Things My Family Is Spared from Knowing

By Nancy Davis Kho · May 18th, 2012 · Comments (16)

My husband and I have a running joke. At least I think it’s a joke. Every night after he takes Achilles outside one last time, he says, “I took the dog out for you,” as though the dog’s nightly eliminations somehow belong in my category and he’s doing me a big favor. My responses range from, “I bore your children for you,” to “I made the coffee for you,” (even though I’m the one who drinks it) to dead silence and a head tilt, which never ends well.

Everyone has their role to play in a family, and his happens to include taking the dog out at 10 pm. He also specializes in When to Refinance the Mortgage and How to Wax the Car.

But there is an equally weighty list of things my family can rest assured that I will always know for them.

1.) Where the spare rolls of toilet paper are stored. Yes, there are always a few rolls under the bathroom sinks, but do they know where the TP Mothership is parked after I haul it in the door from Target?  Why would they? They have never in their lives been caught without a square to spare.

2.) How to buy or address a distant family member’s birthday card. These appear magically on the kitchen table, with the “Dear [Name]” section filled in, the address and stamp already on the envelope, and a pen lying across the top. All they do is step up and apply a John Hancock.

3.) How long to microwave anything. Who has time to read a box? Just ask Mom. She’s probably read that one before. Also, ask her which dish to microwave it in. She’s magic that way.

4.) Where to buy filters for and/or how to clean the many filter-needing products in the house. Water filters, coffee filters, refrigerator filters, HVAC filters, I’ve got them wired. I know when to change them, where to buy refills in bulk and on the cheap, and where to store them (hint: near the TP Mothership.) If I go, please buy my family bottled water and coffee coupons.

5.) When and how to apply preventative medications to the dog. My family wouldn’t know where to find the tick oil and heartworm medication stash in this house, or what to do with it if they did. All they know is once a month, when they walk in the door from school or work, they’re greeted with “Don’t touch the dog’s back until the tick oil sinks in and for god’s sake keep him off the furniture!”

6.) The dates of school related activities. We operate on a Just-In-Time Information Inventory system around here. I am not about to tell them that the Middle School Open House is in two weeks because everyone is busy and they’ll forget anyway. I like to fill their lives with happy surprises by springing it on them 90 minutes ahead of time.

And if you think I’ve made any of this up, I’ll just share a stanza from the lovely Mother’s Day poem I received from my eldest daughter this week, entitled “6 Ways To Look at a Mother:”

The only one

with a concrete

sense of

what is happening

at any given moment

Here’s to not knowing, and feeling fine about it.

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School of Thought

By Nancy Davis Kho · May 15th, 2012 · Comments (11)

School HallwayThe decisions are made. The die is cast. After six months of researching school options for our kids, both of whom enter new schools next year, we’ve made our final choices. No going back. Go Toros! Go Bulldogs!

You can tell I’m nervous, right?

Where I grew up, there was none of this “Which schools are you applying to?” crap. Every last one of us went to the local public elementary school. Then the middle school. Then the high school. Yes, there was a parallel parochial system that drew all the Irish Catholics in my neighborhood, but once those kids got onto the Holy track it was the same thing for them: first Lady of Lourdes, then Queen of Peace, then Our Lady of Mercy (girls) or McQuaid (boys.)

What a golden era. Entire tranches of our young brains were spared the indignities of “shadow visits” and researching afterschool clubs and language requirements, and could instead be devoted to memorizing lyrics by Hall and Oates or devising strategy for epic games of bike tag. Where am I going to go to school? Why, where my brother went. And my sister before him. When I showed up for kindergarten, the teacher said, “I remember you! Your sister brought you here for show and tell when you were a newborn!” I don’t think parents spent nervous hours worrying whether it was worse to impose adult edicts and crush a child’s tender spirit, or to defer to the educational preference of a person who, given the choice, would eat a 100% sugar diet.

Now, for all I know no one who grew up in my birth ZIP code still follows the same lockstep process I did. My niece and nephews who live there did, though, and one of them even had the same German teacher as me. The public schools I went to were excellent, empirically excellent. I remember getting to college and thinking how much easier some of the classes were than in my high school.

But in Oakland, one has choices. One must consider the choices, given the vagaries of state educational funding and the decimation that Prop 13 has wrought on the quality of California education. (Adjusted per-pupil spending – We’re Number 47! Thank god for Alabama making us look good.)

