keeping a running tally of estimated viewing hours, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

In our defense, the children are generally not passive viewers. Unless they have just woken up, they are not sitting slack-jawed in front of the tube. They are playing, talking about the program, acting it out ("I'm Ash." "No, I'm Ash." "You're always Ash."), hollering out orders to the short order cook (me), and perpetually, unremittingly, incurably jumping on the furniture.

I also do my best to control content, although I am undermined in this by my husband, who grew up free-range viewing and doesn't seem to distinguish between Toon and Nickelodeon, with their smartass, slapstick, pottymouth asthetic, and PBS Kids. The chief difference is that the kids will get bored with the quasi-educational programming enough to eventually find something else to do, or to at least carry on a conversation, whereas Jimmy Neutron or Fairly Oddparents requires the entire bandwidth of their brains to download obnoxious slang for personal use.

Even the shows on the offending networks that I like—Spongebob, for one, and Avatar, for another—come bundled with offensive advertising. And although Patrick can make an eloquent argument that Avatar has thematic merit (one episode teaches the chakras), he has yet to persuade me that a Saturday SpongeBob marathon is not the video equivalent of eating Froot Loops straight from the box. Yummy, but ultimately devoid of nutritional value.

For years, we didn't have a tv. When our firstborn was still an infant, my father-in-law offered us one, and I remember it was a real moral dilemma, necessitating much earnest discussion. This was back in the day when I was making homemade, fruit-juice sweetened teething biscuits and was willing to homeschool and breastfeed through Grade 12, if necessary. Anything to keep this shiny new life unpolluted and pure.

Let's just say I got over that. Thank God.

As far as childrearing goes, I'd rather screw up consciously than unconsciously, so I can have a shot at damage control. I let go of the idea that I was going to get to do it all perfectly a long time ago. Now it is all about weighing risks and benefits, and as with most questions to do with personal values, I find there are rarely absolute answers. On the down side, my kids watch a lot of tv. More than I hoped. More than I like to admit. On the plus side, they are happy, healthy, active children. The tube buys me time and space to reflect and find perspective. It buys me time to cook a good supper and set a nice table. It spares them from the yelling that I also said I'd never do, but do, when they are unfocussed and idle and I am all spent. It buys me time to come here and record this wild, wonderful, impossible time of our lives and work out who I am under the rush and roar of it.

Turn it off for a week? I'd love to. Really. But I just can't afford it.

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My generation?

One of Patrick's clients gave us tickets to the Who concert at Alltel Arena last night. I saw them in Toronto in the late eighties, back when they were first retiring. Talk about the long goodbye.

Stadium rock is not, and has never been, my thing. Whereas Patrick, child of the seventies, was there for all the great arena shows of his era, I could stick my souvenier tickets between the fingers of one hand. I much prefer concert hall, or club, gigs to shelling out a hundred bucks to watch someone play on a giant video screen.

But the tickets were free, and Georgia offered to babysit, and who can argue with that?

As we were getting ready to leave, I was thinking how strange is this post-modern era. The Who is from my parents' generation. Mom and Dad weren't going to Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby concerts when I was a kid. The overture to this new millenium is so very ouborous. It is as if all of twentieth century pop culture got jammed up against the exit in the rush to leave the building.

Consequently, for my generation nothing is relative. We listen to our parents music. We buy our kids replicas from our own childhood. Maybe we recyle everything in an effort to slow the process of digestion down. Maybe our collective consciousness has four stomachs.Maybe our own cultural maturation is delayed by the logjam of babyboomers down river.

Last night's show night reflected this pileup, both on stage and off. In all spectator events, for me, the spectacle lies in the spectators. I watched the crowd more than I watched the band. It was a weird split between snaggle-tooth hippies and people who looked like they just came from a Jimmy Buffet concert. You know, middle aged guys who have gone cyborg with their bluetooth earpiece. I estimate that less than three per cent of the audience was under forty-five.

The band (or the corporate production that encompasses the band) got this, and played to it, in a way that was ironic without being cynical. The performers were backlit by stop-motion film clips on hanging screens; a repeat montage of sixties icons like Twiggy, Peter Sellers, and flowers. Every ten seconds the band's emblem and THE WHO would pop up. I got the giggles, thinking of the display as flash cards to help the aging stoners figure out where they were. A sort of multimedia "Who's on First":

"Where am I? Who are they?"
THE WHO THE WHO THE WHO
"Yeah, man, WHO?"

The band was in good form, if not exactly mint. Their new, operatic material was interesting enough for me to probably check some of it out on iTunes. Townshend was charming, disarming and sincere. I remembered how much I enjoyed his White City album, and made a mental note to go see what else he's been up to since. Zak Starkey, on drums, was yummy. There was more of a celebratory spirit coming from the band than I remember eighteen years ago. When they sang "My Generation", it was without apology. They were still talking about their generation. Only now they are defending it to their juniors, not their elders; people my age and younger who might question whether millioniares in their sixties have any credibility as rockers.

