in the fade

While we're in the holiday mood

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:16:11 -0500

Christmas 1979. Aside from the kick ass t-shirt, what I love about this photo is the background: LPs, 8-tracks and 45’s.

LOOK AT THOSE PAJAMAS.

Stiff Little Fingers - White Christmas

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:01:36 -0500

Stiff Little Fingers - White Christmas

Gratuitous Christmas Picture of Yourself Christmas, 1971. I was...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:36:26 -0500

Gratuitous Christmas Picture of Yourself

Christmas, 1971. I was nine years old, wiped out from an exciting day opening presents, playing with my toys and sneaking sips of “grown up drinks” when no one was looking. Those Winnie-the-Pooh feetie pajamas were the height of sleepwear fashion back then, as was the decorative yarn in my hair.

an agnostic celebrates a religious holiday

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:33:35 -0500

I was raised Catholic. We weren’t devout Catholics by any means, but we went to church and received our sacraments and said grace before dinner. My parents were mostly CAPE Catholics - they only went to church on Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter. Then they stopped going at all. Then I went through an atheist phase which ended at the point where I realized I’m agnostic, but that’s another long winded story.

Even after I abandoned religion for the most part, I still celebrated all the appropriate religious holidays families. Granted, mostly it was for the food. But Christmas, that was something different.

Christmas was never about Jesus’s birthday to me. It’s about so many other things. Sure, I’m not celebrating the “true meaning” of the holiday but then again, no other holiday really gets its true meaning celebrated. Easter has become about bunnies and colored eggs. Halloween is about scary witches and ghosts and candy. Even holidays meant to celebrate births of great figures in American history are nothing more than days off from work and school. Americans love a holiday, that’s for sure.

So why does this agnostic person celebrate a holiday that is supposed to be about religion? It’s not the gifts, it’s not the gaudy decorations. It’s the spirit. When I was a child, Christmas time meant so many things. Parties in school, snow on the ground, snooping around my parent’s bedroom for hidden presents. The air was filled with a sense of anticipation and joy that was not present most of the year. The calendar was marked down with X’s on the dates of December, and every new X meant that special day was coming. Of course, I loved the presents. But I loved the atmosphere, too. My parents are very social people. During the holiday season, there would be friends and relatives dropping over to say hello, have a drink, maybe a bite to eat. The Christmas tree glowed and sparkled and the windows were covered with those plastic, colorful decorations depicting Santa and snowmen and angels.

Christmas is about traditions. For as long as I can remember, we would gather at my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve - we still do - enjoying an Italian feast of fish and pasta, at least 40 of us crowded into the fully decorated basement. We exchanged presents and Santa came and the grownups were all happy and carefree and festive. We would go home late, get tucked into bed and then lay there for what seemed like hours, too excited to sleep. It was a great night to be a kid. My father would always take us shopping on Christmas Eve day, usually to Sears. We would buy presents for our mother - always Jean Nate perfume and powder - and presents for each other (I still have the music box my sister bought for me one year that played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”) and we would get home and have hot chocolate covered in whipped cream and wrap our presents. We made cards for our parents and sometimes we would make presents, too; sloppy hand-made ornaments that still hang on my mother’s tree. Even decorating the tree became a tradition of hot chocolate and Christmas songs and sibling fights over who got to put the star on top. We still do that to this day, gathering at my parent’s house, now with kids and spouses in tow, and continuing the tradition of decorating and fighting.

As I got older and discovered - through a spiteful cousin - that Santa no longer existed, none of the excitement and wonder of the holiday season wore off. I became more deft at making hints at what I wanted for Christmas, yet still secretly wrote letters to Santa in hopes that my cousin was playing just kidding. Eventually I became ok with my parents being the real Santa. I figured they were more likely to get me a Black Sabbath album than the jolly bearded guy would be. On Christmas morning, my sisters and I would wake earlier than any human should rise, and we would sit by the fireplace in the half-dark, opening whatever was in the bulging stockings that hung from the mantle, waiting for our parents to wake. Finally, we couldn’t take it anymore and we would run into their bedroom, jumping on the bed until they finally got up, bleary eyed and exhausted from wrapping and arranging presents the night before. After the presents were unwrapped and the fire was roaring, fed by discarded wrapping paper and empty boxes, dad would make a huge breakfast and we’d gush over our presents, comparing each other’s stack of gifts. Then, while mom cooked, dad would take us out visiting relatives and each aunt or uncle would give us Christmas candy or cookies as we went from house to house.

