LaurieWrites

(Don't) Let Her Sing

The other night I was driving and recorded myself trying to sing Sheryl Crow until I got disgusted with Soak Up the Sun and stopped. I have been encouraged to share the results here. You do not have to click play. In fact, I recommend that you do not.

But if you came here to hear my Darius Rucker impersonation as it segues into a deconstruction of Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue (WOAH! YEAH! I TOTALLY FORGOT MOST OF THE WORDS EMEFFER WOAH YEAH!) you are totally in luck. 

If you didn't, all I can tell you is that I like to drive, a lot, when traffic is not a consideration, and I like to sing, when talent is not a consideration. I have no problem driving relatively long distances alone. I'm into back roads and road signs, and pretty much anywhere you put me I want to cruise around and check it out and listen to music.

I drove to North Carolina and back last weekend and left my iPod radio adapter at home. I didn't realize it until I had left and the Aquia, Virginia, Target (a ritual stopping place for me on 95 South, every single time for reasons beyond my understanding) did not turn up a clearance or even sale-priced replacement that I could justify buying to have around as a second string. So I was relegated to the radio and the weird assortment of cds I've jammed into the slot on my car door, plus a few I had in my laptop bag that I'd picked up at Best Buy (Nirvana-Nirvana, Alice In Chains-Facelift and, um, Def Leppard-Vault, hahaha) that clearly out the grunge/metal/whatever the hell roots that I have no idea I cling to so hard until I'm in front of a rack of $7.99 cds and I end up buying stuff I used to have a long time ago before someone moved and took it or I crushed it under my car seat or gave it to someone to copy and they never gave it back or any of the myriad reasons why I'm currently destitute because I spent most of my late teens and 20s buying cds multiple times.

As much money as I toss into the iTunes black hole, I still probably come out ahead, seriously.

Long story short I listened to Appetite for Destruction five times nearly in a row with some breaks to scan through country stations and Christian pop stuff that I cannot stand regardless of its message and the stations that seem to cycle through that Ke$ha character and the new Britney single and FloRiDa's hot new song, Low, which is not really new but at least it's not that "You're a Jerk" "song."

By the time I got home I had perfected my rendition of G'nR's Rocket Queen, which, if you are not aware, is one of the best songs recorded by anyone, anywhere, I swear. And I had also thoroughly revisited the therapeutic practice of singing while driving, and drew a few conclusions, some rules for singing in the car, if you will. 

The first rule of the singing in the car club is that there are no rules.

Obviously. That is why Hoobastank suddenly seems like a really great idea. And no I don't know how I know all the words either. Shut up.

And no, I did not hack off the end. I'm not editing this stuff. Why are you watching this anyway? Why don't you go read a book.

The second rule of the singing in the car club is that you do not have to know all the words. I mean, it's nice if you do, but who's policing you? It's also totally fine to make embarrassing noises that approximate the sounds of the instruments. This is the musical equivalent of mooing at cows or bleating at goats when you see them in fields by the side of the road.

What, you don't do that either? What is wrong with you?

And actually, bleating might not be far off of the mark.

I just remembered that my best friend in high school and I had a strange ritual where a song would come on that we didn't like and we'd go, "I hate this! Let's turn it up!" And we'd sing it.

I know, I'm not sure either.

The third rule of the singing in the car club is that talking back to the radio and/or the artist performing the song is not a sign of instability but rather an indication that you are fully engaging with your entertainment source. This includes habitual accusations, such as when I say "You are so not from Philly" to Elton John without fail whenever "Philadelphia Freedom" comes on, or statements of need, such as "I wish I was in New York RIGHT NOW OMG I LOVE NEW YORK" when I hear "Empire State of Mind." It may also simply signal a profound need to pull over for a Frosty, but that is perhaps my particular evaluation of this behavior.

Fourth and final rule? (I think. I'm making this up as I go along, totally) is that no genre of music or performance deemed unpleasant (i.e., "not cool") in normal circumstances is off-limits in the car. This is why I know the words to some of the worst songs ever recorded in their entirety, including "Fancy" by Reba McEntire, and why I generally don't turn off any 70s light rock song, which is one of my specialty genres.

