Songs of My Misspent Youth: I Don't Care Anymore

My my own admission, I'm a moody bastard. Much of the '80s, for instance, was taken up with me being angsty and wishing I had more black clothing. On the one hand it was wonderful when I finally got a black jacket exactly like my grandfather's, but then I was into the Phil Collins music, and he's all No Jacket Required, and that's not at all why I pulled out the Phil Collins this week. No.

Phil Collins turned 58 yesterday. He was the age I am now when I really started paying attention to his music. This freaks me out on many levels, but mostly the level called, "Holy crap 1984 was 25 years ago," which keeps occuring no matter what music is playing.

Like the Vangelis from a few weeks back, I've been known to play a few Genesis songs on my synth but it's those drums, man...those drums. Now, I could have gone with the obvious In The Air Tonight, which is great and all, or I could have gone silly and channeled American Psycho with Sussudio, but because I'm writing this in advance very late at night, I thought I'd go with one that saved my life.

I realize I seem to say a lot of stuff saved my life, but when a kid has no interest in drinking, drugs, religion, food, jail time, other people, sports, or going for really long walks, they turn to the only thing left: Music. That and Monty Python, but I digress. Once in 1993 I was in a particularly low mood when the Phil Collins song I Don't Care Anymore came on, and it turned a great many things around. I had a good friend who was a drummer, and he loved to play anything by Phil Collins, and when I hear this, I hear him telling me not to waste my time devising ways to do anything but live.

...Too heavy?

Okay, here's Behind The Lines from the No Jacket Tour, and I won't go into how this song also got me through stuff, because it's a peppy cheery song and it's the weekend and the sun is shining and angsty kids today have their own songs to get them through things so they don't need mine. There are few Phil Collins songs that I don't attach to some event in my life, so we could be here all day if I don't stop now. Happy birthday Phil Collins, and thanks from the bottom of a moody little girl's heart.

Tags: January 2009, songs of my misspent youth, video, music

Songs of My Misspent Youth: I Don't Care Anymore

True Insanity Takes Time

I can't put a lot of time into these vlog things, but Vlog the Vivth was started before the fourth one, was orignally meant to be the second one, and has all sorts of characters in it I haven't seen since the '90s. Does it mean I cleared more than four boxes out of my basement? HELL NO! But there's an outtake involving The Puppy that is possibly the greatest commentary on my mental state ever. Why am I talking to my hand? Why was I yelling at the spare toilet paper? Who knows?! Not me!

(Anyone wanting to hear the wicked Boushh impression I can do when my hernia is acting up or see the ghost of Gumby past--these two minutes are all for you, baby. ;) )

True Insanity Takes Time

You haven't lived until you're smelling of three strangers' urine.

It just seems my luck that I wait forty years for a blind date, and my utterly clueless coworkers set me up with a woman so enamored of one Richard Bruce Cheney that she had reconstructive surgery to fashion herself into a 90-pound version of her hero. Oddly, this did not instantly dawn on me when she showed up at my cardboard excuse for a door with a hunting rifle slung over her shoulder. She doesn't know the area, I thought. She'll relax once I show her my magic trick with the deviled eggs.

Man, was I wrong.

My idea of going to see Koyaanisqatsi before eating was the first mistake, as she swore loudly all through the bit with the Soviet tanks and wound up shooting me in the leg when I tried to get friendly. After we were kicked out I had to resort to riding around in her lap being I couldn't drive anymore.

Just my luck it was free Long Island Iced Tea night at the Jiffy Lube just before the highway turnoff. The idea was that anyone keeping their car--and somehow the entire world--in tune deserved to get 100% shit-faced as a reward. Oh, there had to be ten cars with drivers whose eyes were as glazed as the simonized metal monsters that rolled over us. I lost count after seven, anyway.

Strangely enough, my companion for the evening didn't say a single off-color word as this was happening. At first I thought she was dead, and tried to reason how I would explain this to my husband, but then a kindly vagrant came over and stood the wheelchair up before making off with it, dislodging the gravel from her throat and ensuring she would live to yodel again. Being we were quite squashed into the gel-and-faux-fleece seat cushion, we were treated to an evening of bum festivities, such as seeing who could piss the furthest after chugging bourbon banana smoothies, and then came a midnight recital of drunken poetry.

"Ah rung up the fat barney with toadlicker and marbles corn tingled," I think one toothless gent was insisting. I nodded along best I could with his tale, hoping that as long as I seemed transfixed my date wouldn't get too frisky. The third SUV to go over her head had dislodged the recent nose job she'd had and I wouldn't even know what I was snogging if I took the chance. As it was the man who stole the wheelchair was having his way with it by a flaming trashcan and I had no intention of sitting in it ever again. So my first blind date ended with us all unwittingly eating a poisoned wild bird from behind the airport. It tasted just like bologna.

