Wanderlust

In a few short days I’ll be staggering my way through Sea-Tac Airport, loaded down with sticker books, crayons, snacks, a portable DVD player, three weeks’ worth of luggage, and two lively routine-disrupted children. If we’re lucky, the airport powers-that-be will let Mr. Black see us to the gate. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Either way, though, it’s a long trip ahead of us. Leaving early to get to the airport, a two-hour layover in Atlanta, and a two-hour drive back to my parents’ place after the last leg of our flight – that’s about twelve hours of travel just to end up in the house where I grew up.

I wrote about this after last year’s east coast trip, too:

It’s ironic that so many of our vacations take us to Berks County, PA, considering how much time I spent planning to get out… As a ten-year-old poring over my encyclopedias, looking up all the different states, trying to imagine where in the world I might live and what my state bird might be. As a teen with no date to the junior prom, wandering through a cornfield and picturing those miles of green were Manhattan city blocks. As a college student drudging my way through boring summer jobs at home, missing this or that boyfriend, dreaming of the beaded curtains and candles we might use to decorate some future apartment. Thinking up names for future cats.

But lately I’ve been thinking . . . it wasn’t just “escape” fueling my daydreams. Because I’m just as excited to make this trip back east, familiar though the destination may be. I like staggering through the airport with the kids, seeing all those planes and passengers coming and going all over the world. I like the sense of being in motion, waking up at dawn to pack the car while everyone else is getting ready for work. I like how travel somehow makes the familiar more exotic simply by skewing the context.

And I’ve loved airports ever since I was seven years old, when my family and I accompanied some visiting relatives to the Philadelphia airport to see them off. I’m sure it must have been a rather mundane experience for the adults, but for me the memory is charged with vivid excitement. Those rows of gray vinyl chairs! A huge airplane right outside just waiting to whisk my cousins across the country! Snack machines!

My wanderlust was less about escape than it was about the process of a journey – not being pinned down, sweeping blissfully across the grain of conformity. It’s no coincidence that I chose to settle in a town where that sense of journeying never really goes away. My Seattle. Even an ordinary errand is set with distant snow-capped mountains and vast expanses of water . . . deep, indigo water on all sides. I’ve lived here for ten years and I still catch my breath at the sight of it. It really feels as if we’re at the geographical edge of the nation, in flux somehow.

But even when I lived in less thrilling places, I found ways to sustain that sense of motion. Long walks to unfamiliar parts of town, discovering new shops and diners. Haunting the edges of popular thoroughfares, a tourist in my own city. Setting off on long drives or train rides to visit friends in other states. Even driving back home to my parents had a sense of adventure about it. I’d plan different routes, trying to keep it new.

Maybe the wanderlust explains all those long distance relationships in my twenties, too. Maybe I was addicted to the thrill of traveling to someone; those exhilarated hellos at airports and train stations. When you’ve only got a weekend or a week’s vacation to spend with the guy, suddenly even the most ordinary activities take on epic romantic significance. Every movie rental, every trip to the grocery store is heavy with meaning.

And so it is now with my family. It’s not always easy being so far away from them, especially since we were such a close-knit team for so long. But the closeness is still there, despite the miles. And when we see each other now, there’s an extra special quality to it. Just like those long distance relationships, there’s magic in a trip to Target; magic in our old community pool or lunch at Friendly’s. There’s magic on my sister’s front porch, in my parents’ living room, on the playground at our old elementary school. Every moment is treasured (and, more often than not, photographed).

That’s what it feels like for me, anyway. I can’t tell yet if my kids have a sense of the magic, or if this is all very ordinary for them. We’ve been doing the east coast trip twice a year, sometimes more, since The Boy was six months old. But I know they always have lots of fun, especially with their cousins. The Boy’s been talking about our upcoming trip for weeks.

Which reminds me . . . I’d better start packing.

There's Something About Bella

Warning: Lots of spoilers!

