If you missed the interview, you can hear it streaming on The Outside Lane’s blog talk radio page.
Thank you, again, to the lovely Amy Arden for hosting.
Author: the outside lane
Happy. That about covers it.
Art Appreciation
I don’t really worry about whether or not people like me. A long time ago, I learned that no one is everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s all right. I’ve said before that I think I have a strong personality, and I realize not everyone is going to want to be sitting in the booth with me. That’s okay. I respect that because I don’t want to sit in the booth with everyone either.
Many years ago I hit upon the idea that personalities and people were like art in a museum. I could appreciate the effort it took to bring them to their current installation, and I could (and should) respect them for what they were, but I didn’t have to want them hanging in my living room. My liking or disliking the art does not make it any less worthy of installation–it only affects where I give it space in my own life. The reciprocal applies. I wouldn’t match everyone’s decor, so I can’t expect every patron of the arts to want me as the focal point of their great room. If you don’t like me, that doesn’t make me any less worthy of someone else’s love–it only affects where you give me space in your life.
All that said, while I have very little trouble with the idea that someone might find my personality a bad fit for their world, I am horrified to think that anyone might find me annoying, ill-mannered, offensive, rude, or cruel. Those aren’t personality issues. Those are character flaws.
I do actually lose sleep at night when I think I have hurt someone, been rude to someone, or been offensive. Even in situations where I know I am in the right, I can’t stand thinking I’ve behaved badly. I want to be judicious in anger, and gracious in pain. I always have the thought in the back of my head, “One day, it might be you on the flip side of this coin. How hard do you want to have to beg for mercy?”
So, I am paranoid about being accidentally offensive. Even the slightest change in the tone of a conversation sends me scanning everything I’ve said or done, trying to figure what of my puppy-like idiocy might have caused the change. I come up with some doozies, too.
I find that really amusing about me. I don’t mind if you don’t like me, but I am gutted if I think I’ve done something wicked to deserve your dislike.
Blogging::Cheap Therapy
Album Review: All You Need Is Now
I thought about kicking it old school and writing as serious a review as I would have when I was getting paid to listen to music I got for free, but I am too lazy to do it just now, and I will forget later. I’ll just give you the rundown as I hear it.
Much has been made of All You Need Is Now being Duran Duran’s comeback album. Quite honestly, I didn’t think the album could live up to the hype. Mark Ronson. Kelis. Ana Matronic. It sounded like it was going to be overkill to me. After the disappointingly average (thought not bad at all) collaboration with Timbaland, I was hoping the Durans would scrap producers altogether and just let John Taylor play the fooking bass. And, after hearing a couple of leaked tracks, I was less than underwhelmed. But…
Once the album dropped on iTunes, I found myself grooving along to several of the tracks on first listen. Without even a second go, I had a couple of them stuck in pleasant head-loops. I started to get excited. I hadn’t felt this way about their music in, well, decades. I liked it well enough to go see them live, something I hadn’t done in 22 years, and then I watched their live stream, David Lynch produced concert from The Mayan. And I loved every second of it.
Today, I went out and bought the Deluxe Edition CD for the extra tracks. I didn’t want to stop my car! I’ve been listening to this on my computer, and there was a huge difference in sound in my car. I was excited. I was elated. I was fourteen again. The Man Who Stole a Leopard came on, and it was the same feeling I used to get in my chest when I would listen to The Chauffer or Secret Oktober.
Look, I am an old school, diehard Duran Duran fan. I will argue the merits of their music against any hall of famers, any day. With the exception of the execrable Pop Trash, I have found something to enjoy on every album. My favorites of theirs are from the very lean years, Big Thing and Liberty, with their first album and the Wedding Album tying for third. So, you see, it isn’t like I’m someone who loved Rio and hasn’t looked back since Andy left the band. I haven’t been wondering where Duran Duran has been all these years. I know exactly where they’ve been, and I’ve been right there to listen, hoping to love what I heard.
This album…this…this is the album I’ve been waiting for all this time. This is the album that makes me feel something when I listen to it, and there are precious few of those: Molly’s Yes (Wonderland), Fiona Apple (When the Pawn), Arcadia (So Red the Rose), Erasure (The Innocents), Loreena Mckennit (Book of Secrets…!!!!), Duran Duran (The Wedding Album). This is the album I will be listening to for a long, long time.
Yeah, they were quite right. All I needed was now.
Houston’s Powder Room Earns 2.5 Puffs
Years ago, I started taking pictures of restrooms. Why? Because I was in them so often. Having grown up with the extreme issues I did, I have become something of a toilet expert. I thought it might be a fun little photography niche, but who wants to see pictures of restrooms? No one.
Too bad.
I have decided to start doing Restaurant Restroom Reviews. We all use them, and it’s good to know where the nice ones are. There is nothing more disappointing than going to a 4 or 5 star restaurant and finding a substandard, or worse, plain old powder room.
My criteria will be the following:
- Cleanliness, which should go without saying
- Aesthetics, meaning, is it fancy? is it run down? does it look like the toilet in the rectory?
- Lighting–really, you need good lighting if that’s where you expect us to reapply our lipgloss.
- Ammenities: How is the soap? The toilet tissue? The paper towels?
