Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 57

Honey Do Do

The other night I sat down on the couch, flipped on the tube, and laid eyes on a new TLC show called Honey Do. For the first fifteen minutes, I was rendered totally helpless by the sheer empirical genius of a show aimed straight at my married, female solar plexus.

The premise of Honey Do is that women whose houses are in extreme disrepair – think toilet seats untethered from the ceramic throne, curtain rods hanging at an angle, cupboard doors off hinges—are visited by the Four Handy Magi, who instead of bearing gifts are wearing toolbelts. That Jonathan, Kevin, Ben, and Dan are gorgeous, young, and overtly flirty with the beleaguered wife is a given. Jonathan even has a British accent and a faint resemblance to Teddy Thompson, which to me is just gilding the lily.

In back-to-back episodes I watched, the wife pointed out all the areas where her husband was lacking the tools of the trade. Almost immediately, two of the Honey Do Dudes stripped off their shirts to drill things, rivulets of sweat glimmering down their bare, muscled torsos. Then the other two rubbed the wife’s feet and fed her Mimosas and baked goods.

Every few minutes, the husband would enter the scene and say, “Could you PLEASE put some shirts on?” or grumble, “Those men were rubbing up on mah waaff and I didn’t like it, no, not one bit.” But then he’d realize that the payoff for being totally emasculated on television was that the bookshelves in the family room were finally assembled, and the fireplace was resurfaced, and the husband would make peace with the whole process even if he had a new dead spot in his soul where he could never fully trust his wife again.

I am not made of stone. For a long moment, I fantasized about what I could put on my application. The light switch in the guest room closet that doesn’t do anything! The cold water faucet in the upstairs tub! The loose towel bar in the kitchen! A topper on my flat Mimosa!

But seeing the wreckage of these women’s houses, both of which could done double duty on Hoarders, it was clear that our problems were small beer. And the longer I watched British Jonathan and his crew make snide comments about the husband’s shortcomings while gyrating like Chippendales models around the stepladders, the more it began to actively bother me.

First, because I am nothing if not safety conscious. Seems like if you have to wear eye protection to operation a circular saw, a shirt is also a good idea. No one wants to slice off a finger, or a nipple.

Second, because ever since friends of mine had a home makeover on the TLC show “Curb Appeal,” it bugs me that these home shows pretend to get the work done so quickly. Real reality is that those projects last for WEEKS, and the families live in the construction zone, and the editing makes it look like it happened in two days and that it was all a surprise. Sure, the husband probably could have cleaned and organized the garage sooner, but to make it look like it was a two-hour job that he had been avoiding is a bit disingenuous.

But in the end, it was the whole Damsel in Distress vibe that I found incredibly patronizing. British Dan and his boys couldn’t believe how badly the wives had been neglected by a husband unwilling to change the lightbulbs in the bathroom fixture. One woman’s plea was for the guys to hang a second curtain on a curtain rod. I mean, she was short, but there are chairs to stand on. Lightbulbs and curtains, people, not rewiring the electrical system.

When my youngest was about four, we had a rat problem in the house. Don’t judge; they love the ivy that makes our part of Oakland so green. A trap in the unfinished basement snapped one day, its job done, while my husband was away on a long business trip. I called him and said, “I am not touching that thing. You can take care of it when you get home. I don’t even care if it starts to smell.”

I hung up and turned to see my cherubic four year old daughter with her wacky head of curls watching me, both hands on her hips.

“Mom,” she said, plainly exasperated after listening to the conversation. “If you want to make Dad impressed of you, you have to take care of the rat. BEFORE he gets back.”

On that day, when I triple-garbage-bagged the rat and carried it out by the tips of my industrial rubber gloves to throw in the garbage, gloves, trap, and all, I learned a good lesson not just about being capable, but about setting an example for the two young damsels watching my every move. And if I want them to be impressed of me, I better show them what I’m capable of with a Philips head screw driver, a paint brush, and a hammer. I do have some pride.

I better also teach them that most Handy Guys who come to the house are more likely to look like the clueless husbands with beer bellies and bad trousers than they do the TLC Adonises who are laying sod. The truth is, if I lined up my husband with the plumber, exterminator, electrician, and drainage guy who keep this house running, the only one I’d want to see without a shirt on is the one I’m already married to.

But…if, the next time the electrician comes, he wants to bring some pastries? I would not say no to those.

“Handyman Blues” from Billy Bragg…so funny, so good.

