Category: music

guilty pleasure monday: ready for love (bad company)

guilty pleasure monday: ready for love (bad company)

Posted on by wrekehavoc

happy valentine’s day! here’s something bad…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl68DqSifDc

okay, so it isn’t bad. it’s supergroup bad company, with free’s paul rodgers and simon kirke; mott the hoople’s mick ralph; and king crimson’s boz burrell. none are probably household names to anyone now except for possibly paul rodgers, whose distinctive vocal delivery makes him one of the people on my top ten people i wish i could sing like list. but together, they made it quite big in the ’70s under the management of zeppelin’s infamous peter grant. i suspect a monotone singer whose material included yankee doodle would probably succeed with peter grant, but as these guys were pretty amazing, it’s no wonder, at least not to me.

anyway, i thought of many sappy songs i love. i thought of all sorts of videos with cute kitties and hearts and flowers. i vetoed them all. so if bad company’s not your cup of romantic tea, i’m sorry. i’m sure some easy listening station is playing celine dion right now.

go for it.

guilty pleasure monday: sunshine (go away today) (jonathan edwards)

guilty pleasure monday: sunshine (go away today) (jonathan edwards)

Posted on by wrekehavoc

no, not that john edwards.

back in 1971, things were looking grim on the american homefront. the vietnam war was still raging; citizens, particularly the young, were feeling restless and anxious about a world in which they believed was dangerous and in which they were essentially voiceless. remember, back then, you couldn’t vote until you were 21; and yet lots of 18 year olds were being shipped off to fight a war they thought was pointless.  jonathan edwards added his thoughts to the landscape via this wonderful protest song, sunshine.

recent events in egypt have made me think about this song anew. the people are speaking out against a government which they believe is not democratic. i believe that people have the right to determine their own government; i always thought that was what we were taught in school. you know, the whole american revolution thing, right? dropping tea into the harbor? making our own rules?  i mean, as the scholar jeff spicoli once explained:

and yet some on the right — those who champion folks like the modern-day tea party and who claim to love america more than you and i do — are demonizing the protesters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6ThpZ1iyFY&feature=player_embedded#

beck seems to believe that the entire middle east is going to blow.  his inflammatory talk doesn’t give us any ideas as to how to make things better. and frankly, i think he’s played fast and loose with a lot of his so-called data. i find it confusing as well that he seems to not support people forming their own governments. are we happy when religious zealots form a government and rule a nation? no, we are not. but who are we, as america, to tell another nation who should run it and how it should be run? boy, we were so successful putting people into power (iran and egypt, i’m looking at you, among others too numerous to count) that i think we ought to rethink our strategy a bit here.

do i have the answers? of course not. i wish for peace every day; and i wish for people to be free the world over. and i will continue to monitor the events as they unfold.

but i can’t help but hear edwards refrain as i watch the news.

How much does it cost, I’ll buy it
The time is all we’ve lost, I’ll try it
But he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine, Sunshine

guilty pleasure monday: happy hour (the housemartins)

guilty pleasure monday: happy hour (the housemartins)

Posted on by wrekehavoc

vive le guilty pleasure monday!

for a long while, i tried to make mondays a little more bearable (or awful, depending on your perspective) by sharing one of the songs i adore, a song which could result in ridicule from some of my cooler friends. i wrote about quite a few. and then, i hit a mental snag. did anyone enjoy these things? was i getting bored writing them? am i all out of songs to crow about?

but now, i’m back, and what a good place to be, starting back up again with the housemartins’ most well-known song (well, at least in the US, anyway), happy hour. i have to give paul heaton props; it isn’t every day you end up with a band which sports songs mixing christianity with marxism. but he managed to pull it off for a few years in the 1980s until the band disbanded (and heaton became part of the beautiful south.) another famous alum of the band, norman cook, became more famous later on as fatboy slim.

for reasons i’ll never remember, i always think of an old officemate when i hear happy hour. i don’t think i ever shared an office with anyone so happily before or since. our office had once been a high-level company person’s secure area, complete with some sort of security system at the door (which had been dismantled by the time we rolled in.) i believe my officemate put a defunct nation’s flag over his desk — or was it on the floor as a rug? i don’t remember. but we have always shared the same love of 80’s music as well as all things relatively quirky. i remember when i discovered some 80’s alternative music channel and used to play it all the time, ad infinitem. every time i started it up, it played the same bunch of songs, over and over. but i was so desperate to hear stuff that i played it constantly. and he didn’t mind. (or at least, he never said.)  (this was the mid-90s, you must know, so this was a big deal to find this mini internet pirate radio.) in fact, he was the most tolerant colleague ever. he didn’t care when i went on a jag playing kyle’s mom’s a bitch (NSFW, even though it was SFW in my old office environs. it was a different world back then, kids.) and best of all, when i had hideous morning sickness while (secretly at the time) pregnant with BC, he never said boo when i ended up under my desk, laying on the floor, praying for death.  as a single guy at the time, he probably had no idea what the hell was wrong with me; but in true male fashion, he just let me be until i came up for air.

so i’ll revive my old GPM feature with a hat off to one of my favorite ’80s loving pals. hoping every hour is happy hour for him.

world aids day 2010

world aids day 2010

Posted on by wrekehavoc

…because freddy mercury should be singing bohemian rhapsody and not elton john or axel rose.

