ART AMISS 11 Music Compilation CD - FREE!

Art Amiss is a night that happens once a year here in Fayetteville where Arkansas musicians, artists and fashion forward showcase their art/talent. The first 200 through the Dickson Street Theater doors received a compilation CD of local musicians. I got one and listened to it. Let me just say that it certainly is a mix. Anyway, to toot the horns of a few of the bands I like 'round here, here is a link to KXUA's blog where you can click on the ART AMISS 11 Music Compilation link to download the zipped folder of some of our local goodness. Enjoy!

The Pedestal Table

It was a beautiful French antique shop and the table looked so beautiful from far away. It seemed to have perfect proportions, just the right finish, portraying just the right balances of strength and warmth, grit and subtlety, whimsy and solemnity. Your first thought was that it sits so nicely.

You make efforts to know more about this table, specifically its measurements and scales so you can judge for fit. You reel in information from its seller processing what you're told about it first and then sorting out later what you think for yourself.

It's lovely. This particular table seemed earnest and had great presence but was not gaudy. You have just the perfect place for it.

But you were wrong about that, because after researching and after coming back time after time to admire that table before buying it you're saddened to learn that this kind of table is indeed strong, but with a strength that actually when thumped for authenticity, rings hollow.

Confused because it is such an expensive piece, you don't at all understand their asking price.

From what you've observed and learned over time, how to make one of these tables actually takes years because you see, developing a beautiful patina is a gradual and delicate thing. To learn that this table you were so excited about is really void of significant worth disappoints and so, as you should, you move on to the next table in the shop.

You think you've got it now, the art of appreciating a good table. You're feeling more confident in knowing exactly what you need now so you allow yourself to move on although with a pang in your heart and a slight limp. You've learned something and it's that the sorting needn't and won't be as delayed next time.

Neko Case - Magpie to the Morning

Where HAVE All the Weird Girls Gone?

I've never been a big TV-watcher, but I seem to be watching less and less TV these days (years). Some of that is because of our busy lifestyle, I now have kids and so when the TV is on, it's usually tuned to something kid-friendly and (hopefully ... eek!) educational. I used to be a news junkie and I don't even watch that anymore. There are pretty much three shows that I watch regularly: The Office, Project Runway and Madmen.

I've heard about some of the newer teenage-aimed shows gaining audiences out there such as the hit show, Gossip Girl. It is about a bunch of NYC socialite kids and their drama, I mean, lives. I caught my first episode of it last week. Don't know if it was just me, but I found it ridiculous and mind-numbing (I fell asleep) and then I felt kind of sad for teenage girls today that junk like that is what they are bombarded with as the picture of "cool." I could faint and then drown in my own pool of drama just over that!

So, I got to thinking about it and then I read Paste Magazine's brief article, "Where Have All The Weird Girls Gone? Gone to the Big Screen, (Nearly) Every One," and felt that they were totally on to something, pointing out this major discrepancy in today's lopsided offering of normal, a.k.a. weird, female characters on television. I live in a college town and so I see and know of several girls around that age. I'm pleased to announce that the college kind I know are wicked cool. However, from what I observe (and I realize this could be seriously biased because it is ALL about my observation and not about knowing these girls personally) they look alike, sound alike, dress alike, poof their hair alike and while I'm sure they're just as adorable as they can be, BORE ME to pieces just to watch them walk in packs home from class.

So, trying to get all pop culture-y to make comparisons here, I tried to think about who and what is out there for these girls to watch, emulate and even admire. Britney Spears? I can't even deal with how bad her music is, but her LYRICS are even worse. Taylor Swift? Miley Cyrus? I guess those two would be considered on the wholesome side of things, but they're still not representative of Paste's definition of a weird girl, though. Christina Aguilera? She's got some pipes, I'll give her that, but only if you like your ears to ring with that kind of vibrato. So there's Pink, for the "edgier" sell-out. Sorry, I can't hang there either. Hurts my ears, I tell ya. So, who and what out there today is normal-cool/weird?

I'm not sayin' that there aren't ANY cool weird girls out there of this teenage generation. I know some. However, poor them if every other girl is trying to be "cool" by what is currently portrayed as cool on TV. Seems like today, weird girls are doomed for epic failure in socially cool if they don't have private cheer-leading lessons from the time they're three-years-old. Nowadays, if you start later like other normal girls, you're thirteen and can't do a back handspring to save your life. If you're one of those girls (a non-back handspringing thirteen-year-old), go ahead and count yourself off that list of who's made the cheer-leading squad! *Side note: Not slamming gymnasts' or cheerleaders, here. It really is a sport.

Teenage guys are just as guilty of perpetuating this deep black hole. Guys (and feel free to weigh in here in the comments fellas) seem to like the stereotypical beauty being put out there right now and the often mean interior to go with it. So, if they like it and weird girls see that's what gets "cool" guys' attention, there's not a hope or prayer for the poor weird girl that likes it a little indie instead of a little lame. Or at least not a prayer in high school or even college.

