Embarassed. Pissed Off. American.

This moved me to tears. Well done, sir.

Ready or not, here I come

annie :: bms @ valentine’s, albany, ny :: january 15, 2011

Unrelated: Is it bad that I’ve been to Valentine’s so often the staff of the Hilton Garden Inn across the street remember my name?

Where to start?

How about my beeeeeeeeeyooooooooutiful new blog design?!?! It’s all because I HELPED SAVE BOOBIES in October… Big thanks to Joelle at Moxie Design Studios (design), Mel at Emtwo (ee development) and Cynthia at Green Couch Designs (wicked awesome fencing/hockey Tam illustration).  The new design far exceeded my expectations (and my current skill set)!!  If you like what you see, contact those amazing women and see what they can do for you.

OK. Commercial over.

I’ve gone to Albany and Saratoga more times than I can count lately to see Black Mountain Symphony, but I don’t really care about the miles I’m driving or the time I lose in the car. The last weekend in my March was the last gasp of my extended birthday remix. So OF COURSE I headed to Saratoga to see Black Mountain Symphony host “Fiddle Night” at the Putnam Den.

So many random memories -  Charlie played guitar! Annie sang “Stop Stopping!” Being called BMS’ number one fan and subsequently being introduced as the “girl who drives from New Hampshire.” Meeting Bear’s new ‘lady friend’ - is she a girlfriend? No…  - Annie was so concerned about calling her by the right description, it was absolutely adorable. C-Rollz and Annie covered the Fugees’ “Ready or Not”*. The crazy birthday guy dancing on the stage.  “Come Out Ye Black and Tans”(!!!!)  I danced my little bottom off.  And then some.

(Also noteworthy from that night - Northern Water Snake and Acoustic Trauma. I’ve seen NWS before and they’ve improved drastically since that first show. Acoustic Trauma… well. You really need to hear them. Picture the bald guy from Midnight Oil playing the violin like Johnny from “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” I’m serious.)

As if that wasn’t an amazing enough birthday present… They were playing at Valentine’s the following night!!! I went home with Annie and Charlie. They were house sitting and offered me a bed for the night. How do I say no to a free place to sleep? I woke up next to Winston Churchill. Yes. You read that right… except this Winston Churchill is a huge-ass orange tabby. Actually, huge doesn’t quite do it. He’s huger than huge. And quite the lover. Charlie played “Donegal Danny” on the guitar. His version is far superior to this one. Of course. It was a nice, relaxed day. I did leave them early, so I could check into the Hilton Garden Inn and catch a nap before the show at Valentine’s.

I always have a hard time getting into the show at Valentine’s. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s too small a club, maybe there’s never a decent crowd. For whatever reason, I struggle to lose myself in the music. Eh. Whatever. I was still treated to a fucking awesome show. After BMS played, the Ameros took the stage. I’ve met their drummer, Kiki, and I’ve seen their lead singer, Jesse, at BMS shows, so I was kind of excited to hear them. They played a Sublime cover and a 311 cover - I was in heaven! I remember two random things from their set: 1) Bill shouting “Just when I think I got you figured out, the shit gets so twisted up, it makes a brother want to shout “Heavens to Betsy, girl! There is something wrong with you!”  2) Jesse jumping into the fans to sing “Terminator Seeds”. (Bow down to the new world order!—That song is DANGEROUS. I can NOT drive at a reasonable speed when that song is on.)

Definitely the best way to end my birthday!

Last weekend, we went into Worcester to see BMS and Sound in Stone play at the Raven. Unfortunately, it was Sound in Stone’s last show. I’m too lazy to find the link, but I did blog about meeting Larry the Lumberjack / tuba player at Valentine’s a long time ago. Anyhoo, Orion couldn’t make the trip, so their old bass player, Colin, made the trip. (Now that I’ve written it, I’m not sure that’s his name. Oh well. It’s his name now…) They did an awesome cover of “Billie Jean”. So unexpected! Even more unexpected - the girlfriends made the trip: Bear’s (sorry - “lady friend”), Bill’s, and Rollz’s. It was nice to meet Rollz’s girl, and to see Alex again.

Sound in Stone played “Rowdy” for their last song. Love that song! You can bet I got up and shook my money maker for that! Larry even took his tuba into the crowd during the song. What a great way to end my final Sound in Stone show, even though I’m bummed I didn’t get to see them more. I should have seen them more often - they were close enough. Oh well.

What else happened recently?

OH YEAH!  I got the best birthday gift ever when my coworker quit. She and I didn’t get along very well, and after the new ownership really got involved in the day-to-day ops, it was obvious she didn’t want to be there. At any rate, I have the ‘social skills of a gnat’, we created a hostile work environment for her, and the State of NH sided with the liar, but we’re done with her and I couldn’t be happier. It’s down to two people doing the work of four and we’re trying to move into our new building, so work is stressful. AGAIN. (When is it not? Really? I’ve been running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace since February 2010.) My body has also decided to rebel against the large quantities of mold in our current building and I am constantly sick. Headaches, sinus pressure, you name it. Bring it on… in a few more days, I’ll be in my sweet space in the new office and we’ll have a new office manager who doesn’t insult her co-workers or yell at customers. I am a very, very, very happy Tam.

So, anyway, I’m here. I’m alive. Just busy.

*To my friends who have seen BMS cover it at the Hungry Tiger, C-Rollz’s version >>>>> Colin’s. Trust me.

Have you hugged your platypus today?

Consider me a freaky lighthouse. A positive beam of pure strange.—Nick

I have no fucking idea where that statement came from, but this is exactly why I love Nick.

