though everything has been pretty ridiculously beautiful on this dear little utah trip, there are a few things that deserve standing ovations. maybe things like the Inadvertent Navy/Navy TWINS! or, the return of the Great Action Shot Adventure (featuring new player ASHMAE! doing her one of the kind Russian folk dance/karate chop move) or, the audition for wikipedia's new fistpump image! or, making puppeteering dreams come true at kneaders: or, miraculously adorable/awkward action shots: so here is to glorious, glorious, reunions of transpacificists nationwide:
sometimes i open my email and see treasures such as this: which make me want to cry with delight (SO CUTE!) and pain (why am i not the one sitting next to that precious cargo!??) (PS this panda on a plane was so perfect because i just saw kung fu panda last night and it was awesome.)
my dear friend spencer (don't mind the creepy photo), who now has a stellar beard a lovely wife who bakes delicious things in a bakery, started sending me unbearably cute things a few years ago. i'm not sure why. but thankfully, the more and more cheesy i get, the more and more friends seem to send me unbearably cute/weird things. check these chicken police out from sharky shark:
if it wasn't apparent from my post on power pop ballads, it should be painfully apparent now: i am in love with top 40 pop. i do not know how this started, but i do know that every time i am the car i turn on the radio. tonight i actually listened to delilah. her breathy voice soothed my tattered little nerves and i sank into her tonally-imbalanced selection of love songs ("you're the one that i want" AND "everything i do i do it for you") with something that very closely resembled relief.
i have a suspicion that my top 40 love started out ironically (like my now very enthused love of the high five, the word "awesome," raising the roof, and shouting "woot woot" in reference to anything from california). it may also coincide with my increasingly frequent steps into the arena known as "middle aged interests" (no offense).
my love for jason mraz is deep, abiding, unironic, and unapologetic. and i am glad that he has made it to the commercially successful world of top 40 pop. like, truly, and selfishly. it means that he's on the radio a lot more. anyway, shortly after moving to iowa i became absolutely convinced that his new song would be on some station at any given moment of the day. my hunch was confirmed on countless drives. but sometime three weeks ago i stopped hearing the song on the radio. completely unacceptable. in retaliation, i started to listen to the radio even more and with a sort of unidentifiable desperation. sure, i could have just bought the song on iTunes but something more was at stake--sanity or something like that. i had become so convinced of my theory--that everything in the world would be okay if i could just hear this one silly song once a day while driving in the car--that it really did feel like a betrayal to find out that i was wrong.
so tonight, after being deterred on detour after detour trying to drive the single mile home, a miracle happened. i was at a stop light staring at all the trees with the christmas lights twinkling. it was dark and really, really cold and i heard the dulcet, cheesy intro of that dulcet, cheesy song and i just started to cry because, well, it was dark, cold, and the christmas lights were twinkling and deep down something unthawed and i was thankful. when i got home i bought the song and it felt oh so right. so this one goes out to jason mraz:
i mean, seriously, so cheesy and so lovely: Look into your heart and you'll find love love love love Listen to the music of the moment, maybe sing with me All - ah peaceful melody And it's our God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love loved
a friend pointed out these two treasures that iTunes failed to put on the list (travesty!) Anything for Love - Meat Loaf (I was very surprised this didn't come up but I defintely watched it and the following Dr. Pepper commeercial last night to make up for it!)
Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes (the real atrocity is that I don't actually own this song...easily remedied!)
i love how my computer knows me better than a lot of real people...oh algorithms, i trust you with my life.
lia & trish both posted things on secrets and now i will reveal one of mine (not so secret, actually). i like--no, love, thrive--on power pop ballads. and the cheesier/sappier the better. much to my dismay, this once ironic indulgence has now become the real mccoy. you can only listen to "i would do anything for love" and "total eclipse of the heart" so many times before getting sucked into the extravagance. this is the exact moment when i tried to convince people that these were really finely crafted pop songs and merited the same respect as, say, a john cage composition. funny how few people seemed to agree with me on that. this being said, tonight i used the "genius" function on my iTunes for the first time. and boy, what a treasure trove! and no, it does not trouble me in the slightest that i actually own all of the following songs:
tonight i put the fire on and learned three new songs on my ukulele. then i went to emily & craig's who made me cocoa and i played them said new songs. if winter is going to be like this i'm totally in!
This is what happens when you get a bunch of writers together after reading an essay that talks about tree climbing: Post-climb, scouting out the next tree, late afternoon falling in the meadow surrounded by trees
From Thoreau's "Walking":
I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before — so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me — it was near the end of June — on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward.
It is one of the million reasons why I fall in love with Iowa a little bit more every day.
[Thanks to Kendra & Sarah for the lovely images/text)
