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Aging Non-blondes This morning my bladder woke me up promptly at 6. Since it's Saturday, I wasn't too happy about that, but the TV took pity on me. There on Bravo, on a show called Musicians (new to me), were Deborah Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie (note the dot com address is the comic strip). The show was a mix of mostly interview and some acoustic performance, revealing some interesting underlying bits of pop culture from nearly 30 years ago.
It brought back old memories of summer camp at Appel Farm. Now I would have sworn it was the summer of 1977, but Parallel Lines did not come out till 1978, so I must be mistaken. I can be absolutely positive the two events were concurrent (my summer at the camp and the release of the album) because Parallel Lines was 50% of the soundtrack of my three weeks at camp. Though the literature said don't bring anything that must be plugged in, the jewish girls from NY and NJ who populated my bunk (and most of the camp) either knew they could get away with it, or decided to be defiant about it. Because they all had hair dryers and a host of other electrical crap, and one girl had a tape player. Remember this was the pre-boombox era. Anyway, girl-who's-name-I-can't-remember had a tape player and TWO tapes. Two. One was, you guessed it, Parallel Lines by Blondie. If I heard One Way or Another once, I heard it 900 times in that three weeks. That and Fade Away & Radiate, Heart of Glass, etc. Unfortunately that summer ruined me for Blondie, and I was unable to appreciate the band until. . .now? Perhaps. Though I loved Deborah Harry in Videodrome, David Cronenberg's hallucination classic.
By the way, when Olivia began to show interest in filmmaking, I told her to check on the net for some summer camps that had filmmaking stuff. The one camp she brought to my attention was Appel Farm. I don't think she ever knew I went there. [fade up Twilight Zone theme music. . .]
On the show Chris Stein said something I found very interesting -- When asked about how the power dynamics of the band were affected by Debbie and Chris being a couple and therefore a voting bloc, he responded (and I sorta quote) "at best a band functions as a monarchy, or perhaps a dictatorship. Democracy does not work in a band." That brings me to think of bands I've been in and bands I've known well, both democracies and monarchies/dictatorships. Hmm, I think I'll think about that some more.
I just got back yesterday from the 11th Annual WV Governor's Summit on Aging, held at Oglebay conference center. I got to stay in a cabin, which was the bomb, ask me about it. Anyway, I got this idea during the Summit, while listening to kickass speaker and thinker Dr. Condeluci, to mindfully connect more dots. When you speak, or write, the more things you tie together, and the more ways you tie them, the more likely you are to have your ideas stick with the audience. We all connect our own dots all the time, and though the dots fade, the lines between them get stuck in our brains much longer before they fade. That's my new theory. And a related theory that struck me there, too, is that if you connect the dots to form an ugly picture, that's the picture that will continue to surface in your mind. Whereas, if you either don't connect those dots, or connect them to form a groovy picture, you can minimize the likelihood of ugly shit entering your psyche. For example, if you encounter negative stereotypes, you will be more likely to see them in people. You'll connect the dots in that way, because those lines are already present in your brain. But if you never learn a negative stereotype, you have a chance of never looking for it to be true, and therefore never seeing it. The dots are always there, you can connect them however you want, but once lines get drawn, they tend to perpetuate themselves.
These thoughts came to me as Dr. Condeluci spoke about how the elderly and people with disabilities are devalued in our culture, seen as their impairments, and excluded from our circles of commonality. We gots to change that. Connect some new dots.
Blondie has aged, and sounded great. The unplugged phenomenon is such a great one, for me. I love to hear the naked version of a tune, and Blondie's acoustic performance on the show was so much better than the Blondie of my camp memories. They played a tune from their new album (yes, new album) called Night Wind Sent that I really liked. Somehow I doubt the produced studio version of the tune will be as satisfying, so I'll probably avoid it. Why connect those dots?
Dr. Condeluci ended with one of my favorite quotes, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Martin Luther King, Jr., letter from the Birmingham jail.
