FAMILY – Page 11 – Wrekehavoc.com

Category: FAMILY

san francisco (be sure to wear flowers in your hair) : part two

Posted on October 13, 2009February 9, 2010 by wrekehavoc

i know, i know. i left you in suspense since part one.

you’d be surprised how nice airline people and TSA folks can be. on that friday morning at an undogly hour, when the lady at the northwest counter started to help me check my bag [note to self: you needn’t have bothered. people took bags the size of wisconsin on the plane.], she asked me a simple question: are you okay?

in what may end up being my finest impression of mary tyler moore, i sobbed: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

that lady came over the counter and gave me a hug. when she found out that this was my first solo trip since having kids, she said girl, my son needed a break from me when he was three months old. you need to get out. this will be good for you! so i got my bag checked and a mini-psych session. who knew!

i then dragged my tear-stained, hadn’t-slept-since-tuesday-night-face through the TSA area. i have been lectured endlessly that the humorless people of TSA are not to be trifled with. no jokes, no conversation, nada. in short: do not taunt happy funball. i’m a friendly sorta chick, but lucky for me, i was one stripe short of a flag. i dragged myself through. Mr. TSA Guy stopped me. oh shit, i thought. my very existence will get me flagged for something i have not done. time for the instant replay of everything i have done wrong this week: i’ve put some whites in with darks in the laundry. i’ve ignored a few emails. i probably dropped the f-bomb in front of the kids while swerving my way through DC traffic…

then, a deep voice: are you ok, miss?

a loaded question from a TSA person, right? at least, it was to a sleep-deprived, unhappy flier like me. but somewhere, the answer came:

i miss my kids.

TSA Guy smiled at me. i understand, miss. i smiled back and walked on through. SWEET! score one for crazy mothers everywhere. i did all i had to do, removed various articles of clothing, bought coffee, and got on the plane.

sadly, i couldn’t get a direct flight from DCA to SFO, so i had the pleasure of a three-hour layover in scenic minneapolis. i was pretty freaking happy to have that layover, though, as the plane ride from DCA to the twin cities was nightmarishly turbulent, so much so that the air hosts tried to start beverage service twice and twice failed. i’m not a happy flier to begin with; to ride a plane that feels like it’s a trampoline fest? priceless. (if i ever find that kind tax lawyer who talked to me through the entire experience, i will definitely see that he gets knighted.)

so spending three hours in the minneapolis airport was a godsend to a person desperate to be on the ground. i walked up and down and all around. i bought a powerball ticket, as BS and i have decided that people who win powerball usually live in places which can probably be bought, lock, stock, and barrel, by the dollars garnered by said winning ticket. [read: the deep south, the rural midwest. maybe minneapolis isn’t rural, but it isn’t far from rural places. (yeah, i know, i know. it’s not like the people’s republic of arlington is that far away from rural places…or rural places that are dotted with mcmansions, anyway.)] i got a hand massage — only my right for some reason — in the body shop by a lady who clearly thought i needed a break. i watched endless CNN coverage of the selection of the olympic city. (as an aside, i was taken aback by the coverage, as the commentator was actually upset — UPSET — when chicago was first dinged off the list. walter cronkite shedding a tear at the news of JFK’s death? definitely defensible. this guy getting actually red-faced over chicago? SERIOUSLY? did this guy spend any time in J-school?)

after starting and finishing war and peace, it was time to board the second plane du jour.

a bigger plane. yay. a lovely older couple flying to SF en route to china beside me. fine. a little late departure? no problem. we’re up, then we’re down.

and i had finally arrived.

san francisco (be sure to wear flowers in your hair) : part one

Posted on October 7, 2009February 9, 2010 by wrekehavoc

it was 1998 when i last went anywhere just as me, myself, and i, rather than as somebody’s wife or mother. this idea gnawed at my soul for a long, long time, until finally, my best bud murph and i figured out that this would be the year we would go away somewhere. since she had moved away, we never got to spend much time together anyway, so why not? besides, murph had some frequent flyer credits to kill, so as long as we selected a place where her plane would take her, we were golden.

