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A-Mused

Since I listen to the Alt Nation station on Sirius satellite radio, it could not escape my notice that “Resistance” by the British group Muse is a really hot song right now.

Which is astounding to me, because it’s the most ridiculous song ever. And I don’t think this is my inner-old person bucking against new-sounding noises that are so strikingly unlike the music to which my grizzled hairy ears are accustomed.

If you’ve never heard the song, imagine if Freddie Mercury & Queen teamed up with the Killers and they wrote a Spinal Tap-style definitive arena rock anthem while high on marijuana. The lyrics just kill me:

Is our secret safe tonight
And are we out of sight
Or will our world come tumbling down?
Will they find our hiding place
Is this our last embrace
Or will the walls start caving in?

Love is our resistance
They’ll keep us apart and they won’t to stop breaking us down
Hold me
Our lips must always be sealed

I mean, that is so much gooey industrial grade cheese that I can’t help but to wince. The portent piano intro and sweeping sound effects coupled with the defiant guitar arpeggios and impassioned vocals do truly beg the question: what or whom is this unknown “they” that warrants such ardent resistance? And is it possible that everyone who relates to this song enough to jump up and down with youthful “They’ve got the guns, but we got the numbers” enthusiasm has already succumbed?

Kids today. In my day, we didn’t shirk from naming our oppressors, and we certainly didn’t resist them with (sneer) love.

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By Meredith – January 29, 2010

Fire Drill

I had one of those mornings. And no, the omitted adjective is not “terrific.”

At the beginning of the New Year, I rearranged my weekday routine so that I’d work 9:30ish to 6ish (instead of the punishing 7:30-4 schedule on which I started my new job). This new regime allows me to stay in bed later, to pop over to the gym in the mornings, to miss a bulk of the insane after-work traffic that plagues my commuting corridor, and to stay late at the office like a diligently good do bee.

I greatly looked forward to the prospect of staying in bed for an extra 50 minutes, but what I never realized (because I woke up at 5:50am) is that our next-door neighbor starts his Audi at 6:15am every morning on the dot. Since his driveway is right under our heads, the sound of the engine kicking alive functions very much like an alarm– the kind you want to throw across a room, or perhaps leave a threatening note on.

So, after waking up at 6:15am, I laid in bed to soak up a few more minutes of idle respite before staggering to an upright position and pulling on my swimsuit. I packed my breakfast and lunch, brushed my teeth, and bid good day to my husband, (who also wants to kill the Audi) and then go out to my own car. And what greets me when I turn on the car? “Give Me Back My Man” by the B-52s. Eff me!

When I get to the gym, I realize that I left my goggles and swim cap at home. So I had to tie my hair practically in a knot and swim backstroke. As I’m swimming, a woman asks if she can split my lane with me. “Sure, no problem, but I’m warning you that I’m only swimming backstroke,” I said. “So I might have a hard time staying on my half of the lane.” I admit I was trying to ward her off, but it didn’t work. She gives me a look as if she just caught me peeing in the pool and gets in anyway.

I swim leisurely backstroke for about 40 minutes, until my neck develops unbearable pain from holding my head rigid to keep from straying out of my half of the lane. My shoulders are feeling the backstroke, for sure. I abscond to the whirlpool in the women’s locker room, luxuriating in hot pulses of bubbled water. Surely this would be the highlight of my day.

And then, wouldn’t you know? Fire alarm. The women’s locker room is filled with a shrill clamor that barely resonates above the din of showers and hair dryers. A woman pokes her head out from the sauna, looks at the strobe lights emanating from the blaring alarm unit on the wall, looks at me neck-deep in the whirlpool, and goes back into the sauna.

Two things go through my mind. One, isn’t the whirlpool the safest place to be in the event of a fire? And two, does anyone expect all of the naked, semi-naked, and bathing-suit clad women to go outside in 20-degree weather unless an actual fire is bearing down on them?

