Author: the outside lane

Excellent message to this video, and it doesn’t hurt that you get to look at Daniel Craig and listen to Judi Dench. It’s like when you get peanut butter on your chocolate!

I don’t know if you read Nile Rodgers’ blog, but it is certainly worth a looksee. I love Nile. Lovelovelove. Le Freak, by Chic is one of the first songs I can remember really grooving to and getting. I mean, I understood that rhythm. That song, and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, are inextricably tied to summer for me, and anytime I hear them, I am immediately transported poolside, hearing them on a transistor radio. I also always wanted to do my hair like his. As I discovered, I would never be able to accomplish his, or my other hairstyle icon, Cher’s, locks. Poor little blonde girl.

Nile has also produced some of my favorite songs. I can almost tell you when he has touched it. Nile brings music to life. There is real joy when he finishes with a track.

Listen, I like pop music. I like disco. I love funk. You know why? The world is hard enough already. I want to be able to dance while I’m living it. I really don’t care how stupid, or unoriginal it is. If it makes my shoulders happy, and I can dance to it, I’m on board.

How can you not be happy when you hear this? You hear that bass? How can you not dance to this?

I owe Nile Rodgers a debt of gratitude for all the joy his music has brought into my life. I owe a lot of musicians.

Maybe I’ll start posting about songs I find meaningful. That could be fun.

That movie messed me up. A home invasion, rape, and murder of wife and child in the first 90 seconds. Messed me up. I had to get out of bed because I was lying there in grim imagination.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned being at home when my house was broken into by three men. I was quite fortunate. I was able to call the police, and lock myself into a back bedroom, and the one man who had vocalized a desire to take care of me turned and ran when his minions took off. I’ve made it into a funny story because I’m a whistler in the dark, but it was pretty bad.

I think about Adam Walsh a lot. I was ten when he was kidnapped and murdered, and it made a big impact on my mother. It made a big impact on how we did things after that news story broke. Adam’s story has made a big impact on the way I parent.

I’ve had so many weird-bad things happen to me that I hope I’ve taken up all the statistics for my family. There was the molest-y babysitter, the guy who followed a friend and me for two blocks before pulling his car into a driveway to block our path and jumped out masturbating, the jr. high teacher who took a very physical interest in me and always wanted me to ride in his car with him instead of on the bus with the other kids, where he would pet my thigh–thank God he never tried more, the time a relative chased another friend and me in his car, driving up on a curb after us–after another little girl had pointed me out for him while I was trying to walk home (he hadn’t seen me in many years, and wasn’t sure which one I was–thanks, other little girl, you nearly got me killed that day.) There was the carpool driver who threw two other students and me out of the car in a very bad part of town, and the guy who tried to chase us down and force us into his car–honestly, that’s one of the most terrifying things that has ever happened to me, and includes me running almost under an 18-wheeler trying to get away from the man. There was the very ugly domestic violence, the home invasion, the professor who lured me in for an after-hours session and then tried to pounce, and the date rape, and really, don’t you think that’s enough? I think that is enough. I think I’ve done the violent crime–oh wait, I forgot the attempted mugging and the sexual assault at work. Yeah, I think I’ve taken up plenty of cosmic unpleasantness. Enough to cover my family for generations.

But what all that has taught me is that bad things happen to decent people all the damned time. One minute, you’re walking home from school, the next, you’re running down alleys crying and yelling. It happens. Doesn’t matter how much of your own business you are minding.

Jennifer Day was a little girl I met the summer before my freshman year in high school. We were at two orientations together and hit if off like gangbusters. She was a pretty, sweet, outgoing girl, and I was really looking forward to us being friends. She was also abducted and murdered not long after I met her. I’ve thought about her frequently. I’ve thought about her parents.

My mother would have given anything to keep me from having to deal with the situations I faced. Fortunately, my situations never turned dire and she had taught me to think and reason. Keeping a cool head kept me from worse harm. I’m working on that with this little guy, who woke up while I was typing and is now sleeping on my legs, snoring like a buzzsaw.

John and Reve Walsh are heroes for taking Adam’s murder and turning it into a platform for saving children, and catching criminals. I am grateful for them, and people like them, who take the worst trauma and turn it into something to help others. No vigilante justice. No whining. Just work to save other people from facing the same.

My grim imaginings had taken me to a courtroom and I was feeling every bit of the truth that no earthly justice can bring back what is lost. No earthly justice can fix a sociopath’s brain and make him/her regret what they have done. All justice can do is remove an obstacle to another child’s safety.

All we can do is keep a close eye on our kids, and watch out for other people’s. And carry a big stick.

We just finished watching Hot Tub Time Machine, which was pretty funny. Slightly misogynistic, but it’s a dude-bro comedy about a hot tub that turns into a time machine, so one must suspend one’s eye-rolls at dude-bro as one does one’s disbelief regarding time travel. I giggled quite a lot. Pretty much anytime Chevy Chase appears, I am guaranteed some sort of laugh.

Now, B has some awful movie on where in the first scene, Gerard Butler’s family is murdered in front of him. Now, Gerard is about to go Charles Bronson all over town.

I do not like movies where children are harmed. Okay, I do not like movies where people are harmed. I am angrily opposed to movies where children are harmed. I didn’t like them before I was a mother, I can’t stand them now. I’m not sure how anyone is entertained by death, especially violent death. Buh.

Perhaps it is having grown up with some violence. I just can’t manage it. I’m a total weenie. I even had to give up certain types of video games because I had such angst when it came to keeping my little characters safe. I was fetal by the time the credits rolled on Braveheart, and only made an exception for watching that due to it being about William Wallace. Given my squeamishness and delicate sensibilities, I avoided The Passion of the Christ. I’d read that story a few times anyway. Remember when Mel Gibson wasn’t crazy?

I don’t mind a movie like Die Hard, or Terminator for some reason. They aren’t shows I would choose, but I can sit through them. Remember when Arnold was an actor? It’s when the violence is graphic, or intense, or prolonged. I’ve never made it through Rocky. I hate boxing! My parents used to watch boxing all the time when I was little. I hate that stuff.

We turned that one off. Now we’re watching Kevin Costner getting it on with Sean Young’s crazy in the back of a limo. Remember when that was shocking? Remember when Kevin Costner was pretty? Sean certainly has some pretty underwear in this movie, but her pancake is awfully white.

You know what’s funny to me? That it is more socially acceptable to watch violence, than it is to watch sex. Me? I don’t want to watch either one, really, but one is quite natural and usually makes consenting participants very happy. The other is something most all of us try to avoid.

You know what movie I used to love? The Presidio. Sean Connery. Oooh. But my favorite movie of all time is Undercover Blues. Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner at their primes, and an always enjoyable Stanley Tucci. I always wanted Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas to get married. They had such great chemistry on screen.