I will say that there are some rare young men that see through all that mess-a-heap and like girls for who they really are and are about. And, they flipping rock. I do also believe, that after trudging through several years of trying to get the "cool" girl(s) in high school, college, etc., they realize once they get there that they're (in most cases) simply talking to a brick wall that really isn't at all sure what she's about because there's no one else around to ask or compare herself to. What happens to the truly cool guys after growing up enough to call a brick wall what it is, is that, one day he meets a truly cool weird girl and he finds something more beautiful than he'd ever imagined possible; a mind, a soul and a beautiful (at least in his eyes) face to go with it.

Please say this isn't dead! Being plagued by Paste magazine's definition of a weird girl my whole life, I know the woes of my kind. It is tough for all girls, no doubt, but it's especially tough for weird girls. An example of the rudest thing ever to happen to weird me in college? Let me tell you a little (true) story.

I had a good friend, an actual cool guy who gave being in a fraternity a good name, invite me to a function. I never rushed and so this world was new to me. I was apprehensive to go. Being the cool weird kind that we were, we saw and petted the cute little farm animals at the function, said hello to those we knew and then ditched all that and went to listen to The Cure in his room. (Nothing happened. Like I said, we really were good friends.) Anyway, I "pulled (my first) cotton" because of that night. What is pulling some cotton? It is a term frat guys coined pertaining to the acquisition of the free t-shirt they'd score to be a sorority girl's date for her function. A free t-shirt of that function was a guaranteed parting gift and if you pulled a lot of cotton, the t-shirt-mountain-of-cotton grew and grew, a symbolic trophy of one's greatness, really.

So, at the end of that fun night as a joke (although I did appreciate the gesture), I put my new tee on over my too long overalls, did a little jig in it and like I did many nights in college, went home late, de-overalled and slept in that t-shirt. With maybe four hours of sleep, I woke up for my 7:30 a.m. Algebra class, brushed my teeth, threw on some jeans, kicks and probably a hat, still grossly wearing my unwashed function tee from the night before. Super tired and hungry after my class, which was directly across from my college dorm dining hall, I went to Brough and got in line to get my tray so I could fix a bowl of Captain Crunch. A guy who I'll call "Carson" who was in the same fraternity as my friend but a spring rush, is in line in front of me. He notices and points to last night's farmer-in-the-dell fraternity tee and says sarcastically to me with a smirk, "Well, I bet you FINALLY feel cool now, don't-cha?"

Let's just say I'm glad my brother and I didn't go to the same college.

If I'd had a full bowl of milky Captain Crunch goodness, I'm not sure that I wouldn't have poured it on his head right then. After I simmered down, I realized that he was the dork. No really, he was a vain, mean, dork. Every time I saw him after that, I'd uncomfortably stare him down just a little bit to remind him that yes, I was a weird girl, I was kind of starting to be proud of it and that he was a tool and I'd caught him being a tool. This so makes me laugh, now.

So, the movie, Juno; I love her character and Ellen Page nailed the snark-y teenage bomb of weird-girl wit and sass. In one scene in the movie she says that the cool guys always like the weird girls, but were just afraid to admit it, so they taunt them because they don't know what else to do. I can't really prove or disprove this, but I did see this authenticated a couple times in my life.

Let's go back to my high school, shall we? There was this guy at my high school, we'll call him "Brian," who would NOT leave me and my vintage Mazzio's Pizza, rainbow-collared, uniform-shirt alone. I didn't ever work there, I just liked the rainbow collar. He drove a 5.0 Mustang, played baseball, apparently thought he was black and had lots of people paging him, often.Knowing there was a picture of me in the Mazzio's shirt somewhere in existence, I laid into my old photos and I found it! This is actually me in college. Anyway, this is on a camping trip to a music festival in Bushnell, IL, circa 1997-ish? Dig it. It's glorious, right?

I was super shy to people I didn't know back then. When he'd playfully corner me in the hall and ask if I wanted to skip class and go smoke at Murray Park, I'd sarcastically make a joke about how good kids don't skip school, or that my public education was valuable to me so, I better not. In study hall one day, he rolled up a piece of three-ring notebook paper into a cone and started to spit dip-spit into it. I did my best to repress my gag. When he sassed our teacher and demanded the hall pass to go wander, I felt bad for her. He had such little respect for others, much less, himself. Through all of that, I learned by watching him and his kind, that being cool sure was hard work. And, it looked ridiculous.

Anyway, eventually he stopped cornering me (he graduated a year before me) and teasing me about my Mazzio's shirt and the like. I hope that my standing firm, not pandering or laughing at his attempt to be cool, somehow showed him that he could lose all that and that in doing that, someone would think the real him was really cool.