we settled on san francisco. san francisco is home to many, many things, some less printable than others. for our purposes, it would be home to the free hardly strictly bluegrass festival in golden gate park. now many of you faithful readers (and i know you are out there, you people besides my dad) are familiar with the fact that i am not exactly the biggest country fan on the face of the earth. this, as we all know, is true. however, i have an appreciation for classics, like emmylou harris, who, i think displays a startling beauty in her work. i also took note of the hardly strictly part of the title. i saw names i adored on the list of performers, like aimee mann and nick lowe. and, in short, i was sold. besides, one of my other dearest friends, m2k, lives there, a lucky strike extra indeed.

now, you might think that that would be that, and i could simply say i got on a plane and off i’d go. but nothing in my life ever goes quite like that. for starters, i am a bit frightened of flying, a la isadora wing. sure, i have flown plenty in my life; i’ve been overseas and i was a regular in the 80s on people express to florida. but somehow, since i’ve become a parent, flying freaks me out. i guess the thought of potentially not being there to see my kids grow up makes me freeze. but i have also learned in life that i have to step up to the plate and just face the things or people i fear and get past them.

so i do.

i was slated to leave on friday, october 2 at 5:15 in order to catch a plane at 6:40 a.m. i packed during the week during fleeting free minutes. by wednesday, i was nearly ready, putting final touches together while BS and jools were out at a cub scout meeting in the evening. they returned home late, 9ish, so i stopped my packing and put jools to bed. then, as he was standing by the sink, rehashing the evening’s events to me while drinking a glass of water, BS suddenly grabbed his throat, then his side, then toppled to the ground, hitting his head on the hard kitchen tile floor. i ran over to him immediately, patting his cheeks and calling his name. no one was home. then, his eyes opened and went back into his head. this is not really happening, i thought. (you bet your life it is, a little voice sang.)

i wedged BS on his side against the dishwasher, jumped up and ran to the phone. only too bad for me (as my heroine junie b would say), that glass of water BS had been holding had spilled all over the floor. i slid and fell on my ass. that hard tile floor contact seared along my legs and backside, but as my ass has plenty of cushion on it, i knew the floor had probably hurt BS’s head a lot more, so i struggled up and grabbed the phone, dialed 911, and slid back to BS, cradling his head in my arm while keeping him on his side.

911 operators, for those of you who have never spoken with them, are rather tough cookies. calm down now, ma’am the lady kept saying to me. i am not one of those people who likes to be told to calm down; it makes me more frantic. but i looked at my husband’s face and knew i had to keep myself together. so i described what had happened, where we were, that sort of thing. as i looked at him, my husband’s eyes opened again, and this time, i saw a glimmer of recognition. i’m fine, he said to me, over and over. i’m fine. i had the feeling that he did not want to trouble the EMTs; that’s the sort of guy he is.

too bad, i thought. i don’t take direction from people who have been unconscious in the past five minutes. the EMTs are coming.

he looked like he was coming to for good; and when i heard the firetruck, i ran to the door to open it, then ran back to my husband. EMTs and firefighters filed in. one took me aside while several hung with BS, asking him all the usual questions to ensure his noggin was still in working order. after lots of questions, the EMTs decided that he probably somehow messed with his vagus nerve and gave himself a brain freeze to remember (or not). he was probably ok for now. fabulous.

i spent the night watching him sleep, as i was afraid whether he’d have a problem again due to whatever happened or perhaps even a concussion from whacking his head on the floor.

the next day, i tried to calm down and finish packing. by the evening, though, i was terrified of the impending flight. i was upset by the idea of leaving my formerly unconscious spouse alone, especially with two kids to look after. in short, i was afraid. i went to bed that night, unable to sleep.

now everyone occasionally hears things that go bump in the night. and, as little miss non-sleeper 2009, i heard two knocks in the night, pounding sounds like when water goes through the upstairs pipes. curious, i thought to myself: no one is running the tub. but i sat there, and i pondered. that is, until i heard the sound to end all sounds.