I stay in the whirlpool, closing my eyes, closing my ears, and dreaming of dreams.

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By Meredith – January 28, 2010

Flight of the Bumbles

When I joined the community orchestra after many years of dormant viola practice, I was expecting it to be, you know, easy. Minuets, fugues, a Gershwin crowd-pleaser, maybe an orchestral adaption of a popular tune, maybe a John Williams musical score. I certainly did not expect this:

Why I don't have time to blog anymore

Even if you have no musical training, I’m sure you can look at that piece of music (The Moldau by Smetana, here) and instinctively sense its difficulty. Look at all that black ink. In classical music, black ink = hard. Let me add that there are 6 more pages that look just as black as this and that the whole shebang takes the orchestra about 16 minutes to play. It very nearly qualifies as cardiovascular exercise. Work those fingers, work that bow, work it, work it.

When I play at home at the fastest tempo I can sustain, it takes me about 21 minutes. My fingers just can’t move that fast. My eyes blur. My bow slides. My viola squeaks in protest. I tell myself that it’s good training, that if I can play this, I can play anything. Yes. Yes. I just need to master this within the next month, in time for the concert, and then I can go professional. Or I’ll wind up like that guy from Shine…

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By Meredith – January 26, 2010

Quarrel Sex

A school district in rural California has removed Merriam Webster’s dictionaries from all school shelves after a parent complained that her elementary-aged child read the definition for oral sex (noun: oral stimulation of the genital). School officials felt that the “sexually graphic” definition was not “age appropriate” (here). Somehow I think that a definition for oral sex that is age-appropriate for elementary students would a heck of a lot dirtier, because it would involve words like “licking” and “naughty bits.”

Of course, the issue is not the actual wording of the definition, but rather the fact that an entry for oral sex even exists in the dictionary. Which is a new development, because when I was in elementary school, oral sex wasn’t even invented yet. How do I know this? Because it wasn’t in the dictionary.

Believe me, I looked for it. When I was in fourth grade, I scoured the dictionary, learning all about “breast” and “penis” and “sex” and “intercourse.” And, I admit… it totally rotted my mind. Because those words were no longer just words that my classmates bandied around or that I heard in health class. They had unspoken acceptance as normal, desirable behavior by virtue of being defined. Total impetus for virtuoso vocabulary coupled with precocious harlotry.

These parents should be celebrating the fact that kids are looking up anything in the dictionary. And, they should be taking a hint that if their offspring is looking up sexy things in the dictionary, they should be talking him about sex rather than leaving him to satisfy his curiosity with a Merriam Webster’s dictionary. Because, wait until the kid gets a little older and discovers the Internet. Who knows what he will find if he searches for “oral sex?”

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By Meredith – January 25, 2010

Two Years of Legal Love and Marriage

Today is the second anniversary of our civil marriage. Yes, two years ago on a Wednesday night, Mr. P and I rushed home from our respective places of work to be legally married by a Justice of the Peace in our living room. What a magical five minutes that was!

That day was chosen simply because it fit our schedule, but how auspicious that our civil anniversary would forever be 1/23. Because otherwise, we’d forget it.

In celebration, we treated ourselves to a day of XC skiing at one of our favorite ski areas just across the New Hampshire border. To spoil ourselves a little more and maximize our time on the trails, we stayed at a Bed & Breakfast near the ski area on Friday night. We picked the Birchwood Inn because we dug the British motif that the ex-pat Anglo proprietors carefully cultivated: the Union Jack  hanging on the porch, the rooms named for quintessential English towns, the beer-themed knickknacks, the authentic dart board, and the tiny beds with the dense mattresses — so very, very British.

Birchwood Inn

I liked that the building dated back to precisely 1775, as if the Inn was an alternate universe where the American Revolution never happened and an enclave of Brits carried on calling each other “love” and cooking bangers and mash, bubbles and squeak, and, of course, spotted dick.

