Spotify

Pants Are Highly Overrated

I was standing in the kitchen last night (early this morning, actually) at 2 a.m., making noodles and fighting a raging case of insomnia.  I was listening to the new music releases on Spotify (which was utterly depressing, don’t do it) with headphones on.  I was wearing nothing but a long sleeved, plaid flannel button up shirt, and my panties.  I had no pockets and needed my hands to make noodles so I put my phone down my panties for safe keeping.  Don’t judge me.

My panties have done a lot of shit over the years but this was a new one.  They started ringing and not a normal ring tone.  It was that weird Facebook Messenger ringtone when someone calls you wifi to wifi that sounds like a woodpecker playing percussion after a really bad trip.  Don’t hold me to that, that’s just my take on it.  I’ve never actually met a woodpecker and I’ve never been on a bad trip.  Bad hangovers but no bad trips.

But I digress yet again.

I’ve never actually followed through with one of those Messenger calls because it’s usually a butt dial.  But I retrieved my phone from the nether regions of my panties and saw it was my good friend “Lulu”.  Lulu and I message every single day but have never actually talked to each other on the phone or met in person.  It’s kind of weird that a chick I’ve never met before knows that I can’t put buttercream frosting anywhere near my vagina without followup medical intervention but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Lulu and I had been messaging each other earlier, commiserating over our mutual elusive Sand Mans.  She was cooking, I was starving and sleepless in bed.  A coughing fit overtook me (I’m still sick) and I finally said to hell with it and got up when E threatened to (and I’m quoting) kick my coughy-y ass out of bed.

I answered my phone and said, “Did you ass dial me?”  Turned out, she kind of neck/boob called me.  She stressed no nipple was involved but I told her we could save that for the next time.  We have to have something to look forward to.

I sounded like a Southern trucker due to my scratchy voice (Lulu said I didn’t but I think she was just being kind) but we were on the phone for a whole two hours, finally ending the call and going to bed at 4 a.m.

I’m kind of a loner.  I know most of you won’t believe that but it’s true.  I’d rather be home watching a movie with my kids any given night.  I’d rather not get involved in the sticky details of someone else’s life because I have enough sticky details of my own.  Issues?  Oh, I’ve got ’em.  Plus I’ve gotten back on another reading binge, which I always seem to do during the winter and I’ve learned over the years that people generally get offended when you bring a book to a get together.  Going out or inviting someone over is just too much to ask at times plus I have to put clothes on.  You know, normally.

But I’ve been trying these past several months to make myself break out of my comfort zone.  Instead of replying to a friend’s stressed, cry for help Facebook post “Hey, let me know if you need anything”, I’ve made myself type “Do you need dinner tonight or tomorrow night?” or “‘What can I buy for us to drink together and when?”

This has resulted in sitting outside on my deck for so long with a girlfriend, drinking and talking, that we were able to get drunk and then sober up in the same night/morning.  It’s led to me agreeing to be a substitute for a friend’s Bunco group, which I swore to never do again (that’s a Texas story I need to tell y’all sometime) and actually having a lovely time last week.  It’s led to counseling a good friend from high school (or attempting to) about a troubled marriage and actually being there for him via messages when he finally had to make the gut wrenching choice to leave.  It’s led to a 4 hour coffee date with a friend, holding her hand while she cried in Dunkin’ Donuts several weeks ago, confessing dark things we’d all rather keep to ourselves but just have to be admitted before it keeps us hostage in that dark place.  It’s led to having coffee with another friend in a different coffee shop, laughing and crying over much more serious things than Bunco.  Life altering things, big girl panties kind of things.  It’s led to agreeing to go with a friend’s family this Thanksgiving Day to buy dessert for and help serve the homeless in downtown Birmingham a holiday meal.

It’s made me a better person.

Don’t get me wrong.  A friend turning up on my doorstep unannounced is still kind of as perplexing to me as opening the door to a bag of flaming shit.  But I’m getting better.

ahole

Call someone you haven’t called in a while today.  Or better yet, call someone you’ve never called.  Worst case scenario is awkward silence.  Just blame it on this crazy red headed chick you know, say you accidentally ass dialed them, hang up, then put your phone back in your panties.

Have a good week, y’all.

Tits And Bits, July Edition

Remember, Tits and Bits is where I post random shit which may or may not be entitled to an entire blog post.  You will not see pictures of my tits or bits unless I accidentally post those selfies I sent to E last week.  Stop celebrating.  I can hear you.  As usual, we’ll do this old school, OCD bullet style.

