Four years ago today I was capturing on film one of my oldest friends and one of my newest friends legally joining alliances. It was epic. I still get goose bumps whenever I hear their song:
The One I saw you dancing out the ocean Running fast along the sand A spirit born of earth and water Fire flying from your hands
In the instant that you love someone In the second that the hammer hits Reality runs up your spine And the pieces finally fit
And all I ever needed was the one Like freedom fields where wild horses run When stars collide like you and I No shadows block the sun You're all I've ever needed Baby you're the one
-Elton John
Happy Anniversary EM & M! Here's to 4 more lifetimes together.
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay.
–Robert Frost
The news that Estelle Getty passed away after years with Alzheimers dementia made me want to shell out the cash for every Golden Girls DVD ever made. My friends & I LOVE that show, and yesterday I realized how much it still comes up in conversation. Like, in THIS POST I wrote about my last trip to Las Vegas.
I talked to 4 of my friends last night about how bummed out we were to know she's gone, but all the more reason to plan a Golden Girls-themed party. It's still in the discussion stages, but I'll keep you posted on the details. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite Sophia-centric things:
The best Estelle Getty clip of all time (besides the myriad of scenes from GG) is from one of the reincarnations of Password, a game show that Betty White's real-life husband Allen Ludden originally hosted. I love how offended Betty looks when Estelle takes a stab at the answer:
Host: "We have loose, would you like to take a guess?" Estelle Getty: "Is it Betty White?"
I love Valentines Day and I love The Golden Girls, and I plan to e-mail this to all of my friends come February:
The small print underneath Sophia's valentine says, "(Seriously, though; maybe tonight?) (At least consider it.)"
Someone else in my circle won a Halloween costume contest in October (I'm not actually in this photo). His biting wit in the e-mail that came with the photo still cracks me up:
This is the Golden Girls costume that won us 1st place at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival.It is also most likely the reason I am still single.
West Hollywood-style Golden Girls. I'm not any of these people.
I've already written about how my job has involved many pitch meetings for different products, and that I probably pay attention to commercials, slogans, and advertising in general more than the average person does. I think about what goes into a pitch meeting, and how I'm sure some advertising agencies must be amazed when a client goes with (and pays big money for) some half-baked or unintentionally hilarious idea.
The following product slogan fits right into the How did the marketing department get away with that? category. This is the perfect example of a commercial that a roomful of men must have scripted:
Double-click on either 'play' arrow if you have trouble with the video
We started with a simple almond. Added pecans, peanuts and a hint of sweetness. The result? An extraordinary nutsnack.
Facts: -This commercial had Jen & I in hysterics, which confirms that we're 12-year old boys at heart (and if you remember THIS OTHER post, you are not surprised by our reaction to the commercial at all).
-Somehow we've been quoting the commercial incorrectly for the past 48 hours, saying at every opportunity, "...and what we've come up with is an incredible nutsnack". Since "extraordinary" surpasses "incredible", we owe an apology to the True North Nut company for under-appreciating their nutsnack.
-I've already e-mailed the company to see if they'll send me product samples for giveaways. I'll keep you posted.
Thanks Lark, for being as immature as my friends & I are.
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In other, less nut-centric news: After taking myself and my sister out of the running, and numbering everyone in order of their comment on THIS POST, we have a winner of the George Michael concert merch and her name is Swishy.
E-mail me your address, Swish, so I can get your prize in the mail!
My favorite picture I've ever taken of you because it IS so you.
I remember turning 10 and pretty much the only thing I said all day long was Double! Digits!", and today is your big day, K! Ever since you were a toddler I would tell your mom that you guys were twins--though you were obviously shorter--and her response every single time was to say that you look more like your Daddy. I can see the physical resemblance there, so I don't disagree with her, but when I see you I can't help but be taken back to my own childhood, those years your mom & I grew up together in.
Your dad better start shining his shotguns to fend off the boys now!
You have your mom's sass, her spirit, and her spunk. I look at you and think, in the very best way, Here comes trouble! I see all those things in you that I saw in your mom when we met at the age of 11. I love that you send me surprise text messages and I love that when you answer the phone, we chat before you hand it over to your mom. I love that when she & I are talking way past your bedtime, she'll catch you sitting on the steps trying to listen in, or that you'll come downstairs asking for cheese about the time of night you should be in the REM sleep stage.