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My Personal Declaration of Independence

This holiday weekend, I feel it’s important to wave a flag high for all the areas in my life where freedom reigns. With no futher ado:

I declare myself to be independent of and free from the following:

The ability to stop at one homemade chocolate chip cookie
The stomach for Quentin Tarantino movies or adaptations of Cormac McCarthy books
The willpower to resist the “Buy Now” green button on the iTunes store
Disinterest in baby interactions; I will always wave and make faces at cute babies
Comfort with the loss of control inherent in allowing my husband to navigate the car without my input
The self-control to stop reading at bedtime when there are
A yearning to learn how to ski
An aptitude for geometry
The patience to use Siri, especially since she started calling me Alicente (pronounced “Ala-shent.”)
An affinity for jigsaw puzzles
Empathy for foul-mouthed parents whose children curse in public
A tendency toward terseness

God Bless America. Thank you. Please pass the sparklers, and add your own declarations of independence in the comments section.

Here’s a new favorite from our July 4th playlist – Bastille, with “Pompeii”…if Enya were a dude, and ate the Depeche Mode drum machine.

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Tourist Trapp

Quick show of hands. How many of you marked the passage of the 1970s by which Trapp child you’d be cast as when they inevitably remade the 1965 Academy Award winning movie, The Sound of Music, and came to your house to offer you a role? For example: from 1974-75 I would have been Gretl, 1976-77 were the Marta years, and in 1978 I would have been perfect for Brigitta because I was a bookworm just like her.

Anyone? Anyone else?

Oh. Well, there you have it. I was a Sound of Music nerd, listening to the soundtrack on my orange record player and studying the album cover so closely that it fell apart in my hands and had to be repaired with cellophane tape that, over time, removed patches of the Alps from the cover art. I listened to the music so many times that thirty years later I can still anticipate the tiny interruptions as the children inhale and exhale during “So Long, Farewell.” I was so ready for my closeup. But time passed and one day I was too old to play even Rolfe, who may have been 17 going on 18 but still had a faulty moral compass.

Still, I found other ways to stay connected. I don’t want to say that TSoM was the reason I studied German in school, but it wasn’t a deterrent.

When I landed in Austria for a semester abroad, one of the first places I visited was the Trapp hometown of Salzburg, staying at a youth hostel that catered to Australians, sold Gösser beer for $0.25 a bottle, and played The Sound of Music on a loop in the common room. Later, when I lived in Munich, I’d take out of town visitors on the easy-peasy 90 minute train ride to Salzburg and drag them around saying, “Here’s where Marta dropped the tomato in the market! Here’s where they marched in lines and sang ‘Doe a Deer!’ Here’s the Villa Von Trapp!”

So earlier this year when we were looking for an offbeat Vermont location to spend a few vacation days with the family at the end of June, I booked the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe faster than you can say Lonely Goatherd. This is the Austrian style hotel that Maria, the Captain, and their children built in the 1950s, first as a family farm and later as one of the first cross country ski resorts in the country.

My mother and dad drove up to Rochester to meet us and my mother kept threatening to sew us matching dresses out of drapes so we could run through a field together singing, “The Hills Are Alive.” It would be a double whammy of mom/grammy embarrassment for my kids, because I was totally game.

From the minute we pulled onto the resort property I was a little short of breath with nostalgia for my Austrian sojourn. “See the front of the building? That’s what buildings look like in Salzburg. See how it says ‘Tagessuppe’ on the menu? That means ‘Day’s Soup.’ See how it’s pouring outside nonstop? It also rains in Vienna!”

Reinforcing the full-immersion experience were hallways that were alive with framed movie posters and paraphernalia from all over the world.

You can bet that my mom and I were among the first people to arrive at the “The Real Family History” tour given by…Samuel Von Trapp. He’s a strapping, friendly guy, grandson of Maria and the Captain, and he looks perfectly capable of climbing over some Alps to escape the Nazis.

Only: it didn’t really happen that way. As we learned in the talk, there were quite a few discrepancies between the real story and the Hollywood version, like the fact that the Trapp family actually boarded a train bound for Italy rather than hiking over the Alps (which would have landed them in Germany,) and that they had ten kids not seven (Samuel’s dad was the baby, born once they got to the U.S.), and that the Captain was not the cold curmudgeon depicted by Christopher Plummer but rather a warm and loving dad.

On the other hand, every drag queen’s favorite character, the Baroness, was real, and so was the broken engagement. (Side note: my husband, upon viewing the movie in the lodge hall for the first time in decades, shook his head and said, “Man. He really should have gone with the baroness. Money AND good looks.”) Maria really did make a lousy nun. And the family harmonizing was real, so real that the family was scheduled to sing for Hitler and that’s what finally compelled them to leave.  Mom and I both got a bit choked up in the family cemetary where Maria and the Captain share a plot, surrounded by the graves of six of their children.

