Munchy's

Ever since moving to Nashville I've wanted to do a photo project of the signs on Jefferson St. but haven't yet made the time to to walk the street and document the awesomeness so I have just one right now. This below - for Munchy's - is the original, the first sign I saw in the neighborhood when I was in Nashville for work before we moved, driving around with no idea of where I was. That time, and often since, I was compelled to read it out loud in a voice deeper and more male than my own. It's almost a growl. If I'm driving with Matthew, he'll chime in.

MUNCHY'S. FOOD YOU EAT...WHEN YOU GOT TH' MUNCHYS

LOL Lyrics

A friend gave Matthew a giant rap and hip hop mix which we've had in the car and the first time we drove around Nashville listening I was cracking up, hard. A few choice lyrics that really did make me laugh from Wallpaper, Spank Rock and Tyga are below. When I listen closely to the whole songs though, and pay attention to all the words, I get bummed out because they're often misogynistic and stereotypical. Peaches, on the other hand, I LOVE. She, too, is crude but she's creative and sticks tired old gender norms up her a-double-s.

"Get chicks at the farmers' market / white girls buy produce / take them home, make them drink Grey Goose / white boy wasted / glue stick pasted / stupid faced-ed" - Wallpaper, STUPidFACEDD

"Did a full strut / when we pulled up / she said she like D's / I said Deeeez Nuts" - Spank Rock, Loose

"I got ya grandma on my dick" - Tyga, Rack City

"You think that it's a synch / to get up in my ginch" - Peaches, The Inch

Note: I've never felt older than when I just Googled ginch. I was pretty sure I knew what it meant due to context clues but I wanted to be certain. And yea, I was right.

"Gonna sell those tickets advance, baby / an immense gig up in your pants, baby / the tent's so big in your pants, baby" - Peaches, Tent In Your Pants

"I think your mac needs a lot more ram / be my Moog and I'll twiddle your knob / be my corn and I'll nibble your cob" - Peaches, Hit It Hard

I'm a little ambitious / and I want my wishes / so I gotta fuckticious / Sid Vicious / doing all my dirty dishes" - Peaches, Bag It

"You can pat my ben / pat my ben / pat my ben-a-tar" - Peaches, Stick It To The Pimp

Hoff sighting

Hoff sighting in a LA promoter office yesterday. This post is dedicated to Neil Rinden, with whom I recently had a text conversation based on the premise of someone overdosing on Zoloft while pregnant with siamese quadruplets fathered by David Hasselhoff. I DON'T KNOW, I THINK I WAS TIRED.

Let's talk about taxes

"I wish I brought gold stars," our new tax accountant said. She was sitting in our living room, going through my piles of paper, receipts that were scanned, blown up to 8x10, and separated by category. "You're so prepared, you're making my job easy." I wasn't sure I heard her right but wanted to hug her, just in case.

This time last year my stomach was a mess of nerves from letters we got from the IRS and emails from our tax accountant. We owed XXXX to the state and XXXX to the feds, totaling approximately XXXXX more dollars than we had in savings. We signed paperwork pledging our intention to begin the government payment plan at a frightening interest rate and called the IRS to make sure we were doing everything correctly - their letters are dense and minimally readable to us, two fairly literate people. The woman on the phone warned us. We'd get snowed, she said. It'd be better to take out a bank loan and pay the bank back over time than owe mounting sums to the government. I wanted to puke.

But we were so lucky. Yes, we'd moved across the country from a cheap state (KY) to an expensive one (CA) thinking that it would be better for my job. We'd decided that it was worth my husband quitting his job, not realizing how hard it would be for him to get another library position, and we were paying far more money in rent and insurance and just about everything except for gas since we walked (me) or skateboarded (Matthew) to most places in Oceanside. We were lucky because even though we'd blown our money, tax season was just a few months before my work season so within a few months we'd be able to start turning my paychecks over to the IRS to get out of debt. This was by no means a fun process but it was doable because I earned the majority of my income in the summer. With most jobs, that would have been impossible. Of course, the job I have now caused the problem in the first place.

