5 Golden Rings!

I am a fan of Christmas. I went so far as to write my master thesis on the subject of Christmas music.
Christmas decorations make me happy too.
My favorite are artificial  (not green fake, but really fake) trees.
One of my first-ish memories is having a metal silver tree in my room one Christmas.
I believe it is when I lived on 6th street in Manhattan Beach. I am not totally sure how long we lived there, but I think we moved out of that place when I was in first grade. Anywho, I don't recall this particular Christmas tree at other houses I lived in, so maybe it was a one off deal.
One night I was in my bed and looking at the tree. I had a radio in my room and there was Christmas music playing...The song "12 Days of Christmas," started playing and I remember thinking to myself that it was like nothing I had ever heard. I am sure the music was to soothe me and send me into slumber-land, but it did quite the opposite. After the song was over, Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," came on and I have a vivid memory of listening to every sound of the piece. Of course, I didn't know anything about it at the time and when I saw the Nutcracker on television for the first time, I was really excited to see the dance along with listening to the music. It was quite a few years later, because I lived in the IE with my dad. The next song was "Deck the Halls," and after that was "Carol of the Bells," with vocals. I fell asleep once the programs switched to regular classical music.
I am interested in the manufactured nostalgia that comes along with Christmas time, and the longing for the sublime. I grew up in Southern California and never celebrated a Christmas in snow. More often than not it was 80 degrees outside on the 25th of December. I have step-siblings that I acquired when I was in high school, who were close to me in age, so there was no sharing a room and the nervous not-sleeping energy of Santa coming down our nonexistent chimney.

However, we have created our own traditions: tuna snowman, driving around looking at lights, and baby cheeses. They are not the ones you see in Hallmark movies, but they work for us.
I guess the manufactured nostalgia is more esoteric than I thought. Hearing the above songs remind me of that night and I now have a growing plastic Christmas tree collection. So...well done?
I think that many folks have a negative reaction about Christmas because it is too commercial, or there is an assumption that everyone is supposed to like AND celebrate Christmas.
That is just plain silly. I don't like football, techno music, or macaroni and cheese. No one else needs to be concerned by this...

With all the craziness happening all over the world right now, it is sometimes difficult for me to focus on what is in front of me. That is why I am doing something for someone who may not have the basics that I take for granted. I am facilitating two separate donation drives at my campus. To me, it is the least I can do.

I hope all have a peaceful new year.

Sistas are doing it for themselves

Recently, I volunteered for Women's Rock Camp. It was a one day fundraiser event to support Girl's Rock Camp. There were workshops, instrument lessons, band coaching and open mic. ALL IN ONE DAY!
I was a bass instructor for 5 women. Their ages ranged from twenty-one to fifty-something. Only one had any experience playing, the rest were complete beginners. I worked with one other instructor and we got them comfortable holding the instrument, introduced them to basic bass anatomy, string names and notes, and they learned a song.
Not too shabby in an hour and a half.
After lunch I was a band coach to one of the 5 bands that were put together.
The band consisted of two guitar players, bassist, keys, drummer, and vocalist, with their ages ranging from mid-twenties to fifty/sixty something. Most of the band were beginners and had no experience playing with other people. In 2 hours they had created a song and performed it (FIRST) at the open mic.
It was amazing to watch the band communicate with each other and play together.
The music reminded me of mid-1980s Pere Ubu, and the lyrics (written on the spot by the vocalist) reflected their feelings about participating in WRC.
 My favorite lyric was " I feel gorgeous!" When the vocalist asked if they liked what she was singing they all nodded their heads with beaming approval.
I felt like a proud parent when they performed and it was really cool to watch the reactions of their friends and family. There was a woman in another band whose two kids were super amped to watch their mama rock out on the guitar.
As a musician, it was the least I could do.
As a woman musician, I feel gorgeous.

The heat is on...

Apparently, El Niño is going to be the Godzilla of weather. That is good. I mean there will probably be flooding and it won’t be enough to relieve the drought and such, but rain is rain.

I have been away for many years and I had forgotten about the “Indian Summer” the bay area has in September and October. Also, we had a warm summer, so once fall started I was ready for the sun to set and the temperature to drop 35 degrees and not come back until spring.

Yes, I realize that I am complaining because it might reach 80 degrees later in the week and that my friends to the south could experience highs in the low 90s this weekend. But my tights are all bundled up in a drawer, my boots stand side by side all lonely in my closet and my scarves! I can’t forget them. I have tried to wear them to work, but by lunchtime they are sequestered to my bag.

Last week I decided that weather be damned, I was going to wear fall type outfits. By the time I got to BART (at 7:00am), I was sweating. Luckily, I have figured out where to stand so the air vents will hit me. Unfortunately, this particular train was blasting freezing air up my back. Yes, the first few minutes were awesome and I cooled down. The remaining 23 minutes were a little uncomfortable. But suck it up. Right?

