Forget that Forrest Gump Crap.

Forget that Forrest Gump Crap...
Category: Life

No, life is NOT like a box of chocolates.

My son had an astute observation today.

Thus said Lucas.....

"God is the best graphic designer ever. I mean, look at the detail in the world around us. Life is like a video game, with the best graphics and the best action. But you only get one life...if you die, you don't get a bunch of chances to start the game over."

(At this point, I decided against dampening his profundity by explaining that some folks believe in reincarnation, whereby you would be entitled to innumerable chances to get things right.)

Well, Hallelujah!

This weekend, I attended the wedding of and reception for my 2nd cousin and his new bride. It's amazing how wedding ceremonies and receptions simmer on through the 21st century, foregoing originality or progression for blanket banality, archaic rituals and an obligatory impetus for line dancing. ("It's electric!!!")

Prior to dinner being served, the guests were entertained (??) with a series of three Power Point slideshows put to song: one of pictures of the bride, one of pictures of the groom and one of pictures of the bride AND groom, with a collective running time of about 14 hours. In between hunger fantasies of chomping on the centerpiece, I noted the decision of the couple to use Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as the song for the bride/groom slideshow.

A point in favor of the couple was choosing this song over tired standards, such as "Tonight I Celebrate My Love" by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, or "Unforgettable" by Natalie and Nat King Cole, or anything by Celine Dion. But I had to wonder if the couple paid even a modicum of attention to the lyrics of "Hallelujah" prior to having it musically complement photographic evidence of their overwhelming lovey-doveyness and mutual affinity for Miller Lite Beer.

"Hallelujah" is a reasonably dark interpretation of passion, sorrow, love and loss with complex Biblical mingling paralleled to the life of King David. One of two competing theories, then, must be true. Either my cousin and his wife just dig it as a pretty tune and really like how they keep saying "Hallelujah!" over and over again, or I've grossly underestimated their intellect and capacity to illustrate the ebb and flow of emotion within human existence by contrasting vapid, positive imagery with contemporary lyrical melodrama. Knowing this couple, however, I will stick with the former.

That got me thinking about other songs that similarly smitten couples often choose as "The Wedding Song," and how often such songs are erroneously interpreted as being loving or sentimental, when in actuality, they are bitter, hostile and downright unpleasant.

The list includes:

"Every Breath You Take," by The Police. Please. You must be a rank life amateur if you missed the memo on how this song is a frightening ode to obsession and stalking.

"Wonderful Tonight," by Eric Clapton. The story goes that he got so tired of waiting for his wife, Pattie Boyd, to get her ass coiffed and makeup slathered for a dinner party that he had time to pen this classic as he pumped down whiskey and chain smoked cigarettes.

"Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," by Green Day. Kids. Kids, kids, kids. Stop using this as your prom theme, your graduation song, blah blah. Really.

"(I Love You) Just the Way You Are," by Billy Joel. Joel wrote this as a ginormous musical bitch slap to his first wife, who had also been his manager, who's brother conned Joel out of like a bazillion dollars worth of songwriting and publishing royalties. Plus, Mrs. Joel #1 was wicked fugly. Don't go changin!

My list is by no means exhaustive, so I'd certainly welcome other additions I might have overlooked....

Cockermouth!!!

Imagine my disappointment that the word "cockermouth" is neither a sexual innuendo or a vulgar dig. It's a little town in England. It's also a track off of the last Mekons record, "Natural." Though the vanity of the town's nomenclature might wear off quickly, I've decided that since America is rapidly collapsing, I should seriously consider emigrating somewhere. Cockermouth sounds about right. "I'm Andrea, and I live in Cockermouth!!!" How do the people who actually live there manage to keep a straight face? Lamb of God!

The efficacy of my prescription NSAID in the quest to relieve my retrolisthesis and multiple lumbar disc herniage pain is miniscule. That's a nice way of saying that the shit my doctor gave me ain't cutting the mustard.

The ICD-9 diagnosis code for my ailments prior to my brain and lumbar MRI's indicated (780.4) that I had been suffering from "dizziness and giddiness." Excuse me, have we met? While I'm all sorts of happy that "giddiness" is a medical condition, it's not one from which I chronically suffer.