All these traditions are still intact. Some have changed a bit; there were years when the Christmas Eve party at my aunt’s house turned into 3am drunken poker games and most of the cousins hanging out back with the keg and the nickel bags of pot. Then we got older, had kids of our own, and put the magic back in our tradition.

My sisters and I still open our presents very early, all of us arriving at our parent’s house at an ungodly hour, heading straight for the stockings while we wait for our parents to wake up. They greet us with the same bleary eyed look they always did and the presents are still stacked sky high under the tree like always. We have a big breakfast and compare presents and then it’s time to visit relatives. Except now we visit them at Holy Rood cemetery, putting wreaths and blankets on their graves and thanking them for the all the cookies and warmth they gave us in the past.

Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Our Christmas and Christmas eve follow all the same patterns, but now we have our own children to work magic for. There is nothing like the gleam in their eyes as they see the gifts under the tree and even though they no longer believe in Santa, they still delight at the note that “Santa” leaves for them, thanking them for the cookies and milk. Even better is the smile on their faces as they present us with the presents they picked out, wrapped using six yards of scotch tape and a lot of love. They are truly grateful for everything they get and our home is filled with a warmth and comfort that gets pushed aside most of the year by homework and housework and the hurried pace of our lives.

This is why I love Christmas. I love way the neighborhood is lit up in color and light at night. I love the excitement in the air, the way people give so freely of themselves in the spirit of the season, the way the kids bounce when they walk through the mall, thrilled at the thought of picking out presents for those they love.

Yes, Christmas has become commercialized and may appear to be nothing more than a celebration of consumerism. If that’s what you see, then that’s all you want to see. Me, I see pretty lights and smiling kids and relatives all gathered in one place for a change instead of scurrying to appointments and ball games and work.

Please, feel free to wish me a Merry Christmas even though I’m not religious. I don’t expect you to replace it with a generic Happy Holidays. I don’t care if there’s a nativity in front of your store. I don’t mind if children sing Silent Night. I know there are anti-Christmas grinches around. Just because I’m not a participant in your religion doesn’t mean I expect you to stop celebrating it in front of me. I want to embrace your joy and your season.

To quote Bill Murray in Scrooged:

“It’s Christmas Eve. It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be.”

exspectator: Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:09:02 -0500

exspectator:

Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures

Alright, I’m going to try to get the Songs for the Deaf comparison out of the way. Yes, it’s very reminiscent of Queens of the Stone Age’s masterpiece album, and the reunion of Josh Homme and Dave Grohl will invite the comparison as well. No, it’s not quite as aggressive and nuanced as Songs for the Deaf, and it lacks the loose-cannon aspect that Nick Oliveri brought to the table in Queens, but it’s a better album than Era Vulgaris or pretty much anything the Foo Fighters have done this decade. Josh Homme has one of the best guitar tones in rock music and Grohl pummels the kit throughout the album, but stuff like “Interlude With Ludes” and “Caligulove” could easily be pitched without harming the complete record. Everything seems really on for the first half, particularly the one-two punch of “Elephants” and “Scumbag Blues”, but the B-side loses some steam and starts to feel bloated. Regardless, when the band is one, they’re really fucking on, and there probably isn’t another man in stoner rock who can pull mass appeal out of ideas as dense and obscure as he has. It isn’t perfect - most supergroups aren’t - but it’s still another worthwhile entry into Homme’s resume. (3.5/5)

I have to agree with him. The more I listen to the album, the less I love it in the way I wanted to love it. At first it was the most amazing thing ever because I expected it to be and wanted it to be the most amazing thing ever. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a GOOD album. I like it a lot. But it’s not complete greatness. It’s not better than any QOTSA album (except for maybe Era Vulgaris, like he said) and I know, they aren’t QOTSA, but they most certainly are an extension of them so the comparisons are inevitable.

