peevish mama

I’m not sure why I’m so obsessed with Saint James’ musical maturation, but I am. It’s fascinating to me. Maybe it’s because I was such a late bloomer when it came to music (and admittedly fairly regressive considering the tunes that are passing my ears these days). Or maybe I’m just obsessed with Saint James. He’s just so darn cute – exactly the kind of boy I would have had a crush on in fourth grade: the cute, smart, quiet one. 

The other day I went to pick him up at school and was scanning the school yard, doing a Where’s Waldo of shaggy haired dishwater blond boys, when I spotted him with a little clump of older kids huddled around an iPod. Two of the boys each had one earbud in his ear and the rest were standing by with heads bent toward the ground, listening by osmosis, I suppose. Being the fiendish mother I am, I stopped in my tracks, bit my lip and feeling all gushy and mushy, decided to give him a few more minutes to listen. Or maybe I was giving myself a few more minutes to watch. I never did find out what they were listening to, but wouldn’t I like to know! (You see? Even though I’m a total crazy mother, I’m savvy enough to control myself so he has no idea I’m a crazy mother!)

A few days later I was putzing around the kitchen, Saint James on his perch at the laptop, when I hear a little She Wolf. Aaahh, Shakira! What’s not to love? That girl taps into my basest and most hoochie Latina impulses, the ones that were basically eradicated by virtue of growing up in snowy Michigan as the first born daughter of Argentine parents who had no tolerance for hoochiness. I happened to glance over and realized he was watching the video, not listening on iTunes as I had assumed. I watched for a couple seconds from a distance and Ay caramba sweet sabrosa Maria Magdalena Madre de hoochiness! does Shakira have it going on in this video! I thought I was familiar with her pelvic gifts, but she takes it to a whole other level with the cage and the skin colored leotard. She does this move where she starts on her stomach, holy shit, and ohmyGod you’llknowitwhenyouseeit!

In the past, I’ve been rather blithe about censoring music. I don’t believe in it, mostly because I choose to assume most of it goes over their heads, and when it no longer goes over their heads, then hopefully they’re old enough to understand that it’s entertainment, that it’s part of a whole, that it may represent someone’s truth, but doesn’t have to be their truth. As a prolifically profane person, I take the position that all words should be loved, regardless of what they are and how they are strung together (not true for words of hate and racism, but true for my sweet, sweet cussin’).

But visuals? Visuals are a whole other ball of wax. Watching Shakira gyrate around in her cage, my first impulse was to leap across the kitchen, landing on my side with my chin in my hand in a perfect breakdance denouement, the laptop shutting with a soft click under my deftly placed ass. But I couldn’t. That would embarrass him, maybe make him feel guilty about checking out this Shakira he keeps hearing on the radio. I’m the one who has been encouraging him to explore, after all. Furthermore, if we lived in Argentina (or Brazil, Uruguay or most places in Europe, for that matter), he’d see the likes of Shakira shaking their moneymakers in commercials for everything from yogurt to snow tires. After all, she’s just singing and dancing. Cough, cough. In the few seconds that I stood frozen like a deer in Shakira’s headlights, he clicked out of the video. Had he seen enough? Had it made him uncomfortable? Had it bored him? Had it scared him? I felt like I needed to address it somehow, someway, so that he wouldn’t be left holding a big bag of confusion. So I cleared my throat and plunged right in:

Me: Well! Well! Wooowee! Wow! Some of those South American ladies sure do know how to shake their bootays! Phew! My goodness!

Saint James: . . .

Me: Holy moly! Um. Guacamole. Ya, they have a whole other way of dressing and dancing! Don’tcha think? They are something else. Some of those. Uh. Ladies. Woowie.

Saint James: . . . 

Me: Um, ya. So, ya. I think that everyone’s used to the ladies acting a little crazy down there. Like it’s no big deal to dance so, like, hubba hubba. Er. 

Saint James: . . .

Me: Wooh. That dance is a little much, but I really do like Shakira. She’s got a great voice. She’s from Brazil!

Saint James: Columbia.

Me: . . .

We’ve been on a bit of a music tear lately, although all these late night trips to First Ave make us seem a lot cooler than we are. Doctor Dash and I have devised a bit of a system for the old/infirm/lazy. We call First Ave during the day to find out what time the main act is coming on (tip: they know exactly what time by around 4 o’clock) and swoop in about ten minutes prior to grab drinks and shimmy as close to the stage as possible, avoiding wild looking boys with flailing arms whenever possible. I like to dance as much as the next person, but I know how to do so without cracking any noses, which I’m not sure can be said for everyone.

A couple weeks ago we went to see Atmosphere and although Doctor Dash had predicted a testosterone filled environment (a warning to me upon seeing me emerge resplendent in lipstick and bling), I was a bit taken aback by the energy in that place before they came on. For the first time, as a bevy of young bucks bounced in place and loosened their taught neck muscles like boxers spoiling for a fight, I thought to myself, Jesus, this might get rough. Maybe I really am too old for this business. It didn’t help that the start time was super late, giving everyone plenty of time to get drunk and rowdy – pumped, if you will. Not a huge fan of pumped.