The only time in my life I've known exactly how much money I made was when I had a fixed salary publishing job. I was the representative for our union there for awhile and signed off on paperwork lobbying for tiny raises, amounts like $10 a week that didn't affect anyone's lifestyle or livelihood. Drinking money, we called it. At every other point, I worked for cash or several jobs at once and the yearly total fluctuated wildly so I just always lived within my means, whatever those means were. Without a clear concept of how much I made or needed to make, I just lived simply and saved enough to do things I wanted without worrying. I realize now what an enviable position that was even if I was never rich. I always got a small tax refund back at the end of the year and didn't give it much more thought.

In the past few years, however, a series of misfilings and underreportings kicked off my tax problems. Without directly causing the problems - I didn't know not enough taxes were being withheld and didn't know important documents hadn't been sent to me to file - I still wasn't savvy enough to catch anyone's mistakes. I'd had friends tell me to start tracking deductions but I never quite understood what that meant and how much it would benefit me so I continued to hum lalalala in my head while they gave me advice. I do have to take responsibility for being that willfully ignorant. When the IRS letters started arriving in the mail, I panicked. I was stressed and felt stupid and in that state fled to the self-help aisle in Barnes & Noble.

HOW TO BE A GROWN UP: THE TEN SECRET SKILL EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW

This book reminded me a lot of something I would be terribly embarrassed to buy. I had to take off the jacket cover because I couldn't bear to see Stacy Kaiser smiling at me, head cocked to the side with her perfect hair, perfect eye make up, perfect teeth. Perfect grown up, unlike me. The book's blue binding, stripped of its cover, sat on the bookshelf next to my bed and I looked at it from time to time and thought about how I should read it. I tried, once, and walked away aggravated. I'm not saying it's a bad book; I didn't read enough to fairly judge it. I just wanted to unlock the secrets of taxes not take a quiz on whether I was a "fully loaded" adult overall. I donated the book to Goodwill and went to the public library where I checked out J.K. Lasser's 1001 Deductions and Tax Breaks 2011: Your Complete Guide to Everything Deductible. Woo! Down the street to Pierview Coffeeshop I went to drink a gallon of coffee, read the entire book, and type up ten pages of notes.

When we moved to Nashville I got the name of a local tax accountant who's familiar with music touring from the business side. I'd been saving receipts all year: moving expenses, business purchases, health care, phone bills, charitable donations. The weekend before she made her house call to us - An accountant who comes to you and then fills your ears with praise? Yes please! - we went through everything and got out the scanner, printer, paperclips, highlighters, and post it notes. Then we waited with a certain amount of dread. Helene showed up, sat on the couch, and spread everything out on the ottoman. She asked us good questions and gave us good info. When she left, I had a moment. "She gets me. She gets us!" It was more or less ridiculous. What wasn't ridiculous is that we broke even and Helene charged us less for her work than her initial quote. Because I made her job THAT EASY, I'd like to think. Thank you J.K. Lasser, maybe next time How To Be a Grown Up.

Waking up in Nashville

Lawnmowers and wedding ponchos

Blogger just redid its format so I can see all the drafts of posts that I've started without publishing or deleting over the years and I just found this line from November 2009: I may be in denial but I still refuse to believe that I need a binder to plan a wedding. God, I'm stubborn sometimes. Enough people tell me I need a binder and I will steadfastly refuse to buy (into) it. My wedding was a still screaming success but that binder represented something much larger to me, as do lawnmowers.

I can't remember ever consciously thinking about lawnmowers but when we rented this house in Nashville with a yard and Matthew mentioned buying a lawnmower, I FLIPPED. I instantly hit a wall of hatred for lawnmowers and I straight-up refused to buy one, or at least a large, loud, gas-powered one. "Fuck lawnmowers," I believe I put it. Because I'm not completely irrational, I admitted that our house is attached to a yard, a yard we'd been thinking would be awesome for Patsy, and that it needed to be mowed but I would only consider a hand-pushed rotary blade mower. Or scissors. "I will get down on my hands and knees and cut every blade of grass in sight with scissors before I buy a big lawnmower."

Matthew was intrigued by my vehemence and probed at my reasoning: Was it the expense? The environment? The noise? Did the lawnmower represent the suburbs and I was recoiling out of some sort of urban principle? No, yes, yes, and yes again. I don't care for big yards. If I'm going to have a yard, I'd prefer some trees, flowers, vegetables and rocks to keep it from being so grassy. And if I do have a lot of grass, I'd prefer to also have some sort of grazing animal who keeps that shit in check. Note: Patsy has been grazing. She bites at the grass with an OCD-like tic when she gets excited but then she comes inside and pukes so the positive is outweighed by the vomit. In the end we didn't get any lawnmower because our landlord gave us the number of a guy who will cut the lawn for us. Matthew's allergies have kicked in so badly here that he can barely breathe at times and I'm rarely home so this is the best option for now.