This is really good music. Fantastic music. But it’s missing something that would make it amazing and I realize after reading the above review (and the reason I reblogged this) is that it’s missing some needed decadence, the very thing Nick Oliveri brought to early QOTSA that goes missing in the QOTSA albums after his departure.

I keep wanting this album to do something…more. It stops just short of kicking my ass. Every time I listen to it, I end up listening to a QOTSA album right after. It’s sort of like having sex and you’re almost there…almost there…..and your partner rolls off you before you can get there so you have to finish off yourself.

I woke up to find a demon at the end of my bed: One woman's terrifying account of a sleep disorder that afflicts millions (Sleep Paralysis) | Mail Online

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:48:58 -0500

I woke up to find a demon at the end of my bed: One woman's terrifying account of a sleep disorder that afflicts millions (Sleep Paralysis) | Mail Online:

peachcherub:

michaelhermansen:

I had lots! of Sleep Paralysis when I was younger, slowed down to once or twice a month when I turned 18.

Helped with Lucid Dreaming though, which is a bit funner.

I have had this happen sooo many times. It’s like I can see things that are actually real (the room around me), but I can’t move or speak the way I want to. Freaks me out every time.

Sleep paralysis is frightening. If you’ve never had the joy of experiencing this, imagine a dream in which you are trying to wake up, trying to move from sleep to alert and you can’t. There’s something pressing down on you that keeps you from moving. In your sleep state, you are trying to move, trying to get your legs to kick out or your body to turn but you can’t. The feeling of struggling is overwhelming; it’s like your wake self is fighting with your sleep self in some tug of war to keep you in one state or the other. You want to wake up, your body doesn’t. It is truly like a feeling of being paralyzed. Once the paralysis sets in, the feeling of not being able to breathe comes, like a great pressure on your chest, something or someone pushing down on you, holding you to the bed, so you can’t move or breathe or wake up. It’s worse than any nightmare I’ve ever experienced. Sometimes the paralysis would come with the feeling like someone else is in there and they are sitting on your chest. In your half dreaming state, you’re sure that you’re being visited by a ghost or aliens or someone has broken into your house and is trying to kill you. Of course when you wake up - gasping for air and feeling like you just cheated death - there’s no one around.

At the time in my life when I was having sleep paralysis bouts about three times a week, I was also doing a lot of lucid dreaming and experiencing hypnagogic and hypnopompic dreams. I still have those sometimes and I still lucid dream more than I don’t, but thankfully the sleep paralysis has not come back.

People like to attribute sleep paralysis to things like alien abduction and ghosts, but I know it came at a time when I was feeling crushed by the weight of life and I’ll just attribute it to my body’s need to manifest that into something physical.

I hope it never comes back.

ALERT ALERT ALERT

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:42:40 -0500

theresa-c:

The following movies are now on Hulu:

Mothra

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah

Godzilla vs. Destoroyah

Godzilla: Tokyo SOS

Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla

Godzilla vs. Mothra

Godzilla vs. Megaguirus

You’re welcome.

MOTHRA IS MOTHERFUCKING ELITE, BITCHES.

Me and my fancy pants are so elitist Jonathan Coulton named...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:53:10 -0500

Me and my fancy pants are so elitist Jonathan Coulton named them.

As usual, butthurt erupts and no one steps forward to speak for the frank and unapologetic elitists.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:02:49 -0500

(via danielsh)

I am so elitist I wear Fancy Pants. Just ask Jessica.

King Diamond - No Presents For Christmas Because no Christmas...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:43:00 -0500

King Diamond - No Presents For Christmas

Because no Christmas season is complete without this.

the frageelay report

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:37:00 -0500

Just watched episode 5 of Glee while I did my step workout. Going for sushi with the family. Will write a few chapters a kill a few thousand zombies after that.

P.S. I WILL KILL ANYONE WHO TELLS ME WHAT HAPPENS ON THE GLEE FINALE TONIGHT. I WILL KILL YOU WITH FIRE. DON’T DOUBT ME. I KILLED A COWORKER WITH FIRE TODAY FOR PLAYING JINGLE BELL ROCK TOO MANY TIMES.