Nevertheless, if you don’t know Atmosphere and like hip hop, they are totally worth checking out. They are  local (went to Washburn High School) and they can and do turn it out for their fans. Big time. They put on an amazing show and as Slug tore through song after song, rapping a white hot streak (his lung capacity is truly astonishing), I started to understand the crowd. They knew all the words, shouting them out with fists in the air, veins bulging at their necks. They were there to pay homage to one bad ass Minnesota boy with some serious street cred. Slug’s partner in crime, Ant, spun beats of gold from his tables clad in a silky white shirt, slicked back hair, fu manchu stache and impenetrable expression, looking a bit like Steven Segal. I will say that the free flowing marijuana eventually took the edge off the jumpy crowd, as did Slug’s near constant banter and appreciation. Maybe it makes me a high maintenance audience member, but I love to be loved up. I think we have a really smart, rich, complex music scene here in Minneapolis and it’s nice to get some props. You could tell he was fired up to be there, playing in his hometown in one of the best places to hear music on earth. Slug raps about everything from hockey hair to a girl who is like a drug to Lyndale Avenue to killing his boss. It is quite raw and quite beautiful. The next day I felt drained, sort of battered and buffeted by the whole experience. It has taken all these many days to digest that concert and I think it was one of those shows where the performers put out so much emotion and energy, that you can’t help but do the same – absorbing and then sending back the love, the angst, and the anger. They were gooooood, so good that next time I go, I just might find myself feeling, um, pumped.

Two nights ago, one of my Babe-O-Matics, Shady, flew in from Chicago to join us for Arctic Monkeys. A departure from our recent hip hoppyness, Arctic Monkeys was Dash’s idea, but I LOVED it. In contrast to Atmosphere, who are around our age, Arctic Monkeys are YOUNG. They look so young, in fact, with their floppy ringlets of hair, that it’s almost impossible to believe that they’re as talented as they are, that they rock the way they do. The three front men look like they could be in a hair styling textbook illustrating the different ways hair can part. But no matter – they’re completely adorable. The lead singer, Alex Turner, is an unbelievable vocalist. His voice is so facile, so slippery – he runs it with no effort, no straining, no sweat. Unbelievable. And he’s super sexy, like a young Mick Jagger but not as peacocky. As it turns out, however, I do have an age threshold for unseemly chops licking and I located it on Saturday night. Just a wittle baby. And the drummer, Matt Helders, well, what can I say? Dash, Shady and I were all in love with the drummer. He and his lovable little fro just powered every song like a mad charging bull, pulling the rest of the band behind him. Screaming. Breakneck. Breathless. Uh mazing. Thoroughly satisfying, totally impressive, those boys have got some serious rock chops.

And now, at the risk of neglecting our children and our friends, I think we’re going to take a little break from our nocturnal musical adventures. Although I am loving Solid Gold, and I hear they’re coming soon . . .

My college girls and I used to call ourselves the Babe-O-Matics, and lest you think we took ourselves seriously, please know that it was all in jest. Mostly. Back in the day, I had inherited a tape player called the Invert-O-Matic (my dad has always been a gadget guy and this was pure seventies cutting edge stuff) which, no joke, would eject the tape, flip it over, suck it back in and play the other side. Someone covered the “Invert” with “Babe” and that’s all she wrote. I don’t remember exactly when we became the Babe-O-Matics – it feels like we just always were. And as it turns out, I think we always will be. We may no longer be running around Southbend, Indiana dressed like grungy man-girls in big Levis, flannel shirts, Birkenstocks and boots, but Babe-os we remain.

I’ve been sitting on this post for a few days – it doesn’t seem to be writing itself, as usually happens when the emotions are bigger than the words. Earlier this summer, I had intended to write about the bookend stop in Chicago on our way back from Michigan and I never did. The words sort of eluded me to describe how much fun we had overnight at Sunny’s* house in Wilamette with her hubby, Tax Man Italiano, and their four kids. Our other roommate, Shady** came in from the city for the night and we slipped right back into our old mischief, feasting, drinking, and gabbing to excess – only now we were surrounded by a gaggle of kids and a couple of indulgent husbands who seem to understand implicitly that if there was ever a night to step up and get the kids to bed and let us talk, it was then. Late night, sitting on Sunny’s porch, drinking those last beers we would regret in the morning, it struck me that after college, I was far too cavalier about the Babe-os spreading out around the country. Nothing seemed permanent back then. Nothing seemed of consequence.  We all had things we needed to do, and I figured they would always be as close to me as they were on that sad day we all drove away from our little blue house on St. Peter’s Street for the last time – weeping, desolate, inconsolable in the knowledge that we would never have that kind of fun again. 

Looking at my girls over the flickering candles on that porch, my heart caught in my throat. We could be doing all of this together. Instead, we live parallel lives in different cities, only catching up for a few golden hours every year. Shady goes to a lot of the same concerts we go to when they hit Chicago – she was at Beck and at De La Soul. What a partner in crime she would be if we lived in the same place! And Sunny’s kids and my kids paired off and scampered away like they see each other every day. Sunny and I could be sitting at the pool together, at the beach together, cobbling dinners together out of cheese and crackers and wine. I married someone who knew me way back when – back when I was young and fun and didn’t have a care in the world. I know how much humor and patience and leeway and pleasure you draw out of that pot of memories, that book of characters and references. It’s huge. Embarrassingly, I think I might have blubbered something about missing out on my Ya Ya sisterhood, but Sunny and Shady understood. When six girls spend a whole Halloween night tied together disguised as a drain hair shark, on mushrooms, well, it adds a whole other dimension to your relationship. 

We could be doing all of this together.

But we’re not. And as bittersweet as seeing each other may be, it’s also completely restorative, satisfying and necessary. To laugh like that, to be understood and accepted like that, fills us up and lets us glide on through until the next time. We all have other wonderful friends where we live, sisters, the ladies you count on. But what we Babe-os had remains utterly apart – maybe because we’ve always lived apart – it’s locked away in time, but breathtakingly accessible. All we have to do to tap into that, is put ourselves into the same room. So we do.

