And now…a song!

Just for a change of pace, it’s a—nah, totally kidding, it’s another Green Day song, obviously.

We went down to see my Mom today (she’s doing well!), and on the way there and back, we played the CD I got this week, “21st Century Breakdown.” (Yes, I am behind. I am quite aware of that! Better late than the Twelfth of Never, right?) The song that immediately struck me was “Peacemaker.” I LOVE this song, and Ken liked it, too. I had to play it twice, and I’ve listened to it a couple more times since we got home.

I love the minor tone; I find that I am often drawn to songs with a minor tone. I love that pause in the last word, and then the final scream of the last syllable. The lyrics don’t really speak to me other than the sense of rage, especially what seems to be religious rage. It’s just a really kickass cool song, an auditory grenade. What a blast!

Well, I've got a fever
A non-believer
I'm in a state of grace
For I am the Caesar
I'm gonna seize the day
Well, call of the banshee hey hey
Hey hey hey hey hey
As God as my witness
The infidels are gonna pay

Well, call the assassin
The orgasm
A spasm of love and hate
For what will divide us?
The righteous and the meek
Well, call of the wild hey hey
Hey hey hey hey hey
Death to the girl
At the end of the serenade

Vendetta, sweet vendetta
This Beretta of the night
This fire and the desire
Shots ringing out on a holy parasite

I am a killjoy from Detroit
I drink from a well of rage
I feed off the weakness
With all my love
Call up the captain hey hey
Hey hey hey hey hey
Death to the lover that you were
Dreaming of

This is a stand off
A Molotov cocktails
On the house
You thought I was a write off
You better think again
Call the peacemaker hey hey
Hey hey hey hey hey
I'm gonna send you back to the place
Where it all began

Well now the caretaker's
The undertaker
So I'm gonna go out
And get the peacemaker
This is the neo
St. Valentine's Massacre
Well call up the Gaza hey hey
Hey hey hey hey hey
Death to the ones
At the end of the serenade

Well, death to the ones
At the end of the serenade

TURN IT UP!

Lunch and a movie

Ken’s Mom came over this afternoon, and after running by the Ford dealer to settle up the bill on Ken’s Mustang so we could pick it up after the movie, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for some lunch, beverages, and chat. My friend Aubrey wasn’t working, but her sister was, and I got to meet her! Very cute and sweet!

Then it was a quick trip to the theater where we saw—don’t judge—“The Lone Ranger.” I haven’t heard many good things about it, but I went into it thinking that it would be a fun summer movie. I’m happy to report that it was exactly that!

This is not high cinema, folks. This was a cheesy western, with prototypical western bad guys, and a prototypical good guy out to find justice. Throw in a badass sidekick to provide some comic relief, and it’s all fun. Some great action sequences, and it really is hard to go wrong with Johnny Depp. Just that sidelong, skeptical look he gives makes me laugh. And I’m sorry, but if you see the Lone Ranger on Silver, rearing up as that iconic music starts, and you don’t get at least a little bit of a thrill, there is something wrong with you!

I grew up watching Roy Rogers on TV. It was my favorite show when I was a little girl. I wasn’t born when Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger originally aired, but I remember seeing reruns (same with “I Love Lucy”). My Dad loved westerns, so I watched a lot of them when I was growing up. I still love a good western, and this was a fun diversion on a hot and humid summer afternoon.

Don’t expect a lot. If you go, just relax, have fun, eat some popcorn and your candy of choice (Twizzlers for me, Milk Duds for Ken). And go ahead and cheer when the Lone Ranger yells, “Hi-yo, Silver...away!” I did!

Dead-A-Thon

I hope everyone has enjoyed their Fourth, and is still continuing to enjoy it!

We’ve been having a relaxing day at Nutwood, with a brief run up to the Ford dealer to drop off Ken’s Mustang to be worked on tomorrow. We wanted to be sure we get it in and serviced before we head to Florida in a week or so. Ken mowed the yard, I spent a little time out on the deck, and worked on getting stuff ready for dinner tonight.

But mostly I’ve been glued to AMC watching the weekend marathon of “The Walking Dead.” It started at 1 PM today, and will go through Sunday. All the episodes of all three seasons, plus interviews with cast and crew members. I really had not intended to watch these—we have both Season 1 and 2 on DVD—but once I started, I just couldn’t turn it off. Even Ken was glued to it for a while until he headed outside. I love seeing some of my favorite moments (The introduction of Daryl, anyone? Kicking a walker and yelling, “This filthy, disease-bearing, motherless, poxy bastard!” Love it!), as well as knowing how the characters develop. Some very sad moments, too, because I know what happens to a lot of these people.