So that means Sunday school open houses, Wednesday night information sessions, conversations in the grocery store aisle with fellow parents about what they’ve heard about this school or that. It means applications, recommendations, interviews. It means driving by the school during let-out time, to see if it’s as chaotic as you’ve been led to believe, and stopping by ostensibly to drop off paperwork but really to see the school in action when it hasn’t been buffed to a high sheen by an admissions director.

It means frank family discussions about budgets, goals, worries. What kind of a future do you want for your child? What school is best suited to get her there? Who else will be attending, and is that a community in which you can envision yourself? Where do you see yourself in another four or five years?

That’s a discussion I was hoping to have with and about the kids when they were 18, not 11.

To their eternal credit, my kids were reasonable, calm, and determined throughout this process. One knew from the get-go where she wanted to attend and just had to bring her parents around. The other was open to all possibilities and, because of that, made us particularly proud of the confidence with which she made her final choice.

They’re going to public schools, just like their dad and I did. But we sure took the long way ‘round.

Although, obviously, if the School of Rock were not fictional, they’d be heading there under the tutelage of fake Ned Schneebly.

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A Mother’s Day to Remember

By Nancy Davis Kho · May 11th, 2012 · Comments (18)

I keep this picture on my bedside table. It’s my favorite picture of the kids and me, taken ten years ago, a blurry snapshot from a Napa Valley getaway. Real photographers would probably say that it’s not a keeper. The image is overexposed, the baby’s not looking at the camera, and aside from the earrings which I lost shortly thereafter and still miss, I look like a slob.

But I love it, because my daughters and I look like the branches and trunk of a single tree. Despite what may have actually been going on that day – diaper shortage, toddler fits, goldfish crackers ground into my car upholstery – I seem confident and strong, and the girls are grafted right onto me. I prefer to think of the light on the left hand side of the frame as the universe giving us our spotlight dance, saying, “You are blessed with these particular children, who will enrich your life in ways that it will take you the rest of yours to comprehend.” We look, simply put, intertwined.

Ten years later, with my kids growing up and independent in all the right ways, we aren’t so physically attached (my hips couldn’t take it) but we are still connected.  If they haven’t checked in with me for a half hour, I find myself wandering through the house looking for them. “Whatcha doing?” I ask, as I peer into their bedrooms or into the family room. It’s the inverse of the the long ago days they used to come find me in the kitchen, touch my knee, and return to their paper doll games, the unseen sonar of familial reassurance. Sometimes it’s hard to remember with any clarity the time of my life when they weren’t flanking me.

Which is why, on this Mother’s Day, I am holding a special thought for the children of moms no longer alive to to be that reassuring home base. And for the mothers whose children have left too soon.

It has been a hard spring, full of loss for people near and dear to me. But whoever you are, there are people all around who have lost a parent, or a child, knocking that precarious balance off center. They’ve had to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other every single morning, how to present an appearance of solidity to the world when all they want to do is dissolve into a thousand pieces. They are our neighbors, friends, parents, siblings, husbands, and wives, all of whom have had to un-learn the reflex of “I’ve got to remember to tell my mom the next time I call her” or “wonder what time my daughter will get home?”

It takes fortitude and courage to keep moving after such a loss. There are specific days of the year that it sucks to be the one left behind.

This Sunday, Mother’s Day, would be a good day to take a moment and think about those in your life who have lost a mother or a child. Shine your own spotlight on them, by offering a funny remembrance or a kind word about the one no longer here. Remind them that you also remember.

And the rest of us who still have the branches of our family trees intact? Even in the worst moments of parenting, or being the adult child, try to recall: we are actually the fortunate ones.

Here’s a song from an album called The Reminder, by Feist. 1,2,3,4, tell me that you love me more…

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I’ll Take One Dog Cone, Size Large

By Nancy Davis Kho · May 9th, 2012 · Comments (7)

My dog is under the impression that he is both paralyzed and in big trouble. All it took was a cone.

In the past I have openly mocked dogs wearing the big Cone of Shame as my prancing, handsome dog Achilles trots alongside looking like he is on parade duty. “Oh, no, the cone of shame!” I have said to other dog owners, chortle chortle hahaha. “Poor thing.” In my head I have thought, “That is just so undignified.”

But one run through a patch of something itchy last weekend and we booked Achilles a one way ticket on the Undignified Express. It was that, or watch him remove his own back right foot using his tongue and a determination heretofore seen only on women at the Title 9 Warehouse Sale (3 Days Only!) in Berkeley.