On Saturday three of us flew to Saint Louis to surprise Dolly*** for her 40th birthday party. She had no idea we were coming. Her lovely sisters and hubby, Soul Daddy, masterfully kept it under wraps. Tartare had flown from Seattle to meet up with Shady and Sunny in Chicago and they flew in together. When I looked up from my phone to see the three of them striding toward me in the St. Louis airport, looking all foxy and smiley, my heart did a little jump. All together! For a party! For Dolly! It was just too good. 

The surprise was perfect. We didn’t jump out of a cake. We simply walked down the street and as we approached we could hear Dolly’s daughter, Mimi, yelling Moooom, come outside! So of course, there was shrieking. Of course there were hugs and laughter. Dolly was grinning ear to ear, as was the adorable Soul Daddy. Operation Babe-O-Matic was a success.

The Babe-os were in da haaayouse and Dolly’s relaxing afternoon had just morphed into something else entirely. We chatted, drank in their three adorable kids, oohed and aahed around the house, soaking up the wall colors, the pictures, the stuff of our dear friend’s day-to-day life. We felt lucky to be sitting in her kitchen, even for a couple hours, to have our hands on the counter top where her kids color, where they spill cereal, where Dolly rolls out pies, where Soul Daddy chops and puts out cheese and olives. We Babe-os take nothing for granted, least of all time in each other’s homes. It’s just too rare. And even back in college, back when all we really cared about was the next great party, we were all about nesting, making our dorm rooms and then the house on St. Peter’s Street sweet little homes to relish, share, and make memories in. Some things never change.

A lot of things never change.

After a little adventure to Dolly’s favorite nail salon for manis and pedis, a quick beer, and that festive, oh so fun, getting ready time when we chatted and cackled and checked out eachothers’ lotions and potions, outfits and jewelry, we were off like the wind to Dolly’s bash. We knew it was going to be great because it was at the house Dolly grew up in, now owned by her sister, the lovely Maisie and her family. We had already celebrated Dolly and Soul Daddy’s wedding at that house, not to mention various stops to and fro Mardi Gras throughout the years. This family knows how to fling open their doors, hug you close and throw down for a really good time. There were pretty lights strung up in the yard, cocktail tables with candles, delicious food and bevvies, jello shots in every flavor, and tons of party people who all love Dolly.

We knew it was going to be fun. What we didn’t know, is that we were going to spend the next nine hours in a magical musical pleasure fest! Soul Daddy’s old band set up in the garage due to some threatening sprinkles, which, luckily, never ended up getting much footing and began a night of amazing music. Lordy, did we dance! Soul Daddy sang and we all swooned. Dolly sang and we swooned some more. Our girl! As the night tore on in a mad blur fueled by beer and restorative stops to the food table, all of Dolly’s sibs took a turn, and then her uncle and then her cousins and before we knew it, the night had devolved into a beautiful crazy hootenanny. It was great. And if you went inside, you had their exquisitely woven playlist to contend with. I have fuzzy memories of lurching around, dancing to So Lonely, screaming the words while gnawing on a chicken wing. It was a buh uh uh uh laaasst!!!

Just like the old days, the Babe-os would fan out at a party, flitting around, talking to everyone, only to find each other again in a riotous explosion of cheers and hugs and laughter, feeling like you were home again after a crazy odyssey. This would happen, and did happen on Saturday, multiple times a night, all night long. We may have lived together, but we were always happiest to see each other. 

A lot of things never change.

Tartare, Sunny, Shady and Dolly, you are my heart. Happy birthday Dolly. I love you rockin’ Babe-o-matics.

*Because of love of, disposition, outlook, and Coppertone always at the ready.

**Because why mess with a good nickname?

***Because she has a love for Dolly Parton, not because she looks like Dolly Parton.

One minute I’m navigating back to school night, standing in line in the school gym, clutching myriad forms and checks, and sweating about getting my kid the band instrument choice he wants. The next minute I’m in the middle of a thumping sweaty rumpus at First Ave, right up close to the stage, crackin’ out my best, getting my hip hop on courtesy of these fine fellows. Dash and I went with Nanook, Gear Daddy, Crackerjack and Renaissance Man (happy birthday RM, fellow Virgo and lover of eighties new wave, good birthday, wouldn’tchasay?).

On this evening of all things back-to-school, the smell of hallways, chalk, and gymnasiums still fresh in my nose, we got SCHOOLED. We got old schooled, we got new schooled, we got knick knock paddywacked give the dog a bone, this old girl came rollin home. These professors of hip hop put on a great show. It’s the 20 Years High and Rising Tour, marking 20 years since their first and biggest album, 3 Feet High and Rising, dropped (see how I did that? I got the lingo, bitches) and they put on a show that emphatically said: we are still here, mother fuckers and thank YOU for still being here, mother fuckers! They went easy on the goof, heavy on the heavy, and scratched all the right spots with their genius rapping, sampling, scratching, and happy mahem inducing antics. It was really cool to watch a hip hop show backed by a smokin’ ten piece band (the Rhythm Roots Allstars) who really stood on their own but, combined with De La Soul, just amped it up to a whole other level. There were crazy bongo explosions (seriously, like three or four guys on bongos – awesome) and a full horn section affectionately introduced as Ghetto Brass (which made me chuckle given my afternoon of instrument wrangling with Saint James) and who floored us with a little Stevie Wonder: a bright, shiny, clear your sinuses, Sir Duke. Beautiful. Truly.

