7 readers of the world, panic not! Though it’s past 5p.m., I didn’t forget about throw-back-song Friday!!!!
Having spent most of this past week on the bathroom floor, clutching my laptop in the fetal position and singing “I Will Always Love You” with the shower on (no one should belt out Whitney without water running nearby ), I don’t have much to say about the tune posted below. It’s not a Whitney jam. (Too soon for that.) But it’s still a great song with heart that never gets old, and one anyone could use after a long day or week or if you just feel like staring out the window with a cup of tea and feeling all inspired and “hell yeah life!”
I don’t think of myself as a particularly Zen person. My jaw is usually tense, I talk to myself on public transportation, and most of my experiences with social media cause more harm then good. (I live in fear of the day when Zuckerberg goes rogue and lets everyone see who has looked at their Facebook profile in the past year. On that day I will be permanently re-locating to a sewer in Nicaragua.) But despite these facts, I occasionally find myself experiencing bliss. And since bliss is pretty awesome and glow-ey, I will now let you in on my secret: I eat a lot of pickles, and I watch Tommy Heinsohn call Celtics games.
Let’s start with pickles. I love pickles so much. I always forget how much I love them until I have them in my house, as I do right now. They are truly the fridge equivalent of a joyful dog greeting you at the door when you come home—so salty and tasty and crunchy and wet! They make a sandwich so good and crisp I could cry! Plus, pickles are very low in calories. I just discovered this. Like, tonight. And I would love pickles regardless, but the fact that you could eat an entire jar in one sitting and not have to feel all “uhhh-Blake-Lively-would-nevvvver-do-that-why-am-I-watching-New–Girl-in-a-velour-bathrobe-from-2002-with-a-jar-of-pickles-in-my-lap” makes them somehow even more amazing.
Bring this photo to the MoMa!!
Then there’s Tommy Heinsohn. Tommy Heinsohn is a New England treasure. If he is not a part of your life, he should be.
He’s loud, he’s seventy-eight (photos above ain’t recent, but to fabulous to not show), and he’s a true BALLER in every sense of the word. (Eight NBA titles: check. Oil paints for a hobby: check.) In my mind, the sound of his voice and the force of his love for the hometeam are the epitome of whatever a juice fast or the word OM is supposed to do. I’m convinced the clip below could possibly knock-out the entire anti-depressant market in one fell swoop if doctors prescribed hourly listening. If ever in need of a pick-me-up after a horrific ride on the Green Line during rush hour, I suggest two Clausen’s pickles and the video below on repeat.
Welcome to the second installment of Throw-Back Song Fridays! Below is the 90s gem that plays in my head every morning when my alarm goes off.
Please listen to it. It’s amazing.
Listening to 5ive always reminds me of my friend Kate, because my friend Kate, like me, loves really really horrible music. Back in high school, where we met, all of our friends pretty much listened to the same, weird, shit—stuff like Dispatch and Led Zeppelin and uh, Phish. I could stomach some of it, but a fourteen-year-old girl can only take so much noodling before she wants to put on some SheDAISY and lip-synch in front of the mirror. Thank God for Kate. Kate always came through for me. I could go into her bedroom at anytime of the night (we went to boarding school), turn off the lights on her while she was sitting on her bed in a trucker hat eating Fritos and strumming a ukulele, put “Oops!..I Did It Again” in her CD player, and before I knew it, private dance party. (We also did emo quite well; a pair of young women screaming “don’t you know you betta run, run, run, run, RUN!” in the bathroom together has never sounded so beautiful.)
Kate lives in Los Angeles now. She is also the loudest person I know. I bring this up because sometimes I wonder if I could hear her telling a story from LA if I stuck my head out the window and tried hard enough. For real. I used to call her “The Chip” in high school because I thought she had a microphone lodged in her trachea when I first met her. But Kate is much more than just a loud voice—she knows how to work a room, too. She has weird, witch-like movie-star charm. Even if you are the only person in that room with her, and you’re just sitting on a couch watching Don’t Mess with The Zohan and eating Ritz crackers, Kate will work the shit of you. Or at least herself, because she is also one of those people who laughs a lot at her own stories, and not like, a series of a amused little giggles at herself, but full-on belly-laughing at what she’s saying, slap the table, eyes-watering—she never ceases to find herself and her life incredibly amusing. Kate has a million friends and all of them, like me, think we’re DEFINITELY in the top two or three of her inner circle. There are legitimately forty-seven people out there who think this. Parties she throws often end in snap-offs.