...I love these blog entries I draft and then leave for 2 weeks. If I had a point to make or an opinion to share, it's since left the transom of my psyche. So.....

Today Was Awesomely Awesome

For the following reasons:

1) My son completed his first-ever Cross Country meet, running a mile. Luke's not terribly athletic, preferring academia, movie making and intellectual (??) pursuits, so this was his first attempt at an extracurricular sport. It matters not how he placed; rather, that he completed the run. My favorite moment was when he saw me at the bottom of a tiny hill over which he'd run, passing me with a livid expression, growling aloud, "I HATE YOU." Such are the moments that mothers tuck away in their hearts for a lifetime.

2) After the Cross Country meet, there was a fundraising dinner at the school for Mexican Independence Day. My gang of friends from St. Paul were all there, noshing on yummy, homemade Mexican fare, with our previously exhausted runners clocking in what had to be an additional 5 miles like farts in a bottle around the gym. The next time the kids crab about the agony of Cross Country, I believe the solution is to have Chuck chase them from behind wearing the remnants of a blue pig's head pinata on his head. Vaya con Dios!

3) Today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Historically, I never fail to send greetings for the holiday to my friend, Jon Langford, of the Mekons. He is a Welsh transplant living and working here in Chicago in music and art, and just one of the nicest fellas in rock-n-roll. He'd filmed a show in October of 2007 for Columbia College's "Musicians' Studio" where he played a few tunes, was interviewed at length, and answered 3 audience questions on camera at the end, one of which was from yours truly.

Just when all hope had been lost that the show was ever going to air, whilst channel surfing as I yacked on the phone with my brother, there it was! In a fit of giddyness, I hung up on Steve, quickly called my mother and texted my boyfriend. My DVR wasn't cooperating tonight, so Luke took a very rudimentary clip of me asking my question and posted it to YouTube. I will go down in history as the woman who broke the very grim news to Jon Langford that he only has 4 minutes to live and has to listen to one more song....what would it be?

BB Had "Lucille," Clapton Had "Blackie," and I...

...bid adieu to my beloved and rare, circa '1970 maple Rogers drum kit.....

The Rogers kit has been lovingly pounded in my family for decades, most recently by me for the past two years, and really the only kit on which I've had any practice or play time.

Prior to that, my older brother played them until he replaced them a few years ago with a snazzy new Gretsch kit and left them in his basement on which to merely practice or jam. The Rogers suffered only minor damage to the bass drum rim over the years and was otherwise still the pristinely crafted and sonically impressive kit for which the brand was famous; amazing, considering the history of spaztastic Miklasz action the kit has seen.

Recently, my brother joined a second praise band in De Kalb, IL, which meets at a second church, and he was growing weary of lugging the Gretsch back and forth 4 nights a week. He was happy that I was putting the Rogers to good and regular use, but also wished for the convenience of having two kits at his disposal. Naturally, this left both of us with a vexing conundrum, since neither my or my band's budget could currently invest in a new kit here in Chicago.

One of the singers in my band found an almost-new, 5-pc poplar, Tama kit (plus cymbals, plus stands) for free on some online bartering site while I was on holiday 2 weekends ago, which was sitting unused in a drummer's basement on the South side of Chicago. I have no legitimate room to complain, because the donation of the kit to our church was indeed very gracious, but upon whacking the Tamas with my sticks for a trial fill this week, I could barely muster a cringe.

The Tama Imperialstar 5-pc Compact is an entry-level jazz kit, so it looks (and sounds) dwarfed compared to the size, tone and construction of the Rogers. The stock cymbals that came with the kit are manufactured out of spray-painted tin and, dare I say, even shittier than what I formerly thought were the world's most vomitrotious cymbals, the Sabian B8 series I bought in 2006. Luckily, I am keeping my Sabian B8's as well as the incredible Zildjian A-series ride cymbal I received for my last birthday.

Holy Hell, my dead grandpa's ball sack has more action left in it than the snare drum that came with this kit. I'm hugely spoiled, however, because the only other snare I've ever played is the Rogers Dynasonic, universally rated as one of the world's finest sounding snare drums.