I’m not a professional, I don’t take notes, I don’t have the vocabulary or the knowledge base to really talk about music in a meaningful way but most importantly, I don’t want to miss anything. More and more, I’m finding that if I think about how I’m going to blog about something, it really takes me out of the moment, so I try not to do that. Ever. Consequently, I’m left with little more than ringing ears, a huge grin on my mug, sore muscles, and the vague notion that in addition to hopping us up on some good hard hip hop, these sampling geniuses tantalized us with a little Gorillaz, a little Steely Dan, a little Beastie Boys (Hey Ladies!!!), a little MJ, for sure some Run DMC. I know there was more, but I have a mind of swiss cheese.

And not for nothing, the last twenty years have been kind to De La Soul. They look great and they sound great. It was nice to be at a show watching guys our age working it out, and working it out really really well. It was an 18+ show, so there were plenty of babies in the audience to be sure. We even ran into Matt who works at the pool snack bar and knows to give us a heavy pour on the vino blancos, and bless his heart he was totally cool, casual and refreshingly not surprised to be running into a couple of pool mommies at the show. Every now and again they’d pan a big bright spotlight over the crowd going nuts and I amused myself imagining what Posdnuos would think of our little group dancing all dirty and freaky with our yoga arms up in the air and silly smiles plastered on our, ahem, super duper dewey and youthful looking faces. Every time I go to see live music I have a little age dysmorphia conversation in my head for a few seconds: Jeez, these people look like toddlers, ooh, hey, that one looks like a grown up St. James, cute! I should feel really old, but I don’t feel really old, what is wrong with me that I don’t feel really old? Fuck it, step aside slightly stinky, disaffected little one and watch a mama strut her stuff, WOOOHOOOO! 

Sigh. It’s true. It’s really really true. So my take away from last night?

Mirror mirror on the wall.

Tell me mirror what is wrong?

Nothing child, keep keeping on.

And on and on and on and on.*

*OK, so I took some liberties with the last two lines. Sue me.

Do you recognize this man? He is Hasidic Jew rapper reggae dancehall boy genius – Matisyahu. At the risk of sounding like a musical experience hyperbolizer, I will tell you that he put on a thoroughly soul satisfying, gut wrenching, sweaty crush of a show last night at First Ave.

I, for one, was on fire. I, for one, was ready to jump the fence. Good bye baby Jesus. Hello my sweet little juju bean.

We had thrown together a little light summer din and drinks on the patio for six or seven of our besty couples for a pre-show fest. I made Duddy’s (aka: Chief Big Voice) Latin Pork Pernil recipe and set out yummy fixins for tacos, including a little lime chipotle crema that is so delicious it could double as a nourishing facial mask should you wish to wake up as a bit of a Salma Hayek. And cilantro in everything of course – my favorite, coddled, golden child herb – cilantro can do no wrong in my eyes. The beers and vino blancos were going down cool and fast and, of course, there can be no patio revelry without the squat-bottled goodness of Señor Patrón. At nine thirty we piled into a couple cars and left in a flurry of rustling tickets and high spirited cackles (ok, maybe that was just me).

I must admit that for a long time, I poo-pooed Matisyahu. I thought the Hasidic Jew thing seemed gimmicky and I didn’t give him a shot until Tartare and her hubby Meester Panqueques put him on our iTunes before heading back to Seattle when they visited for Thanksgiving. I started listening. I started liking. A lot. Many a dinner has been prepared in the company of my silver tongued, honey toned, deeply soulful, peacefully bad-ass new friend.

I was jacked up for this show and Matisyahu did not disappoint. In fact, not in a million years did I consider that I would be swooning within the first minutes of watching him croon and beatbox in his hoodie. The guy’s got something. Aside from that angular, lankiness I’m drawn to like a moth to flame, he’s got a beautiful voice. A beautiful, pure voice, which actually matters more than you’d think in rap – to me, anyway. Like, I love Jay Z, he’s a great rapper and he’s got a good thing going with my girl Beyoncé and I love that they jet ski at Cannes in white bathing suits, but he just doesn’t have a pretty voice. No disrespect. Just iswhatitis.

And if the face, the voice, the lightening-quick blast of words, and the warm reggae dipped in cool hip hop weren’t enough, it turns out they’re a bit of a jam band. They rock. Hard. His guitarist was a superstar and had a white knuckled grip on my entrails every time he went off on his wizardly solos. Seriously, people, someone hand me a fan because I think I may faint. 

And if all that weren’t enough, local boy Yoni, joined him for a few songs and he ripped it up. Watching him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that at last, the chubby Jewish kid who carried his debate team to the championships, was getting a whole new day in the sun. He was incredible. That wit and those words could have landed him in law school, but instead it landed him in a whole lot of First Ave love last night.

The vibe was the happiest and mellowest I’ve ever experienced. First Ave is always great, everyone’s always psyched to be there, but honestly, not to sound hokey, last night was different. I didn’t really get a chance to survey the crowd as I was too busy busting out my finest moves, but any time I tried to get a little closer to the stage, people parted like the Red Sea. Normally you get elbows and an unyielding wide legged stance, but last night the crowd was fluid and happy. Oh holy Moses, was I feeling the love! At one point, I turned around to Doctor Dash, my hand on my heart and yelled This is really moving me! Like really really!  He just nodded at me indulgently, as I tend to get carried away in these situations. But that’s what makes me so lovable, right Dash?

