Month: January 2016

Dream Awake

Nothing says, “It’s not the world, it’s you” like all the shows you identify with and love the most getting ruined in the second season or just cancelled outright. The first season of Life is great television, but the show lost a bunch of original writers/producers after the 2007 strike. The second season is dead to me, mostly because the new writers ruined “softened” Reese’s character. Those first eleven episodes, though: you can learn everything about me if you know how to look, including perhaps that my version of great television does not align with yours.

Charlie Crews is who I turn to when the world make me stabby, the Jordan Catalano for agitations beyond the ability of good hair to soothe. The music isn’t too bad either.

Get On With It

This emo ditty has been the perfect thing to play on repeat during the DC evening commute that I’m now making once a week. I’m cross-commuting–which is traveling against the flow of the majority of traffic during prime commuting hours, for the bazillions of you fortunate enough not to live in one of the most car-congested metropolitan areas in the country–so I haven’t been sitting in the parking lot going the other direction. However, Silver Spring is still a bottleneck no matter how you cut it and the snow banks narrowing stretches of the road to a single lane have been making the trip maddeningly long. Which is where belting out C’MON GET ON WITH IT over and over comes into play.

Nearly 10 years ago now I saw Val in Baltimore at a little showcase that my high school acquaintance was also playing in. It was good enough that I bought a couple of CDs, not realizing until I watched the series a few years later that he played the narcissistic musician neighbor on Ugly Betty. You did remember that I said I liked alternapop, right?

As Is

Last night Ani played the 9:30 Club and I did a babysitting coop gig for folks who were heading into town to see her. I was late to the Ani party, but eventually caved to the mandatory fandom that came with attendance at a women’s college in the early 90s. Then I listened to her enough in my early 20s to last me a lifetime. She’s awesome, she’s a great writer, her live shows rock (so many live shows). But she’s become so much a part of my musical past that I now think things like, “She has a new album? She’s still touring?”

I heard she did a lot of old stuff. I heard it wasn’t crowded at all. I had a little twinge and remembered the first time I saw her in a tiny gym with just her drummer over 20 years ago.

Or maybe I just left Ani because she was always singing about me.

Life Is A Highway

Life may be a highway, but no one around here is riding it any time soon. We are appreciating our incorporated town and public works employees made possible by our happily paid taxes, all of which have given us completely clear roads. Which we can use to get to county and state roads that are a godawful mess and we would truly be driving all night long to get anywhere. Good thing we stocked up on bread, milk, and toilet paper!

Underdog

Went to sleep to steady snow and woke up this morning to THUNDERSNOW. Only a couple of booms and one visible lightning bolt if you were in DC, but it was still exciting. We were promised thundersnow during the snowstorm six years ago and it never materialized in our part of the city.

So, hearing it this morning was fun and this old favorite from when I was the sprout’s age popped into my head. He is over the moon about the snow, with or without thunder.