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Author: wrekehavoc

guilty pleasure monday: in the midnight hour (wilson pickett)

Posted on August 11, 2008 by wrekehavoc

it’s time for another soul edition of guilty pleasure monday, which means its time for wicked pickett:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2blEJ3hVYo&feature=related

gee, so this must be the video that inspired the brady bunch’s dance moves in sunshine day! the bradys probably ditched the tambourines for safety reasons, i’m sure.

grammy legend wilson pickett, raspy-voiced devil known for land of 1,000 dances, BS’s favorite mustang sally, and funky broadway (a song that has driven me, at times, to substitute anything but funky, funky broadway in the lyrics. f’rinstance, instead of:

Every town I go in, there’s a street
Name of the street, ha
Funky, Funky Broadway
Down on Broadway
There’s a nightclub
Now, now, name of the nightclub, now baby
Funky, Funky Broadway

substitute, hell, anything:

Every football team I see, there’s a player
Name of the player, ha
Funky, Funky Broadway
Down on Broadway
There’s an plumber
Now, now, name of the plumber, now baby
Funky, Funky Broadway

and so on, nonsensically. it drives me insane in a bad earworm way.) wicked pickett had a troubled life, from start to finish. you could hear it in his voice, a voice you could imagine screaming at you in a smoky bar as you gingerly moved away from him for fear of getting your ass kicked.

but it’s a voice that emoted. it’s a voice that pleaded to be heard, a voice that growled at you, and not always in a malevolent way. in the midnight hour, written by pickett and stax backup legend steve cropper, is a song which moves the emphasis onto the second beat, a bit of a revelation in the 1960s. it wasn’t the first to do that, but it is one of the earlier hit songs demonstrating that that i can think of. it’s just a great hip-shaker.

and oh my LORD, open your ears and listen to that horn section. it’s not a technically complex line, but it kicks. admittedly, add the memphis horns to mary had a little lamb and i’ll adore it. but they open the song up into a new level of soul transcendence.

if only they could have lifted pickett’s soul.

we are the champions

Posted on August 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

dee, over at On The Curb, has bestowed upon me an honor i will treasure for as long as i can remember without the aid of gingko biloba or yellow sticky memo pads: the arte y pico award. i don’t know spanish well, but apparently, it has something to do with art and male naughty bits. so dee tells me.

see, you may remember dee as my sister quintuple-y-removed who got the good grades in science but who ended up in alabama through no fault of her own. (when in doubt, blame your ancestors.) thank you miss dee. it means a lot, considering most of the words you say usually result in my needing a restroom because i am laughing too hard (and i’m not sure from which place which body fluid will emerge first.)

The award. Let me steal dee’s words, which she borrowed from Grandy, which, in turn, were built on a swamp and then burned down, and then… aw heck. you get the picture. and the rules. must. have. rules.

About the Arte Y Pico Award

This award was created to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creativity and their talents, and for contributing to the blogging world in whatever medium. When you receive this award it is considered a “special honor�?. Once you have received this award, you are to pass it on to 5 others. What a wonderful way to show some love and appreciation to your fellow bloggers!

The rules for passing this honor on are..

1) Pick 5 blogs that you would like to award this honor to.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico�? blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award from Arte Y Pico.

my nominees, in no particular order because i love them all:

hey ho kelly go: the woman formerly known as o for obsessive. simply put, she’s a rockstar.

foolery: the east coast girls are hip; i really dig the styles they wear. and the southern girls with the way they write, they knock me out when i’m down there… but no one has much on this california girl, who makes me laugh so hard one minute and then tells touching family stories the next. and best of all, she doesn’t get offended when i quote monty python.

surely you nest: when i think green, when i think crunchy, when i think earth mother, and when i think of the person with the biggest heart that i know, i think of mamabird. caution: visiting her site on certain days may make you hungry

pillowbook: when i want to catch up on politics, learn more about the challenges of being an independent film maker, or simply follow the antics of the adorable unreliable narrator, (which i do most days), i catch up with cynematic. and i cheer her on. she’s good people.

