Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 51

California Drought: Excuse Level Red

I’m not sure if the news has spread much beyond Cali yet, but as a region, we are apparently plunging into the Drought to End All Droughts. After two dry years and with no relief on the horizon, we are soon going to be engaged in intra-state wrestling over water like toddlers on a Tonka Truck. It’s very hard to enjoy our uncharacteristic seventy degree winter days once you realize that all the crops in the state are going to dry up and wither by July.

But I’m a reservoir-one tenth-full kind of person, and I’m going to look on the bright side. Here’s a list of things I plan to blame on the drought, fair or not. (I’m not going for accurate, just plausible.)

My sad little garden. I’ve been apologizing about it for years: the money and effort it takes to grow one stinkin’ tomato, the confusion about what kind of stunted greens I planted, anyway, the specter of the albino cucumber. Now? I can tear it all out, plant some cacti, and point mournfully to the sky as if to say, “If only it had rained, this would look like Eden.”
My dry skin. Those wrinkles are not from aging. They’re from a persistent lack of moisture in the environment. If I lived back in Rochester, which my brother recently pointed out is to water what the Sahara Desert is to sand, I’d be so fresh-faced.
Bad hair days and/or indoor baseball cap wearing. Back when I had long hair, bad hair days were easily solved with a ponytail and some distracting earrings. But now with my short ‘do, I wake up with bedhead funnier than your son’s when he was five, and the only thing that fixes it is a shower. Due to water restrictions, you’re either going to have to live with it, or hold your tongue when I show up yet again in my Oakland A’s hat.
The dish backup in the kitchen sink. It fills within seconds every time I finish cleaning the kitchen, but somehow it feels more efficient to leave all the dishes there and wash them when they’re about to tip onto the floor rather than cleaning up as I go. Probably not true, but definitely plausible.
New sunglasses. I just saw some cute pairs at Target. The Sun is trying to get us Golden State residents, and I have to arm myself accordingly.
Daytime beer consumption. I’m not saying I’ll drink beer every day. But if I did, it would only be to help out the farmers in the Central Valley.
More professional massages. Because they have those nice aromatic oils and my papery skin, she is so dry!
Less laundry. Everyone has to wear everything, let’s say…fifteen times before I’ll wash it. Yes, it’s arbitrary. But so is the current rule that if a garment even touches a skin cell, it needs an immediate trip through the spin cycle.

Alright, for what will you make The Drought – The Blizzard – The Flood – or whatever is your particular 2014 climatic bugaboo – a scapegoat? Your secret is safe with me.

PS This song, Dry Bones, goes out to my friend Ann who is kicking off her second half century by getting a degree in Integrated Medicine and is taking an Anatomy class. You got this, girl.

                   
CommentsMany thanks, Nancy! Can now check off my studying for the day. ... by AETYour skin would still be dry in Rochester because all that ... by EllenWeather reports say it should ease up some soon. Hope it ... by tomwiskMeanwhile in France, we have enough rain and blah days that we ... by ShananI read a good column by SFChronicle's Jon Carroll today ... by Nancy Davis KhoYou tell me how to send you all of the rain/precipitation we've ... by LanceRelated StoriesGong Hei Fat Choy! From a potentially lethal HorseThings That Make You Different From MorrisseyForeign-Word-Learning-Joy 

Gong Hei Fat Choy! From a potentially lethal Horse

I was so excited when I realized that on the Chinese calendar, we are now in The Year of the Horse. That’s my year! I’m a horse! (Something I probably shouldn’t yell at parties.) Shouldn’t it bode extra well for the 8.3333% of the world’s population whose animal it is on the Chinese calendar every year? I think we’re supposed to have a slightly better year than all the 91.7777 percenters.

If I could have picked my zodiac sign, Horse is what I would have chosen. Because when I was a tween and spending my summers at a Ranch Camp in the Adirondack Mountains, there were pockets of my brain that believed if I just wished it hard enough, I could actually become a horse. (I blame an ABC After School special that I’ve never been able to track down, in which a bullied kid wishes himself into a bird that flies away from danger. Anyone? Anyone?)

Here’s a picture of me, for proof, at age 10 or so, getting giddy with a horse named Bulldog. Who needs stupid boys when there are horses like Bulldog? I rode bareback, I galloped over rutted fields, I did barrel racing, I jumped over fallen logs and came home at the end of August with horse dirt so deeply embedded into my knuckles and the insides of my jeans that it took until November to get them clean.

But eventually I grew up, figured out why someone might choose boys over horses, and rode less and less until I became a mom, when I stopped riding pretty much at all. Horseback riding seemed super-size risky once I had two kids depending on me. Luckily, when the girls were a bit bigger and I was about to turn forty, my sister and I went to Cowgirl Camp at a Dude Ranch in Arizona. By the end of four desert-riding, barrel-racing, cow-penning days, I got my gumption back. I reconnected with my inner horse swagger.

So naturally the arrival of a Horse Year seemed to bode well for me. Yeah! This year is going to be like jumping bareback onto good ol’ Bulldog, galloping up and down Haul Ass Road, and then cooling off by swimming the horse into the lake – exhilarating and kind of scary, in the best way.

Then my friend Alison in Hong Kong, who is my age, mentioned that we are both Fire Horses. Because Chinese zodiacs don’t just come in animals. They also include the five elements. So a Horse could be an Iron Horse, a Water Horse, a Wood horse, etc. (We’re now in a Wood Horse year.) I decided to do a little Googling to see what traits are specific to Fire Horses.

Main trait: the overall birth rate in Asia, particularly in Japan, drops like a stone in a Fire Horse year because NO ONE WANTS A FIRE HORSE GIRL.