This is also why the clip below features me impersonating Darius Rucker singing a song that I have sung approximately 237 times in my car at various times in my life, with some color commentary and Hootified trash talk. Then the clip segues into the aforementioned Kickstart My Heart ridiculosity which, you know I don't even know. It had been eight hours at that point.

Honestly, I don't even know why I'm posting this, except that the stupidity below makes me laugh so hard for some reason that I cry. And it is not funny. It is not really funny like "Pants on the ground" isn't funny to me. And yet I laugh.

This is all very self-serving.

[Oh, and editor's note: As Kerry pointed out in the comments, this clip is almost eight minutes long. I don't expect my mother to watch it. Please don't. My "work" here is done, as noted below.]

And with this post I need never post myself singing on the Internet again. Or maybe I'll do it all the time, or just do a special Run DMC post, because I can perform Raisin' Hell in its entirety, and also still get a daily dose of inspiration from Rev. Run on Twitter, true story.

This feels really awkward.

I mean really awkward.

Graphic courtesy of Aimee and I guess I should go over and tell Chris I read his blog too. :)

You, if you're there, and never comment (or even if you do, because good Lord a post like this with no comments would send me straight to the oven with my head) are supposed to comment.

I feel like I should give you an assignment, a prompt, if you will, but maybe that's just my teacher brain.

I'm also really resisting the urge to call out specific locations I see and am intrigued by in my Sitemeter and demanding that you tell me who you are but that would just be really, really weird.

So just tell me something, anything. Something nice. Your favorite song of the aughts, maybe. Or is that too cliche?  

Actually, since I'm a photographer, you should maybe share a link to your favorite picture if you've got it. In FACT, you can visit my lonely Flickr stream and comment there. That would be fantastic. I'm re-thinking this whole thing.

Eh, whatever. Tell me anything. I'm easy like that.

Here, I'll even go back and put in a stupid picture of myself so it's kind of like you're saying hello to a real person. Which you totally are, anyway, but whatever.

    

 Bonus points if you know where I am and why I look so freaking tired.

And for a lot of you these really should be easy bonus points. I'm just sayin.

Now I guess I should go comment on some other blogs on which I never comment. Stupid Twitter.

The Girl Scouts and Their Cookies Are In My Computer

Cross-posted at BlogHer. 

January started innocently enough. The eating - er, holiday - season passed and I had a vague plan to get back into last year's fairly successful effort to get myself to a more comfortable weight and back to a sanity-saving exercise routine that tanked in September. 

I don't want to talk about it. 

Anyway, just after my new year's snack of bacon with a side of black-eyed peas and greens, (that I made myself so I know just how much that ratio is true) I went back to work with my almonds and tuna, my newly re-upped membership in the water club and the spring wellness schedule bookmarked on my desktop. 

That first morning back I fired up my computer. And checked Facebook, because that is important to do before proceeding with any other important tasks. And there was my friend Karma, all up in my newsfeed. 

(These names are not real. I will not call my friends bad names. Draw your own conclusions.) 

"Hi everyone! Happy New Year! As you may know, Beautiful is a Girl Scout now and she is eager to meet your cookie needs. 

 This post included an image of a Thin Mint, and a link to a site entitled "MEET THE COOKIES" that not only included graphic depictions of each variety but also gave me a link to "FIND COOKIES NOW," which indicated that if I keyed in my zip code a nearby Girl Scout would arrive at my office door bearing Samoas and a glass of milk.

Not really, but you know, it was sort of implied. And all of a sudden the spring wellness schedule icon shriveled and died on my desktop like the Wicked Witch of the West under water. Damn. 

I mean really, this has to happen in January? Where are my gift wrap and mixed nut children? I can't eat gift wrap and I have to actually think about taking the lid off of a can of nuts. Do the chocolate bars and pre-fab pizza dough come out from their hiding places now too? 

Is anyone selling wine? 

It should be noted just for kicks that I was not a blazingly successful Girl Scout. I never went camping beyond a day trip to a nature preserve or two, and mostly stuck to badge-worthy yet reasonably sedentary activities like cooking and chess. 

 Yes they give badges for chess. Shut up. 

