Songs of My Misspent Youth: I'll Take New York

I listen to the radio in bed. Hot, eh? Wait, I should tell you in this much of story I'm underage. 15, to be exact. One night, I happened upon a song the likes of which I'd never heard before. And yes, Jersey Girl was technically the first Tom Waits song I heard but some dude named Bruce was singing it and the videos for In The Neighborhood and Downtown Train also came before this precise moment I'm writing about, but the greatness did not set into my young mind until I'll Take New York by Tom Waits was on WFUV, way way down the dial. Now, by "night," I mean around three in the morning. It's called chronic insomnia for a reason. Creaking around looking for a pen to scrawl "TOM WAITE" did not wake my family, and that was not a misspent moment at all, come to think of it.

Neither was the afternoon in April of '90 when I put Frank's Wild Years on for my Poppy to hear:



The time I brought my Tom Waits tapes with me on the trip to California and then fell asleep two seconds into Rain Dogs because I was exhausted, that could be the misspent bit. Or all the time I wasted not being me, until I heard Tom Waits and realized holy moly it's cool to not be a cookie cutter run-of-the-mill person, that time was wasted. Different is good, kids. Different rules.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: I'll Take New York

Have I Ever Mentioned I Love Mothballs

A while back I mentioned that I've been sending entries into 100 Word Stories for the weekly challenge where everyone gets a theme and writes 100 words about it. (Hullo peoples visiting from over there!) This week I was finally able to log back into BlogRolling so I added the link along the left sidebar so you can go listen to Laurence Simon's neat stories after you're done reading my stuff. I HAVE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE PLANNED.

I thought I'd post some of my past entries, being I ain't got nothin' new for all y'all and I'm doing ScriptFrenzy this month so I think you'll enjoy these stories better than NOTHING.

The first challenge I took part in was #149 and the theme was Mothballs. This is what wrote. Not my usual fare, I realize, and entirely fictional (I'm allergic to apples, after all).

The apple falls from my hand as the familiar smell brings it all back to me, Stewie Norton fumbling with my blouse in the dark, the pawing of his grandmother's cat at the door.

Nearly given away by the meows of a tabby.

I pick my fruit up off the floor of aisle seven with one last glance at the box of mothballs next to the Yahrtzeit candles under the mop display and turn away from my dark, dirty past.

Things were so much simpler then, no courtship, just a quickie in the closet.

Young love behind old men's suits.

You can hear the story read, along with nine great tales of mothballs here.

Have I Ever Mentioned I Love Mothballs

Commercials That Make My Mind Weep.

I apologize for my recent mopey posts, but real life tends to suck some of the time. I would also prefer it not to. This month, however, I decided to go with a theme to amuse you with, and that theme is why the hell are some commercials so mind-numbingly stupid?

I thought I'd start with Cialis.

Yeah, I went there. Mind you, I don't care one way or the other about commercials, but the TV's on a lot, and people tend to ask me what the hell is up with certain ad campaigns, like my secret knowledge of Internet clues me into why people are wasting time taking baths on a mountain top when they could be doing what that pill they're advertising is said to help them do.

For those of you who haven't witnessed the ads, you could look them up on YouTube, but then again, maybe you don't want to. The gist of every one of the ads is a couple is getting overly friendly with each other and then the neighbors show up. After a list of ways the pill can kill you and everyone in the vicinity of your home, the couple have been transformed into Cylon hybrids are in tubs, separate tubs, watching the sunset. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY, AND NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE.

There are theories, though. I Googled "Cialis bathtub" and came up with endless speculation on WHAT...THE...HELL.

It's times like that, when I'm faced with a problem that has no solution, that I start editing--only in my mind, officer--alternate realities where Norman Bate pays a visit to the two utter twits bathing in the frikkin' woods. Or Harvey Keitel's character from Point Of No Return, even, with the jug of acid. Yeah, that's right, I don't care if you enjoy getting together with your men friends in a shack out in the middle of nowhere singing Elvis filks about rival remedies to having to live with what you live with, and I don't care if you made a college student that can't do their own laundry and therefore has to interrupt your sexy times, just don't make me have to try to explain what the hell you're doing on the beach in a bathtub. The ocean is two feet away!

While near the ocean, toss in the Enzyte ads with that sick grinning bastard and those giggling women who all seem to have bought the same vibrator. Then throw in a live grenade. The god of testosterone demands it.

Commercials That Make My Mind Weep.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Running In The Family

The 1987 trifecta of my radio-listening habits closes with Running In The Family by Level 42. A song I first heard on Rock Over London, but was thrilled to hear playing on New York radio when Scott Muni's Things From England debuted it...the day my aunt went into the hospital for a ruptured aneurysm. I was 14, I was self-absorbed, much better to focus on music that what may or may not be. A week later I very happily told my aunt I'd picked up the album in Crazy Eddie's on the way up to the hospital. At the time she was giving recitals of West Side Story to the nurses but later on in the year did we ever have fun listening to this album.

That's the good memory this song brings to mind.

The other ones, the confusing memories, those are just intertwined with the good ones until they become not quite so bad as I thought they were. I could have picked any song off this album and arrived at the same destination, I lived teen angst and runaway stories through music because I was too chicken to actually strike out my own path myself. So I'd listen to Level 42 while re-organizing my closet and thinking of all the things I'd love to do if only I didn't have that headache, or if only whatever was in my eyes wasn't annoying me, or if I was thinner, or if I had an entirely different genetic structure. But as it turns out, and that 14-year-old I was would not be able to cope with this, I am exactly what I was then. I haven't changed a single person's life for the better, my closet is disorganized, and by the self-imposed standards I drove myself insane with back then I'm a complete and utter failure, but I'm much happier now. It's so bizarre.

YouTube has embedding for this video disabled, and...some of you who made fun of my love for Level 42 back then are probably thrilled about that. :P

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Running In The Family

One Year.

When I was 17, I got it into my head to call up my Aunt Bubbles from 3000 miles away, just to hear her voice. I got the area code wrong, and ended up having an awkward moment with a woman who spoke only Spanish. My Aunt Bubbles loved butterflies. When I see them, I tell them to say hi. Butterflies can go where phones don't, I've found.

♥

One Year.