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Author: wrekehavoc

friday i'm in love

Posted on April 9, 2008 by wrekehavoc

somedays, a song follows you around for an entire day. and somedays, when you’re really, really lucky, you find out why in the end.

today, friday i’m in love followed me all around. (note to self: they’re preparing a bed for you at bellevue.)

i heard it on the radio around the time when i dropped BC off at school.

i heard it when i set rhapsody on random while i scrubbed the kitchen for the better part of the day. (i found evidence of a mouse yesterday. BS found an actual ex-mouse behind the stove. if that isn’t enough proof to all that i’m a terrible cook, then i just don’t know what. in short: move over, Raid. my cooking kills rodents. dead.)

i swear i even heard it at some point when i was driving BC to get a chest x-ray. or maybe it was just playing in my head, over and over. but i heard it. i know because i started mindlessly singing it:

Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday, Wednesday break my heart
Oh, Thursday doesn’t even start
It’s Friday I’m in love

i remembered thinking, why the HELL am i singing this song? it’s not friday; not even close. i’ve spent most of my day cleaning my kitchen, crying because i had to discard some of my children’s artwork (i need to stop collecting every single piece of paper before i drown in it), freaking out wondering when the familia rodentia were next going to pay a visit, going to the doctor for some much needed antibiotics, and shuttling children for x-rays and afterschool classes. not a whole lotta love there to be felt.

in fact, based on my experience thus far, it should be something closer to:

Monday — yay, they found my vein,
Tuesday, Wednesday such a pain
Oh, Thursday won’t hear me complain
It’s Friday I’m on drugs

(yes, the week’s going swimmingly. and yours?)

and then, bedtime. thought i’d made it through the day and that i was safe from robert smith’s gothic clutches. but listen: i hear a tiny little voice:

I don’t care if Monday’s blue
Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too
Thursday I don’t care about you
It’s Friday, I’m in love

it’s jools. somehow in his travels, he heard it, probably on BS’s mp3 player. (sometimes, those two listen to that instead of the radio when they commute together.) there was something so utterly weird and yet so utterly charming listening to a little boy singing those words.

we listened again — this time, on his rockabye baby: the cure CD. maybe looking at the cure might give a kid a nightmare, but somehow, their songs work so beautifully as nighttime treasures. especially, of course, when sung by my little dude.

it’s wednesday. and i’m in love.

missing you

Posted on April 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

jools,

mommy is home today without you. i know, i know: it’s tuesday, and tuesday is our day together. but since i didn’t get much done last week with you in my back pocket; and since i have wall-to-wall kids next week (thanks to a teacher workday, a jools-day-tuesday, and a day in the country a trip way out west to visit a pulmonary specialist for your sister), i thought it best that i try to accomplish a thing or two this week. plus, i must confess, i still am not feeling better yet, and yesterday’s IVIG treatment hasn’t yet worked its magic on my upper respiratory infection. it’s not exactly a mommy’s vacation; but i’m hoping i get something done and even get a little rest in between coughs.

so i went to whole foods today, just like you and i always do on tuesdays. i passed through the produce department, something that you always enjoy because you like pointing out all the fruits you find “disgusting” (and the few vegetables that you actually like.) i sauntered through the poultry and meat section, which you always hate because of the smell. next, the health and beauty aisle, where you and i always try out hand cream and decide which ones we like best. (i tried a nonscented one today since you weren’t there to tell me whether it smelled good or not.) i bought pita chips, remembering the fun we had last week making hummus and scooping it up with them. you know, we were together 24/7; and while we didn’t do a ton of consequence, i think we had fun. we even picked up a tiny bit, and you were able to do the cleaning chore you relish: cleaning the toilets. what you lack in thorough details, you make up for with gusto.

dude, i know you are currently abiding your time at school. but i’m missing you right now. somehow, tuesday is a day to hang together; and i realize that our tuesdays are going to be ending come september. tuesday has been a day for me and your sister or a day for me and you since BC was very, very small, and i negotiated a four-day work week for that very purpose. i like our days together.

i like the tempo of the days, the slow-motion, conscious moments we share. we may not be talking of anything of consequence, but we. are. there.

