Saturday, February 21, 2015

Saturday night music on a quiet snowy night...

One of my favorite songs from the early 80s is "It Might Be You" by Stephen Bishop, a track probably most known for appearing in the film "Tootsie." I hear it whenever it shows up on my iPod shuffle (like just) and when I do it still makes me tear up like it did the first time. I don't know why it makes me cry.

I don't think it's a sad song so much as a wistful one. It is also beautiful and sweet one, and somehow sums up exactly how it must feel when you finally meet the person you've been wondering about your whole life.

Stephen Bishop, by the way, has also other lovely songs as well...I've always felt he was a bit underrated and that his others are just as good and heartfelt as "It Might Be You."

I like my iTunes library best for listening, but since I have an Amazon Prime account and Prime Music comes with that, I've been trying it out, making it easier to add even more music to my phone.

Amazon doesn't have the extensive library Spotify has, but I do like this feature:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?&docId=1001407921

Plus, I like that you can add songs and even entire albums to your account with no extra charge as long as your membership is current. Or, if you don't want the entire compilation, you can click the plus signs and the track will be added to your account:

"Poison & Wine," absolutely and painfully gorgeous

Except for during wintertime, I enjoy going to grocery stores more often than not. For some reason, they fascinate me. This is from this weekend's Wall Street Journal:

A Grocery Clerk and Proud of It

We’ve taken our knocks from Hollywood, but life in the aisles is like being in a movie. Only I get to write the script.

by Jeffrey Shaffer

I recently took a job that is often ridiculed as menial and mindless. But I have found it to be interesting and rewarding: I work in a grocery store.

Hollywood hasn’t been kind to this line of work. Anyone who has seen the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption” knows what happened to inmate Brooks Hatlen ( James Whitmore ). After decades of incarceration he was finally paroled but couldn’t adjust to life outside prison walls. One major source of disillusionment was his job at a local market filling grocery bags, and before long he gave up and hanged himself.

The hit Netflix series “House of Cards” includes a snappy putdown in the first season when Claire Underwood ( Robin Wright ) is forced to cut the staff of her nonprofit organization, including the 59-year-old office manager. Claire offers to write a letter of recommendation but the woman angrily replies, “To do what, bag groceries?”Well, I’m past 59 and my résumé includes stints in radio, television news and print journalism. Turns out the skills I learned from those job are a big help in my new work place. For me, life in the aisles is much like being in a movie, except there are no cameras to interfere with the action and I get to write my own lines every time a customer asks for help.

The store is owned by a Northwest-based company that emphasizes friendly service and looks for opportunities to carry products made locally.

This is an interesting time to be in the grocery business, when millions of Americans are becoming seriously interested in food production, nutrition, diet regimens and cooking styles. My fellow employees and I are all active participants in the collective conversation.

I was hired as a “floater,” so I work in all departments, which is fine with me because it provides a range of opportunities for making personal connections. That’s probably the main reason I took the job. Writing is often a solitary process, but I’m not a solitary person. I like direct engagement with people. Doing interviews was always my favorite part of producing news stories, editing them much less so. Now I’m in a spontaneous, edit-free environment—and it comes with a nice benefits package.
The shoppers are a snapshot of America. I’ve talked with teenagers, parents (married and single), and elderly women who decided that having purple hair would be a fun new look. Some customers have tattoos and body piercings. Hearing true-life stories told in person will always be my favorite form of social media.

Long visits by shoppers aren’t unusual; the store has a salad bar, kitchen, deli counter and dining area. Sometimes we have live music featuring local talent. On busy days, I feel like I’m in a community center that also offers groceries.

The bakery is the most enjoyable department. Bread is elemental, and seeing the process that brings it into existence is compelling. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at selling it—my mantra when I’m behind the bakery counter is “No loaf left behind.” I want the shelves empty when I leave at night. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m making progress.

One request I’d like to make of all supermarket customers everywhere: Next time you’re in the parking lot and a delivery truck blocks your path as it maneuvers toward the loading dock, don’t get mad and honk. That truck is carrying items you want. Keeping the product pipeline flowing smoothly and on schedule is a crucial element of the free-enterprise system, not to mention the means by which most of us stay fed.

Sometimes I look toward the store’s front entrance and imagine Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” peering through the window. That’s another film that slams my job, in the scene where Kurtz expresses his utter contempt for Captain Willard ( Martin Sheen ) by telling him, “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.” If only Kurtz could spend some time working in a supermarket these days—maybe a stint at the bakery counter would cheer him up.

