¡NEEDFORSPEED!

Sometimes I get a feeling that I need more than I've got...then, I eventually realize that it's all been stuck to the bottom of my shoe the whole time I've been walking around looking for it. The trick with dancing shoes is that they need a nap sometimes, but they never, ever die. Different pairs have their own styles, and some have more oomph than others. It's like clapping, everyone does it together as a whole, but they're all individual sounds. It's just a big ol' garden of good news. That's what a proper dance party is. I don't know how it happens, but I manage to get lost in my own beliefs. What is it that I love, and what should I do to spread it? Well, for one, make sure it's authentic. If not, then you're doing something wrong, and not following your true dharma. Do I use that word? I guess I do, huh. Just a few days ago, I was feeling kinda grey in the heart region and decided to force myself to go exercise. The question is always what the soundtrack of the work out should be, and on this particular day, Beyonce won the race. I put on my head phones and let Suga Mama flow through my limbs, which encouraged some bitchy running, air-punching and lip-syncing whilst treading on the treadmill. I noticed that I hadn't rocked out in a while, at least not how I'm used to, and I felt a sort of rush from this, because I missed it so much. The truth of the matter is that I've been a little under the weather, both in my mind and in my sinuses. Ewww. I think it's been spreading...there are a lot of people suffering from similar symptoms that I've been having, and we all know that this sort of thing can seriously alter our general state of well being and self-expression. I took a healthy dose of Porno Galactica today, along with a few drops of Journey. I'm really starting to feel a lot better. I have a cold, and for that I'll eat some oranges. Hooray, medicine can be fun and tasty! Despite my small immunity malfunction, I still ended up at a party the other night, which was probably not the best idea if we're being smart about it, but if we're going to be real instead, then yeah, it was a great idea. Ugly sweaters, good music, rad people and yummy wink nog made for an eye opening night. Who needs to be bummed when you've got so much to be happy about? It's something that happens to everyone, and I think it's part of nature, honestly. Trees have to die to keep the forest alive, right? I can observe things failing within myself, decaying and passing to the next phase. It's all part of the rotation of our physiology. I'd say that if my life were one long college career, I'd be majoring in Fun, with an emphasis in Spontaneous Dance and Joy. But...college is gnarly, and sometimes you gotta take a personal day. Whoa, wait a minute...do I even need to use this as a metaphor? I'm starting to think not. ; )

Brunch is for the Birds

You can't always get what you want, right? Unless you're a girl. Because girls just wanna have fun. This photo was taken in New York in a restaurant-by-day, dance club-by-night. Take a look at what I found. I told them that I had a blog and wanted their picture to post, which wasn't true at the time, I just wanted a picture of them because they looked pretty amazing. But check it out, I ended up telling the truth on accident! Cool. So. Let's take a peep, what do we have here? The book worm, the cutie pie, the comedian, and the bitch. Looks like a pretty dead-on representation of the main seasons of girls. In class today we took a few hours to look at gender differences in the brain, the hippocampus' size difference, the fluctuation of amygdala use, etc. and it suddenly occurred to me that I really enjoy being a girl. We may have smaller brains than men, but we have more gray matter than them. Whatever that means. There are stereotypes to women, words like "catty, sultry, loving, creative, emotional, exclusive, loud, etc" and I'm 100% okay with being a stereotype, mostly because when it comes to real people, there is quite a lot of fine print to add. I guess you could see stereotyping as a sort of rounding up from the sum of a lifestyle. Hey, I'm a girl. I'm stoked! I've got friends to share clothes with, and I have a blast dancing in my room with the other ladies in the hall. I also enjoy a weekend brunch. That's a big one. I don't think guys use that word, but I see them at brunch every Sunday. I think they generalize it by the time of day. Let's get...lunch. With eggs and roasted potatoes. At noon. That works. But me? I get brunch. I like wearing dresses a lot, which is something I just discovered within the last 3 years. But it's really nice having the open option to wear basically whatever. It's funny, but I consider androgyny to be a very important part of embracing femininity. Feminism has really gone downhill since the suffragettes went on their walk through town. Remember them? Remember their shoes? Yeah, they wore heels. I don't really understand the logic behind new feminism through the expression of baggy clothes, boyish haircuts and a ban on cosmetics. I don't see any of these things as personal disgraces if someone chooses them as a part of their life, but to clump it together and call if "feminism" is a bit illogical. Being a powerful woman to me is being able to balance your level of sensuality and personality. Just because you don't want to be a floosey in the eyes of the general public doesn't mean you have to be a man. I love a pair of trousers just as much as the next Diane Keaton, but to call them the sign of a woman untouched by the affects of "Man," well, that's just silly. *smile* You know?