To which, they answered, I could just f-f-f-f....

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Postscript: Pete Townshend has a blog! Just like me. Maybe we could be friends. It appears to be personally written by him. I wonder if he'll post anything about me last night?

"...played Little Rock last night to a strange looking audience. One, a thirty-something brunette in the stands, needs to be told she is way past it for going sleeveless. --P.T."

tags technorati : pete townshend, the who, zak starkey

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I love them and everything they stand for

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

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Who's that girl?

The reason I haven't posted since last week is because my girlfriend Lennie made me get a myspace page (see Mom Gone Wild link on sidebar), which sent me into a spiral of despair, confusion and possibly early menopause.

I tried telling Lennie that myspace, like fruit-shaped cereal, is for kids. But she insisted I would fit right in. I am extremely suggestible. If all my friends were jumping off a bridge, I would absolutely be right behind them. Within forty-five minutes of Georgia telling me she had strepp the other day, I felt my throat closing over. So on Thursday morning, with the schools cancelled because there had been a snowflake, I ventured in. It was extremely disorienting at first, like going to a rave, or shopping at Old Navy. Flashing lights and loud music. I groped around blindly until I found a code generator and was able to pull together a myspace page, all the while wondering, what in the hell am I doing? Like I haven't split my creative focus enough already. Such is the life of the ENFP.

For those of you who have not myspaced, it is like a Playboy playmate questionaire, or temp agency application. You are prompted to list your interests, vital statistics, inclinations and other personal details. It was a lot of pressure. I had to choose a song, a music video and a photograph. It was a little like planning my own funeral. For the video, I used our family Rock Star. I flipflopped on the theme music, settling on the Shins new single, but if I ever go back in, I will likely change it again. As for the photograph, it was challenging to find something recent that didn't scream Mom. I needed to be wearing something without mucus on it.

I settled on a photo taken last year, on the night I retired my Super Heroine Dress, my favorite and most outrageous get-up of all time. I found it in a secondhand store in 1996, and am wearing it in the above snapshot from about that time, taken in the parking lot of the blues shack where I worked (as a waitress, in case the five-inch heels mislead you into thinking I had a job as an exotic dancer — that, I did for free at the after hours club, after five or six bourbon-and-cokes). Although the Super Heroine Dress is not visible under my fringe leather coat, you can get the overall vibe. A picture of the actual dress is posted on the myspace page and here, at my friend Kathy's online gallery (I would adore a signed print of this for my wall, if anyone felt like impulsively buying me a present).

Within a few hours of creating my myspace profile, I had an offer to go have "drinks" from some Michael Scott-type who said he was coming through town on business. This caused me to play up the married-with-kids-church-lady angle that I was trying to play down in my photograph. My About Me section reads like a Mormon caught at a strip club...I am just there to save souls.

Once I had my myspace page complete, it turns out there was absolutely nothing left to do. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of myspace is to find someone you know and send them a message that says, "Hey! You're on myspace! I'm on myspace too!" And then you do the cyber equivalent of staring into your drink, pretending to enjoy the pounding music and strobe lights. Unless I am missing something, that seems to be the extent of it. Kids today.

Well, there I was with all my mixed feelings about the Dress, and growing older, and being more and more Out of It. So I spent the weekend writing about it, thinking I would post those thoughts here. But it turned into something bigger, so I am looking for a home for it elsewhere. Also, some money would be nice. Business has been kind of slow, and I might have to locate those shoes.

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You're my man.

Marita
Please find me
I am almost 30.

—Leonard Cohen

Years ago, when Leonard Cohen's masterpiece I'm Your Man was released, a girlfriend and I sat on the floor swooning over the lyrics of the title song

And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone
I'll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man.

"Why can't all men be like that?", my friend said, sighing.

My Dad, who was also a poet in Montreal in the sixties, cut in. "Girls," he said. "All men are like that.

Yeah, okay, maybe. But they sure don't all express it like that.

The film Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man, arrived in my mailbox last week. It's been in my Netflix queue a long time and I was looking forward to an evening of swooning and sighing. I did both, but also a lot of seething. You can't make a bad film out of Leonard Cohen songs and interviews. The raw material is too good. But it is apparently quite possible to make a bad film around the songs and thoughts of Leonard Cohen. I don't know enough about filmmaking to know how much of the blame rests with director Lian Lunson. I don't know how much is a factor of budget. I do know there were elements that reminded me of —how can I put this without feeling disloyal— National Film Board productions I grew up on. No disrespect to the NFB. But it's 25 years later, and we've come to expect more sophistication in a doc.