BOOM!

at around 3 am, a thunderous noise literally pushed my husband and i up into the air (it seemed.) ohmyG-d, ohmyG-d, ohmyG-D! was all i could mutter as i ran down the stairs to find out what the hell had happened. i didn’t have to run far. the ceiling of the living room, AKA the room beneath my bedroom, had fallen. the 60 year old plaster and drywall concoction had finally breathed its last and decided to fall atop a table the kids use to do crafts and play games on. amazingly, all of the toys that were underneath the heavy ceiling were relatively undamaged, though the ceiling did rip a hole in my pullout couch. but no one was injured. (after all, no one else was awake save for insane jane moi.) i checked on the kids, who had no idea what the hell had happened.

and then, i proceeded to stay awake and fret. after all, i had to wake up at 4:15 in order to get myself together for my 5:15 cab. how the hell can i leave you? i shrieked at BS. this is like a sign from G-d — i should not be going anywhere!!! BS told me i should get on that plane and not worry about signs — i needed to go and besides, murph would be very upset with me if i blew her off.

by this point, BC was up for the duration. in between telling me what i needed to wear (you’ll be cold if you don’t wear this jacket, she told me, handing me a windbreaker. she was right, incidentally. glad i listened to the 60 year old in the 10 year old suit.), girlfriend was crying her eyes out. don’t gooooooooooooooo, mommy!!!! oh, i didn’t want to. i really didn’t want to.

but i got in that cab, blew a kiss to the little girl who was sobbing at the window, and was off to the airport.

once there, i stood outside northwest airlines’ entrance. and i sobbed. i called BS. i don’t want to go, i cried. what kind of wife and mother leaves her family after these things have happened?

BS, who by this time was probably one step away from a one-way trip to whothehellami land, very calmly uttered: just GO!

so i did.

guilty pleasure monday: stay awake (mary poppins)

Posted on September 28, 2009February 9, 2010 by wrekehavoc

ah, the magic of The Mouse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPw6QBSggls

those of you who’ve been around here for awhile know i’m pretty ambivalent about disney, disney world, and everything remotely related to walt’s creations. i’ve ranted and ranted and ranted. and ranted yet again about our trips to disney. (and even had some happy moments to share, because like most of their cartoons, disney’s prefab experiences are never black and white.) the kids, however, really enjoy going; so once every so often, we trek down to florida so that we can hear american singing we can spend absurd amounts of cash on items that my kids will begbegbeg for and then probably forget about within one week of our return home we can all have fun as a family in that magical world.

that being said, i do love me some disney movies. sure, there are ones that left me scarred for life (bambi and dumbo, i’m talking about you.) and of course, there’s a certain predictability in their storylines: you know that in the first 20 minutes, something awful is going to happen. but there are degrees of awfulness, i think; and mary poppins never really scared me. i’m thinking julie andrews and dick van dyke singing and dancing all the way through had something to do with that. back then, julie andrews always ended up in a happy ending: hell, only a year later, she escaped the nazis! so a stodgy english banker had nothing on the divine ms. j.

my mother also tells me that when i was being born, the hospital was piping in music. she remembers hearing a lot of chim chim cheree.

anyway, i rediscovered the song stay awake quite by accident. BC had received this baby disney CD as a gift, and she really started to love it. it became a nightly staple; only, too bad for me. the girl didn’t seem to like one song: stay awake. pity, too, because i then found a lovely cover of it by suzanne vega (ignore the grim video), but no dice. see, the song perfectly captured my ambivalence toward nighttime as a mom. on the one hand, i was wiped out: parenthood is exhausting at times, and i wanted girlfriend to conk out so i could get a moment to myself. on the other hand, i enjoyed our time together so much, i didn’t want the day to end.

i guess some things will never change.

guilty pleasure monday: let's hear it for the boy (deniece williams)

Posted on September 21, 2009February 9, 2010 by wrekehavoc

because he’s a hellboy, but he’s OUR hellboy!

