Not So Deep Thoughts

My apartment gets FABULOUS water pressure at 4:30 in the morning. It’s been awhile since I’ve had such a pleasant shower…

And why, you might ask, am I showering myself at such an early hour? Well, in a few minutes I’ll be off to Rome, Italy to see Mom and Guy!! Woohoo!!

Here are some photos to pass the time while I’m gone…

Happy Endings - Final Run

After a record breaking run that finished off the final 2007 season at the Matadero 3 Theater, we were asked to come back and dazzle the crowds once again. Three sold out performances later, dozens of roses strewn across the stage and the smell of fresh success in the air - we closed the doors of the Matadero behind us, leaving our footprints in the legacy of this womb of the fine arts, and went to buy a round of beers to celebrate, effectively spending the entire profits we made on the show.
Good times…

(Oh, and the photos of us acting like jackasses in the basement of the theater… ummm, we were really bored. And this is what we do when we´re bored.)

Another Friday’s Night

Once again, the Queens of Friday’s Night, Jacki and Krystal show my why God invented Friday. Here you can see the consequences…

Arrivederci!!!

Photos!!!

From 5 Months Ago!!!

Christmas in the US o’ A!

I once again make the long voyage home to spend time with the loved ones. Good to see that my family still rocks and the good friends still come to pick me up at my mom’s house because I don’t have a car anymore. Four Christmas Feasts with the Fam, 10 Year High School reunion, New Year’s Eve in New York City with Brother Mike, and carousing around town with the old buddies. Good times.

Click on photo to see more! (or here)

This is the biggest of the albums to come, so if you can make it through this, you can make it the rest of them.

Ciao!

The beautiful thing about writing a rant like that last post is that one is quick to write a follow up post so that the first thing that people who stop by the site see ISN’T a hostile outburst against some undeserving folk. (Although, to be honest, Paula Abdul still deserves it.)

And as far as follow-up posts like this, they too are good for the blog/frequency ratio, because anyone who reads this will probably wonder it is I felt the urge to rant about and read the original blog entry anyways. Therefore, some kind of post that makes no reference to either of these posts is almost guaranteed for the near future. Maybe something nice, like “Why I Love Slippers” or “A Smile: They’re Free.”

Who knows. I’ll just be sure to do it before I get around to doing the 90s section of music; I just know that Wilson Phillips is going to give me an aneurysm.

Peace.

I dunno what came over me, but I’ve decide to take a fairly simple year end project for my history class and turn it into a freaking doctoral thesis. The original assignment was to choose one song, transcribe it, analyze it and write something about it that includes at least something you’ve learned in class to show the teacher that you’ve actually absorbing something over last year.

So, during one of our classes, we were covering some of the bigger hits of the 1950s. Four of the songs he put on were by women, and I couldn’t help noticing a theme in the lyrics they sang: I Love You, I’ll Wait For You, I’ll Be True To You, Will You Be Kind Enough To Have Me As Your One And Only Lady?

Where was the attitude? Where was the defiance? Where was the ‘I-Am-Woman-Hear-Me-Roar!’ on the radio waves?

Looking into it a bit more, I found a list of songs that have reached #1 on the Billboard Lists over the years - every # 1 song since the 1800s… seriously. I though it might be interesting to compare how the image of the female was portrayed in popular music over the times and how it might have effected the youth at which it was targeted.

So I started with the 1950s and the following few decades, picking out any #1 single that was fronted by a woman singer. Listening, reading… And what a joy it was, I felt like I was back in my old house on a Sunday afternoon as my dad blasted oldies on his Hi-Fi. With each song I found, I would put it up on YouTube and search Google for the lyrics. 100 songs I got through on the first day. It was a lot of cutting and pasting, but it was a great to relive such a blast from the past.

Until today that is…

I got to the 80s.

I seriously started to twitch as I wrote that.

Fucking awful

That’s all I have to say.

Paula, Debbie, Cyndi, Gloria, Whitney, Janet, Madonna - Shame on you. Shame, Shame, Shame.

God! I thought that women were finally coming into their own come the mid 60s and 70s as Nancy stomped around in her boots and Janice and Bobby stowed away on trains.

Granted, I knew something was going wrong when disco slipped its way into the #1 list come the end of the 70s, but I was so blind to what was coming ahead in the 80s. Atrocious.

I’m gonna put on some Ray Charles just to get this awful feeling out of my head.