and right now, you aren’t. and i’m sad.

i think i’ll go put on nick jr. while i vacuum and pretend you’re here.

ni hao, kai-lan is just not supposed to bring me to tears.

guilty pleasure monday: stuck in the middle with you (stealers wheel)

Posted on April 7, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i’m stuck in the middle of the 1970s in guilty pleasure mondayville. there is SO MUCH fodder from the 1970s that i could cite. i may cite it all yet. (i’m sure you can’t wait.)

in fact, i should probably nominate my brother larry to write a guest column for guilty pleasure mondays. there is no one else who likes really awful 1970s music more. (yes, if there were a museum for bad 1970s music, he’d be the master curator — only he likes most of it.) and besides, y’all need to meet larry. he is the smartest, funniest, and nicest one of we three kids.

now that i think of it, it may even become my mission to make His Laziness Mr. Attila the Hun my beloved middle brother contribute a guilty pleasure one day, if only because it will give me hours of fun. and a day off 😉

in the meantime, i bring you a song i absolutely adore and have done since i first heard it on my friend jeanne’s jukebox: stuck in the middle with you by stealers wheel. i actually had two friends who had jukeboxes in their basements; but as i spent a lot more time in jeanne’s basement, i had a much greater familiarity with her jukebox, filled with lots of 1970s hits — as it was the 1970s at the time — and, much to jeanne’s chagrin, her ballet recital record. yes, a parent in that house had a good sense of humor and stuck the 45 (remember those?) in the last jukebox slot. whenever i wanted to piss jeanne off, i would press it. she’d go spare.

but i digress. per usual.

i don’t think much else happened to this UK band after this hit, which has been covered by at least one jillion different groups; but a few years later, the lead singer, gerry rafferty, ended up with a few hits of his own; but this early 70s group put out a song with an unforgettable guitar riff… so unforgettable that sheryl crow stole it in all i wanna do. (lucky for my girl sheryl, i love that song. and considering her brilliant choice in first names — spelled correctly, no less — it is difficult for me to get too annoyed by the creative ripoff. instead, i will consider it an homage to this earlier work.)

but why, why, WHY did quentin tarantino have to go and ruin it all by using it in a lighthearted scene in that fun, rascally romp known as reservoir dogs?

yeah. i’m definitely asking larry to write a column. i need the time to get certain images out of my brain.

bungle in the jungle

Posted on April 3, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BS has returned! the bat is gone! all’s right with our little world! alert the media! and yet here i am, still focusing on wildlife. go figure.

we have been steve irwin fans since i-dunno-when. BS and i called him dingo boy; and we loved to watch him chase animals all over the place. i especially remember whenever his wife terri entered the picture. when i was pregnant with BC back in 1998, she was pregnant with bindi. we used to hoot and howl whenever clueless steve would put terri’s life in danger, asking her to do things tough for a normal person, let alone a person in the family way: c’mon ter, let’s scale this cliff and make our way down into the [insert scary, dangerous animal type here]-infested area! yep. the only scale i was near was the OBGYN’s at that point; and the only danger i would consider putting myself into was fighting someone at the supermarket for the last pint of chubby hubby.

i loved the fact that the irwin’s two kids were the same ages as mine. and i was wildly astonished by the poise with which bindi spoke at her dad’s funeral. she is an articulate young lady with an apparent passion for animals, though there are times on her kid’s show that she seems like she might be turning into some sort of hyper-energetic, disney-fied being. i love this family, and i really want to root for them.

that’s why i am so sad to read about bob irwin, steve’s dad, leaving the australia zoo. bob, as you might know, is the actual founder of the australia zoo. he not only has lost his son, steve, but i believe he has also lost his first wife. terri denies any sort of family feud, but you have to wonder what exactly would make a man walk away from something he built up from nothing, especially in a time when terri is being sued. there are reports that terri is trying to make the zoo a disney-like destination, with hotels and spas. while several media outlets were willing to pay him for an exclusive interview, bob chose to give his one and only interview, for free, to the aussie ABC. it’s all so strange and somewhat suspicious.

