In the last two weeks, more than 10 million people have gone to YouTube to watch the uber-genius spectacle that is the Muppets performing "Bohemian Rhapsody."
In that same time, my small hill of dirty laundry has grown to a mighty mountain (but luckily not big enough to require recruiting sherpas).
So this weekend I decided to finally tame laundry mountain (by strategy).
And yet...
Apparently, the time and energy I have available for doing laundry is limited.
Especially when I'm busy remixing Muppet video to tell the story of Rolf's showbiz dreams (complete with new power-pop soundtrack and cameos from Big Bird and the Yip-Yip Martians):
I'm not a huge heavy metal fan. And when you get past David Bowie and Mott the Hoople, I'm not big on glam.
So how do I explain this: Angel was a heavy metal glam band from Washington DC led by Punky Meadows and the late Mickey Jones. The band was discovered by Gene Simmons from Kiss and eventually signed to Kiss's label Casablanca Records. They had absurdly long hair and their gimmick was that they always wore white. And they appeared in the 1980 movie Foxes (starring Jodie Foster, Laura Dern, Randy Quaid, Cherie Currie, and Scott Baio) essentially playing themselves.
To my mind, almost all their songs sounded the same -- and although it was interesting to hear a glam version of the Young Rascals' "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" once, it didn't seem like it was something I'd need to hear again and again (it stalled out at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100, so I guess I'm not the only one who felt that way).
And then, in the late 70s, one of their songs snuck onto the radio around Christmas. It didn't really sound like any of their other material. And I couldn't get enough of it. Back then, DJs used to identify the records they played, so at least I knew the name of the band (Angel) and the name of the song ("The Winter Song").
But these were the pre-internet days, so I didn't have any idea what album the song was on (or what the cover looked like). And I didn't have any friends who liked the band, so I couldn't borrow the album from anyone. So I did what I always did -- I spent months searching through the various used-record stores in town until I found it. One scuffed-up copy with a big scratch at the end of Side One. But otherwise, the album was in good shape.
So, ignoring the hideous cover, I plunked down my 85 cents and bought the record.
I listened to the entire record once. But I've listened to "The Winter Song" (last track on Side Two) dozens of times.
God help me -- I love the sleigh bells, the cheesey 70s synths, the "little drummer boy" rhythm, the choir, the call-and-response in the later choruses, the layered sound that slowly fades off to infinity, and the way the song always makes me think of a fresh snowfall.
I'm pretty sure this confession should cost me every last shred of street cred I've ever imagined I had (or might have in the future). But it's the holiday season -- and everyone has a few guilty pleasures.
It dominated the living room and drew everyone who walked into the house towards it.
Her father, a famous jazz musician, got the piano as a gift from Miles Davis after filling in at the last minute on a European tour.
Growing up, I remember the sounds of the piano. The entire house exuded music. Every day there'd be glissandos and counter-melodies drifting through open windows out into the street. If I'd walk by in the evenings, I could see her in the living room, practicing. I sensed her feet pressing on the pedals as the music increased in volume.
During High School she'd complain that she'd rather go out skating on a frozen pond but her father made her stay inside at the piano. When she'd look out the window at people walking by carrying ice skates, it was almost too much for her to take.
A few years after she finished college, her father died and her mom sold the house. She took the piano. Dragged it with her to 14 apartments and 3 houses in 6 states. The piano lasted longer than both her marriages.
She said as long as she had the piano a part of her father would always be alive.
Then, last winter, she was moving again. With the piano and all her stuff packed in a U-Haul Truck. On a mountain pass, another car skidded into her lane and she swerved. The other car righted itself and was soon gone in the night. But she fishtailed and spun around, striking a guardrail.
The back of the truck opened and the piano came crashing out, down a ravine, losing its legs. Eventually, it came to rest on top of a frozen lake.
She stood by the edge of the road, marveling at the weird moonlit sight of the grand piano on the lake, a gift from Miles Davis long ago. And she heard a slow crack that grew in volume. But her feet were nowhere near the pedals.
And she watched, mesmerized, as the piano slowly sunk below the ice until it was swallowed up by the lake.
The next week I ran into her on a street in our hometown. I hadn't seen her in over 15 years and was pleased to see she looked lighter and happier than she'd ever been. She told me the story of the piano and the lake. She had no sadness about it, just a general sense of relief.
We said our goodbyes and I knew she'd been wrong about needing the piano to keep a part of her father alive. As long as she had music, part of him will always be alive.