Calling America

Do I see a future of an honest government? Green grass and happy cows? Kids with a good grip on education? I think we're getting closer, and that's the important part. Even if it's just a step, it's one taken. There's gonna be a black family in the white house. If you watched Fox News at all on the night of November 4th, this seemed to be all they could mention. Oh, excuse me, colored family. What's with all the talk, old dudes? Why aren't you celebrating? No sparkling cider or fun size snickers in your office today? Ohhh....yeeeah, McCain didn't win. Thank goodness all the talkers finally got together and DID. After living in Berkeley for a while, I'd kinda lost faith in the faithful. It takes more than ideas and bitching your heart out to get things to happen, so to everyone that voted and took initiative, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I mean it, thank you. Four years from now, it'll be 2012. Things are about to get really really wild. Let's not take 5 and walk away from our posts just because we've got a good looking and seemingly good doing president. It's not his job to be everyone, but to inspire and direct. This should, more than anything, be our cue to take positions and begin our lives as new Americans. Oh wow, what's that amazing smell? Satyuga? Can't wait until it's ready to take outa the oven!

In Defense of Fun

This blog is mostly about music. This picture was taken in Las Vegas during a show. Her boyfriend is the one on the right, clearly not having fun, and she had been sitting silently with him for an hour until she finally got up and gave him a lap dance. He pushed her off, and instead of starting a fight, making a scene, or getting embarrassed, she just found her own space, and used it wisely. The mystery of human shame over fun is one of the many I will never understand. Since I was in elementary school, I've been listening to whatever makes me feel good, watching movies that inspire me to be a better me, and reading books and magazines that whisper constant little jokes, the sarcastic, obvious, corny, hilarious, and real. My first album was by Tina Turner. From then on, it was nothing but good news. When I say "a better me", what I mean is not a person who goes to bed early, finishes her homework, reads nothing but autobiographies and classic novels, and expands her vocabulary to things like fine cutlery or statistics of various causes of child idiocy. No. It's not like that. Some of these things are parts of my life, and I'm perfectly happy to read or get a good nights rest, but the part that I'm very VERY okay with is the Care Bear Share rainbow blast that has potential to knock people out of their chair and onto the dance floor. I believe in the power of rock 'n roll, pop music, good jokes, and the beauty that is the movement inspired by all three. That is, rocking out. There are friends I have who don't understand how I could possibly go see High School Musical 3, or have so much fun watching Hairspray. It's true that I'm a bit closet-y about my harboured love of musicals, but I a love a good movie, and to create a good one with song and dance is a real challenge. Dreamgirls? Bad. Across the Universe? Sorry, but...bad. Both of these movies lacked something very important, and that was the combination of decent plot with decent noise. If you're going to make a catchy pop song, there are three essentials: story! beat! And deadly hooks! Movies are similar, they require three essentials as well: story! pace! And good twists! Thinking about it, combining these two is difficult. It doesn't matter if it's a G movie or a NC-17, if it can make these things fit together and still keep it's form by the end, then they've done well. There is also the stuff that I could just never say no to. Do you know I've met people that claim to hate the Beatles? This is the worst way to try and become different from the crowd, because it's not very honest. If someone did hate the Beatles, it's probably because they have an ex that listened to a lot of them. Bands and artists like Prince, The Knack, The Pippettes, The Shangri-Las, Electric Light Orchestra, Journey, the Gin Blossoms, Vampire Weekend, Billy Joel, The Tough Alliance, Missy Elliot, The Smiths, or Teenage Fanclub, these have sides, and specific moods. People can like them or not. When I hear these bands, there if a direct instruction to sing along and move my feet, but this is my personal translation. Some just don't go for it...I just hope it's for good reasons, is all. Shame in good times is killing humanity. I say that with all the seriousness I can find in my mellowyellow self. I've made mistakes. I have. I've listened to music in the past that did nothing for me in an attempt to divorce myself from who I am. I love my old friends, the Jack Kerouacs and the Jim Beams, but these things bring no noise, bring no funk. There were a lot of inner voices at play during this time. The little adult said, "Baby One More Time is rotting your brain." The little angst-ridden hippie punk said "don't give in to the man, dude." The ugly poet in my heart told me, "stop being selfish, what's all this dancing doing for the world." And then there was me, the real one. I was in constant question but went along with my alternates thinking they could be right. I've since said bye to them. "some call it vain, others say vanity comes from the heart and not the head. And it may be insane but what is insanity if not a cry for the truth to be truthfully told..?" - Neil Diamond

I go to school at Hogwarts.