another thing i wonder about: there’s an awful lot of attention on bindi. the girl is clearly being groomed to follow in her father’s footsteps. you have to wonder whether she is missing out on a regular childhood, complete with opportunities to explore other interests. who knows: she could be the next best painter, brain surgeon, poet. i’m sure there’s a certain internal pressure at work here — the good and obedient child wants to do whatever she can do to honor her father’s legacy. but at what cost to herself?

oh, and what about bob? you know, the little four-year-old dude? with all the attention paid to his sister, what does that mean for him? does he absolutely hate his sister? is he jealous?

i hate to watch families implode. especially this one.

driver 8

Posted on April 2, 2008 by wrekehavoc

driver 8, take a break. we’ve been on this shift too long.

i’ve been single-parenting it since sunday morning. and i love my kids. but i’m so very, very glad that BS just called and said he’s on an earlier flight home today, possibly home by dinnertime.

the nice thing about single-parenting it is that the rules are all mine. if we want to eat chocolate for dinner, we can. (fret not. we didn’t.) if we want to make a tent and sleep in it, we can. if we want to sleep a little later, or wear crazy clothes, we can. dance party with the clash? sure. cos i’m the mom, and i say so.

the bad thing, of course, is that the kids cry for their daddy. they miss him and his regulated schedule, his soft laugh, his scratchy beard, his crankiness. every bit of him, they miss.

i do, too.

(here’s the visual: i am self-medicating. it’s mid-morning, and i’m eating two squares of dark chocolate. it will make me happy. don’t tell me it won’t.)

single-parenting has brought me some stellar experiences over the past few days.

1) the aforementioned dead bat who, by the way, is still very much dead. and still on the lawn, waiting for BS’s special way with a shovel.

2) jools. home. every. single. day. i know many of you do this voluntarily, but i am unused to a very active child, 24/7. we’ve been having a lot of fun together, making hummus and guacamole and such, but i haven’t been getting as much done as i need to do. still, no one is dying because my house is a mess, so i’ll lighten up.

3) BC’s cough. BC has had a cough since sometime last year. (when the pediatrician asked her last week how long she’s been coughing, she answered: since first grade. and she was dead serious.) nothing has stopped it; not inhalers, not singulair; not voodoo dolls. (heh. just kidding. i think.) it’s really beginning to bug her; sunday night, it took her quite awhile to settle down to sleep because of it. i finally put my foot down and told the pediatrician that we need to visit a pulmonary person.

but then, we had to do the medical limbo. for some reason, the pulmonologist can only accomodate people with our stellar insurance (and that’s not sarcastic talk — it is the insurance gold standard around here, and a PPO to boot) in their leesburg office. huh? so i have to pull madam out of school and go through rush hour traffic to get her to the doctor’s office in about two week’s time. yay.

but wait, there’s more: oh, can we add sinus waters study to our pediatrician’s chest x-ray order? a wha?

but dutifully, i get the pediatrician’s office to fax it. i call to check it has made it. apparently, the pediatrician checked the wrong box — it’s an x-ray, not a CT scan. (oh really? you’d think the doctor would know that, the receptionist said. i guess he’d know that before i did, being a real doctor, unlike me.) and around and around we go again.

all the while, jools is glued to nick jr. because i suck as a mom.

so today, for fun (and before the wednesday afternoon carpooling duties hit me), we will go for the aforementioned x-rays.

i can hardly wait.

4) yesterday, a magical experience where a friend of BC’s insisted that she had cleared an afterschool playdate with her babysitter. pleasepleaseplease let BC take the bus home with me. pulllllease!!! i said i would drive BC over and just check with the babysitter, since we had not yet met, much less cleared anything. the babysitter was rather surprised at the idea of a playdate; we apologized and moved on.