After we said goodbye to the Lodge and headed down the road for Cali, me wearing a new silver ring cast from a tiny piece of Vermont birch bark to remind me of the time a childhood dream came full circle, I had a sudden revelation:

I think I’m still young enough to play the Mother Abbess.

Here’s a favorite daughter of the Green Mountain State – they even named a chocolate bar after her: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals with The Lion, The Beast, The Beat. This song rocks as hard as Vermont granite.

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Terrible Twos

Two years. That’s how long it’s been since I threw Normalarkey out with the bathwater and started all over again with a blog that I hoped would be bionic: better, faster, stronger than the old blog. Or at least with a much easier name to spell.

I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams in connecting with people in the world who think in lyrics, who would rather laugh than complain, who would race both for the cure and for The Cure (can’t take credit for that one, though I wish I could. Original here.) Thank you, dear friends, for making me feel like less of an oddball.

In the past twelve months I’ve gotten to share some of my favorite music books with you, and I’ve hosted the words of some amazing writers through Still in Rotation. I love when I get the guest posts ahead of time via email; I clap my hands over my keyboard each time and think, “I can’t wait til my readers get a load of THIS!” Thank you, guest posters, for sharing your favorite albums and your lump-in-throat-inducing writing with us.

I’ve had the perfect excuse to hit a concert a month. Like I needed one. Thanks for telling me about the bands you love and sharing stories of the performances that stuck with you.

I’ve had a place for my stories, my memories, and my rants, and I cannot express to you how important that is for the person whose childhood nickname was Aunt Blabby.

Finally – and this is new in the past six months – I have gotten onto the distribution lists for PR people flogging new music. Unfortunately a lot of that music is by a girl named Cheyenne who is playing all over the NASCAR circuit this summer, and much of what remains is by metal artist Jungle Rot. (Not that there’s anything wrong with metal, but I like mine with some Viking seasoning.)

Still, there’s probably a better way for me to highlight what’s new and good on the music scene for you guys; I just need some time to figure it out. So the blog and I, we’re going to get away for a few days, you know, reconnect as you do around your anniversary, and think it over between meals and naps. I want to make sure I enter Midlife Mixtape’s Terrible Twos well rested and mentally prepared.

And while I’m gone for the next little while, scroll through a couple of these listen-worthy treats that have popped up in my inbox lately. Let me know which you like best in the comments!

Robb Benson and the Shelk – The Way Through

Coming to Oakland to play on August 9 to the Awaken Café. Love this indie songwriter from Seattle…

Lorde – Royals

This gorgeous Kiwi has a hypnotic, distinctive voice – and she’s 17? So depressed. No, good for her. Really.

 

Dessa – Call Off Your Ghost

This rapper is so angular. Keep your new girlfriend away from her or she will cut her with a cheekbone.

The Swing Set With Alex Cook – Bad Things


This one goes out to the True Blood and Mad Men fans

                   
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Seven Things My Pet Thought In the Past 24 Hours

1. The bed just creaked! Is this the middle of the night trip the lady does to the bathroom, or is it THE CREAK OF CREAKS THAT THEY ARE GETTING UP TO LET ME OUT AND FEED ME OH JOY OH JOY I THINK IT MUST BE THAT! I will wag my tail so hard that it cracks the plaster on the wall next to me! I will spin in a circle to make my tags jingle like the Bells of Saint Marys! Oh happy, blessed day, they are going to wake up and talk to me and pet my ears! Plus, FOOD!

Oh. False Alarm. The lady just flushed the toilet and went back to bed.

Unrelated: why is the man yelling at me to quiet down?

2. Again with the wet lawns. Well, the good news is she’s finally awake, and we’re outside in the front yard where the sprinklers have just turned off, which means all I have to do is relieve myself and then she’ll fill my dog dish with those delicious crunchy brown nuggets. But why does she insist that I have to walk onto the wet grass to do my business? Sure, I’ll eat the toxic sludge that the man hoses out of the green bin where the compost goes, I’ll roll around in the poo of whatever creature scents the trail, I’ll drink from a puddle that has a petroleum oil slick on top. But do NOT expect me to dampen my dainty paws, lady. I’ll hold it til lunchtime if I have to.

3.) I’m exhausted by all the activity. I’m going back to bed.

4.) LADY! LADY THERE ARE GANGS OF MURDEROUS THUGS TRYING TO BREAK INTO THE HOUSE! DANGER! DANGER! PANIC!

What’s that you say? A book fell off a shelf upstairs? Huh. You know now that about it, I was sleeping pretty hard right then. I may have overreacted.