That’s right, I read Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. And you know what else? The darn thing was actually pretty entertaining. I can’t hold it up as “literature.” I can’t say I wouldn’t be concerned if my daughter gets swept away by it when she’s older. I can’t defend its overt anti-feminism and don’t even want to, really. But I am intrigued. There’s something here that got me absorbed in each book, truly enjoying them in spite of some obvious and problematic shortcomings. I wonder what it was?

I’m sure part of my enjoyment came from the exceedingly low expectations I brought to the series in the first place. I’d read plenty of acidic and mostly spot-on criticism beforehand, both published and ranted online. But then I started noticing that many smart women whose opinions I respect really love the series. And some aspects of the story sounded intriguing (Quirky, introverted heroine?! Star-crossed, passionate yearning?! Set in Forks, Washington?!). So I put the books on hold at the library and delved in, bracing myself for the worst.

Indeed, a feminist critique of this series is like shooting fish in a barrel and has already been well-established by greater minds than mine, but just to recap: Edward, the male vampire hero, basically stalks Girl Everyteen heroine Bella. The very thing that initially attracts him to her is her viability as uniquely irresistible prey. He’s in a constant state of rescuing her from her self-destructive choices, bad luck, and clumsiness. He showers her with a mix of patronizing fondness and anger at her risk-taking. She reciprocates with undying devotion and is utterly empty without him.

Meyer is a Mormon, and her beliefs and ideals are barely concealed in the series. Aside from some fast cars and the occasional allusion to wild marital sex, it’s pretty clean living in Meyer’s vampire-land. (Bella meeting Edward’s coven for the first time was eerily reminiscent of that “South Park” episode where Stan becomes friends with the Mormon family. Bella learns all about vampire history and they invite her to their family game of baseball. Seriously.)

In fact, the series reads like a parable of sorts. Bella comes to the story with a certain post-Steinem cynicism about marriage, but is won over easily enough. By Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in the series, she’s married at 18, living with her in-laws, deciding not to attend college, pregnant after having sex once, and blithely insisting on seeing that pregnancy through even though the half-vampire fetus is killing her (“health of the mother,” anyone?). In fact, during Bella’s pregnancy the novel completely surrenders her first person narrative voice to one of the male characters.

Ugh. Doesn’t seem to leave much to like, does it? You don’t just suspend your disbelief; you cram it into the closet and try to ignore it pounding on the door. Nevertheless . . . I can’t deny that I really enjoyed these books in spite of the problematic not-too-subtle message it sends to younger readers. Why? That's very unlike me. I'm usually a very personal-is-political kind of reader and don't tend to take these things lightly. I can't help but wonder how this series won me over?

It’s not about Edward. No, really. Edward is usually presumed to be the blind spot for women in my demographic. He’s written to be a dreamy character and played by an even dreamier actor in the film version, Robert Pattinson:



But that’s never been my type. I can recognize he’s gorgeous in the same way I recognize someone like Megan Fox is gorgeous, but truly, he doesn’t do it for me. And that “protective”/controlling thing doesn’t work for me either. My personal middle-aged-housewife-escape fantasy would involve some Jemaine Clement /Jason Schwartzman-type, with zany pop culture references and awkward irony. (Which, I suppose, is why Stephanie Meyer is Stephanie Meyer and I blog for my own amusement. But I digress.)

The storytelling in the Twilight series is good. Lots of suspense and excitement with a colorful supporting cast of vampires and townsfolk. And I wasn’t kidding about the Forks, Washington, setting being part of the appeal. In the early days of our long-distance relationship, Mr. Black and I took a wildly romantic trip to the Olympic Peninsula. (We even spent a night in pre-Twilight Forks.) Those lush, misty rainforests and rocky beaches still tap into my strongest feelings for him . . . the thrill of being reunited and swept away to the edge of the continent. It’s the perfect setting.

But more than anything else, I think the Twilight appeal for me is simply this: Adolescent nostalgia. As Jenny Turner describes in her excellent essay “The Beautiful Undead”: “Awful memories were dislodged, of being young and full of longing – a really horrible feeling, a sickening excess of emotion with nowhere, quite, to put it.” Horrible, yes. But deliciously horrible, too. Love was so intense, so raw, so fraught with superlatives and bad poetry. For us older, wiser types, the Twilight series reads like a love letter to one’s inner adolescent, hearkening a time when we were introspective misfits with vague fantasies of being counter-culturally powerful in the very way these vampires are: they can read minds, change others’ emotions, see the future, literally shield their loved ones from harm. There’s something oddly endearing about that fantasy.