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

i remember when i was a young mom with a little girl who looked like a precious moments figurine and who behaved pretty damn well, no matter what situation. i attributed it all to our complete preparation: crayons? check. distracting toys? check. never-ending stash of cheerios? check! i read my books and i was on top of things. but of course, all of her model behavior was simply because we were such awesome parents.

of course.

anyway, BC was about 18 months old when we took a trip to visit my dear friend wah and her family in wisconsin. wah and i have been friends since we were teenagers; i love the fact that we have been friends so long, we don’t need to sugarcoat anything. this is a girl who will tell you that your butt looks big in that outfit. of course, she will also give you ideas about something else to wear. no malice, just truth with a dose of warmth.

for this and for so many other reasons, i love this chick with all my heart.

anyway, we went to visit wah’s family on two occasions and had a great time with them. but i still remember the first trip. we visited a noodles and co for dinner — my first — and sat down, our family and hers. wah has two wonderful boys, and at the time, i think they were probably about 2 and 4, though i could be wildly wrong. we sat down to wait to be served. i say we, but i mean BS, BC, and me. BC was perched daintily on her booster seat, coloring with crayons and smiling like a little angel girl. cue smugness here: my, but once again, aren’t we such awesome parents?

wah’s boys, on the other hand, were happily racing around the table, playfully shouting, and basically, not sitting still. i must have looked over with that face with which i am now so familiar — the why can’t you control your child face. the i’m a superior parent face. i. can. make. my. child. sit. still. i. do. it. with. sheer. will. and preparation. why can’t you?

wah caught me. she shook her head, and she said words i never forgot:

wait til you have a boy.

…………………………………………………

fast forward a few years. i do have a boy; and while he doesn’t run around in restaurants, i can see the lesson she was trying to teach me: different children are built differently. you don’t have to be a piaget or steiner devotee to know this: you need only be a parent who is wise to the ways of her kids. each child is wired differently, and it doesn’t make much of a difference whether you’ve read up on child development or whether you go with your gut. the truth is, different children require different approaches.

and different children should be appreciated for the gifts they are.

so today, here’s one for my boy. my energetic, spirited, rockin’ little jools.

my beautiful boy.

guilty pleasure monday: photograph (def leppard)

Posted on September 14, 2009February 9, 2010 by wrekehavoc

the one song where i required actual medical attention.

the creme de la creme of hair metal, english band def leppard (intentionally misspelled by the group so as to not seem like a punk band) are still rocking it worldwide, in spite of losing band members as well as band member body parts. (bionic drummer rick allen has been drumming for the band for decades even though he lost his arm in a car crash. perhaps he was meant to be a spinal tap drummer at some point in his life?)

i have particularly happy memories of def leppard from the summer of 1983, when i was about to enter college. as mentioned in an earlier post, i had worked as a day camp counselor (for the whopping sum of $50/week), which left my evenings free to be a somewhat economically-challenged teenager. some nights, when my oldest brother, BTD, had no one interesting to hang with (i always knew i was asked only after every conceivable person did not pan out before me, but what the hell), we’d drive over to the boardwalk and play pinball and drink cheap grape water and sometimes, sometimes, get cheap pizza at the sawmill. with some financial support from my folks, we’d maybe go on one of the wildly unsafe waterslides at night, which was extra cool because i was afraid back then to wear my contacts when i did that. so there i’d be, a few stories up in the air, in the dark, going down a waterslide (where one false slip and you’d end up as road pizza a few hundred feet down) where i could not see. good. times.

but, most of the time, my oldest brother was having a life (and my middle brother larry did not want to be within one mile of my presence because i was that annoying moody 18 year old sister (tonight on ABCFamily!)). so i spent the bulk of the summer with my buddy, simone. simone would drive like a big ass bird (to quote her dad) to toms river, pick me up, and we’d end up pretty much where we’d always end up: the ocean county mall. we’d rock the stores, gossiping about everyone we knew, then finish up at friendly’s (where my freshmen 15 started before i entered college thanks to the reese’s peanut butter cup sundae). many times, we were obliged to bring her younger brother, joel, along for the ride. joel was so cool, we nicknamed him chilly willy. [i’m not certain, but i believe he is now an accountant, a profession which would suit him to a T, considering he was so calm, cool, and collected, even as a young guy. it’s important to be cool when people are crapping themselves after realizing their tax realities.]

i’m pretty sure it was joel’s def leppard tape.

we listened to def leppard’s pyromania c o n s t a n t l y that summer in simone’s dad’s car. it must have been a tape. but what a killer summer soundtrack. foolin’ — what a great song to scream out a window! the videos made no sense, of course (and this was back in the day when we watched videos, boys and girls born after 1980) but the music wailed — and of course, gave us important words to live by, like:

Gunter glieben glauchen globen

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

you betcha.

anyway, it was a special summer for me, thanks in no small part to simone (and chilly willy’s soundtrack).

fast forward to 1990. i was a newlywed in VA, back in the days before the internet had been invented by al gore. it had been a long while since i had heard pyromania; it wasn’t in my CD collection, so i went sadly without for many years. i was upstairs in our tiny, two-level WWII-era townhouse. suddenly, i heard the opening chords to photograph coming from the TV downstairs. SQUEE! my little bear brain yelped. i ran down the upstairs hall (official olympic length: 5 feet) and proceeded to run down the steps to see the video — because we WATCHED our music back then, you know. only, too bad for me: i was wearing brand new, slippery-soft cotton socks. i slipped and tripped while running down those recently-redone wooden stairs.

WHOOPS!

i fell on my back and my butt, all the way down the damn staircase. (about 16 stairs, i believe, for those of you keeping track.) i landed, badly banged up, at the landing. lucky for me, i had been hired the month prior at a place that offered me a crappy level of health insurance; i ended up going to a quack who did very little for me. and voila! i started down the road of back pain bliss that i still experience to this day. sweet!

anyway, i love this song. and i will always hope that my first memory of it involves driving in a car and singing at the top of my lungs (which probably didn’t go over well when we were passing by members of the chasidic community in the town where simone lived.) to be sure, BS still looks at me funny whenever photograph comes on the radio in the car.

i think he’s afraid i’ll lose control and smack the car into the nearest pole, ending up with my not-so-glamorous photograph in the paper.

for all the wrong reasons.

flashback: safe and sound

Posted on September 11, 2009February 9, 2010 by wrekehavoc

because i’ll never forget 9/11.

and i suspect you won’t, either.

guilty pleasure monday: frank and ava (suzanne vega)

Posted on August 17, 2009February 10, 2010 by wrekehavoc

frank and ava. embedding is borked, so you have to click here to hear it. bork bork bork.

you know those toys you loved as a child and then tired of? those toys are like the artists you enjoyed in your youth. you still love listening to their hits (or classic albums, if they weren’t exactly a top 40 act) — but have you given them a listen lately? sure, some of them will not be producing great stuff, but you might be surprised at the ones who are.

i feel this way about suzanne vega.

suzanne vega has produced consistently engaging works. she’s so much more than luka (or tom’s diner, which i can’t stand in the smashed-up DNA version) and thank Dog for that. her voice is so clear, so evocative, kind of like a female lou reed but one who actually can sing (with some apologies to reed, who probably could care less.) i cannot understand why she is not more celebrated in the world when she creates the kind of music in league with heavies like aimee mann (at whose altar i worship daily.) some of the imagery in selections from songs in red and grey, an album that is a morose yet wistful product of her divorce, is riveting: she explains to her child:

Daddy’s a dark riddle; Mama’s head’s full of bees. You are my little kite, carried away in the wayward breeze.

i was glad that her next release, beauty & crime, moved away from that topic. frank and ava, she once noted, is the story of a couple who can’t live together and who can’t live apart. in the end, like the real frank and ava, they end their relationship and never see each other again, though they never forget each other. it is a song with an incredible hook; i’m surprised it wasn’t snapped up for use in a movie or starbucks or SOMEWHERE.

we love this song. my little cherubs sing knowingly it’s not enough to be in love. i wonder whether they will really understand that later on in life. i guess i’ll have to content myself with a different image for now: the image of BC, who, in the proud tradition of her grandmother, mangles the lyrics to the song. unintentionally. for girlfriend, the song starts out this way:

on the way to the bidet is where the trouble used to start.

(well, for people of a certain age, this could be a problem, right?)

anyway, maybe suzanne vega doesn’t light your lucky as she does mine (musically speaking), but perhaps you should check out someone you liked years ago. their latest stuff may not put them in heavy rotation on the radio (especially if you live in radio wasteland as i do), but it might merit heavy rotation on an mp3 player near you.

guilty pleasure monday: sneakin' sally through the alley (robert palmer)

Posted on August 10, 2009February 10, 2010 by wrekehavoc

anyone else notice a leitmotif here in the guilty pleasure monday world?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsLz2pvO5N0

yes, those of you observant enough (or even breathing, perhaps) might notice i’m picking GPMs featuring a lady’s name. although the lady in this song is clearly no lady.

and she sure as hell ain’t the singer’s wife.

you can’t talk about this song, a cover of new orleans legend allen toussaint’s, without mentioning the late, great lowell george of little feat. i remember the first time i heard the sailin’ shoes / hey julia / sneakin’ sally through the alley montage and thinking — wait a minute — is palmer covering a little feat tune? i had heard the little feat version of sailin’ shoes, but not palmer’s. george backs palmer on this album, and i think it shows.

so many people think of robert palmer as the slicked out, tricked out guy of the 80s with that annoying all-girl band.

(yeah. i’ll wait while the guys out there finish with the video…)

anyway, long before the creepy whiteface models (TM), a predecessor to the blue man group (sans tobias fünke), palmer was a purveyor of blue-eyed soul, as those crazy, cliche-ridden music writers like to call it. teamed up with george, he made a classic album filled with slide guitars and funky beats. my kids have been listening to this since they were, well, even littler, as it is never too early to experience the greats. sure, the lyrics aren’t exactly kid-friendly (there’s a lady in a turban in a cocaine tree and she does a dance so rhythmically. hello, division of youth and family services?) but hell, like me, they’re paying most of their attention to the groove.

the only problem occurred when BC, age 3 or 4, started singing hey julia to her little friend, named, not surprisingly, julia.

Hey, hey Julia, you’re acting so peculiar
I know I’d never fool you in a million years
A horn section you resemble and your figure makes me tremble
And I sure would like to handle whats between your ears

yes, i remember the day when girlfriend asked me about that last line. i think i told her the singer was talking about the woman’s brains, like in a horror movie. she accepted that, and we moved on. (i expect a bill from her therapist in about 20 years.)

so this threesome of songs (and don’t think that term won’t get me saddled with all sorts of perverted page hits now) goes from drugs to sex to getting caught. we don’t really get to know much about sally, beyond her generosity and her clandestine trips through the alley. but what we do learn? the sheer stupidity of the man telling the tale of woe. why, there’s nothing wrong with being friends, he tells his wife — sometimes, this chick lets me use her car!

i’ll say.

guilty pleasure monday: jane (jefferson starship)

Posted on August 3, 2009February 10, 2010 by wrekehavoc

yeah yeah. i had a guilty pleasure post about jefferson airplane a little while back. but the airplane and the starship are two different modes of transport, if you know what i mean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIsiR43Zw5M

when jane was released in 1979, i think the only person left standing from the original jefferson airplane lineup was paul kantner. (someone chime in if i’m mistaken.) my beloved grace slick (and her rockin’ haircut that i’ve copied for the past 30 years)had been kicked out, thanks to her infamous drunken tirades against basically the entire nation of germany. marty balin bailed the group just before this album (but not before contributing some mid-1970s hits which i can hardly stand.) luckily, they somehow pulled in journey’s drummer aynsley dunbar and discovered teenaged guitarist craig chaquico who has since gone on to play smooth jazz and new age successfully. voila! instant band.

to my young ears, the song had a fantastic hook — and a killer keyboard part for me to bang along with on that poor, beleagured piano (the one that still graces my family room, despite the times when hellboy pounds on it.) i didn’t care that the singer was obviously being played by his girlfriend, jane. (when i was 14, those sorts of things didn’t loom large in my mind. the song could have been about flying monkeys and i would have been fine with it, as long as the hook was working.) i hear it, and i’m instantly transported to summer camp — the second year i was working at one, that is. (for $50 a week. yes, you read that right. by my calculations, i would have to work one hour to afford the big gulp coffee i required prior to each work day.)

