guilty pleasure monday: veronica (elvis costello)

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.

guilty pleasure monday: if you were here (thompson twins)

because jake ryan is a bohunk.

my dear friend from college, suzanne has been visiting this weekend. we had fun on saturday when we took BC to the mall to just shop and cruise around, much like we did in our younger days. BC really loved hitting the mall with us older ladies; she gave great feedback as i was trying things on. for example:

mom, that dress looks like the one i tried on when we visited colonial williamsburg.

and

mom, this dress is all wrong for you. it makes your butt look bigger.

and

mom, you need to wear your pants lower, like i do.

yep. in one hop, skip, and jump, we will be landing in that scaryland known as puberty.

(i’ve seen the future. i can’t afford it.)

one of the funniest things suz, BC, and i realized was that the merchants at the mall were all piping in 80’s music. we heard yaz, we heard depeche mode (or that peshy thing, as my mom used to call them). hell, even BC looked up at me, puzzled, when she was spraying her tenth bottle of whatever at bath and body works — mom, they’re playing lips like sugar!?

yes, virginia, i am now the targeted demographic.

now that i’m a targeted demographic, i am feeling just a tad bit maudlin. i am looking back. and little screams 80s more than the collected works of john hughes. in fact, i really still wish i could host a john hughes film festival — at least, of the three or four flicks of his that i can stand to see multiple times.

one of them, of course, is the classic sixteen candles. molly ringwald was hughes’ muse (heh — say hughes’ muse ten times fast!), and this movie is probably the very best of the entire bunch. no movie captures the awkward teen years better than this — or at least, funnier than this one. the writing is top-notch.

and my favorite part, of course, is the end, when jake ryan is helping samantha baker blow out her birthday candles. i’m not entirely sure why hughes chose if you were here for that moment; the lyrics don’t exactly work. but musically, when you hear the swells behind this innocent scene, it just hits you in the gut.

and you can no longer hear this song without getting a little wistful. which is where i am at the moment.

wistful for a time when i was a different sort of demographic.

guilty pleasure monday: obsession (Étienne daho)

yep. this one will be chalked up to the WTF category.

you silly american pig-dogs, thinking i’m talking about a different obsession from the 1980s. this one comes from france, le pay avec des pommes frites de ‘freedom’, mais oui?

who is etienne daho? well, using all the french-reading-powers that i can summon from four years of francais (avec ma professeur madame donovan pour trois des ans! mon dieu!), he’s a soulful guy who writes, produces, and sings. beyond that, i need to consult with my friend, mr. wikipedia. apparently — and like jerry lewis — daho is big in france and england. oui! he has even had marianne faithfull on one of his tracks, reading from her great-uncle’s creepily famous work, venus in furs. (yes, virginia. as in the one sung about by the velvet underground.)

(ou est la salle de bains, s’il-vous plait?)

of course, no one in america seems to know of him. so how did i stumble onto this guy with the hot voice?

simple. one day, while writing, i put on the french cafe station of rhapsody. amidst a sea of songs with accordians and songs that sounded like what the hip starbucks on the seine might play, this song came on. it stuck out. i was captivated. je ne sais quoi.

not feeling particularly wordy today, so just go ahead and give it a listen. extra BONUS points to anyone who feels like translating.

fin.

american girl

oy gevult! there’s a new american girl.

and she’s a nice jewish goil, to boot.

at least the book illustrations make her look a little jewish. or italian.

recently, an american girl catalog made it’s way into my mailbox. for those of you who do not have a girl between the ages of 7-10 in your home, let me school you.

american girl is the wildly-successful doll/book franchise now owned by mattel. they sell you a doll from a specific period in american history for about $100. then, you’re free to buy the ultra-expensive accessories as well as books that tell the story of said doll. if you’re REALLY insane fanatical up for spoiling your child beyond the realm of what is okay excited by the series, you can take your child to have a special tea at one of the american girl doll stores, located in a few major US cities. to the tune of several hundred dollars. (that must be one hell of a cup of tea.) for the record, we’ve never bought any of the dolls, but we have read plenty of the books thanks to our local public library. we couldn’t get through the hispanic girl’s saga, but we especially enjoyed spunky kit kittredge’s tale as well as that of the revolutionary war era doll, felicity merriman.

while rebecca rubin, the newest addition to the american girl family is not actually the first jewish girl doll offered (there was once, for a split second, a jewish girl doll offered as part of some sort of calendar doll thingy about 20 years ago), she is the first here-to-stay jewish girl doll, with a full backstory and tons of expensive props.  (i can’t wait to hear about little cornfed midwestern girls begging their moms and dads (and santa) to bring them rebecca’s sideboard and sabbath set, complete with challah and candlesticks. does it come complete with brachot (blessings/prayers for the non-tribal set)?)

