Category Archives: favorite

When I was in high school, one of my favorite albums was Sammy Hagar, Standing Hampton. I made a tape for my car and listened to it at least a 10 times a day when I wasn’t listening to Journey or Styx (please click on the Styx link and look at the band photo. Ooooh. I can’t stop laughing.) or Triumph or some other awesome guitar rock.

I saw Sammy live my senior year, at the Fabulous Forum with rockin’ opening band Night Ranger. Was there ever a better time to be a teenager than the early 80’s?

With all the recent Van Halen whoo-ha in the news I heard Sammy Hagar on the radio and I tried to remember the last time I heard Standing Hampton. It’s probably been 20 years and I’ve been yearning to hear it again. But I don’t want to buy it. I already did. I just don’t know where it is although I’m sure it got the boot during a move. Lugging records around was always such a pain. I want to see if it sounds good now even though I couldn’t have even told you the name of one song on that album. Until last night.

Last night as I shuffled out of my yoga class there was a old but shiny Honda Accord with the windows rolled down cranking “Baby’s on Fire” in the parking lot. Right in front of the yoga studio. Do you love it? I need to get my hands on that album.

Meanwhile, that song brought back another long and deeply repressed memory of going skiing with my lame high school boyfriend (“bf”) and his family. Sometimes memories of my own person lameness startle me. It’s making me shudder to even type this story. You know when you’re out doing something and there’s a group of people who are so stupid and clueless that even years later you’re still talking about it? That was us on this ski trip. I’m probably going to have to turn out the light and sit back with a washcloth on my forehead when I’m finished with this.

I’d never been skiing and bf had been once. His parents got a cabin in Big Bear and I was invited to join them for a ski-tacular weekend. We rented our gear in the Valley somewhere and I got whatever they recommend for beginners. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Since the bf had already been skiing once, he advised that I didn’t need to take a class. I could just learn from him. I had no ski clothes, so I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. No hat. No gloves. I put on my skis in the parking lot and scraped along until someone noticed the stupidest and most clueless person alive and advised that perhaps that wasn’t the greatest idea and I should take the skis off immediately, aim the pointed ends to my chest, then fall on them.

I never did catch on to the idea of getting off the lift so I went straight from the chair to a full frontal face plant. Every single time. I spent the entire day falling down. My jeans were soaked. I was cold. Why do people like this? I wondered. I exaggerate little when I say I hated every single second of it. I did manage a very basic snow plow down the bunny hill and then to stop: face plant. I never did figure out where the enjoyment was.

Back at the cabin, the bf decided to light the fireplace. WHOOSH went the gas. I can’t get this lit. Can you get this lit? How the hell do I get this lit? He sticks his head into the fireplace with a lit match and WHOOSH. The fireplace is lit. So is he. He was not hurt but his eyelashes, eyebrows and top of his head were singed to a stinky crisp. Thus: Baby’s on Fire.

The second day no one skied and his mom and dad were mad because we wasted such a great opportunity for so much fun. Then we sat in traffic getting out of there. Why do people do this again? For our final act of stupidness we didn’t have a ski rack so, I kid you not, we had the windows opened a crack and the skis stuck through perpendicular to the car and sticking out the windows on either side. At one point a police officer followed us and yelled at us over his PA. It wasn’t worth stopping us. He probably hoped natural selection would finish us off.

Last night after I finished my delicious dinner of leftover soup washed down with two glasses of my favorite $6.99 Trader Joes Tempranillo the phone rang and you know the best calls always come around dinner time.

It sounded like a recording except the recording asked me questions so I’m not sure if it was a robot blend or the lady was just so filled with family values that she spoke without inflection.

She identified herself as being from the Dove Foundation which I had never heard of before. Then she started with something about families, kids, and concerned parents and grandparents. I almost cut her off right there because I have no children and was anxious to be excused from the call. But I let her go on because she was talking about how don’t I think that measures for monitoring violence and adult content in entertainment aren’t doing enough? (Note: I’m totally paraphrasing here, especially in favor of my side of the story.)

No, I said.

She went on into a longer speech making statements like, “We’re not about censorship,” and “Sure parents can be doing something in the home but that’s not enough,” and “We all know Hollywood won’t make movies with our family values, don’t you think we should do something about that?”

I behaved poorly because I laughed and said, You’re crazy.

She told me her message was intended for concerned parents and grandparents and thanked me for my input.

I wish I’d had my act more together and could have stated my opinion more intelligently. If people want to get together and promote family entertainment, I have no problem with that. I have a big problem with someone calling my home and telling what to think and feel about a particular subject while making untrue statements and projecting a particular set of values on me. I’d love to write 10 more screens on this except, it’s of limited interest and my writing time for today has long expired.

I think to myself, there has got to be something to write about besides complaining about the weather, the traffic or my woes with hair care products. But I have nothing so I avoid this place.

Today I’m going to complain that both FoodDay (Oregonian) AND Dining Out (NYT) sucked mighty cheese this week. The Food section is the best part of the papers. Whenever I’m freaking out about the piles of newspaper in the dining room (generous word for what is essentially a nook between the kitchen and living room) I realize that if we got rid of the papers, I would not have my regular food section fix.

