This is the First Day of My Life

One year ago today, I began my blog here.

What. The. Crap. It feels like a week. It feels like ten years.

What to say when milestones like this arrive? How emotional should I get? Should I cry or something? Is anyone else crying (except Lynn. Don't count Lynn. She always cries.)? If someone (besides Lynn) cries, I'll cry too.

12 months and 253 posts later, and I'm still no closer to knowing what the hell is going on. If there is any change in me at all, that the most earth shattering. The fact that I can even say that:

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON."

is a pretty intense admission, even at this late stage.

For years, I told myself that I did. I knew what time it was. What's the score? Ask me and I'll tell you. And I'll say it with such authority that, yes, you will believe me.

I've heard lines of third rate movie dialogue and grocery line psychology to the same effect: Just when you think you know it all, you don't.

Ha! What a load. I KNOW IT ALL. I KNOW HOW IT ENDS.

Boy effing howdy, I don't.

I wept and sputtered through this last year. I learned things I didn't want to know. I walked away from groups and projects that I never thought I would.

It has been great. It has been awful.

But I can still be surprised. For better or worse.

I have been surprised to learn that people I thought were close to me, weren't.

I have been surprised to discover that if a person is not what I want, it is fruitless to try to shape them into something that can never be.

I have been surprised that family and friends would extend their hands to me, and be patient with my bad habits. That they would care for me anyway.

I have been surprised that an old and dear friend can make an extraordinary transformation in the time it takes to brush the hair out of my eyes.

I think a lot of blogs start out as kind of a diary, and this one is no different. It has served as a catalogue of change, week in and week out. I'm going to continue in my "Post most every day" mission - thank you for reading and continuing to read. We'll see what happens next year.

I'll let you know if I figure out what the hell is going on.

Yeah, you know...whatever....I guess...

Song for a Crappy Tuesday

I must be feeling some intense nostalgia for 1986.  13 was a great year.

This is what I'm doing today.

(And by Taking the Skinheads Bowling, I mean I am taking my nephews to Brookfield Zoo.)

Goodbye, Shermer Illinois

If you were born between 1966 and 1975, you were influenced by his work.

John Hughes, in just a few short films, shaped our soundtracks, our senses of humor, and launched a level of post-modern self consciousness that has its fingers in almost every aspect of pop culture. He is a cornerstone of our shared childhood.

Love his films, hate his films? Indifferent? Doesn't matter. Sort of like the God of Abraham, you can refute his existence, worship his legacy, or feign ignorance - but the entity still permeates our concept of what it means to be a teenager.

The God of our Adolescence has made his mark.

And of course, the original:

Song for a Birthday Thursday

In winter of 1994, I propositioned a young man in my class to join him on a road trip to Montana. I barely knew him in any real way - except that he had a loud spoken wanderlust - and I was in a mood to shock my friends.

We left at dawn on the first day of spring break, meeting at a mutual friend's apartment to scamper off to Big Sky Country like a couple of 16-year-old elopers. I left a note for my roommate.

(The trip itself is probably worth a blog post on its own. There was a lot of drinking, drinking and driving, drinking and bowling, drinking and car wrecking, drinking and walking ten miles in the snow. Very wholesome.)

When I returned, I was in some trouble with everyone. Once they had figured out where I had gone, and with whom, there was a talking to.

The talking to came from my friend, Jan. You see, it was her ex-boyfriend who was my companion on the trip, and while he and Jan weren't together at this time...there are just some things you don't do. This I learned, as Jan pointed her brand new red acrylic nails in my direction.

To me, our friendship began here.

Before, we were acquaintances, circling each other's core friends but never really connecting. My reckless vacation cast us into the Thunderdome and we emerged comrades.

Jan is one of the women of L.A. The ones that I count as part of my extended family. There is a very short list of people I will call when I am in need. Jan is close to the top.

A couple of years ago, while Tina was off in Egypt. (Seriously. She was in Egypt.) Jan and I spent the night in her apartment. We drank four (4) bottles of wine, and proceeded to tell each other the "Truth". Neither of us remember much of that night. We ate breakfast in a haze of potential public barfing. But it was a blast.

Jan has talked me off the ledge over bad break ups, she has given me makeovers, driven me down Lake Shore Drive in a rented convertible, and endured untold amounts of performance art. She has told me in the same breath what a moron and genius she believes me to be. I think sometimes we look at each other and think: Wow. We're friends. And probably will be for, like, ever.

Happy Birthday, Jan. I love you like blood. Please don't let your mom tell my mom about my blog.

STAND UP.

If I put a dollar in your Treble Clef will you leave me alone?

Maybe, I'm getting old.

Isn't that what you're supposed to say when faced with a troubling cultural shift? Usually one involving sex?

Last night, while driving my sister's car after a frustrating and time gouging mistake, I took the opportunity to flip through the radio. I've mentioned before my love of radio, even as it lays dying at the feet of iTunes and XM. ( There's a weird level of responsibility with the new fangled music players. You and you alone are the arbiter of what goes into your ears. Fatigue sets in after a while - all the songs you KNOW pop up, cycling through the Merry-Go-Round of the same euphonic scenery, over and over. Once I've heard "Somebody to Love" 84 times, my heart just doesn't burst with passion the way it used to. With radio, I am not responsible for my play list. I can stumble across any old thing. And who cares if it's Roxette. I'm not responsible. I can belt "She's Got the Look" and never have to answer to my iTunes recommendations for having purchased it.)

