Three years ago today, I signed up for Twitter, beginning a love affair that now involves 2,368 people directly (952 I follow and my 1,416 charming, smart and gorgeous followers) and thousands more by association. For this, you can either thank or blame the editor who sent me a link to Ana Marie Cox's then brand-new feed and said something to the effect of, "I think you'd be good at this."
I'm certainly not as popular as Ana Marie, but I tend to my Twitter counts like an old man with his tomato plants, and have a very low "block" threshold. Also I can't bear to think about politics, cats or my pants quite that much. So it's all good.
This week also marks six years since I launched this blog, which has slowed somewhat but (like the blog world itself) definitely grown and changed because of Teh Twitter. There's so much more quick-hit posting because of the increase in mobile, plus microblogging/sharing sites like Twitter and Tumblr, and Facebook's ability to easily link from almost everywhere. So while it's meant not spending entire days sitting in front of my computer working on the blog, it's also meant I need to be more disciplined and focused on actually making time to think and write. I'm working on that.
The in-between season, while the kid and husband are home on winter break, is always a slow time for me, but I have a piece in this month's Penn Stater Magazine about how live music -- Queen Bee and the Blue Hornet Band in particular -- got me through a long winter before graduation.
The idea came from finding a bunch of Queen Bee clips on YouTube, at very, very long last. Here's Tonya Browne singing, and an early incarnation of the band playing, "Every Night About This Time" in 1990. I love how Mark Ross just kind of sways back and forth, the metronome keeping everyone in time.
By the time I came around about a few years later, her voice had both strengthened and refined (Their MySpace Player has a few good clips from that time, especially "Let Me Tell You What Love Is.") and the band had changed up a little bit to include Rene Witzke and Doug Bernstein, who later split for Nashville. Through the wonders of Facebook I've got back in touch with Rene and am happy to find him -- and his beautiful, multi-talented wife, singer Molly Countermine, of Pure Cane Sugar, Maxwell Strait etc. -- living, playing and raising a family in the State College area. Mark Ross's son is now old enough that he played with the band on a recent reunion gig (Ryan Jones blogged about it for the Penn Stater here), and "Sleepy" Jack Wilkinson is still banging away, God love him.
. . . am fondly remembering sneaking up to an apartment above the Shire in
Cape May with Tonya and a few others, and getting completely hammered
during the drum solo in "Too Tall To Mambo."
During the next song, three hoochies and a large bouncer-looking
dude from the (now bulldozed) Wildwood strip club C.R. Fannie's come
in. The girls start busting moves on the dance floor -- not stripping,
though they were wearing assless jeans and the CR Fannie's logo was
painted on their buttcheeks. Such helpful girls, bless their hearts.
After they left, we were all so loaded we just looked at each other like "did that just happen?"
The Blue Hornet Band, with Tonya out front, accomplished a lot: Not just regular regional gigs, several CDs and a large and loyal group of fans, but European dates and opening for B.B. King -- who was said to have been drawn out of his dressing room by the sound of Tonya's voice. Every band needs its legends, and that one is beloved.
My own personal legend is about the night we finally graduated, and both my parents and Pop Cesspool's folks sat around a table at Cafe 210West, toasting themselves on their accomplishment and rocking out to the Queen Bee. There couldn't have been more happy people in State College that night.
I'm grateful to Tina Hay and the Penn Stater for publishing the piece -- I was hoping it might be a catalyst for Queen Bee fans to find each other, and the music, again. Cue social media!
I have plenty for which to thank Tonya, Mark, Rene and Jack -- and not just New Year's Eve '93 and '94 at the North Star Bar, though that alone would be plenty -- but the biggest may be that those shows ignited my love of live music and appreciation for the people who make it. Keep rocking.
For The Record: The version of "My Baby Loves The Way," on the MySpace Player, is my all-time favorite.
Sohn's novel lampoons a specific neighborhood - the ultra-yuppie, ultra-P.C, ultra-stroller-mobbed-out, beyond-parody Brooklyn neighborhood that's a byword for "smugness" and nice houses in the tri-State area. But she could just as easily be talking about parent populations all across the country - and online. These are the women who populate the "momopshere," those fabled helicopter parents who assume everyone shares the same level of fascination with their children's diets and can afford to worry about the provenance of a cloth diaper.
I'm using this as a way to test the remote posting device on my TypePad blog, so forgive me if this comes out looking crappy.
OK here's the thing about this book: It's readable, and funny in spots, yet awful in that way a book so clearly written to be picked up for a TV show can be. This is what I imagine a Jennifer Weiner TV show would be like, except there'd be a fat chick whereas in this book there's one chubby woman, who also happens to be a complete psychotic freak. If you ever wondered whether the Sex and the City ladies would be as annoying as at-home moms as they are as singletons, the answer is yes. Also, at this point in 2009, the lux goods worship and obsessive wealth seems dated.
When I finished Prospect Park West, I gave it to my mom to read last Saturday at the Shore. "You can probably get through this tonight," I said. "Tell me if it's my imagination."
The next afternoon when we returned from the beach, she said "Yeah, I finished this one. The bit with her burning her hair off was good but it reads like it's a TV script or something."