From a FB group dedicated to Fire Horse Women: “Since fire is already voracious and powerful, the combination of the fire and the power of the horse is seen as an almost uncontrollably independent mixture by many believers in Chinese astrology.” It goes on to say that those traits of independence and ambition aren’t quite as frowned upon in Western culture, but in traditional Asian culture where female submissiveness was valued, it was downright dangerous for girls born in 1966 like I was. Author Kay Honeyman, who wrote a novel called “Fire Horse Girl,” says of gals like me: “Their bold natures and the heat in their blood bring misery to their families, especially their husbands and fathers. Trying to restrain the will of a Fire Horse girl can cause tragedy, even death.”

In a post entitled “The Curse of the Fire Horse: Japan’s Ultimate Form of Contraception,” I found this graph that shows Japanese birth rates over time:

Oh snap.

So indeed, the Lunar New Year is off to an auspicious start: I’ve discovered that I have to power to bring tragedy and death.  Gong Hei Fat Choy!

Now bring me a bucket of oats. OR ELSE.

It was an obvious musical pick and everyone likes it.

                   
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56th Grammy Awards Part 3: After Party

Are you tired out from reading about the Grammys thus far (Part 1 and Part 2 here)? Then that’s the perfect state of mind to get through just one more post, about the After Party. Because even if the clock only said 8:45 pm, we were feeling a little weary as the 56th Grammys came to a close. We’d been sitting up straight in fancy clothes for 8+ hours at that point.

If I were Trent Reznor and mad at CBS for cutting the final performance short, I would have been more pissed at my fellow musicians. When the house lights came up, the first three rows of celebrities were long gone, all to their record labels’ parties. Not, in turns out, to the Official Grammy After Party, held next door at the LA Convention Center, where we were headed once we moved through the milling herd of people trying to leave the Staples Center. They may all have been dressed up, but the experience of leaving a sold-out stadium show is the same: slow going. Good thing I had my weapon purse to goose people along.

(An aside about the weapon purse: if you are looking for a good icebreaker, you cannot go wrong with this bag. Everyone from the Hilton brunch guests to the LAPD guys on the Red Carpet to our seatmates at the show wanted to discuss it. I had the same response for all of them. “I’m from Oakland. I wanted to be ready in case a fight breaks out.” I may set up a Twitter feed just for that bag.)

Once we made our slow way down the metal barriers of the outside security gates we were given big Grammy Party hangtags and directed inside to the biggest single party room I’ve ever seen. It had an art deco theme, and scattered about the giant room were models dressed like ‘20s flappers and gangsters leaning on the hoods of vintage cars, slowly rotating atop big white circular stages. Trapeze artists, trampoline artists, and what seemed like a supremely bored Hula Hooping Artist were scattered here and there.

The room was huge, the party was packed, and the food, beverage, and seating inside seemed to be designed for an event about a third of the size. Maybe it was my high heels talking, but seeing the huge line at every food table and bar plus the no open seats at any table, for acres around us, was a bummer. Oh why oh why can’t everything be as well planned as our elementary school auction?

Still, wishing it hadn’t taken so long for my husband to return with a plate of food is the closest I’ll come to complaining. My time slumped against a column gave me time to survey the crowd, in which the most famous person I saw was comedienne Tig Notaro (I managed to NOT say, “OMG I’ll SEE YOU AT BLOGHER 2014!”) The lovely Grammy-nominated Sarah Jarosz, who we’d seen perform at the Everly Tribute, stopped for a chat. Otherwise it was a whole lot of lesser-famous people looking around for the more-er famous people who were not there.

You know you’re musically satiated – or that your feet hurt – when pregnant Ciara starts performing on the other side of the room with your favorite dancer from last season’s So You Think You Can Dance and you say to yourself, “That’s a real long walk, maybe I’ll just watch from here.” Still, we shuffled over – by now reunited with Carrie and Steven – and caught a few songs. Then we headed to the smaller “Master Card Jazz Lounge” which maintained the exact unequal ration of people to food/drink/chairs as in the big room.

Through the power of attrition, we finally found a table from which to listen to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy play. We ended the evening talking to Macklemore’s session musicians about the weapons purse, which somehow slid into a discussion of the Seahawks, which somehow slid into my husband, a University of Wisconsin grad, screaming, “You can thank me for Russell Wilson, baby!” Seemed like as good a time as any to head for the door. But first! We had to cash in the “Grammy Souvenir” coupon attached to our party passes. Grammy Swag, baby! Will it be jewelry? Beauty products? A watch?

It was a bag full of Take 5 gum. I mean, a shit ton of Take 5 gum, in two flavors, and we got two bags, so our family is fully stocked with gum through the end of the 2014 or maybe, time. It does seem to be reproducing in there.

Thus endeth our Grammy adventure. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. If there’s one takeaway, let it be: enter contests, and have faith. You never know how it will pay off.

                   
CommentsI am both inspired and exhausted reading this final post. What ... by Liz @ PeaceLoveGuacAnd you were so worried about what to say to any celebrities ... by Ellenwatch yourself. by Nancy Davis KhoIf we could do it over exactly like this – Hilton perks and ... by Nancy Davis KhoLoved every single line of your stories of the big weekend. ... by Helen KhoExcellent dispatches from the front lines, Nancy! Just don't ... by RisaRelated Stories56th Grammy Awards Part 2: The Big Event56th Grammy Awards Part 1: The Pregame56th Grammy Awards: The Pregame 

56th Grammy Awards Part 2: The Big Event

In Part 1  of my 2014 Grammy recap, I talked pre Grammy festivities, from backstage tour to paparazzi scrum. Now it’s Game Day.

In keeping with the blistering pace of over-the-top hospitality extended to us by the Beverly Hilton, we were due at a swanky rooftop brunch in our black tie-optional finery by noon on Sunday. So we did what all the stars do prior to a big red carpet event: drank Robitussin and watched Real Sports on HBO.

