Musical Friday

Funny that Megan posted about music today, 'cos I'm about to tag her with a meme.

Here's how it goes:

1. Go to this link at Pop Culture Madness (scroll down - see the list of years on the left?)
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Pick five songs from that year
4. Wax nostalgic about each song and why it's special
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends

I'm bad at passing on meme's but I know Megan is a huge music buff so I plan to evilly take up an hour of her time.

I had to do some serious math before I calculated I turned 18 in 1992. Turns out this was a perfectly hideous musical year, including such abominations as "I'm Too Sexy", "Too Legit to Quit", "Achy Breaky Heart", "Baby Got Back", and the timeless works of Mr. Big. Now I'm not so puzzled as to why my teenage years were so boring and crappy.

Still:

November Rain by Guns N Roses - Oh, the angst! The drama! Best played loud on your cassette walkman while walking to school, blasting out the world around you (that just doesn't understand.) Even at 18, though, I knew the video was cheesy. (I've linked to the videos on YouTube for these.) The song holds up, though, as do a lot of GnR classics, especially "Paradise City" that pretty much requires being played really loudly while driving.

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana - Amongst all the unbelievable crap (see above), this song sounded like the most honest, raw, brilliant thing anyone had ever written. I don't know what those crazy kids today think but it still sounds like genius to me. And a finer, starker, smarter, more iconic video has never been made. And 15 years later it still makes me a little sad.

Caribbean Blue by Enya - Um, I still have this one on my MP3. It's just so relaxing, and conducive to letting your mind wander and create. It's too bad every song Enya has released in the last 15 years has sounded pretty much identical.

Free Your Mind by En Vogue - I really liked En Vogue back in the day - whatever happened to them, anyway? Does Beyonce know what a debt she owes to them? This is one of their most infernally catchy tunes, and fun to dance to if you play it loud. The video - that crazy fashion show of the future - is spectacular. Great outfits, great style, great dancing. No one has ever worn a pair of thigh-high patent stiletto boots (with matching push-up bra!) to more awesome effect.

Mysterious Ways by U2 - Actually this is the year that Achtung Baby was released, an album that is still in my play rotation. I could have picked any song, but I picked this one for its pure U2 perfection - awesome guitar licks, irresistible bass line, kicking drums and inimitable vocals (as one of the YouTube commenters so eloquently says, "Bono = the shiznit!") Special mention goes to One, which is pretty much my favourite song of all time and (the "bar version") one of my favourite videos. (Damn. I just watched it again and he IS the shiznit!)

Right Megan - you're up!

Abby

Presents for Myself

When I finished my first novel, it felt like a big deal. Big enough to mark the occasion somehow - and a dinner out just didn't seem to cut it.

On an impulse, I went out and bought myself a present.

This is it:




It didn't cost much - I don't remember how much exactly, but it was less than $30. It sits just perfectly inside the opening of a button-down shirt, without being too distracting, and it always looks nice. But, more than that, every time I put it on I remind myself of why I bought it. I remind myself of how proud I am of myself, that I actually finished a book. You lose sight of that after a while - that not too many people actually get that far.

Considering it was an impulse buy, it's been surprising how much enjoyment I've gotten out of this one piece of jewelery, and how much it means to me. My little heart necklace always gives me a small boost of confidence, even on a bad day.

So, now I've finished my second manuscript and I think I'm going to buy myself another present.

But what? I could get another necklace - I do like necklaces. I was thinking of a ring; I love rings but I find they bother me over the course of a day and I'm usually itching to pull them off. The day job requires a lot of talking on the phone so I have to pick my earrings carefully, though I like them too.

A bracelet maybe?

Maybe I'll wander around online and see if anything catches my fancy. And if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

8 Random Things About Me

Courtesy of Megan. This one was surprisingly hard:

1. My legs are freakishly allergic to every moisturizer in the known universe. The only moisturizer I can find that doesn't give me hives is a self-tanner. Hence, my legs are orange-y and pungent all year round.

2. I am a lifelong U2 fan - always have been, always will be. Greatest band in the world.

3. The smell of Bugle corn snacks makes me feel ill.

4. I hate socks with a passion. I put on my sandals as soon as the snow melts and I don't take them off until my toes are freezing.

5. I am incapable of parallel parking or reversing into a spot. The Guy calls my parking skills "shameful".

6. Although I consider myself a girly girl, I can not figure out how one might use a curling iron on one's own head, nor do I understand what toner does. (Still, I stand by my position.)