  • The kids go back to school a week from tomorrow.  It’s going to hurt like a mother fucker, getting back on a schedule. There have been lots of times this summer I’ve looked at a clock while the kids and I were watching an Avengers movie, completely shocked that it was 3 a.m.  I was mortally offended when two different people called me the other morning before 9 a.m.  I’d barely even been asleep!
  • Fantasia, Sylvia, and I were embarking on an experiment/review for my blog while I was in Texas which involved purchasing this:

funnelI still haven’t finished unpacking from my Texas trip. Most of it’s done but there are a couple bags left.  Gracie was looking for her sea salt hair styling spray.  Apparently, if it’s not sea salt your hair is fucked.  Do NOT try that shit with regular table salt.  You will rue the day.  I’m only here to help, y’all.  Anyway, she found her sea salt spray, came back to the bedroom, and said, “I saw the funnel in your bag.  I didn’t touch it.”, then she visibly shuddered.  I attempted to explain that neither Fantasia or myself used the oil change funnel for the purposes we bought it for so it was unused and new but Gracie cut me off with a raised hand and said, “Mom, I don’t want to know!”  Oh, the teen years are going to be so fun – for me.

  • E and I were driving through Wendy’s one night a few weeks ago.  The customer in front of us was taking her sweet ass time.  E asked me, “How long does it take to order a Hot ‘N Juicy?”  I replied, “Maybe she’s in the wrong drive through and isn’t it called a Big ‘N Juicy?”  E laughed at me, which is his usual response to most things I say.  I then asked sincerely, “Is it Hot ‘N Juicy or Big ‘N Juicy?”, to which he just continued laughing.  Next time, I’m ordering the Hot ‘N Big ‘N Juicy.  I ain’t gonna miss any of those descriptive adjectives.
  • This goes way back to Christmas, when we were in Texas.  I never travel without my Poo Pourri.  It is priceless when you’re on the road for over two solid weeks.  E and I were on the way to my brother’s bar one night.  I was wearing a black leather jacket that had been thrown into a random bag in a hurry.  I kept smelling something not unpleasant but very strong and familiar.  I asked E if he smelled it.  He answered that he did.  We tried to identify the scent all the way to the bar.  I finally recognized the fragrance as we were parking.  My jacket smelled like the citrus Poo Pourri I packed.  The bottle had leaked all over my leather jacket.  Always looking at the bright side, I told E, “Well, if anyone shits on me tonight, I’m golden.”  Glass is half full, y’all.
  • Landon and I were running errands a while back.  Landon has Asperger Syndrome and is not up to date on the latest trendy things to say, which makes this even funnier.  Also, he kind of sounds like Forrest Gump and I say that with love.  I was listening to some new music I had added to my Spotify favorites playlist.  I wasn’t very familiar with the songs so I didn’t know there were multiple F Bombs in them.  I know it’s hard to believe but I try to not curse in front of my kids and I try not to play music with F Bombs when they’re with me.  So after the first F Bomb hit, Landon said “That was a F Bomb!”  I apologized and went to the next song which dropped about four F Bombs within the span of 10 seconds.  I was so flustered that I just turned the stereo off and apologized again to Landon, who sighed, shook his head and said very disapprovingly, “So many F Bombs.”
  • Gracie was bemoaning the fact that school starts next week.  She said, “Yeah, I can’t wait to hear the yelling and cursing and see the fighting.”  I said, “Oh, it won’t be much different than a night at home then.”
  • Speaking of hurting like a mother fucker, just block out everything and watch this.  It’s Adam, his ass, and almost peen.  Some other people may be in it, I’m not sure.

That’s it for Tits and Bits, July edition!  I’ll post my Summer Texas Trip Wrap Up in the next week, which will include an explanation for the funnel purchase and also explain to E’s good friend (who subscribes to my blog) why I asked him over the phone if I could show my tits at my brother’s One Year Anniversary party at the bar.  Yes, all that in one blog post.

Have a great week, y’all!

Concert Review: St. Paul & The Broken Bones

I have resided in Birmingham, Alabama for the last six years yet I first heard of a local Birmingham band named St. Paul & The Broken Bones from a friend who lives in New Jersey.  True story.

My friend posted this video and I instantly fell in love with the lead singer, Paul Janeway, who looks as unassuming as a Macy’s shoe clerk but has the soul of Otis Redding when he opens his mouth to sing.