"Mom, can I have some CHEESE?"
When you're old enough, I'll to tell you & your brother all kinds of stories about your mom & I when we were kids. Until then, you just keep right on being Little Miss Personality because it gives me a reason to love being a photographer, even when the people who pay me to be one drive me mental.
Giggles ensued for hours after I pointed out your nail polish was the color of Pepto-Bismol.
Luckily your mother (and your grandmother, for that matter!) doesn't fall under the category of people who drive me mental because, 1) I only let her pay me in wine; and 2) by the time I'm done "collecting my payment" from her, I'm too tipsy for her to make me crazy. Besides, even if she DID drive me mental, she knows way too much dirt about my past (and present!) for me to ever cause a fuss over it. But she doesn't drive me mental. Really.
My sister & I had seats in the nosebleed section for George Michael's show at the United Center. Normally, nosebleed seats are okay with me because I think ANY seat is a good seat at a live show. Sure, sometimes I'll get carried away and go for the best available, but only when I feel like it would otherwise be a missed opportunity. Like the time we were at an on-site Ticketmaster location picking numbers out of a hat to determine our place in line for tickets to see Lenny Kravitz. I picked #1. As in, FIRST TO HAVE MY CHOICE OF ANY SEAT IN THE HOUSE. That is called luck. We decided that instead of buying the lawn seats, we'd go all in, just for kicks.
That's how we ended up 6 rows from Lenny during the entire show with the exception of the 5 minutes he leaned his sinewy and half-naked body into the waiting arms of the crowd, and my outstretched hand was literally millimeters from his beautifully sculpted and tattooed bicep. I'm actually glad he wasn't closer, because had that been the case, you would now be reading about that one time my lawyer advised against using "What do you expect, I'm only human! Have you SEEN him?" as my defense in court for licking Lenny Kravitz's hot bod.
Oooh, Lenny's hot and probably very tasty bod... I need a moment.
Where was I? Oh yes, nosebleed seats. We were in the car on our way to grab a bite before the concert. I had yet to tell my sister about some e-mails sent to strangers on my lunch break because I didn't know what the outcome would be.
At 5:45 p.m., my phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize, but I knew the area code, and took a deep breath before answering. A decision had been made and some information was exchanged; logistics, passwords, horoscopes, the secret handshake, a limerick.
By the time I hung up three things were evident: 1) I had no control over the fact that I was hearing myself scream about my sizeable balls,2) my sister was VERY confused and wanted to know what was going on, and 3)We could look forward to being a mere 50 feet away from George now that we had insanely great $250 seats in the 4th row of section 122. For FREE.*
I would love to tell you every specific detail on how I got those tickets from someone I don't even know, but then I'd have to kill you. Just kidding, I wouldn't really have to kill you; but it is beside the point I'm trying to make here, which goes beyond "good" seats at concerts. What I'm trying to tell you is this:
Open your mouth and ask for what you want. This goes for run-of-the-mill AND outrageous things. I have lived by that rule since I was 19, and it has worked for me more times than I can count.
Last year, after getting a direct e-mail from the author of a book, thanking me for a post I wrote about my excitement for the release date, I e-mailed back asking him to sign the book for me once it was out. He had plenty of other things do besides give into the whims of a stranger but enjoyed both my enthusiasm and a challenge since he was shuttling between countries and continents at the time. We figured out a plan and he somehow found the time to get to the post office in a city he doesn't even LIVE in on his last day there to pick up the book I'd shipped overnight specifically for the purpose of opening the box in the post office, signing the book, and immediately sending it back to me. It was all quite a thrilling adventure that wasn't without mishaps. You can read (and should!) the whole entertaining story on that HERE. We're still in contact, by the way... and the next time we're in the same country we're totally meeting for a drink.
One more example: Want to know how I have a 4-day workweek with every Friday off? I asked for it. Had they said no, it wouldn't have been a deal-breaker, but I asked anyway and got it.
My sister said something on Wednesday night about me being lucky, but luck is when something falls unexpectedly into your lap, like being first in line to buy Lenny Kravitz tickets. Giving the credit to luck when you've clearly asked for something disregards not only the effort put forth in the initial asking of the question, but does even more of a disservice to the person who decidedly says yes.