anyway, in truth, i have a warm spot in my heart for this little doll and for this effort already. rebecca lives in new york city in 1914, the child of jewish immigrants from russia. i haven’t read the stories (yet), but i suspect they involve the pull jewish immigrants of the time felt between staying true to their cultural roots while immersing themselves in their new american identities.  my grandmothers, also NYC dwellers back in that day, would have either been a trifle bit older or a trifle bit younger than rebecca, so i can smile to myself a bit, thinking about what their lives must have been like back then.

i know their families worked their tails off, that’s for sure.

i wonder, in fact, whether there’s any mention of things such as the horrible working conditions these immigrants (and their italian, polish, irish, and other internationally-born brethren) endured back then — i suspect a mention of the triangle shirtwaist factory fire would be something i would want to talk about with my kids. if there is, i’m sure it’s like a whisper that won’t be noticed except by parents like me, who will pounce on it as a teachable moment.

anyway.

mattel took several years to get this one right. and while the actual face of the doll is exactly like every other american girl doll (let’s all join hands and sing we are the world. we all look alike, you know! seriously, don’t you think people would have shrieked if they gave the jewish girl a beak to remember? so i guess i understand that move.), there’s something kind of wonderful to finally be recognized, even in this small way, as american. my ancestors wanted so much to be accepted as american. they were sometimes greeted with signs like this:

even when it seemed that jews were a bit more accepted in american society, there are still holdouts, people who think we can’t be americans if we also have a warm spot in our hearts for israel. i still remember when i, a high school rising senior, was being interviewed as a candidate for new jersey girls’ state. the craggy-faced american legion men asked me a question that infuriates me to this day:

if america went to war with israel, whose side would you be on?

no one asked any of the other interviewees whether they would side with america or ireland, or america or italy, or america or england.  people seem to think that you can’t be an american and a jew, which is an idea that is unfathomable to me.

my grandparents and their parents worked incredibly hard to experience the american dream. they had their struggles, and then, my parents probably had their own challenges growing up jewish in america. jews are not the only people who struggle here; but because it is our ethnicity as well as our religious and cultural background, it has been harder to gain acceptance. you can be irish or italian or polish, but you can still share a sausage and a smile. for us, it’s a little more of a difficult proposition. not insurmountable, though.

i am an american jew. being jewish infuses everything there is about my americanism. and being american pervades  every aspect of my judaism.

and when i see mattel bringing forth an american girl doll like rebecca rubin, i know that the struggles of my ancestors to be american have not been in vain.

somewhere, my grandmas are kvelling*.

*Kvell: (Yiddish) to take great pride and pleasure; a peculiarly Jewish joy most often associated with the accomplishments of one’s family members

guilty pleasure monday: hero takes a fall (the bangles)

i didn’t want to like the bangles. blame it on my first copy-editing gig.

yes, virginia. once upon a time, i worshipped before the altar of  AP style, thanks to my short but eventful career at the miami hurricane. (i know, i know. you wouldn’t know it reading my blog now.) i’d spend my freshman year sunday nights and wednesday nights crouched before antediluvian computers, trying desperately to make heads or tails out of other people’s words. this, of course, is how i became good friends with my pals fern, gibbons, and my best pal murph. murph and i (and mr. lexicon himself, john barret) would hurriedly try to get things straightened out before they had to be sent downtown to the miami herald.

we were so MOD-ren then: the words would get typeset. then, editors (like me, eventually) would drive downtown, where we would take razors and splice up the copy for layout (or in my case, try not to bleed all over the equipment after i’d accidentally spliced more than the columns.) then, the good employees of el herald would make our papers. finally, i’d awake monday and thursday mornings to papers all over campus, as some sort of magical fairy picked up the finished copy and distributed them everywhere.

anyway, during that freshman year, there was a young woman who would write our music columns. this young woman had ins everywhere, it seemed, and wrote some compelling articles. however, editing her was often the stuff of legend. i think murph and i would secretly avoid editing her because you knew when you got one of her articles, interesting as they often were, they required an inordinate amount of time and patience to complete, something that is in short supply on a sunday night at 10pm when you know you have an 8 am class on monday morning.