‘Round about 11 am, the preparation finally began in earnest, with the ritualistic severing of the Troubadour wristband from the night before by the concierge since I hadn’t packed scissors. Then I started piling on the pounds of makeup that filled my suitcase, layer after layer, like the great Grand Canyon. Last time I wore this much makeup it was ’83 and I was inspired by all the girls in all the Cars videos.

This time I even tried false eyelashes, “tried” being the operative word because it was apparent, half a fake eyelash in, that I was not ready for that kind of advanced makeupping, all previous direction from my stage-makeup-wearing ballerina daughters notwithstanding. I gave up and got dressed, and let my husband be the tiebreaker in the riveting debate of “Which bracelet, pink or green?” (Answer: pink.)

Meanwhile my husband put on his new suit and the tie he picked to match my dress. He looked pretty fly, I must say. Here’s a pic taken as we entered the brunch.

Here’s the brunch. Various Hilton luminaries and important VIPs were there, along with three employees who’d won an all-expenses paid trip by submitting musical performances on video – one from India, one from England, one from Chicago. Their excitement, and the genuine pride taken by the Hilton exec introducing them at the brunch, was really touching. I am so Team Hilton.

Here we are with our Grammy Besties, Carrie and Steven. We’re all getting matching tattoos of the number “56” next week.

 What seemed like a short time but was really many whole-grain croquettes and glasses of champagne later, they ushered us into the lobby and handed us each envelopes containing our tickets and the After Party tickets, before pointing us toward the limos. Here we are rolling four deep (Carrie took the picture) on a ride across Los Angeles that felt like maybe we went by way of San Diego.

And suddenly there we were at the foot of the Grammy red carpet, where the broadcast that you saw started. Now, for What You Saw and What You Didn’t See.

The Red Carpet

What You Saw: Stars making their slow and graceful way down the carpet, stopping for photos and interviews.

What You Didn’t See: The left edge of the main red carpet is an Auxiliary Lane, kind of a not-so-fast-track for not-so-famous people, with a low barrier and lots of Grammy employees separating the two. So if you’re on the Auxiliary Lane, the name of the game is to walk suuuuuupppper slooooooow and gawk to your right to see if any celebrities are walking parallel to you. That’s why I almost missed Kathie Griffin walking toward me on the Auxiliary carpet, like a salmon swimming upstream – we made eye contact and she gave me a big smile. Honestly, everybody just seems so happy to be there. Willie Nelson was behind us, in the wrong lane, bless his heart.

You also didn’t see how the red carpet ends and non-stars then tromp across some asphalt to get into the Staples Center. It was at this concrete/carpet junction that my husband spotted Paris Hilton about ten feet away, wearing this outfit – can’t figure out why it caught his eye. After she undulated away with a gait that is a cross between a cheetah and a drunk sailor, my husband said, “She looked straight at me. We had a moment.” Steven totally backed him up on that.

Staples Center

What You Didn’t See: Me getting more and more excited as the ushers looked at our tickets and exhorted us ever forward. Even Carrie and Steven dropped off, heading for a suite. Us? Section 101, 11 rows up, staring straight down at the musicians sitting in the front floor section. Here’s a pic taken by Jenni Chiu of Mommy Nani Booboo that shows where we are.

Also, the Eastern European models from Friday’s backstage tour? Out of a crowd of 20,000 people: we walked straight into them.They were still wearing their Laboutins. No, they did not acknowledge us.

Did you ever wonder about the kids in the pit during the shows, the ones who are right underneath the performer? They’re filing into place here, in this pic. Once they got into the pit, they stayed there – for FOUR HOURS, like cattle. The woman next to me and I lamented their footwear choices as they climbed in, and agreed that four hours without a bathroom break would like to kill us.

The Broadcast

What You Saw: An orderly crowd sitting attentively in their seats.

What You Didn’t See: Before the broadcast started and every time there was a commercial break, the stars on the floor jumped out of their seats and milled around like guests at a cocktail party, while we watched with laser focus. Look, there’s Ringo shaking Taylor’s hand! There’s Hunter Hayes chatting with Lorde’s band! There’s Daft Punk wearing the g-d helmets even during the breaks, SERIOUSLY?

Then a big booming Voice of God would say, “We’re live in 5, 4…” and everyone would scurry around like ferrets on speed skates to get back to their seats. This was also when the professional Seat Fillers were thrown into action, crab-walking down the aisles to fill in for whichever star was onstage or backstage. There was a huge army of black-clad, walkie-talkie carrying production assistants and they must each have lost five pounds Sunday night running around to make it all look so calm and orderly.

What You Saw: Katy Perry doing an ode to Bewitched

What You Didn’t See: Me watching the dancers get loaded up into the ghostly trees beforehand and thinking to myself, “please god let there be a Spinal Tap moment.” Nothing against Katy Perry but wouldn’t that have been awesome?

What You Saw: Pink doing trapeze artistry

What You Didn’t See: Me turning my hands palms up so as not to leave sweaty hand marks on the front of my satin dress. Y’all, she did NOT have a safety harness on, not even one thin wire.  I could barely watch.

What You Saw: Explosions of flames during Katy Perry and Metallica/Lang Lang

What You Didn’t See: Me, sensing the heat on my face because we were that close, and immediately looking for fire exits and plotting to get us out ahead of 20k other audience members. Once a fireman’s daughter, always a fireman’s daughter.

What You Saw: Presenters nailing their lines

What You Didn’t See: The gigundo teleprompter that made it nigh on impossible to screw up (Ozzy being the exception that proved the rule.) Also interesting to see who read their lines word for word and who used them as a jumping off point to riff. I’m talking to you, Anna Kendrick.