5) while driving home from said non-playdate, lecturing BC about why i don’t just send her on the bus with any friend who insists that a playdate is ok with the adult-on-duty, i saw a police officer with a laser, and it was pointed at ME. and whoomp: there it was. 37 in a school zone. i have actually made it to my advanced age having never gotten pulled over for speeding. i’m an excellent driver, you know. and now, i’m speeding, albeit not wildly, but technically speeding nonetheless. don’t cry, mama, BC said. you can’t cry in front of a police officer.

oh girl. yes. you. can.

the officer took my license and registration and went back to his motorcycle to call it in. julian kept asking me what was going on. i muttered and muttered. leave mama alone, i heard BC bark at jools. i muttered that my husband and his brother, a police officer, were probably going to laugh at me over this one day. i pictured it in my mind’s eye: yeah, my wife is such an idiot, she doesn’t know what to do when she’s pulled over for a ticket. i muttered because it kept me from crying over my very first traffic infraction at age 40+.

the officer returned and started telling me about prepaying the ticket versus the court date, etc. etc. suddenly, a voice shrilly commanded from the backseat:

exCUSE MEEEEEEEEEE!

it was jools. oh shit. now i’ll get ticketed for some parenting violation, too: this woman has rude children. lock her up.

please officer: i’ve been home alone with two kids for a few days, and i’m a little wound. can you take pity on me and just ticket me over the car and ignore the fact that my young son doesn’t grasp the concept of decorum? pleaseohpleaseohplease?

excuse me, i said to the officer. okay, jools, what do you want?

no, i want to talk to the policeman.

doubleshitdoubleshitdoubleshit. i peered at the officer through my window. is it ok, sir?

sure. what can i do for you? he asked jools.

my uncle mikey is a police officer! he announced to the officer.

is he really? the officer asked. where is he a police officer?

in new jersey, i replied.

BC pulled the facts together: my uncle mikey is a police officer in NEW JERSEY!

well then, he replied, i’m going to give you a warning, thanks to uncle mikey. he crossed out my court date and wrote W A R N I N G over it. slow down, okay?

yes, sir. i took a deep breath as he walked away from my car. karma pulled through for me. all those times i let people in instead of cutting them off; all those times as a patient and courteous driver — it all came back to me in the guise of a kind police officer.

and it also made me thankful for my brother-in-law. my husband has only one brother. lucky for me, he happens to be a terrific person who happens to be a police officer. he risks his life daily, and he’s a person we are all very proud of in this family. and i bet he has been in this situation before and he has been kind. i just know it. he has a good heart.

i waved at the police officer as we drove past; he waved back in that serious, Adam-12 sort of way. i bet he has an insane sister-in-law, too.

last night, jools got a honkin’ big bowl of his favorite ice cream. and BC finished her solid chocolate easter bunny.

my rules, cos i’m the adult-on-duty. and i think that’s fair.

guilty pleasure monday: magnet and steel (walter egan)

Posted on March 31, 2008 by wrekehavoc

the 80s were often silly times, musically speaking. but there is inherent silliness, methinks, in a lot of music from the 70s (music that now resides mostly on office radio stations and in elevators). that’s around the time band members really started embracing the term artist. yes, a word to describe geniuses like pablo picasso (who was never called an asshole) and my fave, paul cezanne (the father of cubism) was now being bandied about by people to describe people like leo sayer.

there’s something inherently silly about thinking this is serious art. (sorry, OTC. i know that’s a fave of yours.) enjoy it, sure. and i suppose it is art because it simply exists. but don’t get all hoity-toity and pretentious with me. it’s a hershey kiss when what i really want is some serious belgian chocolate or at least a little cadbury imported from england. i like hershey’s, but it’s not exactly what i want on most days.

but today is guilty pleasure monday, so i’ll tell you want i want. (what i really really want.) magnet and steel by walter egan. back in the day, the best way to get a song plugged into sales overdrive was to get some heavy-duty backup singers; and that’s what seems to have happened with this little gem. i think both stevie nicks and lindsey buckingham sing backup on this puppy — you certainly can hear stevie nicks, no problem. i love the way the song lazily propels itself forward, kind of like BC on a school morning when she dawdles to get dressed, eat breakfast, and get her backpack together before she ends up late.

anyway, i love this song precisely because it sounds so 1950ish with a slow rock groove, only to get all 1970s with the bridge/chorus, then revert. the bells, which you can hear if you listen reallyreally closely in that part, add a sort of sonic rainbow. (anyone else feel the love? groovy.)

and, if nothing else, the lyric you are the magnet and i am the steel is just a terribly clever pickup line. i’m imagining guys in leisure suits or mid-70s bellbottomed coolness using this and probably succeeding.