ALSO, CAFFEINE IS MY ANTI DRUG.

Sleater Kinney - Modern Girl I know, I posted this song a few...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:57:42 -0500

Sleater Kinney - Modern Girl

I know, I posted this song a few days ago. But this is the video. It makes me smile.

Lemonheads - Frank Mills Yesterday, I posted the song Frank...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:49:27 -0500

Lemonheads - Frank Mills

Yesterday, I posted the song Frank Mills from the musical Hair, and my old friend Andy sent me this, the Lemonheads covering it. Sweet.

Talking Heads - Swamp I listened to this song today. I have not...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:44:20 -0500

Talking Heads - Swamp

I listened to this song today. I have not listened to it in many years. The instant it started everything came back.

1983 was the best summer of my youth. I partied harder than ever. I did everything in extremes that summer. I think the fact that I was about to turn 21 was weighing on me. I wanted to do everything that was the opposite of being an adult before I offcially became an adult.

It was also the last summer I spent with the few close friends I had from high school. We hung out with musicians. We went from club to club to club watching our friends play, everything from new wave to punk rock to jazz fusion. We listened to music non stop. I swear, we never slept. We drank, we rocked, we watched MTV, we went to Shea Stadium to boo the Mets, we took road trips and had the most insane parties when my parents were away. I had a 78 Mustang. I had a fiance I dumped later that year because he was a psychopath. I had so much zest for life and somehow it all went to hell that winter.

This album was everywhere with us that summer. Slippery People and Making Flippy Floppy and Moon Rocks and the whole damn thing - Kevin used to imitate David Byrne and Steve’s band used to try out a couple of the songs during rehearsal. Every note of this album is everything good about my after high school days. It was the end of a lot of things, but it was a great way to go out.

so

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:25:28 -0500

A few days ago I mentioned I might be doing something really cool that involved hockey.

I decided to not do that really cool thing.

What it came down to was this: Someone wanted my soul for those tickets and my soul isn’t for sale.

You might think I’m a fool to turn this opportunity down but I think I’d be a bigger fool to take it at the expense of my twitter timeline turning into a commercial.

It has a little to do with not wanting to be a whore, a little to do with the ickiness factor of it and a LOT to do with the fact that if I started that - and indications were that it would go beyond that game - twitter would no longer be the free for all fun time it is now. And for what? Occasional tickets and marked down NHL swag?

There’s more to this than meets the eye but that’s all I’m going to say about it here.

I only tell you because a lot of people emailed me about the game and I wanted to let you know I’m not going.

Feel free to call me an idiot :)

Gratuitous Paragraph About You Wednesday

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:45:51 -0500

everythinginthesky:

How about we write a simple, short paragraph of a few sentences trying to describe how we are today, rather than posting a blurry camera-phone photo painstakingly picked out of many solely because it carefully hid our wrinkles / flab / cold, dead eyes*?

* Shane

I like this because I hate pictures of me and don’t always do GPOYW and even when I do, it’s just a cam shot that looks like all the other cam shots I’ve ever posted, which are me looking tired and trying to hide the fact that I look tired. At least I don’t have Shane’s cold, dead eyes.

So how am I today? I’m cold. It’s really windy out. Like, house landing on a witch windy. It’s pouring. It’s dark. I slept like shit, the dog threw up at 3am yet for some reason I’m wired.

Today is payday, which is nice. I need to finish (read, start) my Christmas shopping. I’m going out for sushi tonight with Todd, my daughter, my sister and my nephew.

I’m going to have to bring a change of clothes to work because by the time I walk from my car to the building, I’m going to be soaked through. NO, I DON’T HAVE AN UMBRELLA THANKS FOR ASKING.

Regardless of all the above, I’m in a fine mood today. Sometimes I really like a good rainstorm.

Happy Wednesday!

Albert Hammond - It Never Rains in Southern California I was...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:40:54 -0500

Albert Hammond - It Never Rains in Southern California

I was making a play list of rain songs, because making playlists is what I do when I’m supposed to be getting ready for work. Also, it’s raining. A lot.