My final straw was the inability to evenly sew the seam on a fake suede skirt - a fuede skirt, if you will. And I honestly wasn't kicked out, it just didn't work out for me. And there may have been other reasons, other small badge infractions maybe because I've just never been much into those sorts of systems, but for me that was the deal-breaker. 

Also there may have been some crying before meetings because I wanted to stay home and watch repeats of Laverne & Shirley rather than build bird houses. That may have been the real problem, but my mother gave turning me into a responsible scouting citizen her best shot. 

Yes, my mom, the faithful team player who remembers her days in sash and uniform fondly, was still the cookie mom for one year out of the two I lasted. All I can remember is a dining room full of boxes, the neon Do-Si-Do orange and Thin Mint green, and the stress of thinking how many I had to sell to meet who knows what benchmark of cookie stardom. 

Anyway, now that that pressure is long gone, I cannot tell you in acceptable language in this forum what I can do to a box of Samoas. I mean, I can, but I have issues with sharing that kind of information publicly. I could maybe share with you how I can picture in my mind what a Trefoil looks like as it disintegrates in a glass of milk in the dim light of a kitchen at midnight, and how my hand trembles and my brain negotiates with itself while it chooses a number to write in the box next to the Do-Si-Do picture on the very colorful order form. 

"Six...NO! What is wrong with you?!? That is approximately one quatrillion peanut butter cookies that you do not need in your life! Three...Ehhh. Still no. Two. Blah, okay. Two." 

Yes. And that is not even taking into account the mental gymnastics required to calculate how many boxes of Trefoils are required for those days of simple milk-and- shortbread comfort cookie needs or the yearly limited edition with the fancy kind that you have to try although you won't like it as much as the Tagalongs so you just should have gotten another box of Tagalongs or how many Thin Mints you'll need minus that rogue box that you find in the back of the freezer on that crappy July day when you most need them because they fell behind the pile of frozen burritos. 

 What? WHAT? 

But now there is no order form needed. There is no paper trail here. There is just a link. And a wall post with a smiley face from Karma who needs, she NEEDS to sell these cookies. For Beautiful. And also, let's face it, for me, so I can guiltlessly or at the very least less guiltily avoid the table of girls and their parents who accost me at the grocery store until well past the spring thaw ("OMG, isn't cookie season over YET?" I will think to myself, as they smile at me in their sashes and threaten silently to kick me in the shins) because Beautiful, SHE has gotten my business. I know her. I have contributed to her cause - to her badge, or her trip to Juliette Lowe's birthplace or to her iPod, because they probably entice them to sell these things with digital music players now. 

Samoas. Oh, you coconut and chocolate and caramel siren cookies of my dreams. Six boxes. Six! 

Now I can tell Karma how many boxes I want at a distance, in a minute. And then they will arrive in her office, and I will write her a check or fork over at least one of my ATM twenties (only one? Cheap. Cheap cheap cheap, cookie miser) and think, that isn't a lot now, is it? That isn't so many boxes of cookies. 

Until I feel compelled to buy five more from other people. Because as it turned out, Karma was not the last, oh no. I know a lot of people, in-person people and people who are not only close enough to leave cookies on my porch but those who inhabit the vast recesses of my computer and distant lands like Indiana. The blog people. The Facebook friends of friends. And among them  are many moms and dads and grandmas and aunts and godparents. And those innocent little children who stare back at me from Flickr? Some of them are joining the nefarious ranks, memorizing the Girl Scout Law as we speak. Some of them are taking their cookie pleas to video (even if it is just, allegedly, for Grandma and Grandpa.) I remember what it was like. And while it may be taking me a few days to adjust to this new digital world cookie order, I would have YouTubed this whole enterprise too, if YouTube had been invented then.

Other voices around the Web:

Michele Cozzens would have bought more boxes from the Girl Scout on her door step but they're only taking cash this year because so many people have paid for cookies with bounced checks.

