Spicy Music

If you read my blog regularly, you'll know that I listen (and blog about) a wide variety of music and, if you read my books (and I hope you do), you'll get an idea of what I was listening to while I was writing that particular work. For example, in my new book Fluidity, I mention the Al Stewart song "Year of the Cat" a lot. (Side note: I really wanted to call the book "Year of the Cat" but I didn't because I'm not that crazy. But I digress.) While I like to think I have pretty good taste in music, I'll admit that my likes are often not in the mainstream. For example, I like some of the solo work from former Spice Girls Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) and Emma Bunton (Baby Spice).

For Geri, her song "Look at Me" is great. She can't sing worth a damn, but I love the music in the song and the video cracks me up. (Halliwell apparently can't dance either which makes the dance sequence at the end all the more entertaining.)

Emma Bunton does much better with her version of "Crickets Sing for Anna Maria" (and I've blogged about this before). I love her version of this song. It really is great to me. She also isn't the greatest singer, but she works with what she has. (She, like Geri, unfortunately, isn't much of a dancer either which you'll notice if you watch the video.) I'm working on a short story now and I'll probably end up working these Spice Girl tunes into it somehow just because I've been listening to them a lot lately.

Fluidity: Now Available

My new book, Fluidity, is available now for sale on the JMS Books website. Just click on the cover link and check it out. It's also available via Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program. This book has been a long time coming and I'm glad to see it finally published. I hope people enjoy it.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

That's Not Who I Am...Until It Is

I'm so tired of reading one person after another who does something awful and then apologizes and adds the statement, "That's not who I am!" Uh, that IS who you are. It may not be who you want to be, but your bad behavior is just that...yours! You own it. No one wants to admit making a mistake or doing something stupid. We all do bad things. However, to claim that your bad behavior isn't representative of who you are as a person is ridiculous. Sure, you may not go around punching people in the face on a daily basis, but if you did it even once, that behavior is a part of you. Hopefully, you'll learn from your mistakes and change any bad behavior you exhibit, but don't deny that the behavior exists within you, like some foreign entity overtook your body and made you do something wrong. I'm also tired of people making assumptions about people based on how they look. I'm not talking about someone stereotyping a person because of his/her race or hair color, I'm talking about people overlooking someone's flaws or bad behavior because the person is attractive. While reading some of the current news stories about Donny T.'s son-in-law, I constantly come across comments about his youthful looks and assumptions that he should be an upstanding person because he's deemed attractive. Since when did someone's looks influence that person's character? There are plenty of people who are lovely on the outside and ugly on the inside (and vice versa). I used to work with a guy who wasn't an awful guy, but he could be a pain in the ass sometimes. However, he was attractive and he used his attractiveness to his advantage in getting what he wanted from other people. Even though I'm sometimes slow on the uptake, I soon got up to speed with him and got wind of his game but not until after I also had been duped. You live and learn.

Audra at Steppenwolf

I went to see Audra McDonald in concert at the Steppenwolf Theater Monday night. (I went to the second show.) I'm a huge Audra fan and I was glad to have the opportunity to see her perform in Chicago. I just assumed after I left the East Coast, that I'd have to travel back there in order to see her again. The Steppenwolf show was good and very low-key. It was nothing like the time I saw her at Carnegie Hall five or six years ago (maybe more than that). During the Steppenwolf show, she sang and talked with her pianist, Seth Rudetsky, and performed "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" with her husband Will Swenson. Her performance of "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret was great and she ended the show with a wonderful rendition of "Summertime." As you can see from my photo below, I wasn't exactly close enough to get a good picture.

Looking...The Movie

I watched the final movie based on the canceled HBO series "Looking" this weekend and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The series was a bit of a disappointment for me, but I did watch all of the episodes. Surprisingly, the part of the movie that interested me the most was Patrick's conversation with Kevin. Their relationship during the series made me roll my eyes many times, but I enjoyed seeing them talk and try to deconstruct what went down between them. That was good stuff. I hated seeing Richie go back to Patrick, but he seemed to be glutton for punishment. Going from Patrick to Brady was just exchanging one spoiled white guy for another, but the heart wants what it wants, I guess. One of the problems I had with "Looking" the series was that it focused too much on Patrick and he largely annoyed me with his whining and neurotic behavior. I enjoy watching Jonathan Groff as an actor, but his character on the show was insufferable. I was more interested in Dom and wished the show would have focused a little more on him. But, even with its flaws, the show wasn't the trainwreck the public made it out to be. I think too many people were expecting "Queer As Folk...the Sequel" and it just wasn't that kind of party. I commend HBO for taking a chance on a drama centering around gay men even if this particular one only lasted two seasons. I certainly hope they don't give up on LGBT-themed dramas. Once again, non-network TV is doing the heavy lifting while the networks focus on tired BS like "The Big Bang Theory" and "Modern Family."