After college, before Kate moved West and I moved…to Boston, Kate taught me how to drive. On a rainy December night in 2008, I took my driver’s test in Bruce, her recently departed Ford Focus that was always filled with random things like neon-green pipe cleaners and empty cans of seltzer and mix CDs of country music and trance disco and the odd tennis shoe. (Kate hearts clutter.) During the test, the cop actually had to turn around and yell at her for trying to mouth me the answers to his questions from the backseat. If I hadn’t already mentioned it, Kate is unfailingly loyal. There are very few friends who would give up their time to try to help someone like me learn how to do a three-point-turn in a high school parking lot at the age of twenty-three, but there she was, texting furiously and laughing the whole time, while unironically proclaiming that should have been running her own ad agency at this point. We spent many hours in that high school parking lot that winter, drinking cinnamon lattes and trying to avoid having me kill the track team. At the time, I was very much like “uh, what is HAPPENING in my life, this is like Garden State but not sexy” but of course I now miss it.
So…I miss you Kate, lover of life and music good and bad, who introduced me to this song and the glory of the “Jenny From The Block” station on Pandora, and who has never met a night out you didn’t dominate.
I was in my room the other night re-arranging my match collection when I heard something really beautiful: a woman was walking down my street, possibly drunk and loudly singing “The Sign.” It was an amazing experience. Like “Truly, Madly, Deeply” and Robyn’s “Show Me Love,” “The Sign” is a song that deserves our attention and adoration, and should be played loudly at 7am on a Friday morning while one rubs ice cubes on one’s eyelids and fake contemplates ironing their shirt. (I am also excited to announce my new blog feature, of which this is the first installment: throw-back song Fridays, or just, really amazing song Fridays!)
Like most people born in the mid-1980s, Ace of Base changed my life for the better. And I must give a shout-out to my stepmother, who took me to the Dartmouth Mall in fourth grade and in the same glorious afternoon bought me both a pair of suede navy blue Puma’s at Foot Locker and the Ace of Base CD from Strawberries Music. (Did we also go to the food court for Taco Bell? That might have been too much joy.) I can’t recall what I had for lunch on Wednesday, but I so remember walking on that dirty mall floor, staring at my new kicks as I clutched my plastic-wrapped CD and thought, “So this is what it means to be cool—Pumas and an Ace of Base CD. Life, I’ve made it!”
Of course, it’s all been downhill since that moment, but the beautiful spirit of youtube never fails to amaze me:
A few thoughts after viewing:
1. How does this video only have 67,000 views? I am ashamed of our country.
2. When are extra-large pleather vests going to come back in style for women?
3. So much making out in the 90s! I am sheepish!
4. (Wait, these lyrics are actually really deep….)
omg what should the song be next Friday…? TRL me!
I’m praying for Tommy Gisele!!!
Tonight when I was shopping at the supermarket (grocery store? do other people say supermarket?), and there were like fifty million other people there buying their chicken and slices of cheese and over-priced cereal and I was a bit like “uh, I have a head cold why is EVERYONE and their grandmother buying food right now” and hurling tomatoes and corn chips into my basket. Ten minutes later I passed a woman in the yogurt section squawking into her cell phone, “of course, the whole universe happens to be at the store at the same time as me” and I was like, can that woman hear herself? She sounds ridiculous!
And then this song came on the loudspeakers while I was checking out. I’m pretty sure it was a sign from Myra Kraft that she loves me.
(Don’t tell me you hate this song. Everyone secretly loves this song.)
And yet…I really hope my cool British neighbors didn’t just hear me listening to it again. Twice.
Things the woman sitting next to me at the nail salon said to her friend today, while flipping through US Weekly.
100% true.
-Do you still watch Gossip Girl?
-But you watch New Girl, right? Oh my God, so funny.
-Wait, do you watch 2 Broke Girls? It’s sooo funny.
-Uh, oh my God, I love Blake Shelton.
-He is—he’s a fav.
-Wait, Drew Barrymore is engaged? Are you kidding!?
-Who even is this guy?
-I didn’t even know she had a BOY-friend!
-Will..Kopelmahn? Will…Kaaahpelmen?
-Whoa, Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldena are dating.
-That’s weird.