I actually really like Bella. I like that from the very beginning, she’s already got one foot in the monster world. She’s awkward and self-deprecating, practically shivering with a vague sense of doom before a vampire even crosses her path. She’s introverted, dark, lonely, and a little on the masochistic side. Maybe to some people this reads like a “moody teen” caricature, but I can’t deny that it speaks to my experience. And Bella’s devotion to her boyfriend? Um . . . well . . . yes. The boyfriend himself might not do it for me, but Bella’s experience of all-consuming love is something that, unfortunately or not, rings true for me as well.

Sometimes I wonder if we violently recoil from all this teen-angst romance because we might just recognize a tiny bit of ourselves in it. A lot of readers lose patience with Bella in the second book, New Moon, in which she falls into a wounded haze after Edward abandons her (in an effort to save her from vampire-related danger, of course). But I savored it, remembering my past near-supernatural attraction to other people; that desperation to be near them every moment because somehow it seemed to set the world in motion. Whole months of my young life were defined by all-consuming infatuations, and I’ve got the mix tapes to prove it. There, I said it.

It’s nothing to be proud of. But maybe it’s nothing to be ashamed of, either. I came by it honestly. I spent much of my youth lurking somewhat nerdishly at the corners of other people’s action, fantasizing away with my books and pop culture and rich imagination, dreaming about the day when I’d have a turn to live these dreams for real. Turn that loose on a college campus and see what you get. All that erratic, untamed emotion set free. It wasn’t pretty.

It wasn’t about needing a boyfriend. It was about needing a context. I didn’t want to be in a corner anymore, but I felt positively naked out there on my own. We introverts are social creatures too, you know. But being around big groups of people can be exhausting for us. The amount of energy it takes just to show up, smile, and contribute to a conversation can be phenomenal, even when we’re having fun. You can see how, for some of us, it becomes appealing to have a smaller circle. Maybe even a circle of just two. And if you’re only going to have one other person in that circle, it might as well be someone who can meet your romantic needs as well as your social needs. Makes sense, right? One special person to connect you to an exciting, tumultuous world. That was all I wanted; all I believed I could handle.

And there were times when it actually happened. It can. Sometimes you meet your introvert-match and you find yourself swept into that sickeningly sweet whirlwind of mutual bliss. It can be gorgeous. But it doesn’t typically last. It’s an unrealistic model that can’t sustain itself. And at some point, we have to find a way to participate in the world a little more healthily. Having put ourselves back together after something like that, it’s easy to see why readers find Bella’s tenacious devotion to Edward so annoying.

But as I said, I find it endearing, too. As an older reader who's been there, you want to take Bella under your wing a little bit. But instead she’s taking you under hers, sweeping you into this bizarre fantasy world in which you actually get to have the “Edward” of your youth; all that angst, all that yearning not in vain. And even though no one ever gets her Edward, isn’t it a little interesting to imagine if you had? There’s something very superficially gratifying there.

Not only that, but giving herself over to Edward’s vampire world actually empowers Bella. How’s that for fantasy? But I do like that she finally gets to kick some ass at the end. She gets to be fierce, standing up to fight beside the others. She blows all the other vampires away with her unique vampire awesomeness, but in a very Baby-from-Dirty-Dancing way. Her power comes from her sense of love and protectiveness, and from her stubbornly unflagging devotion. In the end, she compromises nothing and gets it all. Nobody puts Bella in a corner.

I know. It’s cheesy. But it’s like this:

I was 24 when Reality Bites came out, and the movie annoyed the hell out of me at the time. It felt like a cheap, watered-down version of what I was actually living. I thought it merely skimmed the surface, threw in a few pop-culture signifiers, crammed an unrealistic ending down our throats, and slacked off into the sunset.

