Christopher Street

My shameful admission.

God help me, I like the new Jennifer Lopez single. I like it a lot. A real lot. I have probably listened to it a dozen times this evening and I am not tired of it yet. I'm hooked.

My husband doesn't know whether to spring for a therapist, a hearing specialist or a divorce attorney.

The whole weekend was about music, when you get right down to it. I bought the new Shania Twain CD(s), I downloaded some new matchbox twenty, and we managed to turn our .mp3 collection into a whole-house, wireless, streaming jukebox.

Let's start with that last bit. Earlier in the year, I became obsessed with ripping my entire CD collection. I was tired of looking for music that I knew I had, if I only knew where it was. I was tired of making CDs for the car, when that process involved swapping 15 CDs in and out of the cd drawer. I had also become addicted to internet radio at my job, and had gotten used to listening to tunes while I worked on the computer. Internet radio was not an option for the house, though, as it sucked down too much of our precious bandwidth. So, with all of these things in mind, I attacked the ripping of my collection with a vengeance. Over the course of a week or so, I had ripped something on the order of 3000 songs...and had my own personal jukebox, right there in my PC. It was cool.

What it wasn't, though, was particularly portable. See, I have this laptop that I spend more time on than I spend at my desktop. But since the desktop had the big hard drive, the desktop got the tunes. I was in a fix. Pulling the tunes over the network wasn't good--latency issues meant that a song would halt for a couple of seconds every 40 seconds or so. Blah. I tried pulling a few albums over the network to store locally on my laptop--but it just wasn't the selection I was used to. And, if I decide that I want to listen to the first "Four Bitchin' Babes" album, and I didn't have the forthought to put it on my local drive, I don't particularly want to wait the 12 minutes that it will take to transfer. So...a new solution was obviously needed.

If I had known that all I had to do was ask John, well, I would have asked sooner. He spent most of the day yesterday combining all of our .mp3s onto a single server and then importing them into a streaming jukebox solution that runs on the network. Since it's streaming, no latency. We have a web page that lists all the music we have by artist and album, and all the music is easily accessible from any computer in the house. It's wicked.

New music is something that I am vaguely suspicious of, even in the best of circumstances. Even when bands that I like release new music, I don't usually like it much, until I have listened to it enough for it to become familiar. Most songs garner very lukewarm reactions from me on first listen. Very few songs grab me out of the gate--so it's really odd that I feel totally in love with not one, not two, not three, not four but FIVE new songs this weekend. First, there is the aforementioned "Jenny From the Block, " the song of my shame. What can I say--it has a good beat, the lyrics aren't deep by any means but the phrasing is interesting and, aurally, it's stunning.

There are also a couple songs on the new Shania Twain CD that I really, really like. Don't get me wrong--I think that the whole CD is really strong. I think that it is a more than adequate follow-up to 1997s "Come On Over". She cops to a range of influences in the liner notes, from Stevie Wonder to Dolly Parton to the Bee Gees and you can hear some of all of them in the songs, plus not just a little Abba on the "Dancing Queen"-like "C'est la Vie". But the standouts on first listen are the first single, "I'm Gonna Getcha Good" and, what I think will be the second single, "Up!". Both are the funky-honky-tonk that Shania does better than anyone and while "Getcha" has catchier lyrics--and one hell of a hook--"Up!" has a pop-ier sound that will serve her well on the charts. Worth mentioning, if you haven't heard it already, is that Shania and her producer-husband, Mutt Lang, actually recorded three different versions of this CD, with three different bands. One has more of a country flavor (the "green" disc), one is more pop ("red") and one has an international feel ("blue"). The red and green discs are being sold together as a double CD in the states; the red and blue discs are bundled internationally. I have only been listening to the "red" disc this weekend--I haven't braved the twangier "green" disc. Mind--they all contain the same 19 songs...it's just the arrangements that are different. Odd, but it explains why it took them so long to release the damn thing.

Finally, Matchbox 20. Or matchbox twenty. Whatever. It doesn't matter, because the new music kicks ass. I have only heard two cuts--I didn't buy the CD this weekend because I am unemployed and I hadn't heard anything off of it and I thought, wow, you know--irresponsible to buy music that I don't know I will like. But I downloaded a couple trax off of Kazaa this weekend and--wow. Wow. I'll be going out in the morning to but the CD. The first single, "Disease" rocks--it was cowritten by Mick Jagger--but the breakout single is going to be "Unwell" and it will be bigger than "Smooth".

As for Lopez, well, I am listening *again* to "Jenny From the Block" as I type this and I still like it. But I'm still not going to buy the CD. I mean, a girl has to have some standards.

If the prop that David

If the prop that David Letterman was holding is to be believed, Pearl Jam is releasing their new album on vinyl. I am not sure if I should be touched, amused or frightened for their sanity.

On a related note, Eddie's new hair, very short and sprinkled with gray, made me feel very, very old.

Good God, I'm tired.

And I am not sure why. Probably it's because I didn't get much "regular" sleep this weekend--I got about 4 hours sleep Friday night, then about 4 more yesterday evening, then another hour in the loveseat last night and then had a night last night that was interrupted by bad dreams and an overly insistent bladder. Maybe tonight, I will sleep for seven consecutive hours in a bed. It could happen.

I haven't felt much like writing for a few days--I've been consumed with a complete site re-design at tivogoddess.com. When I first registered the domain, back in February, I was much less concerned with what my homepage would look like than I was with just having one at all. As the weeks wore on, though, I became more and more critical of how it looked, what it wasn't, what it didn't do. So, I begged my husband for some help in redesigning it. This time, I knew what I wanted, and while we're still not done, I think that it's a 100% improvement.