Carry on.

5.) *click of leash being removed so I can run free on the trail through the redwoods*: I smell something! I smell something else! I smelled that other thing so hard that it made me sneeze! If I just get in here hard enough, bet I can inhale this entire lawn!

6.) I’m exhausted by all the activity. I’m going back to bed.

7.) Uh, do you not see me staring at you from this spot on the rug? The spot where my bed should be? So I can lie near you and watch you read your book? Fine. I’ll make that weird almost-talking noise that German Shorthaired Pointers make–arglomrumph! Got your attention on that, huh? But you’re still not moving my bed. That’s fine, I can glare at you all day. Feel me glaring? Feel me glaring? I’m throwing down another talk noise, too. RAFLOMOGRUMPH. Bet you can’t keep reading your book through THAT.

Ha.

Thanks for bringing me the bed, lady.

Speaking of inscrutable thoughts, this video left me more confused than even Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Frank Ocean is Thinking About You.  Anyone want to tell me what’s going on here?

                   
CommentsBecause he knows you like the drumsticks. by Nancy Davis Khothat is the saddest tale of drug addiction I've ever heard, ... by Nancy Davis KhoMy cat just proved to me he loves me: he left me a death rat! ... by Tinne from Tantrums and Tomatoesgood looking dog My dogson is a 7 1/2 year-old golden ... by LanceGood point. But Achilles' noise is more drawn out, so maybe ... by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 2 more...Related StoriesHow to Maximize the Drama Inherent in a Wild Turkey EncounterCanine Agents of EmbarrassmentA Fathering Attribute I’d Like to Have 

A Fathering Attribute I’d Like to Have

Before I had kids, back when I still knew everything about parenting, I read an article that cautioned mothers to just let fathers be. Basically, it said, there is a separate but important set of skills taught by dads through the type of roughhousing, kidding, and what some might call Benign Neglect (others might even call it Actual Neglect) that characterize many interactions between dads and kids. It made sense to me—I know there are things I learned from my father that were vital, just very different from what I learned from my mom. A good parenting team is one that fits like puzzle pieces, each partner contributing something important to the whole.

With Father’s Day around the corner I was thinking about the one puzzle piece attribute of my husband’s that I would appropriate if I could, and it’s this: the ability to maintain a sense of humor. Ironic coming from someone who describes herself as a humor writer, I know. I think it’s just proof that I married up in the humor pool.

Many are the times that some new parenting challenge would have best been met by an objective response of “Wow, that is hilarious.” You know, if you could just take three big steps back and imagine the conflict played out on a big movie screen in a PG rated family comedy. Like when a child laments the tiny discomforts of her life as she sits in a warm, dry house in nice clothes with a full belly and decent Wifi. Or when three requests in a row to pick up shoes from the front hall are met, finally, with the question: “What did you ask me to do?” Or when a toddler screams “I hate da twees!” and refuses to step one foot further into a redwood forest to which we’d driven expressly for the nature hike.

And yet the three aforementioned examples are ones that I have taken seriously. Seriously as in grinding my teeth, throwing death stares, hissing nasty responses that sparked mild discontent into the fiery flames of open family warfare.

I know it’s my job to be the grown up and to pick my battles, that laughing at a preposterous moment is a time-honored moment of deflating tension. I’m just not as good at it as my husband is.

Truly, I marvel. We’ll have a child stomping around the kitchen, about to boil over into mad about something, and instead of launching a lecture about being oversensitive or being grateful or being less persnickety overall, which are my go-to strategies, my husband takes a different tack. He’ll intentionally misunderstand something to comic effect, or tell a weird and unrelated story, and pretty soon the daughter in question is smiling, pitching in, brightened up. The storm has passed without even breaking a leaf off a branch.

I should have expected that this would be a parenting strength for him. He has long used jokesterism as a means to jolly me out of my own bad moods, and most of the time it works.

The other day was a long, bad one and I was at the end of my rope at the foot of my bed, crying and feeling sorry for myself, and my husband said, “Would it cheer you up to know that I almost got punched on the airplane today?” By the time I’d heard the bizarre story – he accidentally hit someone with his briefcase while walking to his seat on the plane, and the guy tried to sock him – I was taken out of my self-pity long enough to get my head on straight again. Sometimes you don’t need to describe the problem. You just need to stop staring at it so hard.

So on this Father’s Day, here’s to the Dads who remind us there is always another way. Even if it puzzles us moms.

What’s the fathering attribute of your partner or your own dad that you most wish you possessed?