Having said that, I would be running for the hills at the first whiff of sappy spirituality. I take my religion and my music separately, thank you very much, and never the twain shall meet. But maybe I don’t reject the idea of music carrying a spiritual message so much as the idea of crap music that’s simply there to carry the message. And not for nothing, those Christians who sway with their eyes closed and their arms up at mega Christian rock concerts give me the total creeps. Matisyahu manages to be uplifting, inspiring and spiritual, yes, admittedly, he is – but his music stands on its own and it has enough hard edges and darkness to fully satisfy. 

And I am fully satisfied. The music, the dancing, the drinking and my friends filled up my canteen and I am feeling good today. Really really good. I’m telling you, that boy has got something. He goes far, he goes deep, and he couldn’t possibly be more lovely.

Yesterday was such an odd day – it was the quintessential, hot, sunny summer day in the Midwest replete with a comfortingly familiar level of humidity and mosquito action. We swam, we idled around home, we face painted, we rode our bikes and I even broke out the Deep Woods OFF for the first time this season. It was a good day. It was a regular day. And in the midst of my morning, I find out Farrah Fawcett died, which is sad, but she was sick and it was no great surprise. I always loved Farrah in that sad sort of way a little Argentine girl living in Michigan would. She was the ideal, and I, with my dark hair, big feet, long legs and funny name, was most definitely not. Before a family vacation, I even got my hair cut so that it would “feather,” having no clue that you needed a curling iron to do it. Not to mention that my hair was so thick and heavy that it would have required mad skilz, copious amounts of hair spray and a head immobilizer for me to pull off a feathered do. Instead my hair fell around my face like Cousin It until my mom got so exasperated she bought a barrette from a Disney World gift shop to pin it away from my face. Michigan in the seventies was not a place you wanted to be different. It was a time before Benneton ads, J Lo, Beyoncé, and High School Musical. Little girls swoon when they find out my name now, but back then, Gabriela was odd and ugly – just like me. Revisiting those youthful cringes and tinges upon hearing of Farrah’s death, while not entirely surprising, amounted to more than plenty melancholy nostalgia for a hot June day.

I screamed and practically jumped out of my skin when I read that Michael Jackson had died. Michael Jackson is dead. Not that he was the picture of vitality, by any stretch, but still – it just doesn’t seem possible! Talk about a tragic life spiral. I’ve always been a fan, but like most people, had sort of let him go as he got weirder and whiter – as he finally succeeded in erasing all traces of the beautiful black boy he had once been. He was so talented that it somehow made his erratic behavior and freaky looks all that much more distasteful. It just became easier to ignore him than to try to understand what was going on chez Neverland. Oh, but what a cool little kid he was, what a voice, what a dancer! And to die at fifty, alone, and hidden away in that big weird house, living out a fantasy most certainly gone awry. Tragic. Check this out, though. The footage from Harlem is breathtaking and I could watch that all day. Hopefully he’s watching from wherever he is and has found whatever he was looking for. Good bye MJ.

And good bye beautiful Farrah.

Santigold tore it up at First Ave last night! She TORE! IT! UP! This girl is blazing hot hot hot! She’s a chica who slinks and jumps and pumps and thrashes her way through genres, yet manages to make it all hang together and groove and swell until she rips the roof OFF the place!

She’s this totally beautiful black woman with a giant voice and I found my mind racing to pin her somehow. A creature of musical mythology, she defies classification, definition, description, even. I feel like I can talk circles all around her, wrapping her in a web of useless strings, without really being able to convey the IT - the her.  

If you took Tina Turner and Blondie and Patty Smyth with a smidge of Gwen Stefani and Venus Williams and M.I.A., you might be able to approach the righteous show-womanship that is Santigold. I love her when she’s eighties rock and synthesizer voice, I love her when she’s pumping out a little hip hop, I love her when she looks like she’s doing aerobics – ONJ style, I love her when she’s thrashing her silky black shag and then pulling out a little Flash Dance-fast-run-in-place and then flips to deep, dark, African beats – chanting like a medicine woman and then all of a sudden you freeze and think: punk – of course. She’s a punk, hiphop, ska, electronica princess who had Minneapolis eating out of the palm of her hand last night. She was sweet and gracious and loved us up bigtime. An earthy diva she reads as retro and futuristic both – but street and glam too. I am smitten. Totally gone.

She was wearing a white leather jump suit that had a drapey, animal print cloth pelt over it which was cut in a vaguely eighties leotard sillouette. Amazing. And of course, the huge ghetto fabulous gold hoops. If her earlobes are intact, I would consider it a miracle. 

As a testament to how bad-ass she is, how sure she is that we won’t take our eyes off her, she’s flanked by two phenomenal, beautiful and freaky deaky dancer/back-up singers. These chicks go from being mimes to marionettes, to humpin’ flygirls, their faces blank behind white glasses. Ultra cool and totally mesmerizing.

Opening acts, Amanda Blank and Trouble Andrew, both reentered the scene at different points and I’m glad they did, since we had missed them. Amanda is a skinny white chick with a Demi Moore scratchy voice who can rap like a mean mad mo’ fo’ – her lungs are ridiculous and as she flailed around, all pale and skinny in her sexy black romper, I thought to myself: I”m not quite sure what to make of this chick, but it’s working! And Trouble Andrew, I wish we hadn’t missed him, because he slipped on stage, swooped around and sang in his beautiful guy voice and then he vanished on me. Put him on your radars.

I kept turning back to Doctor Dash- ear to ear grin – and shrieking “It’s a SPECTACLE!” And it was! A rockin’, thumpin’, spectacular spectacle of gold – Santigold.