I don't even know if Lunson is a compatriot, but the whole film had the air of earnestness and self-consciousness that I have come to associate with Canadian film and tv. It tries to be sexy, but it takes the effort so damn seriously it comes off as contrived. It's like watching someone who's never smoked, trying to look cool with a cigarette. For example, there are flashes of bodyparts of a Vegas showgirl inexplicably strewn throughout the film. And then at the end, in a final non-sequitur, she comes out arm in arm with Cohen and U2. I can just see someone saying, you know, people might not get that the Cohen poems and lyrics and art are sexy. We better put a half-naked girl with feathers in. Because THAT says sexy.

The director's affectations were minor, however, compared to most of the performers in the concert segments. Starting with my beloved Rufus Wainwright, who did "Everybody Knows" in the style of Liza Minnelli and was obviously reading the lyrics off a music stand. He more than redeemed himself with his subsequent contributions, but others were painful to watch. Their affectations? It was like watching actors read poems. Which is my personal definition of hell. What did they think one could possibly add to a Leonard Cohen song with all that emoting? Your voices are enchanting, but it's supposed to be about the songwriter, not your signature angst or eccentricity. Antony Hegarty. Beth Orton. Martha. Yeah, I'm looking at you. Tribute is properly used in third person.

And for the love of Armani, it's Leonard Cohen, kids. Let's show some respect. Like, maybe learning your part and not singing off the sheet. Like maybe trading the thrift shop duds for something approaching the elegance and class of the man himself, that says I am honored enough to be here to have brushed my hair and ironed something just for the occasion. Nick Cave wore a suit and won my undying love. And Teddy Thompson put a dinner jacket over his t-shirt, stood up straight and just played his guitar and sang the song. It was riveting, a standout moment among performances that may as well have been done from inside burlap sacks. It reminded me of that old story that goes around acting circles about the method actor asking Sir Laurence Olivier his trade secret. "It's called acting, dear boy," was the response. In other words, get over yourself.

Leonard, I'm so sorry. After all these years, you deserve better than rags and feathers. Put me on the door list next time, I'll come wearing white gloves and hyacinths. But don't wait too long. I am almost 40.

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Shuffle: decoding my musical genome

My new ipod Shuffle may be my very favorite possession next to my ibook. Thanks, Mom! It goes a long way toward making up for the Christmas I didn't get a Ken doll!

Look at it. Isn't it adorable? Smaller than a book of matches and holds 240 songs. And when I get tired of those 240 songs? Why, I just plug it into my ibook and fill it with 240 more! Remember when the Sony Walkman first came out? Remember how we thought that was THE SHIT? (If you don't, what the hell are you doing here? Go back to MySpace.com and blog with your own kind.) Remember how it played music recorded on actual tape? And took alkaline batteries? And how the headphones went over your head? It seems a lifetime ago. Several times a day, I glide a finger over the controls of my shuffle and murmur, "To think that I should live to see such wonders..."

It validates my faith in humanity. If we can put 240 songs and 12 hours of battery power in a matchbook, my brothers and sisters, we can save the polar bear.

I am enjoying the shuffle play feature. I've had itunes on both the ibook and the kids desktop PC for some time now, but I have preferred to stay on top, so to speak. I say what to play and in what order. But since my new toy has no display feature, I am effectively blindfolded. Surprise me, I say, as I slide the power switch on.

The result is that I am listening to tracks I haven't heard in a while, and hearing familiar songs in a new context. It has me thinking about how passionately I love music, how my tastes have evolved over the years and how the soundtrack for my life gets synced and updated through my relationships, the deepest of which always center on music.

Some key influences:

My parents. Mom and Dad had a massive LP collection. This is where the parameters got established, in terms of how eclectic you could be. It was heavily weighted toward folk and singer-songwriters. Lots of Leonard Cohen. The Chieftains. Gordon Lightfoot. Ryan's Fancy, with whom my Dad did some work. Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan. But there was also Beethoven and Rod Stewart and Waylon Jennings. Probably my most beloved record of theirs was Jesus Christ Superstar, which was a bigger (and healthier) influence on my theology than 12 years of Catholic schooling. Album art was also hugely influential. I partially credit my sexual awakening to a cover photo of a stripper in a g-string and pasties on a Tom Waites album. Looking beyond recorded music, it should be noted that I grew up in a home and a culture where it was not unusual to have live music sessions in the kitchen. It was also the era of the folk festival and I was a veteran of them by the time I was thirteen.

Bob. I doubt Bob reads this blog. But if he did, and I left his name off the list, he would be sure to call me on it. Bob and I knew each other in diapers, and in the summer of 1981, he introduced me to the Beatles. Just in the nick of time, since I had just that week bought my very first record with my very own money and it came from K-tel. Someone saved my life that night. I became a total Beatlemaniac twenty years after the fact, and was largely insulated from the new wave.