while walter egan is still quite active — apparently, he is teaching a popular music course at georgetown — i don’t think he ever had another hit. (please correct me if i am wrong.) i wonder if anyone else remembers this song. anyone under the age of 40ish, that is.

ars longa; vita brevis.

sigh. i suppose as long as there are light rock stations gently lulling office workers into a midafternoon daze, there will always be a home for a lot of 1970s top 40 fodder, stuff that people probably, at the time, thought was work that would stand the test of time as seriously important, especially with two members of fleetwood mac tied on for good measure. like this one. even if it’s not great art, you can still dance to it.

s l o w l y.

three is a magic number

Posted on March 30, 2008 by wrekehavoc

yes it is. it’s a magic number.

and in my case, things come in threes. not always fabulous ones, but three. no more, no less. you don’t have to guess.

1) BC, jools, and i were getting into the car when suddenly, i heard squeals. EWWWWWWWWWW! and NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! i looked quizzically at my kids, who are pointing to a tulip, which has not yet bloomed with flower but which has blossomed with a dead bat beneath it. no, not a mouse. not a rat. not a squirrel. not any of these woodland creatures. a B-A-T bat.

animal removal is not part of my contract.

2) woodland being the day’s leitmotif, BC, jools and i decide to take a nature walk behind BC’s school. we walk all the way up a huge hill, then down a steep one, dodging the woodland creature poop, and visiting the creek. i say visiting because i know better than to tempt fate: i will not take my kids too close to a creek when it’s chilly out and fate is laughing at me, daring me to tempt her. no one is getting soaked on my watch. nature’s no fun when you can’t interact with it, BC complains.

too bad, i counter. fate freaks me out more than nature does. i know fate is waiting for me, waiting for that perfect moment, waiting to hit that perfect beat.[note to self: bronski beat definitely qualifies as a guilty pleasure moment. be sure to annoy people with that down the road.]

we move on to the schoolyard playground and play. i am responsible for snack at brownies, and i figure we can play for a short while and then leave with just enough time to drop BC off for her scouting fun. only, too bad for me. i just give my two minute warning to the kids when jools says: uh. is there a bathroom here?

uhm. there is. when school is open. do you need a bathroom? i ask.

uh. it’s ok. i am just a little wet.

i do the mom eye roll. r e a l l y?

uh, well no.

the dude who has been day-trained since, well, since a long time, decides to let the rains fall, metaphorically speaking, just at the moment when i need to pack the kids up and rush them over to the brownie meeting where i must deliver a child and some snack. on time.

crap.

we race home, change, race back, and all’s right with the world. well, for most of the world. not the bat, who is still there, pushing up a tulip.

3) i decide nature is overrated. we are inside now, and inside we will be until tomorrow. for reasons i don’t really understand, jools decides to punch a seedling i have growing in the sunroom. the day before, he took out his little boy scissors and decided to trim some of the leaves of the seedling. leaves it didn’t need to leave. and now, he has given it a whack, something i didn’t know you could do to a tiny plant. it would just have never occurred to me.

i figure the boy is mad at nature. mother nature deposited a bat in our front yard. mother nature neglected to call him in time, so to speak. so whack, take that, mother nature! if only the boy understood: it’s not nice to fool mother nature.

i have a feeling we ought to stay indoors for the rest of the week.

sick city

Posted on March 27, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i look a little like this when i’m sick.

after weeks of little people coughing on me, trips to ~~petri dishes teeming with germs~~ the pediatrician’s office, and an evening in cold night air, i’ve come down with a dilly of a cold, preceded by a day of never-ending bloody nose. mmm. you want to come and have a cup of tea with me, i’m sure.

so i’m bummed. i was going to have lunch with some old friends, but i want to share love, not germs. i’m going to nap, but when i’m sick, i spend time just vegetating. last night, while surrounded by tissues and attempting to breathe, i watched a new show, i know my kid’s a star, starring danny bonaduce. i admit that there are times when i am addicted to reality tv like the next person; i remember the early series’ of real world on mtv (you know, before people on the show slept with other people on the show — at least, not on camera.) and i loved watching the osbournes in spite of the fact that the kids made me crazy with their spoiled behavior.