I loved the term the vet used as she handed over the healing sprays and antibiotics at the end of his short appointment. “Does he have an Elizabethan collar?” No, but his velvet damask cloak and his scepter are in the car. The vet tech approached with a monster sized translucent cone bigger than any lampshade in my house and pulled it gently over his head. And with that, Achilles stopped moving. His knees locked, his eyeballs bulged, and his ears retreated to the back of his head. He was obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

We only made it back to the car through a combination of dragging, coaxing, and pleading – if anyone walked by and thought “That is just so undignified,” they were 100% right. Forget his usually bounding leap into the trunk of the station wagon. The dog just stood looking up at me from his cone, his eyes like saucers. I hefted him in and out of the car, and somehow got him inside the house. By then his expression had changed to one of utter guilt, trying to figure out just what he had done to deserve such medieval torture.

And now, when the satellite dish-sized cone is on his head, he believes he cannot walk. He stands there, alone, in the dining room and whines for rescue, though we are all seated at the kitchen table four unrestricted steps away. We hold out treats for him, we pet his face, we whisper and shout encouragement. The look on his face says, “Freeze, people, or they may put one of these on you too!”

On his first night with the cone he lay in his bed at the foot of ours emitting an unrelenting high pitched nose squeal – the German Shorthaired Pointer’s special gift of communication is nose whistling. After 15 minutes my husband bailed to the guest room. I made it another 8 minutes before pulling the cone off and wishing his foot good luck.

As of this writing he’s still suffering acute psychoparalysis and has to have the cone removed to walk up or down stairs, from the kitchen into the adjoining dining room, or down an empty hallway towards the front door. He is lying on his bed, depressed, wondering why we spent so much time being nice to him for the past six years if this was what we had planned all along. The foot, by the way, is healing nicely and will be ready for summer sandal weather in no time.

But even when he’s better I’m keeping that cone close at hand. I’ve tried everything else to get him to stop kitchen counter surfing for food. I think I finally have my solution.

Here’s a little video of Achilles in happier days – to which he’ll be back to in no time. This is a ravine trail near my house (yes, Oakland is hella wild in spots!) and he taught himself to play Fetch The Pinecone. After painstaking pinecone placement at the top of the ridge, he watches it roll downhill to the creek, then hurtles in after it and brings it up for another round.

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Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: The Black Keys

By Nancy Davis Kho · May 8th, 2012 · Comments (5)

The Band: The Black Keys, Oracle Arena, Quatro de Mayo 2012. Two sons of Akron Ohio, Black Keys guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney met when they were eight years old – so all you moms listening to your kids making their guitars and drum kits and clarinets not-so-gently weep, take heart that they too could someday sell 2 million albums and embark upon a stadium tour. They play straight-up, blues-tinted garage rock, and won MTV’s Best New Artist award in 2010. Which is cute, because they formed the band in 2001.

The Venue: Oracle Arena, Oakland CA. Whoops, that’s O.Co Arena, thanks to its new corporate overlord Overstock.com. I try not to get too attached to the stadium names around the Bay Area since they change more often than the stated goals of Occupy Oakland. I also try not to go to stadium shows if there is any way to avoid them. It’s rare that a band playing a stadium has the power to make everyone, even the fans in the cheap seats, feel like they’re engaged with the show, and I sometimes think I should have just bought a live concert video. A video would certainly have been cheaper than paying the outrageous $35 parking fee. On the plus side: O.Co is close to home, clean, and serves a fine, cold Sierra Nevada beer.

The Company: With two daughters, I live my life in Girl-land, awash in the latest news about Demi Lovato, Dance Moms, and H&M microcollections. So I jumped at the chance to join my friend Andrea, her 13 year old son and his best friend to see a rock show. Already on the drive over I was enjoying the change of pace of masculine adolescent humor. We were still talking about OneDirection, though. “How do you make a 14 year old girl cry? Tell her Harry is the cute one.” Guffaws and high fives all around.

The boys also had an uncanny sense for food consumption. Though, by mutual agreement, we sat in different sections for the show, somehow they knew exactly when we were stepping up to the cashier to order food. They swooped in and promptly quadrupled the size of our order. Then they grabbed their hotdogs and nachos and disappeared again before Andrea signed the charge slip.

The Crowd: A veritable Noah’s Ark of humanity. We knew we were in for a good night when we walked past the guy in a sandwich board with Bible verses bellowing about the End Times, and a white guy with dread locks walking next to us said loudly, “Let’s get our sin on!” There were Latino guys with neck tattoos, bald gay guys with Geek Chic glasses, punk girls with blue hair, suburban couples with matching blonde coifs, and Asian dudes wearing plaid. If the End Times had indeed arrived during the show and there were a way to switch the O.Co Arena to “Biodome Setting,” rest assured that there was plenty of gene diversity to repopulate the earth with music fans.