What You Saw: Taylor Swift awkwardly dancing and hugging people, especially winning people.

What You Didn’t See: My husband’s growing annoyance with T-Swizzle and the way that she managed to be the first person to run over and hug every winner, just as the cameras arrived. He went from, “She’s up and dancing again,” to “Look at her! She’s running over to hug Lorde!” to “It’s not the Taylor Swift Award Show!” to finally, “It’s official. I have found a public figure I hate more than Jim Harbaugh.”

What You Saw: Willie and Kris and Merle skipping a word or two, with Blake Shelton pitching in to keep it in line. I heard there was some nastiness about Kris Kristofferson’s dementia and their general old age on Twitter.

What You Didn’t See: Beyonce and Jay-Z standing up through that ENTIRE performance, and Bey singing along to “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys.” Because isn’t the entire goal to be able to keep doing what you love when you’re 80? The Carters set a nice example of what respect looks like, for everyone to follow.

What You Saw: Thirty-four weddings.

What You Didn’t See: That when the commercial break started, stars started hugging the newlyweds and clapping them on their backs and congratulating them. One bride facing me looked fully ready to spew before the vow was read, which is how I’m pretty sure this really meant something to the people involved. (Also cleared up why I’d passed a bride in the hallway on my way in, which I thought was a little puzzling.)

I think Macklemore is great, though the fact that a 40-something white woman does is probably all the proof you need that he shouldn’t have won Best Rap Artist. Still, this singer has hauled gay marriage out into the spotlight lately, and on Sunday night he, Madge, and the Queen made put it right there in front of millions of households. Just people who love each other. Not bothering you. No big. Let’s move on.

What You Saw: Part of a finale performance by Nine Inch Nails, Lindsay Buckingham, Dave Grohl (or was that Animal from the Muppets?) and Queens of the Stone Age, before CBS cut to credits.

What You Didn’t See: The whole performance. Shoot, you guys, because that rocked really hard. Just about cancelled out the Hunter Hayes performance.

Ok, I could go on, and I will about the after party, in one last post: The Grammy Afterparty or, Why I’ll Always Have Gum from Now On

                   
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56th Grammy Awards Part 1: The Pregame

The challenge of summarizing our weekend at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, which I won in an essay contest sponsored by the Hilton Hotels a year ago, feels a little like swallowing a watermelon whole and then spitting back ten perfect seeds. I could do four complete blog posts alone on Beverly Hills, home of 75 year-old men with longish pitch-black hair squiring around 45 year old women who wear leather sweatpants, a magical land where none of the crosswalk buttons work because who on earth walks and would think of reporting them?

So I’m going to count on the fact that you either watched the Grammys or read someone else’s recap by now, and focus on what we got to see that people watching on TV wouldn’t have – the juicy stuff. And we saw some juicy stuff. Because while Hilton could have given this little prizewinner a basement double near the ice machine and seats in the nosebleed section for the show, they instead treated us like celebrities all weekend, with special access and perks. From here on out, I will seriously cut Hyatt if it comes to a gang fight. Don’t test me, bro.

Today I’ll talk about some highlights of the weekend, pre-show, and the next post will be about show itself. Watch yourselves, ptuh, ptuh, ptuh, here come some seeds.

Backstage Tour

We met in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton on Friday for a backstage tour of the Staples Center, which is when we met Carrie and Steven, aka Grammy Besties. This couple bid on the same prize package I won, as part of a charity auction, and were paired with us for the rest of the weekend, whether they liked it or not. Off we went in limos to meet our tour guide Mimi for our private tour of the nooks and crannies of what is essentially a bustling mid-size temporary city (minus the politicians and the One City, One Book campaign) underneath the stage. Some of my favorite moments:

The red carpet sheathed in plastic and the warning signs meant to keep it clean until show time. All along the red carpet, stalls were set up, each a little set onto which the stars could step up and be interviewed.

The microphone manager, a young man who leapt to the opportunity to describe to us the technical aspects of how hundreds of wireless mics are managed, with a passion and intensity normally associated with tween girls reacting to a Hunter Hayes video.

When Mimi said, “Do you guys mind if we meet up with the team from Gucci for the rest of the tour?” and this trio of leather-clad Glamazons from Eastern Europe along with various other Gucci-clad people joined us. If you’re looking for a way to immediately feel short, provincial, and dowdy: boom.

Walking past wheeled dollies loaded with instruments for each act, each marked with humble masking tape and sharpie.

My husband suddenly stage whispering, “HOCKEY NETS!” and going rogue from the tour so he could have a meaningful moment with the Los Angeles Kings’ nets. His ensuing search for Lakers’ hoops was unsuccessful.

The winner’s walk – when the award winners walk offstage,  the producers give them twelve minutes to run the press gamut and get back to their seats. And the distance they have to cover is substantial. They must run like Secret Service agents keeping time with a presidential motorcade to get through it all in time.
And finally, those awards presented at the mic? Fake. The real awards come in the mail a month later.

Then it was back into the limo for 24 hours of unstructured time. We spent most of ours raiding the Beverly Hills Rite Aid for cold and flu medicine, because why would anyone in our family NOT catch whatever is going around this winter, especially if it’s a bad time to be sick?

Americana’s Pre-Grammy Salute and Tribute to the Everly Brothers

Back at the hotel the Saturday before the Grammys, the big buzz was “Clive’s Party.” Legendary record producer Clive Davis throws an annual pre-Grammy bash at the Beverly Hilton, and all day Saturday we could hear people like Lionel Richie and Miley Cyrus rehearsing, while another red carpet was rolled out and a stage went up underneath our balcony to display a Hyundai. (No offense to the Hyundai people but I only saw one Hyundai when I was in the BH, and it was sitting on your stage. They’re more of a Bentley/Rolls/Porsche crowd.)

