"When I play, I am making love to the audience," said Arthur Rubenstein. Dude. Me too.
I heard the Lemonheads' version of "Mrs. Robinson" on KROQ the other day. This song used to bother me because it's a great cover, but I would wonder, how many kids listening to this have never heard of Simon & Garfunkel?
This time, I thought, I wonder how many kids listening to this have never heard of the Lemonheads?
Then I thought, How many KIDS actually still listen to KROQ?
To quote another song,
What a drag it is getting old.
I have recently started having some occasional bouts of nausea. It usually happens in the car, but has, sometimes, happened at work. In general, I don't actually, you know, vomit, but it's uncomfortable and if I'm around other people, I get very self-conscious about it. Luckily this almost never happens.
For a while, I thought that the nausea was a portent of a migraine. Why did I think that, you ask? Because almost every bout of nausea was portentous of a migraine, i.e., they went together, hand in sweaty little hand.
But! I have been extremely lucky lately (knocks on wood, spits in the wind, shouts from high atop the thing), and I haven't had an actual migraine in a couple of weeks. The nausea persists, though. Then I suspected that it was a reaction to the stress I mostly always experience at work. I guess it's possible, but when and where it happens makes this, to me, an untrained professional, seem unlikely.
Sometimes, I can stave away the uncomfortable-ness of it by singing. Obviously I can only do this in the privacy of my car (in other places I just take a lot of deep breaths) or bathroom, and I've got my own little playlist of songs I, with my limited range and unpleasant tone, can manage. Sometimes I just go for it (as Patrick, my brother, and Jules can attest, having witnessed it on a recent drive to Northern California. I figured my own brother wouldn't mind, but turns out he had headphones on and/or slept the whole way. I suspect he was listening to white noise meant to drown me out).
One of the songs I get a kick out of singing is that instrumental masterpiece by those philosophically challenged Canadians, Rush. I've been fond of Rush since forever (I should probably admit that this affection was encouraged by an old boyfriend). Their lyrics are incredibly stupid, the actual music borders on... bad, but I really love them. Wait, did I say "love"? Fine. I love those songs. along with Geddy Lee, however, requires more range, vocal cords and talent than God saw fit to endow me with, so their song YYZ is perfect for me.
As an unabashed dork, vocalizing the guitar and bass parts, the cheesy keyboard line, and the super precise and crazy complicated drum parts is THE BEST THING EVER.
I even add in the wood block crack thing that happens about 2/3 in, and yes, it makes me proud when I keep up, rhythm and pitch-wise, with this 10/8, 4 minute, 25 seconds of perfection.
My colleague offered me cake yesterday. "What kind of cake," I asked, thinking of that scene in the West Wing when Donna offers Sam some cake, trying to take his mind off of election results that would make him the Democratic nominee in a race he had no intention of competing in. Donna's answer is, "It's cake." Here's how my exchange went.
Colleague: Miss Palma, would you like some cake?
Me: What kind of cake?
Colleague: Cake I found on the street.
Me: That's the best kind of cake.
This is why Aaron Sorkin is Aaron Sorkin, and I am not.
I was listening to NPR this morning, and I noticed that the news lady used the term “bad actor” in describing people who indiscriminately shoot people in Chicago (it was a story, I think, about a Pastor in a small neighborhood who apparently blames Rahm Emanuel for the fact that while gun violence is supposedly decreasing across the country, it hasn’t changed significantly in Chicago, and may in fact [if I had been listening more carefully I might have caught this more definitively] even increased due to his governance). Anyway, the NPR lady used “bad actor” to describe the people contributing to the uptick of gun violence in Chicago, and I started thinking about it.
I’ve heard it before, and it’s been bugging me. I think the first person I heard say it was Trump, while discussing the supposed rapists and murderers who come into this country illegally. So right away it rankled me because that guy has twisted and misspelled the English language in the worst of ways.
The thing is, I like calling things what they are, not by euphemisms or trendy names. And what are we saying when say “bad actor”? To me, a bad actor is someone who moves their lips while another actor is speaking their lines. Google “bad actor” and photos of Nicolas Cage and William Shatner pop up (I would include Ian Ziering in the list, and could probably come up with more, but that would be mean).
However, that search also came up with the definition of “individual or entity with prior criminal convictions,” and right there I have a problem with it. It seems we’ve been using it to describe people who have either actually committed a crime (the aforementioned rapists and murderers) but it seems to me that people also lump in people who may have committed a crime, or have committed a crime more along the lines of “jay walking,” or "littering." Bad things, yes, but not exactly moral failings (well, maybe). In other words, I don’t think calling someone a “bad actor” is good enough. So and so is a bad actor? Really? Did you seem them on SNL? Maybe we're not supposed to categorize people by what they DO, and that's the problem, but saying a person is "bad" seems not that much better. Can't we just say, So and so is a convicted felon. Killer. Liar. Cheater. Embezzler. Perjurer (I’m surprised that’s a word). Child molester. Corrupt government official. Briber.
Fishbone knew what they were doing and they called it correct:
The lyin', piss off, sack of shit
Slut trash can scumish
Dirt bag... bitch!
See? Those words have meaning. “Bad actor” is too soft. Yes, it’s mean to call someone working on the craft of acting a bad actor (some people just need to do more work. Some people need to work at Starbucks). But if that’s their only crime, who cares? It’s an opinion, it doesn’t stick, it isn't hard enough. Paul Manafort is a callous sleaze-bag, soon to hopefully be convicted of treason or some other high crime. He's not a "bad actor." Let's save that one for the people on TV.