You haven't lived until you're smelling of three strangers' urine.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Tainted Love

Last week Wiggy mentioned Tainted Love, one of the greatest songs ever and it's been back in my head ever since--like it's ever out of my head.

It was one of those songs I'd eh...perform...as a child, to start with. Oh, I had a whole video worked out in my head, especially for the extended single that included Where Did Our Love Go? and the idea of my godawful singing is a way less harmless memory than the Ice Road Trucker-like driving around in GTA trying to keep a stolen tanker from rolling down a mountain as the Gloria Jones version of the song played. The Marilyn Manson remake made me sad and the times kids would go nuts over S.O.S. by Rihanna without knowing anything about Soft Cell made me feel old.

And then there was the time I saw the original Soft Cell video for the first time....

For me, it added a whole new dimension of fun. Or something. Like the time I fell asleep watching I, Claudius after reading the encyclopedia entry about Cricket rules and woke up with a jelly apple stuck in my hair. There was a second video that I guess was meant to be less disturbing to some viewers, but it's like Marc Almond's head is in the fridge of a guy who gets molested by outer space and it reminds me of that shaving gel commercial from around the same time. Has anyone ever been abducted by shaving gel in reality? Really?

I love me some Soft Cell, though, and even bought Marc Almond's solo album with Tears Run Rings on it after it became another WLIR Shreeek of the Week. It bummed me out to read on one of my late-night Wikipedia expeditions that because Tainted Love was a remake, and the B-side was also a remake, they hardly made any money off the greatest freakin' song of the '80s.

Tags: January 2009, music, video, Songs of My Misspent Youth

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Tainted Love

Vlog #4, Where Snow=Endless Fun

I love snow. It's one of the few things I refuse to give up to age. So every chance I get I go out in it. If there are grown-ups around I make like I'm shoveling, and that has the added benefit of points with the neighbors.

I have no voice to make a compelling vlog #4 on my own, so The Puppy takes over for a few minutes giving a dog-like up yours to her hereditary knee condition, which was repaired *two* years ago already. Time flies, eh?

(There's a hint of all I would have talked about anyway at the very end. You've been warned, LOL!)

Vlog #4, Where Snow=Endless Fun

Big News Day!

U2 released their new single, Get On Your Boots today! Yeah, it's a neat little dance tune about the future needing a big kiss and love and community and not blowing someone else's stuff up. I've heard it about three times today and I'm crazy about it.

U2 was at this concert over the weekend, and they got to stand near Shakira and meet a guy who has to clean up an insane amount of messes.



Great song...really.

...

Oh, who the hell am I kidding?

LOOK AT THIS PRESIDENT:



After that picture was taken he told a whole story about how this country has seen way worse times and rejected as false the choice between our safety and our ideals and was like, if people just work together things will get better. Crazy idea. Just might work.

It feels good to have a President again.

Tags: January 2009, music, politics, world, U2, Barack Obama, news

Big News Day!

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Antarctica

I like new age music. I don't know if it's that I grew up in the '80s when Mannheim Steamroller was really big or all that WPAT muzac got into my brain and rewired something, but to this day every night that Echoes is on, I'm tuned in and I can tell Annbjørg Lien from Benjy Wertheimer and Andreas Vollenweider from that mad Greek genius responsible for the Blade Runner theme, Vangelis. I took piano lessons just to be able to play his music. Actually I don't know why I took piano lessons, I taught myself Chariots of Fire, but that's beside the point.

It's cold outside, so I thought I'd freeze us all a bit more with Antarctica by Vangelis. Oh sure, I've got like a slushy grey mountain of ice outside my door, but you know, it's as close as I'll ever get to a whole 'nother continent.

I'd never seen this video for it before, but if you've got a bit of the dark streak in you put those thoughts of the sled dogs going to have lunch out of your mind, everyone lives. At least until the cameras stopped rolling, then I suspect the penguins beat the bejeebers out of the men for bringing sleds through the area. Birds have been getting a bad rap this week, you know. Fly into two engines and suddenly you've got hundreds of people floating in the Hudson, mighty pissed at you. But I love birds, I'll have none of that bird hate and actually I had a moment of silence for those unlucky bastards. I suppose it wouldn't hurt seagulls to file their courses with the FAA. Hey, I don't like the idea of sled dogs freezing either, but they seems to dig it so if some seagulls want to go commit mass suicide in a televised event, who am I to judge? I like new age music.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Antarctica

A Prequel Vlog

This third Thursday turns up a THIRD vlog! Say that thirteen thimes fath and thell me you don't smell ashes!

In this installment it's cold, and I'm having a flashback to 1990, where the purpose of the basement is revealed to be not a psychopath's lair but a pool hall. Yes. I admit it, once and for all, I have a pool table. My grandfather and I went half on it in 1988 and it was the greatest thing I ever did for him (so far). Watch as I wear the pinkest velour pantsuit and only pocket one single ball after I've changed my clothes and then the camera battery dies so it seems like I really sucked at pool, but I assure you I did not, for I had great teachers. This video is loaded with men of quality.

