Star Struck in the Seventies

In continuing with my Summer Stroll Down Memory Lane, I pulled out a few gems I've been keeping in my treasure chest since I was about 9. The TV guide in our newspaper used to have a section where they would post Addresses of The Stars, and I would wait with baited breath each week to see if any of my favorite Sweathogs or Love Boat Guest Stars were listed. I composed very serious letters that I would kill to have copies of now, telling each star how old I was, how much I loved their show or music, my favorite color, my favorite food - you know, the usual. Then I would race to the mailbox everyday, praying that SOMEbody, ANYbody, responded with a letter and/or picture. Here are the results of my earnest endeavor:

Please, Mister, Please. Don't blame me, 9 years old. I thought she had the voice of an angel. My dad had her country albums, and I used to sing every word. Of course, I loved her in "Grease" and wore out that soundtrack album, too. She later lost me with "Let's Get Physical." And what's up with her disappearing boyfriend?

I watched this show religiously, read the books, played "Little House" with my friends who lived out in the country, etc.. I always got to be Half Pint because I had the braids and the huge ass teeth. I thought I really scored with this picture because the whole cast signed it. I didn't realize until years later that the signatures were actually printed on there. Boo.

Another of my favorite shows, although Kris was not my favorite Angel. When I pulled all of these pictures out, I was dismayed to learn that my kick ass picture of Jaclyn Smith and her dog had disappeared. Damn. SHE was my fave. The envelope this picture came in says "RUSH! Cheryl Ladd photo enclosed!"

Recognize this handsome devil? Yes - it's David from "Eight is Enough." See, I didn't go for the obvious crushes - I liked Grant Goodeve over Willie Ames, Parker Stevenson over Shaun Cassidy, Richie over the Fonz AND Chachi. And I couldn't stand Leif Garrett. Something about his overt sensuality probably frightened me at the time (I was terrified of that Rod Stewart video for "Tonight's the Night"), but I always thought the guy had Loser written all over him. Who's crying now, hmmm?

This was a bonus score because I got it as a surprise gift from my junior high principal. He made gold nugget jewelry on the side, and after he sold some particularly heinous pieces to Mr. Schneider and company, he asked for autographed pictures for his favorite students, me and my best friend (Holla, M!). I can assure you we were the talk of the school the day we were called down to the office and came back to class with these babies.

And finally, my personal favorite:

I mean, what 9 year old girl WOULDN'T want an autographed picture of Rich Little, the Man of a Thousand Voices? Especially with the salt and pepper hair, the gold nugget necklace, and the shirt unbuttoned down-to-there? I thought he was HI-larious, and I would entertain myself (and anyone who would listen) with my impersonations of his impersonations of Nixon and Paul Lynde.

Now behold the 21st century version of my star struck letters. Peach came home from school with this one day, totally out of the blue. Please note the coordinating outfits, the spotlights, and "We See Your Love." On the back, she wrote, "Your fan, Peach."

What's The Name of That Song?

Even though I very nearly drove myself insane completing Karla May's concert meme in my Freebird posts, I will gladly give props to my homegirl Bookhart and the awesome song meme she created. I did, however, have to limit myself to naming the first songs that came to mind or I would have finished about the time I finally finish reading the Bible from start to finish without stopping.

Song I Loathe to Core of My Being - We Built This City - Starship
Musical Artist I Loathe to Core of My Being - Eminem
Rolling Stones Song I Love - Wild Horses
Beatles Song I Love - Here Comes the Sun
Who Song I Love - My Generation
Reggae Song I Love - Redemption Song - Bob Marley
Country Song I Love - Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain - Willie Nelson
Movie Soundtrack I Love - Grease
Musical Soundtrack I Love - Smokey Joe's Cafe
Cover Song I Love - Landslide - The Dixie Chicks
Contemporary Top-40 Artist I Secretly Love - Taylor Hicks
Song That Brings Me to Tears - Missing - Bruce Springsteen
Song That Makes Me Shake My Ass - Hey Ya! - Outkast
Classical Composer I Love - Tchaikovsky
Rap/Hip-Hop Song I Love - King of Rock - Run DMC
70s Disco Song I Love - Boogie Shoes - KC and the Sunshine Band
70s Supergroup Song I Love - Up on Cripple Creek - The Band
Metal Song I Love - Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
NewWave Song I Love - Man with the 4-way Hips - Tom Tom Club
Soul/R&B Song I Love - Living for the City - Stevie Wonder
Power Ballad I Love - Love Song - Tesla
Pre 1950s Song I Love - A Tisket, A Tasket - Ella Fitzgerald
Punk-ish Song I Love - Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
Singer/writer Song I Love - Angel from Montgomery - John Prine
MTV Video I Love - She Talks to Angels - The Black Crowes
None of the Above Song I Love - Love Me Tender - Elvis Presley

I gotta get an iPod.

La Tizzy Back in Da Hizzy

Word. I'm back from a successful trip to the Big D Market Center to help my mom buy stuff for her shop. She's been doing it for over 20 years, but I've only gone 4 or 5 times because I hate shopping. Unless I'm really in the mood. And I have a lot of money to spend. Both of which things happen very infrequently. And this is hardcore, to-the-death, power shopping. We're looking for things that OTHER people might want to buy for their homes or as gifts, and you have to wade through floor after floor of ridiculous crap to find the good stuff.