Fast-forward to 2006. Home alone with my newborn second baby, I flipped to Reality Bites on TV and couldn’t stop watching it. And not just because I was breastfeeding and healing from a C-section and didn’t feel like reaching for the remote. I was loving that movie! I even loved that silly wish-fulfillment ending in which Winona Ryder ends up happily coupled with the same distant, too-cool-for-this-Earth, living embodiment of male angst bullshit that most of us spent our 20’s trying to get over.

Maybe it was the postpartum hormones talking. But I don’t know. I think that somehow, from the safety of my rocking chair, in my happily stable relationship, it was a lot easier to swallow the fantasy. And so it is with the Twilight series. It works because it’s relatable, yet completely, thankfully, unrelatable. We can vicariously indulge in the exciting parts of all-consuming teen infatuation because the dangers of it can’t touch us anymore.

Now, if I can just find a way to explain that to my daughter when the time comes. . .

Star Belly Schools

The irony wasn’t lost on me – I was reading Admission, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s excellent novel about a Princeton admissions officer, while waiting for The Boy’s elementary school assignment letter to show up in the mail. In my defense, I’d had the book on hold at the library for weeks. It just happened to show up the week school assignment letters were expected to be mailed. But coincidence or not, it was rather spot-on.

I tried to approach the whole kindergarten enrollment experience with my trademark cynical detachment. Really, I did. But it’s such an all-consuming topic around here. Everybody talks about it as we navigate Seattle’s somewhat counterintuitive public school enrollment process. It’s not as simple as walking down the block to the closest school and signing up for kindergarten.

Some of those schools are packed, with no space to accommodate every student in the reference area. Some of those schools, for whatever reason, are not as exciting as other options in the district. (Alternative schools! Art docent programs! Foreign language immersion!) So we parents find ourselves shopping around for public kindergartens as if they were colleges. Even parents like me, who started out feeling “meh, kindergarten is kindergarten” about the whole thing, get caught up in the madness. (I can hang my head in reluctant-yuppie shame, but I can’t deny that I actually do want the best of all possible schools for my little Impy and Chimpy.) In the end, schools are assigned based on geography and lottery. So there’s not a whole ton of “choice” involved, really.

People get very excited when I mention the neighborhood I live in. There’s a very prestigious “international” elementary school here with an excellent foreign language immersion program. (Something tells me foreign language immersion programs are the new yuppie Kool-Aid. Remember that Cheetos commercial?) The school practically guarantees the groundwork for fluency, and from what I’ve heard they are very hardcore. In the afternoons, only the second language is spoken. If a parent shows up to talk to the teacher, it has to be en español if it’s in front of the students. Apparently, some people claim they can tell these students apart from ordinary elementary school students in a crowd. They’re just that remarkable. Makes me wonder who the school’s mascot is? The star-bellied Sneetch?

But anyway, people hear that I live in this neighborhood and they ask excitedly if we’ll attend this Very Special International School (VSIS). They’re often visibly disappointed for me when I explain that, no, VSIS is not our reference school. It’s located at the most affluent core of this affluent neighborhood. Which is to say . . . not ours. Our block is on the opposite edge of the neighborhood, sandwiched between a state highway and a slowly regentrifying arterial, walking distance from a porn store and a giant “Parks and Recreation”-style abandoned-construction-project pit (and below another bowling alley). No VSIS for us.

The school is so popular, in fact, that many of the students in its reference area don’t get in. There’s a whiff of anxiety and competition among the parents who are hoping for their kids to attend the school. Desperation, even, in some cases. One hears rumors of parents renting apartments close to the school just to get in. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but such rumors seem to have bred a vigilant sense of gatekeeping among some of the parents already safely enrolled. Families who move further away from the school have been asked (but not forced) to leave. Those who choose to stay are regarded with suspicion and resentment by some parents. Which, in my mind, presents an unintended but problematic class issue. Here we have a first-rate “global village” of a public school that’s de facto exclusive to a particular class (and most likely race, if you look at the neighborhood demographics). I’m just sayin’.