With that being said, as I get older (clearing of throat), I have been finding one of the many fun physical symptoms of "transitioning," is having hot flashes. My body can go from normal temperature to 90 degrees in moments. Sometimes my hands are so hot I feel like Human Torch from Fantastic Four. 

I have named my three kinds of hot flashes to amuse myself and now I will share them on my blog.

1. Drinking or eating something warmer than room temperature flash

2. Did an activity that made my heart rate go up just slightly, or walked at a brisk pace flash

3. Sleeping flash

All super fun, I went to a library conference in the summer and participated in a zine workshop, I started making a zine (called HOT FLASH, i know how original), but I have not yet completed it.

Maybe I will set my goal to complete it by the end of the year.

Flame on!

I fought the law and the law won. - The Clash cover version.

I love a good cop show.

I think it started when I used to watch reruns of Adam 12, Hawaii 5-0, and The Streets of San Francisco on Channel 13, during summer vacations.

Once I was in high school I (of course) watched 21 Jumpstreet, (uh-hem) Alien Nation, and Miami Vice. My palate still craved the cop show, but with a twist. All of these shows had something different to offer from the Hill Street, NYPD blues, which I did not have as much interest in…

 Hill Street Blues really upset me because James B. Sikking rarely got the good story lines. Yeah, yeah Renko and Hill were great and it was super sad when Joe was killed, but at the time I did not want as much of a “real life” kind of cop show.

No offense to Miami Vice of course.

In my early twenties I became a fan of “Forever Knight,” a vampire cop show. Was it the most highbrow show? What do you think?

For some reason I totally missed the boat with “The Shield” and I did not delve into “Homicide” until I got into grad school and discovered that I love David Simon.

But before “Homicide,” and “The Wire,” there was “Law and Order.”

Brisco is probably one of my favorite television cops of all time. I will be super nerdy and rank my top 5 detectives of L&O.

1.     Lenny Brisco

2.     Max Greevey

3.     Mike Logan

4.     Rey Curtis

5.     Ed Green

With an honorable mention of Det. Kevin Bernard; his character had some Brisco kind of lines.

When I went back to school, I needed TV to decompress. A friend of mine suggested “The Wire.” Not to sound like everyone else who thinks that it is the best show ever, but I loved it. Because of the “The Wire,” I watched David Simon’s 2 part miniseries “The Corner,” “Generation Kill,” and “Treme.” They are all good, but “The Wire,” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” are my favorites. After my husband and I caught up with the current season of “The Wire,” via Netflix we were both jonesing for more. Once the final season was done, we were adrift. So it was natural for us to move seamlessly into “Homicide.”

Pembleton, Munch, Beau, Meldrick, Bayless, Falsone, Howard, Bolander, Crocetti, Giardello, and Kellerman (and others whose names I can’t remember) were my new people. Even though the show had been off the air almost a decade, the character study of these cops along with some awesome crime fighting sucked us in for a couple of months as we watched 122 episodes (and the not-so-great television movie).

Since then I watched “Southland,” which was a decent show (Ryan from the OC, he is a great eye and forehead actor) and “Detroit 187.” It is a shame that “Detroit” only lasted a season, it was pretty good.

Besides the ones mentioned the cop show had been integrated with specialty like the NCIS brand, or cops played a secondary role to the forensic folks (see the CSI family), or if I must the Hawaii 5-0 reboot. Yes, I watched it, but to me it is a little too fluffy. It does look amazing in HD.

This whole thought process was started because I was thinking about my new current cop show. Longmire.

The show takes place in Wyoming and Lou Diamond Phillips, and Starbuck (Katee Sackoff) are the costars to Australian born actor, Robert Taylor. According to his Wikipedia page, he has played a lot of detective roles and I think he is great as cowboy sheriff Walt Longmire.  LDP has always been one of my favorites. I mean, hello! “Stand and Deliver,” “LaBamba,” and of course he was Chavez in “Young Guns and YGII.” There are some Native American storylines and how the local communities deal with big business. A few storylines that have traveled through the 4 seasons of the show involve law enforcement on the local reservation and how it interacts with the sheriff’s department and so on. Yes, I realize that it is fiction, but it draws me in to a place that is pretty to look at it and has the same kinds of crime, but often the writers of the show use different means to an end. When the station they were on dropped it, I was sad. I would once again be forced to search out a new cop show. Another service picked it up and I think it is coming back for a 5^th season.

I don’t watch a lot of television, but I really like having my cop show.  

May the merry bells keep ringing, happy holidays to you.

Yes, I realize that it is August and my blog title is lyrics from a holiday song.

What can I say? I am in the mood.

September is only a few days away, which means that October and "holiday season" are only 5 weeks away.

October-December is my favorite time of year. I love Halloween. Thanksgiving is usually pretty good and of course there is the yuletide season.

