love

This has to be one of the best videos ever. If ever love was caught on camera, it's in this video.

Basically, these people are all listening to the song "First Day of My Life" by Bright Eyes---which is the song in the video. (And also, can I just say that the concept for this video is really awesome...I mean, having random people listen to the song and capturing their first reactions? Absolutely brilliant.)

It's hard not to feel all the different types of love that each person (and an animal!) is expressing or reacting to when they hear different parts of the song. It really is beautiful.

And yes...I get choked up...every time.



P.S. Jeff? I love you. ;)

again with the blast from the past...

I don't know what it is about this week but, damn have I been nostalgic. And it's not like on-purpose nostalgia. It's more like, things pop into my head or something comes up and BAM! I'm back 3, maybe 5, or even 10 - 15 years ago.

It happened again today. See that video up there? Michael Penn's "No Myth." Brilliant song. Well, I was listening to Last.fm again today, and all of a sudden it came on. And in an instant, there I was as the Roller Dome skating rink in north Hammond, holding hands with my very first boyfriend--we'll call him M.

Ah, puppy love. I mean, at the time it felt genuine. I was only 14, so in my adolescent mind M was 'The One." I imagined our lives together: house, white picket fence, a dog, and 2.5 strawberry-blonde-headed children. (I have always wanted to be a redhead, so the fact that M had a reddish tint to his coif pretty much sealed the deal for me back then.)

But when "No Myth" came on, for a moment, the memory of M and the Summer of 1995 (Holy cripes...13 years ago? Really? Wow. Hold on, I need to regroup for a minute.)...

...as I was saying, when "No Myth" came on today, it brought back that memory of me and M at the roller rink way back in 1995. This song was playing during a couple's skate when M skated me to a dark corner, and I had my first kiss under a shower of lights from the disco ball.

Of course, I make it sound so poetic now. In reality I had a mouth full of Bazooka bubble gum and I had no idea how to kiss.

Like, at all.
And the place smelled like hot dogs and nachos.

Anyways, M and I spent that entire summer together, making out on my front porch swing, (This was before the city decided to install landing-strip-intensity street lights on my street, making secret make-out sessions on the front porch virtually impossible.), talking on the phone for hours, and celebrating our month-a-versaries. Yes, I got flowers once a month every month for an entire summer.

But all this nostalgia I'm feeling, I guess it's not so much about missing M. I mean, he was sweet, but it's not about missing M at all. I think it's the innocence that I miss. When it was all foreign to me,and my heart (among other things) was experiencing all of these new feelings, and it didn't have any bad relationship experiences to reference yet. That naiveté is priceless, and when we are going through it, we don't notice it. And really, that's kind of sad.

I wish I could have found a way to bottle that precious innocence up and could have saved some of it, so that I could daub some on like fine perfume every now and again. Just let it wash over me like those orbs of white light from the Roller Dome's mirror ball back in 1995, all sparkly and new.

cranberry bogs and ska music

So, for some odd reason I decided to Google an album that I had about 10 or 11 years ago called "Ska Down her Way: Women of Ska."

I remember adoring this album back in my "ska-kid" days.

I spent countless evenings lying on my bedroom floor--my combat boots with the checkered laces tossed carelessly near the bed, my silver bomber jacket with sewn-on patches from all my favorite bands draped over my desk chair--singing along to that album.

And for some reason, it popped into my head to look up that album again. I found it on Amazon...although it's now out-of-print and only available through sellers willing to part with it. Luckily, many of the tracks can be heard in-full on Last.fm.

But listening to those old tracks again, with their island-y, poppy, trumpet-y melodies, I got to thinking about how much I still love that music. At Fat Cat on Thursday nights, our softball team usually gets together after games for some food and chit chat. We've always sat outside, but on occasion I've ventured inside to use the facilities, and I've noticed that they play a whole lot of ska music. I mean good stuff, old stuff, classic pure root-of-all-that-is-skafully-wonderful, unabashed ska.

And you know what I want right now? Like really bad? Especially since last.fm works like a radio station and is pumping some mad-awesome ska into my headphones right this very minute? (And it's based on what artists I like. For example, if I put in "Agent 99," which is an awesome ska band, Last.fm will continually stream related artists. And right now, they're playing one of the best Chicago soul, reggae, ska bands---ever: Deal's Gone Bad. This. Is. Fantastic!) But I'm digressing...here's what I want:

I want to sing in a ska band.

Not gonna happen, I know. But it's going on my list of weird things that I want to try at least once. It's one step below "Walk in a cranberry bog" and one step above "Visit a llama farm." Okay, maybe it's tied with the llama farm.

I could, possibly combine the two I guess. You know, visit a llama farm with a ska band and put on a show?

Actually, that *might* be cooler in a cranberry bog.

What to do? What to do?!