I don’t mean to sound sour grapesy about it, but I’m actually a little relieved that VSIS is not our school. Foreign language immersion is cool and all, but it’s not a big priority for me. The Boy can pick up a foreign language later in life if he wants to. I’ve had my share of doubts and worries about the kid, but his intelligence was never one of them. My boy is wicked smart. He’s never seen a flashcard or a Leap Pad in his life; it’s just in his blood. I’m certain that he can learn and excel at any subject he chooses.

But, as my faithful readers may remember, I do have my doubts about his social/emotional readiness for school. Just as he’s inherited the family brainiac gene, he’s also inherited the family anxiety. O, the anxiety. I can read it all over his face. The flash of panic in his eyes. I can see him swallow it down and shudder it off. And when it gets too much for him, every cry, every gasp to catch his breath and attempt to explain, rings true from the pit of my stomach to the top of my throat.

If anything has held me or Mr. Black back in life, it’s not intelligence or education. It’s our own anxiety. It presents as a kind of social skittishness, sometimes masquerading as bravado or snobbery, sometimes hiding behind books instead of under the bed (where we really want to be). We like to sit in our little corners and do our little jobs. We’re closing in on 40 and it looks like we’re not going to have superstar careers anytime soon. We’re happy, of course. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope for more for my kids. I want them to get out there and kick the scary world’s ass with their mad skillz – anxiety or not. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I’ll love them and be proud of them no matter what. But I want to at least give them a fair shot at it.

And when The Boy’s main challenge at school is learning to self-soothe and manage his prolific anxiety, it’d be one less roadblock if he were allowed to do so in his native language. When he’s approaching a 5-alarm meltdown, it’s a freaking triumph if he can express his feelings calmly to an adult at all, never mind en español. So, hasta la vista, VSIS. Not that we’d have gotten in anyway.

Oh sure, it’s a wonderful school and I don’t begrudge my friends whose kids got in any of the accompanying pride and joy. We all want the best education for our children. Of course we do. But “best” is a relative concept if you’re looking beyond test scores. “Best” doesn’t necessarily mean “popular” or “competitive.” “Best” certainly doesn’t mean “restricted to a particular neighborhood.”

As it turns out, The Boy was lucky enough to get a spot at another star-belly school in Seattle. It’s an alternative K-8 that’s not neighborhood-bound, but still stirs up a slightly uncomfortable sense of competition and star-bellitude. The kindergarten tour was such a dog-and-pony show, I actually considered not even bothering to apply. The chances of getting in were so slim anyway; one big lottery for the whole city.

But underneath all the self-congratulatory rhetoric and the embarrassingly nice facility, the school just seemed like a good match for The Boy. Classes are smaller. Social skills are emphasized. Arts and science are strong. They have gym class every day, but with non-competitive sports like rock-climbing and unicycle-riding. I got a general sense that maybe, just maybe, his differences would be less of an obstacle for him at a school like this. And I could be dead wrong, of course. But at least the school bothers to make some sort of pretense toward valuing empathy and so forth. That’s got to count for something.

Some of the same people who were clamoring for VSIS are impressed with The Boy’s new school, but wouldn’t want their own kids to go there. The reason? Students at that school are from all over the city. There’s no sense of community, they claim. Our children will make friends with kids from other neighborhoods and then we’ll have to drive them there for playdates, they claim. But I see that as a strength. There’s no foreign language immersion at this school, but it’s “global” in a more authentic way.

So, we’ll see. Six months from now I’ll either be griping about the school’s hypocrisy or merrily swilling down the star-belly Kool-Aid. Or both. We’ll see. We’ve got a nice long summer ahead of us before the reality of kindergarten sets in…

DIY

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In the Company of Men

Remember when When Harry Met Sally first came out and the big question was “Can a man and a woman be just friends?” Ooh, profound. I remember loving the movie but also smirking at the question. Of course a man and a woman could be just friends, I thought. Most of my friends at the time were the guys from my college improv comedy troupe (I know, I know. Shut up).

