I felt that it was important to document our faces as homeowners prior to having to spend any money on the house, a process that will begin in less than 24hrs ;)
thoughts
Based on a true OCD story
Scene: E and I approach the Oregon Diner, both dressed for the heat and wearing flip flops.
P: Oh, we’ll have to wash our hands after touching all of those boxes in the U-Haul.
E: Okay.
P: Oh my god! I can’t go into a public restroom wearing flip flops! What am I going to do?
E: Honey, I have sanitizer in my purse.
P: You mean for my feet, for after I wash my hands in the restroom? I don’t know…
E: No, honey, for YOUR HANDS.
P: Oh.
And, scene.
just a one-hitter / don’t stop believing
I’m still upset about not blogging on Thursday.
It wasn’t like I forgot about it. I had words in the white box at least three times, but nothing seemed blog-worthy.
With all of this news about perfect games in baseball I was really looking forward to notching a month of blogging every day which – incredibly – I have only done three times in the past 118 months.
It’s the same sort of rarefied event as nine innings of no one on base – a perfect storm of a strong performance by me, plus my team of interesting friends and co-workers supplying me with fodder to write about.
(Also for the record books: that’s only the second time in 118 months this blog has ever discussed baseball (so don’t get your hopes up for another mention (unless you plan to read for another five years)).)
Anyhow.
We went out last night to see two of our favorite local bands in our last “we live ten minutes from South Street” hurrah.
As of noon we are about halfway through our packing process – all of the media, books, decor, and closets have been packed, but the everyday clothes, computers, dishwares have not – which is encouraging, since we have a full 120 hours left before any movers arrive.
In excavating my hall closet I unearthed about 200 issues of Rolling Stone, which I am finally willing to part with, along with my high school year book – now 11 years old, almost to the day.
I took a brief intermission from packing to page through, showing E various pictures of my rail-thin, long-haired self, alternating between my two stock high school poses – one, smiling obviously for the camera, and the other, mouth open and finger pointed in mid-discussion.
It’s amazing how many of the notes – some from people I haven’t spoken to in 11 years! – say something to the effect of, “You believed in me and it made my high school years bearable. You are so talented, and I know you will find success.”
I know I read those messages at the time, but I’m not sure if I really appreciated what they meant. If I could write something in that book today that would appear to the me of 11 years ago, it would be this:
Dear Peter 1999,
One of your greatest talents is your ability to be enthusiastic about everyone you meet, which is why you’re going to school for journalism. I know it feels like while you believe in everyone else no one believes in you. Maybe that’s because people assume (rightly) that the enthusiasm and ambition you have for them is the same as you have for yourself, so you don’t really need their belief.
Don’t be afraid to let people know you believe in yourself, too.
Don’t worry, you’re doing everything right.
Don’t change, ever.
xoxo,
– Peter 2010
I laugh until my head comes off (Amanda Palmer’s “Idioteque” debuts)
See that Radiohead lyric in the title? That’s my past two days. Work + House has reached absolute critical intellectual mass. Whatever that means.
I love Amanda Palmer, even if I don’t always love everything she does. When she said her next release would be an album of Radiohead covers on ukulele I was beyond skeptical.
The skepticism has ended – behold, her cover of “Idioteque,” released literally minutes ago.
I love it. I just love it. I’ve always loved the song, but the icy, withdrawn version on Kid A has never totally connected with me. Amanda’s sounds instantly familiar, as if it was the version I was hearing in my head all along.
For more on her upcoming album hit her “Idioteque” blog post; of note:
[buy “Idioteque for] a minimum donation of 40¢ (9¢ going to radiohead and the rest to paypal)
the album will be available … for a minimum donation of 84¢…some stuff i’d like you to know about that 84¢:
– 54¢ of it is going directly back into radiohead’s pockets (the cost of selling my covers of their songs)
– the remaining 30¢ will be going to paypal to cover the transaction fee
There is no physical release beyond a limited edition LP, and anything beyond the minimum donation for digital is 100% gross profit for Amanda, which will help her recoup her production costs.