but this show pulls reality tv into a shameful place.

all parents think the sun shines out of their kids’ backsides. and now, there seems to be a serious wave of stage parents who must see their children more as a mealticket instead of as their loving offspring. young people who started out as child film, tv, or movie stars are imploding all around us: britney spears, lindsay lohan, even mccauley culkin. and yet somehow, these people overlook that. they claim their kids want this. and maybe the kids do.

you know, my kids want to eat candy all. day. long. it’s my job as a mom to say no, not just to be mean, but to teach them and protect them.

honestly, i didn’t see a talented kid in the bunch, anyway; but that didn’t stop parents from spending serious money and time on making their kid a star. except for one, all of the parents were clueless about how the business of hollywood works. and it’s abundantly clear that one parent, rocky, is pushing her star fantasy on her child. she clearly needs to be on camera and won’t let her daughter practice alone. the pressure she puts on her kid is unbelievable: let’s buy that dreamhouse.

why not just let the kid get barbie’s dreamhouse instead?

reality tv is exploitative; and if you’re a grownup and you sign up for that, then fine. but there’s something incredibly creepy about the fact that these are children. little kids who are going to be humiliated from coast to coast. it’s wrong.

i’m going to go take some cold medicine. to blot out the pain.

DIY

Posted on March 25, 2008 by wrekehavoc

you can pick your friends.

you can pick your nose.

but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.

–anonymous

maybe you can’t pick your friend’s nose, but you can hire people to pick the lice out of your kid’s head. in fact, you can outsource all sorts of parenting challenges, from toilet training to saying no. some of the things you can get someone else to do for you, quoting NY Magazine:

… TEACH HIM HOW TO RIDE A BIKE
… TAKE HIM FISHING
… TALK TO HIM
… IMPART GOOD BREEDING
… TEACH HIM THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
… GO ON COLLEGE TOURS
… DRIVE HIM EVERYWHERE

understand that i’m not completely innocent here. when BC was young, we had a hell of a time teaching her how to sleep, compounded by a never-ending ear infection, reflux, and an inability to gain weight, which meant she needed to be fed around the clock. i read books, i tried a zillion things. the girl wouldn’t sleep. it caused problems in our health, our family life, our work and everything else.

to make a long story short, when jools was beginning to exhibit serious sleep issues, i heard of a magical person who would help us teach hellboy how to sleep. it was a good thing, too, because BS and i could not agree how to handle the problem. i probably would have never let jools sleep anywere except in our bed or in my arms until he was 40; BS would have simply closed the door and walked off into the sunset, leaving the boy to scream. all. night. long.

(when you’re sleep-deprived, few ideas seem insane.)

this was nearly five years ago, but for $300, this person performed nothing short of a miracle. she taught us how to teach our son to sleep. her sleep solution, somewhere between my and BS’s ideas about sleep training, put us dazed parents on the same page, allowed us to continue dream feeds for a time (jools, too, was underweight), and get the boy to sleep through the night pretty rapidly. the dude is still the best sleeper in the house, and it’s all thanks to the extremely wonderful magical sleep person. if i ever see her again, i will hug her endlessly.

by teaching us, she saved my family.

i often wonder about why some people have children. i think kids are just sort of part of an expected tradition in our society: get married, get a house, have kids. but some people simply should not breed. maybe they simply aren’t ready; maybe they’ll never be ready; maybe other things are more important to them. get a cat; don’t make a baby. unlike any other relationship in your life, the parent-child bond cannot be broken. you can divorce your spouse, ignore your siblings, end friendships.

but your child will always be your child. not an accessory. a living person who requires your involvement and your guidance. it doesn’t matter whether both parents work inside or outside of the home. it’s not the quantity of the time you spend — it’s the quality. and while every single solitary moment does not need to be a Mr. Rogers moment, there are certain things that a parent ought to do. and there are certain things a parent should want to do.