Mtv. (Or the Canadian version thereof: MuchMusic/MusiquePlus.) I was fifteen years old the summer of Live Aid. No further explanation should be necessary.

Kirk. I know Kirk doesn't read this blog. As much as I plead with him to get with the industrial revolution every year during our annual Christmas Eve phone call. It is a travesty that a master of the mixtape does not imix. Kirk and I dated off and on for several years, and he would send me mix tapes from college that would make me cry and think very hard for a whole day or two about breaking up with whatever full-time drug-dealing, part-time ski-instructing boyfriend I was living with that year. Kirk was discerning about music, if not girls. Introduced me to Frank Zappa. Turned me onto Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty. Made me listen to Ween. When I called him up and told him I was running off with a guy I'd met on the Liz Phair BBS, he thought about it carefully, and then said, "Well, at least it wasn't PJ Harvey. You'll probably be okay." I took it as his blessing.

Erika, my favorite cousin. Erika has a blog. Irrationally, she doesn't want to expose her personal life to total strangers en masse. But if you ask her nicely and give her a copy of your drivers' license, she will let you read it. Erika is inadvertently responsible for the lives of my three children because she is the one who handed me a tape of Exile in Guyville one day in her car and said, "Here, try this." Twelve months later I was separated from my very nice life and living in a one room flat in the middle of Mexico with this guy. Remember when Paul Simon sang, "Someone could walk into this room and say your life was on fire"? Liz Phair did that for me. Thanks, Liz. I would think you would at least drop by and babysit once in a while.

Patrick. Well, obviously, a marriage founded on Liz Phair is going to be interesting, musically and otherwise. Our entire courtship is preserved in email and mixed tapes. Patrick introduced me to the Carter family and John Prine and the Rolling Stones. We discovered alt-country together, and for years, it was all SonVolt, all the time. Then I decided Jeff Tweedy was cuter and peppier than Jeff Farrar and there was a bit of a schism. But we can always agree on Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams.

Me. Recently, I've been making a dedicated effort to tune into contemporary music. I programmed the DVR to record the top 20 video hits. I use the browse feature on itunes. I am trying to keep my tastes from atrophying. I don't think top-forty pop music is any worse/better than it was when I was in the target market. The Blackeyed Peas amuse me. (Blackeyed Peas in the studio: "I know! Let's write a song about your ASS!" Blackeyed Peas back in the studio next year: "I know! Let's write ANOTHER song about your ass!") The first time I saw Modest Mouse on Saturday Night Live, I looked at Patrick and said, what kind of funky art-school shit was THAT?? and ran to itunes to download more. I have been known to shake my thang to Kellis. I think Keane's "Is it any Wonder" is the most uplifting, sweeping, infectious pop song I have heard in years. I believe U2 is the world's second greatest band (after the Beatles) and Bono and the Edge's recent interview with Dave Stewart's Off the Record is an amazing window into the minds of two artists at the top of their game as well as a testament to the power of a creative enterprise to draw others into its service.

Somebody's always saying how rock is dead. It may be, or near to it. But good music isn't, not as long as your mind is open.

So what's on your playlist?

C'm'on, surprise me.

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Why I May be Sleeping on the Couch

Him: You're watching Lord of the Rings on tv?

Me: Yeah!

Him: Well, why don't we just put in the dvd? You've never seen the extended cut.

Me: Actually, I'm morally opposed to extended cuts.

Him: (dead silence)

Him: You're what?

Me: I think it's cheating. You don't get to go back and re-write your book. You don't get to go back and re-paint your painting. You shouldn't get to go back and re-cut your movie.

Him: Sputter! Sputter! Gack! (leaves, comes back with the liner notes from the dvd, reads me the notes on the extended cut)

Me: See, that's just wrong. You work within the constraints of the medium. The time limitations, the asshole studio execs, the distribution bullshit, those are all constraints of the medium, for better or for worse. You make your statement within that framework, and you let it stand. Look, even given those constraints, Jackson made a masterpiece. When it came out on the big screen, it was no longer his to tinker with. It belongs to the world.

Him: Go away and never speak to me again.

Me: But we're having this exciting argument about Art. Doesn't that turn you on?

Him: Not when you are so wrong.

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Et tu, iTunes?

Update! Glad Tidings! Commenters to this post will be entered in a random drawing for three (legally licensed) cds of my Merry Christmas i-mix. Leave me a way to contact you to get your snail mail. Drawing will happen December 5. Bonus: enter the name and number of your nearest relative in the publishing industry, and I will send them a free book proposal! Hardly used!

So, what was going to be an "interlude" post (see below) has taken four hours of my evening, during which time my children have had to endure hunger and verbal abuse, because iTunes cannot publish my Christmas i-mix intact and I just CANNOT LET IT GO.

