"I caught a good one, it looked like it could run..."

Typically, my mom would put on KCTC early in the morning to wake me up for school. There's a real absence of logic in using "easy listening" to wake somebody up, but this is the same woman who put me in itchy robes made out of what could only be leftover bedspreads from midwestern hotels every morning from ages 6 to 13. I guess she thought the music would combat my sour morning attitude, and it probably did. "Tom Dooley" and "El Paso" were two of my favorites to hear at that time, as the feelings imparted by their tales of rash stabbings or shootings, love triangles, and violent, inevitable death seemed in keeping with the horrible feelings of waking up before it was light, after having only fallen asleep 4 hours prior. The melodies were just jaunty enough to keep me from nodding off in my Cream of Wheat, and stuck with me all day-- much like the itchy neck from the frilled rayon zip-up collar of my robe, only not nearly as annoying.

Here, Steve Martin acts out the lyrics to Marty Robbins' "El Paso," along with a cast of chimps. I love Youtube so much.

Revisiting 'Friendster': Assumption That I'm Cooler Now Debunked

My dad used to wear this tacky shirt around that said "Still Perfect After All These Years" on the front. What's tackier still is that I may have unwittingly adopted this as a personal philosophy.

Following an unlikely thread lead me back to the Friendster account I forgot I still had. It stands, along with my 2002-2006 livejournal, unedited, as a monument to age 18. Yes, that's Amelie you see under "favorite movies." Cringe along with me.

The worst part: my friendster is not really the relic I think it should be after nearly 5 years. I mean, remove about 5 of the bands, The Bell Jar, the highly affected side ponytail, and you've got a reasonable facsimile of Current Me. I consider it a great injustice that I have not become monumentally cooler since then!

And yet, I believe that taking the gradual (natural?) approach to identity building is more respectable than the wild and desperate taking up of (and rapid abandonment of) pre-made and readily available identities. The person who can shift from bro to ska kid to juggalo to radical vegan bike punk to Buddhist nudist every 6 months bewilders the hell out of me.

Of course, what I'm calling a commitment to authenticity could also be called stubbornness or unwillingness to try things. It is possible that I have changed too little. After all, I'm here in my childhood bedroom again, which is hardly a Madonna-style reinvention of myself. I've made gradual, minuscule "improvements." I've traded friendster for myspace, myspace for facebook, and livejournal for this blog; I'm still erecting internet monuments to myself. Despite the fact that one of them emphasizes what I feel to be the uniqueness imbued to me by a steady diet of grandparent-friendly music as a teen, I am still a product of our times. What's more, I am still well represented by my friendster account. Dammit.

While You Were Sleeping, Pt. 2

I've always had trouble sleeping. When I was a kid, proposed 8:30 P.M. bedtimes would find me awake, sneaking out into the living room at 9:00, 10:00 and 11:30 P.M. I didn't want to miss something. I felt that as soon as I fell asleep, outrageous fun, secret lifesaving information, and greater truths would be immediately revealed to all awake persons. Time and time again, my parents proved this theory wrong, as their secret revelatory nighttime rituals involved nothing but Law & Order reruns and, occasionally, Hercule Poirot. Unfortunately, this lesson goes unlearned. I'll still spend nights awake, thinking I can prevent something unpleasant that might happen to me tomorrow by being awake to intercept the sandman and refuse to sign for his packages tonight. Is this line of reasoning totally nuts? Yes. Do I think it was influenced, in part, by over-analyzation of easy listening hits in my early teens? Well, that, my friends, is the hypothesis on which this entire blog is predicated.

"Softly As I Leave You" is the perfect example of an idea that might fuel my late night paranoia for years to come. The song is about a man who leaves his wife or girlfriend of many years in the middle of the night, because he "can't bear the tears to fall." How can I be expected to sleep when there is a possibility that I could date someone this craven? See, I'd never be in this situation. I would be awake, waiting for the opening strains of "Softly" and the sound of feet slipping into shoes. The fellow would have to overcome his cowardice and just tell me he wants to break up, or, if he's still hell bent on sneakin', slip a heavy sedative into my mid evening kombucha.

(A lot of artists have recorded this song. I chose this video because the accompanying montage is inexplicable and really stupid).