Is this the new model of indie music? I hope so, as it’s exactly what I would do. I guess we’ll see soon enough.
Oldies Aren’t So Old Anymore
I have been a huge Madonna fan for essentially my entire life – I have distinct memories of spinning the 45 of “Dress You Up” and its b-side “Shoo Be Do,” which came out when I was three-and-a-half.
My father is a different story – and not just on Madonna. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actively listen to a single song released after I was born (except, occasionally, Billy Joel). His taste in music is firmly rooted in the 50s and 60s – doo-wop, Motown, and early rock – and the radio in his car was permanently and without question tuned to Oldies 98.1, WOGL.
No exceptions, no Madonna tapes. Oldies 98.1 or else. And we spent a lot of time in that car.
When I first was old enough to care about radio stations I thought it was an annoying and restrictive rule. Seriously, no new music? How uncool was that?
Then I got to know the songs. At age five I would perform flawless choreography to “Stop! In the Name of Love” and sing along in parking lots to girl-group classics like “I Will Follow Him” and “Leader of the Pack.”
Those were the obvious oldies – Supremes and Stones, Beatles and Temptations. I’ve owned them for years. But WOGL was more than that – a never-ending stream of doo-wop, 60s pop, deeper cuts, and one-hit wonders. After years of riding around Philly with my dad, to this day I have instant and total recall whenever I hear a classic like “Lightnin’ Strikes.”
Relatively early in my life I remember asking him, “Dad, how old will I be when they play Madonna on WOGL?”
We did some math. Despite playing a lot of Doo-Wop, at the time the majority of WOGL’s songs were grouped around the late 60s and early 70s (disco was relegated to its own hour at night), so my father took The 5th Dimension’s “Age of Aquarius / Let the Sunshine” in as an average example.
“Well, ‘Aquarius’ went to number one in 1969, and now it’s a song we hear a lot on WOGL, in the 1980’s. So, it took it almost twenty years to become an ‘oldie’.”
“So, I’ll hear ‘Holiday’ on WOGL in… um… 2004?”
He laughed. “When you’re 23? Maybe. I don’t know if they’ll ever play Madonna.”
I giggled my agreement – how could Madonna ever be an “oldie”?
Now a full five years past his predicted 23, I’ve heard Madonna on WOGL. It makes a certain amount of sense – she’s an oldie to someone!
What my dad and I didn’t anticipate on our idyllic long rides was that when the oldies’ qualifying line reached forward into the 80s that the oldest tunes would reach their expiry. First it was the more obscure, one-hit doo-wop that went extinct – yes to “The Still of the Night,” but no more spins for The Del Viking’s “Come Go With Me” (very nearly my favorite song all time).
Then it was Doo-Wop entirely. Then the line crept into the sixties pop, slicing through all but the most enduring Motown and Brit Rock – stuff you can still hear on television commercials. Smaller pop singles like Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes” went MIA. Now the midday playlist is mostly 70s classic rock and disco in the day time – where it should never show its spangled face.
Songs I once assumed would be forever woven into the fabric of my life have all but disappeared. Now I rely on random trips to the supermarket to jog my memory – that’s what it took to unearth Friend & Lover’s “Reach Out Of the Darkness” – and it’s from as late as 1968!
The same me that grew up with Madonna grew up with those songs, and this morning when Philebrity‘s Joey Sweeney posted his unfinished thoughts on WOGL 98.1 FM’s recent inclusion of hits from the 1980s into the canon of “Oldies” – complete with name-checking “Come Go With Me” – it resonated with me (and, from the looks of the comments, it resonated with a lot of other 20- and 30-somethings as well).
Yes, “Borderline” is an oldie now. But it’s on other formats, and on Greatest Hits CDs still moving thousands of units a year.
What about “Come Go With Me”? Will any eight year old Gaga-loving kid ever have the chance for that to be his favorite song? Has doo-wop seriously gone the way of ragtime and big band – a dusty antique with no relevance to today.
Probably. I guess that means when I have kids I have to alternate between Madonna and doo-wop on every car ride to make sure they know all of their musical fundamentals.