pink asparagus: admittedly, pink is a new pal, found through my pal kellygo. i’m really digging her thought-provoking posts. you might, too

man, there are so many other people i heart who should get this, too. hell, if you’re on my blogs i heart list, consider yourselves nominated. cos i heart you, too. (and i have to catch up and put other folks on there. if you are missing and you want to be there, please drop me a comment and let me know. cos blog reading is fundamental.)

no rain

Posted on August 6, 2008 by wrekehavoc

a sort of continuation of yesterday’s post. because you know you want to hear me whine that. much. more. but fear not. i promise; today is a happy post. a shiny, happy post. a post with a happy buzz.

a post with no rain.

somedays, i feel like a professional patient. i have been to a pulmonologist; a gastroenterologist; a cardiologist; a dermatologist; a hematologist/oncologist; an infectious diseases doctor; a gynecologist (well, once a year, whether i like it or not); an orthopedist; and my regular, run-of-the-mill primary care dude… and my dentist twice a year, of course. and that’s just in the past year. and that’s just for me. not to mention the doc-in-the-box i hit up a few weeks ago when my lymph nodes went kerflooey (and my brother-the-doctor, alias BTD, told me to stop taking antibiotics and suck it up… which of course was the correct thing to do once i found i didn’t have strep. lord, i hate when he’s right.)

i spend a fair amount of time with doctors, and not just because i’m related to one, either. most treat me well. some treat me with complete disrespect. i have learned to appreciate many of them and the help they give me. and i have learned, over time, that very few of them really know much about CVID. they know pieces of the elephant, but they’ve never actually seen the elephant. (l’elephant, c’est moi?) (BTD tells me that in his years of practice, it would have never occurred to him to learn much about CVID until he actually had to.) i spend time educating them in a way that is hopefully not pedantic. (my brother larry says i am often pedantic. i try to use the word pedantic in a sentence as much as possible, just to show him i am not pedantic. phooey on you-ey, big brother 😉

seriously, as much as i like sharing what i know with doctors (such as explaining what my IgG, IgA, and IgM numbers mean), it does get exhausting, especially since i would appreciate more guidance than what i can get from the internet. i often marvel at the fact that if BTD wasn’t: a) a doctor, and b) a person who understands what CVID is, i would be fumbling in the dark, looking for that damn pachyderm myself.

so it was with intense pleasure that i met with the immunologist today. i hadn’t seen him since november 2006, when i decided to plunge into a semi-denial state and get a second opinion, an opinion which, of course, corresponded perfectly with his own. sure, i hate his parking lot in bethesda. but he is the best. la creme de la creme. he knows his stuff. he’s up on current research. he listens. (he even let me give him exercise pointers since he, too, just had arthroscopic knee surgery.)

and he can advise.

no, i still have CVID, and i’ll probably have CVID for the remainder of my hopefully plentiful days. i only have to have chest and sinus scans if i appear to be having trouble in those areas (and not mandatorily every year like other people have guessed. it is like he channeled my brother.) yes, he agrees with BTD that getting breakdowns of my IgG groups is not necessary (damn, i hate when my brother is right.) and yes, he will help me steer the train. come back in six months unless i have a problem or concern.

and keep those IVs of gammaglobulin flowin’.

finally. it’s like i found someone besides my brother who is familiar with my tribe of bees.

shakin'

Posted on August 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

hello, and welcome to another edition of things that scare me.

what terrifies you? (i mean, besides john mccain as president.) while i don’t have any diagnosed phobias at this time, there are a lot of things that scare the bejeezus out of me. not the usual suspects, i suppose. f’rinstance, spiders don’t bother me. going outside without makeup is a daily experience, so that doesn’t cut it. and i like rollercoasters as long as my feet are not hanging free.

so, things that scare me, in no apparent order:

1) having veins that don’t cooperate with people who are trying to put in IVs. like yesterday, when i ended up having seven or eight holes put in my arms and hands. (two in my right hand, one in my left hand, three in my right arm, one or two — not entirely sure — in my left arm. you should see the lovely purpley-bluey green bruise on my arm.) apparently, between scarring and collapsing veins (as well as 3 sets of IV tubing that weren’t cutting it), my arms didn’t want to cooperate with yesterday’s treatment, a treatment which ultimately took over 7.5 hours to complete. my hand was so swollen that i couldn’t get my college ring off.

i absolutely adore the nurses who take good care of me. i cannot say enough good things about them. i was so upset at one point, i burst into tears, not because being poked hurt (and it did, especially in the hands), but because i felt like i was making their lives difficult. bless them both; they were upset because they didn’t want to make me the human pincushion.

i live in fear that one day, my veins won’t permit an IV thanks to scarring. it’s so unfair; i’ve never, ever been an IV drug user, and yet i apparently have the veins of one. (note to self: i wonder how keith richard’s veins are doing these days?) the day that happens, i will end up with a PIC line, an idea that frightens me not only because of how it is put in but also because those thingies are prone to providing me with a whopper of an infection. which brings me to…

2) infections. normal people don’t worry too much about them. after all, they’ll take an antibiotic for 7-10 days, and off they’ll go. unfortunately, i am allergic to two different families of antibiotics. i have to use antibiotics that are safe for me sparingly, as i will definitely need them when/if i experience The Infection To End All Infections. which could be a simple infection for a regular person, but not for me. which leads me to…

3) not being around for my kids. well, duh. this is every parent’s fear, isn’t it? when you’ve been in a situation where, out of the blue, you lose things you need to live, then you are never the same again. one day, i was walking down the street, having lunch with old friends, doing my job. the next day, i was in the hospital with almost no platelets. if i had done something to precipitate this change, it would make more sense to me.

but i didn’t. just because i possess some wonderful genes, i magically developed ITP, then CVID. boom! everything changed.

in some ways, it has been a blessing. my entire life perspective has changed to the point where i think i’m living most of my values for once instead of glancing at them, like a passenger on the subway watching the blur of movement out the train window. and every day, i attempt to be healthy, though i’m far from perfect on that front.

i’m in remission from ITP. i’m in treatment for CVID. and i’m still shakin’.

and i’m trying to push back the thoughts over when the other shoe will drop.

guilty pleasure monday: hold on (i'm comin')

Posted on August 4, 2008 by wrekehavoc

it’s august, which around these parts is hotter than july. in honor of the heat, i’m making a leetle leitmotif for this month’s picks: my favorite guilty pleasures — in soul!

kicking off this month’s faves is sam and dave’s hold on (i’m comin’) written by none other than chef isaac hayes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHfWyEaTIjk&feature=related

sam and dave were part of the stax roster of the 1960s/early 70s, a dream team of memphis soul artists backed by musicians like steve cropper and duck dunn. admittedly, i didn’t know any of this stuff until the blues brothers came out. that was when i had my first taste of a musical genre i adore. then, about 12 years ago, a colleague of mine lent me a HUGE box set of stax. (note to BS: a box i am still looking to obtain.)

and i was smitten.

now, i love my share of motown, but where motown records of that era sounded more sanitized and pop-py, the stuff stax put out was earthy and funky. kind of like the beatles versus the stones: i like them both, but for very different reasons. and people love soul man, i thank you, and wrap it up — lord knows they’ve been covered a bunch of times.

but my favorite sam & dave song is still hold on (i’m comin’) — which was sanitized by the record company to hold on (i’m a-comin) because someone somewhere was afraid of the sexual connotation. they didn’t have worried — it was what dave porter, the co-author of the tune, told isaac hayes when hayes wanted to write this song and porter, evidentally, was taking too much time in the toilet. (you just never know what will inspire an artist.) somehow, i guess they thought it was better to sound like a shuffling racist caricature than it was to sound like a sex machine. oh well.

i just love the message of the song — that the singer’s love is reliable and unwavering, even in times of trouble. it’s what i always teach my children when i tell them i love you no matter what. yes, they may grow up to be white collar criminals or axe murderers, but they will still be my babies. and i don’t want them to be sad and lonely.

