April 23, 2003
Spring Domesticity
CNN crawl headline of the month: "Religious organization paying $10 to kids who learn and recite the 10 Commandments runs out of money. Project on hold until the Lord provides more money."
At the beginning of this month, I went again to my fair hometown, Fredericksburg, VA, to play at Mary Washington College. This time, it was for the annual Multicultural Fair, an excellent event featuring lots of different kinds of music, dance, art, and food. It made me very nostalgic for my own college days, when such events occurred throughout the year and there was always something really cool to do. I had a lot of fun playing, the only sketchy part of the performance being when I decided to try out a new song that I'd only just finished the night before at my dad's house. (Note to self: stop doing that.) Oh, and I was interviewed for the local paper! Here's the link to the full article. And here are my favorites of the pictures I took:
Me with my mom
My mom with my friends Elizabeth and Tracy Kelly
After the Multicultural Fair, I went to play a show at Orbit's downtown. As far as hometown shows go, it doesn't get any better than this. You see, my dad and stepmother brought a large group from their church out for the show. At the same time, Orbit's was hosting a party of Ultimate Frisbee Players who were in town for the annual Fredericksburg Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. You can imagine that the two groups might not desire exactly the same kind of atmosphere. Kim, who booked me for the show, warned me about this: "Oh, I should tell you that you're here the same weekend as the Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. They always come here after the games on Saturday. They're usually really loud and obnoxious. Although I remember you being a pretty tough girl who's not afraid to speak your mind, so you'll probably be OK." (BEST compliment ever!) My reply was something to the tune of, "Thanks for the warning! I work at the GA Renaissance Festival, so I'm pretty used to having to compete for attention. Imagine singing outside, with no amplification, in front of a children's ride, a drum booth, and several street vendors, all hawking their wares at the top of their lungs. I think I can handle a few rowdy Frisbee players!"
But WAIT! It gets even better. My friend Marshall Goff, who played lead guitar on one song when I recorded my first CD and took pictures of me in the studio (see Photo Gallery), plays on an Ultimate Frisbee team, and he was in town for the tournament! So we agreed over e-mail that he would bring his axe and join me onstage at Orbit's for a few songs. He listened to the CD to learn some of them; the rest, he learned on stage, on the fly. (I like it when I don't know what's going to happen. It keeps me from getting too confident and professional.) Marshall is a good egg, and we had a great time. Here's a picture of us, post-show:
Marshall and me, relieved that we made it through our unrehearsed set
Speaking of not getting too confident and professional, I also played a gig in Washington, D.C. at a book store/coffee shop. It was quite an interesting experience. First of all, I was getting over a stomach virus, and I was not quite feeling my best. Second of all, it was one of the most interesting mixtures of family and friends new and old to ever assemble at one of my shows. Friends from high school, college, and the past two years happily mingled in the stacks. Yep, in the stacks. See, I figured they would put me in the coffee shop, where an audience could sit, eat and drink, and enjoy the show. However, I was warned by my friend Sean Smith a couple of days before the show that they don't do it that way. Instead, they put me on this little walkway overlooking the bookstore, and everyone who wanted to watch had to stand in the stacks. It was a little weird. I kind of felt like I was on Star Trek or something, up on that walkway, looking down on everybody. I really wished I had planned it better, brought stuff to throw down to the audience or planned a really awesome rope swing or something.
But the gig was fun, if long. Playing for three hours is a bit of a challenge, but it gave me an excuse to break out some fun 80's covers to do with my friend Angie. Angie and I went to Emory together, and we used to hang out regularly for the purpose of mercilessly butchering songs that we loved. As I recall, we were quite proud of our cover of "The One I Love" by R.E.M., and she was the original designated harmony singer of Lindsay Smith classics "Molly Brown" and "Yellow Car." (Shut up, they're classics if I say they are.) It's a 10-hour drive to D.C., and the gig was that night, so it's not like Ang and I had a lot of time to practice. Like I said, it's good for me, keeps me on my toes....
Here's an item from last week's Entertainment Weekly that I thought was interesting. Not that I usually get my news from Entertainment Weekly or anything, but here this was, buried in the section where they tell you who's gotten married or divorce or sued or whatever. "Ed Gernon, the exec producer of the forthcoming CBS miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil, resigned from production company Alliance Atlantis after his comments in TV Guide were interpreted as comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. In discussing the miniseries, Genon said that a devastated Germany accepted Hitler's policies out of fear, and that Americans are supporting Bush 'because of the fear of what will happen if they don't.'" Maybe it's appropriate to compare Bush's tactics to those of Hitler, and maybe it isn't. But the fact that this man was forced to resign over his comments rather proves his point, doesn't it? I realize the article doesn't say that his resignation was forced, but, having been through several "resignations" at my day job during the past few years, I really can't imagine that this was voluntary, given the circumstances.