Adventureland’s soundtrack got me thinking about music and how for me, it used to be a really tactile, physical thing – both literally and figuratively, in a way it just isn’t anymore. In 1987 we were listening to music on cassette tapes. Plastic, durable, stackable, bulky tapes with scratched cases. I can still smell the ribbon and feel the anger in my throat when it got pulled out and chewed up by a rogue tape player or a little brother. I remember spooling it back in with a pencil, holding my breath, hoping it would still play. Taping songs off the radio, making mixed tapes, it was a manual thing – you had to get the timing right, you had to listen and press RECORD and STOP at the perfect moment.

When you went to the record store and plunked down nine dollars and change for a casette, you were taking it on faith that you were going to like all the songs as much as you liked the one you bought the tape for. You listened to the whole tape as soon as you got in the car. It was cumbersome to fast forward to a particular song, although it’s a skill we all honed. Doctor Dash was exceedingly good at this, though he had had many years of practice by the time we started roadtripping together.

Music was experienced by album back then – not by song – so there was a depth of familiarity and listening that I’m not quite getting anymore. We used to listen to our tapes over and over until we wore them out. Now I flit around, clicking and dragging, making playlists, dismissing songs I don’t like in the first ten seconds. Truth be told, there’s so much music on our computer, I haven’t even listened to a lot of it. Music is an ocean now – vast, unknowable – I feel I can’t do much more than sail along on top of it.

When I was young, I would very specifically and deliberately associate certain songs with certain times or people. A song was like plastic wrap and you would wrap it around a memory and there it would stay forever. Packaged, accessible, easy to hold in your hand daydream fodder. Lionel Richie’s Hello offered direct access to the one and only time I danced with Danny Voss – hunky, blond, turquoise-sleeveless-t-shirt-wearing, cousin-of-a-girl-I-hated, Danny Voss. Talk about yearning. Talk about visceral. This song made my stomach do flip flops for months on end.

At the beginning of law school, I sat on my fire escape and cried because someone was having a party at a house nearby and loud snatches of Uncle John’s Band kept floating over to me. The late afternoon sun, the Dead, the smell of beer and pot – that was college and I missed that life so much it hurt.

Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes? High school dances – unfettered Molly Ringwald dancing. I Melt with You by Modern English? Also school dances – spinning, dizzy, swallowed up in the music, wishing I had a boyfriend.

The Reflex by Duran Duran was the lip synch contest at camp. A girl from another cabin peed on stage. Pee and nervous laughter as she pretended to play the keyboards. Darkening concrete beneath her feet.

U Can’t Touch this by MC Hammer was the lounge at school. Girls in uniforms dancing on the coffee table.  

Brass Monkey by the Beasties was Fourth of July fireworks. I was really really tan and my hair was really really big. I was wearing Levis, rolled and tapered at the bottom, a pink tank top and opalescent lipstick. Hot shit.

And if there’s any woman my age who can’t hum the song from the Sixteen Candles scene pictured above, I’ll get a spiral perm tomorrow.

Do kids still do this? Lock in music to moments? Or is that something you only do when you can fit all your music into a shoe box? When the rate of discovering new music is directly tied to weekly rides to the mall? Is there too much music now? Is our capacity to make music our own finite and ultimately being diluted by instantaneous and unmitigated access? Is the very fact that I’m posing these questions, proof positive of my old lady status and that I just don’t get it?

And then there’s irony, which creates even more distance between the gut and the song. A friend was complaining about how her high schooler was listening to Phil Collins, whom she had never liked and liked even less now that her daughter and her friends had discovered him. I can’t say I disagree, although perhaps I find myself softening on Mr. Honey Tones and Thinning Hair as the years pass. On second thought, Sussudio really was unforgivable.  Maybe I was uniquely unjaded when it came to music, but I always took it as it came. I certainly didn’t listen to music with any sense of irony. I do now. And kids now seem to as well. Is it their loss?

I hope not. I hope that when Saint James is 35, he can pick out a handful of songs that send him shooting to his teen years, to specific moments in time when he couldn’t breathe for laughing so hard or being so smitten, to driving with friends with the windows open and the wind on their teeth, to playing foosball in smoky basements, to wrestling in the snow because he and his best friend were both being dicks and it was the only way to work it out, to pressing a finger onto a girl’s sunburnt shoulder, watching his print recede and doing it again.

Which songs did you wrap around your memories? Do tell.

You know that feeling the first time you kiss someone you really like? You feel like you’re falling, right? Adventureland is, hands down, the sweetest movie I’ve seen in a long time and taps right into that dizzying free fall – that vertiginous, dangerous, utterly perfect last three inches before your lips meet.

Jesse Eisenberg plays James, a likeable if slightly uptight protagonist who wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s smart, he’s sincere and he’s stuck working at a cheesy amusement park in his hometown of Pittsburgh instead of traveling around Europe after college as planned. He ends up falling in love with the beautiful and troubled Em played by Kristen Stewart. Eisenberg is perfection – he is authentic and restrained and brings us all the angst, yearning, butterflies, sharp pangs and small humilations of young love with total immediacy and subtlety.

The movie is set in 1987. This is my era – I was 17. The soundtrack is full of ridiculous gems that make you chuckle (Your Love – The Outfield) and that hit you in the gut (Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely – Husker Du, Pale Blue Eyes - Lou Reed). Nostalgia tends to make me slightly queasy, but since this movie so deftly sidesteps sappiness, it was easy to just relax and indulge. It’s a coming-of-age flick with brains and heart.

Doctor Dash and I picked this movie because we just wanted to escape and laugh a little – we didn’t really want to have to think. The last thing we expected was to feel. And remember.