While you ponder, here’s something else that made me laugh – a new (NSFW) video from Lonely Island. Just promise me that if you watch it, you’ll watch the entire thing. Promise me. Otherwise rampant semicolon misuse could spread even further.

                   
CommentsMan, I could use a big dose of him myself. Wait, that came out ... by AnnI think you shared that sense of humor – your girls got a ... by Nancy Davis KhoI just LOVE the “Rags for Sale!” image. Thanks for sharing ... by Nancy Davis KhoHow could anyone be nicer than you? Not possible. Although I ... by Nancy Davis KhoI think my husband is just a nicer person than I am. He likes ... by Janine KovacPlus 4 more...Related StoriesAn Open Letter to the African Tribal Statue in My New Neighbor’s Picture WindowThe Dark Side of Family Vacation MemoriesSeven Things My Pet Thought Today 

Still in Rotation: Ram (Paul McCartney)

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.

Paul Myers is one of my favorite music Tweeps, and not just because of the geographic close calls we share – he’s from Toronto, I’m from across the lake in Rochester, he lives in Berkeley, I live a few miles south in Oakland. Songwriter, musician, author, journo: I’m honored to have Paul here today talking about Ram.

Still in Rotation: Ram (1971)

To fully appreciate the impact Ram had on me as a young boy in suburban Toronto, you have to first realize that I grew up in a happy, unbroken home and at that point no one I knew, even my grandparents, had died. Therefore, the only painful family breakup I’d ever experienced had been when Paul McCartney leaked news of the Beatles split to a stunned planet of Beatles fans.

Mommy and daddy had things to work out, but they want you to know it isn’t your fault and they both love you very, very much.

After we’d pored over their lovely swansong, Abbey Road (in many respects more perfect than Sgt. Pepper), and the tense post-mortem that was Let It Be, came the “solo albums”.

Having been naïvely invested in the myth of the Fab Four as one big happy, innocuous family, the idea of John & Yoko, the radical activists, was as jarring as your older brother going off to college or becoming a draft dodger, so his first few albums didn’t click with me, at the time anyway. I bought into the prevailing notion that without Paul’s steadying influence, John might never make Beatle quality records again. As for Paul, apart from “Maybe I’m Amazed”, which would clearly have been welcome on any late era Beatles album, the McCartney album had felt homemade and missed the deft production touch of Sir George Martin, which my dumb young ears needed. Again, I was a kid. This was how I saw it then.

At the close of 1970, George Harrison, the under utilized underdog of the group, had surpassed his Fab rivals with his tour de force All Things Must Pass, my Christmas album that year. It amply made up for the lack of new Beatles under the tree. Then, the following year, both Lennon and McCartney, as if challenged by the quiet one, each pulled up their socks and finally crafted solo albums that felt Beatle-worthy. For Lennon, it was the Phil Spector produced colossus Imagine, a triumph of echoey Lennonism redolent with strings and a full spectrum of poetic emotions laid bare. If he sounded like he had something to prove, remember that the context of the album’s October 1971 release was only five months after Paul & Linda McCartney’s own solo masterpiece, Ram.

From the opening descending acoustic guitar riff of “Too Many People”, Ram felt like Paul’s personal Revolver; the album where he began to define the rules once more. Beatle Paul was back, but he wasn’t going backwards. This time, he and his old lady shared equal billing, and their conjugal vocal blend seemed to make a defiant statement to the haters: “Linda is my partner now, piss off if you can’t handle it”, or words to that effect. Looking back now, I am certain that this was the point all along. Also, free of outside collaborators, Paul could fill his kitchen table with the best melodies of any of the rock songwriters of his generation. So what if his lyrical focus seemed less urgent or relevant than Lennon’s? Still, McCartney put enough confessional subtext into his word salad that you felt the point even if it made no linear sense.

The one time playboy of St. John’s Wood was now happily domesticated and songs like “Eat At Home”, “Heart Of The Country”, “Long Haired Lady”, and the big finale “Back Seat Of My Car” were his paeans to the new normal. The angrier songs on Ram, such as “Too Many People” dealt in a round about way with McCartney’s disaffection for his former partner. Apparently, Lennon took personal offence to the line, “Too many people preaching practices” as a possible attack on Mr. and Mrs. Lennon’s limousine liberalism.

And it’s read McCartney’s feelings of abandonment into couplets like:

That was your first mistake

You took your lucky break and broke it in two

Now what can be done for you?

You broke it in two.

The two were shooting songs back and forth at each other, and months later, Lennon would gut punch McCartney (with guitar from Harrison) on “How Do You Sleep?” from Imagine. At the time, I remember that I just didn’t like mommy and daddy fighting, even in the veiled forum of song jabs.