When I was in grad school (the first time) I wrote a thesis on secular Christmas music. A few years ago I put together a podcast of Christmas tunes and put on a Christmas show. I am not sure what I want to do this year, but I have to think of something.

I was inspired today, because I came across "Halloween Nuggets." It is a box set of Halloween ditties from the 1950s and 1960s. The art on the cover is very pulp fiction and the tunes are "garage" in their composition structure and sound. Though I don't really have the desire to compose Halloween tunes, I am interested in their history. Much like the Christmas tunes I wrote about in my thesis, many came out of the area of novelty songs (1910s-1930s), but failed in that they are not revered every year, nor did it spawn a gold rush of Christmas hits in the 1940s through the early years of rock and roll.  Christmas' desire for the sublime of yesteryear was manufactured by the Knickerbockers in 1800s New York area to curb wassailing and make the holiday family friendly. 

With this cleansing of the holiday, nostalgia was built into the mystic of Santa and all things NOT Jesus related and our modern day secular Christmas started to take shape. By World War I, Christmas was becoming an industry and by the end of World War II, Christmas was the United States' holiday.

Today Christmas is a powerhouse. 

I mean Hallmark has like 200 movies in the can about the holiday.

They are all great too. Women in relationship with a dud, either happens upon a mysterious stranger (with a heart of gold), or rekindles with an old flame. This takes place where it snows at Christmas time and her parents always have some kind of connection to the stranger or old flame. In one movie I saw the loner "cowboy" guy is really into whittling or putting those ships in the bottles just like the woman's dad and they bond. Ccccraaappp. 

I watch these movies every year.

And don't even get me started on Christmas traditions.

Anyway, what I was actually going to write about is that Halloween might be coming into its own as a holiday with the nostalgia train. Except unlike Christmas, it paid its dues as a holiday and now is a valid mainstay, which people/families have their own traditions associated with the ghoulish season.

Halloween is a mish-mash of Celtic, All Soul’s Day, All Hallows Eve, and a few other days that center on the celebration of the dead. In the late 1800s, there was an effort to curb Halloween’s “trick or treating,” which was similar to wassailing at the time and make it more community friendly. The holiday went through an ebb and flow until the 1950s and the baby boom, where the holiday became a child focused holiday.

As a Gen X’er, I have a certain nostalgic ping in my heart for Halloween. Growing up with more autonomy then kids today, we trick or treated huge geographic parameters and used pillow cases to hold our loot. There was an excitement of being out at night, dressed up as someone (or thing) else, and going to strangers doors to receive a treat that can I cannot explain.

Later, as a punk rocker I enjoyed (still do) the ghoulish tunes of the Cramps, Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, and other goth rockers who seemed to live in a loop of Halloween and had a macabre group think that was celebrated with not only images of the grotesque and German expressionist poetry and art, but also an appreciation of seeing beauty through a different lens.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the cutesy Halloween stuff too.

With my daughter now at an age where she will enjoy the candy part of Halloween, it pleases me that she is into picking out what she wants to be for the holiday.

Does it warm my heart that she wants to be Sally from “Nightmare Before Christmas?” Yes.

I hope that the music of Halloween will one day be recognized to its full potential.

Witch Girl by the Mystrys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPxGD1rfbxM&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZHBtPBMDyvhB1oa2xPy2nj

Graveyard by the Phantom Five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifZjdqwIGTg&list=PLUSRfoOcUe4ZHBtPBMDyvhB1oa2xPy2nj&index=5

Burn the Flames by Roky Erickson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkrorBRhmgE

Many miles away something crawls to the surface. Of a dark Scottish loch.

I am all over the place today. 

Last night I saw one of my favorite musicians tear it up at the local metal watering hole in downtown Oakland. 

First off, I had no idea that metal was still a thing.  Y'know, like new bands doing it. 

Their songs reminded me of when Motley Crue shouted at the devil, and Bruce Dickenson ran toward the hills. Second, it was nice to hug my sweaty drummer friend.

I listened to our old band this morning and it was nice to hear the ebb and flow we created sooooo many years ago. 

I admit it, drummers are my favorite people. A little crazy, they feel the need to hit objects, and keep time. Plus, they get me. As a bass player, jamming with a good drummer is like a fine wine, good sex, and 600 thread count Egyptian sheets.

With that being said drummers also don’t listen, act like fussy toddlers, and speed up and slow down depending on how much coffee and/or alcohol they have consumed.

It is complicated.

Presumably one of the best rock drummers of all time Keith Moon was consistently the latter description and freaking amazing. But if you ask me (a bass player) it is because John Entwistle knew how to communicate with Moon through tones and sonic movement.

This leads me to communicating through music.