So, what are you waiting for? Get some big, figurative balls of your own and start asking for what you want from every facet of this life. Of YOUR life. It's yours to live and there are people out there who will be glad to conspire with you in ways you have yet to imagine. Ask for what you want from the people you know and especially the people you don't. One thing is certain: if you never ask, you'll NEVER get it. When the worst that can happen is that someone says, "no", you should always go for it. Come from a sincere place and ask for what you want. You'll be surprised at how many times people say yes!
Then, whenever possible, send thank-you notes. Being ballsy is something to be celebrated. Being ungrateful is not.
*To be clear, the $250 seats we got were not taken away from a child in the Make-a-Wish program, or anyone else for that matter.
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As for those who are interested in how G.M. was live, I can only say that you better get your tickets while you can. He was incredible. I worried that maybe at this point in his career, he'd phone in the performance. He did no such thing. It was a tremendous show, and ranks among the top 5 favorite live performances of all time, and I've seen lots of live shows. He blew the doors off the joint, and I can only hope his idea of a farewell tour is the same as Cher's and The Rolling Stones'... that it goes on for decades, seemingly without end.
My camera phone seems to have a wide angle lens. We were closer than it appears from this shot. This is precisely when I had my heart attack.
Yes, I know camera phone photo quality can suck, but I can only blame myself for these blurry shots. It's as good as it gets when you're involuntarily jumping and singing and cheering and clapping.
You can't really see that he's standing in the shadows on stage, but the silhouette on screen proves it. So. Much. Awesome!
My desk on Thursday morning. My boss thought I'd like some creative inspiration to carry me through the day. I got the last laugh when I told him where we ended up sitting!
The seating chart my sister worked up to show you both our nosebleed and eventual AMAZING seats. Click image to enlarge and then click HERE to read her post on the night, complete with the set list and youtube videos.
Note: I want you to know it pleased me to NO END that lyrics from one of my favorite 80's songs fit in perfectly with the "Wednesday is called humpday because it's in the middle of the week"; and "Putting the Hump in Humpday refers to someone/something that is totally humpable" theme, and I mean, it fit in SO perfectly that I suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that the entire reason I came up with the Humpday post idea all those months ago was just so that one day I'd be working on the post you're about to read and I'd think, "I was born to come up with the cleverness that is this very title". That's how good it is, and if you know what line comes after the lyrics in the title, you not only appreciate my multi-layered wit, but you could also win a prize*.
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1984 - 11 years old The new girl in town, who moved from Ohio to Tennessee, has her first slumber party. I'm one of the 3 girls she invites and I am thrilled. We spend most of the night in a large spare room in their finished basement, dancing up a sweat in front of a mirrored wall to the new Wham! album. We're trying hard to copy the swingy little dance step that George Michael executes so perfectly in the video for Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. It's a very specific series of moves consisting of clapping, snapping and kicking with a sideways shuffle. The trick to getting it seems to be an avoidance of over-thinking. It should come as no surprise that I have a hard time getting it all synchronized. I mean, I know how to dance, but this is a new way of moving as yet undiscovered by the likes of my 7th-grade self.
We're listening to the cassette, but because MTV played the video so much in the preceding months, by the time "Cuddle up baby, move in tight. We'll go dancing tomorrow night..." is blasting out of the speakers, we're each hugging ourselves and nailing his signature eyeroll while belting out, "it's cold out there but it's warm in bed; they can dance, we'll stay home instead!". The 4 of us followed that up with squealing and laughing and talking about how cool it would be to see Wham! perform live or to be a backup singer on tour or for George to ring the doorbell that very second and play Spin the Bottle with us. It would then be the polite thing for him to stick around long enough to teach us exactly how far into the clapping and snapping that the kicking should start. I know with his assistance I will master the dance.
See George hug himself and dreamily roll his eyes at 2:25. Trust me, it's worth it.
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1988 - 15 years, 11 months & 3 weeks old - The Faith Tour One week before I turned 16, I overheard my mom & one of her friends, Terri, in mid-conversation. They were talking about how Terri committed to taking her daughter somewhere and was already dreading it. I wondered what would make Terri's usual upbeat attitude so gloomy. This is how our conversation went:
Terri: "My daughter talked me into taking her to some concert on Tuesday night."
Me: "What concert?"
Terri: "I don't know, some George guy. He's singing next to a jukebox in his new video."