It's just after six and less than an hour ago two of my friends from work texted they just got home. Today averaged about an hour drive for people living less than ten miles from home and up to five hours for those living about thirty miles away. I am so glad they are home.

It's definitely a good night to be inside. Here in Columbia, the snow is still coming down. A good website for checking out traffic and road conditions is right here, though obviously right now is not a good time to go out at all...just for future reference:

http://www.chart.state.md.us/TravInfo/trafficcams.php#

So it did turn out to be a big snow event and we were let out early from work and I am so glad I was able to face my fears of driving in bad weather and not freak out like I used to in the past. I think it's nice to have a role model in your life because you can think, "What would that person do?" and then you try and face the situation the way she would.

And facing your fears (even if driving in the snow may not be everyone's, most of us still have something we fear greatly) is awesome:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/10/16/face-your-fear-the-result-might-be-amazing/

Chicken Little fever has struck Maryland with all the reports of impending snow. It's so contagious and a few people today are just a tad..um, unfriendly? ...so I am just needing to see this today:

“I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”
― Maya Angelou

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/self-acceptance

Friday, February 20, 2015

I feel my sad mood wanting to return, but I will not let it, absolutely not! So I'm putting on a good album for conquering bad moods and one that's also good for Friday nights. the id by Macy Gray is one of my favorites from the early 00s. I think "Freak Like Me" is one of the sweetest, weirdest love songs ever. :)

This is taken from a review for the album that appears on its Amazon page:

Over the course of Gray's second album, the novelty of her vocal style is somewhat tempered by her limited range. That said, what she lacks in octave-conquering she and producer Rick Rubin more than make up for in creativity. The album's many eclectic singles stand strong. "Relating To A Psychopath" opens the disc with a wall-of-sound block party; it's a funky, celebratory track, well endowed with twangy surf guitar, glimpses of theremin, a ragga-inspired bass line, and lots of goodies floating in the song's highest register (backing vocals, splashes of cymbals, piano). Gray's album also benefits from a host of R&B and hip-hop guests, including Slick Rick, Sunshine Anderson, Angie Stone, Mos Def, and most notably Erykah Badu, who supports Gray on "Sweet Baby," a moving uptempo ballad that easily rivals the best that '70s soul has to offer. Once again, her lyrical sensibility is gripping, vacillating from whimsical ("Oblivion") to disturbing ("Gimme All Your Lovin' or I Will Kill You"). In all, Macy Gray continues to wave her R&B freak flag while digging deep in the trenches of the vividly real. --Beth Massa

Also good for a Friday night is "Dazz" by Brick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbfL4Q9bP7g

And vintage Madonna:

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine [-]

Although she never left it behind, it's been easy to overlook that Madonna began her career as a disco diva in an era that didn't have disco divas. It was an era where disco was anathema to the mainstream pop, and she had a huge role in popularizing dance music as a popular music again, crashing through the door Michael Jackson opened with Thriller. Certainly, her undeniable charisma, chutzpah, and sex appeal had a lot to do with that -- it always did, throughout her career -- but she wouldn't have broken through if the music wasn't so good. And her eponymous debut isn't simply good, it set the standard for dance-pop for the next 20 years. Why did it do so? Because it cleverly incorporated great pop songs with stylish, state-of-the-art beats, and it shrewdly walked a line between being a rush of sound and a showcase for a dynamic lead singer. This is music where all of the elements may not particularly impressive on their own -- the arrangement, synth, and drum programming are fairly rudimentary; Madonna's singing isn't particularly strong; the songs, while hooky and memorable, couldn't necessarily hold up on their own without the production -- but taken together, it's utterly irresistible. And that's the hallmark of dance-pop: every element blends together into an intoxicating sound, where the hooks and rhythms are so hooky, the shallowness is something to celebrate. And there are some great songs here, whether it's the effervescent "Lucky Star," "Borderline," and "Holiday" or the darker, carnal urgency of "Burning Up" and "Physical Attraction." And if Madonna would later sing better, she illustrates here that a good voice is secondary to dance-pop. What's really necessary is personality, since that sells a song where there are no instruments that sound real. Here, Madonna is on fire, and that's the reason why it launched her career, launched dance-pop, and remains a terrific, nearly timeless, listen.

One last song that is good for bouncing into a good mood:

The Mammoth Book Of series can be hit or miss, but this collection is amazing so far, amazing. And one of the best things about anthologies is you can read a few stories each day and get back to the real life things you need to do.:) The problem with this one, though, is that the stories are all so good, reading the collection is like eating a bag of chips and trying to stop at just one.