Birchwood Inn Porch

Inns that are 200+ years old aren’t necessarily spacious, luxurious, or even comfortable, but they are historic. Thoreau reportedly stayed at the Birchwood Inn for a stretch, and one of the dining rooms featured a mural painted in the mid-1800s by Rufus Porter. Proof, in my opinion, that not all old art is necessarily good art.

Rufus Porter Mural

On Saturday morning, after a breakfast that was thankfully devoid of baked beans, we headed out to XC ski. Supreme conditions, with a luminous bare blue sky, nary a hint of wind, and a mid-20s temperature that felt much warmer thanks to the trusty blazing sun. A soft one-foot cushion of snow provided an excellent surface for skating. The only flaw was that it was perhaps too perfect of a ski day, as it attracted legions of people.

Perfect Ski Day

Mr P. inspiring widespread awe and fear with his pure finesse on skis.

Descending the open slope like it was alpine

Ascending hills like it was cake

After skiing for about 5 hours, we drove home and had a meat fondue. No, that’s not a dirty euphemism, we had an actual meat fondue.

Meat Fondue

Two years of civil marriage, and we can still spend a day together, enthralled with each other’s company, and enjoy a night filled with meat fondue. That’s a successful marriage!

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By Meredith – January 23, 2010

New Year, New to Yoga

It must be January, because the yoga classes are full. Lately I’ve had to cram my mat in between the mats of people who strain mightily to touch their toes and who wobble precariously into Warrior One. They want relaxation, enlightenment, and toned thighs, and they think the 5:30pm Hatha Yoga class is totally their ticket.

I snuck into the crowded class two minutes late and splayed a mat in the back of the room next to a young couple. I knew they were a couple because I saw them in the parking lot, toting yoga mats under their arms, and because they were both so fit and healthy-looking, I assumed they were yoga veterans. But after 5 minutes of Sun Salutations, it became clear that this was their second, maybe third class ever. The guy’s muscles were tighter than a hipster’s jeans; his knees were so bent in Downward Dog that he was almost in Child’s Pose. The girl was slightly more flexible, but lacked the functional arm strength that would enable her to pull off any sort of graceful chaturanga.

The yoga mats over which they labored were so new that the ends curled. I imagined them making a New Year’s resolution to take yoga together, and purchasing the mats to solidify their commitment. It must’ve sounded so easy and good and healthy at the time, but there they were, suffering physically and looking as stressed as mice in a maze… in front of each other.

Not that I was any better when I first started yoga. By virtue of my sporting lifestyle, I thought that yoga would be a breeze. In fact, I was initially hesitant to give up a “real workout” in order to attend yoga class. But just because I could run 6 miles or cross-country ski all day didn’t mean that I could hold a lunge for more than 30 seconds without searing pain in my quadriceps, and it certainly didn’t mean I could sit in pigeon pose and think calming, happy thoughts.

It takes work, and no yoga beginner is exempt from the initial physical acclimation. I call “bullshit” on the author of the ” Om my!: Introduction to yoga is a breath of fresh air,” an article in the Boston Globe by a yoga novice who attends various classes in studios around Boston. Her first yoga class was a 90 minute Baptiste class — an intense ordeal; it’s like someone who has never run before doing a 5K. She claims after the class she “felt a little more awesome than before.” While that might be true, I marvel that she neglects to mention the agonizing physicality and constant bewilderment that yoga beginners always experience. No one was born doing vinyassas.

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By Meredith – January 22, 2010

The Catcher in the Rye Misses One

Last Monday, a teenaged boy robbed my town’s local bookstore (a disheveled arsenal of mass market books that I do not frequent.) According to the clerk, the suspect showed her a crowbar, demanded that she open the register and give him the money, and said “I’m sorry I have to do this.”

I am very curious as to why the teenager just HAD to rob the bookstore. What all-consuming need was he satisfying? And was he really sorry that the trajectory of his young life left him with no alternatives but to menacingly brandish a crowbar at some dumpy local bookstore employee?