We all feel the sap rise in our veins when it’s spring. I know I do. I feel lusty, antsy, frothy, a little bit wicked, almost adolescent. This is a bad time of the year to be hobbled. My trusty minivan is my only ally. I cruise around, windows open, my hair dancing in wild wips, listening to Hip HopNation waaaaay too loud. Thank God for satellite radio. Slim Thug, Lil’ Wayne, T.I., Young Jeezy, Jay Z, Fiddy, Diddy, Kanye, Dre, Snoop and my girl M.I.A. I drive around, my van fulla my homeys, warm breezes and bass. Spleefs and 40’s passed around, the windshield a movie, the soundtrack our own.

Except. Except. Not.

It’s just me and the music and the wind. I pull into the driveway, my ears ringing and the yearning in my chest only slightly abated.

Damn you spring.

I don’t know what squeezes my heart more. To realize one of my children sings in perfect pitch or to realize one of my children is tone deaf. I’ve got one of each. I’m not saying which is which, because everyone has got to sing.

Someone once said that a good title will get you half way there. Actually, I just made that up. But it’s true, I think. Which is why I would have picked up Another Bullshit Night in Suck City if I had seen it in a bookstore, even without the recommendation of our good friend, Flan. To tell the truth, Flan could recommend a book called Beige Slacks and I’d probably still give it a try. I love this title and I love this book. A memoir by Nick Flynn, it’s raw and beautifully written, pain and humor, grit, blood and spittle spun into something fragile, translucent, vivid and incredibly complex and textured. I can’t help but think of Chihuly’s work. Flynn uses such a light hand and strings each chapter together with the most tenuous of invisible strings – the whole book feels a mere gust away from crashing to the ground in a pile of tragic shards. Instead it soars. One example of countless:

“When my grandmother comes to dinner at our house she always carries her own jar of Turner’s Special Blend. She knows how much she needs and doesn’t want to be caught short. My brother remembers her at Christmas one year, an especially weepy time for her, when she put her hands around his neck and murmured, My little angel, you wouldn’t be so hard to kill. And though he knew it was only the whiskey talking, he also knew that the whiskey talked daily.”

I can’t get that image out of my head. Her wrinkled hand against the smooth pale skin of the boy’s neck. At a certain point, what really separates a caress from an atrocity? Just a bit of pressure for a few minutes. Man.

Another title I love is from Atmosphere’s last album: If Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. Genius. And they back it up – it’s a great album.  These boys have a knack though, because in 2002 they released an album called God Loves Ugly, which are my sentiments exactly.  Offensively stinky cheeses, drinks so strong they make you grimace, books that make you cry, music laced in rage or grief, meat – what can be sadder than eating meat? That’s the good stuff.

That murky water hole where pretty and ugly swirl together? That’s where I want to wallow.

* Saffron Tower, by Dale Chihuly on exhibition at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ until May 31, 2009. Wish I could go.

Perhaps there is something amiss when your son’s croak from the way back of the minivan is barely audible over the music: Mom, I just can’t listen to so much rap in the morning.

Perhaps there is something amiss when your morning goodbye to your kids concludes with a cheery: And try not to get lice!

I’ll tell you one thing that was not amiss, however, and it was M.I.A. rocking the Grammy’s last night with her gigantic full term belly. She was out there with T.I., Kanye, Jay Z, and Lil’ Wayne thumpin’ Swagger Like Us like nobody’s business (love this song, love this girl, love her original Paper Planes). I just wish she’d checked with me before busting out in that polka-dotted, sheer black body suit. M.I.A. can do no wrong in my book – she is so bad ass that, honestly, she can (and does) get away with anything. But the gigantic black polka-dots translated as more Minnie Mouse than Tamil Tiger and it really, really wasn’t working for me – notwithstanding the fact that she put her beautiful belly front and center (which I fully applaud). 

If I was M.I.A. (believe you me, this would not be the first time one of my reveries began with those words).  So, if I was M.I.A. I would have worn a beautiful bejeweled bra with lots of structure and support for my pendulous pregnancy breasts. Nothing tacky, no fake pasties, just really really blingy – in gold. I would have worn a flowy, slightly sheer matching sarong, slung way low under my belly. The sarong would be to the floor but you would definitely see a little leg. No shoes, lots of bangles. My hair would be the same – perfectly disheveled – a few sandy salty days away from dreads – and heck, I’d even keep the black Wayfarers. And lastly, I’d borrow Gwen Stefani’s fanciest bindi and stick it to my outie belly button.  If I was feeling less exotic and more street, I’d do a tiny white tank, cut off right above my belly, low low low rider baggy jeans and some cool body paint/graffiti action on my belly. You feel me? 

M.I.A. if you need me, I’m right here, in Minneapolis, Minnesota – at the ready to be your stylist. I can be your Rachel Zoe. You got some balls, lady and I love you for that. I totally get that you aren’t about being glamorous and fitting into anyone’s idea of what a woman should be and that’s what makes you so freaking fabulous. Still, polka dots (even ironic polka dots) are a killer.

This morning found me in the kitchen making crèpes for the kids, which is slightly labor intensive in that you can only make one at a time unless you go crazy like the Swedish Chef on the Muppets and start in with two, maybe three separate frantic pans. As I was flipping crèpe after deformed crèpe, I heard Saint James and Supergirl singing in the dining room.  It went a little something like this:

We need fun,

We got nowhere to run.

This ain’t fun,

We got nowhere to run.

We need fun,

We got nowhere to run. etc., etc.

The child of the seventies in me thought - Wow, that sounds like something that would be great in a newly released Annie musical – a modernized version of  It’s a Hard Knock Life! ? Budding Andrew Lloyd Webbers?