The Opening Band: The Arctic Monkeys. Well, I thought I knew who they were, but I admit I may have been subconsciously thinking Arcade Fire. What? It was a busy week getting ready to host a fundraiser cocktail party for the elementary school the night after the Black Keys. I kept meaning to do some research, but was sidetracked moving furniture and hiding breakables.  THIS band is a British punk outfit that was heavy on the guitars and light on the melodies, and had me thinking misty thoughts of college garage band shows in the ‘80s when I still had the wherewithal to skirt the edges of the mosh pit and stick a toe in the water now and then. Good times. I don’t miss them.

Age Humiliation Factor: Temporarily High.
Blame the strobe lights for The Arctic Monkeys, which had much the same effect as the strobes at St. Vincent last week of tormenting the old folks. As she cupped her hand over her left eyeball to avoid the worst of the strobe effects during their set, Andrea casually mentioned that she’d had light-induced seizures as a kid. I spent much of the rest of the set yelling over the music, “But SERIOUSLY!! What do I do if you have a seizure? SERIOUSLY! TELL ME!” The set ended, the strobes got shut off, and we got on with the program without seizing.

Cool Factor: High
The reason is simple. The Black Keys had the best concert t-shirts ever. Retro, funky, well made. AND they had Black Keys coffee mugs, which, at this point, I prefer over a tshirt because I can use it every day, at least if my Crowded House mug is in the dishwasher.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? Yes, but if you factor in the cost of parking and $12 beer you may need a home equity loan to pay for the evening.
My theory on why the crowd was so diverse? The Black Keys play pure and powerful American rock and roll, and you’d have to be European not to love it. This kind of music is a force for unity, a reminder of the grit and determination that underscores the best of the American character. Everyone, but everyone, can find a toehold with “Gold on the Ceiling” and “Howlin’ for You,” and I’ve always found it gratifying to look around a show and see someone who looks nothing like me having as much fun as I am. And rest assured, these guys know how to send their music all the way up to the cheap seats.

Today’s video is my favorite Black Keys song – “Gold on the Ceiling.” I hear it all the time on the radio and I still can’t get enough of it, so that’s a testament to something. Are there other good bands coming out of Akron that I should know about? Have you ever mixed up two bands because they both started with “A” and had two words in their name and you were trying to remember a recipe for vodka punch at the same time? Let me know in the comments section. I could talk music with you all day long.

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Turn Down the Music and Read: The Drunk Diet

By Nancy Davis Kho · May 3rd, 2012 · Comments (21)

How I Lost 40 Pounds...Wasted

I get approached by a lot of PR people who want me to write about their product or service, and I almost always say no. But when I saw the cover image for this diet book, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.

Let me say this first about The Drunk Diet: How I Lost 40 Pounds…Wasted, by Lüc Carl (St. Martin’s Press, March 2012): I couldn’t put it down. I laughed out loud reading it. I recited entire paragraphs to my family. It was the funniest book I’ve read in months.

Ok, so it’s not technically a humor book but rather a mash up memoir/diet plan. But if “bar manager, author, long-distance runner, musician, personal trainer, semiprofessional bowler, and Sirius XM Radio DJ” (and also Lady Gaga’s ex) Lüc Carl is anything, he’s a pragmatist. When a diet guru’s advice for holiday eating is “Strap on your seatbelt and f’ing pray!” you know he’s not going to mind that I recommend this as a humor book. He just wants me to recommend it.

Here’s the back story: a kid from Nebraska grows up thinking canned fruit with whipped cream is a health food, gets a drum kit, grows his hair out, opens a case of Bud and adds an umlaut u to his name. For some period of time Carl seems to feel he was caught in a John Hughes movie, wherein the oft-derided “rich kids from Connecticut” are bested by him and his lowbrow buddies using hand-me down instruments in Battle of the Bands that I thought only existed in Hollywood scriptwriter fever dreams.

