Complete Albums

Barenaked Ladies' greatest hits album was on heavy rotation this past weekend when we were packing up all of the mismatched Tupperware in our Old Apartment and singing "Welcome to the O-hold Apartment/This is where we used to live." It was my idea to spin us some Cannuck love. I wanted to listen to a complete album. And by that I mean that I wanted to listen to an album that was good in its entirety.

Seems there are so few good Complete Albums being cut these days. In this age of the Hot Little MP3, purchased individually, beamed up instantaneously into our singular iPods, we only care about the isolated tracks which will weave well into a digital playlist. It's almost like we're regressing to the '50s when our parents bought single albums. (Or in my father's case, his brother bought him the Bread album...without the vinyl inside...just the album cover...because it was groovy). One Hit Wonder was not necessarily a derogatory.

Nowadays, I'm usually disappointed with the incompleteness of the albums I buy. There's just no cohesion, or certain tracks are just filler throw-aways. I usually test-drive them on El Napstero and am glad for this, porque la gente esta serviendo el crapo, comprende? I really like Guster's newer "Satellite" song, but the album in its entirety is weak. Weak. The rest of the tracks were like some garage band rehearsal through which even the neighbors probably had happy naps and watched "Wheel of Fortune" and didn't even notice there was a rockin' band practice next door.

There's just something about buying a brand new album, removing the shrink wrap, pulling that pristine CD out for the first time and watching it refract the light. Every teenager has pulled out the album insert to learn the words to the song that everyone will be singing in a week, or was already singing last week and she missed the memo that Van Halen was hot again.

The first album that I really loved in its entirety was the Cocktail soundtrack, which I suppose is still more of a mix, but I wore that tape right out, listening to "Wild Again" and lip-syncing to "DWBH" every night on my Walkman. Later, in high school, I would click the play button on that same Walkman and fall asleep to Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes." It's core curriculum for every teenage girl who can cry her weight in salt tears over bygone grade school tauntings and fears about the future.

My more recent favorite complete albums are Deb Talan's "Sincerely," Tori Amos' "Scarlet's Walk," India Arie's "Acoustic Soul" and pretty much everything that Stevie Wonder has ever contributed to the musical stratosphere.

I am sure the day will come when my own children (whom I imagine will love music, and will probably be very snobbish like their papa is about music), will find these CDs and think it's cool how they come with the lyrics and strange pictures of Bruce Springstein's back jean pocket and I will tell them about way back when, when you couldn't download music from your computer, but actually had to go to the Sam Goody at the mall, where you could listen to individual tracks, but where you could also ask the punk rock dude behind the counter what he thought of an album, whether it was a good album, the whole thing, or whether you should just go home and tape record - using a casette tape - "The Sign" by Ace of Base off the radio, and keep taping it until you have a whole cassette tape of the same song that you can listen to on repeat a la Brenda Walsh with "Losing My Religion" and sulk in your room like every good teenager does. And when you grow up, you can have the pleasure of listening to that song on your iPod. You can play it again and again and not have to worry about it unraveling or scratching. But you will have to worry about it getting old.

Review: "The Last Kiss"

I took "Reviewing the Arts" last semester with Professor McDreamy, so I know that a review of the arts does not have to include a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, or even a thumbs-to-the-side for that matter.

A good review, rather, teaches you something that you didn't know before you read the review. That's it. It doesn't even have to give you a plot summary, or even include a lot of dropped names of indie directors. It just has to say something unique and original about a particular work of art.

It can even be about modern morality, like this one will be, as demonstrated by "The Last Kiss" with your favorite modern man-boy, Zach Braff.

Or.
Wuh?

What is this? Reviewing the Arts class?

Naw.
Naw naw naw.

All I want to say is "The Last Kiss" is a well-done movie. I'm still thinking about it. It presents the battle of the sexes in sometimes subtle, sometimes more amplified moments, and it does it well. It makes its theme very pronounced -- YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE. YOU CAN ALWAYS CHOOSE WHO WILL BE YOUR LAST BRUNETTE, YOUR LAST KISS. YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE IN HOW YOU TREAT THE ONES YOU LOVE. YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE -- but it doesn't parade it across the sky in big caps like I just typed, like I am some kind of blimp advertiser over Fenway Park.

Rachel Bilson has some terrific movie-stah moments, even if the fumbling of her hands is still Summer Roberts all over. Jacinda Barrett of 'Real World' fame is brilliant, even if her Australian accent betrays her as a daughter of American parents. Zach Braff? I have to tell you. He's just not my favorite man-boy. I like him in 'Scrubs,' but I just don't find his boyish ways giving into manly ways. He's a wimp. He has a big nose and his lips are red like a woman's. Also? His hair is poofy. Those are the things that I see when I see Zach Braff.

One of the best lines in this movie is when Casey Affleck asks incredulously why Zach Braff would do his girlfriend wrong. "I mean...she's like a GUY!"

Maybe you had to be there. Or maybe you were already. What were your last thoughts on "Last Kiss"?