see, i will bake them that cake with the file in it. no matter what.

guilty pleasure monday: rescue me (fontella bass)

Posted on July 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

what’s a fontella bass?

a) a treasured instrument used by the likes of bassists like mccartney and sting

b) a fish found in the depths of the mississippi

c) an amazing soul singer who went without writing credits for her biggest hit for decades

well, duh.

fontella bass is still around and singing her heart out, especially in gospel circles. but the lady is best known for a song you’ve probably heard on commercials, movie soundtracks, and if you’re like me, in your head on days when your kids fight over who is breathing whose air. rescue me, released in 1965, is a fun song, with a thumping horn and drum section. for years, i thought it was aretha singing it — at the time, i didn’t know there were others with heart-stoppingly huge voices out there. but there are.

rescue me is also a song that gave bass a share of heartache for a long, long time. was it because she was a woman? was it because she was african-american? hard to prove, of course, but for a long time, no one was willing to give her credit as a co-author of the song, which resulted in financial losses for her, not to mention the fact that she notes (on her website) that she was known as a troublemaker for demanding her rights. (bet that made it hard to get work.) finally, in 1990, she started to get paid for the song, only to have to file suit against American Express (and Ogilvy & Mather, the ad agency) when she heard the song used on an Amex commercial without her permission.

i hope someone invents a typeface named after her. it would be bold, sans serif, that’s for certain.

1-2-3-4

Posted on July 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

you knew it was inevitable.

of course, it will never top my all-time favorite: furry happy monsters.

c’mon monsters — you don’t have to cry!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkHM8xG6i8o

oh. if only mike mills would marry me. then again, we both have sons with the same name. could make step-parenting a challenge. (not to mention the pesky fact i’m already spoken for.)

letting go

Posted on July 23, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i didn’t realize how easy i had it with one child until i had a second.

and i would never, ever trade either of them in for all the tea in china (though there are days when i might give them away, especially on days when they fight about the most picayune things. like who is taking up more space on the planet.)

but this week, while BC is at sleepaway camp with the Girl Scouts for the first time, i am feeling a little blue. i haven’t gotten any boohooey phone calls begging me to drive out to boofoo the middle of nowhere camp to come and pick her up. i’m pleasantly surprised by that fact, as i intentionally picked the camp closest to home in case i got the call at some ungodly hour and had to schlep my ass out, half-asleep, and collect the child. after all, when girlfriend found out that there was no electricity in the cabins, that they had to pee in latrines, that they would have to CLEAN aforementioned latrines, and that there were bugs in them there woods… well, we were not amused.

but she’s still there.

it is giving me the opportunity to really focus on jools, my little big man, who will be hitting elementary school soon (and probably hard.) we play toss the dog with his webkinz. we watch the magic schoolbus, especially the one where they all turn into bats. i want to be a bat, he tells me, because i want to eat bugs. (charmed, i’m sure.) but it’s leaps and bounds better than his current favorite, ben ten: alien force. (yep. the interest in aliens is completely BS’s contribution to the gene pool. but the fact that he rewinds it multiple times to hear the theme song, which he loves — all mine.)

i love the fact that it’s all about him, as it never really is on most days. that’s part of the fun of not being the first child; although when you’re the youngest, you eventually get your turn… of course, you get it as a teenager, when you really don’t want all that much one-on-one time with your folks. typically speaking, anyway.

still, the house is so quiet. i don’t miss people fighting.

but i miss my girl.

i don’t want to tell her, though. she’s the type who will never leave my side if she thinks i’m sad. and part of being a mom — maybe the toughest part about being a mom — is letting go.

if this is just a week, i can’t imagine what’s in store for me later.