Sheryl Taylor wanted to support her friend's daughter's cookie efforts but didn't want the goods in her house. She told her, and they're donating her cookies and lots more to a local nursing home. Sheryl sounds scarily like me:

This way the Girl Scouts win, the recipients of the cookies win, and you win for not eating them while you are on your resolution. Although I must say, she is only the first of many that I know I am going to have to dodge and pass up those Thin Mints! Dang those Thin Mints! (fists in the air)

Finally, the Girl Scouts do have an Internet Safety Pledge, which says nothing about a wall post from Mom but does prohibit them from collecting money online. So at least I'll have to walk over to Karma's office to drop off my payment. That's good for at least a Trefoil, I'd say.  

On forgetting whether or not I ever told my blog that I danced to I'm Every Woman with Jane Fonda.

Seriously. 

I'm going through my photo archives for another day in a row, putting together some images for a friend of mine, and wow. The things you don't really forget but don't actively remember. Like this: 

That's my mother on the far right in this one. She looks like we all felt.

 

This is what happens when you follow Dylan McDermott into the W hotel in New Orleans because you figure that's where the party is because his stepmother just happens to be throwing it. And then somehow you end up in the party yourself (**coughpresspasscough**) standing a few feet away from an open bar and Rosario Dawson. 

 

 Dudes this is still funny, almost two years later.

 

That will never not be funny to me. That ain't no On Golden Pond. 

I have no idea what I said exactly to get us in those doors but I will never be sorry. Like Ferris said, life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

Whole set here. Fabulous trip. 

Pictures, 2009

I go back to work in a few hours after 12 days off with lots of stuff decided and lots of things yet to do. This year has started off with the decision to move and the logistical nightmarish stuff that goes along with that, also a car that decided today that it was tired of running. 

What this year has not started off with is the desire held by a large percentage of the Internet to stop eating, or at least to stop drinking and eating specific things. I think I'm eating more, actually. I should probably look into that. I am, however, yes, going to do our wellness new year thing at work and I am going to be reasonable. I just didn't hear the siren song of quitting everything and running a lot of consecutive miles when the ball dropped. 

Not that there anything wrong with that. 

In the first couple days of 2010 my favorite thing I've learned is how to make serrano pepper vinegar. It's astoundingly easy - acquire said pepper and vinegar, boil the vinegar, drop pepper in it. So I think maybe I'll use this as some kind of totem for my year - the easy pepper vinegar year, that's it. 

Meanwhile, as I am the kind of Saturnine figure that looks both forwards and backwards at all times, here are my favorite photos from the previous year, by month. 

I'm going to try to stick to one but eh, maybe two here and there or four. Thanks for playing along. 

January. 

February: 

March: 

April: 

A

 

 May.

   

 June.

   

 July.

 

August. 

 

 September.

 

October. 

(Totally self-indulgent but I loved the way my hair looked here. Because I didn't do it, of course, and could never make it look this way myself in a billion years. This is what my rockstar alter-ego's hair looks like every day. It was fun.)

November. 

December. 

2009, right?

This year was really great. It really was. 

I mean it. 

It was hard and it kind of kicked my ass as I believe I have stated here before but among the mess of growing pains and things I complained about and stupid, difficult lessons I had to learn (all of them in some way because of things I screwed up or didn't care to prioritize or procrastinated about, really) so many great things happened to me. So many wonderful people literally entered my life as some of my dearest friends, and others stayed, they stayed like they always stay regardless for some reason beyond my comprehension and for this reason alone I should not be allowed to complain. 

I don't know what has happened to me to deserve it, but there is one thing I can say for sure about my life. And that is that although I may joke about being a freak magnet and how strangers come up to me out of the blue in places like public restrooms and malls and tell me personal information including their most disturbing problems, that I also concurrently have attracted some of the best people I know exist in this world to be my friends. 

(I'm an unequivocal fan of my family so I should note that they are never excluded and never far from my heart or mind. And this year was mostly great and especially meaningful with them, too.) 

I started off my year losing my grandma and I wrap up this year heavy with that knowledge still although it's processing better these days. And I am learning to use her as a catalyst and a guide as I believe she would appreciate, although I still think mortality sucks and we all got a raw deal but there is nothing I can do about that. No wonder everyone loves this Twilight train wreck. It's like global death anxiety permeated the pop culture. 