The gold roped, diamond grilled, bling-ditty-bling-bling hip hop producer in me thought - Damn, chil’ren, that hook’s off the heezy, gots ta make it eazy, fo ya sweet mama peezy. A little like this.

And the mother in me, the mother who has basically dedicated her life to making their lives “fun,” thought - You pint size fuckers! What more fun could you possibly handle in your chocked-full-o’-sports-and-activities little lives? Saint James, sometimes you go from hockey to soccer to skiing all in one day. And who’s driving your skinny, fun lovin’ little ass? Right. Me. And Doctor Dash. When I was your age I barely did any activities. And my parents took me to see Reds – with Warren Beatty.  Do you have any idea how boring that movie was? And how long it was? It was so long it had an intermission! And they made me go and sit through it – and did my mother think to bring me something to draw on? Of course not. Her purse had TicTacs and cigarettes in it – not crayons and markers and squishy balls and little plastic animals and playdough. It was not a treasure trove of fun – in fact, we weren’t even allowed to touch her purse! And now, in the cruelest of ironies, I’m getting it on the other end with the boring movies when I have to sit through Alvin and the Chipmunks (hell) and Hotel for Dogs (purgatory). Good luck, my malcontented spawn, finding parents as “fun” as us! Actually, this is the land of milk and honey when it comes to nice families, so you just may be able to find other fun parents. But be careful what you wish for, you ankle-biting ingrates! Your new fun parents may make you bathe way more than we do, eat many more vegetables than we do, do many more chores than we do – and they may be more into board games (read: bored games) than dance parties, and then you will be singing a different tune altogether. Quite. A different. Tune.

BUT -

Fo shizzle ma nizzle. Lock it down, little chumps.

I gots ta admit – I feel y’all. Y’all real y’all.

Oh fa-show.  I need some fun, I got nowhere to run.

Yo, mama needs some fun – she gots nowhere to run.

I don’t consider myself much of an innovator, although there have been things that I thought of that then ended up being invented by someone else. Like tampon boxes with tampons of different absorbancies. A few lites, a few mediums, some extra strength. Ooops. Sorry, male readership – that’s gross, I know. Shake it off.

Yesterday afternoon, however, I believe I invented something. Something good. Something really, really good. All you will need is your Ipod and a pair of those big ass cushy headphones. I’m sorry, but earbuds will simply not do. You need to be surrounded in music – lost in music – fully bombarded. This is key. Then you need to get yourself down to Lake Harriet and walk to the middle. Stand there, face the sun, blast your tunes, take a look around. 360˚. See all the people on the path? See how tiny they are? That’s how tiny you are. Not quite invisible, but definitely unrecognizable. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Right about now you will begin to feel that itch, that bump de bump in your rump. You will feel like dancing and here’s the invention part. Do it. Just let it all hang out. And after a couple of songs, if you get to unzip your coat because it’s 40˚ warmer than it has been and your inside-out flannel shirt that you wear as pajamas is flapping in the wind, then so much the better. And if it’s so warm and sunny that you take off your big black gloves for the first time in weeks and stuff them in your back pockets, then so much the better. Hips down, arms up, shake it my babies. Get your groove on brothers and sisters. It feels amaaaaazing.

Yes, I was a tad hungover and yes, it was really really warm out, but I’m telling you – I’m telling you – this is a shot of joy on ice.

You know how every city has its roller-dancing kings and queens – leathery skin, shiny shorts, walkmans, knee highs, sinewy extremities, blissed out expressions. You see how happy they look as they bust out their best roller skating moves, smooth and sexy – in a world of their own. Well, that’s what I felt like. I felt like the Sun King at Lake Calhoun. He wears peachy pink shorts, no shirt, has a blond mane cascading down his back and every exposed inch of his skin is as nut brown tan as a well worn saddle. He’s Tarzan butter on those roller skates and anytime the kids and I catch a glimpse of him, it causes a happy ruckus in our family. He’s odd, he’s happy, he’s doing his thing and doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks. What’s not to love about that? We all need to take a bite of that apple.

As I was shimmying and shammying and busting out my smoothest moves in the middle of the lake, I thought of an old boyfriend from college. We used to go to the soccer fields at night to mess around. It was huge and open, and we felt invisible. It was fun. We were exposed to everything, but not. Hiding in plain sight. We could have seen campus security approaching from a mile away. It was the perfect place for a little smoochin’ and a huggin’.

The beauty of this middle of the lake dancing is that it’s fleeting, seasonal – a uniquely winter pleasure. This summer, I’ll try to pick out my spot on the smooth water and it’ll be hard to believe that’s where I danced.

I’m also thinking this would be great at night. Twinkling lights. Blue black snow. Mmmm. Sexy. Take your lover and an extra pair of head phones.

Here’s what kept me groovin’ yesterday.

I Want to Take You Higher – Sly and the Family Stone
Honeybear – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Mind Power – Tribe Called Quest (OHHHH, MY!)
Inspiration Information – Shuggie Otis
More Than This – Roxy Music (OHHHHHH – dreamy.)
Otherside – Chili Peppers (always, always. slay me now, I love this song.)
Save Room – John Legend (pant – don’t even get me started. This might be one to save for date night tiny dancing.)
Me, Myself and I – De La Soul.
This Is All I Came To Do – Dinosaur Jr.

And then I left. Now I’m all jacked up. If you see a tiny dancer out there, come say hi. But make a Y with your arms as you approach, so I know I know you and don’t dance away from you like I did to the chocolate lab people yesterday.

Do you trust me? You trust me, right? When have I led you astray? Never, right? Tiny dancing. Try it, you’ll love it.