The Everly Brothers tribute to which we had tickets was a decidedly less fancy affair, an industry gathering of people in the Americana/Blues/Roots/Bluegrass music world at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. We managed to squeeze in dinner before the show at Dan Tana’s next door, which seems to have been lifted in its entirety from a Soprano’s episode, hanging Chianti bottles and all. The food was good but what was better was watching a woman who may have been Tawny Kitaen (I’m not saying it was her for sure, because all the women go to the same plastic surgeon to look like her, to the point where I’m not sure how the 75 year old men even know which 45 year old woman is driving them home in the Bentley at the end of the evening,) fall off her barstool, get up, brush herself off, and order another drink.

When Bonnie Raitt walked past our table to sit down for dinner, we figured it was time to head into the show and stake our spot. Highlights of the night:

The cigarette-stained voice of the 70-something lady in line behind us loudly explaining to her friend: “Well I know her because I was dating a guy in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and SHE was dating someone in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Then, when I was sleeping with Gram Parsons, he took us to lunch because he was sleeping with her too and he wanted her to be more like me.” Yes, I turned around to stare. I think that was her point.
Grammy nominee (and the next day, winner) Steve Martin sitting patiently in the balcony waiting for the show to start, and Jack Black hanging out nearby.
Crowd composition: Half old white dudes, half young hipsters in 19th century facial hair. One very young guy was dressed exactly like the Lukas Haas character in Witness. Of course he ended up being on the bill.
A letter sent by Don Everly to be read to the crowd, and each act acknowledging Phil’s widow Patty in the audience.
One memorable performance after the next, by Grammy nominees singing two or three songs apiece. Bonnie Raitt singing with Joe Henry was gorgeous. But I also loved Sarah Jarosz, the Milk Carton Kids, Dawes, Jamestown Revival, and Grammy Bluegrass category competitors Della Mae and James King joining forces for one song. Hands down best performance, pretty much of the whole weekend? The lovely Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Then it was back to the Beverly Hilton in time to see the paparazzi scrum awaiting the stars’ departure from Clive’s party; the lobby was full of fans hoping to catch a glimpse of someone famous. We spied a wizened Larry King and his much younger wife (of course) leaving as we ducked and wove our way to the elevators, eager to hit the Robitussin and the hay before the next day’s big event.

Next post: What you didn’t see at the Grammys, including what my husband has characterized as his “moment” with Paris Hilton.

                   
CommentsThis is so supremely fantastic. All the way around. You are the ... by Anna LeflerI am LOVING this! You were on my mind all weekend . I ... by MaureenSo exciting! Can't wait to hear more about it. Old groupies, ... by ShananDying. Just dying reading this. And where is my shambling ... by tracy@sellabitmumDan Tana's? I bet it was Tawny Kitaen. This is full of WOW ... by AnnPlus 4 more...Related Stories56th Grammy Awards: The Pregame#OMGrammysStill in Rotation: Black Eyed Man (Cowboy Junkies) 

#OMGrammys

A quick recap for new readers of the blog: last January I won an essay contest sponsored by Hilton Hotels, and as a result my husband and I are going to the 56th Grammy Awards in LA this weekend. Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be Joe Nobody at a big awards show? Watch and learn, friends, watch and learn.

But before we head on down the road to LA, I’m going to channel the artists who win the statues by hyperventilating and thanking:

1.) Wendi Aarons. She found the contest on Facebook and sent it to me. You had to answer the question, “What act do you never miss when they play in your town?” I presume she had already sent in her Barry Manilow entry, so it was gracious of her to tip me off.

2.) Shank. My niece Shannon and her boyfriend Frank flew 3,000 miles to babysit. In thanks, we have bestowed them with a celebrity nickname and tickets to tour Alcatraz. Shank is running the show right now, and our kids couldn’t be happier.

3.) Our friend Jonathan in Oakland, who kindly got us on the guest list for a pre-Grammy tribute to Phil Everly the night before the Grammys. All I have to do is dream about who is going to be onstage (as of right now they’re still not saying but since Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones released “Foreverly” last fall, well…)

4.) My husband who is my Plus One in every sense of the word. He’s not so much into live music as I am. But when I told him we’d need to be on the road in the wee dark hours of morning to make it to LA in time for the backstage Grammy tour that comes with the prize package, he said, “OK.” When I told him we were going to a Phil Everly tribute on Saturday night thanks to Jonathan, he said, “Sounds fun.” Then he surprised me with some fancy earrings to commemorate our adventure. It appears that my husband is going all-in this weekend…just wait’ll you get a load of his new suit.

5.) Hilton Hotels for sponsoring an old fashioned essay contest. It was mighty kind of them.

6.) Sephora. Most of my pre-Grammy prep has involved buying makeup that I don’t know how to use. If the camera scans the crowd and you see Bozo the Clown, don’t be frightened. That’s just your pal Nancy.

7.) Neil Finn. Because the answer to # 1 was #7. I wasn’t kidding about the act I never miss: we’ll be in the audience on April 1 when he plays SF…you can still get tickets if you want to join us!

So: if you want to follow along with the adventures of Joe Nobody at the Grammys, I’ll be on Twitter, Instagram, and FB this weekend as much as I can, but short of the point where it’s taking precedence over just being there, or annoying #4. (This is made easier by the fact that if I wear my contacts, which I will, I can basically no longer see my iPhone screen.)

Well, they’re playing the music to push me offstage so I’ll just – see you on the other side, brother. Thanks for getting excited with me.

Buckle up: Neil Finn’s new album Dizzy Heights, due in Feb, is going to be an experimental ride. Here’s the first single that was released: Divebomber.