Fear not, my little Whos. Christmas will come, just the same. Here is the playlist.

Christmastime Is Here (Vocal) by Vince Guaraldi Trio

Linus' soliloquy gets me every single time.

Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer by Raffi

This one's for my boys. Just telling how it was that foggy Christmas night. I saw Raffi perform when I was a kid. They must just keep switching out Armenians to play him. There's probably a national lottery.

You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch by Thurl Ravenscroft

Because my soul is also sometimes an appalling dump heap mangled up in tangled up knots.

Must be Santa (Polka) by Brave Combo

Who doesn't love some polka at Christmas? This Austin band used to come through town a lot. They do a rollicking version of the Hokey Pokey too. I had a big crush on the lead singer.

Happy Holiday by Bing Crosby

Bing, polka, Armenian children's entertainers, it all spells Christmas.

Baby it's Cold Outside by Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong

Bringing sexy back.

Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt

Because I agree with Eartha that a gal deserves credit for all the fellas that she hasn't kissed.

*Last Christmas by Wham!

You knew there would be Wham! Go ahead and laugh. Next year, I'll give this to someone special.

Silver Bells by Dean Martin

For this, I like to brandish a martini glass and sing the echo parts. Ring-a-ling. (Ring-a-ling).

Blue Christmas by Elvis

Last year, I gave this mix to a co-worker who came back to me with a grim look a few days later, telling me how all he ever wants for Christmas is to get through the season without being subjected to this very song. Oops. Guess I better put a warning on the shrink wrap.

Merry Christmas from the Family by Montgomery Gentry

Patrick prefers the original by Robert Earl Keen, but I think these guys do a bang-up job. Possibly the funniest, truest Christmas song ever written.

Christmas Time's a Comin' by Del McCoury

Bluegrass Christmas. Banjos make a joyful noise. When they're not duelling, that is.

Christmas in Prison by John Prine

"It was Christmas in the big house, and the food was real good. We had turkey and pistols carved out of wood." Hands down, the most touching song about Christmas in prison, ever.

The Rebel Jesus by Jackson Browne with the Chieftains

"From a pagan and a heathen, on the side of the Rebel Jesus." Off my favorite Christmas album, Bells of Dublin.

Away in a Manger by Dwight Yoakam

I will save my Dwight obsession for another post. Hear this once, and you will never be able to sing "the cattle were lowing" without the sweet country harmony line. I have impure thoughts about Dwight even when he is singing about baby Jesus.

Little Drummer Boy by DeSol

I wanted this song for the kids and had a hard time finding a relatively straight-up rendition of it. This one has actual drumming, which is a nice touch. Can you believe they still air the stop-motion television special? I generally start crying by the end of the second verse.

Mary Had a Baby by Bruce Cockburn

"People keep a-comin' an' the train done gone." I don't know what this means, but if Bruce sings it, I'm sure there's an important message in it. Nice calypso vibe.

*God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings by Barenaked Ladies
I can never remember who the beautiful lady guest singer is. But when she sings Star of Wonder, all the hairs on my body stand up.

O Holy Night by Rickie Lee Jones

Fall on your knees when you hear this. Rickie sings like she knows a thing or two about the weary world. Also from Bells of Dublin.

All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey

Forty-two weeks of the year, I cannot stomach Mariah Carey. But I fell in love with this song when I saw the film Love Actually. I sing it loudly in my mini-van, attracting stares from strangers at stoplights. I defy you to drive around town while listening to this song and not start bouncing in your seat.

(* denotes the tracks that iTunes drops from the mix when I publish it on the music store. Do you suppose they are judging me?)

There you have it. Who needs iTunes anyway? Or an iPod? When you could just have me describe the music for you, in writing. I could be onto something big.

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Seasonal Filler

For reasons that have to do with my or some programmers' tiny walnut brain, iTunes drops two songs off my mix whenever I try to publish it. See the official playlist for comparison.

---

This is not today's post. Unless I get too tired to post later tonight. In which case, you should be damn well satisfied with it. What more do you want from me anyway? Haven't I given enough?

Sorry....two more days of NaBloPoMo to go. And then I am off to a retreat centre in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to recover for four days. Seriously. They will probably have to strap me into my bed at night to keep me from hurting myself trying to get to a computer: "Must post! Must post!"

What this is, is my "Merry Christmas from the Family" i-mix. It gets tweaked a little every year. Back in my salad days, I was the Queen of the Mixed Tape and later, the Mixed CD. I am exceedingly proud of this compliation. (Yeah, it's got Montgomery Gentry and Mariah Carey on it. No, I don't like them and you don't have to either them to dig these songs. It's a concept album. Just trust me.) There is something in it for everyone and it is G-rated, unlike my "Kick His Cheating Ass Out 'Cause I'm Here for You Girlfriend" i-mix, which is also some of my best work, but represents only the opinions of the i-mixer and not those of other members of my family. This mix, by contrast, reflects our combined musical tastes. If you download it, my only kickback will be a huge dose of the warm fuzzies. If you download it and like it, you could send me some wassail.