The second tape, by the way, was the soundtrack of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Dot.
posted by cat mcconnell 8:25 AM
Friday, September 19, 2003
Hurricane Schmurricane
Izzy was all talk and no action in my particular corner of the planet. A little rain, a little wind, whateveh. I guess there's still today, we'll see. Seque to. . . coolcat's pet peeves
1. When news, entertainment, and commercialism are all La Machined into a single slimey smoothie and called "news." Buy these products to protect from this wicked storm of the millenium! Fake film at 11!
2. The West Virginia/Western Pennsylvaniaism of "needs fixed, " "needs cut," etc. Hey hillbillies, it's needs TO BE fixed and needs TO BE cut. Need is a transitive verb (look it up).
3. Calling a meringue pie a cream pie. Just cuz it has peaks of white stuff on top does not make it a cream pie, especially if it's an egg white mixture that was actually baked onto the pie.
4. Another grammar thing, mixing singulars and plurals inappropriately. Let me demonstrate: "Everyone should bring their towel to the pool." It's everyONE, so it should be HIS or HER towelS, unless we are all sharing the same giant towel [yuck].Well, enough whining, it's friday! Celebrate the beauty that is no alarm clock at 6am for the next 2 luscious days!
posted by cat mcconnell 8:31 AM
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Dantheman Still Clearly The Man!
Sad Goodbyes to Two Great American Songwriters. RIP Warren Zevon. Witty southern California songwriter, who brought us great humorous songs like Lawyers, Guns, & Money, died of cancer this week. And right behind him on the way out was Johnny Cash, the man in black. Johnny was apparently among only a few musicians who got into both the Rock&Roll and Country Halls of Fame. He won lots of grammies, including one for writing the liner notes of the classic Dylan album Nashville Skyline. Johnny was there before country and rock&roll were distinctly separate genres. The RenFest was just great. Liv and I went with her buds Rhiannon and Donna, and Rhi's mom Carol. The weather was perfect - overcast but no rain, very comfortable for walking around all day, enjoying the scene. We saw my old roomie and bud Deb Tome, who was vending her pottery, as she did there last year. She and her husband Noah are having a baby next month! All groovy.
posted by cat mcconnell 4:10 PM
Sunday, September 07, 2003
[I need an html guru: why is there always some amount of dead white space at the top of my tables? I have tried all the align and valign tags in every spot within the table, rows, and cells, but no luck. I have read that all the common browsers imply a line break before and after every table, so I tried adding a blank table row at the top, hoping it would make the line break the size of the blank row, still no luck. Also threw in some "&nsbp" in a variety of places, futilely. Any takers?]
? What a fine September day, sunny and cool. Good day to have all the windows open while I start rolling some stainblocker paint on my computer room ceiling. It looks pretty disgusting after lots of water leaked through it all over the ceiling, a long story I won't bore you with. I tried the Kilz overhead stain sealer spray, but the color doesn't quite match and it leaves a very heavy white dust all over everything in the room. So I'm switching to the roller today. The walls will have to wait for another day and another paycheck. When the water was dripping down the walls but had no place to escape through the latex paint, it looked like my walls were growing orange-sized boobs. I should have taken pictures, it was so hilarious! Fortunately I still have no floors in my computer room and living room (many more paychecks away from that), so at least I didn't ruin any hardwood or carpet. All in all very lucky, only my scanner got sacrificed, my computer and Casio keyboard survived the bath. I harvested my second tomato, marvelous. I started seedlings but never had a good window of opportunity to plant them, so finally in August I put 3 plants in a large pot on my porch. Poor little things, I didn't think they'd be able to produce anything so late. But they have lots of little and medium-sized green tomatoes on them, so if the weather holds out a little longer, I should get some more to ripen on the vine. Next weekend Liv and I head for the Renaissance fest near Pittsburgh, hopefully the weather will be something like this weekend. Our old bud and roomie Debbie Tome is vending pottery there, we hear, as she did last year. We had a ball there last year, though it was got and then we got soaked by a big cloudburst. Lots of groovy vendors in a wooded area in the center of the festival.
posted by cat mcconnell 12:08 PM