He made off with $200, which struck me as an exorbinant amount of money for a sleepy bookstore to keep in the till on a Monday night, but then again, I have a background in convenience stores, where the first thing they teach you is that at some point, you probably will be threatened with a weapon, so you better keep less than $60 in your drawer at all times. Standard loss prevention, though it may piss off the guy who is menacing you with a blunt object.

The reluctant robber allegedly mingled around the store for 15 minutes before approaching the register with a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye,” the iconic novel for teenaged rebellion. Perhaps young man was trying to signal that, like Holden Caulfield, he was disaffected, disgruntled, alienated, isolated, directionless, and sarcastic, and therefore had no recourse but to express himself through precocious petty crime. “I’m sorry I have to do this. Goddamn money. I hope to hell I don’t get caught.”

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By Meredith – January 20, 2010

WTF, Martha Coakley?

Last December, when I blogged about the primaries for today’s special election to fill the US Senate seat laid void by Ted Kennedy, I made it sound like Democratic candidate Martha Coakley would be a shoo-in. Because this is Massachusetts, where the only good Republican is a Democrat in a business suit.

But oh, boy, Martha. You blew it. Scott Brown, a Republican — a real one — is sitting in Ted Kennedy’s seat.

Holy shit, how did that happen? I’m not sure. Nobody really is, although the local pundits will talk themselves to death trying to rationalize this stunning upset. While I find some explanation in this month’s Harper’s Index, which revealed that only 6 percent of Americans think that women make better politicians than men, the truth is, Martha Coakley ran a miserable campaign.

I mean, Massachusetts elected Obama with a clear majority, and yet Massachusetts did not elect an integral person whom he needs in order to put forth his agenda. Is it health care? Is it taxes? Is it the millions of dollars Coakley’s supporters spent on dirty campaign ads that attacked Brown (a tactic that may work in the rest of the country, but that Massachusetts find degrading and undignified)?

Or is it that Coakley revealed herself as baseball ignorant when she flubbed a quip about Curt Shilling being a Yankees fan?

For the record, I voted for Coakley despite her inability to Wow me. I can only imagine that, after she won the primary, she thought herself to be such a sure thing and then panicked when Brown gained momentum. I am sad and a little outraged, but the people have clearly spoken, and they wanted Scott Brown, the Republican Senator from Massachusetts. (How weird does that sound?)

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By Meredith – January 19, 2010

The Morning Drive to PA

We left for a 3-day weekend in Pennsylvania on Saturday morning at 5:50am. The few other cars on the road maintained the speed limit or lower, so I was reticent to be the solo left-lane speed demon. Maybe the other drivers knew something that I didn’t, like that the Mass Pike is riddled with patrols on pre-dawn Saturday mornings. Maybe this is how the state plans to balance their budget. But after humoring the speed limit for 20 minutes, the sight of the wide open highway was too much of a temptation, and I notched up my speed to 75 mph, reassuring myself that the only reason everyone else is driving so slow is because they all have drugs in their cars.

We blew into Connecticut as the sun rose and the highway steadily gained vehicular population. I abused the touchscreen radio — the downside of Sirius satellite radio is that I’m constantly convinced that there’s a better song on another station. “Boy, I’m really enjoying listening to Adam Ant’s ‘Goody Two Shoes,’ but what if the Alt Nation station is playing that Big Pink song?” The further South we ventured, the fewer fellow Volkswagens we saw. It’s funny that, on my daily commute, I can be in a flock of Jettas, Passats, and Golfs, and feel content within my demographically determined destiny. But as we sped down I-95 South, the VWs turned into Chryslers, Jeeps, and Buicks.

I saw a bumper sticker that said DNT TXT N DRV. No, because that would be distracting… kinda like bumper stickers.

At 8:30am, it was time for breakfast. I wanted to clear NYC before stopping, but the prospect of a NJ Turnpike rest stop breakfast was more terrifying than gridlock on the George Washington bridge, so we decided to pull off of I-95 somewhere in Connecticut. Mr. P suggested we stop in a random hotel and raid their complimentary breakfast bar, a surprisingly devious and white-trash plan for my European epicurean husband. Though it was tempting to do a drive-by grab-and-go on some Holiday Inn Express hard-boiled eggs and bacon, I am convinced that there is some sort of safeguard against such unseemly looting of hotel breakfast bars, for surely we are not the first people to be tempted to just wander into a hotel lobby to partake of the substitute scrambled eggs, industrial sausage, and highly-preserved bakery items? So we stopped at a diner.

We pulled off of the PA turnpike at 11 am, meaning that while the trip did not qualify as a Boston-to-Philly driving world record, it was certainly a personal best. We were so early that we decided to take a leg-stretching walk in Valley Forge National Park before descending upon family. We saw deer. Amazing that, five hours ago, I was pushy my sleepy ass out the door, and now I was walking with the wildlife in PA. Oh, deer!

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By Meredith – January 19, 2010

Tundra

Today I was driving to work behind a Toyota Tundra. One thing that cannot be overstated is the enormity of a Toyota Tundra. I mean, hello? This mammoth pick-up truck is the biggest thing to come out of Japan since Godzilla. I seethed quietly at the Tundra, because it sort of cut me off on Route 2, and now I was stuck behind its gigantic ass that prevented me from seeing anything beyond it, and the driver was one of those drivers who would accelerate until they were riding the ass of the vehicle in front of them and then brake, accelerate then brake, accelerate then brake, and I’m there blindly wondering if the Tundra’s driver is merely mitigating his zealous acceleration or if traffic is stopping and I’m on the verge of plowing into the expansive back fender of the Tundra. Which would, like, totally ruin my week.

So I’m keeping my distance from the Tundra and listening to the Sirius satellite radio station “Alternative Nation,” which just played a song by the Vines, who I like, and the DJ was perfunctorily bantering about the lead singer of the Vines, Craig Nicholls, who apparently has Aspergers Syndrome. Which surprised me, because the Vines are this high-energy Australian punk band, and when I think “musicians with Aspergers,” I think “Devo” or “Aphex Twin.”

The Sirius DJ mentioned how the Vines’ musical output was adversely affected by Nicholls’ condition, and that why they are not more prolific. “But the Aspergers is also what makes the Vines so great, because people with Aspergers are extremely intelligent and musically creative,” the DJ said.

Then a Red Hot Chili Peppers song came on, barf, so I decided to change the station to Hair Nation, which exclusively plays “hair” bands from the 80s (with some 70s and 90s thrown in). It was Poison’s lame stadium anthem “Stand” (“You’ve got to Stand for what you believe, Stand, Stand, Stand, You know You’ve Got to Stand…”) It was more irritating than driving behind a Toyota Tundra. I thought about how different Poison’s music would have been if Bret Michaels had Aspergers.

So I was listening to Poison, trying to imagine Bret Michaels with an autistic bent, when the Tundra takes a left turn and suddenly I’m behind a Toyota Sequoia SUV, which is as equally immense as the Tundra. And I start turning those Toyota brands around in my head — Tundra, Sequoia, Tundra, Sequoia — and it strikes me that a tundra is a landscape typified by the absense of trees, while a Sequoia is a tree. Evidentally Toyota has found that people who like to drive big vehicles have some sort of penchant for trees, or the lack thereof. I like the tree motif. I mean, what the hell is a Camry or a Yaris, anyway? And is there any car more sexless than a Corolla? I mean, even a minivan implies breeding. And station wagons were just made for vehicular romps. It’s the sort of thing that Poison might have sang about, maybe, if Bret Michaels had Aspergers.

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By Meredith – January 13, 2010