There have been many different groups of male friends since then, some casual, some close. I like being friends with men. Although sometimes that feels a little like saying “I like getting repeatedly kicked in the ass.” Because, let’s face it, sometimes straight men can be a very disappointing bunch.

And I don’t mean that in a shrill way. I really like these guys. They always get my obscure pop-culture references. They’re funny and spontaneous, cynical and smart. I like holding my own in their crude conversations. I like that they volley my Simpsons quotes back instead of giving me blank stares while I lamely explain the joke. They rarely talk about dieting or care what anyone’s wearing. And I’ll admit it . . . there have been times when I’ve enjoyed the occasional mild buzz of platonically innocuous sexual tension.

But there are times when that old Mars/Venus dynamic feels very real, so alienating, and so hopeless. Over the years, with various groups of straight-guy friends, it’s happened again and again. Just when I think I’m their true equal, just when I relax into feeling completely free to be myself with them, the rug goes right out from under me.

Hanging out with straight guys, you get a front-row unapologetic view of how they really regard women. Listen to one of them tell a story about his girlfriend sometime and see if he delivers her lines in that high-pitched Minnie Mouse voice. Maybe it’s an innocent lack of impersonation skills on his part. But when you listen to what some of these guys actually have to say about the women in their lives, it seems more likely that that’s really how they hear us: high-pitched, irritating, and ridiculous.

Or maybe there’s some level of hilarity to the Minnie Mouse voice that I’m missing. Let’s not forget that old “women have no sense of humor” stereotype, which some men would insist is true even if Sarah Silverman, Tina Fey, and Amy Sedaris were performing a Three Stooges sketch right in front of them. “Women have no sense of humor” is just their way of saying “women don’t like it when we make fun of them.” I’m sure there’s some truth there. Maybe men are generally more readily self-deprecating than women are. Perhaps.

But what really sucks is when you are self-deprecating, totally get the “guy” humor, and the guys still fold their arms and insist you can’t play. I can be as earnest and verbose as the next Minnie-Mouse-voiced woman, but I also think I can be pretty damn funny from time to time. (Hey, I was in college improv, people! *Eyeroll.*) But seriously. There have been times when I’ve dialed it down for fear of monopolizing the conversation and been mistaken for humorless and prim. Then there’ve been times when I brought it on full force and got called “desperate” (ouch), or “negative” (double ouch), or simply offended people by co-opting too many conversations with jokes. (You know, like men do all the time.) But whatever. It’s all part of the social landscape, I suppose. That part doesn’t upset me too much.

No, the really painful one is this sitcom-worthy scenario: A gorgeous woman shows up in your circle. First the guys drop their jaws. Then they drop you. She’s Daphne, you’re Velma. You can’t exactly join the guys in their Daphne worship with the same enthusiasm, so the choices are to opt out for a while or play the Caring Friend or Wing Woman. And let me tell you . . . ever since the night I left a bar early just to give my buddy a chance to be alone with his Daphne, ever since I waited 45 minutes for my train on that freezing cold December night, I’ve realized that opting out is a much smarter choice.

The Daphne/Velma thing used to bother me a lot more when I was single, I suppose, back when I might have had a crush or two in the group. I’d build some real rapport with these guys, feel so comfortable and happy with them, and then suddenly find myself sitting there bored while they discussed the fine points of Daphne’s anatomy. Or sitting there invisible while they hung on Daphne’s every insipid word.

It’s funny to me when people respond with “You’re just jealous,” like that’s some kind of “gotcha.” Yes. Jealous. Tou-freakin’-ché. My friends just dumped me for someone shinier. I’d have to be a robot not to feel some jealousy there. But it’s not just jealousy. Because even now, even in my happily-married joie-de-monogamy state, the Daphne/Velma thing still gives me some sadness. Here’s the deal:

If you’re female, life can feel like some beauty contest that you never actually signed up for. Every woman is a contestant, and every fat male slob with a pair of eyes is a judge. You can be sitting at your desk at work, walking down the street to get a coffee, grocery shopping, whatever . . . and they rate you. They might as well be holding up numbers sometimes. And I don’t want to be rated, especially not now. I’m almost 40 years old, for God’s sake. I’ve had five miscarriages and two c-sections. I work my ass off chasing these kids around all day. I just want to sit my tired-mama ass down with some friends and talk about movies or politics or something. I don’t wanna be on MILF island.