I know it seems like I'm slamming these poor guys and I guess I kind of am. However, I also know that all of us were or still are on the road to figuring out who we are and that they, although in such a sad way, were just doing the same. An alarming thought just came to me, though! Lord help 'em if they're STILL that way and thank GOD I don't have to see it coming at me down the hall ever again.

To bring it all back around to what's "cool" now, a word to the weird teenage girls, weird college students and even weird young moms like me (I know you're still out there!) ... Keep it weird, y'all! I don't care who you are (even if you really do like Miley Cyrus) it's so much prettier inside and out to see someone genuinely comfortable in their own skin. Word to that?

And, to the girls who were or are considered "cool" according to prime time television, bless you and all the girls striving to be like you. Some of you were groomed to be that way and don't know any better. Some of you want to be that way and to you I say that I hope you become an awesome brick-layer (at least until it all crumbles). Build those exteriors high and tall, keep 'em taut and tight, NEVER admit you're flawed or lame, keep being mean, click-ish, un-accepting of others, never change and may God have mercy and grace on you so that one day you may see the light.

On Sweaty-toothed Madmen, My Favorite Teacher(s) and D.P.S.

Just recently, I re-watched the movie, Dead Poet's Society. It came out in 1989 and a few years later, I saw it somewhere in the middle of reading for the first time, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet under the fine tutelage of the most influential teacher of my life, Mrs. Blackburn. This movie transformed me. And in some ways, even those grossly delayed, so did Mrs. Blackburn. As I watched Dead Poet's Society the first, oh, ten times, I would listen to the way they read Tennyson, Whitman, Keats, and what I heard sparked a hunger in me to put a finger on something it's almost like I already knew of, but didn't at all know how to put it together until I saw how some of the Greats did.

They were able to describe feelings into words, which is something I've never been particularly good at. They were able to paint a place, a landscape, a person or a feeling even, that made crazy sense. They could tell a story like it should be told.

As I processed Dead Poet's Society all those years ago, I understood the boys' desire to 'suck the marrow out of life.' I wanted to be a character coming of age valiantly like that of one in the film. The truth was that I felt that was in here somewhere but also like the best of me was late at blooming and it was hidden somewhere up my sleeve, but not on purpose, waiting for the right time to present. It was maddening. It was defeating. I still can't put a finger on when that time really came for me.

Enough about me. Back to the film. The main character, Neil, was not born into a family of great privilege. Although not poor, his being at the great prep school, Welton, was a sacrifice to his family and his authoritative father let him know this, often with the slightest furrow of his disapproving brow if his son stepped even an inch too far this way or that outside of the "plan." Neil found through his existential teenage journey, that he wanted to act. In the film, he'd gotten the lead in a local presentation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. His father found out about it and not only disapproved, he forbid him to play Puck, pulled him from Welton, enrolled him in military school and proceeded to lay out his future; Harvard college, medical school, you WILL become a doctor, Neil.

So anyway, if you haven't seen this I won't spoil the ending and tell you here. Go rent it. It's beyond worth it. Back in the day, I owned this on VHS and had seen it so many times the end had stopped making me cry; that is until I saw it again recently. I have to say that it felt good to release and be moved by that movie like I used to be. So much of lately has been just the opposite, still feeling deeply, just in a different way, a good way, even.

Lately, it's like I see leaves, brilliantly colored ones, and instead of just appreciating what they are and the time of year it is, I think of describing what they look like all wet, clumped flat in piles and smacked on top of each other potent in their beauty to the point it's almost absurd. I go to my "Thoreau place"... the one where I want to be out in the leaves to smell the air around them, feel them, to take off in my boots and rustle through them. To me, being in a Thoreau place is, to quote him, "living deliberately." It's a place that seeks to appreciate life and the things in and around it that make it wonderful and full. I'm not always this way, so it's nice to be back, kids.

Bringing it all back around to Dead Poet's Society, I'll leave you with a quote. At the beginning of each secret D.P.S. meeting when the boys of Welton would gather to read poetry to each other, they called to order with a reading from Thoreau's Walden which I hope inspires you like it has me (again) as of late:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived … I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..."

To live like this! And to grasp that 'living is so dear,' because it is -- just, wow.

Another favorite quote of mine is from Mrs. Cathy Blackburn, the beloved English teacher I told you about above. With Coke-bottle glasses, left hand on hip, right hand on top of her head, she'd walk almost nervously, or I guess you could say, deliberately, around the front of our class in an over-sized dress too big for her little frame and say like it meant the end of a World War, "How do I know what I think, until I see what I say?" Good, huh? I've always thought so.

So, let's chat. Here's a long overdue Where's Your Mind On This question: Who was your favorite teacher or the most influential teacher of your life? Why?