this party sucks

Posted on July 21, 2008 by wrekehavoc

okay, i really wanted to entitle this why six flags america sucks, but as i like to keep my titles thematically consistent (hey, you hadn’t noticed by now that in 2008, they’re all song titles?) AND, well, any excuse to mention the slickee boys…

anyway, for the past few years, we’ve bought annual passes to six flags. going once pretty much pays for it, and going more than once makes it more cost-effective… cost-effective until you buy items at the park, like food, water, and anything else. but that’s life in amusement park land, of course. i don’t mind when it’s a special day; and every summer, i take one day and take BC to the park alone, and i take jools to the park alone on another. we only go either on weekends early or late in the season or weekdays in the summer; this helps to combat massive crowds. this year, i have already taken both kids to the park, and i am more than underwhelmed. in fact, i can safely state that the park has gone to hell in a handcart. here’s why, in no particular order:

1. all those signs that tell people to keep it clean because employees’ families attend the park, too? how about some employees respecting MY family once in awhile? like not saying the word shit in front of my five year old? okay, so i’m a potty mouth, albeit a judicious one; i just don’t expect that sort of thing in regular conversation by a service employee who is in uniform and on the job.

2. gum. on my shoe. every time.

3. wave pool doesn’t open on time. ever. something to do with training lifeguards. hello? the pool is supposed to open at 11. it gives you a couple of hours to train them prior to park opening. oh, you mean it’s too cold to swim before then? you’re a lifeguard; get over yourself.

4. wave pool closes for 15 minutes every hour.

5. way too many unsupervised kids in wave pool, kids who don’t seem to care about whether they ride over someone on a raft. why do they even allow rafts in the wave pool?

6. way too many unsupervised kids in crocodile cal’s beach house. lifeguards circle the area, but i finally had to step in when my five year old was getting continually mowed down by other kids while waiting his turn for slides.

7. ditto for the baby pool area. there is an EXTREMELY thin yet high staircase to the top of the big slide there. it is covered in netting, which my son was able to move to a dangerous degree. and once on top, he was actually pushed around by boys and girls who were about 12. at least.

8. sylvester’s bounce and pounce? not open in the morning.

9. kiddy bumper cars? not open in the morning.

10. flume ride? not open at opening.

11. renegade rapids? not open til noon.

12. there’s one coaster that has never been open in the four or five years i have had season passes. looks like it would be fun, but i’ll never know.

13. why is the train only available to picnicking business groups? do you have any earthly idea how many little kids want to ride the choo choo?

14. 30 minutes to get two slices of cheese pizza. 30. minutes. with. a. hungry. five. year. old. boy. oh, and this wasn’t at peak time: this was at 2 pm on a monday afternoon.

15. witnessed female employee (princess was her name; and if she moved any slower, she would be moving backwards. the other lady, karouselle, lived up to her name, moving in circles) at papa johns (aforementioned pizza experience) actually give away another person’s whole pizza.

16. no manager present to discuss pizza situation.

17. at register, mentioned the issue to cashier. sorry, he said, we’re short-staffed. ultimately, he gave me a 20% discount on my two slices for my trouble. thus apparently, 30 minutes of my-special-day-with-my-boy-sucked-up-into-a-papajohns-vortex-of-doom = $2.60. whee.

18. no more pesky service staff at locker center near the front. sadly, when the computerized locker failed to work, there were no more pesky service staff to help us. nine year old daughter actually had to flag down passing employee, who radioed for help. help came 15 minutes later when daughter recognized the computer logo on a man passing by. daughter snagged said man and brought him over. (note to self: who needs assertiveness training classes for BC? send her to six flags and let her loose to find any employee who might actually help her in a situation.)

19. $1 off skill games coupon in six flags season pass coupon book apparently not applicable for the water-gun game this week. funny, it was applicable two weeks ago when BC played at the same booth, but now, water squirting is apparently no longer a skill, unlike what six flags itself says on its website:

Games

Ready for a little friendly competition? Come out to the park and show us what you’ve got. Step right up for long-range basketball, skee-ball, water gun races��-real games of skill. Team up with your group or go head-to-head. You might just win a prize for someone special.

shooting basketballs and skeeball apparently is. who knew?

20. as BS pointed out, if the water gun race is not a game of skill, then it is a game of chance, which is illegal, if i am not mistaken, in prince georges county.