(It is a two page playlist, and some of my favorite tracks are on the second page. Also, feel free to share your own favorite Christmas songs: this, like me, is a work in progress.)

Fa la la.

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The List is Life

Okay, I have been working furiously to deliver the promised commentary on the list from VH1 series Greatest 100 Songs of the Eighties, because we may have some new visitors coming through later this week, and I'll not be wanting any of this kind of fluff and drivel left lying about (you regulars, try and straighten up a bit, will you?). More I cannot say, but Canadians, be watching your national newspaper, particularly around Thursday.
(left: yours truly, 1985)

A couple of general complaints to begin with. First off, how can you have any kind of list from the eighties that does not include Bryan Adams somewhere on it? That's the sort of snub from America that Canadians have had just about enough of, and we're going to send you a sternly worded letter about it someday if you keep pushing it.

Second, word to VH1: don't have historical context lines like, "that song changed everything" delivered by people who were obviously not born until after 1980 and whose agents or relatives obviously pulled strings to get them on the show. That, on top of the Bryan Adams shutout, totally undermines the list's authority.

Flawed as it may be, however, the list is a departure point. And more importantly, in a month of daily posting, it is a writing prompt. Back to the eighties.

Conspicuously Absent From the List

Mike Reno & Ann Wilson/Almost Paradise
Chicago/anything by Chicago
Air Supply/anything by Air Supply
Kenny Loggins/anything by Kenny Loggins
Bryan Adams/anything by Bryan Adams (wtf??)
Journey/Oh Cherie
Jack Wagner/All I Need

Hold me now. It’s hard for me to tell you I’m sorry. Yeah, you deny him now, but Peter Cetera got you to third base.

Am I the Only One to Remember these as huge hits?

Musical Youth/Pass the Dutchie
Eddy Grant/Electric Avenue

Where in the Caribbean are they now? How does it feel when you got no food?

Do I detect an anti-Brit bias as well? What about…

Red, Red Wine/UB40
Everytime you Go Away/Paul Young
Everyday I Write the Book/Elvis Costello
Feed the World/Band-Aid

Mem’ries won’t go. No, mem’ries won’t go. Did we ever get some snow to Africa in time for Christmas, by the way?

The list is life. Working off the list:

Songs I would cover if I had a punk chick band:

2. Def Leppard / "Pour Some Sugar On Me"
55. A Flock of Seagulls / "I Ran (So Far Away)"
73. Nena / "99 Luftbaloons"
94. The Rolling Stones / "Start Me Up"

Songs I would cover as a solo acoustic act:

20. Rick Springfield / "Jessie's Girl
46. The Police / "Every Breath You Take"
74. George Michael / "Faith"

Songs I have covered as a solo drunken karaoke act:

8. Madonna / "Like a Virgin"

Songs that will still make me leap up and sing while emoting to my partner:

10. AC/DC / "You Shook Me All Night Long"
31. Queen and David Bowie / "Under Pressure"

Songs that will make me leap up and pogo:

97. The Romantics / "What I Like About You"
22. The Cure / "Just Like Heaven"

Songs that will make me hump air:

54. Salt-N-Pepa / "Push It"

Songs that will make me wave my hand in the air, like I don’t care:

81. Cameo / "Word Up!"

Songs I would strip to in a fantasy world:

83. Prince / "Kiss"

Songs that put the boom-boom into your heart:

28. Wham! / "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"

Girls on this list who do it for me:

50. Eurythmics / "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)"
78. Blondie / "Call Me"
89. The Pretenders / "Brass in Pocket"
70. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts/ "I Love Rock N' Roll"

Boys on this list who do it for me:

Um. None, actually.

Songs sung by men whose hairstyles I emulated:

3. Duran Duran / "Hungry Like the Wolf"

Songs I wouldn’t discover until after the eighties:

42. The Clash / "London Calling"
63. Devo / "Whip It"
66. Depeche Mode / "Just Can't Get Enough"

Songs by bands that I will never be ashamed of:

13. U2 / "With Or Without You"
38. U2 / "Pride (In the Name of Love)"

Songs I would be ashamed to tell you I know all the words to:

67. REO Speedwagon / "Keep On Loving You"

It's the only thing I want to do. I don't want to sleep. I just want to keep on...

But I have to get back to the future. You guys take it from here.

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Don't You Want Me, Baby?

I was working as a waitress. In a cocktail bar.