Like I said, it'll make for pretty TV and cast properly it could be a "thirtysomething"-like phenomenon. But dropping lots of pop cultural and brand references (and there are too many in this book to count) into a book is not exactly the same as writing one. Or is it (see Mad Men)?
And while there certainly are women who inhabit the same demographic and political structure as these women -- except perhaps Melora Leigh, an Oscar-winning actress married to a philandering Australian hottie -- none of them seem even vaguely real. There's plenty of internal dialogue and glances toward the usual parenting neuroses, but nothing that feels genuine.
NEW YORK (AP) -- There won't be any awkward Chris Brown moment at the Kids' Choice Awards - the embattled pop star has withdrawn his name from the ballot. Brown had been nominated for favorite male singer and favorite song for "Kiss Kiss" at the March 28 awards show on Nickelodeon. The nominations came shortly before his arrest for allegedly attacking girlfriend and fellow pop star Rihanna.
I'm on deadline today so am going to keep this one short and sweet: Despite being charged with two serious felonies in connection with the beating of his girlfriend, singer Rihanna, Chris Brown remains nominated for two Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. And he's using his MySpace page to beg for votes.
In response to questions by TMZ, which has been ahead of this story at every turn, the network is falling back on its kids-rule ethos:
A Nick exec tells TMZ Brown "was nominated by kids several months ago,
and the kids who vote
will ultimately decide who wins in the category."
This may come as a shock to Nickelodeon and Viacom, but while the kids may pick the winners, the parents still pick what shows the kids watch, at least in this house. And I can say right now that if Chris Brown remains nominated for an award, I will not let my son watch the show and will encourage other parents to boycott the network. It's pretty sad when TMZ is setting the moral standard on an issue, but there you go. Ironically, Brown is nominated for the song "Kiss, Kiss" with T-Pain, who went to jail in '07 -- for driving with a suspended license. Some will rightly point out that when Jamie Lynn Spears, then the star of a top-rated Nickelodeon show, became pregnant a few years back, the network didn't ostracize her. True, though it's apples-to-oranges unless you hold getting knocked up in the same regard as beating your girlfriend up. Which I do not. I also do not ever recall seeing video of Jamie Lynn Spears leaving a nightclub at 3 a.m., the way we watched the underage Brown do in Miami last week. We already know about the bad judgment Brown showed by putting his hands on a woman, and the potentially worse judgment Rihanna has shown by taking him back. But those are their bad choices to make.
Nick has a chance here to make a better, more responsible choice. And if it can't see fit to, parents will.
UPDATE: As of Wednesday morning, this online petition has nearly 9,000 signatures and other media are picking up the story.
As I write this, the boy is headed off to school with his collection of Valentines for the kids in his second-grade class. We've finally moved beyond SpongeBob, and this time he's handing out
sports-themed foldover cards that come with a little temporary tattoo tucked onto the front. Last night, he sat at the dining room table with the list of names, and filled in the "To" and "From" spaces, fixing the valentines closed with heart-shaped stickers. He'll come home with a haul of cards, and if this year is like every other, a few holiday treat bags assembled by parents who are obviously more generous and ambitious than me.
Things being what they are today, no longer are the bags stuffed with candy. Thanks to dollar stores, the front aisles at Target, and retailers like Oriental Trading, sugary treats take second fiddle to other,
non-caloric loot. (A similar phenomenon happens with Easter baskets, which I wrote about last year for the Inquirer but can't find online right now. Anyway.)
Obviously whatever candy there is inside those goody bag disappears first. And soon enough, these being cheap import trinkets, the little puzzles, yo-yos and mini kaleidoscopes are cast off like so much Happy Meal detritus, turning up on the floor of the car or at the bottom of the toy box.
All that remains are the pencils. They are everywhere, and they are multiplying.
A quick patrol around the house this morning netted 28 decorated goody bag pencils (pictured above), from glittery orange with dancing skeletons from Halloween to the ones stamped with GOD IS SO GREAT! from a CCD something-or-other.
Yeah of course, pencils are a safe alternative to candy or McDonald's gift certificates that always end up lost before they're used. (Sorry, MaryRose!) And unlike those "relaxable dice," pencils probably won't end up sucked into the innards of your Dyson. But I beseech you, unless you're also giving out a pencil sharpener and a pack of Scantron forms in the the goody bags, please reconsider the pencils.
A few months ago, Jack had to fill out one of those "tell us all about you" questionnaires. In the space where it said When I Grow Up, I Want To Be . . . he wrote in "A Father."
The one on the left is about 1975, at Aunt Lil's house on Fountain St. The one on the right, with Elvis Costello looking on in the background, is State College, the night before I graduated. Happy Father's Day! Love, The Favorite
Crappy video, but an excuse to play my favorite Heartbreakers song like evah. Probably too much to hope they'll do this when they come through Philly in June. But you know I pride myself on being hopeful.
The Fame Lady Gaga: The Fame The next step in the the Madonna-Gwen Stefani evolution, because everybody loves a sexy blond kook. And Gaga's talent is legit. (****)