The last 40 seconds is a flash-forward-but-still-back-a-bit where the sexy black love of my life pockets pool balls using only his space-age mind. MEN OF QUALITY, I tell you.

A Prequel Vlog

We Like The Moon!

The picture in the last post is what happens when I don't use a tripod. This is as close to what I was trying to get as I could get with little Mavis on a tripod. I have a thing about the moon, but the moon in Gemini, with the two stars like little eyes and moon like a great big glowy nose...MADE OF WIN.

We Like The Moon!

It's Just Me

The pain in my head is not real. You can't see it, after all.

Much like the Electric Slide, it must be felt to be fully appreiciated. Only I believe duplicating the feeling in another person is a felony in this state.

When I was six years old, I sat behind a chair in the living room crying on my cat's shoulder about how my head hurt. I used to throw up a lot after getting off the bus that would take me home.

When I was nine I watched High Road To China in my room while the wood stain on the cabinets dried. By the time the credits were rolling and the plane behind them was dipping and spinning, so was my head.

I remember my worst migraines more clearly than happiness. Fortunately sometimes they overlap. I traveled cross country once. It was something to see. Only the scenery whizzing by--flickering by--triggered a migraine. This spawned the hilarious tale of the white bag of powder I pulled out of my bag to deal with the nausea. It was only baking soda, and luckily it was only during Desert Storm, when people weren't encouraged to be vigilant in there alertness, so I went on to my destination and made it home again without being arrested. Unlike poor Pee Wee Herman, whose mugshot in a paper I remember fixating on instead of the sun filtered through trees outside the window of the train.

A year before I'd ridden an hour in a car and videotaped most of the ride. Watching it back later triggered a migraine. I didn't know about the baking soda yet and spent most of the next day throwing up. I heard the movie my grandfather was watching in the other room, that Keanu Reeves movie about the school production of the HMS Pinafore getting hijacked by a student's death. Permanent Record, it was called. Later that night Nan and I watched Leviathan. I thought it was hilarious that the first symptom of mutating into a deep sea creature of DOOM was vomiting and itching. I didn't recall drinking any deep sea vodka, however.

I can't drink, I've never done any drug stronger than a half dose of an over-the-counter allergy pill, and yet when I have to walk after driving somewhere on a sunny day, I stagger around like the most wasted freak on the planet.

I wouldn't say my life has been wasted. Hijacked, derailed, kicked off course, sure. But it's me. Maybe it's what I was meant to know this time around. Maybe my lesson is to accept that I'm mortal, and weak.

I keep it to myself most of the time. What I feel can't be seen. What I want is to fit in with everyone else, watch the shaky movies with the lights out, play the spinning games without having to look away, go somewhere and not end up crying in some dark souvenir shop, smell meat cooking and not need to run outside. None of that will never happen. People who notice tell me to feel better. I thank them, even though I know it will never happen.

This past weekend another one hit me. It was one of the bad ones. I knew it was coming, and ignored the signs until they would not be ignored any longer, like Glenn Close with a frikkin' carving knife, just with less nookie beforehand. It was hot, mind you, in the house anyway, and I had watched The Clone Wars the night before and the Golden Globes that night, maybe spending four hours in one sitting in front of a flickering computer screen. What did I expect to happen? It's almost like I long for the times when I sit in my dark room with my earplugs in, sometimes listening to music, sometimes listening to British comedy, never forgetting those flickers of my life when I could have been creating something lasting.

The pain lets me know I'm alive.

Tags: January 2009, health, photos, babble, confessions

It's Just Me

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Peek-A-Boo

Twenty years back, we adopted a cat. He was made of sexiness and awesome, and his eyes were the rarest golden blue marble I'd ever seen. Being it was 1989, the Siouxsie and the Banshees song Peek-A-Boo naturally leapt to mind when I saw those eyes, and that's why this song gets played this week. I'll leave out the fact that we wore matching collars a lot of the time, because that's our thing, and only the woman who took the order for the tags knows that mine said "LOVE SLAVE."

Keep in mind my love for this song happened before the movie Jeepers Creepers came along and totally took our song for the horrors, but after the night I stayed out until after ten to hear it crowned as Shreeek of the Week. How many other Shreeeks you think are going to show up here? I'm thinking quite a few. Not many others put accordions to such good use, though. Aside from the They Might Be Giants songs--NOT THE POINT. Behold, the band Microsoft Agent cannot pronounce doing a song I listen to every time it's on. <Beavis>PEEK-A-BOO!<Beavis/>

(And yeah, the original Jeepers Creepers used to get stuck in my head all the time up until 1988. Johnny Mercer is a frikkin' god of music, I know this.)