Eventually he makes his way to NYC in a battered van full of Rock N Rollers and turns to eating and booze for comfort, at some point earning the nickname Heavy Metal Taco Guy. When at some point he realizes that he is a fat slob who has been reduced to wearing Size 11 women’s jeans (what? He only wears women’s jeans! DEAL WITH IT!) he pulls himself up by the laces of his unlaced Bro sneakers and achieves his goal of becoming The Sexiest Man on the Planet, all without giving up his boozy lifestyle. While the cover shot of a grown man wearing zebra tights tucked into tube socks may not scream Sexiest Man Alive to you, no matter – he tells us repeatedly in the book that he is IT. And he’s down to a Size 5 at Forever21, so thankyouverymuch.

How do we know he is a serious Rock N’ Roller? PURPLE. All the photos in the book are given the same purple filter treatment, even the one of his mom wearing a leather biker jacket and swigging from a bottle of Jameson.

How can you not love a music memoir that includes a section on healthiest eats for the severely hungover? (No hash browns!) Or a diet book that includes long passages on guys named Dirt Bag and Mexico (because, I mean, he’s Mexican. Carl will not tolerate pretentious, even if he does occasionally drink “a wine” with pinky finger extended to impress the ladies.)

Speaking of pretentious, The Drunk Diet will disabuse you of the notion that you need a fancy gym membership, alongside a bunch of rich kids from Connecticut, in order to work out. As demonstrated in many purple photos, you just need a flat surface…like a bar. Carl demonstrates his abs routine atop his bar, still dressed in the zebra tights and tube socks. (Note to any readers who may find themselves at St. Jerome’s in NYC for a drink – you may want to tuck a pack of Wet Wipes into your purse for a quick cleanup. God only knows where he did his inner thigh work.)

Carl sprinkles the F bomb around like the book is a bowl of popcorn and the F word is the salt that he so strenuously recommends you avoid. He likes that word so much, in fact, that the sidebars delving deeper into nutrition and exercise are titled: “What the F- is Omega 3?” “What the F- is a Plateau?” “What the F- is Whey Protein?” In the section on best alcoholic drinks to sustain the buzz without widening the waist, a table of healthy choices is labeled “Drink This, F- That.”

It’s tempting to give up on Carl as that guy from high school who you only ever spied through the window of the detention room door,  for instance when he is providing a back-of-the-envelope treatise on human evolution and body type that ends with “Well, maybe not a cheetah, but whatever.” But then every 32 pages or so, he turns around and says something genius, like pointing out the cozy relationship between the FDA and companies that produce aspartame, and links it to skyrocketing diabetes rates in the U.S. The passages on how hard it was to give up cigarettes and (shhh, don’t tell) cut back on the booze are hearfelt and honest. And he never once disparages Gaga, proof that a gentleman lurks somewhere underneath the hair that takes him an hour to style each day.

Do not count this man out, is my point.

But truly, it’s the deadpan writing that makes Lüc “Heavy Metal Taco Guy” Carl worth the read. The section on him being bit by a squirrel at the beginning of a bar shift that he just can’t leave early, instructing his employees what do if they see him foaming at the mouth, and the ensuing hospital hijinks actually ends with this : “Okay, I’ll admit it: That story doesn’t really have shit to do with dieting or exercise.”

Who cares? It’s funny. F- the story arc, as Carl might say, this f’ing story needs to be shared!

It’s put me in a sharing mood for sure. So I’m giving away my copy of The Drunk Diet to a Midlife Mixtape reader who wants to learn how to f’ing become the biggest sexbomb who ever mixed up one of Carl’s many recipes in the back of the book, one of which is rice cooked in orange juice. Did you just throw up in your mouth a little? F- yeah! Rock N’ Roll!!

Just leave a comment here about the worst food you ever ate in your younger, less wise, possibly drunker days. I’ll pick a winning entry at random (thanks, Random.org) on Sunday evening at 5 pm PST.

And until then? Pour yourself a vodka soda (no carbs) and rock out to some R-rated Crüe. Zebra tights optional.

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No Gum, No Gun

By Nancy Davis Kho · April 30th, 2012 · Comments (16)

When it comes to concert going, there is one big moment of truth for the midlife fan: the ID check. I dread it now as much as I did when I was 20 and a half. “What if they ask me? What if they ask me?”

Only now, I also think, “What if they don’t?”

I’ve had the patronizing: “Why, THAT can’t be your birth year! You look at least 10 years younger!” delivered in the same tone I use when I tell my 93 year old neighbor across the street that I love her new wig. I’ve had the nonsensical: the time a bouncer harassed my friend Andrea and I to show him our IDs, only to have Andrea point at the fine lines around her eyes and say, “Really, dude? CAW! CAW!” I’ve had the futile: the time I tried in vain to attract the bouncer’s attention with my California license as my younger cute blonde friend pulled out a battered passport filled with interesting stamps. Mine might as well have been a Costco membership card.