-That’s super weird.
-She looks great in everything though.
-That doesn’t even look anything like Reese Witherspoon in this picture.
-Does that look like Reese Witherspoon to you?
-No, right?
-She looks weird.
-It was so sad when she and Ryan Phillipe broke up.
-I was, like, so sad.
-No, you’re right, her new guy is really great.
-Oooh, Curtis Stone had his baby!!!!
-Hudson! What a cute name. So cute.
-Yeah, with that girl from 90210.
-Um, she was on Lipstick Jungle?
-Wait you never saw Lipstick Jungle!!!! Such a good show.
And so on and so forth.
And the kicker: she was wearing a GIANTS jersey. Meh.
A few days ago I didn’t know who Lana Del Rey was. Now I do, so I’m just gonna go ahead and add my two cents about that fact, cause I’m pretty sure that’s why Al Gore invented the internet. And all I can say is, I am getting old, people. And bitter. Because I mean, really? REALLY?
Watching those SNL performances, I think I felt how most people did when they saw them: bored/very confused. It was, like, wait am I watching a sketch? Is that Kristin Wiig impersonating a drag queen on quaaludes? Or did Emma Roberts just put on a wig and huff some serious testosterone? Because if it’s none of the above, I’m not sure that that person is okay. And someone needs to get her off that stage immediately.
I don’t want to be too mean. If I was singing on SNL I’d be peeing my lacy white dress and twirling around in awkward circles too, but hey, that’s why I’m not booked to be the musical guest next week, in’it! Also, I get pissed off when I’m super naïve. Ex: After watching the LDR trainwreck, I showed my boyfriend some of her performance. Within ten seconds of watching the clip he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah, there’s no way that chick’s father or uncle or something isn’t some seriously well-connected millionaire.” Then he walked away. Oh, please I thought, don’t be so paranoid and jaded! This isn’t Enemy of the State or something! This is real life! And then a little light googling, and …uh, he’s right! I never think that stuff, and then I’m like…HEY that’s not FAIR! That’s now how it works! Talent is what gets you ahead in life! She’s not a phony with connections, she was just…really nervous!
Which brings me to Susan Tedeschi. Probably never heard of her. That’s fine, she doesn’t really care about that. But I was lucky enough to see her perform live this weekend. And America (well, my twelve readers) I think you’ll agree that that is a musician. (Seriously, click the link.) That is talent. That is SNL-worthy, and also, that is a WOMAN. I repeat: A WOMAN. Not a hyper-packaged, hyper-sexualized, hipstamatic-I-crawl-around-with-tigers-“vintage”-aesthetic spectacle, and certainly not a girl who was born in 1986 and has already had plastic surgery in order to get more youtube clicks. (Yes, Lana Del Rey had her lips done. She’s 25, people. TWENTY-FIVE! I just used letters to spell her age out that’s how sad this makes me. What is wrong with all of us??) Susan Tedeschi could eat LDR for breakfast. Not that she’d want to. But still.
Obviously all this is nothing new. In some ways, Lana Del Ray is just the Britney of 2012, except that dancing around the lockers in your sports bra and jogging pants doesn’t really cut it as “edgy” anymore. But you can at least do crunches and scrub your bathtub to Britney’s, cough, music. I’m not sure what LDR’s “music” is for yet, though I imagine it provides a nice soundtrack for when you feel like burning your forearms with candle wax or being depressed in a sexy-vintagey sort of way.
But hey, to each their own. I just hope this chick gets the collagen out of her face and goes on a very long vacation. Also, she needs to dump that boyfriend.
Do you remember that Wino’s name was Finn in this movie? (Also, is this movie good? Haven’t seen it in years, though I watched it about 45 times when I was thirteen.) God, I wish my name was Finn. So emo.
(I had some pudding on January 1st, by accident. Very pleased to have rediscovered that pudding is SO GOOD.)
2) Watch more TV. (I don’t really watch TV, and it makes me feel boring at lunch. I’ve heard the show below is good though?)
3) Call my grandparents once a week, casually run into Tom Brady and Gisele while buying a bag of spinach, run away to Mexico with Tina Fey for the weekend and….
BLOG MORE!! Hooray!!!!
Hope everyone had a wonderful New Years, and is looking forward to a great 2012, filled with endless news about our hard-working politicians ripping each other to shreds!!!
Wicked Boston 