RIP, Chris Cornell

I heard about Chris Cornell's untimely death this morning from my sister. Sad! My sister, who's a huge Cornell fan, got me turned onto Soundgarden's music. Superunknown is one of best albums from the 1990s. His work with Temple of the Dog is also great. What a loss. RIP, Chris Cornell.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

I wrote a blog post after I saw the documentary Weiner about disgraced politician Anthony Weiner and one of the things I wrote was something to the effect that Weiner was his own worst enemy. He wrecked his political career, his marriage, and his reputation. It wasn't the media or some other outside forces working against him. He did it to himself. (The call is coming from inside the house, Anthony!) I feel the same way about Donny T. and his growing troubles. If he'd only kept his mouth shut and stopped Tweeting, maybe his political career wouldn't be the failing pile of garbage that it is right now. (Then again, maybe not.) Still, the majority of Donny's political wounds, like Weiner's, were self-inflicted. Some people just sabotage their own lives for one reason or another. Maybe they secretly hate themselves. Maybe they're looking for a way out. Maybe they're stone-cold crazy. Maybe it's all of the above.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to the moms out there. I hope your day has been a good one. Mother's Day is bittersweet for me because my mother isn't alive. It's been more than twenty years since my mother was alive for Mother's Day and I still feel sad when the holiday rolls around. People whose moms are still alive should cherish the time they have with their mothers because life is short.

18 Percent

I read a story this week about a white police officer in Michigan who took a DNA test, found out he was 18% black, and claimed after he revealed his test results to his white coworkers, he was harassed on the job. He's also suing his employer for half a million dollars or something, citing racial discrimination. Seeing a picture of the guy, he doesn't look black to me at all so that 18% isn't exactly visible. I doubt anyone would have known the guy was 18% black (or any part black) if he hadn't opened his mouth and let that cat out of the bag. But he chose to share his DNA results with his coworkers. I'm not saying the guy shouldn't have been proud to share his roots with his coworkers, but I think it was naive of him to think he wouldn't catch some flack for sharing that revelation in a non-diverse work environment. It's not like this guy worked in big city with people of visible racial differences. He worked in a small Michigan town in a police force that, I believe, is 100% white. Part of me thinks the guy is just initiating a money grab with the lawsuit, but part of me believes he probably was called "Kunta" by his coworkers and harassed for being a mere 18% black.

PBS

In my efforts to block out the saturation of news about Donny T., I've been watching a lot of shows on PBS lately like Antiques Roadshow and Spy In the Wild. I've been telling anyone I know who cares to listen that I have to have a break from the 24-hour news cycle and PBS fits the bill right now. There's only so much bad news I can take. While some people thrive on news (and I used to be one of those people), I just can't do it anymore. I find that the local news is barely watchable these days too. When you just want to see the local weather and what's going on in and around the city, you still end up with national news about Donny and his minions or just one depressing story after another about violence in and around Chicago. Oy!

Thankfully, I have PBS to fall back on during these dark times. Of course, Donny T. will probably soon cut funding for that to reallocate the funds to some BS initiative brought forth by his daughter and/or son-in-law.

Present Laughter

I'm back home from my quick trip to New York, but while I was there I did have an opportunity to see the play Present Laughter with Kevin Kline. The play wasn't great, but Kevin Kline was great in it. Present Laughter didn't work for me because it came off as stale and dated. Noel Coward plays aren't really my thing either. The humor just didn't really translate for me, but Kevin Kline is such a gem that I was able to overlook a lot of the corny jokes and Katherine Hepburn-like pseudo-British accents in the play. I saw Kline in Ivanov years ago at the Lincoln Center and he was excellent. He's an actor's actor and seeing him again (even though the play was a disappointment) was still a treat.

New York...Again!

I'm back in New York for a brief work visit and the weather has been great although the bottom is supposed to fall out tomorrow as rain moves in. (Of course it would rain on my one day off!) Every time I come back to New York since I left in 2013, I feel like the population gets younger. So many hipsters in and around Manhattan. How can these folks afford the cost of living? I don't know. Maybe they're all trust fund babies or maybe they have multiple roommates or maybe they make a ton of money on their jobs.

School Lunch

I read a story in the NY Times today that outraged me about as much as the story a week or so ago about female prisoners being denied sanitary pads and tampons. Today's outrage story dealt with kids being denied hot school lunches because their lunch accounts are in arrears. I don't have kids and I'm not exactly a fan of many of them, but that doesn't mean I want to see kids go hungry. Denying a school kid a hot lunch because their parents owe money isn't right. I read about grade school kids having their hot lunch taken away and thrown in the garbage while a cheese sandwich was shoved on their food tray instead. I suspect most grade school kids and many high school kids don't control their own funds and have no way of controlling the funds set aside for their school lunch. Yet these kids are forced to be publicly humiliated and chow down on a dry cheese sandwich because their school lunch accounts need money added. It's humiliating enough to have to get a school lunch, I'm sure, especially one partially or fully subsidized by the government. But to have your meal yanked away from you and, in some cases, thrown in the garbage over a few dollars is ridiculous. For some low-income kids, a school lunch is the only meal or the only decent meal they eat during the day. It's a shame that children are treated so poorly in a country as wealthy as ours is.