Playing any new drum kit is similar to driving a car to which you're not accustomed. With both feet and hands simultaneously employed, the response time, agility and technical structure of a song's composition have to be re-worked and re-tooled, which isn't as simple as it may seem, particularly for a drummer like me who is competent but by no means a virtuoso, posing an interesting, even if not a welcome challenge.

Well, Poo!

And I was so close to not blaming Comcast for ruining my week.

Remember the aforementioned catastrophically badass storms that blew through Chicago a week and a half or so ago? Yes, the one that blew out the power at Camp Swanky and cost me $100 in wasted groceries. That one. Com Ed finally restored power to my pad 36 hours later, at which time Luke and I returned home to further assess the interior damage.

Luke received his cousin Jake's used XBox and a slew of games when Jake got the new XBox 360 this summer. Since then, Luke's been mastering the Halo series of games, and just generally indulging in his video game playing passion in between making nifty homemade movies for YouTube. Very sadly, the lightning from the storm must have really struck really close to, if not on, our house. Even though our electronics were all plugged into surge suppressors, Mother Nature smoked out Luke's XBox entirely, now permanently stuck with a game belonging to the Park Ridge Library. The poor boy cried in hysterics for literally 2 hours as a result, in between blaming me for the power outage and cursing the clouds.

*Spoiler Alert: The story I'm about to tell is really, really boring.*

My computer is also connected to a separate surge suppressor, and the storm fried what I originally thought was just my leased Comcast cable modem. Using my superhuman tech savvy, I swapped the leased modem with one that I owned that was just sitting in a box to see if that would allow me internet access, but the problem was slightly more complicated. I deduced that the issue could be with the computer's ethernet card, so I set out to Best Buy to get a new one.

Best Buy featured the Linksys EtherFast 10/100 PCI adapter for the reasonable price of $27.99. A bargain, considering I'd budgeted $50 for the new part. I paid cash, checked out, threw the bag in my car and ran across to Target for some other sundries. Puttering around the electronics department at Target, I came upon the very same Linksys ethernet adapter. Absolutely the same model....for $11.99. Holy price difference, ya'll! Of course, I bought it and planned to zip back to Best Buy to return the first one, only to notice that the girl at the checkout at Best Buy failed to provide me with a receipt. Since only 20 minutes had passed since the purchase, I felt fairly confident that Best Buy Girl would still recognize me, so I approached her register to get a duplicate copy of my sales receipt. She reluctantly printed one out for me, after which I promptly used to return that ethernet card and get my $28 and change back. Yay, me!

Comcast won't add an owned modem to your account until you return their crappy leased modem, which requires a visit to the nearest Comcast service center. Luke and I schlepped there yesterday afternoon, where we were assisted by a very friendly customer service lady who was listening intently to a story Luke was regaling about his vacation in Colorado last weekend. The Comcast lady couldn't believe her eyes when she looked up and saw a little 8-year old boy who tells stories like a 65-year old man. She commented on his eloquence and verbosity, took care of my modem stuff, and off we went.

Once you add or replace a modem, Comcast has to program it and add it to your account over the phone at home. No biggie, that all took all of 10 minutes. Yippee, the internet finally worked again at home. Smooooooooth sailing. For a few hours, at least.

Boom--I started having the same modem problems which necessitated the swap in the first place, despite the new modem and ethernet card. No more internet. Another call to Comcast to troubleshoot. After 1/2 hour, Comcast held fast that the problem had nothing to do with either my modem or their network. Once again utilizing my superhuman tech savvy, I opened the motherboard back up and tried to ascertain if the root problem was the actual internal slot that holds the ethernet card. 'Twas indeed. Another 10 minutes of slot swapping and cursing again at the fact that I keep forgetting to buy compressed air to blow into and clean out the motherboard's innards. But connected at last! Happy dance!

I was so surprisingly not pissed at Comcast this week that I briefly considering taking the entirety of the organization on a picnic by the lake this weekend.

Until tonight.

I have a suckariffic, impromptu solo Thursday night, since my beau had to spend the evening consoling a college friend because another friend of a friend of theirs (or something like that) from college suddenly died. I'm so used to my dance card being filled on a Thursday that I grew antsy from the bevy of free time tonight. I spent about 45 minutes shopping at Trader Joe's and then came home to clean Luke's room and the downstairs bathroom. The birds were also fed and cleaned, and I was in my pajamas by 10pm.