I turned to go back to my car and she continued down the street, carrying her new ice skates, walking out in the crisp winter air to the frozen pond down the block from where we grew up. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
Swedesplease has a great post up with lots of cool Swedish Christmas songs, but the one that sticks out for me is "iPod Xmas" by Hello Saferide. A great holiday heartbreak song. Jump over there and give it a listen.
Quote from the lyrics: "And for present, you fuck, I got an iPod Nano With your name written on it..."
The wall calendar mocks me with its scenes from November and my reluctance to flip it over to the last month of the year. While the news is filled with stories of Goldman Sachs executives spending their multi-million-dollar bonuses on tropical vacations (and guns), most people I know are broke. And it was 80 degrees yesterday.
Plus, people drive like idiots and you don't want to be anywhere near a mall for the next three and a half weeks.
None of which makes me feel very Christmas-y, despite the fact that Christmas music is everywhere (on streets, on the radio, in stores, and in nearly every music blog in the universe).
And humbug. (With the greedies, featuring Paul Cook and Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols plus with Phil Lynott, Brian Downey and Scott Gorham from Thin Lizzy).
I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do...
Gina went into the Peace Corps. It was more than 20 years after it stopped being fashionable to go into the Peace Corps. But she went. Right after High School.
She was a dreamer, a hippie chick in the time of Reagan. She told people she was born at Woodstock, but that was a lie. Still, she loved the protest music of the late 60s and wouldn't listen to anything else. She wore sandals and clothing made of hemp. proudly telling everyone who'd listen that she would never wear a bra.
And while it was admirable for her to join the Peace Corps, her smug, self-congratulatory fervor was hard to take. (Plus, attacking everyone else in our class for going off to "college and the bourgeoisie" didn't win her any friends either.)
For several years, she sent one letter back per year. One letter about building water systems in Africa or working at children's health clinics in India. She sent the letter to one of her friends, with instructions to pass it around to everyone else she knew. In each letter, several pages were devoted to rants about how her so-called friends were horrible because we weren't doing more to save the world.
In 19th century Russian literature, it's common for one character to say that another character had "gone to America."
This didn't mean they'd actually gone to America. It was a polite way of saying "committed suicide," perhaps because the journey from Russia to America was so perilous back then that only the insane would attempt it (and only a few who attempted it would survive).
Looking at the gilded insanity in the past 10 years, I started using a phrase inspired by Russian literature. Whenever someone I knew fell prey to irrational greed and the desire for wild, expensive things that made no sense, I'd say they were "going to Dubai."
This didn't mean they literally went to Dubai (although many of them did), but referred to their new type of thinking -- the same type of thinking that believed building gigantic hotels that look like sailing ships, indoor ski slopes in the desert, and artificial palm-shaped islands that maximized beach-front property and can be seen from space were good ideas. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
Gina dropped out of sight the same time most of her High School classmates finished college. As we went off to our first jobs (or to grad school, or even in some cases to the Peace Corps), we wondered what had happened to her.
But we all got caught up in our lives, so the mystery of Gina went from a frequent topic of conversation to an infrequent guessing game to "which one was she again?"
Until a few months ago.
This time, it wasn't one hastily-scrawled handwritten letter meant to be passed around. This time, it was a crisp, carefully thought-out email blasted out to several hundred of her old friends. With photos. And captions.
The letter alluded to making millions in investment banking and partying backstage during one of the American Idol tour stops. The lie about being born at Woodstock was nowhere to be found.
Judging from the photos, she traded the sandals and hemp clothes for designer shoes and businesswoman chic. And it's pretty clear that she now wears bras.
In one photo, she was smiling at the groundbreaking of a building on one of those artificial palm-shaped islands you can see from space. She was wearing a hardhat and holding a shovel. A shovel made of gold.
The email glossed over details, but one thing was clear: Gina, the hippie chick who believed that owning anything was a sin against nature, had come back from the Peace Corps, and gone off to Dubai.
Five years ago, I told everyone I talked to that Bowling For Soup was "your new favorite band." I meant it, but no one believed me.
"Think Fountains of Wayne with more punk, more booze, and more sloppy sophomoric jokes," I'd say. "But in a good way." Yeah, it didn't work for them either.
Anyway. Let's talk Thanksgiving.
I didn't overeat.
On a holiday entirely geared towards excess, I managed not to stuff myself.
Yet, everywhere everyone seems stuck in a food coma. Or shuffling zombie-like off to go shopping.
This might have been more attractive to me years ago. Which makes me feel older than I already felt after none of my friends adopted Bowling for Soup as their new favorite band.
Five years on, I still love Bowling for Soup (especially the earlier stuff). But they're no longer my new favorite band. And probably not yours either (and this attempt to bring them to your attention is half-assed, even for a holiday weekend).
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