Just when I think I’ve had every bouncer-patron encounter that’s possible while maintaining a PG rating, there’s a new variation. Last week at St. Vincent/tUnE-yArDs it was the silent raised eyebrow, as in, “Seriously, lady, you’re extending your driver’s license to me? We both know that’s a farce.”

But my favorite ID-check experiences, hands-down, are when I am going to a show with my friend Maria and one of us has secreted baked goods onto our person. I decided to bring it to life for you with this short video, inspired by true events. I call it, “No Gum, No Gun.”

Adventures in Identification
by: midlifemixtape
 

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Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: tUnE-yArDs and St. Vincent

By Nancy Davis Kho · April 27th, 2012 · Comments (9)

The Bands: a doubleheader by St. Vincent and tUnE-yArDs, Tuesday April 24 2012. After reading with dismay earlier in the day about the new pink-washed girly Legos that are selling like hoecakes –oops, that’s hotcakes – how can I resist the allure of two female-fronted bands tearing it up on the same bill?

All I knew about tUnE-yArDs before the show was that it was a band that could have been named by SanDeE* from L.A. Story. The band has an Afro-pop, experimental vibe: lead singer and Oakland’s own Merrill Garbus records her Harry Belafonte yelps onto loops, layers a couple of drum phrase loops over top and then proceeds to accompany herself. Two sax players and a guitarist round out the lineup, but I think I have seen the future of outsourced musicians, and it looks like a computer keyboard.

St. Vincent’s frontwoman, Annie Erin Clark, who looks like she could be Jane Wiedlin’s niece, played with Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens before forming her own band. From listening to her latest album, Strange Mercy, and checking out some videos, I was getting hints of Kate Bush for Gen Y, only angrier and with more guitar.

The Venue: The Fox Theater, Oakland CA. Officially my favorite music venue for its close proximity to home and plentiful cheap parking, it’s also magic because of the slice of Oakland it anchors. As I walked to the theater on a gorgeous spring night with the light fading to pink, there was a “Free Bradley Manning” rap concert on one side, a lineup of hipsters at the taco shop on the other, and fancy cocktails being poured at Flora, Dogwood, Rudy’s Can’t Fail Café, and Make Westing to take up the rest of the space. I recently met a Bay Area native, now living in Marin, who said she never goes to Oakland because it’s too scary. I say, thanks for not taking my parking space.

The Company: Judith, a friend who I can never recall meeting, just knowing. We spent our pre-game time at Dogwood discussing how our respective partners handled sudden job turbulence in the past, which just goes to show you that the only real threat of gay marriage is that they will lead lives as mundane as the rest of us. That she directs a golf nonprofit just proves that I like to choose my friends from Central Casting.

The Crowd: The young women in the crowd were of the funky, quirky vintage dress wearing variety, and the young dudes shook out their best plaid shirts for the occasion. (From our seats in the loge Judith and I counted five identical plaid shirts on the General Admission floor, and once the sexy Annie Clark took the stage, the first three rows were XY Chromosome City.)

But the crowd was more mixed, age and race-wise, than I might have expected. I think it’s because Merrill Garbus brought out the hometown posse of friends and supporters. In Oakland, that’s black, lesbian, Asian, and Democratic/Socialist/Pagan/Vegan, often all at the same time.

Age Humiliation Factor: Externally imposed, and high.
I’ve read about a device called the Mosquito used by convenience stores to drive away loitering teenagers.  Evidently it emits a high-pitched squeal discernible only by the smooth of skin, and sends them running.

Guess what? St. Vincent’s strobe light show has the same effect on people over 40. Every time those lights went off, I hung my head to my sternum and pressed my palms into my eye sockets. One by one, the older crowd peeled off and left the theater. Owners of hip bars and clubs should definitely install these lights to keep away the undesirables in relaxed fit pants.

But the real reason Judith and I left early? She was being interviewed at 8:30 am by the Golf Channel the next day. Party on.

Cool Factor: If relatively obscure still means cool, then high.

tUnE-yArDs 2011 album release w h o k i l l (copyeditors HATE this band) and St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy both landed on a number “Best of” lists for 2011, but no one in my circle had ever heard of them. Earlier in the day I had a lunch with a super hip, young, arty friend in San Francisco whose eyes bugged out when I told him the show I was going to see. “Check you out!” he said, with obvious approval. So there’s that.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? If only for philosophical reasons.