Me: "George MICHAEL?"
Terri: "Yeah, that's him!"
Me: "I've wanted to see him live since I was 11. Your daughter is so lucky. YOU are so lucky. I. AM. SO. JEALOUS."
Terri: "My only hope is that he sounds as good as he looks in that leather jacket and tight jeans, but I highly doubt it."
Me: "..." {jaw on floor}
One week later, on my 16th birthday, Terri surprises me with a bouquet of flowers and a t-shirt she bought for me at the concert. I don't remember what kind of flowers she gave me but I remember the t-shirt because it had a screen-printed image of George wearing the leather jacket and tight jeans from the Faith video, and it was shot from behind.
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Saturday, October 19, 1991 - 18 years old - The Cover to Cover Tour A friend of mine calls to offer me an extra ticket to the next night's Chicago show, but I am too busy in my dorm room making out with my boyfriend to answer the phone. She doesn't leave a message, and I don't get the extra ticket. I did, however, end up with a real nice hickey. My boyfriend pays dearly for both the hickey AND the missed phone call, but not monetarily.
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1998 - 25 years old The 2-disc set, Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael is released. I buy it immediately and tell my sister, "The next time he tours, WE ARE SO THERE."
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July 9, 2008 (TONIGHT!) - 34 years old - The 25 Live Tour A few months back, my sister surprised me with tickets to tonight's show (thanks, Missy!) and WE ARE SO THERE. Apologies in advance** to the people sitting behind us, whoever you are, because we probably won't be sitting down much. I can't wait. I'll probably have one of those moments when my eyes get all watery because I'll be thinking, "DAMN, IT'S GOOD TO BE ALIVE!" and then I'll cheer so loud that my voice cracks.
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If you've read this blog long enough, you know that my taste in music runs the gamut, but there are certain artists whose entire music catalogs are embedded into my life; and George Michael is one of them. Say what you will about his seemingly shallow initial pop hits and his personal scandals, but the man is talented. Some people don't realize that he's more than the lyrics, "Guilty feet have got no rhythm". I couldn't say it any better than Steve Dollar did in the last paragraph of his "Top Live Show" column in this week's Time Out Chicago:
Gossip aside: Damn, he had some hits. And, Madonna excluded, there’s no better representative of the ’80s zeitgeist. The tabloid ink has overshadowed an artist who wrote, produced, arranged and played the bulk of his pop perfection. The current—and, according to Michael, last—arena tour is all about those classic Number 1s. No doubt, an older and wiser Michael will bring more than nostalgia to the footlights.
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By the way, I'm still the best of friends with the Ohio-girl-who-moved-to-Tennessee. Just the other day, I made a promise to her that even though she wouldn't be with me during his show, my clapping-snapping-kicking self will prove our 1988 marathon dance session in her basement was totally worth it.
*There's a contest that goes along with this month's Humpday post! If you figure out: 1) which song the post title refers to, and 2) what the next line in the song is; leave them in the comments. I will number all the correct answers and put the range into the random number generator. You will of course need to check back to see if you won or not. The winner will get something small I buy from the totally overpriced merchandise table at tonight's concert, unless there is nothing I can justify spending money on. If that's the case, I'll find something equally awesome from somewhere else to send you, and I promise to get the winner their prize within 2 weeks of being notified. It took me forever to get prizes mailed last time.
**Judging by #6 on this list, I may also owe an apology to 5of9er for what I can only preemptively assume is, in his opinion, a disappointing choice (correct me if I'm wrong!) for July's Hump of the Month. Sorry, 9er! To ease your pain, here are links to NPR podcasts celebrating the 20th anniversary of SUB POP Records: World Cafe (available now) and Sound Opinions #137 (available on Saturday). Yay for SUB POP!
I'm pretty sure "Drank Too Much Wine" might be the best news caption ever. I am going to make shirts for a few of my friends with that exact same sentiment on it. Okay, I'll probably make one for myself, too, but only because I'm a good friend and don't want them to feel bad.
Click HERE to watch the news report, and hear Cindy's Susan's explanation. My favorite part is the kooky radio DJ, who apparently thinks that The Bradys are a real family and that Susan Olsen is still 6 years old. He's absolutely incredulous that Cindy Brady (Cindy! Brady!) could be hungover. With the shiftiest eyes since Felix the Cat, he demands to know, "What happened? I mean seriously Susan, what happened?"
