This book is magic...

"Sometimes I thought if it wasn't for music, I wouldn't be able to cry or laugh or feel giddy or wild. Music was a valve."

This is the kind of book that is so good you're afraid to write a review for it in case you fail it miserably. Until I can get my thoughts together properly this is all I'll say: anyone who adores genuine, quirky and very likable characters, anyone who appreciates the beauty of vinyl and just how powerful music is...Girl Defective is for you.

Of the two covers, the bottom one most definitely captures the spirit and humor of the book. It's like the artist of the top cover didn't even read it! (Argh!)

....

So it's a day later and I still can't do Girl Defective justice...
Kirkus captures it pretty nicely :)

KIRKUS REVIEW

Skylark Martin lives above her family’s vintage vinyl shop that—like its merchandise—is an endangered species in their re-gentrified, forward-looking Melbourne suburb.

In the five years since Mum left to “follow her art” in Japan, Dad’s kept the shop going, drinking homebrew and mourning the past (musical and otherwise). Sky, 15, and Gully, 10, aka Agent Seagull Martin, who wears a pig-snout mask 24/7 and views the world as a crime scene waiting to be investigated, hold down the fort. Sky harbors no illusions about their dreary status quo—Dad’s drinking, Gully’s issues, her own social stasis—but she does have dreams, recently ignited by a new friend, the beautiful, wild and fearless Nancy.

Other agents of change include Eve, Dad’s old flame, and Luke, the shop’s attractive, moody new hire. Drawn, mothlike, to Nancy’s flame, Sky’s dreams are haunted by Luke’s sister, whose similarly wild lifestyle led to tragedy. The family business grounds Sky. Its used records and cassettes, like time capsules, store music that evokes the past’s rich emotional complexity for the Martins and their quirky customers, while the eternal present and frantic quest for the next big thing hold no appeal.

 Funny, observant, a relentless critic of the world’s (and her own) flaws, Sky is original, thoroughly authentic and great company, decorating her astute, irreverent commentary with vivid Aussie references; chasing these down should provide foreign readers with hours of online fun. (Fiction. 14 & up)

In all of the inner turmoil I've ever experienced with being gay it comes down (basically) to this: how much of myself do I have to scrape away before I'm "acceptable" to the people who most hate "what" or "who" am I?

To function in the work world and other places, I pretty much shut up about that part of me (which is not much of a hardship because that is just a small part) except for how I hate lying when I'm directly asked, which doesn't happen often.

I have had people found out about me, only to have them never look me in the eye directly after that or (in some cases) just stop talking to me altogether.

This happened again very recently and I am still hurting over it, especially since they brought up the conversation and I chose to be honest. Lying, apparently, for some people is much more acceptable than homosexuality.

Even though he's not writing about it here at all, I think of Shakespeare, though I have no clue whether he would support gay rights or not if he were around today. In the Merchant Of Venice there is this well-known passage:

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?"

People who are gay still do all the things straight people do. You know: buy groceries, shop for shoes and clothes, go to the dentist, take the car into the stop, care about their families and friends.

Most of us have a "lifestyle" that is no different than straight people's...but the word "lifestyle" (a popular word choice among rabidly anti-gay politicians so they can create fear and visions of things gone amuck) certainly has no bearing on gay people who remain celibate or remain committed to just one person their whole lives together.

I think of what I'm willing to do to please the people in my life who are so anti-gay they will only have me as part of their lives if I am who they want me to be. When these people are my parents, whom I love a lot, it's so unbearably difficult.

There are some things about me that I always thought I'd change in a second if I could...the physical things that keep me single, the emotional things (like shyness) that help me fade away when it comes to being datable and finding love. Now I wonder if maybe they are actually blessings, a weird kind of double protection, to go with the determination and old-fashioned beliefs I already have.

One of the few "ex-gay therapy" philosophies that comes as close to non-offensive as I've ever seen centers around this:

Singleness is not a sin.

The site (Christian Answers) goes a bit further and enters territory I don't like ("The opposite of homosexuality isn't heterosexuality, it's holiness."), but at least the man who espouses this belief gets that you can't "make" someone gay become straight.

I hope that I can promise not to write much more on this, at least not for a while. Really, I'm okay with being single, I'm okay with doing as much as I'm humanly capable of to make my family happy, but the one thing I can't do (something I don't think anyone can do) is make myself feel things I don't.

It's hard enough denying your own, very real emotions without trying to fabricate new ones that just won't come. I know it's not politically correct to say this, but I would gladly be straight if I could be.

What person would want to risk losing their family, their friends and others they respect? Love is wonderful, it really is, but whether it's one-sided or reciprocal, it's hard to be in love in a world that so clearly has its set rules on what it thinks it is and isn't.

More on this can be read at the link below. I don't agree with everything, but I do like that there is some understanding and compassion:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-cross/cross-gaychange.html

After reading an upbeat review for Celebrate: Greatest Hits in a an old-ish issue of Mojo I just had to check out the last Simple Minds release even though I haven't really thought about them in years. What a pleasant surprise this collection is!

There are the obvious 80s staples, of course, like "Alive and Kicking" and "Don't You (Forget About Me)" that still sound great decades later and there are the lesser known (at least to the casual fan) tracks that remain fantastic. "Love Song" almost sounds menacing with its relentless beat, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. "Let There Be Love" is mystical and mesmerizing, as pleasing as ever to the ear! Some songs, like "She's A River," don't hold up so well, but that's the rare exception.

Newly recorded highlights include "Stars Will Lead The Way" and "Broken Glass Park," both of which manage that rare feat of making a band you loved yesterday sound just as amazing today! You may not need to buy the whole album (diehard fans probably already have much of what's on here!) but if you're new to the band or haven't heard them in years, definitely give this a listen!

Glenn Miller, 1940. Associated Press

I'm just now reading the Sunday papers from this past weekend. I love this snippet from a WSJ article by James Ellroy on Glenn Miller's "Perfidia":

The song is about love and betrayal, and Miller's version fits this era perfectly. His rendition begins forcefully, all heavy brass. The reeds join, low and mournfully, with the clarinets on top. Then the Modernaires, the vocal group in Miller's band, sing the lyrics in tight harmony, like a whispered secret: "To you / My heart cries out 'Perfidia' / For I find you, the love of my life / In somebody else's arms." It's the song of the underdog.

 

Miller understood that music is elegiac. Other orchestras back then were hipper, but Miller knew that people would look back at "Perfidia" and say, "This is the Miller sound." He understood it was a romantic era.
 

"Perfidia" always takes me back to a time I never experienced—when L.A. had big gleaming cars and there wasn't a particle of smog in the sky. Women I know like the song, too. The sentiment is universal. It touches the gut of the jilted party and offers a supportive shrug. Hey, you love, you lose.

Amidst the sad and bad in the news world is this lovely story:

 http://jezebel.com/two-women-in-their-90s-wed-after-spending-decades-as-a-1631790801

via The Associated Press

http://globegazette.com/ap/state/two-iowa-women-get-married-after-years-together/article_c27bc39f-37ab-5c9c-a9c7-e17149d780ed.html


This line from the second article gives is so incredibly hopeful: "The two women say it's never too late for a new chapter in life." It would be nice to personally think so, not necessarily with finding love, but with life, in general.  :)