i wonder why parents outsource certain activities. teaching your kid to ride a bike and taking them fishing (or shopping or whatever your recreational activity of choice) — these are fun times not to be missed. and what parent doesn’t want to be there to ask and/or field questions when touring a college? (you can bet your ass i am going to make sure i find out about the party situation on campus and be as involved as the kids will let me when the time comes.)

and simply talking to your child? discussing sex? teaching him/her how to be a decent person? hello??? this is why you’re here. to share your ideas about how to be a kind and contributing member of society. it’s one thing if you need guidance on how to do any of these things; as the cliché goes, kids don’t come with a manual. so seek out help if you need it with some of the thornier parts of parenthood. read books. talk to clergy or professionals. ask friends or relatives.

but when the actual doing needs to get done, do it yourself.

guilty pleasure monday: what’s he got by the producers

Posted on March 24, 2008August 14, 2014 by wrekehavoc

ah, it’s guilty pleasure monday again. all the guilt. all of the pleasure. (at least for me, anyway.) if you’ve heard of this one, then you’re probably my age, or maybe a teensy whit younger or older. it’s a tiny little subset of american humanity, and it’s probably the only group who may actually recall this evanescent blip on the new wave radar.

the producers were an very early staple on very early MTV — you know, the station which formerly played music videos but now shows music videos only at random hours and moments, sandwiched between stupid reality shows and dorky dramas featuring incredibly spoiled people who have no grasp of reality? yeah, that one.

i loveloveloved watching videos on early MTV. didn’t care if people were just standing and faux playing in front of a moving background. loved it anyway. before that, i would watch videos during half-hour shows on my local cable station. i still remember watching split enz and devo being sooooo awed by the direction in which music seemed to be going. finally, something different from the 1970s pap which, while i loved, i had outgrown.

and i adored watching music on TV. i lived for those moments when i could watch videos on don kirschners’ rock concert or even american bandstand (with the ever-so-creepy dorian grey dick clark. he made me nervous, but i wanted to see and hear music, so i made some sacrifices.) so when MTV exploded into my world, i wanted my MTV, and i wanted it bad. at first, my cable carrier didn’t carry it, and i would go to friends’ homes in other towns and hope that they would put it on if they did have it. but soon enough, i had my MTV.

and i loved it. for awhile, anyway. then i got a life. but that’s a whole other story… 😉

so back to the producers. they burst onto MTV as a peppy, adorable new wave group. i think they even hosted an MTV new years eve show, or were on it, anyway. i don’t think much happened for them after that — i often wonder why. but they still tour, playing their brand of peppy pop. and i love pop. i don’t care who is singing it: a good hook is a good hook. it pulls you right in. and what’s he got has one.

it also has a favorite prom memory for me. (shut your eyes, dad. i know you’re reading this.) a fairly well-known jersey shore bar band, bystander, played my prom, a fairly non-memorable evening for me, as my then-boyfriend was away in north carolina or somewhere equally interesting. so, i went with a good friend from out of town whom i adored and who happened to be very, very attractive — just not to me, i had a boyfriend, remember? — and so several girls in my school were practically hanging all over him (poor guy), wondering what the hell he was doing with me.

naturally, i didn’t want to watch the good women of toms river north fawning all over my date (who, i’m sure, was enjoying the attention. and, as a good friend, i didn’t want to ruin his evening.) bo-ring. so, i took off for awhile and hung out with my friend sebouh, a guy who i hope i see again one day, in spite of the fact that he lobbied the entire senior class to vote for me as class pessimist just because he thought that would be hilarious. (i won.) (can you believe it? i can’t.)

bystander suddenly broke into a cover of what’s he got. sebouh and i started to pogo (yes, children, things like that passed for dancing back in those early 80s days). and as they sang:

what’s he got that i ain’t got?

immediately, i yelled out: A DICK!

(well, it’s TRUE! i am a girl, you know. a seriously classy 18 year old girl at that moment, to be exact. dad, i told you to cover your eyes.)

people around us thought that was hilarious. girls and guys began to chant that at the appropriate place in the song.

yep. i don’t remember much about my prom. but i remember that moment, thinking wow, i couldn’t unite these people to do a hell of a lot. but i could unite them into screaming an obscenity.

that, my friends, is power.

(or, perhaps, a lot of kids just dying to rebel.)