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• I first heard Etta James while buckled into my aunt’s truck during a particularly cold Seattle winter. The heat blasted as I struggled to stay awake. I was 6. NPR was playing. Saturday night jazz. Her voice was beautiful, but I couldn’t understand why she was repeating “battleaxe” over and over again. The song was At Last.
  

• In 10th grade Laura Saffioti gave me Etta James’ greatest hits for Valentine’s Day. She just understands, she explained, sitting on the dirty carpet of the theater building lobby, looking out on The Wall, where the objects of our affection wore wallet chains and pushed their greasy hair out of their eyes.

• I moved across the country and into my first apartment after college graduation. It was essentially a barn with no kitchen, 20 foot ceilings, and no door to the bathroom. It did, however, have a blue clawfoot bathtub. I would get home from a long day of feeling entirely inadequate and put I’d Rather Go Blind on loop while sitting in the tub. She always understood.

(Source: coketalk)

Men I Was Attracted to But Also Scared of, an Incomplete List

1992-2000

1. AC Slater
2. Bob Saget
3. Vanilla Ice
4. Extreme sportsmen
5. Fred Durst

Here is an activity for you tonight.

1. Go to the Memory Lane yearbook database and hunt down your parents’ high school.
2. Locate their senior photo.
3. Post. 

Above: My mama looking sharp in 1966 straight out of Tenafly High. Please note her involvement in the Unicorn Club.

Let’s All Just Cheer Up For a Minute

This week has been difficult for a few sad reasons, you guys. Instead of elaborating at the moment, I’d like to instead present a list of Five Important Facts About Good Dog Carl, as sourced from his delightful web site:

1. Carl’s favorite animal is the elephant, though he has never seen one in person.
2. He loves to play all kinds of ball games.
3. Carl is a vegetarian.
4. He enjoys baked potatoes, warm or cold. He likes them so much he doesn’t require butter.
5. On the Sunny Side of the Street is one of his favorite songs.

I’ve written about my meaningful relationship with Carl in the past. It remains one of my more functional ones to this day.

Ten years ago today I was week into my senior year at Nauset Regional High School. We were put on lock down, first listening to the news on a radio and then sitting in an empty classroom, watching the towers fall.

Tourists were leaving Cape Cod for the season. People sat in the aisles of the A&P, sobbing.

We made meatloaf and watched the news. We weathered a suicide.

Today, I am listening to the relatives of the victims read out the 2,977 names, unsure of what else to say.

For a brief time, I owned this magical item. Much like Starbucks’ Trenta, it did indeed hold an entire bottle of wine. Its contents were enjoyed with two straws over a romantic dinner one evening. Shortly afterward, I broke the gentle vessel against the cold, porcelain sink while washing it. Best argument for a dishwasher I’ve ever heard.

Emily Dickinson’s house. Amherst, Massachusetts. May 15th, 2011.

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.

How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the Door —
Unconscious our returning,
But discover it no more.

I hadn’t seen this video in its entirety since it was released on TRL in 1999. I can remember sitting on my parents’ couch between my high school boyfriend and the boy I was crushing on (scandal), wearing flared jeans, a muscle tank and too many bracelets. Today, 12 years later, I am home sick from work in an attempt to feel somewhat healthy when I meet my current boyfriend’s parents for the first time on Friday.

A current viewing of Come On Over has transported me to a time when Christina was the more daring (or honest?) of the two female voices that were being offered up to women my age. Also, the the majority of pelvic shots in this video essentially serve as proof that XTina was the original vajazzler. The amount of late nineties slash early ‘00 trends contained in this one 3:51 song (Sketchers, flares, belly shirts, name plate necklaces, arm cuffs, hoop earrings, halter tops, twisty butterfly clip hair arrangements, paisley head scarves as a thing, bindi forehead stickers) are entirely overwhelming.

The latex curtains that close the piece foreshadow Britney Spears’ red rubber paradise released the following year, further proving that Christina was next level in so many ways. 

This post brought to you by cough medicine, herbal flu pills and a dramatic lack of human contact over the past forty-eight hours.

(via tracieeganmorrissey)

Look at these photos of shopping malls in the summer of 1990. Sure, they’re hilariously nostalgic. Of course there’s the inevitable carry over from the 80’s: the hair, the outfits, etc. No decade makes its mind up about what it wants to be so early. Through all that, shots like this one emerge.

My first real memories include foggy ideas of people who look just like this. Tall people with large hair and cropped cotton bending down to greet me.

The summer of 1990 I was six years old.  Go.

(via meltzer)

Ways We Passed the Time, 1987-1997

Your parents had a small collection of antique coffee grinders and we would sit on your back porch and grind handfuls of frozen beans, occasionally feeding them to the cat. Later that summer, your younger brother trimmed its whiskers off.

You tried to convince me that the cat poop in the sandbox behind your house was actually a collection of Tootsie Rolls.

We sat in a red cement tube on the playground and softly whispered all the curse words we knew to each other, progressively raising our voices until one of us gave up. Many years later, this would be popularized by an indy-yipster romcom as The Penis Game.

We challenged each other to rounds of pinball in my parents’ den. I beat you over and over again. You began to cry as the final ball shot into the gutter. I offered to let you keep the single quarter we used to fuel the machine.

You let me paint your toenails with Urban Decay Spare Change nail polish while we sipped contraband Pepsi in your bedroom. Later, during a dramatic break up, you explained that you would be removing the polish, thus symbolically erasing all memories of me.