Each season, there always seem to be two or three trends that emerge and are bastardized in any number of ways in showroom after showroom. This time it was wine. You name it, and it had a wine bottle painted, stamped, or stitched on it. The most ridiculous thing I saw was a metal sculpture-like thing in the shape of a wine cooler that you would put on the table to keep the wine chilled during a meal, but it was all cut out into some crazy character like Elvis or a cowboy or a cop. Sort of like metal clothes for your wine bottle. Kill me now. And the thing is, the folks that that would appeal to drink their vino out the box, yo, not no bottle, so then it's doubly useless.

And speaking of clothes, what is this obsession with dressing your pets? There were more outfits and costumes and furniture than you could shake a stick at. In a word, that whole phenomenon is absolutelycompletelyandutterlyasininebeyondbelief, and I for one would like to kick the ass of the next person I see with a dog in a purse. I don't care how expensive or big the bag is, you're carrying your dog in a purse, which is an accessory, and your dog is a living thing, which is not an accessory. So screw you. I can only hope that the next time you try to put that precious Carmen Miranda ensemble on your little Chiquita Banana that she bites a chunk out of your collagen-riddled lips.

T-Bone held down the fort quite well for three nights. No big surprise. The whole crew met me at the airport, pretty much in one piece - Olive with only two huge mosquito bites on her cheek, and Peach with a bloody hole in her mouth from pulling her fifth tooth by herself.

P.S. One GREAT find was a necklace from these gals with my LaT profile picture on it. Of all things! I'll be sporting that beauty and hanging the boatload of other goodies I ordered from them in a few weeks. Pictures to follow ...

Ghosts of Summer Vacations Past

When I was 12, we went on the mother of all roadtrips to Washington, D.C.. Nine of us in my aunt's Big Ass Suburban. For two weeks. We were only allowed to bring one bag each, and we crammed them behind the third seat, on top of which we fashioned a napping area we called "the baby berth." We left a single seat up for my grandmother so she could crochet her way across America and read the road signs we passed. All of them. Aloud. And the rest of us bounced around on a pallet in the back like something out of a bad driver's ed movie.

The crew included my grandparents, my mom and her sisters, my cousins, my bro, and moi. Again, all of us in one Big Ass Suburban. For two weeks. In July. Surprisingly, nobody ever got car sick, we had only one pallet-wetting incident, and my aunt only had to pull out her gun once. We were stuffed into one hotel room in New Orleans, and around 3 in the morning, the wizards next door confused our adjoining door with their bathroom door. I awoke to lots of banging and slurred cussing, my portly grandfather - in his wife beater, jockey shorts, and sock garters - splayed across the door like a human shield, and my aunt loading her pistol in the bathroom.

Out on the interstate, we seemed to attract an inordinate amount of honks and other "signals" from the long-haulers we passed. We later realized that such attention was directly related to the times my other aunt was napping in the aforementioned baby berth in her cut-offs and Gilley's tanktop, her ample bosom or butt cheeks pressed against the back window. We had no idea. Nor did we have any idea that when my mom and grandfather were trying to park the Big Ass Suburban in a tiny ass garage in D.C. , my mom with her skirt over her head, dancing around and trying to direct my grandfather into the only available spot, that the whole dance/peepshow was being thoroughly enjoyed, and recorded, by the garage attendants.

Being the extremely proud and patriotic American, my grandfather had secured passes and tickets to all the must-sees of our nation's capital. Unfortunately, so had every GD Boy Scout troop in America as our trip happened to coincide with the National Boy Scout Jamboree. Everywhere we went - everywhere - the Scouts were sure to follow. Big ones. Little ones. Ones with hats. Ones with kerchiefs. And all terribly excited to be there. You'd think with all that alleged scouting going on that they would have been polite and orderly. Wrong. They were all, individually and collectively, going apeshit bananas. When we went to Colonial Williamsburg, I saw two Weeblos take out a woman in period dress just so they could have their picture made in the fake stocks set up in the square. The poor thing's beeswax candles went everywhere. And those damn Weeblos never looked back.

It rained a lot, too. One day, we went shopping in Alexandria and left my grandfather in charge of the boys at the hotel. We returned to find the boys poised to nail each other with marble ashtrays wrapped in pillowcases and my grandfather snoring his brains out in the other room. Apparently, the plastic helmets and swords they had gotten at some fort we went to were not nearly menacing enough, so they opted for the ashtray/pillowcase maces instead. My grandfather awoke with a start, yelling, "Dammit, Thelma! I wasn't going to let them hit each other!" as he emerged from the mound of towels the boys had covered him with to muffle the noise - which noise, I'm not sure.

Luckily, we didn't have to make a trip to the emergency room that day because that would have seriously cut into the time we spent at a garage in Nashville after the A/C on the Big Ass Suburban blew on the way home. But that's another story.

Happy Baby Daddy Day

This fits T-Bone to, well, a T:

Nothing is so strong as gentleness;
Nothing so gentle as real strength.

Sigh.