This is Gabriel, one of the better friends to have. By the way, I'm not really at Hogwarts. After all, this is Iowa, not England! However, I do think it's probably the closest thing. I mean we ARE getting the finest education in things like witchcraft and wizardry, at least by the standards of many small minded folks out there. We meditate twice a day, we eat vegetarian, organic, local'er-than-local food, we listen to pretty music in class that enhances our brain power, we go to yoga class with school mates, friends, and local business owners, we party just enough to keep the flavor, and we all treat each other fairly well, not because we're being threatened or paid to, but because we want to. Most everyone here is too interesting, amazing, or friendly to be lame towards, so it would be a big ol' waste of energy anyway. I'm doing the one thing I've avoided for years and years, and that thing is college. Decidedly in it to win it, getting my major in Sustainable Living, writing this from a dorm room...though, it's probably not what you're imagining as a standard dorm. This big room is just for one single me and my ipod. I can listen to Teenage Fanclub pretty loud because the walls are made of massive brick, and nobody else is here to tell me to turn it down so they can study. A bed, two desks, huge closet, bookshelves, and a just-fine view from my window, all to enjoy by my not-so-lonesome. There's a huge tree outside turning deep shades of golden orange, and around 5:30 the sun does the prettiest dance all over the leaves. I'm in a class called Physiology is Consciousness, and I'm learning how the brain functions. What class are you in?

Sympathy For the Devil

When I watch movies, 99% of the time I usually end up siding with the "bad guy." It's so funny how it always works out that the savior or hero is, at least in my mind, kind of an asshole most of the time. Of course this isn't always the case, but it's become so casually routine that I basically don't expect any good or bad anymore. The Batman stories and the villains involved actually made me question my morals as a very young girl, so much in fact that I've dubbed this chronic mental state as the Mr. Freeze Syndrome. He's the perfect image of a loving, devoted human being who is suddenly set on the wrong course through actions out of his power. All he ever wanted to do was save his wife. It just so happens that in order to accomplish this, he has to steal diamonds to feed the machine keeping her alive. Tough break, right? There isn't really an easy way out of this dilemma. Walking up to the authorities and calmly explaining the situation probably wouldn't get you anywhere when you need a down payment for the entire stock of Tiffany's on a weekly basis, so he breaks the law, over and over and over. There is a point when you have to really analyze a situation and say "all right man, looks like your wife isn't coming back," which is hard but then again, that's life. The only difference between villains and the rest of us is that they refuse to accept that life will simply go on. They don't give up, and sometimes it's not the best idea to keep pushing luck like that, so they get themselves into trouble. Isn't there a part in you that gets a little bummed when the bad guy is defeated (generally speaking, this is usually a more p.c. word for "murdered", which is another word for "justice")? Even Elmer Fudd started crying every time he thought he'd succeeded in the demise of Bugs Bunny. Heroes are not pure beings, should they be throwing stones? In the end everyone is just learning about who they are and how to do the right thing in order to get by. If this means helping the world because there is hope, or caring less because people suck, it's all a matter of perspective. Good thing there's usually enough balance to back the other up.

Hold On to Your Friends

Today I starting thinking about the New York Dolls, mostly brought upon by the desire to see an interview with Morrissey that I hadn't seen before. So before I knew it, I was at the video store and was shocked that they actually had a copy of their documentary. I forgot how much I like their music, and also hadn't realized that David Johansen was in Scrooged! He's a pretty scary looking guy, fit for the part even when he was young. If you've seen this documentary, I think you'd either love it or leave it. My reaction was very emotional. Faith is such an important thing for people, and to see it develop in someone who may otherwise seem unlikely, well it's all the more beautiful. Like when your friend who's always the last to leave the party confides in you that they might be ready to calm down and start a family. It's not a bad thing to be a part of. But back to the movie, New York Doll, it drags you just far enough to feel a relationship with Arthur Kane, only to leave you alone in the end. When you think about it, the suggestion really completed the message of the film. Morrissey, in semi-confidence, tells us that Arthur was not a happy man. This makes me want to understand him even more, and then to find that he's since passed only made it more powerful. He wanted to be a good Christian, and somewhere in my soul I believe that his faith kept him alive and well until the few weeks after the Dolls' reunion, when he was diagnosed and, two hours later, died of leukemia. Morrissey calls the band cursed. Every time something positive happens for them, something tragic then follows, almost routinely. However, I don't understand this in the same way. To me it seems that it would have been truly tragic if he died before indulging on the stage one last time, but he was...can I say, "allowed" the chance, from what power, who knows. God, perhaps. Fate, maybe. Coincidence, possible. But to us it doesn't matter, it was his life, and to him, it was completely personal. I'm grateful for what Arthur 'Killer' Kane represented, and I'm very happy to know that he will be remembered for what he truly was.

If I could bring you to my hood

Have you ever seen someone dance so hard that their hands combusted into a bloody mess? There are a variety of responses one could have to witnessing something like this. It's a symbol of violent, passionate severe love, and I felt it too, because it couldn't help but spread through the crowd. The 24-odd people who stood around the venue got more than they asked for. I met one person there who had heard of The Tough Alliance, everyone else seemed to be there more or less for beer and a place to be on a Saturday night. Once the music started, the crowd was swept away forever. The tornado effect. Once they were done, most everyone left, a few girls with long hair and tall drinks danced together on the sticky floor, and the rest stood by the bar to get their last sips in. I stood there too, wondering how I was going to get home (which was 6 hours away), and got my phone out to call a cab to get to the greyhound station. Before I could get my call in, I was distracted by a couple of drunk "dudes" slapping the back of Eric Berglund, yelling things like "holy fucking shit, man!" and "keep it up dude, that was fucking insane!" I didn't know what to do, and I really didn't expect to feel the gut-dropping sensation of being star-strucked. I mean, there were about 8 people there, and I was nervous all the sudden. He looked over at me and I focused all my attention on the floor. When I looked up he said in his scratchy english, "people say things...I do not know..." and scratched his neck. "Are you okay?" I asked, indicating to his bloody hands. "Why would I not be?" he said. More directly, I pointed. Looking down at them he said, "Oh! I suppose not...how the fuck...?" Henning Furst made himself known which I figured was their cue to take off. I didn't have much time to think, so I grabbed Eric, made some noise about how I felt about everything in the moment, and got outa there fast. Little did I know that was only the beginning of my adventure. I got home the next day, though it felt like much longer. I was almost put in a similar place that Eric must have been in while his hands went on smashing themselves without his knowing.

Beaches and places to mosey.

Anyone who says they "hate LA" is selling something I'm not about to buy. I believe that most of these individuals have personal problems with the place because they haven't spent enough time in it, or have overbooked their stay. There are also those who haven't actually been there, but insist that "driving through it" counts. It doesn't. If you did not visit a beach, have a decent meal, or say the word "sunset" during your visit, then you weren't actually there and haven't given it a fair trial. In fact, I'd say that the city of Los Angeles wins because you were absent from the hearing. There is a magic in LA that creates a sense of a hyper-world, America on pills, and surprise excitement, like oxygen being pumped through casinos. It's just there. The dark side is just as important as the good stuff, because it's the thing that reminds us when it's time to either slow down or leave the building. It's Vegas meets New York. You just gotta take it for what it is. And next time you go, take your favorite outfit, THEN tell me you didn't have a good time. See, now you want to go. Ha.

Title Track

Welcome, this is it. When I'm not writing, sleeping, drinking, or watching a movie, this is where I come to think. These boys are some yungguns I met on the bus in Los Angeles, on my way back from the beach one beautiful evening. You know how it can be in LA. Do you see that? Dude is totally playing N64 from around kids neck. The little one was probably no older than 13, and I felt intimidated by how relaxed and comfortable they were, and it made me think about the concept of "person" as a definition. Then figured that it probably is just whatever you make of yourself depending on your circumstances and upbringing. These guys were too cool for a Webster. I encourage all of you to say NO to dictionary specifications while describing or creating yourself. And take the bus every now and then, you can meet some awesome people.