Nowadays they’d have settled it like gentlemen, with a Twitter war.

A former partner also informs “Dear Boy”, but this time it’s Linda’s ex, who apparently never knew that “she was just the cutest thing around”. That’s pretty much it for the toxicity on Ram, however, and the overall vibe is one of matrimonial bliss.

The album’s biggest single, “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” is where McCartney established his penchant for pasting together song fragments into a Frankenstein “suite” that more often than not works, as it had on Abbey Road’s second side, and as he would later do time and again, most successfully with “Band On The Run” two years later. I still have no idea what this lovely, rollicking, episodic fantasia is going on about, but I do know two things; it still holds up and you could never have a chart hit this crazy in modern times. But Macca got a pass, the Beatles pass, because like his three fellows, he was, and always would be, a Beatle and therefore untouchable.

Musical moments like “Uncle Albert”, along with Ram’s full colour, hand-drawn gatefold packaging, assured us kids of the Beatles family that we would survive the divorce.

Ram and Imagine joined All Things Must Pass as the best examples of the solo Beatles rising to their legacy. In fact, in coming years, the boys would all pitch in for Ringo Starr’s own high watermark, Ringo. These four albums also pronounced that The Beatles were dead. Long live the Beatles.

Our family had indeed broken up, but now we had four dads instead of one.

♪♪♪Berkeley based, Toronto born, writer and musician Paul Myers is the author of the critically acclaimed music biographies A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio, It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues and Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts Private Stories and numerous periodicals, including FastCoCreate, Paste, Crawdaddy, and Mix Magazine. Paul was nominated for a Gemini Award (Canadian Emmy) for writing the BBC 4 documentary Long John Baldry: In The Shadow Of The Blues, and is one half of the San Francisco songwriting team, The Paul & John.

Paul Myers on Twitter: @pulmyears

Paul Myers on Tumblr:

Tumble Dry: http://pulmyears.tumblr.com/

and

Paul Myers Wants To Show You One Cool Thing Today http://pmcoolthings.tumblr.com/

 

                   
CommentsUncle Albert/Admiral Halsey – what a fascinatingly well ... by Linda RoyWe did survive the divorce, didn't we? It was so painful and ... by TarjaWell said, Paul. This brought back many of my Beatles breakup ... by Risa NyeYou can tell with Ram how much The Beatles was Paul's group at ... by LanceRelated StoriesStill in Rotation: Flop (Carnival of Souls)Still In Rotation: TBDStill in Rotation: Let It Be (The Replacements) 

Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: San Francisco Symphony/Dvořák Cello Concerto

The Band: The San Francisco Symphony with Slovakian guest conductor Juraj Valcuha, June 2 2013. The SFSymphony celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2011, and continues its mission to make classical music accessible to all. Whether it’s hip hop/R&B queen Janelle Monae performing with the orchestra to open the season, extensive outreach to local schools, or free concerts in Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Symphony is a crown jewel of the Bay Area cultural scene, and one that is criminally underrepresented in my concert rotation. Valcuha holds the post of Chief Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Torino, Italy.

The Venue: Davies Symphony Hall is imposing on the outside, an island of modern minimalist beauty and calm within. Between the expansive staircases, the pendulum lighting, and the wall of windows that looks out onto the neighboring Opera House and San Francisco City Hall, the sense of grand occasion is impressed upon audience members from the moment they step inside. (Though the last time I went to Davies was to see David Byrne with guest act The Extra Action Marching Band and the energy was slightly different.) We happened to visit on a day that the sky was a sort of blue that deserved to be commemorated in painting.

The Company: My friend Leigh. I like to say that we were matched via Episcopal Speed Dating, when I volunteered to drive parishioners who can’t get to church on their own. Leigh is 90, a widow, hilariously funny and sharp as a tack, and I soon realized that our brief Sunday rides were never going to be enough time to hear all her stories, about being an original Pan Am stewardess, walking with her husband across Africa (yes, the width, and yes, she did) and raising six sons.

But, since we both married half-Chinese men, we mostly talk about how cute they are and how smart we were for catching them.

The Crowd: I got a little panicky when I pulled into the Performing Arts Garage and saw people climbing out of their cars in long dresses and jewels – Leigh and I looked spiffy, but I’d left the tiara at home. Then we realized that the Opera was performing at the same time, and that the crowd heading to Davies was much more Northern California Dress Code. That means: there will be people in sexy cocktail dresses, there will be people in go-to-church outfits, and there will be people in Birkenstocks and fleece. Whatever you wear in the Bay Area, including drag and falsies, you will always fit in.

Age Humiliation Factor: Low.