I know some of you will need one of those t-shirts tomorrow. Better put your orders in with me now, so you won't have to spend all that time explaining yourself.
Back when I had permed hair and used to drive him around. Oh, how times have changed.
This little guy just got his driver's license. You read that right. No, he's not the tiniest motorist in the country... the photo is dated August 5, 1993. He's 16 now, and I'm older than that. My sister took this photo in their driveway during one of the rare weekends I took time out of my party schedule college studies and went home for a visit. The actual image you see is a direct scan from the first print I made in my color photography class, which I was only able to take after 4 semesters of various black & white pre-requisite photography courses.
This was long ago, in the early 90's; a time when hair perms, not digital cameras, were all the rage. Back when we used a thing called film and chemicals to process what became the negatives; which led to shining a big, expensive light through the negatives onto a substance called photo paper for a specifically-determined amount of time, after which we used rubber-tipped wooden tongs to dip and remove the photo paper in several other chemicals with great timing and precision, all while holding our breath until our efforts turned into what was known as an acceptable developed print. Did I mention this all had to happen by hand and in total darkness, with the exception of the safelight's amber glow? Man, those were the days.
I knew I had to find this photo of my newly old-enough-to-drive nephew for this particular post not only because he was adorable (still is, but it's hard to call someone who towers over you "adorable"), but because of what my color photography teacher wrote on the back. He wasn't only my CP teacher, but was also the department chair, my advisor, my boss (I was in charge of keeping the campus photo lab afloat, he was in charge of signing my measly paycheck for doing so), and also the man most likely to bust everyone's chops on the smallest of things because he rolled OLD SCHOOL like that. No critical stone was left unturned. He was not one of those art department teachers that wore torn jeans and acted more like a friend. He was a ball-buster, so we got along pretty well.
The first color project he assigned was to print one candid photo of a family member we either took ourselves or were actually in. They need not be artistic because he was going to be grading on our ability to achieve perfect color balance. The above photo was the very first color shot from the first color roll that I completed by hand from negative to print; an insanely time-consuming and complicated process that begins with mixing the horribly odorous chemistry, which was made worse by the fact that my lab time was on a Thursday morning, and, hello? Wednesdays were quarter-tapper nights at our favorite bar (there was a lot of dry-heaving in the darkroom on those early mornings). During the critique he said that only a few of us had gotten that color balance perfection on the first project, and I was actually one of them. I thought we would get A's.
I should have known better because I had taken classes taught by this same professor in each of the previous 4 semesters and it was never that easy with him. If you had perfect color balance, he'd find something else to deduct points from. That "something else" was never what you'd have expected to be graded on, and as soon as you realized what he'd downgraded you for, you made sure never to make that mistake again. The problem was that he was always 2 steps in front of us, and when we adjusted for one thing, he was already marking us off on something else we hadn't thought of.
On this first project, I failed to secure the paper tray in the bottom left corner when I exposed the negative to light, which made that corner of the photo imperfect. I circled it in red because the 2 people I showed the photo to yesterday had no idea what I was talking about; which was kind of my point. What made my grade imperfect was my failure to NOTICE that corner, which prevented me from re-doing the print before turning it in. His evaluation is still written in pen on the back of the print: "Color good, but white photo borders aren't clean in lower left corner; watch the processing. Grade: B+". Of course his hardcore criticisms always made us better, and ultimately he was a better teacher for it.
Although my nephew scraped his mother's car with a mailbox the night before his driving test (In essence, it was his very own first downgrade, and I bet he won't do THAT again!), he passed and is now a card-carrying member of the people who better not be in the left lane unless they're passing club. I look forward to letting HIM cart ME around after all these years. I am tempted to sit in the back seat and let him be the Morgan Freeman to my Jessica Tandy, but even if I mentioned that particular pop culture reference to him, he'd have no idea what I'm talking about. Since I'd like to remain the cool aunt, I think I'm just going to enjoy the view from the passenger seat. Hopefully I won't be doing any of that floorboard foot pounding on a phantom brake pedal that the adults always did when I first got my license.
I'm not REALLY engaged to Jeremy Piven, as my profile photo would suggest. It's photoshop, people... but do me a favor and play along, will you? Thanks.
