Thursday, March 22, 2007

Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man...

Things I love this week:

Songs: Since I got my pretty red iPod for Valentines Day I've been sort of going crazy with the iTumes downloads.
This week my most favorite download is the live version of Ben Folds covering the Elton John classic Tiny Dancer. I can't stop listening to it!
Usually live recordings drive me crazy. All I can hear is how I would have mixed it differently, or where I would have placed the mics, or how I would have boosted this and put more of the room mix here and tried to compress that a little... But every now and then I get a live recording that really captures the essence of something. By far, the best 99 cents I've spent in a while!
Biggest guilty pleasure download: Shoop by 80's sweethearts, Salt-n-Pepa because it makes me wanna shake my booty.

Speaking of music...

Best Software Download: a friend of mine turned me on to something that has changed my life.
Audio Hijack Pro
For the price of two CD's you can get this awesome little bit of software that will let you record ANYTHING that streams online. This means you can record any of those songs on Myspace that are not set for download. (Not that I would do that because that would be illegal, just saying that you could.) In theory one could use this to make MP3s from any live radio stream, any Myspace profile that have unreleased versions of songs up, or even your Skype conversations, making it perfect for Podcasting!
It is really easy to use and super user friendly. Just be warned, if you use the FREE DEMO version to try it out, the MP3s you create with that are set to self destruct. I tried to add a demo one to my iPod and it froze it, causing me to reset the whole thing and reload all 1000 songs. This does not happen with the paid version! (Sorry PC users, this is Mac only software for now)

Speaking of people who have recorded a frustrating amount of unreleased songs that I would love to get my hands on... (Like my segues here?)

Books: I finally picked up local hero Sean Nelson's book, Court and Spark. It is always cool seeing your friend's name on a book jacket, but even better when you actually, honestly love what they wrote. I have always liked Sean's writing, but I think this book proves that he's got the chops to jump from journalist to novelist without breaking a sweat if he ever wanted to. (Not that I ever doubted him)


Speaking of people who used to be film editors...

Travel: We just booked our tickets for the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC. I'm really excited to spend some quality time with my favorite city again. I've been looking over the festival website and it all looks pretty awesome. Jon is going to play a couple of showcases for people, so this is as much a business trip as it is a mini break. I'm also looking forward to spending some major quality time with my beloved H&M store (Why isn't there an H&M in Seattle? WHY?!?)
Who knows, maybe I will get really lucky and get to meet Mr. Robert De Niro. But what do you say to a living legend? (Anything will be better than babbling about jalapeno poppers like I did at Shatner when I first met him.) Must repress urge to say, "Are you talkin' to me?"

Sunday, March 18, 2007

The word surreal keeps coming to mind.

There is nothing that will give you perspective faster than breaking bread with the two men in your life (That you are not related to) who know you the best.
That is what I did tonight.
On one end of the table was one of my oldest friends, and the only other guy who has shared (or should I say endured) a living space with me as long as the man I am married to, who was sitting at the other end of the table. It was great, more than a little funny, and it left me reflective. You really can’t be anything but 100% yourself when you are surrounded by the people who know you the best and know you at your worst. It is both liberating and a little unnerving.

Thus far the last 6 months have been very “This is your life” for me. I’ve spent time with friends and relatives that I had not seen in years and gone over memories I have not thought about since they were made.
There's been a parade of the past floating through my life and it's all been very... um... educational.

Does this wig make me look smarter?


Right now I am trying to figure out what I will be doing at my next hair appointment because it is a time for a change. Since my favorite hairdresser of the last several years is moving out of state in May, it has to be a big one. I figured there is no better way than to try it on for size, so I pulled out a couple of wigs in the styles I am considering and played around a bit.

Most of my life I was a blonde. When I was young it was a super light blonde bleached by the sun. After we moved to Alaska, and we had less time in the sun, it started to get a little darker. By the time I was around 11 I started dying my hair because my color was such a non-color. I was told the color I had was in the blonde family. My hairdresser called it ash. My honest hairdresser called it mousy. He said we either needed to throw some highlights in it to make it brighter or just go for something rich in the red or the chocolate family.
I got highlights and saw how different it made me look and feel. It just made everything seem cleaner and brighter, so I kept going lighter and lighter until it was really blonde again.
As it got lighter, I noticed something else changed. People started using new words to describe me that I had never heard before. I heard Bubbly, Gregarious, Flirty, Flighty, and Air headed. (There were more than that, but I am sure you get the idea.)
I was finding that I was actually getting quite the reputation for being a “dumb blonde”. For the most part, I’ve never really cared much for what people think about me, so it didn’t bother me until I started to realize that the people I wanted to take me seriously were among those not taking me seriously.
At that point I was getting very involved in political clubs at school. I was going to marches and rallies, and really working hard to change the world. I hung out in art/coffee houses with people who shared my interests and people who would, in many ways, become my mentors. I was more interested in books and music than in boys. I was doing a lot of writing and joining and winning essay contests. But I noticed that, for me, it always seemed twice as hard to break through.
On more than one occasion, after I got a new friend to a place where they were comfortable enough to be candid with me, they would eventually say something along the lines of, “You are not anything like I thought you were when I first met you. At first I thought you were kind of bubbly and maybe even a little dingy, but you aren’t like that at all.”
I decided it was time for the anti-makeover if I ever wanted to be taken seriously.
So what did I do? I cut all of my hair off and dyed it black.
Then the strangest thing happened. I no longer heard words like Bubbly, and flirty, instead I started hearing words like; Dark, serious, brooding, and Goth!
All because of a pair of orange handled kitchen scissors and a $7.99 box of drug store hair dye!
Since then I’ve been changing my hair color every couple of years whenever the mood strikes my fancy. It’s been pretty much any color you could imagine and then some. I've rather enjoyed the new "personas" that come with each change.


Here are a couple more shots from my wigging out session just for fun. (They were all taken the same night, just changed the outfits and the wig.):



 

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