Everything is almost ready to go for dinner, and although it’s overcast, I think the rain will hold off and let us get the ribs grilled. It kind of makes me laugh that we’ll be gnawing on barbecued ribs after watching “The Walking Dead.” nom nom nom They’re showing the first season again in black and white, so we won’t watch that (although that opening scene with Rick Grimes and the little girl zombie is awesome in B&W!), but in keeping with the zombie and rib-gnawing theme, tonight’s movie of choice is one of my favorite zombie movies, “Return of the Living Dead.” Split Dog! Yip! Yip! Yip! (No dogs were harmed in the making of this movie or in this blog entry.) "Send...more...paramedics...."

Do ya wanna party? It’s party time!

Takin’ care of business

I got an early morning phone call today from the other septic company that was supposed to take a look at our “dose tank.”

Okay, so early morning for me is 9 AM, but whatever. Anyway, they could come out in the late afternoon and check it out and see what we needed to do. I got up and around and ran my errands in the morning so I could be home in the afternoon.

By “errands” I mean “beer run.”

Got home, did my weights, called my Mom and arranged to go and see her on Sunday, headed out to the deck to catch some rays...and the company showed up almost two hours early! Glad I got stuff done when I did! We needed a new pump, and they stuck around to install it. Really nice guys, and they even put all the dirt back in place where they dug, and raked it all nice and neat. We’ll be going on vacation soon, so I was happy to get that taken care of before then.

We also got the tickets for our Broadway Theater League shows, including the information about the two extra shows that aren’t part of the season, “Stomp” and “American Idiot.” We saw the former a few years ago, and agreed that we weren’t really interested in seeing it again, but you’d better believe I am ALL OVER “American Idiot!” There was an order form included for extra tickets, and I called the box office to ask if I could just send that in now, because we’re going to be out of town when they go on sale in a couple of weeks. Not a problem, the guy said, so that is all filled out and I’ll mail it tomorrow. I hope we get good seats! The show isn’t until next April, so I have plenty of time to look forward to it...and plan my outfit! Haha!

I made burritos tonight, and I tried my first ever made-from-scratch sangria, and let me tell you, this stuff is FANTASTIC. I just kind of made it up, too! I had a general idea of what to put in it, and used what I had in the fridge. BOOM, good stuff!

Tomorrow will be a Nutwood day...ribs, cucumbers, corn on the cob. More tomorrow, and I hope everyone has a great holiday!

Rock on, Citizens!

Beth’s Music Moment: Green Day’s Uno! Dos! Tré! Trilogy

Today while I was working out, I listened to the last installment of Green Day’s triple threat, “Tré!” I have to say that it is my favorite. This is just straight-up rock and roll, with a couple of slower songs in there that are quite touching.

Since I’ve listened to all three of them now, I’ll talk about them in general (but share a couple of songs from the third one). It amazes me that they released all three of these in the space of about three months, although as Rolling Stone points out, that’s the way music used to be released. It wasn’t uncommon for bands like the Stones and the Beatles to release two or even three albums in a year. But three months! These aren’t throw-away songs, either—they are all solid, fantastic punk and pop and punk-pop songs that seem to encapsulate the history of rock and roll.

I’ve written about some of my favorites from the first two albums. One of my favorites on this one is the slower “Drama Queen,” with the line “I think she’s going psycho.” Another is “Dirty Rotten Bastards.” I love the change in tempos in this longish song, and I think it really rocks! A smokin’ hot guitar solo and amazingly, a genuinely cool bass solo!



My other favorite closes out the album and the trilogy: a ballad called “The Forgotten.” It turns out this was used in one of the sparkly vampire movies...hell, what was the name of those? Oh, the Twilight movies. Yeah. Which is kind of like “eww, ick.” But I’ll forgive the guys for that, because this song is a beauty.



I don’t know what it was about that song, but as I sat there cycling away on the recumbent bike, listening to it, it got to me so bad that I cried. Is it Billie Joe’s voice? The way the song sounds? The lyrics? I don’t know, but I didn’t just tear up a little bit...I had actual tears rolling down my face. I played it again and cried more, and at the end I said, “Oh, Billie Joe!” I had to laugh a little at myself, because I was thinking, “Jeez, Beth, get a grip!” But it’s okay. I like it that music can still move me to tears. Just like Third Eye Blind said, the four right chords can make me cry. In my case, that is literally true.

So mad props to Green Day for three stellar albums. You guys blew me away with these. I was writing to Shane, and I said that if you consider this a triple album (which I really do...I don’t see how you could have just one or two of these), I’d put it right up there with that other classic triple album, “Sandinista!” by the Clash. Yeah, I went there! In some ways, it’s almost better—oh no she dih’n’t!—because “Sandinista!” had what I felt was some filler on it, with dubs and remixes. Plenty of solid, great songs, too, but there were also some that I would lift the needle and skip over. I don’t feel that way about this trilogy, and I think all the songs are excellent.

