Guns N' Roses were never my thing the first time around. I couldn't understand the passion some of my classmates had for the band. But the other day I picked up Appetite for Destruction on a whim and now it's been on player most of the week. I can't believe I never gave these guys a thought way back in the late 80s when "Paradise City" was the place so many teens wanted to go.

If an album remains a classic (as "Appetite" has) then there's really no need to revisit it and wonder at its staying power. Classics never go out of style and besides, new albums (especially by talented emerging artists) probably deserve more review room anyway.

And really, who am I to say that Appetite for Destruction is amazing?...I don't write for Rolling Stone, I have no music experience at all and everyone pretty much already knows this was one of the most solid-selling albums in the late 80s, generating 4 Top 40 hits and some of the most wonderfully unrestrained sounds in rock history.

For me, nothing cures a bad day like coming home, putting on my headphones and listening to something freakin' wild that's loud and mean and isn't the kind of music you'd ever take home to your parents (unless, of course, they grew up in the 80s!)

It's my favorite issue of the Baltimore City Paper...the annual Dining Guide came out today...look for it (if you live in the area!) at local bookstores, libraries and in those yellow newstand boxes or click right here:

http://www.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=19833

Reading about food is even better than eating it because there are 0 calories involved and while your taste buds don't get the benefit, there is always the power of memory and your imagination:) This is an actual favorite of many people, from what I've heard, and even has a nickname..."food p*rn"...(rhymes with corn)...I'm afraid if I use the real word my post will be deemed unfit for minors!:)

"Food p*rn," unlike the other kind, is something I can really get into it...I'd much rather look at pictures like this

than at ones of naked people...

As someone who is starting to notice her metabolism drastically (!!!) slow down, I no longer can eat anything I want like I could fifteen years ago. Back then I could eat anything and still stay under 110 pounds...now my weight balloons if I eat something fattening...it's a bummer, for sure, but the pictures are (oddly enough) somehow very comforting!

 

I'm running out of people to talk Lost with...so many of my friends are jumping ship (even though they've committed five previous seasons of viewing to it) because they feel long-lingering questions aren't being answered fast enough (or maybe not at all, ever).

Now I'll admit I have a few dying-to-know-the-answer-to things on my mind, but, really, if not all of them are going to be addressed, I don't mind. I always thought the reason people watched Lost and stayed with it for so long was because they enjoyed an intelligent show that didn't spoon feed them everything and actually asked that they read between the lines a little.

...just my two cents:)...

Tonight's episode, by the way, had the creepiest ending I've seen on tv in a long time...Terry O'Quinn is just amazing!!!

 
Maybe I should be embarrassed that I still have my original copy of Milli Vanilli's Girl You Know It's True, but I'm not. Not only does the album remind me of college and some of the best times in my life, but the music isn't that bad...no, really, it isn't.

And when you think back on other groups (and possibly current ones) who may or may not have sung their own songs (and certainly there are some who haven't!), you have to wonder why Milli Vanilli took such a bad fall? (If you're old enough to remember...record stores offered to refund all record, cd and cassette copies after the scandal broke, no questions asked.)

"Blame it On the Rain," "All or Nothing," "Girl You Know It's True" and "Baby, Don't Forget My Number" are all pretty strong pop songs if you're measuring pop by light and fluffy and shamefully catchy...but beware, if you have a hankering to hear them nowadays and you don't still own the original, watch out for the album on the right; the mp3 version of "Girl You Know It's True" is the remix, not the shorter, more snappy one that played on the radio back in the day.

 

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.