While You Were Sleeping

As a lifelong devotee to insomnia, I've always had a soft spot for songs about being awake at night. Some of them just don't exactly fit my experience, though. Case in point: KCTC played at least 3 songs wherein male singers tenderly contemplate their female companions in the wee small hours while they sleep or cry nearby. Rather than offer any kind of tangible comfort or respectful silence, the fellow singing chooses instead to either ignore or annoy his groggy and distressed lover, (with the exception of John Denver's "My Sweet Lady").

Item #1: "She Believes In Me," Kenny Rogers
Kenny Rogers is working harder than a shoemaking elf to get some decent songwriting done in the middle of the night while his wife sobs in the other room over his repeated failures. All those circled newspaper want-ads smuggled in between the pages of his copy of Hustler and hours of despairing glances from her are enough to stymie his creative process, apparently, and he has to do all of his "work" at night. Insisting, with determination, that she "believes" in him, despite her audible weeping suggestive of the contrary, he hopes that this song, the one he's singing right now, the one that's keeping her awake as he belts it out, mouth filled with Gardetto's Snack Mix, will finally pay off the 2nd mortgage and make up for 4 years worth of unfulfilled promises.
(Be sure to watch for the fabulous surprise ending in this video!)


Item #2: "Mary in the Morning", Glen Campbell
Early bird Glen Campbell creepily catalogs every movement of his sleeping lover, Mary, noting the way the dappled sunlight freckles her face and hair, likening her somnambulist beauty to summer flowers, and similar flourishes evocative of a Summer's Eve douche commercial. He pauses from his dewy-eyed reflection only to disturb her ever so slightly with unauthorized kisses. If he loves her so much, maybe he should consider using this valuable time to make her a pancake surprise instead of inspecting her moles/trying out the shaving-cream-and-feather trick on her.


Item #3: "My Sweet Lady", John Denver
A wakeful John Denver, no doubt thinking about conservation and a New England Christmas with Kermit and Piggy, consoles his sweet lady as she awakens from a tearful nightmare, assuring her that he will never leave her. Honestly, I can't make fun of this song; I cried when I first heard it. At age 13, and now, I well up with emotion (and estrogen?) whenever I hear him wail, "I wish that you could know how much I looooooooooove you!" For some reason, the idea of waking up next to an overwrought balladeer who can silence any disparaging thoughts with vows of everlasting affection is really, really appealing to me.


Sweet dreams, readers.

Nat King Cole Urges You To Stop Crying, Retreat from Society

Why does Nat King Cole have so many hits encouraging his listeners to become positivity-obsessed human automatons who play the song "Walkin' On Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves on repeat while their unacknowledged negative emotions turn into ulcers and kill them? Granted "Smile" and "Pretend" are probably about the power of positive thinking, and not about unhealthy emotional practices, but as my mother noted earlier, I always assume the worst.
In "Smile," he suggests: "light up your face with gladness/hide every trace of sadness." Even if I made an honest attempt, I would fail. My emotions are always luridly displayed and inappropriate. Barely muffled hysterical laughing over the syntactical errors portion of the SATs. Open weeping over a movie called Electric Grandmother. Open weeping over nasal allergy commercials. Open weeping over an episode of Roseanne on the tube in a suite in the Sands Hotel in Reno. Open weeping in the trunk of a car on the way back from a biscuits n' gravy run at a local diner. What was I doing in there and why can't I just take Nat King Cole's advice?

The keep-on-the-sunny-side emphasis is maintained in "Pretend," with a further suggestion for keeping "bad" emotions at bay. Instead of facing your public with an insincere smile plastered on your face, don't go out at all. Why put in the effort to sustain friendships, buy groceries, or change out of those foul smelling tie-dye sweatpants when you can seek refuge in your daydreams, where you are never lonely and forever glamorous? Now, Mr. Cole, you are speaking my language.

Pre-Teen Obsessional Love and Glen Campbell

He was about 36, with thinning black hair and red facial hair. He liked to wear a gray oxford shirt with a pattern of trout on it (irreverent!) He loved Elvis and The Three Stooges. Sometimes, whilst assisting me with some troubling pre-algebraic equations, he got close enough for me to smell his deodorant (the "spray-on kind," according to my friend, Kim, who knows about these things) through his Polarfleece zip-up. We bonded over 70s ephemera-- he lived through it, and I admired it. He was my 8th grade teacher, and because he was my only non-familial example of a real live grown man, he was also my first crush.