The Oregonian’s two main articles this week were on (1) cooking with kids (the kids help you cook, you don’t cook the kids) and (2) throwing together a quick meal when you happen to bump into your neighbor at the mailbox and begin visiting and decide to have them over to dinner. (Like that would ever happen to me.)

They sell the whole kids in the kitchen thing as an alternative to watching TV and go on about how the kid can learn math, science and hand-eye coordination. Who wants someone without hand-eye coordination in the kitchen? And they have helpful hints like giving the kids age-appropriate tasks. Really? You mean I shouldn’t hand Luis the electric knife and tell him to go to town on the roast chicken? Or toss Josa a blow torch and instruct her to finish off the Crème brûlée?

The “drop by” dinner article is equally educational. Either you can throw together a dinner from what you have on hand or you can’t. A recipe like smoked oyster spread is not going to save you (or really make much of a meal). The spread is made with: cream cheese, mayo, garlic, soy sauce, fresh parsley and a can of smoked oysters. There are only 2 ingredients on that list that I have on hand: garlic and soy sauce. That’s not going to get me far. Another recipe calls for a pound of bacon, another anchovy fillets. Raise your hand if these are the kinds of items you always have on hand to whip up a quick dinner for company.

Dining Out was equally worthless this week. The Minimalist, which I cut out almost every single week, was talking about some sort of tuna burger. Gross. I hate tuna. I hate how it smells. I hate how it tastes. My spouse has to turn on every fan in the house and eat quickly by the window if he wants tuna — even if I’m not around.

But the item that really had my head spinning was the article about a personal chef for babies. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently babies are turning their noses up at those jarred baby foods and their mothers are too busy with their glamorous lives to fix something themselves, so they can get vacuum-packed and/or frozen baby foods from a personal chef. A black and white photo that accompanies the article, shows frozen lumps and tells us that designer baby food includes spices like coriander. yah-fuking-hoo Doesn’t this make you fear for the future of America? At least a little bit?

Does anyone else remember reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells in 7th grade? It’s been awhile so my details may be a bit off but as I recall in the future world there was a race of fragile, pampered worthless “people” who floated around doing nothing and another race of big tough “people” who had to do all the work and were pissed off. Doesn’t this seem like it could be happening?

Shortly after you cross the Interstate Bridge there is a large landscaped area that includes an outline of the state of Washington in plants. It also includes the letters ALKI in flowers.

I drive by this almost every day and for the life of me couldn’t think of what ALKI could stand for.

This morning Bob and I drove past it together and I said, “What’s ALKI?”

Bob: It’s a Ferry. There’s going to be a big celebration this year.

Me, completely agog: They’re having a celebration for a Fairy?

Bob: Yeah! A big one.

Me, still completely agog, my pea brain wheels spinning like mad trying to figure out why the state would be celebrating a big Fairy and why I’d never heard about it before. I actually said outloud: Have I just fallen into a parallel universe or are we talking about the state celebrating a Fairy?

Bob, perplexed why I’m having such a hard time with this: Yeah, it’s a really big deal. It’s like 50 years old.

Me, still agog: And we’re talking about a little creature like Tinkerbell with wings?

Bob: A Ferry Boat.

—

This is absolutely a true conversation. I don’t know where my head was at. I was completely sober, not hungover, although I have a lingering chest cough and hadn’t had breakfast yet.

I did a bit of research and turns out ALKI is the Washington State Motto and it roughly translates to “by and by” in the Chinook Indian language. I didn’t see anything about a Washington Ferry Vessel called ALKI but I only investigated for about 3 minutes because I’m not in the mood for a major online project right now.

I also found reference to an Alki Transportation company, an Alki Point and an Alki beach.

I found nothing about Alki the Fairy.

Remember on Sesame Street they had this segment (probably still, sadly I’ve had no reason to watch Sesame Street since the early seventies, so I can only guess) that went “one of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn’t belong” and then they’d show 3 blue socks and a red sock. Or for a harder one: an apple, an orange, grapes and a German Shepard.

Doesn’t the SAT have questions like that, too? Which one of these things doesn’t go in the sequence: equilateral, obtuse, isosceles, scalene or Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Rhine?

“What doesn’t belong” is barely related to my point today, which is that people will say absolutely anything on the radio.

One of my stations does a bit during my drive home where a person will call in with an issue, say: toilet seat up or down? Then other people call in with their stories of dealing with the same issue.

Yesterday, a woman called who had hooked up with this guy who had come to her house and cleaned her carpet (In this context, not a euphemism. He actually shampooed the carpet.) but he was 10 years younger and she wanted to know what experiences women had with dating younger men. Or younger men dating older women.

So this woman phones in and starts to tell about how when she was 21, her dad, then 48 was dating a 19 year old. This is a red sock. It has nothing to do with anything.

Other radio caller goofballs: people who call in with long drawn out stories with all their personal business and lying brother-in-law and klepto Aunt who ran off with Grandma’s china and their bladder surgery complications and the tail they have growing out of the base of their spine. And callers that get all excited telling a long, detailed story that goes nowhere and has zero payoff whatsoever.

Back to the lady with her carpet cleaner – when the radio people played back the listener comments, one guy said, “If he’s a good kisser and she doesn’t outclass him, I think she should give him a chance.” The woman said that was him. He’d heard the show and called in. I think she should give him a chance, too.