Cram Carnage

Years ago, when I lived in Greensboro, there was a Chinese food restaurant that had a huge banner out front advertising "All You Can Eat Cram Legs!" What was hilarious to me about the sign was not just that it was misspelled, but that a banner-printing company had not pointed out to their customers that the word is crab, not cram, and that the restaurant just hung it on up anyway.
And so, henceforth, I have referred to crab as "cram." So much so, that when I typed that sentence, it read "I have referred to cram as "cram." Heh.

This weekend, Jennifer, Thomas and I ventured out to the Tiki Bar in Carolina Beach in search of sun, sand, Coronas with lime, cram legs and Da Howlies, my neighbor Paul's band.

Well, it poured. But we ate cram legs anyway. Here is some carnage, courtesy of Jennifer's phone:



And here is a moist towelette (shudder):



Discussion at dinner included: how the phrase "moist towelette" is JUST SO WRONG, and how I think that the phrase "save it for later" is hilarious (causing people to stow their moist towelettes in interesting places, so as to save them for later).

When it started to pour, we collected the awesome Michelle G. and headed for our front porch, where Paul busted out his drums and we were all percussionally inclined for several glorious hours. Thomas broke out his washboard and jug and Jennifer even played a wooden frog (she kept calling it a fog) from Thailand. It was one of those blessed evenings you can't plan for, with people calling out their favorite words:

"Guantanamo Bay!"
"Rapture!"
"Quantico!"
"Mellifluous!"
"Onomatopoeic!"

Naming our dreadful band ("Sunnyland") and imagining our terrible show. "Hey," we'd say. "We're Sunnyland. And we kind of suck. But listen anyway!"

I was reminded once again of the glory of summer and good friends, the kind of friends you can just be crazy with. Thanks, guys.

Heat Stroke

Tonight is one of those nights where the air is so thick that just breathing feels like a chore. The air is hazy with it, and my glasses fog up just leaving the house. The flowers, no matter how much I water them, look as if they want to pick up their beautiful petticoats and say, "Well! If I'd realized it was going to be this kind of party, I never would have come at all." This weather might be appropriate if I were on a tropical vacation, or sunning myself on the beach. For everyday life, it seems a bit excessive.

I turn an alarming shade of pink in this weather. I don't have to exert myself; it just happens. I develop a white ring around my eyes and mouth and everything else progresses from pink to an angry purple the longer I stay out. My neighbor came over this afternoon and very kindly sawed down some branches that were beginning to shade out my garden, and it wasn't until after he left that I realized I must have looked as if I were about to explode.

I've spent the better part of this evening putting songs into my iPod. I have 1990 songs now, which seems an auspicious number. The iPod agrees with my need to collect, categorize and revel in everything I own, as if someone could go through it and say, Ah. Now that is Meg. I'd know her anywhere.

WE FEST 2007

I'm back.

This weekend was WE FEST in Wilmington, a totally DIY art/music show that lasts all weekend. Thomas was on the board of it, and so we have been recieving CDs from bands for the last couple of weeks. We'd been listening and developing favorites and went into WE Fest this year with a vengeance.

Here were some of the highlights:



Second Dan, an awesome band from New York that has a very driving, melodic, "Old Radiohead" kind of feel to it. They were my favorite from the outset, and I was very excited to see them Friday night. On Saturday, they did a show from Thomas's store's parking lot, which is what you see here. They were awesome people, and very enthusiastic just to be heard and get their music out there, even if it meant playing in the sweltering parking lot of the comic book store. Initially, we had intended for them to do an acoustic set indoors, but since all the other stores in the strip mall were closed, we decided to go ahead and do the whole thing outside. It was awesome. And the awesome was compounded by the fact that the whole time we felt like the police could show up, a la the concert from Apple Studios.