21. two people must play in order for someone to win a prize in aforementioned non-game-of-skill. thus, you are paying $6 for a stuffed item made in china.

22. aforementioned stuffed item made in china has a GAPING hole in it, much like the gaping hole in identical item BC won a few weeks ago. wondering whether there was a child laborer stowed away in item. hope he or she was able to find freedom here.

23. on summer weekdays, it appears that every elementary through high school aged child in the county is present without any parents, in full bling and pushing past other kids who might actually be in front of them in line for anything.

24. have the balls in the looney toons prop warehouse ever been cleaned? has the looney toons prop warehouse ever been cleaned? i had the pleasure of sitting next to an opened bottle of orange soda today, spillage and all, and we were among the first people in the place.

and, finally,

25. the bathrooms? i’ll refrain from TMI, but in a word, EWWW.

i’m not entirely sure whether this is the case in all six flags. i had thought about taking the kids to six flags great adventure next week, but after our experiences so far this year, i am wondering whether the entire corporation is going kerflooey. there are so many amusement parks that do things well — disney, of course, and hersheypark, for two — so i have to wonder whether six flags simply cannot handle things.

i think this may be our last year for season passes.

guilty pleasure monday: against all odds

Posted on July 21, 2008 by wrekehavoc

when i was 19, i wanted nothing more than to look like rachel ward as she looked in the movie against all odds. i thought she was (and is!) incredibly gorgeous, with her dark swirls curving around her porcelain face. i got an ill-fated perm, a perm which haunts me to this day in family photos, a perm second only in ridiculousness to the horrific perm i had in 1988, when my then-boyfriend (now BS) announced: you look like a poodle.

(for the record, he has since learned to make criticisms comments more judiciously for fear of incurring the wrath of G-d a flood of tears.)

but in 1984, i cut my long straight hair and permed it, and i listened incessantly to phil collins’ title film track against all odds:

(ah yes. is that phil singing, or is it the aztec? or is it mayan? incan? south and central american history has never been my strength, though i’ll still take it on Jeopardy! long before i take Calculus for $200, Alex.)

ah, phil. (not to be confused with the group BS refers to as phil and the phils.) this was the point when phil went from being cool to being hot. and without calling up the spirit of Dr. Fahrenheit, there is a vast difference, musically, in being cool versus being hot. when phil was with genesis up until about 1981 or so, he was cool. he took musical chances. he wrote interesting, non-vapid songs. like this. i even liked his first two solo albums. no lie.

but then, he got very polished, and he had a musical midas touch that lasted for years. genesis got MTV-friendly. his songs became utterly obnoxious. (if i have to hear sussudio any more in my lifetime, i may spontaneously combust.) he produced everyone and their dog (Frida, Philip Bailey, Eric Clapton), showcasing his exceptional and unique gated reverb drum sound. i wanted to cheer him on; there’s something so likeable about him. but once you start writing disney soundtracks, you often become less musically interesting (though probably incredibly wealthy. old rockers never die: they either write cartoon soundtracks (billy joel, elton john), broadway musicals (billy joel, pete townshend), or go classical (billy joel, elvis costello, paul mccartney.) (note to self: what is UP with billy joel?)

the last song i can recall that he wrote that moved me to tears is against all odds. sure the movie, a remake of out of the past, is murky and convoluted, in spite of the saving grace that is rachel ward’s hair. but the song is powerful and showcases phil at his best: singing about lost love. i’d argue the best work he has ever done is when he is in searing emotional pain (see: Duke, Face Value, Hello, I Must Be Going). of course, i would never wish that on anyone, let alone someone as nice as phil; but i think once his life got in order, his music became less emotional and less gripping.

after divorce #3, phil has formally announced his retirement from music, at least from center stage. he’s going to sit back and collect memorabilia from the Alamo. i think that’s a nice euphemism, sort of like how politicians retire to spend more time with their families.

it’s against all odds that he might write another amazing classic. but i’ll never, ever count the bald guy out.