I was poised to spend from 10pm to 1am watching 1983's TV movie, "The Day After" on the Sci-Fi channel. Nothing perks up a boring Thursday night like an incredibly dated, cheesy interpretation of a nuclear attack on the United States.

For some reason, I was receiving the audio on the channel but not the video. Whatever images I did receive were hopelessly pixelated, so the movie watching adventure was short lived. So here I sit. Tanks fer nushin, Comcast!

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

Life has decided that I haven't quite been motherfucked enough in the last year or two, so it sees fit to slug me with a few more wallops.

I suppose I shouldn't use such harsh language in my blog just in case any potential employers might be reading it after having seen the link on my resume. Oh wait, no one is actually READING my resume. The 500 recipients of the vitae chronicling my work experience hit the delete key weeks ago. The handful of interviews I went on were either laughably mundane with poverty level pay or really promising, but with companies who have since disappeared in a cloud of smog. Besides, any employer who scoffs at the sight of the word "motherfucked" in a grown woman's blog is probably too uptight for my personality anyway. This unemployment/job search stuff is really starting to sour my outlook on life. I was finally getting my shit together by staying sober for close to 6 months, I was working on my self-esteem, my issues, working with my doctor to figure out why I feel so physically crappy and keep losing weight without trying (another 4 lbs shed over last week and I swear, I ate like a freaking pig).

In my typically delusional thinking, I was starting to really "get it" with life and looking positively to the future. I felt certain the the future would work itself out and I'd find a good job, I'd move out of the foreclosed apartment and get another place for myself and Luke, and that I wasn't doomed to a miserable lot in life. I could continue to be a good mom, a good daughter, a good friend, a good partner and a good worker. Oops, what the fuck was I thinking? Awesome fulfillment like that, sad to say, is reserved for the beautiful people in life. The gorgeous. The The chosen. The lucky. More and more, I'm honestly starting to believe what my parents ingrained in my psyche as a child: Those that got, get.

Take, for example, my boyfriend's company in the city. One of my close girlfriends just quit as their HR Manager, where she tried in vain to get the catalog editor to hire me as a copywriter there, which would pay around $40k a year. Not outstanding, but an easy job I would be quite good at and would afford me a reasonable wage with which to support myself and my son. But whatever booger runs that department ultimately decided not to hire anyone. There is an opening for someone to run the company's new huge ecommerce enterprise on eBay, which is another position for which I, as a former Gold Star Power Seller on eBay, would be absolutely perfect and would pay a LOT. But that's a job directly supervised by my boyfriend, who sees it as a conflict of interests.

But they DID hire a receptionist not too long ago for $50k a year and good benefits. A receptionist who has no Microsoft program skills, who can't figure out how to replace paper in the Xerox machine, who wouldn't know a Sharpie if it bit her in the ass and who likes to memo the entire organization when she misplaces office supplies. My HR friend didn't want this woman to get the job, favoring a much more highly qualified candidate. She was trumped by the CEO, however, in the final decision, because the CEO thinks that the dimwitted receptionist is very attractive. Life in general tends to roll that way, more often than not.

In other news, severe summer thunderstorms as well as actual reported tornados hit the Chicago metro area last night. Wrigley Field was evacuated during the Cubs game, my ex and son were sheltered in the basement of the Park Ridge Library, the sirens were going off like crazy and I was relatively oblivious to the first band of tornadic storms while in my boyfriend's high rise apartment downtown. (Much of the real damage was several miles west of his apartment.) Band #2 of storms hit between 11pm-midnight, with the most impressively terrifying lightning I have ever seen in my life. We watched bolts hit electrical transformers, which went up in puffs of green smoke. My boyfriend and I each had to soothe our respective 8-year olds over the phone, as they were both really freaked out. Last I heard, ComEd reported this morning that 200,000 customers were still without power, and while a lot of folks in the metro area lost their homes, cars, et al, no deaths were reported, which is good. I wondered aloud, as the lightning bolted down, if power was out at my apartment, which is about 8 miles west of downtown Chicago.