There just aren’t enough women who have made it big in the music world for talent, rather than for camera-friendly looks. And how often in music do you see something really, truly innovative?

Early on in the tUnE-yArDs show Judith looked at me and said, “If Garbus is gonna keep playing the drums and yodeling, this show is going to be AWESOME.” As with most experimental music there were sections that fell flat, but I was totally awed by the Garbus brain  that can handle four separate loops, two drum kits, and a voice that puts any American Idol contestant to shame. The Judy Jetson dress, face paint, and half-shaved head were a big f-u to conventional beauty standards. When tUnE-yArDs wrapped up the set by inviting out four kids to stand behind Garbus and shake their moneymakers, I was officially smitten. I may not rush out to see her play again, but I love that she is helping forge a new visual and audio model of women in music.

St. Vincent provided a totally different dynamic – a gorgeous tall brunette in leather hotpants and heels shredding on her axe, mixing femininity up with anger and power. Clark rocked hard. So hard, in fact, that it finally dawned on me: this is not Kate Bush. This is thrashy, jangly, dissonant, and I don’t love it. I stuck it out for a while in Grrrl Power solidarity. But I guess the biggest compliment you can give another woman is to judge her on her own merits. So it was with full respect and hope for her continued success that I left the St. Vincent and the strobe lights behind.

I’m posting two vids today. “Gangsta” from tUnE-yArDs (upcoming tour dates here) was probably the highlight of the set for me, primarily because I would have expected just about any other word but “gangsta” to come out of Garbus’ mouth at that moment. And “Cheerleader” from St. Vincent (upcoming tour dates here)– I love this song and this video. I don’t wanna be a cheerleader, but I will always cheer for girls who rock.

 

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My Surprising Hidden Talent

By Nancy Davis Kho · April 24th, 2012 · Comments (11)

I enter a lot of writing contests, some of which announce the winners months later, by which time I’ve largely forgotten both that I’ve entered and what I wrote about. Imagine my pleasant surprise when my friend Risa notified me that we’d both been recognized for “Entries of Note” in the annual essay contest by lit mag Tiny Lights. While this may in fact be the equivalent of the “Thanks for Entering! Award,” I’ll take my accolades wherever I can. Thanks Tiny Lights!

I have a surprising hidden talent for chewing tobacco. I discovered it one fall evening during my senior year in high school, and hoped it might be the thing to change my life.

When school started in September, my familiar nerdy-girl longing to be more popular was suddenly laced with a new feeling: hope. Over the summer I’d visited a few universities, and more college visits up and down the Eastern Seaboard were on the horizon. A year from now, I realized, I’ll be watching the leaves fall on a college campus instead of here. The sudden idea that an exit ramp was approaching, and fast, made me reckless. Who says I have to be the straight arrow everyone thinks I am?

The conventional wisdom is that teenage girls worry about their weight, but in my experience the boys in high school were much more hysterical about how they looked. But maybe that’s because I pined after wrestlers. Those boys were constantly stressed about their diets during the season, wearing two pairs of sweat suits to school to perspire excess pounds away and going on long punishing runs along icy streets to burn even more calories. They used “chaw” on weigh-in days as a last ditch effort to meet their weight class, spitting brown saliva into a Brighton Barons plastic cup throughout the day until they were human-colored raisins. After weigh-in, they’d head straight over to Don & Bob’s for burgers and shakes, then, like a Sea Monkey, expand to a more recognizable shape.

The tobacco smokers in our school in the early 1980s were shunned by Authority, consigned outside to a concrete slab and called Slabbies, a name which showcased our creative streak. But the tobacco chewers were held in high esteem by their peers, and teachers turned a blind eye to the plastic cups. They were dedicated athletes, after all, and most of them were good students too, the elusive and rare Scholar Athletes. It seemed, in fact, that the only difference between their scholarly achievements, regarded as acceptable, and mine, regarded as dweeby, was that chewing tobacco.

On a night during Homecoming Week my parents were out of town and left me home alone – the rules they set for their third child being far more lax than for the first – I threw a Homecoming Party. It went as high school parties do – too many people showed up, cheap beer was drunk, out was made. But at one point I found myself alone at the dining room table with  the captain of the wrestling team. He of the piercing blue eyes, dimples, and luxuriant dark hair. He who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, a brunette cheerleader who looked and dressed like a Playboy Bunny. Oh Captain My Wrestling Captain, now directly across from me at the lace-covered dining room table, a flat silver tin of chaw between us.