Okay, I was fifteen and I couldn't get into a cocktail bar. In another couple of years, I'd be "dating" a bartender and spending most of my senior year in one. But here it is the spring of 1985, I am in grade ten, and my totally awesome boyfriend and I have matching hair and upright shirt collars. The trouble with my bitchin' upright collar is that the inch-deep layer of cover girl foundation tends to rub off on it. Fortunately, my strand of pearls is manufactured of unabsorbent plastic. I think they add just the right touch of class to my shaker knit sweater and harem pants. Virginal, yet material.

I have just finished supper and am about to walk down the main drag to loiter outside the brand spanking new coffee and donut shop and smoke cigarettes with twenty or thirty of my peers. From there we will perhaps adjourn to a dance at the protestant high school, where adult chaperones cast a blind eye to sin, and where we will dance in parallel rows, facing each other, shuffling from one foot to the next in time with the beat. Su-su-su-dio. For the last dance, couples will lock arms around each others necks and rock in place to Jack Wagner crooning that all he needs is a little more time. To be sure. What he feels. Isn't only his mind. Jack Wagner has hair just like me and my boyfriend. He came to the mall last summer. That's when I was hanging out around with the break dancing group, Le Crue. With the two little dots over the U. They were so wicked, with the fingerless gloves and all, and one of them could really moonwalk. They were all white guys, of course, except two guys who were half asian. There is a black guy at school, though. He's Irish.

In between dancing, we loiter outside the gymnasium, smoking. The boys are drinking Molsons in the parking lot, which is mostly empty, as few of us have cars. The girls are drinking sparkling rose wine from raffia-wrapped bottles and later, when we vomit, it is pale pink, like Love's Baby Soft.

>>

Patrick and I watched back to back episodes of VH1's Greatest 100 Songs of the Eighties last night. I want to actually parse the list later, but thought I'd establish my cred first.

I was there. Totally.


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Hello? Is this thing on?

My husband played guitar in an Irish folk/country/punk band for the first several years we were married. If your town has a drinking establishment that uses Olde or Ye or Slainte anywhere on its menu, or brass fixtures and red telephone boxes in its decor, then I'm sure your town has a version of this band. They played Thin Lizzie and Waterboys and Ramones covers, along with electrified versions of Danny Boy and the Rocky Road to Dublin, and a sprinkling of bluegrass for local color. They were huge on St. Patrick's Day, and had a pretty good run in the college bars. One time, whilst being introduced to a couple at a party, the wife thought they might have attended a gig once. The husband was having a hard time digging it up. "Remember, honey? We were dancing and then you threw up."

"Yes!" Patrick and I exclaimed in unison. That was the band.

When Patrick started out with them, they were mostly Irishmen, and there's no denying they did tend to run to stereotype as far as the drink goes. (It's funny, when I was in Ireland--and I spent nearly all my time there in bars-- I never saw anyone getting really drunk. It was all quite civilized and genteel. Perhaps they export all the troublemakers.) You could say the band had a tendency to get ahead of the crowd.

The frontsman and bass player was a charming fellow from the North whose accent was utterly unintelligible. This was a blessing because once he'd had a few, he'd start cursing at the audience. "Dance, you bastards! Motherfuckers dance!" Since he was smiling when he said it, and since it sounded to them like, "Brawbrawbraw!", the audience would simply smile and give him a thumbs up sign, if they paid attention at all.

One night some of us wives tagged along to a gig in Memphis. The place was a bit of a dive and it was a slow night. The lads were drinking to make up for the folks who couldn't be there, I guess. Once they took the stage, things went rapidly off the rails. I forget the number they were trying to play, but it got louder and loopier and more discordant by the second. The bass player was screaming something, while the rest of them were sweating and looking back and forth at each other in confusion. It was a train wreck. Somehow they brought the song to a screeching halt.

"What the fuck was that?," shouted the bass player, throwing off his guitar strap.

"You kept saying play faster, play faster," someone charged accusingly.

"I was saying, 'YOU BASTARDS, YOU BASTARDS!"

What recently reminded me of this occasion was a wonderful article in the New Yorker last month about stage fright, where it was revealed that Laurence Olivier used to manage his by pacing back and forth behind the curtain prior to a performance, muttering, "You bastards," at the audience. The article went on to delve into the peculiar love-hate bond between a performer and his public, rife as it is with need, narcissism, power struggles, manipulation, idolatry and all the other hallmarks of a totally codependent relationship. For the person in the spotlight, it's the old "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" paradox.

Recently I have found myself pacing back and forth in front of my site meter (the doohickey at the bottom of the page that tells how many hits a day this page gets), muttering similar curses. I tell myself its not about the numbers. This blog was never intended to be anything other than a place where I could write purely to please myself; check my expectations at the door. But then I got to looking around the blogosphere, and I notice what kind of traffic other blogs are getting, what kind of feedback, what loyal readership. Whole social clubs have been founded on the comments pages of other blogs. Advertising agencies are falling over themselves to get space on them. I don't think this in itself would bother me, but there's a little petulant part of me that says, yeah but dammit, I write better than most of them. Where is my loyal fanbase? Where are my bouquets of roses?