I also went back to work full-time after finishing my graduate degree and that was a really difficult transition, I admit. I was tired, really, fundamentally, after 15 months of such crazy concentrated newsgathering work and a crushingly disappointing news bureau experience that was so stupid it almost defied description. I was bummed out about my weight and nervous that I couldn't do anything about it due to some bizarre combination of my body's stubborness where that is concerned, my relative dislike of exercise and my infinite love for wine and cheese and things that make you go mmmmmmmm in general. 

I began to deal with that and in some stroke of luck won an insane Biggest Loser contest at my workplace. The mood police were on duty and along with the effort to exercise almost daily and eat better I lost 20 pounds and actually felt really great by the time May rolled around. 

Summer rocked. Summer was fantastic. I was in a naturally fabulous mood for the first time, I shit you not, since my ex-boyfriend left in the winter of 2005. 

Four years. Four years of maintaining, of tolerating my daily life, punctuated with occasional minor happiness. Suck. 

Anyway, I was so grateful that I remembered how to be happy this summer without effort. I couldn't really believe it was happening but it did and I feel very, very grateful that although since then I've hit upon some darker times again that it happened. I know it's in there. I am inspired to keep working and striving towards it, even though that just means living my daily life in the best way I know how. I know I have the capacity for joy. 

(If you don't understand this part it's okay. Just know it's in no way as self-indulgent as it can sound. It's really, really tricky.)

BlogHer in lots of ways made my summer and my year, and not just because Chicago is one of my favorite places in the country and it was invigorating to get a tattoo there. It was a profound experience for me this year. It's difficult to explain it, and that may be why I never wrote a recap post, but it's like a three-day festival of everything good about my corner of the Internet. So maybe it's my Blog Woodstock, or three-day Lollapalooza (I am incapable of speaking in terms other than outdated music festivals, apparently.) 

It is this community that has built up around me in the past five years live and in person. It is wine and words and pictures. It is a ridiculously good time and I'm sure that for a lot of people who have not embraced the particular world of blogging that I do it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that's okay. I wouldn't get what those people do either, maybe. I don't care about skeet shooting or Bunco or any number of other things that are probably pretty cool if you yourself do them, this just happens to be what I do. You know, over there, in that hotel lobby with some fucking awesome women who happen to think it's totally fine to take pictures of ourselves reflected in salt shakers. 

Anyway, I've more or less integrated the people and experiences that mattered to me from this summer's experience into my daily life so it's not such a shocker.I could easily call them out. Karen makes me feel beautiful. Laurie put me in her phone in the lobby and brought me down a barrette the next day because I said I wanted to learn how to fix them in my hair and beyond that is a genius who became someone I could visit at the beach the very next week and at her house months later. Sarah reflects me back to myself in the most peculiar way and makes me believe in best friends like when I was 15 but without the crazy, and also may have to bring me beer in the nursing home. Suebob and Maria make me wish I lived in California. Melissa is illuminated and makes me want to be a better writer. Suzanne and Heather astound me with how much I am inspired when I'm near them. It is infinite, really, and I think we are all so lucky we have it. I believe so much in the ultimate goals of that Web site and this community. I will always be so glad I've had the opportunity to be a part of it. 

By the way? Genie is the best (and also MY) BlogHer roommate who also became a mom this year and I am so happy for her and her little family. This post made me cry, because it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever written about me, ever. It is also one of the most scarily accurate summations of my personality - the darker side of it with the light of understanding and compassion shed upon it, mind you - that I have ever read and this is another freaking example of why I'm so lucky. SO LUCKY.

(This is my year-end recap and is therefore by its very nature allowed to be narcissistic. I'm calling it. ;))

There is such power in relationships. I may not have gotten the boy in 2009 that I really think I want, I may never get him, and in some ways, eh. Maybe I'm the reconstituted Virgin of Guadalupe or some shit like that. But dammit, I have FRIENDS. Offline ones, too. They are not written about so much, they are not often seen here, but they are real and they are so loved and appreciated. They tolerate my iPhone addiction and tell me they love me and know my story as writ on walls in hieroglyphics back when we used those, you see. 