                   
CommentsYou're one of three people I know who are going for ... by LanceHilton Hotels was the winner> they got a Nancy Kho original ... by alexandraThis. Is. So. AWESOME. Can't wait to hear all about it!! ... by Anna LeflerSHANK! Omg. And Alcatraz tickets lol Congratulations have an ... by KatieCouldn't have happened to a nicer (or smarter, funnier) gal! ... by AlisonPlus 5 more...Related StoriesStill in Rotation: Black Eyed Man (Cowboy Junkies)Things That Make You Different From MorrisseyMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: Martha Davis and the Motels 

GenX Nostalgia: Reality Bit

To my fellow members of Generation X: we were famous in our youth for being cynical, disdainful, averse to groupthink and phoniness. But even that hasn’t protected us from making a rendezvous with capital-N Nostalgia as we pass through middle age. The temptation to wallow in the Beauty of What Was (minus all those pesky bad parts that our aging memory prevents us from remembering, anyway) instead of the Harsh Reality of What Is (sad 401Ks, sassy teens, sagging skin) is just too hard to resist.

Lately I’ve seen a plethora of Gen-X-penned, funny, sharp essays about the things that were empirically awesome about being a kid in the ’70s and ’80s. But Generation Let’s Keep It Real, why don’t we keep it real? It wasn’t all Michael Jackson hits and scrunchies.

Here’s a short list of things you and I survived which, thank John Hughes or Paul Westerberg or whoever you called God back when you were a teen, our kids never have to endure.

Lax Automobile Safety Practices. Raise your hand if you were every nearly bounced out of the flatbed of a truck onto a hard asphalt surface! In my case, it was no flatbed but the folded-down-soft top convertible of our next door neighbor’s vibrant orange VW bug. When Mr. Fitz folded down the top, it was a signal to every kid on our street to climb aboard – into the back seat, the front seat, around the gear shift,  and, when there were no more seats to go around, to simply nestle atop the folds of fabric held together by metal ribs. Then he’d take off on a low-speed round-the-block funride. Hit a pothole? See you later, bantamweight Chipper Flanagan, we’ll pick you up on the next circuit. Try not to bleed in the meantime.

Skeeching. The act of holding onto the back bumper of a moving car travelling down an ice covered road, knees slightly bent (warm weather variation: balance on your skateboard) and get a free ride that is practically designed to land you, the kid, under the wheels of a motor vehicle. Helmets? We obviously had nothing in our brains worth protecting. (Ed. note: I described this post to a friend over dinner the other night and he said, “I once got both legs run over while I was skeeching. I survived, though, because vans aren’t that heavy. If you’re going to get run over by a vehicle, make sure it’s a van.” Proving my point about the brains.)

Swanson’s TV Dinners. We didn’t have them a lot, which made that rectangular aluminum tray full of processed food goodness all the more special. The Salisbury steak-shaped meat product that caused second degree mouth burns, while the molten-hot lava applesauce giving your trachea a nice heat peel on the way down? That there was good eating.

Lax Automobile Safety Practices, Part 2: My first driving lesson? I was thirteen, my older brother and his freshly minted license were at the wheel of the station wagon, and he suddenly took his hands off the wheel and said, “Your turn!” I screamed, grabbed the wheel, and steered us straight into a leaf pile. Neither of us thought that was weird, only funny. My almost-16 year old daughter is diligently working her way through an online course to get her learner’s permit, and once she does I have high hopes that she’ll never aim toward a mailbox in her car, for sport.

Unbagged dog poop. In my youth, there was one man on our street who bagged his dog’s waste, and we thought he was a capital-F Freak. “Ugh! Poop bag man waved at me again today!” we’d report, after walking our mutt up and down the street and allowing his poop to remain wherever it fell, like Nature intended. Nature must have also intended us to clean dog crap off bare feet, flip flops, and sneakers at least once a day.

Tab. Who’s thirsty for a beverage with a top note of Chemicals, and a lingering afterburn like turpentine? Mmmm. Must be the carcinogenic sweetener that makes it go down so easy.

So yes, there were some awesome things about our childhood that it would be cool if our own kids could experience. Freedom to roam, an intact ozone layer, .

But face it: the fact that you and I are here to sit around and wax nostalgic about them is pure luck.

If I had to pick a song to remind me of the kids in my ‘hood, this is it. Because we were a bunch of boys and girls who loved to have our fun. And we thought a song about a bullfrog was wicked funny.

                   
CommentsI grew up in a small New England town in the 70s and 80s and ... by Jon CWait, did you grow up in the Fifties? That name was an outlier ... by Nancy Davis Kho“I remember when rock was young, Me and Suzie had so much ... by JillYup. Salisbury steaks. Ugh. Only a close second to the very ... by The Well-Versed MomI hope you were already subscribing to the blog when this one ... by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 4 more...Related StoriesAnd Then The Phone RangMortification with a KStill in Rotation: Purple Rain (Prince) 

Still in Rotation: Black Eyed Man (Cowboy Junkies)

Still in Rotation is a feature that lets talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

The Internet is a strange place. There are friends I have made through blogging with whom I feel just as close to as if we were roommates or cousins. (That’s why BlogHer has that family reunion vibe.) Then I’m chit chatting via FB and Twitter and blogs with someone like Laurie White of LaurieWrites, a dear online friend, and it occurs to me: I’ve still never met her in real life. That’s some weird 21st century stuff right there. But you’ll see from her writing why our digital distance doesn’t matter.

BLACK EYED MAN (1992)

I wish I could remember the day I first discovered Cowboy Junkies’ “Black Eyed Man”, because it just seems right to remember when my most important and enduring relationships began. Taking a kinder view of my mental capacity for a change, I think it’s just one of those things that feels like it’s always been there, so maybe the particulars aren’t that important.