It occurs to me, perhaps:

1) I actually suck and don't know from good writing.

or

2) People who read blogs suck and don't know from good writing.

But neither of these theories take me to my happy place, so I might go with:

3) The world is not ready for the magnitude of my gifts.

which is a variation of the time-honored, "When I die, then they'll feel bad."

Bastards.

I know, I am breaking the rule of never let them see you sweat. The fact is, I'm up here in the spotlight squinting into the dark theatre. I know a lot of the seats are empty, but I know some of you are out there. I'd love to hear more often, from more of you. Send me a note backstage sometime, introduce yourself. Toss me a rose, throw a tomato. Clear your throat once in a while.

Or just email me a smiley and a thumbs up, because, honestly, you can't understand a word I am saying.

Slainte.

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G'day, Steve.

It was ungodly early when I saw the news yesterday morning that Steve Irwin, a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter, had been killed while snorkelling off the coast of Australia.

My first thought was, how very sad for his wife and children. My second thought was, my seven year-old son will be heartbroken. My third thought was, I will never, ever go swimming in the waters of northwestern Australia. If the Bill Bryson book I am reading, In a Sunburned Country, weren't enough to warn me off already, now I am a true believer.

A pot of coffee later, I thought of my friend Georgia and rang her up.

"Well, I just felt I had to reach out to an Australian," I said when she picked up. "And you're it, mate."

"You're the fifth person to call me this morning," she said, sounding baffled and amused. I assume she is still in the denial stage of grieving (her next door neighbor, however, is apparently quite distraught).

Come right down to it, Jeff Corwin is much more my cup of tea when it comes to guys with camera crews running around in the bush molesting wildlife. Although the genre as a whole has come a long way since my childhood, when all we had was the sadistic Marlon Perkins sending poor Jim into the lion's den week after week on Wild Kingdom. Nonetheless, I admired Irwin's effort to make us see beauty and purpose in creatures we have been taught to revile, principally crocodilians and snakes.

My sympathies have long tended to lean with the snakes. Maybe it's because we don't have any reptiles in Newfoundland on which to project primal fear, or maybe it's because deep down I've always known, had it been me in the garden of Eden, I would also have gone for the fruit (see "Sublime", below). I think they are beautiful, and I love it when one crosses my path (as long as I see them first). We have had several good-size king snakes around the yard, and last weekend there was a lovely brown water snake that would greet me at the water's edge when I'd go down to the lake at the conference center.

My husband, like most southern men, is of the "Whack first, ask questions later" school of zoology. The post-mortem report is invariably, "copperhead." The slender brown grass snakes that turn up in the garden from time to time, no more than a handspan long, are always "baby copperheads" which are supposedly "even more poisonous." This elicits much eye-rolling from me, and disavowals of assistance from him come the day I am finally bitten and lie twitching in the driveway. When I told him that the Crocodile Hunter had been killed, I thought I detected just a glint of biblical vindication in his expression (although, bizarrely, it turned out to be a stingray that dispatched him--the terrestial parallell would be a bull rider being gored by a goat).

My sons took the news in stride, as it turned out. Our resident mystic, my middle son, said after a moment's pause, "Now he's awake."

When it comes to knowledge of life, good and evil, my money's on the wisdom of snakes and babes, hands down, every time.

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Brokeback, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Okay, it's true, I was predisposed to love this movie. I am all about repressed, unrequited, doomed love. I have seen Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet countless times since I was eight years old. I am still haunted by the English Patient. Just about my favorite five seconds in all of cinema is the scene in the corridor in The Remains of the Day, when you can see Anthony Hopkins is in a life or death struggle to keep from reaching out and touching Emma Thompson on the cheek, but then he gets a hold of himself and doesn't, and never comes even close again for the rest of his miserable life. I played it for my husband the other night, but after rewinding it several times for him, it was still lost on him.

I have two favorite genres in film: the hero's journey, which could be summed up as "become what you are". Think Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. Or Joe vs. the Volcano. The other includes movies wound so tight with emotional tension they might crack. Where the dialogue is all subtle and terse, and preferably spoken in the Queen's english. Where for a minute something almost happens, but then it doesn't. (Patrick would add, "and then it rains frogs.")

Apart from lacking British accents, Brokeback Mountain is my perfect storm. I watched the trailer twenty times waiting for it to get here. I saw it the very first weekend when it finally did. I just downloaded the soundtrack from Itunes. I am seriously thinking about going to see it at a different theatre tomorrow afternoon. I am obsessed. That ole Brokeback got me good.

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