Monday, June 29, 2009

Never Can Say "Goodbye"

This is the start of my "OH MY GOD, I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE IT" blogging about the second biggest thing to shape my life.

Mr. Michael Joseph Jackson, born August 29, 1958.

I was born October 12, 1968, and am the typical product of my generation . . . except when it comes to music.

Music.

Weirdly, I can't sing. Or dance. Just ask my husband. But music is in me, some way, some how.

Michael, as well as many others, speak to me.

When I was a little kid, I remember being given a Beatles record and hounding my birth mother (yeesh - I must have been about 5?) to play it. Play it again. Play it again and again and again.

To this day, I prefer the Beatles over the Rolling Stones - not because the Rolling Stones are in any way inferior. Blame it on "early influence of a 5 year old" lol. In my mind I "grew up" with the Beatles.

Songs resonate in my soul. They just do.

I remember being a little kid (roughly 8 or 9) and putting the 8-track tape into our (me and my next-oldest sister's/youngest brother's - we had to share that shit back then) 8-track player and hitting the 20 acres we lived on, as it pertained to the various machinery and wilderness we played on. Next to the "Old Barn" was a mobile home we played around and near it was various "in-different-states-of-disrepair" vehicles that we loved - especially the one old ice cream truck.

To this day I hear Chicago, and think back about then.

That whole musical era flashes me back to my "life on the farm" - "Comanche the Brave Horse", "Stand By Your Man", "The Gambler", "Wichita Lineman" Kenny Loggins (because he performed here once, when I was a kid).

Music. It's in me, it's formed me and I love it more than I love a lot of things. The surroundings I hear a song in sculpt my memory of that song and cement that moment.

Case in point: The sound-track of me being "un-adopted" is Lionel Richie's "Can't Slow Down". :shudder: It's the tape my adoptive parents had playing as they drove me from SLO to Santa Barbara (on Christmas Eve and without warning . . . HELLO!) to hand me over to my biological mother.

The Mike loves Lionel Richie and plays his songs all the time. I get that. He loves Lionel with a heart that is pure for the music. Lionel is a musical icon to him. Just not to me.

He has musical icons I can't begin to understand - KISS. George Straight. Janie Frickie (sp?) the list will always go one because he always finds new talent to appreciate - Chris Cornell makes the same sense to him that Manhattan Transfer makes to me.

I'll take "black coffee in bed" and he'd rather "rock & roll all night" but we will always agree that "you and I must make a pact".

Michael Jackson has, and will always, transcend. Me and the Mike just can NOT believe he's gone and no way will we ever say "goodbye" to him.

Don't know what my next post will be, except it will be more memories of Mr. MJJ.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

'Member? You 'member!

Remember when I made the comment about "Female Victim-Vision"?

That thing that Frosts My Already Chapped Hide?

Hand to heart, it just pisses me the fuck off, and it's been going on For. Ever. For freak'n ever.

Tonight, my local knittas got to gabbing about what they do (and don't) watch on the telly box.

One participant was very honest with her views of what television she enjoys and also eschews.

That part there, though, got me typing about what, in the end, is so very wrong with current (HELLO 2009!) tele choices

Again.

Remember that I am 1000% not behind televised "Victim Vision".

Our house has a ton of T.V. available (part of our living arrangement) but I've decided to step away from the siren song. It was hard, since there is so much freak'n garbage on there that I could easily fall into.

I had to realize it's "garbage" when you get down to it.

Now I knit a ton more than usual and enjoy books like I haven't in several years.

My biggest pet-peeve, regarding "that stupid box in our living room" is what I call "Female Victim-Vision". I am so freak'n tired of noticing women in the victim/provocative role.

1) Cut to the female victim: tied up, scantily clad, then enduring physical abuse before being "saved".
2) Cut to woman wearing provocative clothing and subsequently becoming "the victim" - see #1
3) Scene opens with dead woman, scantily clad . . . 'nuff said.