I listened to the album, as close to how I used to as I could, minus a couple of vices and a newly broken heart, to try and remember. I crashed on my couch and turned it on — Spotify, not a scratched cd I scrounged off of my car floor, I cannot tell you how many copies of this I loved and lost — and let it play. No cigarettes now. No extra long twin bed (why are these beds extra long?) in a drafty Ohio grad school house. No Ohio at all. No none of that. Tonight it’s just Margo Timmins singing her way into the corners of my living room and through some sort of Southern gothic alt-folk landscape that no one I know of outside of real country music can create like her and her brother Michael, who plays guitar and writes the lyrics.

I used to like to think of when they first realized it worked so perfectly, and what it’s like to be that creatively tied to your brother in a way that’s in any way sustainable, on the road even, for decades. I followed them obsessively for a few years on their usual circuit of mostly restored theaters with columns and curtains and small listening room-type spots. Michael sits to play guitar, Margo always has a stool for the occasional sit-and-chat, plus tea and the eternal bouquet of flowers sent by a fan. They may as well be performing in different rooms, their approach to the experience is so different, but she still looks at him and back at the band (another brother is the drummer) with what I identify as affection, so that’s good.

When I found them, people were all about their remake of Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” on 1988’s The Trinity Session. They are into homage via cover song and guest appearance, and this song loved them back. I liked it a lot, and had a long communion with “Misguided Angel” in particular, probably because of some over identification at the time with the protagonist, but it wasn’t until “Black Eyed Man” that I bit and hung on

It kicks off with “Southern Rain,” a gorgeously made and sung song with a groovy guitar hook that sets the mood you need to get through this.

“But it will never cease to amaze me

How a little rain can drive folks crazy

When I’d trade all my clear skies gladly

For your blue eyes, your crooked smile

And a steady downpour”

Still gets me every time.

It’s all mini-stories like this, of crimes of passion, old loves waiting on trains, a woman fleeing pain to ride her horse every second Sunday. The title track details a black eyed man taking the fall for poisoning a well because he happened to piss his girlfriend off, which in Michael Timmins’s mind you apparently ought not to do. The last line of the last verse, “It ain’t the water that’s not right around here,” is still one of my favorite lyrics.

And so it continues, for almost 45 minutes. “Lilly’s just waiting for the trial to be over/ Rosy’s just waiting for the axe to fall.” (Townes van Zandt wrote that one, and they covered it. He’s all over this record.) Trial for what? Axe for why? Murder, tonight, in the trailer park. Who? Don’t know. Something strange is generally afoot, and, love or killing or both, Margo rolls through it. It’s best not to ask too many questions, like the people in the songs. Once you’ve heard her voice — speaking or singing — you won’t, anyway. Candy, the weightiest kind. Magic, in your face and your ears. I met her once, and she was just as I’d have wanted her to be. I don’t like to meet performers I love, usually. Ruins the illusion, and I need to keep a few. In this case, I’m glad I made an exception, because I have a picture, and it is happy. That was a good night.

It’s been easy to take this album with me. It doesn’t need to recapture anything it or I was when I had it on repeat during a long heartbreaker of a first year away from home, in the shambles of a first love, smoking too much and crying too much and I don’t even know how I’d have survived it without music, you know? I remember sitting in venues by myself, watching them bring it to life on stage, taking me into and out of myself. Certain music is one of the only things that can change my brain, zero to 60 in one track.

The last song is a cover of Townes van Zandt’s “To Live is to Fly.” This one is different. The stories are over, and you’ve got a mission now: to move on. It’s hope that has gone onto so many of my mixtapes and playlists. It means different things all the time, but it always works.

“But it don’t pay to think too much/On things you leave behind.” I didn’t believe this at all when I heard it the first time, but I wanted to, so much. It’s good to catch up with Margo now, to hear her say it again, to keep pressing play, to see what stuck.

♪♪♪Laurie started writing one day as a small child and never stopped. LaurieWrites (http://www.lauriewrites.com) made it internet-official in 2005. A founding contributing editor and inaugural Voice of the Year at a little website called BlogHer.com, she has written about everything pop culture for Mamapop and Babble.com, and worked in community and communications for Camp Mighty, the Dad 2.0 Summit, and Mom 2.0 Summit (6th annual this year in Atlanta, May 1-3!)  Her first concert with her mom was Donnie and Marie, and with her mom sitting in the parking lot was Howard Jones. Living with an intermittent Melissa Manchester earworm for 25 years, she can name pretty much any pop song in 4 notes, lyrics included. Try her.  

                   
CommentsYes, exactly. I loved and lost many Cowboy Junkies albums as ... by Liz @ PeaceLoveGuacI love this to bits, you guys. xo by LisaRelated StoriesStill in Rotation: Slippery When Wet (Bon Jovi)Still in Rotation: Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)Still in Rotation: Purple Rain (Prince) 

Things That Make You Different From Morrissey

As gleaned from my unsuccessful attempt to slog through the new book, Autobiography, by the lead singer of the Smiths, Steven Patrick Morrissey.

Favorite childhood television programs!

You: remember them fondly.

Morrissey: devotes five straight pages to listing them, alongside inscrutable commentary that is especially confusing for American readers who have never heard of any of these shows.

When it’s hard to find an after school job as a teenager,

You: bitch to your friends, eat Cheetos, take a job you hate because it’s better than nothing.

Morrissey: spends several “war-torn months” “kowtowing to the rigors of gabbling clerical ciphers in a fate worse than life.”

When you want to describe your cool arty friend,

You: describe her as “cool and arty.”

Morrissey: calls her “an alcohol-free mangle of Jean Genet, Yoko Ono, Norma Winstone and Margaret Atwood. Pens, pencils, pens, pencils.”