Because we chose a matinee, there were kids in the audience, so I’d say that I was at the inflection point of the audience members’ ages. And there was even some species diversity; a seeing eye dog sat behind us and because of the way the seats rise, we were eye to eye with this very well behaved Golden Retriever every time we turned around.

Cool Factor: High

There’s nothing nicer than saying you’re going to hear a world class symphony on a gorgeous spring day.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? Or just bring the kids, if you can afford it.

Ok, I’m told that the way writers truly connect with readers is through wrenching honesty so I am going to admit it: I nearly fell asleep during the first half, which was the Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor with young Gallic superstar cellist Gautier Capuçon, who looks exactly like the son in the Robin Williams/Nathan Lane version of the Birdcage.

But it wasn’t because I was bored. In fact, I kept thinking how visual the symphony is, what with all the violinists’ bows striding up and down, white stripes moving against the black-clad players. There’s a “Where’s Waldo” game of figuring out which symphony member has the solo, maybe easier for people sitting closer or who are better educated than I am, but I quite liked the challenge of figuring out what type of instrument could make that sound and then scanning the appropriate section to find the soloist before their section ended.

No, the doziness came because classical music is just…so…calming. The sonorous cello, the gorgeous waves of violin music, the brass…it was all so pretty. Does it make me a bad person to move from calm to passed out? Both Leigh and I had moments where the clash of cymbals startled us to attention. I think the Seeing Eye dog behind us was a bit disgusted with our slouching.  But I’ve decided that when I’m getting stressed out at home, I should pop a classical music CD into the stereo to see if it helps.

I snapped to for the second half of the program, which featured work by two other Eastern Europeans, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók. These were livelier and somehow more storylike—maybe it’s my love of reading, or the side effect of close study of Peter and the Wolf in my public elementary school, but I can’t refrain from trying to assign characters and motivations to each instrument in the orchestra.

And let’s take a moment, shall we, in appreciation of the symphony Playbill, in which you can read about what you’re going to hear and the people playing it, providing context to deepen your appreciation of the concert. Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to get that for a Black Keys or a Joy Formidable show – “here’s why they wrote this song, and here’s what it actually means.” I wouldn’t say no to a little booklet that connected the dots between the players and their influences and what it all means, I’m just sayin’. While you ponder my pipe dream, enjoy this clip of the Dvorak concerto being performed by Capuçon, this time with Orchestre de Paris.

Am I the only person who gets a bit too relaxed at Symphony shows? What current band’s music do you think would best be augmented by a Playbill? Let me know your thoughts in the comments field – I could talk music with you all day long.

                   
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Turn Down the Music and Read: VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave

With the speed at which I inhaled VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave (Atria, 2013) it is official: there is no detail about the early days of MTV too picayune to interest me. All five VJs shared one dressing room at first? Fascinating. Nina Blackwood was a professional harpist? Who knew? Alan Hunter blew his first wardrobe budget on an array of neon pants and sweaters that looked like a box of crayons had melted on them? Actually, I could have guessed that.

This book fills in the very few blanks left by the mammoth I Want My MTV (Dutton, 2011,) the “uncensored story of the music video revolution” that omitted nearly all first-person details from the Fab Five First VJs: Martha Quinn, J.J. Jackson, Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, and Alan Hunter. Jackson passed away in 2004, but the rest of the team was obviously holding out to tell their side of the tale. Where I Want My MTV mixed a bird’s eye view of the changing music industry with lots of salacious details about how videos were made, VJ, written with Rolling Stone contributing editor Gavin Edwards, lets us see the whole journey through the eyes of the quintet that lifted their furled umbrellas and guided us through it.

Look: I was fifteen when the channel debuted, sixteen by the time it got to my cable broadcast market. Having a one-sided conversation with these guys was a major component of my teen years, so reading about what happened on the other side of the television screen feels a bit like reminiscing with a long-lost high school friend whose memories are just different enough to keep it interesting. I didn’t realize John Cougar Mellencamp put the moves on Nina! Or that David Bowie reamed out Mark Goodman on camera about the lack of black artists being played. Martha went to her initial audition wearing a “Country Music Is In My Blood” tshirt? OMG, let’s get some Tab and Doritos and talk about this all afternoon!

While the anecdotes are undeniably interesting, VJ is marked by moments of genuine heart and emotion. The way the surviving VJs talk about Jackson – the VJ emeritus with the deepest music resume and the coolest rocker friends – is profoundly touching, and it’s clear that the conflicts and clashes that are inevitable between any co-workers have faded away with time, leaving only the bonds of real affection between the original VJ class. If you’re already disgusted with the reality programming to which MTV turned at the end of the original VJ era, then the graceless way that all five were shown the exit isn’t going to do much to improve your opinion of the channel.