So, like I said, I think the smarter choice is opting out. But how does one do that, exactly? How do you opt out of a system that’s so insidiously hardwired into the culture? Walk down the street holding my ears going “LA LA LA LA!”? Drop a group of friends every time they flirt with a barista or admire a passer-by? It’s unavoidable. Sexuality pulses through everything, and there’s inherent competition in that.

If you tune into it, that is. Maybe the “LA LA LA” option isn’t so ridiculous after all. Look: I’ve got this wicked-smart Jeremy-Irons lookalike of a husband in my house who adores my bitchy-brainy cynicism, who’s man enough to actually listen to me and stick with me through the tough times. So why should I give a flying fig if no one else can see beyond my glasses or dry wit? Judge all you want, losers. I’m the one who’s actually getting laid tonight.

Ugh. I suppose I should have tried to end on a more feminist note. Maybe next time…

If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out

“When more people experience the euphoric ecstasy that could be obtained by listening to beautiful music selections from rock to opera, more people will be less inclined to strife."
– Ken DeFeudis

It all began, like so many good things in life, with a Simpsons re-run. This was right around the time when Mr. Black and I were first married, and the episode was “A Millhouse Divided.” For you lovable non-geeks out there, that’s the one where Bart’s friend’s parents divorce and the dad tries to launch a music career with this demo tape:



We’d seen the episode many times before, but for some reason that scene with the demo tape was really cracking us the hell up. Suddenly, Mr. Black remembered something and ran down to the basement to rummage through his old tapes. He emerged with this:



Coincidence? Well, probably.

Mr. Black had been music director of his college radio station back in the day, a job whose benefits apparently included first dibs on midlife-crisis-guys’ demo tapes. We popped it into the tape player and . . . oh, how to describe it? Playful Casio keyboard chords, all two of them, bounced back and forth. And then, about a beat or two behind the electric drum from the get-go, in sailed the low, nasal, heavily Boston-accented goodness of Ken’s incomparable voice:

She’s a run for cover lover
That I know best
She’s a run for cover lover
Need I ever rest

It was deliciously bad, of course. But also very intriguing. Who was this Ken DeFeudis, and what was his deal? Was there really a run-for-cover lover? Was Ken just a shallow midlife-crisis guy dabbling in music to get laid? Or was he a deep guy with a real story to tell who simply lacked the talent to give it the compelling presentation it deserved? He looked so earnest on the cover of his demo tape. Maybe he was like Mary Beth Hurt’s character in Interiors: a poet at heart, but no actual talent or motivation to execute the vision. I wanted to find out more.

A quick Google led me to the Web site of “Incorrect Music,” a weekly radio program on New York’s WFMU. The program featured, in its own words, “a misguided tour of musical outsiders, bumbling celebs, no-hopers, corporate anthems, pop-eyed zealotry, uber-patriots, insufferable kids, Third-Eye Lounge crooners, and a whole range of Frankentunes.” Naturally, our Ken DeFeudis was in heavy rotation.

I scrolled through the archives and found more Casio-heavy DeFeudis originals, including the spicy ersatz Latin number “Come Back, Serena” and “Lover Without a Cause” – which was largely a retread of “Run For Cover Lover,” replacing the frolicking chords with a more understated electric drum accompaniment. Ta-ta-ta TA-ta-ta, Ta-ta-ta TA-ta-ta, etc. Ken really let go and wailed on that one, and the lyrics were the most head-scratching of all:

I met her one day
In the usual way
I said ‘Oh what a sweet dear.’

And as time went by
Both her and I
Developed something
That was much more than mere.

Ken had a karaoke period as well, bringing his laissez faire sense of timing and Boston-nasal lowing to such classics as “Desperado,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” and “New York, New York.” Sometimes he’d even shout out the song title at the end of the song, community-theater-musical style. I was hooked.

