Thinking back on it all, I'm not so sure reading Forever at the age of ten was a good idea. My parents were always pretty open about letting me read what I wanted, though I'm sure if they had known just what Forever was about they'd have been horrified. And I think the only reason they were so open about what my sister and I read was because it would never occur to them that we would ever read anything questionable.

The book was my first exposure, of any kind, to sex. It would be another two years before we had sex education in class (or "family life" as it was tactfully called when we had it back in the early 80s) and up until then my thoughts mostly alternated between two prevailing theories: one belonging to the stork and the other to a variation on pollination. 

Needless to say when I first read Judy Blume's classic novel about teenage love and sex I was absolutely terrified by the things Michael and Katherine were doing. I remember wondering if this was something everyone did and if it were something everyone had to do at some point in their life. If it were, I wanted no parts of it,  not so much because it seemed repulsive as that it seemed so clinical and unromantic. Even then, I kind of wondered: don't people value something like this as more than something physical? You should wait for sex because you needed to understand how special and important it could be in loving relationships...

Written in 1975 the novel would go on to be the target of many a banned book list and was also (it is thought, though seriously or not I can't be sure!) to be responsible for the declining popularity of the name "Ralph." I  won't go into the reason for this because if you haven't read the book I want to spare you and if you have...well, then, you already know.

new episodes of scripted television shows return:)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/arts/television/01season.html?ref=television




If you're interested in what shows are returning now that the Olympics are over, just click the above link. My beloved "Glee" still seems so far far away (it returns in April)...

I'm STILL in shock that "Mercy" made it to a full season...yikes!! Maybe I'm just missing its appeal?

 

Just a quick plug for these wonderful cookies (or rather the mix that produces these wonderful cookies) which are "all natural" (I'm putting in quotes because these are so good I'm somewhat doubtful they're truly all natural!) and quite addictive...don't make them all at once or you'll eat every single one...more on this later!:)

...just saw that a book called Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter is coming out this July. If the cover is any indication (and the fact that her friend Dionne Warwick is involved), hopefully this will be a biography written with respect and consideration, not like the articles that ran in tabloids after Karen Carpenter passed away. Her lovely voice and music have often been overshadowed by her tragic death.

There's a Facebook page for the book:

http://www.facebook.com/search/?ref=search&q=little%20girl%20blue&init=quick#!/littlegirlbluekc?ref=search&sid=533065246.21501579..1

I remember a few weeks after she passed away, People magazine ran a cover article with a ghastly photo that was actually taken at a public appearance long before the last weeks of her death. Ironically, Karen Carpenter had physically "recovered," but the toll of intravenous 
feeding and sudden weight "gain" (what would still be under normal weight for most of us, but closer to a 'healthy' weight than it had been for her) on her tiny frame was too much for her heart.

In the more than 25 years since she died, the singer's life has been the brunt of eating disorder jokes and endless speculation about whether she also had bulimia. Sometimes lost in all of that is the fact that she was perhaps one of the greatest female vocalists of the 20th century....(of course I have loved the Carpenters since I was a child so I may be a bit biased)

On the Cars song Drive Benjamin Orr sounds mysterious, sad and all-too-knowing. Though Rick Ocasek is the name and face we usually put behind the wheel, I can't imagine anyone but Orr singing this track. It's probably one of the eeriest love songs (besides The Police's Every Breath You Take) to come out of the 80s and it's also one of the best (I think.)

Drive was the Cars' highest charting song in the United States. It was released in the summer of 1984 off their Heartbeat City album, but was still playing on the radio a lot when I started high school that fall.  For the longest time I associated it with everything that was weird, wonderful and upsetting about freshman year, but now I think of it as something else entirely.

It's not a sweet love song, it's not sugary or silly or cheesy...it's just brutally honest and yet...Rick Ocasek (who wrote it) talks of a love that never forgets and even as it has a bitter undertone, it's also about someone who still cares about the person who cast his love aside...

Of course, that's just my take...I may be reading too much into it. Besides, like any good song it's best to just let the sounds wash over you. 'Cause sometimes the whole reason we listen to music is so we can just be.