Structurally, it’s the perfect summer read, with short chapters comprising even shorter recollections on topics like “I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me: Celebrity and Its Consequences” and “I’ve Seen You on the Beach and I’ve Seen You on TV: The Cultural Impact of MTV.” Twice, I sat down on the couch planning to read three chapters only. Instead, I sat still and finished the book in two sittings. It’s the Sea Salt Potato Chips of books.

Want to spend some time with the original VJ book yourself? Gavin Edwards has kindly arranged for a copy to be shipped to a lucky Midlife Mixtape reader. (You should check out Edwards’ previous book of musical Mondegreens, ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy,” It’s for anyone who thinks the line in Baba O’Riley is “Out here in the field, alfalfa our meals…”) Leave me a comment, below, on who your favorite VJ was and why. I’ll pick a winner at random on Friday, June 7 at 5 pm PST and ship you a copy.

Until then, here’s the dearest little clip: The first two minutes of MTV. Ever.

                   
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My Backstage Concert Riders

A few weeks ago Beyoncé’s backstage concert rider for her performances in London’s O2 arena was making rounds on the Internet, primarily because it was so cray. For those who don’t know, a concert rider is basically a list of demands by an artist about how he or she will be treated if he or she is expected to put on a show for your venue. It’s also a chance to flex your diva muscles. Beyoncé, for instance, allegedly needed crew members to wear 100% cotton, and she also needed RED TOILET PAPER in her dressing room. Where to get red toilet paper, and why, is a topic for another time.

As someone who worked backstage at shows during college, I never saw a rider that whackadoodle: we usually had to stock a certain kind of beer and a specific number of towels, but that was about as exotic as it got (of course, we didn’t have people like Katy “ABSOLUTELY NO CARNATIONS” Perry playing the auditorium.)

But reading over Beyonce’s demands for $900 titanium drinking straws and hand carved ice balls got me thinking: how awesome would it be to go through life handing out a rider to smooth the way? I’ve decided going to print out these situation-specific riders out on notepads and distribute them wherever I go.

Nancy’s Grocery Shopping Rider

Cart handles must be sterilized with bleach and hot water 30 seconds before Nancy arrives at venue.
Cart must be cleared of stray shopping lists and moldy grapes from prior shoppers.
All wheels must pull in the same direction, and at the same speed.
Deli lady should be handing out roast beef samples.
Bread shelf must contain Acme Bread Sourdough Batard. For removal of doubt: that is not the same as Acme Bread Sweet Batard.
If Nancy is not wearing makeup, store must be cleared of anyone she knows.
Checkout lines must be no longer than one person long, unless Princess Kate is on the cover of People Magazine in which case there should be four to five shoppers in line so that Nancy can skim the entire article without purchasing said magazine.

Nancy’s Dining Out Rider

If there is a reservation, Nancy and her party must be seated within five minutes of arrival. Otherwise Nancy is allowed to give hostess a lecture about the meaning of the word “reservation,” and her husband is allowed to stand over the diners who are lingering at their table, to assess the progress of their dining.
Chairs must have backs; stools look nice but seriously, who likes to perch on a wood stump beyond the first five minutes? Lumbar pillows welcome.
Waiters should have a spare pair of reading glasses to surreptitiously slip into Nancy’s hand if she is spotted holding the menu more than three feet away.
No wasabi anything. The Nineties are over. It’s done. (Exception made for Japanese restaurants.)
Do not use the royal “We.” “How are we liking our food?” and “How are we enjoying the wine?” are fully forbidden.
Even if Nancy doesn’t order dessert, always bring her a fork in case her dining partners need help with the caramel cheesecake.

Nancy’s  Airplane Rider

All people ahead of Nancy in security line shall have flown at least ten times before, so that they don’t freeze when they reach the stack of bins and say things like “Do I need to take my belt off? What about my shoes?”
On board coffee must be Peets or, at the very least, Starbucks. If you come at her with a pack of freeze dried coffee and a Styrofoam cup of hot water, she gets to sit up front with the pilot.
If the person in the seat in front of her reclines his seat into her lap, there shall be no attaching Nancy to her seat using Flexi-cuffs just because she starts to sing “Shave and a Haircut.”
Blankets and pillows: have them.
A flight attendant must be stationed near the restrooms to review with each bathroom visitor the following rule: if it came from you, WIPE IT UP.

I could go all day on this one, but I’d rather hear your own situational riders. While you think it over, enjoy Rough Rider by the Beat…

                   
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