7. In my early twenties I suffered from a bizarre crush on Hugh Grant and endured quite a few mediocre movies as a result. After a year or two it went away completely, like flu.

8. I scare pitifully easy at movies, even the bad ones. The Blair Witch Project gave me nightmares for a week. Even Shawn of the Dead freaked me out.

Harry Somebody

I'm all for it, but I admit the Harry Potter craze has not swept me up. I read a few of the books and thought they were fresh and entertaining, but they didn't grab me. It's an individual thing.

I didn't think much of it, except to generally be in favour of everyone reading books and enjoying themselves and writers getting rich, until - as usual - Stephen King said it best.

Think how it must be for all the kids who were 8 when Harry debuted in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with its cartoon jacket and modest (500 copies) first edition. Those kids are now 18, and when they close the final book, they will be in some measure closing the book on their own childhoods — magic summers spent in the porch swing, or reading under the covers at camp with flashlights in hand, or listening to Jim Dale's recordings on long drives to see Grandma in Cincinnati or Uncle Bob in Wichita.

and

[R]ereading is a great pleasure, but it's not the bated-breath, what's-gonna-happen-next suspense that Potter readers have enjoyed since 1997. And, of course, Harry's audience is different. It is, in large part, made up of children who will be experiencing these unique and rather terrible feelings for the first time. But there's comfort. There are always more good stories, and now and then there are great stories. They come along if you wait for them...

This column made me positively teary with nostalgia. All those lucky kids, going through that for the first time! The same thing I went through with the Narnia books and The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Judy Blume's Blubber (nasty though it is) and The Great Gilly Hopkins and that long, great summer I spent reading everything Tolkien. The other girls my age were going through it with Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, the Anne of Green Gables books, and A Wizard of Earthsea. I lost entire days to Tolkien, just barely lifting my head to eat and not really aware of what was going on in the supposed "real world".

And those were the days when "Young Adult" was hardly a genre, let alone a hot one. I look at the YA shelves in the bookstores today and wish I was 12 again, just for the summer vacations.

King is right. Sure, nothing is quite like those first books, but then you get to be a grownup, and you get to read romance, sci-fi, mystery, history, fantasy, paranormal, and whatever else turns your crank. The ghosts and wonders don't go away, they just get more grown-up.

You can find them. I know I have.

Questions you're not supposed to ask while watching Transformers

(Um, I guess there might be spoilers in this, but not serious ones. Besides, it won't make much sense unless you've seen the movie.)

• How could the Autobots have learned English "from the World Wide Web" when they've just landed on Earth?
• What happened to the huge megavirus that shut down communications across the world?
• Why didn't that helicopter-thing just blow everybody up?
• Why did the Deceptecons spend the first hour of the movie looking for that pair of glasses, when they didn't actually need them to find the cube?
• How come Bumblebee couldn't talk through the whole thing except at the end?
• Why did they decide to bring the cube to the middle of a populated city when it was being pursued by deadly destructive alien robots?
• Were they actually implying that the whole thing was covered up in the end?
• If Optimus followed Sam to the top of that building, why did they need Sam to go in the first place?
• The actress playing the heroine was extremely pretty. Why did they feel the need to put her mascara on with a spatula?
• Why were three teenagers invited to the Pentagon to decode enemy transmissions?
• Who wrote this thing?

Not that I didn't enjoy it - I did. The opening sequence alone is worth the price of admission. It is a spectacular movie, without a doubt. But they could have spent a little less money on the graphics and a little more on the script.

IMO.

Deep Thoughts

So I take a couple of days off and here's what inspires me to blog again:

Does anyone else think that romance writer Julia Quinn



looks a lot like Jennifer Garner?



She probably hears that all the time.

In other news, the big RWA National conference is coming up, which means that the slobs (read: me) who aren't going get to sit at home and tell themselves that everyone can't be having THAT much fun reading each other's business cards and worrying about the right shoes. Hm, maybe I need to come up with a 2007 list of how to be a Nationals beeyotch.

Is it just me or does everyone seem freaked out about pitching this year? Maybe it's just me. I've pitched to two agents in my life (through my local chapter) and though I was nervous, I was also happily oblivious that pitching is supposed to be A BIG DEAL. The first agent nodded, asked me a few questions, and told me to send pages. (Don't they all nod, ask a few questions, and tell you to send pages?) The second one listened to me for maybe a minute (my plot summary was really short) then looked out the window and got me into a conversation about What The Romance Market Is Missing. Then she asked me to send pages.

Three months later, she left agenting completely. Which is too bad. She was cool.

Chill about the pitching, guys. They're just people.

Abby