In retrospect I see that the guy was probably just resting before going back to engage in more deeply homoerotic/homophobic wrestling in the den. But then, I felt my moment had come.

“Let me have some,” I said, prying the can open and reaching expertly for a pinch. I’d observed the ritual from a distance enough times to fake it. I put the bristly wedge of brown leaves into the corner of my lip, felt my mouth fill quickly with my own spit. It wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as I’d expected; it reminded me of being in kindergarten and sneaking a puff on an unlit wooden pipe while playing at a friend’s house.

Then I reached for The Captain’s spit cup, making sure to brush his hand with mine, and deposited a perfect blob into the center.

“Holy shit!” he said, the first time he’d ever looked me in the eyes.

My triumph lasted almost as long as the party. The Captain beckoned in a few boys so I could demonstrate my skills, to great fanfare and surprise, and in my naiveté I mistook that for popularity. It felt close enough, anyway. Then he and the rest of the boys turned their attention back to the girls in Fair Isle sweaters, whose breath smelled of mint and Bartles & Jaymes.

Mercifully, like the asymmetrical bob haircut and the safety pins worn as earrings, the tobacco chewing was a passing phase. I left high school behind and found clever new ways to attract the attention of the opposite sex, such as pretending to understand Jack Kerouac and jogging in Lycra shorts. Eventually I stopped acting, and that’s when things finally fell into place.

But over the years I’ve taken great comfort in knowing that if I were ever stranded on a desert island with a  farmer, a wrestler, or a professional baseball player, we’d at least have an icebreaker.

While I failed to earn The Captain’s romantic interest, the chaw incident did earn me a new level of respect which manifested by him saying, “If you ever want me to steal you an album from the radio station where I have an internship,  just let me know.” (Don’t judge, the station was transitioning to CDs and phasing out vinyl anyway.) This song comes from my first shopping list item: Hot Rocks.

And while you listen – let me know – what’s YOUR surprising hidden talent?

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Emulating Erma (Eventually?)

By Nancy Davis Kho · April 20th, 2012 · Comments (8)

By the time you read this, I’ll be fulfilling a long-cherished dream: going to a conference in Dayton, Ohio.

But not just any conference:  I’m attending the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop, a biannual humor and human interest writing seminar.

I don’t know how you felt about Erma, but growing up as a kid I just adored her. Her humor appealed equally to my mom and me, and her deadpan delivery on her Good Morning America cracked me up. A few years ago I bought an Erma anthology and left it lying on the coffee table, and was tickled to see my kids giggling as they read through her timeless columns.

So much of her writing was memorable: the one about how she prepared for her Weight Watcher’s weigh-in by first removing her coat, then her shoes, and on down the list until she was taking out her own fillings and stray navel lint. Her husband’s ambitious but failed attempts at being handy, or her kid’s bizarre accidents and the ensuing awkwardness of filling out insurance claim forms.

Erma was funny, but she was never mean. And there was a streak of compassion in her work about a mile wide. On my best writing day, I can only hope to touch the hem of her housecoat.

Speaking of memorable writing, I’ll be converging at EBWW with some of the funniest female bloggers who have ever obsessed over Google Analytics. For your Friday procrastination and reading pleasure, here a but a few of my favorite posts from but a few of the ladies with whom I’ll be sharing rubber chicken dinners, and, by advance arrangement, any bail payments required by the Dayton Police Department.

  • Wendi Aarons, Memories of a Fanilow. I may never get to a Barry Manilow show, but I can live vicariously through a woman who carries Fanilow Credentials in her purse.
  • Peace, Love, Guacamole, Sibling Revelry. Liz is a double threat photographer/writer, and after reading this beautiful essay I actually thought for 8 seconds about having a third kid.
  • Ann Imig, Third Blogiversary “Mazel Tov.” I don’t know how she makes these videos, but I can’t get enough of them.
  • I’m Gonna Kill Him, Dead Vagina Walking. I had the ridiculous good fortune to hear Erin read this live last year at BlogHer and she had the audience on the floor. Open mic night in Dayton, y’all!
  • Good Day, Regular People, Guide to an At Home Fun Spring Break with Kids. The counterpoint to our education vacation on the road, Alexandra attempts to liven up spring break by having the kids compete to sit in front of her Seasonal Affect Disorder lightbox.
  • Anna Lefler, In Which I Sprain My Dominant Boob. Really, do I need to explain the appeal of this one further?

And one video, dedicated to my support team at home who wished me well – miss you guys and see you Sunday!

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