When it comes to words you may be guilty of overusing,

You: say “great,” or maybe “awesome.”

Morrissey: says “sea-creature.”

When describing a past complicated romantic relationship,

You: giggle, say “it was complicated.”

Morrissey: says, “There will be no secrets of flesh or fantasy, and we managed to parrot on non-stop for two years in a jocular fourth-form stew of genius and silliness.”

When it comes to paragraph breaks, section breaks, and chapters,

You: recognize that readers sometimes need a little visual break, a signal to catch their breath before plunging ahead in the book.

Morrissey: finds them vastly overrated. What’s wrong with a 454 page Chapter One, anyway? Pencils, pens, pencils, pens.

You’re a vegetarian faced with cold cuts at the breakfast buffet.

You: head for the oatmeal.

Morrissey: guilts David Bowie into setting down the bacon in favor of some fruit salad then says to himself, “And another soul is saved from the burning fires of self-imposed eternal damnation.” On a related note, many scenes in his book conclude with him getting up and leaving restaurant tables in protest over meat being served. (Alas, Morrissey doesn’t see that as a good enough reason to sprinkle in a paragraph break.)

Someone’s done you wrong (legitimately, or maybe not.) But decades have passed.

You: move on. Sure, it pains you once in awhile, but water under the bridge, life’s too short, all that.

Morrissey: call an editor and say, “I have an idea for a book.”

On the other hand, if we’re talking about the catchiest, funniest, most mordant and memorable songs ever to play on the airwaves,

Morrissey: wrote and performed them.

You: probably didn’t.

(If you’d like a Smiths tome with a tad more objectivity, check out A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smithsby Tony Fletcher. Or, as my friend Barry suggested, you can always waste some time on This Charming Charlie – Smiths lyrics mashed up with Peanuts cartoons to great effect.)

                   
Comments…and heaven knows I'm miserable now…. by EstherI watched a BBC documentary on Morrissey and Noel Gallagher (a ... by LanceWell, Morrissey is the Sun, and the Moon, with a shyness that ... by Nancy Davis KhoI am human and I need to be loved. Just like everybody else ... by JillHe is indeed a Classic. A Classic what, we will leave unsaid. by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 5 more...Related StoriesMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: Martha Davis and the MotelsGetting Toasty In Defense of Middle Aged Music FansForeign-Word-Learning-Joy 

Foreign-Word-Learning-Joy

For Christmas, the item on top of my wish list was the new book Schottenfreude: New German Words for the Human Condition, by Ben Schott. He’s a journalist, photographer, and designer who trained his sights on a quirk of the German language: there really aren’t that many nouns in it. So when the need for a new word arises, German culture just strings together a bunch of related words to describe it.

German is to compound nouns as Miley Cyrus is to dance moves you wouldn’t want your kids to imitate. So Schott came up with plausible German nouns like, “Schmutzwortsuche,” or “dirty-word-search” – looking up dirty words in the dictionary. And “Tageslichtspielschock” – “day-light-show-shock” – being startled when exiting a theater in broad daylight. (For more examples, see this NYTimes piece.)

I started learning German in sixth grade, an age where my brain could still soak up language like a bag of dried beans dumped into hot water. Then I studied in Vienna in college, and lived for Munich for a couple of years in my early twenties. That was twenty-plus years ago and my German’s considerably rustier now, but I can still sing you songs of the German parts of speech and conjugate verbs six ways til Sonntag. And I still miss the German words that express concepts for which there is no English language counterpart as precise.

These are the German words I’m mostly likely to throw into my English sentences, especially when I’m talking to myself.

Schaffen – a verb which means, “to handle, to manage, to git ‘er done.” As in, “I know this couch is expensive, but I think we can schaff it if I get paid on time for last month’s feature story.”

Scheiβe – actually, there’s a very precise English word for this – think the French word “merde” – but everyone knows that when you swear in a foreign language in front of your kids, it’s less damaging. This is also the first German word that my kids learned. Yay, parenting.

Ganz Gemütlich – “Very Gemütlich”, Gemütlichkeit being a Saxon-tastic state of coziness, warmth, just-rightness. As explained by my Austrian Literature professor to a roomful of American twenty year olds: “Gemütlich is when the pillows are fluffed just so,” demonstrating with a chop of the hand how to make the center dimple on a throw pillow that meant so much to German speaking people. It baffled me that a properly fluffed pillow could mean so much, considering how I barely made my bed or picked my clothes up off the floor at that age. But I moved back to America and become a Grown Up, and my pillows are chopped to a state of ganz Gemütlichkeit every time I clean.

Weiβ Ich Nicht – means “don’t know,” which obviously isn’t unique to German. But I say this one with a Schwabish accent as tutored by my German then-boyfriend’s mother who hailed from that region, so it sounds like one smeary word wrapped up in utter disinterest: “veezeeschnitt.” Must be delivered with a shoulder shrug, while you turn away from the person who asked the question.

Ich drücke dir die Daumen – the German equivalent of “fingers crossed!” is “thumbs pressed!” Or in this case, “I press my thumbs for you.” That same former German bf had an endearing variation on this one to communicate the fervency of his hopes on someone else’s behalf: “Ich drücke alle verfügbaren Daumen,” or, “I press all available thumbs.”  I always pictured him running around, pressing the thumbs of strangers in earnest helpfulness. So that’s what I say, in English: I press all available thumbs.

What about you? What are the words of foreign extraction that you wish had an English counterpart? (My friend Alexandra from Good Day, Regular People once wrote a great guest post for me about Colombian-isms, if you’d prefer a Latin American variety.) Add them in the comments – and don’t forget to give pronunciation.

It’s still early enough in January to make resolutions. Let’s all improve ourselves by learning a few new foreign words for 2014.

I bet we can schaff it.

                   
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