Tags: January 2009, 1988, songs of my misspent youth

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Peek-A-Boo

Eating The Scenery Is Apparently Encouraged

Behold, the second week of 2009 has brought us Vlog II, where I continue to show that despite all the years together my hand and I have no chemistry whatsoever.

See, I'm holding the camera in my hand. *ahem*

(Special bonuses if you watch this video include a kiss from a puppy, cats at play, my hernia Batman voice and the wicked wind storm we're getting. ALL IN UNDER TWO MINUTES!)

Eating The Scenery Is Apparently Encouraged

I Don't Feel Like Blogging, No Sir, No Blogging Today

It's been difficult to get back into blogging. I've been doing so much non-blog writing that I almost don't want to blog. Don't panic, I want to blog, I just don't know if what I want to blog about is going to interest anyone else.

My non-blog writing is starting to freak me out. Everyone seems to have a goth friend, they're reclusive and horrible at the beginning and then they go save the world. All of them. It's like the people in my head are trying to tell me something. They used to be vampiric karaoke ninjas who actually managed to save the world a few times, now...I don't know.

Twitter has totally spoiled me, even more than all the people who ever called me wordy put together. So I just sort of want to blog in short sentences anymore.

I'm sad about John Travlota's son and I'm angry about Gaza.

Dammit everyone stop killing each other, that really sucks and makes humanity look like a bunch of insensitive assholes.

Murder is up in New York, but down in everywhere but New York. That was...nice to know. For everybody but me.

I started an InsaneJournal, it's like a LiveJournal but not owned by a Russian company and not losing half its staff today. After what happened with JournalSpace (it's just GONE.) I started to get the whole LJ mortality thing and the whole emo teenager all my friends are there thing and yeah, I know all my friends are here on Blogger too, but a lot more of my friends are on LJ and I have a private LJ where I chart every explosive rage episode and finally figured out I just was a human and I rather like that thing. Is it wrong to come on Blogger and say I love another community because it has threaded comments and filters for how much crazy I want to show the world? Then I am spending yet another year wrong.

So my InsaneJournal is considerevising.insanejournal.com. It's like, the error Microsoft Word gives me when I'm rambling. LOL.

Duncan Sheik managed to have the first new song I heard this year, and that suits me just fine. I like that guy. I'm realizing that waiting until the last hour of the year to point out noteworthy music is pretty stupid. HEY HERE'S A GREAT SONG IT CAME OUT IN JANUARY! Yeah. Actually We're Here To Tell You came out in November, but it only hit WFUV on the first New Music Monday of the year, yesterday.

I have tragically outgrown the first everything of the year. Not to say I didn't have a moment of "W00T!" when I got outside Sunday night. The weather has been crap and if I'm saying that believe me, it's crap. I'm the one who stands out in 80mph gusts of wind to check out the Pleiades and goes out to shovel snow in a T-shirt.

There's a reason I shovel snow in T-Shirts. I wore a jacket on New Year's Eve. I shoveled. I ended up unconscious. Still people ask me, "Aren't you cold?" I DON'T KNOW. I only measure cold by what color my fingers are and heat by how fast I can get off the floor.

I'm finding it much easier to let go of things. Like the room full of boxes I *might* have to ship something with. I won't have to ship anything. Last time I shipped anything there was still another Star Wars episode to be made.

If anyone wants some of those shipping air-pillow things, I have some, I want to not have them, I will give them to you.

I'm still trying to save the world. It doesn't seem to want saving.

Tags: January 2009, babble, news

I Don't Feel Like Blogging, No Sir, No Blogging Today

Songs of my Misspent Youth: New Year's Day

This year, instead of blathering on about movies that came out ages ago, I thought I'd blather on about music that came out a few decades ago. It'll be like riding around in a car with a non-migraining me in the back! (Except it won't be entirely fictious!)

First up, I thought I'd start the year off with the obvious New Year's Day by U2.

I first heard this song, like much of the good stuff, from a local music video station called U68. Unfortunately I heard it a lot, and back then I still had opinions I would voice, even if they were utterly stupid. I was sitting in a room with two of my buddies (actual living humans, not like...in my head, because they all get my jokes) think I said something along the lines of, "I'm getting sick of U2."

I wonder if the members of U2 planned for that when they named the band. "Let's make sure no one can say they've heard our music too much without sounding like a total ass!"

I love U2 now, and not at all because I still tend to only be in rooms with two other people at a time.

Universal doesn't want me embedding their videos so if you want to see the video it's over on YouTube.

This song is about Poland, you know.

Tags: January 2009, music, video, songs of my misspent youth

Songs of my Misspent Youth: New Year's Day

My New Year's Message

I made a vlog. Then I eated it.

Happy 2009!

My New Year's Message