Don Joyce, of the band Negativland and “Over the Edge” radio died last week. This was an individual whose deliberate audio strokes created unique soundscapes filled with humor, social commentary, and general weirdness. One of my two favorite memories of listening to OTE was driving down the I-5 on the way to Vegas. The show was audio anarchy about a guy and his chicken ranch. If I recall there were a lot of samples of televangelists too. We were lucky enough to catch the show on three different public radio stations on the way down and it went on for hours.  

I realize that to enjoy Negativland and a program like “Over the Edge,” one must have a certain kind of “musical palate,” but the art of his noise should be celebrated, because he was a pioneer and sonic artist.

Take it back to the bridge.

I have played with many, many guitar players and I am currently involved with one who shares much of the same musical tastes as me. I know that doesn't sound so strange, but he is younger than me and his connection to the music of my youth is from a different perspective that I find refreshing (and a bit validating). 

It has been years and years since I have listened to so much of the same music as my guitar player. I mean previous guitar players and I have shared mutual influences, styles, and visions. This is more about what I listen to when I am plugging away at work with a Pandora station playing in the background, or music I choose when cleaning the house. It is refreshing. I once played with a guitar player who thought a Led Zeppelin song was the Who. Or vise-versa, I have blocked it out.

It has also been years since I have written music with any regard to what the guitar player might come up with. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate guitar players (I am married to one), they just play too loud in the practice space and don’t listen to the rhythm section is all.

I kid. I kid. Guitar players are necessary, most of the time.

 Below is a link to a nice article about Don Joyce.

http://blog.sfgate.com/loaded/2015/07/23/don-joyce-radio-maverick-and-member-of-negativland-dies-at-71/

Love is an open door...

My kid loves Frozen, what can you do?

Friday marks my ten year wedding anniversary. Double digits. Holy cow.
It has been quite a ride. I mean we got married, moved away to a strange land known as Tennessee, and I started grad school. Husband changed careers and worked at Dollywood.
We moved back to California, where I finished my degree and then started another one. We had a baby! Moved back to the Bay Area and are going to attempt to put some roots down for the long haul.

Me and the Hus are a pretty solid team. I think we try to keep things balanced by splitting responsibilities and always laughing together.

Our kid is the love of our life, but I can't think of my life without my partner.
As he will tell you I am super easy to live with and not a dominant personality (clearing of throat), but he takes it in stride, because lucky for him our daughter is the same way.
With that being said, I have the pleasure of living with two individuals who are very "particular" about how things should be--- the way the bed is made, socks on feet, and the list could go on.

Anyway! Ten years of being married to my best friend is alright with me. I got him slippers for an anniversary present. This may not sound like much, but there is a back story. Since the wee one came into our lives we haven't gotten each other presents, but I thought with this being a "big one," a present might be nice. I also thought a present would be nice for me and sent him some links of things I want. Yep, marital bliss.

Happy Anniversary Hunny. You are aces in my book.

Raindrops keeping falling on my head.

I wish.
I am unhealthy obsessed with the drought. As a native of the great state of California it enrages me that there is not more coverage and action towards finding alternatives, aggressive restrictions and the like to help our dry state.
Typically, I blame the millennials for everything (usually in a "get off my lawn" high water pants, shaking my fist, kids and their rock music kind of way), but I think that there is major denial about the dire situation our poor state is in...
I think fast forward action and making people aware of it EVERY day is what needs to be done.
Not to sound like the crazy guy at the Civic Center BART station who yells about the apocalypse or anything, but I want news agencies to shove it down the throats of people.
Don't get me wrong, I was very interested in Angelina's lady parts, but did NPR have to report it?
There is an opportunity here for people to come together and do right.
As someone who was born and raised in  California, I am a bit arrogant- because I am a native.
I say drive around in your dirty cars, let your lawns die, and demand that fracking in California stop.
Let us all become mini-conservationists. I am sure someone can make an app for that.

http://californiansagainstfracking.org/
http://saveourwater.com/

Fashion. Turn to left. Fashion. Right!

Today on BART I noticed that I was the most colorfully dressed person in the car.

I was wearing a pink corduroy peacoat and a scarf with a bunch of different colors on it. 

Looking around almost everyone had on black, brown, dark blue, or grey. There wasn't even the shocking bright colored hairstyle on the alternaperson.

I know I have been away for awhile, but did living in southern California encourage me to wear bright colors?

I can't gauge what people are wearing on the students, because many of them are fashion students.

With that being said there are a lot of earth tones happening in the library at this very minute.

My daughter loves to wear all the same color and is not afraid to match up polka dots and stripes and Hello Kitty pants.Yes, she is 3 and I would look like a freakin' crazy person if I dressed like her.

Take today for instance, she is out and about with a sweater, tights, and sneakers on... 

Yep. Outfit complete. Next.

I think that I want to continue wearing bright colors. I mean I don't want to dress like Pippi Longstocking or anything. Well, she did have some kicking tights.