I remember a song that played on the radio often when I was very young. It Never Rains in Southern California. Except in the song, he doesn’t always say southern. He just says California. So, thanks to Albert Hammond, I grew up thinking that it really never rained in California. Ever. And maybe it doesn’t in Southern California, but I know it does in Northern California because last time we were there Todd’s mother said “Wish you didn’t come during the rainy season.” Which, it turns out, is about five straight days of rain. That’s not a season. That’s normal weather for a New Yorker.

Anyhow, the lyrics went like this:

It never rains in California
But girl, don’t they warn ya
It pours man it pours

I was ten when this song came out. I was really into analyzing lyrics at a young age I guess, because I agonized over this song. How does it pour if it never rains? I DON’T GET IT.

To make matters worse, I thought he was saying menopause instead of man it pours, and I had to go look up what menopause means and that’s when I started to wish I was born with a penis.

Albert Hammond’s legacy: Terrible weatherman, liar and reason I grew up wanting my uterus removed.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain? Why...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:31:31 -0500

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

Why yes, CCR, I have. It’s right out my window. And it’s raining like it’s never going to stop. There’s also wind. Heavy, hard wind that’s blowing deflated Santas and elves down the street. It’s a freaking monsoon out there.

writing and flow

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:18:57 -0500

My tenth grade creative writing teacher said “Start with a good idea and the story will write itself.”

I called bullshit. He replied “I didn’t say it would be a well written story. Or even a good story. Pay attention. I’m trying to teach you about ideas flowing.”

He went on to talk about not being constrained to your own ideas of a beginning, middle and end when you start a story. Sometimes things will happen as you are writing that you didn’t anticipate. Your story might take a turn you didn’t know was there. When that happens, you don’t stop and make the story go in the original direction. You go with it. Sometimes the story knows more than you, he said.

He was right. I started to get looser with my writing, letting the ideas flow from a starting point without being locked in to where I thought the story would go. What he taught me stayed with me through all my writing, whether it was articles for the college newspaper sports column, essays, short stories or, later on, even blog posts. I never outline. I rarely have an ending in mind. I let the story flow.

Now I’m in the latter half of the novel I’m writing and I’m constantly surprised by what’s happening. When I killed off one character last week, I had no idea that was going to happen until it did.

Last night I was at a crucial point, one which would begin a climax - and when I talk about this I always see in my mind the chart all my writing teachers showed us about plot development. So I’m climbing the peak of plot development. I’m pretty sure I know what’s going to happen because it’s been played out in my mind a thousand times already.

I stop writing. I stare at the screen. I’m having a hard time scaling that peak. Something else wants to happen. A little voice inside my head - which sounds suspiciously like the voice of my tenth grade creative writing teacher - says, sometimes the story knows more than you. I go with the flow. I start writing again.

As with the death of the other character, what this character does takes me by surprise. It’s not anything I had in mind and it’s nothing I would have ever considered. But it’s right. It’s good. The story knows.

I write a few more paragraphs then sit back and read what I just wrote. It’s like it was supposed to be this way all along. She was supposed to be bad. I go back to earlier chapters and you can see it in the things she does, the words she uses.

This is the most I’ve ever written for one story. I’ve produced hundreds upon hundreds of short stories and probably thousands of creative essays over the course of my life. Being almost 50,000 words into a novel is, well, a novel thing for me. You would think after spending every single day writing this, all these words, all these ideas, that I would know my characters. But I don’t. They are their own entities because I’ve chosen to let the story write itself, so to speak.

If my creative writing teacher didn’t spend an entire semester teaching us about flow and not being tied down to our original ideas and trusting our imaginations, this novel would probably be done and I wouldn’t be happy with it.

I just googled my teacher’s name and found a blog post from someone who also took his creative writing class, probably within a few years of the time I did. But I found nothing else on him. I’d like to look him up and thank him.

I just realized this post had no point.

talking to my daughter on twitter

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:41:34 -0500

natuhtack @abigvictory i forgot to walk to the dog. my bad

abigvictory @natuhtack well, that explains the pee stain on the rug.

natuhtack @abigvictory sorry i couldn’t hold it in.