After I picked my son up from day camp, we headed back to our apartment. Our unlit, stiflingly sweltering apartment. My electric bill is up-to-date, so I knew it wasn't that the utility company turned it off on purpose (though that's happened before, wah), and I came to find out from neighbors on my block that our whole block had been out since 10:30 pm last night. ComEd told the neighbors that since our outage was confined to one block, we weren't a "high prority" in the power restoration game, and that we should sit tight. Would love to sit tight, but the sweat on my body was sliding me off of my furniture.

I gathered all of my reusable grocery bags and began to clear out the refrigerator and freezer. Only 3 or 4 boxes of Morningstar Farms veggie burgers and brown rice cakes were salvagable, while the frozen vegetables were soppy bags of mush. The sorbet, gelato and Luke's push-pops were sticky liquid. The butter smelled funky. The formerly-frozen loaves of bread were soggy. Items that weren't in immediate danger of totally yucking up the place, I left in the freezer because I was getting too pissed off to clean out the whole thing. The refrigerator items were even less fortunate than the frozen foods. I salvaged the berries, grapes, limes and shelf-stable organic milk boxes of Luke's, the Kalamata olives, but the spinach and salad were blech. I lost a total of close to 4 lbs of cheeses in various forms (shredded, sliced, blocked, et al).

The total grocery loss is honestly close to $100. $100 I don't have to immediately replace the food in the house until I get the next child support payment. Luckily, my son is going to New Mexico and Colorado with his dad on Thursday for a long weekend, so I don't have to worry about feeding him. My appetite is shit anyway, so I can get by on the non-perishables I have and whatever is safely chilling and re-freezing at my mom's. After my band plays at church Saturday night, we're having a BBQ at the guitarist's house, for which I planned to bring tabouleh and some veggie kabobs to grill, so that day's eating is checked.

Once the power is restored, I really need to start packing up my apartment for whenever whatever judge gets the case decides to throw Luke and I out on the street, at which time the boy will divide time between his dad and staying with me at my mother's house, with all of my possessions indefintely held in storage. I really like my apartment, and having to pack is astoundingly depressing, because it cements the reality, which is that the sheriffs will come to padlock the building and evict us in the very near future.

Even my drums are up for grabs. I play a vintage maple Rogers kit that's been in the family forever, and it's beautiful and sounds great and anyone who knows me knows that drumming is not only cathartic but also very enjoyable for me. I beat a shitload of anger and frustration out on that kit, in a band of people I absolutely love and respect, twice a month for my church's contemporary praise band. My older brother also plays drums in his church's praise band and allowed me more or less permanent access to the Rogers kit when he got a new Gretsch set a couple of years ago. While it's a pain in the butt, he schleps his kit in the car every week to the praise band gig as well as that of a new band he just joined, which is a lot of work, admittedly. I don't have to schlep my drums because they're kept at the church for when I need to rehearse and play. But now, my brother is asking me if my church can buy me (I'm so sure!) a new drum set and if he can have the Rogers kit back (again, I'm so sure!). It's hard enough for the church to find it in the budget to buy me 2 new pairs of Pro-Mark Hot Rod sticks when mine break, and that's only about $30. Losing the Rogers drums essentially erases what is a very crucial coping mechanism for me and my favorite hobby. Losing the Rogers drums will mean losing my place in the band. If I can't afford food and shelter, it is not in the cards for me to just go out and buy a new drum kit.

Yes, a lot of the issues and problems I have are a direct result of how I behaved, misbehaved and mismanaged my life when I was drinking. A lot of these issues are directly my fault, and some are me just perpetually drawing life's short straw. Yeah, this blog might be a long exercise in self-pity and if my readers see it as such, I'm not holding a gun to anyone's head to continue to listen to me bitch. Looking out the gigantic glass paneled windows from floor-to-ceiling at my boyfriend's apartment tonight, life does continue to go on. I'm looking down at millions of people for whom life has also dealt a raw deal, as well as that vital, successful, happy, lucky, beautiful, chosen few.

Speaking of the beautiful ones....

Now readers, the rest of tonight's "Hello darkness, my old friend" raging rant is reserved for those who subscribe to me on myspace or have access to my blogs there. Sorry! Sometimes it even sucks to be you.