Loved Every Minute

People say they "loved every minute" of certain experiences, most often in the hyperbolic sense, like all four years of college, when you know that's really not possible, because finals? No. No, you did not enjoy every minute of finals, unless of course you were high, in which case you probably did not enjoy every minute of receiving your grades.

Or maybe you did.

But I'm kind of British in this sense. I always remember the moments that I did not enjoy and regale you with them in a way that is sometimes rawther amusing, much like a movie in which Hugh Grant plays a twit (the novelty!) and everything goes dreadfully, hilariously wrong.

So when I hear people say, "I was a Highland dancer all through high school and loved every minute of wearing a kilt!!!" I'm skeptical.

But then I think of the times when I was loving at least every other minute of life. And I know I'm blessed because there's been more than one of those times.

Grade school. I didn't love every minute of grade school. Loved most of my teachers. Loved a good handful of the boys. But junior high? Kinda bit. My mother bought me these too-small maroon polyester gym shorts (We wore school uniforms, which included gym uniforms. I'd tell you this was Pre-Vatican, but that be a lie.) and refused to take them back. She maintained that they were the correct size ("Mom, Daisy Dukes would think twice about wearing these around the house.") and so I dreaded gym day all week. In the winter, it wasn't so bad because I wore the uniform sweatpants. In the warmer weather, though, woe woe woe was me. I would sometimes rummage through the lost and found box - which smelled like a flooded basement - in the school dispensary to see if there were any more becoming gym shorts. On a good day, I wore some "lost" shorts which I had found. On a bad day, I was not loving every minute of gym class.

High school. I think it's safe to say that the minutes that I loved were few and far between. And it's a shame, because there certainly was potential there to love high school. But I treated high school much like I imagine a CEO runs a Fortune 500 company. Tirelessly. Exhaustively. My locker was my corner office. My backpack was my Blackberry. I ran club meetings like board meetings. I treated my friends like they were dog-eared cards in my Rolodex. If you were to look at my schedule in high school - and I don't just mean the courses that I took - but my actual schedule, you would fall on the floor laughing. 3:15pm, ride bus home. 4pm, write letters to Senators to exhort to choose life and abolish abortion. 5-6pm, homework. 6-9pm Dairy Queen. 9p -1am - Finish reading "David Copperfield." It's safe to say that I took myself a bit too seriously. But I was dealing with a lot of pain in my life in high school, and what better way to grieve than to fill your life with club meetings and GPAs and multiple jobs and play practices that completely distract you from the pain?

There was one glimmer of high school in which I loved every minute. My mother encouraged me to attend a writing geek camp at Kenyon College. I called home once during those two weeks. I was very busy loving every minute. I am sure somewhere I still have saved the notes that the other writing geeks wrote to me on our last day of camp. At the time, I read them, thinking, Boy, did I have them all fooled. They thought I was bubbly and nice and funny, and talented. If I went back to read them with the hindsight that 10 years removed allows a person, I will know that they were right. I was all those things. But how sad that I only allowed to be those things for two weeks of high school.

After high school graduation, I was in a musical at my church. It was the kind of musical where I learned the songs quite easily because I sang them all day, on my bike to work, making the swirly cones at Dairy Queen, eating dinner with my mother, brother, and sister. I had completely become a drami. I had a crush on every single person in the cast. Even my sister. I was so amped up on loving every single minute of life that summer, I could never fall asleep at night. I don't think I will ever have another summer like that summer. Which made leaving for college even more tragic.

College. The misery of my freshman year of college has already been well-chronicled. But after freshman year of college, I pretty much loved every minute. I met the mentors who are still my mentors. I met the friends who are still my friends. I met the man who is still my Lovey Loverpants. And my enjoyment of college life was not because of anything magical or deserved, but because of a resolve, I'm sure, just to make it good. I think that is what college taught me the most. That you can decide to be the person you want to be - no one knows you well enough to tell you otherwise. You can spend your time the way you want to spend it. You can eat the Corn Pops for dinner if you like.

The one experience in college in which I am sure I loved absolutely every millisecond was my internship in Washington DC. My internship was somewhat sub-par, but my fellow interns were delightful. My roommates were and are my Golden Girls. Washington DC in the spring and summer is a lot like a county fair. There are heaps of people all around smiling and taking pictures, the air smells like buttery popcorn and the trees look like tufts of cotton candy during cherry blossom season. My pre-husband and I were doing pretty well with the distance, and even though there was a fairly major crisis in my family that spring, I was happy. I don't know if I will ever get back to that place in my life where I feel that edified, or if I'll ever have an opportunity to explore my curiosity about art and history in a place where the museums are so free and accessible and the sun is so warm and the food is so good.

My Golden Girls from Washington DC, reunited, 2005

I am pleased and centered in my life right now. I know who I am (most days) and I know who the important people are to me. I'm still trifled by the occasional ill-placed criticism. I'm still second-guessing myself all the way through my writing. I still distract myself from the pain sometimes, and sometimes I forget to remember what I'm supposed to remember about choosing to be the person I need to be every day. But I'm glad for just having had the experiences that inform the happiness that I now know. I know that it's now possible to love every single minute of single parts in this single life, now doubled in joy and divided in sorrow by the single life joined with my own.