Chris Cubeta and The Liars Club was another great band from New York. I was really impressed with these bands who drove all night to get here in Memorial Day traffic to play for free. What incredible, talented people made up this band. Thomas arranged for them to play a pre-show gig at Lula's (our favorite bar downtown). I was not a believer in this idea, as Lula's is tiny and I thought it would be too crowded...too loud. As usual, I was totally wrong and it was brilliant. I'm hard pressed to say whether I enjoyed them more plugged or unplugged. Excellent lyrics, vocals, harmonies, and seriously, some of the nicest people I've met in a long time. They sound a bit like the Counting Crows.

Other highlights:

The Sammies (The song "Falling Out" kills me).
Olivia and the Housemates (Very nice horns--a bit of a ska feeling to it).
FilthyBird (Awesome girl vocalist: Grace Slick meets Robert Smith).

I had a great time all around and consumed enough beer to fell a small elephant. Today I feel moody and silent because of it.

I kept thinking throughout the festival that I'm so proud of Thomas for getting involved in these things and grateful to him for bringing me out of my shell about them. I would have never, ever gone to WE Fest without him and I had a wonderful time.

I also thought a lot about the fact that although sometimes the ticking of the biological clock in my ear drowns out all other noise, I'm glad to still just be the two of us, going to music festivals and getting drunk and staying out all night.

Currently

Life is quiet in Meg-land.

Read:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Shopgirl by Steve Martin
Here We Are in Paradise by Tony Earley

Reading:
Blue Angel by Francine Prose

Listening:

Here Comes Your Man by the Pixies

Slept Through:
For Your Consideration

Actually Watched:
Revenge of the Nerds

Worried about:
Oscar Peterson (isn't eating properly all of a sudden)
Gonzo (screamed when I pet him yesterday)

Rejoicing:
Tax refund arrival

Planted:
Angelonia
Ageratum
Amaryllis
(didn't notice until now that it was "A" day)

Yard Sale-ing Yield:
negligable

Ate:
Chicken Tikka Masala
Tempura fried crab in lueysuan sauce
Spicy Eggplant and Tofu with Thai Basil

Interview-o-rama

Many thanks once again to Velocibadgergirl for interviewing me as part of a meme that's going around. I saw it first on Amy's blog, but I didn't feel like I knew her well enough to ask her to interview me. Here's the deal:

To participate:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions of my choice, but probably not until early next week.

3. Then, you should update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You have to include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you get to ask them five questions.



1. Why did you start blogging and what do you like best about it?

I started blogging after I realized that I was checking my friends' blogs on a daily basis. When people first emailed me links to their blogs, I was a sporadic reader and then slowly it became a part of my daily life. I have an MFA in fiction, but what I always wanted was a "slice of life" column...some forum in which I could write short pithy pieces about my daily existence. It became clear to me that that was what my friends had, essentially, and I wanted in.
I like that, finally, when people ask if I'm writing, I can say yes. And I love the community of blogging. I've met so many awesome people and I love reading all the different writing styles and subjects. I feel more connected to myself as an artist, even though I'm not doing anything that most people would consider particularly artistic.

2. If you could see one band or singer in concert--living, dead, broken up, or still together--who would it be?

Dude, all these music questions, after I just did a huge post on music! I don't know quite how to answer this, but I guess the obvious answer is the truest one for me: the Beatles. I've been a Beatles fan since I was practically in utero; when I first listened to A Hard Day's Night at 11, I found I already knew all the words. My love for them intensified over the years and I became a big collector. I'm not so much anymore, but there is an entire room of my house dedicated to them.
I'd want to see them between the time of Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album, when they became more of a studio band and the songwriting partnership of Lennon-McCartney was fragmenting a bit. I'd love to see how that would be recreated live.

3. Name one book you think everyone should read and explain your choice.

This is tough. Because, of course, I think it's tempting to try to name my favorite book. But I think I'm going to say....oh, crap. I'm torn. I'm giving a top three. This question be damned! The Temple of Gold by William Goldman. This is the first book I ever read that made me want to be a writer. And it cemented my ability to live vicariously through a character, to totally commit to a person who doesn't exist and just...be...in his or her life. I feel like I turned out to be a better person, more accepting somehow, because I read this book so early in life. Ok, I'll stick with that. The Temple of Gold by William Goldman. Read it.

4. If money and time off work were not a problem, what vacation would you take?

I'm not a very big vacation person. Vacations in which travel is involved always feel to me like their own kind of work, like I need a vacation from them by the time I'm done! But I very much would like to leave this country, as I never have, not even to Canada. You know what I'd like? I'd like to have a couple of months to travel the world visiting the shooting sites of movies and tv shows I've loved. I'd take me back to Washington State, which I love, where I saw the shooting site of Twin Peaks (it ruled! My best vacation ever!) but this time I'd go to Roslyn, WA as well to see the Northern Exposure sites...then off to New Zealand to visit Middle Earth...New York (I've never been)....

5. If you could only listen to five albums for the rest of your life, what would you pick?

I suck, cause I kind of did this last week.
The Beatles: The White Album
Radiohead: OK Computer
Kent: Isola
They Might be Giants: Flood
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP

Ok, comment away if you'd like to play. And read Pardon the Eggsalad because she was nice enough to interview me and the Billy Collin's poem after which her blog is named gives me the shivers (as all good poems should).

Groove is in the Heart

I've been tagged by VBG with a music meme in which I have to list seven albums or tracks which have featured in my life recently.

This is a hard meme for me because my musical taste is either a. ancient or b. ridiculous. My musical development came to a grinding halt in the early 80's when my friend Ingrid Yan (are you out there, Ingrid?) gave me a mixed tape featuring The Smiths, Erasure, Depeche Mode, The Sugar Cubes, The Housemartins and the like. Henceforth, I have worshipped at the altar of synthy-euro-pop.

However, I do love hip-hop. And to make sure that I'm catching what's new without having to listen to R&B (retch) I keep my car radio on the top 40 station. So, you can pretty much bet on my knowing all the lyrics to anything by Fergie, Avril, Gwen, etc. And I'm not saying I don't rock out sometimes to these things. I'm just ashamed later.

Also, as I am very, very poor, I cannot buy new music. I can really like a song, but how can I possibly spend $20 on something when I might not like every single note on the whole album? This is also exacerbated by the fact that I didn't own my own CD player for years and years and so I don't buy CDs out of habit.

So here we go.

This week, Thomas was record hunting and found me Louder than Bombs by The Smiths. I almost peed myself. And then, he rather sheepishly admitted to me that he liked it. Muhahahaha. I shall convert you all!



This album now holds the distinction of being the only album I have ever owned on tape, on CD and on vinyl.



Also, he brought home Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me by the Cure. My husband loves me so.



Just Like Heaven holds sad, old connotations for me, but I love it anyway.

And now, because that's all I've listened to this week, we enter the "always in rotation" portion of this post.


Isola by Kent. Kent is the most awesome Swedish band ever. They released 2 albums in English which rule, but I listen to the Swedish albums as well because they are just. that. good.



This is a kind of long and mellow song; I'd have prefered to share something else, but one must operate in the confines of the very cool RadioBlogClub. Whoops! Didn't know this was the Swedish version. Oh well.

Flood by They Might Be Giants. I will never, ever get over this album. It's my favorite for painting/building furniture/things I need jollying through. For our anniversary, Thomas got us Birdhouse In Your Soul for the jukebox. I can't wait to sing it drunkenly at the top of my lungs some Friday night.



Fear by Toad the Wet Sprocket. I have loved this since I was a senior in high school. It's one of the few albums I've ever purchased. Thomas and I discovered our shared passion for it, and now it keeps me company when I garden.



Again, not the song I would have chosen, but lovely nonetheless.

Dummy by Portishead. When asked to define sex music, this is always my pick. However, oddly and somewhat grotesquely, it is also my "I'm having a dinner party" album.




OK Computer by Radiohead. When Radiohead still had melody, they were, to borrow a phrase from Kim Shable, my "2nd only to the Beatles" favorite band. OK Computer, to me, is one of those amazing albums that demands listening all the way through. It likes to keep me company while I grade papers.



Yum.

Tagging: Kim, Joshua, Kathy (ha!) and anyone else who wants to play.