I’ve liked them from the early days (although as I mentioned recently, I got away from them for a bit), but I can say that I have a newfound respect for their talent and musicianship. These songs run the gamut for me: sweet, sad, in-your-face, funny, raunchy, balls-to-the-wall, chills-up-my-spine, and finally, as the last song played, a song that had me crying my little rock and roll heart out. Any band that can have me dancing around our workout area singing “Baby baby it’s FUCK TIME!” at the top of my voice one day and sitting there with tears rolling down my face the next day is doing something right.

If you’re like me and Joan Jett and love rock and roll, you should get these. Seriously. BUY THESE ALBUMS.

A surprisingly good girl

That's me these past few days…a good girl and always a night owl! A lot of times when Ken goes on a trip, I somehow manage to stay up until the wee hours, often going to bed at 4 or 5 AM. Since I try to get up by 10 AM, that means I don't get a lot of sleep on those nights.

I did have one night like that—I think it was Saturday night—but otherwise, I've been getting to bed at a decent time, at least for me. The evenings have cooled off a bit, enough so that Sheeba came in and curled up with me last night, and slept pressed up against my back the entire night.

To be honest, I think tonight will be another late night. I'll be watching "Under the Dome" at 10 PM, and I already have a bit of a hankering for some Rock Band after that. We'll see. I've watched very little TV while he's been gone...not even any Norman Reedus movies or "The Walking Dead"! But there is a big AMC Dead-A-Thon coming up over the long weekend, Thursday through Sunday; there will be previews of Season 4 and interviews with the cast and crew. Oh boy! I recently watched S1 and S2 again, so I'm not so worried about revisiting those at the moment, but I'm planning on watching all of Season 3 again on Saturday. The DVD doesn't come out until late August, so I really want to watch this marathon showing of the entire season.

I spent some time reading on the deck today (although it was mostly overcast, I still managed to catch a few rays), ran some errands, did some (minimal) housework, and treated myself to a deli sandwich for a dinner because I just did not feel like doing any cooking tonight. It's waiting for me in the fridge, and I'll probably have that when I sit down to watch "Under the Dome." I look forward to seeing the citizens of Chester's Mill freak out when they start figuring out that they're in some deep shit. We started off with a bang with the Split Cow and the Exploding Pacemaker...let's see what they've got for us this week!

I hope your day was a pleasant one!

Remember the Junction!

My valiant defense of Nutwood continues, my faithful companion Sheeba by my side. We await reinforcements, but they are not scheduled to arrive until Tuesday evening; we shall have to do our best, using our wits and ingenuity in order to beat off all attackers. Errr...keep the attackers at bay. Yes, that sounds better.

Today I tackled several dishes, including a belligerent cookie sheet, that appeared in the sink, and beat them into submission. I find that waterboarding does the trick with those cheeky bastards.

I then interrogated the deck by stretching out on a lounge chair and placing my full weight upon it. It might not seem like much, since I am not a large person, but an hour of constant pressure made it splinter in several places. Sheeba stood guard inside while I continued my interrogation.

After I completed my questioning, I left the deck to nurse its wounds while I washed away the stench of its fear and the sweat of my exertions from my body. As I finished, I noticed the towels staring at me with listless insolence, so I gave them a thorough dousing, followed by an hour in the hotbox. They are now silent in the linen closet, and I expect no further trouble from them.

Sheeba and I were both in desperate need of sustenance, so I gave him a packet of MREs while I made do with the cold pizza I had been saving for just such an emergency. Combined with the amber beverages, I find that the cold pizza has left me contented and at peace...for now.

I’m afraid that tomorrow, I will need to address a serious problem with the sheets. I’ve noticed that at night, they are bunching beneath me, perhaps in a feeble attempt to keep me from my rest. Sheeba has no such problem, as he sleeps often and anywhere, but I feel that the sheets are trying to break me. I shall not be broken. They will receive the same treatment as the towels did today, and I expect that they will also come to understand that they are powerless.

If necessary, I will call in an airstrike tomorrow from either the Post Office or UPS...both, if the situation proves dire enough. Both Derrick and Mike have proven themselves to be devoted allies, and I know I can count on them to deliver. The garbage detail will be coming by on reconnaissance, and I have already set out their supplies. I have left them a note on the back of the foil top of a yogurt container; I will trust whatever passes for providence that they receive it.

I see that I am receiving a message from the fireflies on the front screen, so I must finish this entry and decode it immediately.

I shall remain vigilant, with the ever-true Sheeba at my side. Unless it thunders; then he will retire to the basement.

No retreat! No surrender!