Last night at around 1:30am, however, the radio was not my friend. In fact, it wasn't even an acquaintance. The radio, it turns out, was a hooker who hopped into my car at the intersection of Pulaski and Irving Park.

I have offered several iterations to the fact that I am not a sexual prude. If it rings your bell and nobody's getting hurt (without their consent), then full speed ahead, I say.

But do we have to be so, I don't know, On-The-Nose about it?

My friend E. has an unapologetic love for "Booty Music": sexually charged hip-hop that is at once exploitative and playful. Kinda angry, Kinda hungry. Usually, somebody done somebody wrong, but god knows, they can't help but want each other, up in the club or in the hot tub.

I have no problem with this. I'm not hot to listen to it all the time, but when I'm in the mood for pretending I have the wherewithal to head to the dance floor, it hits the spot.

But during a commercial free hour on B96, my ears were given an unwanted lap dance. From songs like "Birthday Sex" (You say you want passion/ I think you found it/ Get ready for action / Don't be astounded/ We switchin' positions/ You feel surrounded/ Tell me where you want your gift, girl Birthday Sex, Birthday Sex) to "Love Game" (Let's have some fun/ this beat is sick/ I want to take a ride on your disco stick.) to the elegant "Hotel Room Service" (oh, you're the healthy type/ Well, here goes some egg whites/ Now gimme that sweet, that nasty gushy stuff/ let me tell you what we gon' do.)

There's sexy and playful, and then there's unlicensed gynecological.

Remember when Madonna scandalized the public by humping a bridal veil on MTV?

Ha. Tepid. Tame. Downright puritanical.

I've puzzled over why I'm so grossed out by this. I'm about as liberal as you can get. Why do my eyebrows crinkle thus?

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was propositioned while using the computer in study hall.

"Go out with me." he said in a tinny, southern accent.

I scoffed and rolled my eyes.

"You make my nut hairs curl."

Yes. This is exactly what he said.

I think it took a week for my fallopian tubes to untangle.

The thing is, I've no objections to a man (or woman, sure) expressing urgent sexual interest. Terrific. But might you finesse it a little?

The conventional wisdom seems to veer towards "dispense with the games and just be honest" and how "we're all just animals anyway." The "just be honest" part I support in full. But aren't games (not the head ones) a little fun? Who out there, regardless of social status or education, couldn't use a good wooing every so often?

We can still go at it like the animals we are later on.

I may be getting old - that is certain sure for all of us. I'm not standing on any moral high ground and wagging my finger at this generation's "Egg Whites".

But the B96-ers are missing out.

Song for a Crappy Tuesday

"Nice day out, right?"

You plop down at the dining room table right across from a shirtless First Tuesday in August. He has been manufacturing silence, broken only by occasional sniffs, for about twenty minutes.

Your jocund observation causes his shoulders to wince. He presses his head further into his palms.

"It's not being nice to me," He says.

The two of you are quiet for a couple of minutes. You know that he is tired and ready to bite whatever hand that tries to feed him. You slurp your coffee with some caution.

After a moment, he reaches over and pats you on the forearm and pries himself from the chair. He pads off to the bathroom, and moments later you hear the spike of the shower turning on.

This is probably not the end of it, but at least he's abluting himself.

1989 was a strange, unsettled year for popular music. I always feel a little bad for the 9's of any decade - we crane our necks to see the dawn of a new era while the 9's dog paddle through weird musical stew.

In a way it can be a great thing. 1969 brought us Proud Mary, Build Me Up Buttercup, and Everyday People. 1979 introduced Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Heart of Glass, and The Logical Song (It also brought us the likes of MacArthur Park and Music Box Dancer, which I think serves to illustrate my point that in the decade ending musical grab bag, you get some fly KISS tee shirts, but you'll still get a some expired Sea Monkeys in the bargain.)

1989 was still trying to hose off the musk of Disco as it embraced the Bubble Gum Blitzkrieg of Debbie Gibson, Milli Vanilli & NKOTB. Hip Hop was just starting to make a break for the Top 40 with Tone Loc and Young M.C., while white hot hair bands like Warrant, Bon Jovi, and White Lion rocked the loins of juniors and seniors everywhere. And for about 20 minutes we O.D.-ed on Batdance.

In 1989, no one saw the Nirvana revolution coming. Alternative was still alternative and rarely did it touch the Billboard Hot 100.

There were a few gateway bands drifting about the perimeter. Bands like XTC or The Stone Roses offered up Alternative Pop Rock to a pre-Grunge audience who had grown weary of Enuff Z'Nuff.

In 1989, the Smithereens released the album 11 (yes...named for the Spinal Tap speakers). I was a sophomore in high school, and while I was an Angry Young Woman...I still wanted my rock to give me a love song or two. The Smithereens were more than happy to oblige. Most of their albums brimmed with hooky guitar based tunes of love lost and won. 11 was no different.

In 1989, A Girl Like You was released, offering the band its highest charting on the Hot 100, with 38. It's a fun song and it takes me back to the days when I wore hats for pleasure and dreamed of dating some brooding writer/actor/artist/lead-singer-of-a-band type.