After I plowed through all the archives, I learned that “Incorrect Music” posted its new shows on their Web site every Friday. And thus, our own reimagined radio days were born. Mr. Black and I would hurry home from work every Friday, whip up martinis using our wedding-present cocktail shaker, and gather around the old iMac hoping to hear the latest DeFeudis masterpiece.

It wasn’t mean-spirited in the least. We liked Ken. You kind of want to root for the guy . . . singing his heart out in the face of all obstacles like that. It was like some bizarro-world version of the bad American Idol auditions. Simon Cowell would have cut old Ken to ribbons with Ryan Seacrest cheerfully snarking as the TV audience cheered them on. Yes! Way to smack down those grandiose losers who think they’re good enough to sing on a TV show! Misguided ambition sucks!

There really is a “how dare you” factor when it comes to untalented artists, and not just on American Idol. It’s everywhere. And maybe it’s a little warranted, after all. Maybe it is a little insulting to those truly talented people who struggle to succeed, deserve to succeed, but never beat the odds. And then some pipsqueak comes along claiming to be a songwriter, sending his appallingly bad demo tapes all over the place unapologetically, rhyming “mere” with “dear” as if that’s all there is to great songwriting.

But who’s to say old Ken didn’t pour his blood, sweat, and tears into a song like “Lover Without a Cause”? Who’s to say he didn’t work as hard, believe himself to be as gifted, strive as much to be heard as any real artist?

In an attempt to learn more about Ken’s backstory, I stumbled across this dude’s blog, on which he’d posted some pages from Ken’s early-90’s press kit. As one might expect, it’s chock full of sweetly clueless claims like:

[Ken] fulfills his philosophical nature in the avenue of music, writing, and singing. He wants to live a long life and be creative. His fulfillment will not come until he’s completed the full cycle of his inborn talent.

And:

Capable of singing opera, his flexibility enables him to write, sing, and ‘bop it up’ like the kids if he desires.

But it’s also oddly inspiring:

Every day, he says . . . Don’t try to wait until you know exactly what you’re going to write, paint, sing, or whatever, because if you do you may never start, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You can always correct, improve, or scratch and restart. Your errors will show you what’s right. They may be your best teacher.

Hokey, yes. Badly punctuated, heck yes. But it’s not without a relevant message for those of us who dip our toes in the old “creative fulfillment” thing. Maybe we’re not the most talented at what we love to do. But maybe talent isn’t even the point. Just look at Ken, so joyfully engaged in the very process of music. And yes, his music happens to suck. But it’s a glorious kind of suck. It’s a suck that really puts itself out there, embracing the thrill of unbridled expression as well as the inevitable hurling of rotten tomatoes from his audience. And he seems to be having the time of his life. I can’t help but feel a little inspired.

We weren’t laughing at him. We weren’t even laughing with him. We were simply caught up in the momentum of Ken’s brash, wild ride of transcendently bad sing-your-heart-out joie de karaoke.

And I can’t think of a better example than Ken’s “New York, New York.” Miraculously, it’s still up on WFMU’s archives for your listening pleasure. Just click on this link and scroll all the way down to the show from December 19, 2001. Click on “RealAudio” and slide directly to 56:10 or thereabouts. You’ll be so happy you did.

Sing on, Ken:

High Five!

The Boy is five today. FIVE! I was going to write something special for him, but I'm simply exhausted from the day's birthay-partiness. He wanted to get a plain cake that he and his friends could decorate. It was a great party activity, but the sugar high is a bear to come down from. You'll feel tweaky just looking at it. Don't say I didn't warn you:



Anyway, since I'm in no condition to write much more than my name tonight, here's a little stroll down memory lane for your scrolling pleasure. Five years of life with The Boy . . .

Two weeks old and he's already got his father's "skeptical eyebrows face":




Baby's first trip to New York:



Baby's first trip to Paris:



Baby's first trip to the hospital:



"Baby" as Big Brother:



As Pacific Northwest kid:





As inventor:



Baby's first Spinal Tap reference:





Happy birthday, Tiger Boy!