I am getting quite frightened by the way in which dissenting voices are being ridiculed, booed, and pushed to the side in this country right now. In a democracy, free speech is the most important freedom we have, and the most important function of free speech is the ability to criticize our leaders and to hold them accountable for what they do. But that hasn't been happening. The climate seems to be that if you don't think Bush is a good President, or even if you don't support our President unconditionally, then you are unpatriotic. And when there is a dissenting voice, it doesn't even lead to any good debate. It's all just name-calling and silliness. ("Freedom fries," indeed.) Our right to free speech is worth nothing if we only use it to call each other names. What ever happened to informed, intelligent political debate?
Goober Gossip Corner: my sister's engaged!!! After ten years together, Lee and Tom are getting married, and I get to be the Maid of Honor! I am very excited and already deep in the planning process, even though I probably have a whole year before I have to worry about showers and dresses and stuff. What I really want is to see her ring, which she says is very sparkly and nice, but with the Renaissance Festival starting this weekend, I won't be able to go visit her until June. Very irritating. Allison and Kelley, whom you may remember from the last Gossip Corner, finally got an engagement ring as well. I was there for the whole process (they bought the setting and the stone separately, on E-Bay), and it was so exciting to see the finished product! It's a cornflower blue sapphire in a pretty, antique-looking platinum setting with teeny little diamonds all over it. So pretty!!!
It seems like every couple of years, everyone I know gets engaged. Then half of them get married, half of them break it off, and everything settles down for a while. Right now, people are getting engaged like crazy, and it's giving me major ring envy. And, as anyone with girlie tendencies knows, that can lead to unwise decisions. But so I decided that, rather than actually get engaged or something crazy like that, I was going to get myself a nice ring. That way, I would have a pretty ring to look at, I wouldn't have to be jealous of my friends' rings, I would confirm my independence by not needing a man in order to have a pretty ring, and, since I pretty much prefer cheap costume jewelry to the nice stuff anyway, it wouldn't cost me very much money.
The Multicultural Fair was a perfect place to execute my plan, since there were many purveyors of cheap jewelry to choose from. I actually found two that I liked a lot; one was a garnet set with cubic zirconium (classy!), and the other was my very favorite of all the rings I saw: a "cat's eye" ring - like a tiger's eye, only green - which was set so that the stone was off-center at a diagonal from the silver band. It was so cool and pretty! I had decided on that one, but since my mom was there, I let her buy them both for me, for $30 total (thus ruining the whole independence plan but also not costing anyone very much money). I was so happy with my cat's eye ring that I put it on immediately and didn't take it off for the rest of the day.
The next day, as I set out to drive 10 hours back to Atlanta, I couldn't stop looking at my pretty, pretty ring. I admired it in the sunlight as I drank my Cokes and ate my road snacks. Several rest stops later, when I finally made it home, returned phone calls, looked through the mail, and unpacked, I realized, to my horror, that it was gone! I'd stopped to take out my contacts at a rest area, had taken the ring off to wash my hands, and had left it there on the counter.
I feel certain that there is a moral to this story. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I can't have nice things. For real. I lose them, I leave them in the car, I wash them with the wrong detergent. All my life, I have been too much of a spaz to have nice things. So I guess it's a really good thing that I don't have a really nice engagement ring because who knows where it would be by now? At least the ring I lost only cost $10, and, with any luck, it was found by a little girl who loved the way it shone in the sun and convinced her skeptical mom to let her keep it. Maybe it's her favorite ring now. Maybe she wears it every day. My mom's going to call the vendor and try to get me another one, and this time, I'm going to try really, really hard not to lose it. I want to be the kind of person who can have nice things.
On a related topic, I have once again resolved to learn how to cook. Tomorrow night, I am making baked salmon and couscous with vegetables for my boyfriend and his brother, and the recipe doesn't look that hard, so cross your fingers for me! This could be the dish that gives me the cooking bug at last! Maybe I can finally be the kind of person who can host a nice dinner party. Well, but I'd have to clean, wouldn't I? Hmmmm. One thing at a time....
What’s in my stereo at home:
What’s in my car:
What's in my CD player at work: