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Sometimes–and only sometimes–part of me wants to pick up and move down to Florida* so that I can see my extended family and inlaws more often. I learned a couple years ago that I actually like my family. (My mother’s family.) I grew up not seeing much of them. And now that my father’s side of the family has stopped inviting me to family gatherings,** I have nothing keeping me up here.

And I like my inlaws. In fact, I’m currently penning a how-to book called How to Renovate Your House on the Cheap by Enslaving Your Elderly Parents.

On the other hand, though, that would severely curtail My Alone Time, which mostly consists of drinking bourbon, eating peanut butter out of the jar with my hands, reading Metafilter, and listening to the music that N can’t stand. And sometimes it’s music that no self-respecting musophile would admit to enjoying, under pain of death even. Like post-Gabriel Genesis. Or Josh Turner (whom NPR seems to like, so maybe he’s not totally uncool)(that was said in half-seriousness). Or the Dead.

Or post-Toys in the Attic Aerosmith. Very post-.

Twenty years ago, when I was in high school (and oh my god I can’t believe I just typed that), I got mono. I started coming down with it the week of spring break, but I didn’t want to tell my parents that I was running a fever and feeling a bit delirious and tired, because I had plans to play tennis*** with this cute boy from school and I was not about to be stopped.

So, the Monday school resumed, my mother found me standing in the shower, dry, staring numbly at the hot/cold water knobs and unable to figure out what the next step was. The doctor confirmed it and thus began my month of quarantine.

As much as I like to be alone, I can’t say that I enjoyed this month, because I also had an almost unbearable–and tenacious–case of strep throat. Seriously, it was bad. It was so bad that for the first time in my young life, food held no appeal, and I couldn’t taste anything. My parents made me milkshakes every day, which I refused. Milkshakes.

MILKSHAKES!

I lost about 15 pounds, which actually put me at a healthy weight. (When I returned to school, people would stop me and ask what happened, and I told them I’d been away at an unwed mothers home.)

The school sent a tutor every week to bring me homework assignments and give me tests and whatnot. I finished everything within an hour. Public school is a joke.

This meant that I spent most of my time watching MTV. You might not remember this, but 1990 was not a great year for popular music. As such, in my febrile state, I watched an unchanging and fairly small rotation of videos. Of them all, Nothing Compares 2 U was the most tolerable, but then there was also Adam Ant’s pathetic comeback attempt, Room at the Top. Also, we had Onion Skin, by Boom Crash Opera, a band so mind-blowingly awful and improbably popular that I have to assume they made a pact with the devil. And then, of course, there was “Hold On,” by Wilson Phillips (which, by the way, was the number one song of 1990), who had not sold their souls to the devil in exchange for fame–they were actually his henchmen and I will not be linking to their video.

Finally, though, there was a song that somehow resonated with me, as bad as it is. To this day, I really, really love it. I even bought the mp3 from Amazon last year.

Aerosmith, “What It Takes”

So when I am alone, I listen to this song. Really, it’s not so bad. A sad accordion song will do it for me every time.

*Other times, I want to pick up and move due to the fact that we do, in fact, own a house there now, and also to the fact that the weather in NYC is ready to kill me right now.
**I can’t imagine why, though I suspect I should blame Obama. I miss the Struffoli but not a lot else.
***All these odd revelations about me today! I think that was probably the last time I picked up a tennis racket, by the way. I should be glad my spleen didn’t explode.

I found, via the Cinetrix, this Atlantic article about giant cocktails, which is well worth the read. The accompanying video features a drink described as “blue as a David Hockney swimming pool,” and that’s the sort of prose that makes me want to throw in the (bar) towel because I have never, EVER, come up with anything close to that good. And writing about drinking is my specialty! Or perhaps it’s not so much the writing as the doing that’s my specialty. Anyhow. Gimme my Fucking Book Deal already.

I challenge anyone to sit on “chat” with eBay’s customer support for 75 minutes and not drain a bottle of wine. Having a rather annoying technical log-in issue, not very interesting, and not very RESOLVED, either. The worst part is that I don’t feel a thing. Buzzkill.

After all was said and done, I typed, “this is actually really embarrassing that I can’t figure out what’s wrong because I work in IT,” and “Darwin P,” on the other end, typed, “It’s okay.”

So I’ve drunk all the wine and I polished off the bourbon days ago and now I am drinking the Genepi, which is a rather cloying and viscous remainder from N’s trip to the French Alps. (To be cured of homosexuality. It didn’t work.) There’s almost nothing left. It’s either that, the jalapeno tequila, or the 8-year-old grappa with the cork broken off in the bottle. WHAT I write about drinking, that’s what I do.

The other night I happened to catch The Harder They Come, a film I could watch over and over again. One winter I had a job working in an unheated artist’s studio. There was a boom box and a crate of ancient cassettes, and the soundtrack was the only listenable one in the bunch (the others being, like, Hot Tuna or something). I still really like the album, despite the adverse conditions associated with it. But then again, I like the smell of turpentine, as well as a bevy of things Other People find distasteful, so whatever.

Toots and the Maytals was my first real concert (not including Sha Na Na and…uh…Weird Al). 1987 I think? God I wish I still had that t-shirt.

The sad legacy of such music, however, is that it’s now the province of bands with the [adjective] [color] [animal] name algorithm. And frat boys.

I’m going nowhere here. I’ll just leave you with this. For those of you who love original and indigenous sounds. Don’t forget to keep the beat with the upper half of your body.

Given the recent uptick in traffic, I thought I’d avail myself of the opportunity to promote shit that I like. It will help you understand. Because I’m concerned that I’m inadvertently giving you the impression that I a) have more than the slightest awareness of pop culture, b) consort with folks outside of my LARP circle, and c) talk to people at parties. This was like an albino hunchback riding a unicorn.*

Anyhow. Two bands I love, one book recommendation, and an unassailable holiday gift idea.

Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, this incredible Italian post-punk band:

T!S!T!T!, Oh Look, a Grenade!

Binary Sunrise, from Dallas, TX, who sound like so many things, all of them wonderful:

Binary Sunrise, Five Minutes

Everyone else I’m listening to, as per usual, is dead and gone and I don’t want you to know about them anyhow.

Book recommendation: Two Dollar Radio’s Some Things That Meant the World to Me, by Joshua Mohr. I read it during my St. Louis adventure. It’s a simultaneously creepy and poignant story about a drunk haunted by his past, and I enjoyed it immensely and not just because it’s like my life story (minus San Francisco, which might be the only town I hate more than Atlanta or Chicago)(Yeah you heard me).

Finally, hey, are you looking for a Christmas gift to amuse/alienate your loved ones? I can’t think of a better gift than Love Is a Four-Letter Word, which is available at finer bookstores everywhere and the bookshelf at the National Review. You can even read an excerpt here, and that’s the only time I’m givin’ it away for free.

*Did you know that “unicorn” is a term for a single woman at a swinger’s club? I learned that recently.