ah, leonard baer day camp, 1979:

i would be the dork on the far right channeling my inner chris evert in the white shirt and green tennis shorts.

my hair had not improved one iota from the year prior, when i was a mere CIT:

lmbdc 1978 — white shirt, top left, dork with whistle. cos that's how i rolled.

what a difference some years make:

lmbdc 1983 — far left, girl with bouncin' and behavin' hair. just prior to my infamous run-in with Sun In.

i think i was still pulling in that $50/week by 1983. probably kept me in hair supplies, i think. but it kept me from working on the sleazeside heights boardwalk, a scary and dangerous thing for a girl of a certain age to be doing, my parents insisted…

where was i? r i g h t…

jefferson starship. 1979 was probably their last year of interest for me. (and apparently billy corgan, too.) they’d go on in various incarnations, building up to the atrocity known as we built this city, one of the worst popular songs of the 1980s. (a decade that had a lot of awful musical opportunities, so no mean feat.) by then, they had dropped the jefferson part of their name and were simply starship. perhaps they should have put whatever dirigible they were flying in in park in 1979, cut their losses, and followed solo careers.

sigh. nothing lasts.

thankfully, i still have jane. and, come to think of it, my grace slick hair.

guilty pleasure monday: veronica (elvis costello)

Posted on July 27, 2009February 10, 2010 by wrekehavoc

a special guilty pleasure. and not just because my beloved macca is involved.

elvis costello, in my estimation, is one of the best songwriters of the 20th/21st century. it was no surprise to me, then, when, in the late 1980s, he teamed up with paul mccartney (no slouch in the songwriting department) to co-write the album spike. (and paul plays that hofner bass on the album, too! squeee! okay. okay. i’m back now. i’m calm.) i am not terribly fond of some of costello’s output in the mid-1980s, though upon reflection, there are some incredible gems that i simply wasn’t ready to appreciate in my younger years (like his magnificent modern jazz standard shipbuilding, for example. [bummed i can’t find a version with the incredible chet baker trumpet solo.]) but spike seemed to be a musical kick in the pants for costello — his musical energy rebounded, and he produced some fine work.

veronica actually ended up a hit in the united states; and what a curious subject matter for a hit record. costello writes about an older woman who is clearly battling with some memory-robbing illness — dementia, alzheimers, or something of the like. she floats in and out of lucidity, remembering the scary parts of life as well as the blissful moments.

i suspect this song has always made me think of my grandmother. my grandfather died about a year before this song was released; and i think when he passed, my gram as i knew her passed, too. though her body was in tremendously healthy shape, she started down that slippery slope of dementia, just as veronica did. it was very hard to watch; i will never, ever forget the feeling of having someone who loved me dearly not know who i was. but once i realized that my gram was essentially gone, it became a little easier to bear. i started to think of her in a more scientific way: i was fascinated to hear about the places where her mind decided to visit. some days, she was a young girl in new york. she’d speak yiddish, and i was at the mercy of my parents to translate how old she was in that time and what she was doing in her mind. (and unfortunately, their yiddish was not quite what it was, so sometimes, we just had to smile and nod.)

and yet, there were those moments when she was there. by G-d, if you were not respecting her, she’d hand your head to you.

you never knew which lady you’d get when you dropped by the nursing home.

anyway, gram’s been gone now for nearly 13 years, but fortunately, the gram i remember is a feisty, tough-as-nails lady. the lady who wasn’t all there? that wasn’t really my gram.

Veronica sits in her favourite chair and she sits
very quiet and still
And they call her a name that they never get
right and if they don’t then nobody else will
But she used to have a carefree mind of her
own, with a devilish look in her eye
Saying “You can call me anything you like, but
my name is Veronica”

the lady may have had issues with her memory, but i’d like to think that she was going to hold onto her dignity no matter what.

and she did.