 

I eagerly waited for their first full length album to be released and I was not disappointed in “Half The City”.  In the meantime, the band was building up quite a following, appearing on every late night talk show around, and stunning people with their sound, which is really nothing new but very refreshing in this age of computer generated music and generic, recycled lyrics.

I got to experience this band’s vintage yet new sound and feel on November 13th when I had the privilege of seeing St. Paul & The Broken Bones play a sold out show at the historic Alabama Theatre.  I had bought tickets in a brutal online battle, which led the band to announce a second show on November 14 and it quickly sold out also.  Birmingham was very excited to have the hometown band back, it seemed.

E and I arrived at the show early and were very surprised by the crowd in attendance.  It was a much older crowd, for the most part, than we are used to at concerts.  We could have easily been going to see a Statler Brothers concert on a Sunday afternoon, judging by the crowd.

We were seated in the upper balcony, which didn’t afford a great view but again, I was just happy to have tickets.  I settled in with a beer and we waited.

Suddenly, an ordinary looking young man wearing jeans and a red hoodie with “Roll Tide” scrawled across the front appeared at the microphone.  No one recognized him.  He then said “Hi, I’m Paul of The Broken Bones” and then everyone came alive.  Paul, by the way, was named after Paul “Bear” Bryant, the greatest coach (so far) in Alabama football history.  Also, I would be completely remiss here if I didn’t type in all caps “ROLL TIDE”.

Paul introduced a friend of his who would open up the show.  To be honest, I can’t even remember the guy’s name but he was from Oklahoma and really good.  It was just him, his guitar and an attached harmonica.  He was personable and funny with his short stories in between songs and didn’t overstay his welcome.

But the crowd was ready to see their hometown boys.  Paul got emotional a couple of times, telling the crowd his grandmother was in the audience, seeing the band live for the first time.  He also said he had seen B.B. King and Tom Waits play in the same theatre, had watched Christmas movies there also (we’re taking our kids to a Christmas movie marathon there in just a couple weeks) and now he and his band were playing two sold out shows in his hometown theatre.  It was truly moving to see him living his dream on stage.

The band performed the entire “Half The City” album plus a few covers, including David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream and Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees.  The covers were distinctly St. Paul and if you didn’t know the lyrics, you probably would never have known they weren’t their own songs.

My favorite cover of the night was their closing song.  It is also my favorite Otis Redding song. Here is a video of that exact performance:

 

Would I shell out more of my own bucks to see this band live again?  Absolutely.  Hopefully, the next album will be out before we know it and they’ll come on back home to perform again.

Here’s their album “Half The City” on Spotify, for your listening pleasure.

Spotify Survivor: New Music On My Starred Playlist

Some of you know I religiously check out the New Releases on Spotify every Tuesday night.  This sounds like a lot of work if you think about all the new releases from every genre that’s released every week but it’s pretty easy for me and really doesn’t take longer than around 30 minutes.

I’m a speed listener, if you will.  I know within a few seconds of listening to a song if I’m going to like it or not.  I listen to the first few seconds of a song then skip to somewhere around the middle and listen for a few seconds.  I then make a decision on whether or not that song deserves to be placed on my “Starred” playlist for further exploration later.

Don’t preach to me that I’m missing out on a lot or that I’m not a music purist because I don’t buy into the whole “album as a concept” philosophy.  There are a few exceptions where the whole album as a concept thing has worked and actually made sense and I’ve respected and liked those albums much more for it but those instances are few and far between.

Side rant or as my husband calls it, “Look!  Something Shiny”!:  I think music snobbery/bullying is at a peak right now.  I’ve actually been called narrow minded because I didn’t want to listen to some bearded dude’s wrist slasher of an album which he made all by himself in a secluded log cabin in Bumfuck, Idaho using only tin cans, string he made himself from squirrel innards, a blank cassette and a boombox.

Bad music is bad music and I don’t have time for it.  Listening to a song I instantly don’t like another dozen times will not warm me up to it.  Also, if a song title includes the words “truck”, “dog”, “trailer” or “badonkadonk”, I don’t even listen.  Trace Adkins is totally fucked based solely on that criteria.  And if you’ve ever written a song that included those words, I say to you, sir or madam:  Fuck you and stop making the collective South look like a bunch of stupid ass wipes.

I’m actually not in a bad mood.  I promise.