 

All these things you stole from me…

bu vs northeastern :: agganis arena, boston :: march 5, 2011

So, on Tuesday, R.E.M. released their new album “Collapse Into Now.”

They should have named it “Collapse Into Shit”.

I’m a HUGE R.E.M. fan. Have been my entire life.

Granted, there are some albums I’m not really into, but that happens with most of the bands I like. They can’t hit home runs every time they’re at bat, right? I could never really get into “Reveal”. I have a lot of problems with “Out of Time”. Even despite Peter Buck’s hatred of “Around the Sun”, there was a lot I liked about it.

But I’ve never downright HATED an R.E.M. album. Or really any bad album by any of my favorite bands.

This is a new feeling and I don’t like it.

To me, it sounds like a band picking and choosing the bits of R.E.M.‘s music they really like and piecing it together to make… something. It kind of sounds like a bad parody of an R.E.M. album. Or a new band desperately trying to capture their sound and failing miserably.

Honestly, I haven’t been able to listen to the album enough to go into as much detail as I’d like, but I can you this: Stipe lifts a line, practically WORD FOR WORD, from “Houston”. Then, there’s a riff in “Oh My Heart(?)” that reminds me of an IRS-era song. Possibly “S. Central Rain.” There’s bad acoustic stuff that kind of feels like “New Adventure in Hi-Fi”, down to bringing Patti Smith in on a song. (And seriously, WHAT THE FUCK is up with that spoken word disaster over her part?) They try to capture bits of “Monster” and “Reveal” and… well, it’s just not good.

As their career moves on, I still love the IRS stuff more than the Warner Bros., but that’s not to say that I don’t like the WB stuff. “Green”, “Accelerate”... good stuff. (Even though “Hollow Man” uses a riff that sounds like it could have come off “Fables” or “Pageant”.)

The thing that pisses me off the most is that for the last two albums, there are are these reviews saying, “This is the album that will bring them back into the mainstream / make them relevant again.” You know what? R.E.M. is not supposed to be RELEVANT. They’re not supposed to be MAINSTREAM. It’s not that I don’t wish them success - I do - but not at the cost of what I love about them. Stipe’s lyrics are supposed to be nonsensical, but he’s started telling stories and it’s changed the sound of the band. These new lyrics make sense. They’re clear, easy to understand. Bill Berry’s leaving changed the sound of the band, too, but they were able to overcome that. (Compare with Blues Traveler, who after the death of Brooklyn Bob, lost whatever it was that I loved about them.)

This album is so bad, it made me cry. I’ve had lots of music make me cry before, but that’s due to the memories it brings up. I’ve never cried out of heartbreak, out of anger, at AN ALBUM. It’s like they cheated on me, killed a kitten, and told me Santa wasn’t real all in the same 5 minutes.

I love you, R.E.M., so much it hurts. But you’ve betrayed me. I don’t know where this leaves us, but I think we need a break.

Sweet Home Trainwreck

You can’t ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean.

My guiltiest of guilty pleasures has to be the movie “Sweet Home Alabama”. I don’t know why, but I can’t walk away from it when it’s on TV. I will drop EVERYTHING to watch it - even several times in one day.

You can stop laughing now.

So anyhoo, I had had this whole entry written a few days ago about all my friends who are getting married, having kids, and how I keep discovering that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. And I deleted it.

The part I regret deleting is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever written… Seriously. Writing about my parents? Walk in the park. Writing about the bipolar? Taking candy from a… oh, wait. That’s actually quite a nice intro.

A few weeks ago, I journeyed to CT to meet my little brother’s baby, Bean.

It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of kids.

Actually, just the idea of them makes my skin crawl.

When Jeff shoved Bean into my arms and made a big deal out of me holding the baby, something in me melted. 

Not a whole lot, but just enough to bug the shit out of me.

See, I’ve known for my whole entire life that I don’t have IT. Whatever that magical thing is that drives women to have children, I just don’t have it. I’ve never been interested in kids. No babysitting. No dolls. Nothing. My shrink once blamed it on the fact that I lost my cousin to cancer before his third birthday, but that’s bullshit. I know what I know… some shrink who only gets an hour in my head, and only gets to access what I say they get to access? They are not allowed to blame my dislike of kids on Inky. Grrrr.

It didn’t help when I found out that I was bipolar and that it is genetic. If for some unknown reason, I changed my mind, I would run the risk of having a bipolar kid. Not. Even. Worth. It.

I knew at 22 that I didn’t want to have kids. I tried to get my tubes tied, but the doctor wouldn’t do it. She said I was too young; that I would change my mind when I found the right guy. I laughed in her face, changed doctors, and was afraid to ask again. It wasn’t that I thought I would change my mind. It was that I didn’t want people pushing their religious agenda on me. (Welcome to Ohio, Nelson!)

I KNEW that kids were never in my future, but sometime after my father died, I found myself doubting that decision. I had almost talked myself into believing that I wanted kids. That I would raise some little hockey players. That I would name the first one Nicholas, the second one Charlie.  I started to want to have kids. I never said anything to anyone about it, but I was feeling a lot of pressure from a lot of different places, and all I wanted to do was fit in.

I don’t remember when I came to my senses but after we moved back to New England, I finally had my tubes tied.

No… this isn’t where I say I’m sorry I got my tubes tied. After all, I keep coming back to where I’m supposed to be, right?

This is where I announce the startling realization that while I’m still very anti-kid, my resolve may be weakening.

Will I ever WANT to hold Bean, babysit him, blah blah blah? OH HELL NO!

But I’m open to spending time with Bean - as long as his parents are there.

And that, believe it or not, is progress.