I spiraled out in the fall and the bad times hit again. The living situation was a little weird and work was hard. I struggled with what my next step should be and creative inspiration was limited. 

But I kept writing. I kept shooting. I kept at it, although I didn't know why, and that's probably what should be my epitaph. 

She kept at it although she didn't know why. 

This year I took a long trip to California to watch my sister celebrate her master's degree. We had a really meaningful family vacation in August, and reconvened on the same beach in November to celebrate Thanksgiving and my uncle's birthday. 

I spent some time late in the year with one of my oldest and dearest friends, someone who in spite of miles and distance and such different lives will always be one of my touchstones, who taught me in the weeks after that visit that we never, ever know what effect we're having in the moment. We just have to do and say the best things we can. We have to be honest to the best of our ability with the people who mean the most to us, the people we'd save from fire and flood if we could. We have to trust them to make the best decisions and to be able to hear what we're saying when it is based in deep love and concern. 

I had some great meals this year and some disasters. The best in restaurants were a Cioppino at Sogno DiVino in San Diego's Little Italy that I would have shipped to me frozen without question and a shrimp burger and beer at Fannie's on Tybee Island, Georgia, that combined with an ocean view made my trip and made me believe once again in the restorative power of coastal American food. I ate more sushi and edamama this year than I have consumed in my entire life thus far. I still didn't have my own kitchen yet, so I didn't cook a whole lot myself. That's on my list. 

I drank a lot of wine (mostly Spanish and South American, red) and some reasonably good beer. I hated the Pittsburgh Penguins and lost my mind when they knocked the Caps out of the playoffs, but this season I had a fantastic seat at a game because Sarah and her father-in-law are nice. I still believed in Terrapin basketball and the Washington Mystics. I saw Green Day live and it changed my life. 

I wore MAC #3 perfume and green eyeliner almost every day. Green and orange are still my favorite colors. I still miss having a dog, also daily. I spent ridiculous amounts of money on my paid-off car. I got an iPhone in March in Austin and it is perhaps my most favorite material possession ever, second only to the pink Sony boombox that saw me through the late 80s and many, many dubbed tapes from the radio. 

Michael Jackson's death knocked me sideways. 

I stood in freezing Washington, D.C. at the Inauguration concert and felt an energy that I have never felt before in a city I've lived I've lived beside my whole life. I watched on my television the next morning as the first African-American president, a person I still believe to be a true agent of change, took the oath of office. 

I went to Charlotte twice and Austin for SXSWi and the aforementioned Chicago and San Diego and Pittsburgh and to New Orleans for my most awesome first Mardi Gras. I finally sat on and broke my beautiful green glasses so I have to get another set of frames. I spent a stupid amount of time searching for my chargers for my seemingly endless array of electronic devices. I made three apple pies. I finished NaBloPoMo.

I didn't welcome Christmas. I wasn't ready and to be honest I didn't really care. It came anyway. 

It is January now. The last month of 2009 was punctuated with me entering this photography contest and being so blown away by the nice things people were saying about my entry that I felt that whether I won or lost I had already accomplished something. And then another friend called and asked me to enter this other cool contest for people of the blog sort and these two things combined have served to make me ready to make a life change that has been simmering for a long time. Like a decade. 

I think it involves Virginia and I am seriously freaking out. 

Speaking of the aughts, I think I might do some sort of wrap-up posts this weekend because this was a DECADE here, people, and for me it was the most profound one yet. I'm coming up on an anniversary next week that started out a very happy one and ended up sending me into my own personal bell jar for most of the aughts. It is fundamentally why this blog exists and why I am currently inarticulately telling you about my year. I'm going to write the shit out of something about it because you know what, I can. 

Happy new year. 

And I'll tell you one thing - and you can write this down, as we are wont to say in my family: 

Next January 1, 2011? If I'm not dead, I'll have just turned 40. I'll be writing some crazy wrap-up from Pittsburgh if the Caps play up there in the Winter Classic because Kim and I have a tenuous date for it already. 

And also? Next January? I think I'll have some kickass things to share. Really. Because I'm finally allowing myself to expect a lot from a year, whether I'm ultimately disappointed or not. I'm not staying home so I have to go big.