The summer of 1994...my  friends and I were driving along the hills surrounding historic Ellicott City late at night, enjoying the windows rolled down and the feeling that usually comes with having a weekend and few things to worry about. Our fearless leader was driving just a tad too fast and blaring his van stereo as usual when a song I had never heard before came on the radio....synchronized beats and raw energy and lyrics about "f$*cking like an animal."

I asked one of my pals what the song was and she told me right away. "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails. The guy singing was someone named Trent Razor and words like 'isolation' and 'absence of faith' and 'my whole existence is flawed' filtered out to me amidst all the carnal rage of the music. I loved it almost immediately, even though it was more harsh than the stuff I was regularly listening to at the time. But it felt wild and more honest than most anything I'd heard that summer.

To this day I think about that summer night whenever I hear Nine Inch Nails and I wonder how sixteen years have gone by and carefree times with old friends on summer nights is harder to come now that we're all on different paths. Somehow...summer seems more connected to songs that leave you open and ready for anything...

"Coming Around Again" is my favorite Carly Simon song, even if it does make marriage sound like the bleakest thing ever. The opening line: "Baby sneezes, Mommy pleases, Daddy breezes in" sets up the whole idea of how people in love can get into a rut so bad, nothing feels like feeling anymore and falling apart is preferable because "there's more room in a broken heart." And yet amidst the sadness, Simon insists so earnestly (and with such touching pain) that she does believe in love, with the rising back-up vocals to support her.

Not only are the lyrics themselves truly affecting...the way Simon sounds so real just makes it all the more heart-breaking. It's a far cry from the infamous "You're So Vain."

Macy Gray, whose gravelly voice and quirky charms have somehow always oddly calmed me, really delivers on her new album The Sellout. It's rare that I like every song on an album, especially in the digital age when you can be impatient and picky about wading through an entire CD. But tracks such as the highly danceable "Lately" and tough girl optimistic "Beauty in the World' have me listening over and over again. Not since she sang with Beck on her album The Trouble with Being Myself have I felt such a thrill at hearing new Macy Gray.

I close my eyes to "Lately" and not just the words, not just the music, but the whole spirit of it gets to me. It's about a woman who dumped her boyfriend because she was terribly insecure and now that she's got her act together  (she's popular and "been comin up like a palm tree") she wants him back. I love the way the chorus swirls round and round like great disco songs do and the male background's cynically chanting "uh huh" brings it all together.

I recently received a free sample of Tide's Swash Fresh it Up. The directions on the side of the bottle, "lay flat (the clothes, not you!)," cracked me up, but other than that nothing special came from the experience of using it.  The idea of "refreshing" last night's clothes just doesn't turn me on...

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine Uncle Frank (played very well by Steve Carell) calls high school "your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that." I'm not sure I'd go that far (my bet is with middle school if you want to kick the whole suffering thing up a notch.)

There were moments in high school I actually enjoyed...times with friends, certain parts of class (both humorous and academic) that made up for the more painful stuff (trig, geometry, algebra...the whole math thing).  We'll skip the unrequited crushes, the out-of-sync-with-the-rest-of-the-world cloud that often followed those of us who were mostly loners and that horrible melodramatic overload of hormones and mixed emotions.

I mention high school because of what I'm currently reading. Elizabeth Berg's newest book (aptly titled The Last Time I Saw You) captures some of what makes high school reunions both scary and utterly fascinating. I just started it, but hope to return soon with thoughts on it...

...A few hours later and I've had time to read more. I love this passage: By the time she was in high school, she spent all her money on record albums and on paperback books--she couldn't get enough of either. Why moon about not being invited to a party when you could listen to Bob Dylan? What date could compare with Nine Stories?  The major reason I usually end up liking a book is because there is a least one character so relatable to you it's almost eerie...(except, when I was in high school I didn't listen to Dylan.)