yet i will admit now, after 25 years — i think i was the better avoider, as murph got the lion’s share of these articles. poor murph. this was around the time that this young woman seemed infatuated with the bangles. i should point out that, at least in the 1980s, miami was not a bastion of popular music (unless it was club music or, dog help us, local girl gloria estefan and the miami sound machine.  i often thought that a popular song of the day in miami was actually a remedial aid for the UM football team.) a local radio station, SHE 103 (SHE’s only rock and roll) kindly fed us the stuff that would become classic rock, but nothing alternative hit my dorm room unless my BTD shared it with me (the REM Murmur tape he gave me was worn to shreds; poor poor pitiful me never heard of the smiths until i transferred north to Rutgers in 1985.)

and this writer girl, who had cool ideas but definitely required serious editorial backup, went on a bangles binge. at least, it seemed that way to murph and me. (or maybe just me.) i was thinking to myself, who the hell are these girls and why are they treading on hallowed Go-Gos ground? would she please shutthehellup and write about clapton, or van halen, or SOMEBODY else?

it would take me another year or two to remove the stick up my ass listen to the bangles. when i did, it was love at first listen. susannah hoffs has the smoothest rough voice i’ve heard; and their material often took beatlesque turns in a fresh, new wave way that was purely 80’s. sure, the world was introduced to them with the prince-penned manic monday — or maybe walk like an egyptian. but me? hero takes a fall won me over, hook, line, and sinker.

that girl who had the ins and who wrote amazing, albeit editorially-challenging stuff? she’s now works in country music, managing some major acts. she has even co-penned a kenny chesney hit. she doesn’t know me from adam, as i was just a lowly frosh copy editor. but i will give her some serious props anyway, as someone who led me to a band i may not have otherwise discovered back then.

clearly, AP style was no match for that chick. and thank goodness for that!

peace train

both BC and hellboy have started camp this week. so far, the only casualty involved would be hellboy’s swim trunks and rash guard, which he lost the very first day and which are not present in any of the lost and found bins. i’ll chalk it up to his inexperience and try to not fret, considering he was growing out of that set anyway.

hellboy lucked out. his best girlfriend from kindergarten, M, is in his group at camp. on the first day, i hid behind a tree, stalker-helicopter mom that i am, watching the group get organized. hellboy had a deathgrip on M’s hand, which another little girl didn’t like very much. the other little girl, who i found out later was M’s friend from preschool, was very much interested in tearing this couple asunder. ultimately, though, they’ve all apparently settled their differences. besides, hellboy has made friends with one very nice-sounding little boy and another little boy, who curiously started out their friendship by kicking hellboy in the nuts while in the post-pool shower portion of the day. (i have had friendships start in even odder ways, so i guess i will take a deep breath and see where this one goes.)

madame, as is typical, knew no one in her group when she started. [how wonderful for the moms (and dads!) who get themselves organized enough in january to get their kids together with other children at camp. this was not a year like that in this house.] fortunately, you could drop BC in a crowd of millions and she would make a life-long friend (if not several) by day’s end. (this of course would be thanks to my gene pool contributions.) so i don’t usually worry about BC in new situations. she goes through the same motions i do — she frets that she knows no one, then she just finds someone who looks like they could do with a friend, and voila! instant social scene.

this year, BC has already made her friend for the session. per usual, i asked BC which local school her new friend A is from. mommy, she replied, A is from saudi arabia. we have lots and lots of people from all over the world in these here parts, so i figured, sure, she’s from there, but where does she live now?

she lives in saudi arabia, girlfriend replied, getting irritated. her family is here for the summer and they sent her to camp.

alrighty. well, that’s got to be interesting, huh? has she told you anything about saudi arabia? i asked.

yes, she was born in philadelphia, but her family is from saudi arabia. that makes her american because she was born here, right?

i replied, yep. how lovely — you might make a new penpal, i replied, hopefully. where is this going?

she’s muslim. i helped her out today and told her that she shouldn’t eat the pepperoni on the pizza they gave us for lunch. she can’t eat pork, either, but i don’t think she knew what pepperoni was. so i helped her. i remembered DiDi (BC’s beloved friend from daycare, who is really named kareem and who is apparently still the man she wants to marry) can’t eat pork because he’s muslim. so i figured she couldn’t, either.

i scratched my head a little. my parents never had to navigate these sorts of situations. well, that’s a mitzvah that you helped her keep with her beliefs, honey. and besides, her beliefs aren’t that much different than yours are. does she know you’re jewish?

sure, BC replied, i told her. but she doesn’t know what jewish means.

should i chalk it up to youth? should i chalk it up to purposeful omission? i don’t know. but i believe that peace happens, one person at a time. i have to be positive and hopeful and not make assumptions, not jump to any stupid or misguided conclusions. because peace no longer just starts with me.

it starts with my kids.