if ignorance is a pet peeve of mine, then you can bet that ignorance about HIV and AIDS goes far, far beyond mere annoyance in my book. as i have known plenty of people who lived and died from the HIV virus — and I have a friend who continues to live with AIDS, probably far beyond what doctors predicted — i have been gobsmacked by the stupidity people have shown toward those with HIV, as if you might catch it by simply breathing the same air.  in the old office where i used to get my monthly IVIG, i had less fear about being around AIDS patients than i did with someone with something actually infectious. it wasn’t like i was going to be having sex while getting my IV — not that i could even figure out how if i even wanted to, of course. (and i’m quite sure none of those patients were interested in me, anyway.)

i can’t believe we’ve hit world aids day 2010 and there still isn’t a cure. there are a lot of advances, thanks to groups like amfAR. still, funding is an issue — i know, where isn’t funding an issue these days. and you might wonder why i care about this disease; i don’t exactly fit the profile of someone who might be engaging in behaviors that might lead to trouble (although no one is ever truly perfectly immune from anything, i believe.) i guess somewhere in the back of my bear-brain, i know that i have a condition where so little is known. there’s no primary immunodeficiency day out there; we don’t have celebrities talking about what it’s like to have a crap immune system. but i feel a kinship with HIV/AIDS folks — they, too, have crap immune systems. theirs is an acquired situation, whereas mine was something i was simply born with (apparently.)

maybe it’s a slightly selfish thing — i figure that maybe, if someone out there figures out how to help those folks, that maybe someday, that research will possibly benefit my children and grandchildren. after all, someone’s going to get my genes.

so i hope you’ll join me in commemorating world aids day 2010. i hope i see a day in my lifetime when they no longer have this commemoration because the disease has a remedy.

and then maybe, we won’t lose people like freddy mercury just because he loved often but possibly not always so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=narrCWt02Zo

pet peeve: people who aren’t thankful on thanksgiving

pet peeve: people who aren’t thankful on thanksgiving

Posted on by wrekehavoc

no, really. thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL1Nu3qZLdg

sure, i picked the leitmotif of pet peeves this month. but that doesn’t conceal the fact that i am very, very grateful for a lot of things. i could list them for days and years. i’ll just list a few off the top of my pointed head.

1) thank you, BC: for being an awesome daughter who somehow gets me in a way that no one else does. you forgive me when i probably deserve a tween shriek thrown at me. you are one of the two greatest gifts i have ever been given, and i never forget that.

2) thank you, jools: for being an incredible son who picks and chooses the strangest moments to change from a delightful little boy into a wizened old man and provide me with a perspective that i sorely need to hear and grasp. you are one of the two greatest gifts i have ever been given, and i don’t ever forget that.

3) thank you, BS: my eternal partner in crime, the statler to my waldorf. you put up with me no matter what. you like me in spite of me being me. you make me laugh. you are always my personal bulldog. and you’ve got the most beautiful eyes i have ever seen. i am so lucky that mark wintle dumped a beer on you and therefore brought you into my life for keeps.

4) thank you mom and dad and aunt barbara: you have always been in my corner, and you have taught me the power of unconditional love. i’ll never be able to tell you fully how much you mean to me, but somehow you always know what i mean when words fail me.

5) thank you to my brothers, who never treated me like a girl but who always treated me as someone who needed to learn to be as tough as nails. i learned so much from both of you; and while i know i continue to get on your nerves in a huge way, i do it because i love you. (you’re welcome.)

6) thanks to my mother-in-law, my dearly-missed father-in-law, and all my husband’s family for treating me like one of your own. i know i’m a little bit odd in comparison to you all, but you’ve always welcomed me with open arms from the word go.

7) thank you to my friends, who seem to like me still. i treasure you.

8 )  thank you to america for taking my great grandparents in. my family has always been fiercely proud of our nation.

9) thank you to the Beatles for making the best music ever.

and last for today, but not least:

10) thank you, gutenberg, for inventing the printing press. for i do so love to read.

happy thanksgiving, everyone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUhRY5ah8YE

pet peeve: people who say “whatever”

pet peeve: people who say “whatever”

Posted on by wrekehavoc

yeah, you heard me.

i will be the first person to tell you that i hate arguments. some people adore conflict and can’t wait to jump in, fangs bared, to tear into a topic. that person would not be me.  as tori amos once sang,  i believe in peace, (bitch). i never think of the truly clever thing to say in such situations until hours or days afterwards. i fumble. in short, i need time to think before i speak. i know that once the words are out of the mouth, it is nearly impossible to take them back.

but i also realize that there are times when one must  put her big girl panties on and deal with uncomfortable situations. and when i have taken the trouble to talk to someone, calmly, about something that really disturbs me, one of the worst things you can say to me back is whatever. it’s as if my very existence  is being discounted, tossed away like a used kleenex.  and then, watch out. i won’t be as careful with my words since you apparently didn’t appreciate what i said. you don’t have to agree with me, but you do have to respect me. and since i have been disrespected, well, hell hath no fury like a woman whatevered.

i often hear plenty of people do this, particularly younger folks. when did it become okay to be fresh in conversation? it’s as if they’re done, and they don’t care about resolution — their ideas are the only important ones. a big thank you goes out to the mostly baby boomers who have somehow allowed their kids to shut down others in a thoughtless way.

maybe i ought to burst out into song the next time someone says the W word to me. my singing is punishment enough, i suspect, especially when attempting to sing along with aretha.

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