On days that seemed particularly fraught with bittersweet longing for this man-- those days when I really wanted to believe that his compliment on my Scooby Doo sweatshirt contained codewords of romance--I would typically get the song "Wichita Lineman" stuck in my head. I like how Wikipedia puts it: "The lyric describes the longing that a lonely telephone or electric power lineman feels for an absent lover who he imagines he can hear 'singing in the wire' that he is working on." Frankly, knowing all the words to the Brady Bunch theme was perhaps impressive to my teacher in a way, but it wasn't the sort of talent that would whisk a happily married man away from his family and into my skinny, though loving, arms. I knew this. The longing and loneliness described in Wichita Lineman seemed to match my own feelings; in my adolescent fashion, thoroughly unsure of what a "lineman" might even be, I felt that I understood the Wichita Lineman's existential predicament.

Of course, existential predicaments are hard to keep under wraps, especially at an age when subtlety is an unknown concept. My little obsession performed its grand finale on the night of our 8th Grade Graduation Dance. This final opportunity to fraternize as a class to the sounds of K.C. and Jo Jo was heralded by the removal of the tables from the cafeteria and the addition of fish or pineapple party decorations that barely fit the dance's Hawaiian theme. At previous school dances, I always asked a chaperone to dance. It was a running gag that my classmates seemed to find funny. Sticking within the parameters of my popular joke, I thought it would be a good idea to ask the teacher to dance. My friends would get some laughs, and I would get at least five minutes of dreams-coming-true. It seemed foolproof, so I asked him. He was reluctant. He pulled me aside, not for some dancing, but so we could have a chat. The I'm Old Enough To Be Your Father, You Should Probably Dance With A Nice Boy From Your Class, Very Serious and Concerned chat. He knew! All the time, he knew! Humiliated, I managed to choke, "Well I only wanted a dance, sheeesh," as I walked away. Back with my friends in the cafeteria's corner, I wondered how I blew it, what I was going to do now that my life was essentially over, what to do with these stupid pooka shells once this lame dance ended, and why I chose sheeesh as my parting retort.
Well, that witty zinger must have made an impression, because he changed his mind.
He tapped me on the shoulder and led me out across the linoleum, generously giving me back my silly fantasy for the night. "Hey, I think you're short enough for me to rest my chin on your head!" he said. My only wish at that moment (besides that it could last forever) was that Wichita Lineman could be playing.

"Your Music and Memories Station..."

There used to be a radio station in my town with the call letters KCTC, AM1320. It played music from a syndicated station, first called Your Music and Memories Station, and later, The Music of Your Life. It wasn't meant to be the music of my life, exactly; PSAs about prostate cancer awareness ran between ads for Geritol and Centrum Silver, and any sweepstakes giveaways were usually all-expenses paid trips to Branson, Missouri. It was, after all, my grandparents' radio station, and upon my first introduction to the sounds of Sinatra and his contemporaries winding their way fuzzily out of the speakers (in mono no less), I reacted with the appropriate indifference of an 11-year-old.

Coinciding perfectly with discovery of the most sickeningly sentimental songs ever recorded was my hormonally influenced and ever-growing awareness of cute boys. The nostaligic songs on KCTC, with their euphemistic yet passionate lyrics, were giving me a sort of mental language for my new preoccupation with the adult world of love and loss the way the sexually explicit songs marketed towards my own generation could not. While I was aware that L.L. Cool J was "Doin' It," I was not--I was merely daydreaming about "some enchanted evening", the way that it seemed Perry Como must have been daydreaming. I would spend hours just listening, imagining what my grown-up life would be like.

So here I am, graduated from college, sitting in my childhood bedroom yet again, anxiously awaiting the passage into that mysterious next stage of my life. I wish Your Music and Memories station was still on the air to ease me through it. What better left to do in this strange, transitional time (besides send out resumes with ferocity) than return to, and re-examine my relationship with The Music of My Life?