Now, back to weddings! Everyone knows that when I got engaged, I dreaded all the fuss. I was extremely self-conscious about telling people at first because the news often elicits a lot of squealing and "let me see the ring"s and it made me uncomfortable. If I were in a rom com, I would be the friend of Jennifer Aniston who rolls her eyes and smokes a lot of cigarettes. Mandy once likened me to Miranda from Sex in the City. My close friends all get it and buffered their comments like this, "I know how you are but I'm soooooo excited for you!" And that was just fine. People who don't know me quite as well have told me not to be "too cool for school" and that I'm "trying" to be some way. I can usually brush it off or explain myself but every now and then it totally gets to me and I've cried to Matthew, literally tears rolling down my face, that I'm not trying to be anything. I'M BEING MYSELF. Ask my mom. I was like this in f'ing preschool. I declined her offer to go to Disney World when I was ten. Sometimes I wish I knew how to be more gushy. I wish I loved costume parties, board games, team sports, and lawnmowers but I just don't.

HAVING SAID THAT

Sara gave us a framed photo for our wedding, a photo of a fence. Handwritten in cursive underneath is something along the lines of tearing down our heart-fences and how we will not be safe but we will be saved. We didn't put it up in our Kentucky home but it hung in the hallway in Oceanside and it's in our bedroom in Nashville. I sent her a photo of it the other day when I was lying in bed looking at it. She wrote back and said she was happy I liked it, that she thought it might be too cheesy for me when she bought it. "Even I let the cheese in sometimes," I wrote back.

Two of my friends were recently engaged. I heard about Casey first and I pretty much started jumping up and down and had to call her because I was in Tennessee but if we'd been in the same city, it's possible that I would have squealed right in her face. How's that for a turn of events? I'm really, really happy for her. A bit later I called her back and left a long message on the topic of engagement photo shoots and how so many people not only do them but seem to find themselves picnicking in their shoots. I'm guessing, but I doubt most of these couples ever go on picnics until they get engaged and the next thing you know they're sitting on a blanket in a field, cracking up, holding hands, and feeding each other grapes. Because Casey's sense of humor is similar to mine, I think her and Bob's engagement picnic would be hilarious so I offered to fund the shoot. She hasn't gotten back to me on that. She did, however, send me an incredible photo the other day. A few months back we had a long, protracted Facebook exchange on the subject of ponchos when I bought a poncho on impulse and was still grappling with the implications. Yes, ponchos have implications. Casey was all for the poncho even though it was vaguely reminiscent of the baha circa 1995 and when she got engaged I said I'd get her a wedding poncho.

WELL, THEY EXIST. Who am I to make jokes about a wedding poncho? Or bridal cape as this Etsy shop calls it.

Pulphead

My favorite book so far this year: Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I found it at Parnassus Books, an independent book store in Nashville opened by Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes, and until these essays I had no clue I was so interested in Bunny Wailer, Christian rock festivals, ancient cave paintings in Tennessee, Tea Party marches, strange and violent animal behavior, the One Tree Hill house in Wilmington, DE, Michael Jackson, the questionable death of a census worker in Eastern Kentucky, long-lost Blues recordings, or the forgotten work and possibly repugnant personality of French German naturalist Constantine Rafinesque. Oh, and Axl Rose.

Athens of the South

Before Nashville was Music City, it was called Athens of the South because it had more institutions of higher education than any other Southern city in the 19th century, the first public school system in the South, and an educational leader who aimed to bring the classics to Tennessee via the study of Greek, Latin, and Philosophy. When the time came for the state to celebrate its 100th birthday in 1895, Nashville had an expo and built an exact replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, minus the ruins. Today it stands in Centennial Park.