Restrooms making the grade will receive 4 Powder Puffs and so on.
I’m not sure how often I’ll be doing these because it is very difficult to get pictures of a restroom. I have to have the place all to myself for that, and you never know when someone is about to walk in!
I did manage to get a couple of shots of the ladies room at Houston’s, one of the nicer restaurants in my part of town. Houston’s is an upscale place serving American fare, and has some of the best service I’ve ever encountered. The one near me is all glossy wood and soft leather seats, invoking the feeling of a dynastic ranch estate, so I was expecting to find a Reata styled restroom.
Imagine my surprise to walk into black tile and Barbie. I was taken a little aback. The tile and the picture frame being the first things to catch my eye, I thought I had stepped into Sonny Crockett’s bathroom and expected that Barbie print to be a Nagel or Ty Wilson. But no, Barbie.
When it registered, I was all, “Hey, girl! What are you doing hanging out with Crockett?” And she was all, “They hung me in a toilet, Lane. I am Barbie Effing Doll, and they have hung me in a toilet.” I nodded sympathetically, then turned into the European styled stalls.
I love those! Most of the bathrooms I visited in Europe were rows of skinny wooden doors with actual handles, which you opened into tiny little spaces, barely just big enough for me and a toilet. But it was me and the toilet and no one else’s feet kicking under a stall door. With issues like mine, absolute privacy is glorious.
The toilet paper was forgettable, so neither good, nor bad. The restroom seemed very clean, which was good. But the decor and lighting were terrible. See the lighting against that mirror? You look cadaverous in that lighting. Don’t even bother trying to touch up your makeup in there. Also, there is an awful glare from the shiny, black tile, so everything looks hazy. Remember Cybill Shepard’s close ups in Moonlighting? That kind of hazy.
Really, it looked like my Granny and some guy in a pastel blazer from 1984 had put their heads together and come up with the decor. Granny supplied the vase of fake flowers, the wood framed mirror, and the Barbie print. Fauxny Crockett did the rest.
All in all, I give it 2.5 powder puffs. It was tidy and clean, and I loved the privacy, but the lighting was horrible, the t.p. was enh, the soap was very drying, and I had to hunt for the paper towels because they were beside the other basin.
Friday, Rebecca Black, and Lyrical Comedy
In part because I can’t stop watching this video for Friday, by Rebecca Black, much as I could not stop watching the honey badger video, in part because it is actually Friday, and also because I was once thirteen, I bring you another nostalgic post.
Back in my day, if a kid wanted to make a music video, she had to be Debbie Gibson. There was no such thing as The Ark Music Factory, and I won’t lie, had there been, I would have saved up my allowance, my babysitting money, and maybe learned to hustle just to gather up the funds to star in my own production. And if I had been offered the song Friday, you can bet your favorite pair of legwarmers I’d have been smacking the honey badger shiz out of those lyrics and imploring you to help me choose a seat in the car, like Celine Dion telling you her heart will go on.
I started writing music pretty early. My father writes music, so it was just a natural part of life that I would write melodies and lyrics. Now, I can’t score for peanuts, but I’ve written some okay tunes that sounded pretty fantastic with a choir behind them. Those came in my 20s, though. The songs I wrote in my tweens and teens? Ha! I fancied myself the wee version of Tammy Wynette and Billie Holiday, so I concentrated my efforts on overwrought Country or Blues songs about my man cheating on me.
I was ten years old when I penned this chorus of a particularly twangalicious ditty:
You been doing Odd Jobs
in her neighborhood.
Odd Jobs
I should’a known that you would
You got tired of me, but I was too blind to see
that you were doing Odd Jobs.
Yeah. It would be seven more years before I got my first proper kiss, but I was writing about my man going up the block to help out the super hot, newly divorced neighbor. I’m not sure what it says about me that even at that age I knew “mowing her lawn” could be a euphamism.
By the time I hit high school, I had decided Country music was for morons, and I was going to write like Morrisey. That’s when I got sent to the counselor’s office because a teacher thought one of my tone poems (later turned lyric) was a suicide note. No. I was just emo before Gerard Way’s parents had met (I just learned his name, by the by.)
As a junior, I wrote this:
Once, I was someone’s everything
And tore it all apart
the words did not mean anything
I’d eaten out my heart
Where once there was “I love you”
now it’s “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye”
The hole in me is howling
To kiss
To touch
To die
Again, yeah. Funnily enough, by high school, I had forgotten euphamism and double entendre or I’d never have written that chorus!
But, I never took my music for a walk, so it never went anywhere. I do have a couple of writing credits on a couple of dusty songs from a kid’s show I did, but outside of that, I had no real interest in pursuing my “art”. What I did have an interest in doing was going to 6 Flags and getting in the recording booth to belt out my version of Gloria Estefan and Kim Carnes songs. And later, when they added the video booth…Oh Em Gee! My little heart was full!
What I’m saying is I can’t knock Rebecca Black or her funny little song. She’s a kiddo who got a chance at fulfilling a fantasy, and it’s working out for her.
And honestly, how can you not love a song that tells you half the days of the week? I can’t get enough of this song. It’s like comedy crack. Much like mine would have been.
The Outside Lane 