I realize that music is very personal.  That song you absolutely love, I may loathe with a level of hatred not known to man ever before and vice versa but I happen to think I have a pretty broad range of musical interests.  I have everything from Mozart to Slayer in my music library.  The concerts I have seen or will see this year range from St. Paul & The Broken Bones to Rob Zombie.  I love a very well made country song.  Well, ones that don’t include the words truck, dog, trailer or badonkadonk.

With all that said, when I add a new song to my Starred playlist, I give it a few days.  Most do not prove themselves worthy to become a regular fixture in my life so they are deleted and banished to my music graveyard forever, God rest their souls.

I listen to a lot of music.  A lot.  You would be shocked if I broke it down.  I thought it’d be fun to go back through the last few months of my Spotify listening records and make a playlist of new releases or at least recent releases that survived culling and were not voted off the island.

 

These songs won’t be for everyone but I’m betting if you’re friends with me, you’ll gain a few new favorites yourself.  Let me know in the comments if I introduced you to your new favorite or if I introduced you to an artist you’ve never heard before.  If you’re that crazy bearded dude with the squirrel innards, just go away.  I hear Trace Adkins is really lonely.

Oh, You Want A Playlist?

All my friends call my husband “E”, even if they’ve never met him. We’re not in Witness Protection or anything, I promise. My girlfriends in Texas started calling him that years ago and it stuck around.

E and I were running around this weekend like aimless baboons who had just happened to find my “Shit We Still Need For The Cruise” checklist and decided to be helpful. We checked some shit off, for sure. My bank thinks I’m about to make a permanent run for Mexico or they suspect someone else is making a permanent run for Mexico with our money so they apparently don’t give a flying fuck because those bitches haven’t called to say “Hey” or anything.

I was feeling pretty accomplished with all that productivity.  You know, for me. And then this little tête–à–tête went down:

E: You got a playlist put together for the trip?

Me: (I actually don’t say shit because I got nothin’)

E: You DON’T have a playlist, do you?

Me (stuttering like Mel Tillis with Tourette Syndrome): I…I…d-d-d-d-damn it!…I…shit!…always h-h-h-have…I always have…m-m-m-my Sum…Summer Play…motherfucker!…Playlist…on my Spot…Taint!…Spotify…acc…account…p-p-p-p-penis!

Okay, I didn’t actually say it like that. I think I missed a really ugly slang word in there somewhere and probably have forever offended some clan in Ireland. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, btw. Proud member of the Murphy clan here. I now return you to this cluster of a blog post.

E (very snarkily): So you DON’T have a playlist? Aren’t you always the one with a playlist for everything? And now you don’t have one?

At this point, I have beaten the shit out of Mel Tillis in my head and am now thinking of doing the same to E.

Musically, compared to E, I am Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Jessup in the movie “A Few Good Men”. I won’t speculate on what rank E is in this fictional Music Army but let’s just say he’s probably holding a vegetable peeler while listening to Nickelback.

I’m probably sleeping on the couch tonight for that little joke.

I think I know my music pretty well. I stay on top of the trends even though I usually don’t like the vast majority of them. That’s why they’re called “trends”. I love to ferret out acts I’ve never heard of. Every Tuesday night, I check the New Releases on Spotify. I’m constantly adding to and editing my Spotify Playlists.

E can’t question me on my Music Readiness. In the words of the great Colonel Jessup (no, I’m not going with the blow job quote although that could probably work here also): “I run my unit how I run my unit. You want to investigate me, roll the dice and take your chances. I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Cubans who are trained to kill me, so don’t think for one second that you can come down here, flash a badge, and make me nervous.”

Shit! I’m so sleeping on the couch tonight.

This is where I need your help, dear readers. I know some of you are real music freaky freaks. I’m busier than a one armed monkey with three dicks this week. Your freaky musical knowledge can greatly assist me. Help me make an “I’m So Drunk I Pissed On My Lounge Chair And Passed Out In The Salsa In Multiple Caribbean Locations” Playlist.  I’ve already added the second song that my brain spewed out when I fed it the word “vacation”.  “Whole Wide World” by The Proclaimers.  I tried to add “Margaritville” by Jimmy Buffet but apparently he doesn’t like to share his music with others on Spotify.  Not cool, Jimmy.

If, for some reason, you can’t add to the Playlist because I’m a dimwit and can’t link correctly or you don’t have a Spotify account (although you totally should, it’s free and awesome), just tell me your favorite vacation songs in the comments below and I’ll update the playlist for you.  Yes, I realize I’m basically making you my Musical Minions.  Thank you.  I will sleep well tonight on the couch knowing you care.  Mel Tillis will also.