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I sat on the couch yesterday and teared up because I loved the song Matthew played for me on vinyl. When we got back from the bar last night, I did some research and found out it's a cover from MIAMI VICE. I am forced to admit that the song, Crockett's Theme, originally by Jan Hammer, covered by FPU then remixed by Tiga, a song (FPU version) I was already starting to think of as my song might be best accompanied by a shot of Don Johnson walking down the beach in a white blazer and lavender pants.

Laughing quietly to myself

About how I thought I was texting Matthew but accidentally wrote our van driver in Scranton and 1) called him baby and 2) told him that the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of vacationing in Canada. "I don't even know your name," he said after reading the texts aloud to everyone in the van. Thanks, Phil.

Flashdance!

My friend Matty does stuff like this. Flashdance!

California and back mix

This time last year I thought about putting together a mix called Coast Highway. We were a few months into our California year and I was spending a good amount of time driving up and down the Coast Highway and I-5, playing music in the car and thinking about how scenery affects my choices. In footwear: I was regularly wearing flip flops even though I don't like flip flops. In music: it got sunnier to match the relentless beam of Southern California light. I still adored the darker stuff but it was harder to connect to in such proximity to so many stoned surfers. On our drive back towards Ohio and Nashville in December, I considered but didn't follow through on making an I-40 mix. And over the many times I've driven between Cincinnati and Nashville these past three months I've thought, "Okay fine, now it's the I-65 mix, are we doing this or not?"

This mix is all of that. I don't know how to describe its character except as snapshots of wildly different landscapes and highways and (mental) states through music. To drive in California is awfully different than in Tennessee. In California the drivers are aggressive and they are assholes but they're good at what they do. SoCal is a car culture. They drive fast and you have to get used to it but once you do, you know what to expect and it's all good. Note: so California of me to say "all good" like that.

In Tennessee, the drivers turn corners and into driveways with the speed of a snail but the rest of the time they are ERRATIC. Highway drivers cut lanes, many at a time, with no provocation, no blinkers, and without the space to do so. The only predictable element is that there seem to be no agreed upon rules. I was on a rant about it when Matthew told me, "Well, you know Tennessee only started requiring driving tests in 1998."

"WHAT? There are a bunch of old people on the road who've never taken a driving test?"

"No, there are a bunch of 30-year-olds on the road who've never take a driving test."

"That explains so much."

Hello - Lionel Richie feat. Jennifer Nettles - Lionel gets back to his Southern roots. Just go with it.

Future Starts Slow - The Kills - Inspires some of the best seated-in-a-car-dancing I've ever done.

Dark Allies - Light Asylum - Makes me want to beat my fists on my legs, head bang, and throw myself against a wall. My dream house has a room with padded walls.

We Have Everything - Young Galaxy - "Help me forget all the worry worry, just split the sky and free me to be golden" = cross-country driving optimism.

The High Road - Broken Bells - The high road is hard to find. Or is it?

Midnight Rider - Patti Smith - I was sitting at a Burbank train station when I finished Patti Smith's book Just Kids and my impulse was to turn back to page one and read it again. I started re-listening to her music then and haven't stopped.

Baptized in Black Light - Kenna - I like referring to Kenna as my boyfriend or as our "brother husband" when Matthew is within earshot. I am sort of kidding.

Celestica - Crystal Castles - Speaking of Mormons, I associate this with palm trees and the Mormon temple on the side of the highway near San Diego. I think this would come as a surprise to the Canadian duo.

Ok - Beastie Boys - The Beastie Boys are in my personal hall of fame and I listen to them on every single highway I ever have, and ever will, drive on.

B.S.E. - Young Galaxy - Intoxicated by reinvention. Intoxicated by transformation. Yes.

Look at Miss Ohio - Miranda Lambert - "Miranda" and "Lambert" are two of the new words I've learned since working in Country music.

10 Mile Stereo - Beach House - We bought the Beach House CD Teen Dream from a record shop in Carlsbad just after moving to California.

Sweet Disposition - The Temper Trap - When I play the drums, my practices will probably be a lot like this video.

Goth Star (Pictureplane Cover) - HEALTH - Last.fm tagged this as "witch chill". HAAAAA. There should be a Mad Libs specifically for music genres: just add "chill", "wave", or "gaze" to your noun of choice.

Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake - Zola Jesus - "I love the feeling when you hear a song that is so overwhelming and powerful it makes your veins hurt. I'd like to write one of those songs one day" - ZJ

Toledo, OH