But HTML makes me nuts and gives me a headache and makes me want to run, screaming, from my computer...hence the not updating for a couple of days.

I've been trying for a couple of hours to get tickets to the new Harry Potter, but the online ticketing system is thwarting me at every turn. I may just have to give up and--gasp!--drive to the theater and get them the old-fashioned way. I take it so personally when technology fails me.

Amy

I had a weird experience the other day. I was sending out an email to, well--to pretty much everyone in my address book. While I was doing this, I was thinking about my friend Amy, who is someone that I don't really have a good email address for. I mean, I know that she used to get email at her Dad's address, but that was a couple years ago and I am not sure if he even still has the account. So, I skipped over her entry and was sad about it.

Before we get to the part that's weird, though, you need to know more about Amy. I met Amy on August 28th, 1972, which is to say that I met her on the first day of first grade. I met a couple other people that day, Andrea Melzer ("Hi, I'm Andrea. A-N-D-R-E-A. So if you ever see a word spelled like that...it will be me"). David Rush, the object of my childhood affection well into the 5th grade. Probably others, Kelley Yurt or Nancy/Nancee Ziefel...but Amy stood out. Well, she and Andrea. I mean--who forgets a girl that spells at you right out of the gate?

Anyway, Amy. Amy was...God, she was glamorous and smart. She had really good hair. She was a dancer and a drummer in the band. She had perfect skin. She knew all about makeup...eye shadow and everything. Everyone loved her. I, on the other hand, was a bit of a dork. I had glasses and a gap between my teeth that you could drive a truck through. I couldn't dance. I had a bad complexion. I still don't know anything about eye shadow. I was the personification of uncool. But she was my friend, no matter how many cool points she lost because of it. She was never my best friend, nor was I hers. Avi and Sally filled those roles. But we were always good friends, great friends. Real friends. And we have been friends for 30 years. Outside of my family, no one on earth has known me as long as she has. That is a rare and precious thing. And, even though we have drifted farther apart now than ever before--I haven't seen her for, gosh--three years?--she still sends me a funny postcard every once in a while. And if she walked in the door tomorrow, we'd just pick up where we left off. I know because that's what we've always done.

So, to the weird part. Remember-I was sending all those emails, right and thinking about Amy...remember? So later that night, I get a call from my Mom.

Mom: "Guess who I saw in the grocery store tonight?"
Me: "Who?"
Mom: "Amy."
Me: You're kidding me. Amy. In the grocery store?

Turns out, Amy is living in Europe now. She's a flight attendant, and flies out of the states, is based out of the states, but spends most of her time in Amsterdam. There's apparently a boy in Amsterdam. She was home visiting her Mom and Dad and ran into my Mom. In a grocery store a l o n g way from Amsterdam. Mom said that she looked great--but I would expect no less. I mean, it was Amy, after all. :) She explained to my mom that she is a terrible friend, that she doesn't keep in touch and I am sure that she really feels bad about that. I also know that she knows that I don't hold it against her.

I mean, she's Amy. :)

Speaking of the Yoko Factor...

OK, so I was watching tonight's Buffy.

I am stunned. I don't know what to think. I think that I may hate Joss Whedon right now, not for making me think--or making me not know what to think--but for not making this a 2-hour episode, or for not getting UPN to schedule next week's episode tomorrow, like they did with Surprise/Innocence.

Questions abound. Will Willow talk to Buffy and Dawn about her experience? (I hope so!). Was Joyce also part of the Thing Beneath? Will they make that connection? Will the house get put back together? Does their homeowners insurance cover demon invasion? Is there a Richter measurement for what happened? Did anyone else in the neighborhood feel the tremors? Will it be recorded as an earthquake? I hope so, cause then I'm sure they have insurance. What can I say? These are the things I worry about. But, back to the topic at hand--

Cemetery guy--real or Thing Beneath? Spike? Real or Thing Beneath? I mean, I think that Spike's chip is still functioning...so how did he turn those people? Unless we are just meant to think that he turned those people. Thing Beneath would benefit if Buffy and Spike were less than reconciled.

So, TBs agenda, as I see it: Buffy sad. Willow dead. Spike Dust. Dawn mad at and distrustful of Buffy.

I'm going on record. I do not like the Thing Beneath. It's goals run counter to my own, which are: Willow Alive, Buffy Happy, Spike not all dusty and Dawn all kick-ass slayery, not whining, and down with her sister.

And where the hell was Xander? I'm betting that he and the Real Spike, the crazy Spike, the Spike who didn't sire anyone, were home, watching reruns of DeGrassi High.

Now, I'm going to go watch Angel kick Riley's ass again, cause, you know..never gets boring. :)

You know what I never get tired of?

Watching Angel kick Riley's ass. I could watch that every day. :)

The Yoko Factor is a most excellent episode. :)

This may make me a total dork, but I don't care.

I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams. I love American Dreams.

There. I've said it. I'm on record. I love this dorky little show.

Every week I watch, expecting to finally see the man behind the curtain, expecting to finally feel manipulated, expecting to finally think that Joey Lawrence with a haircut is, well...still Joey Lawrence.

But I don't. Instead, every week I watch it and I am filled with joy. Pure, unabashed joy.

Let's start with Meg. I love Meg Pryor. She's every girl that I wanted to be and wanted to be friends with in High School. She's smart and funny. She's a good dancer, she's popular with the fellas. She's exuberantly happy. And she's nice. Now some will say that there is no such thing as a nice adolescent girl, and they will be right. All girls between the ages of, say 13 and 17 are total bitches. I was. Everyone I knew at that age was. I suspect that they still are. Roxanne, for example, is a total bitch. But not Meg. Meg is a Good Person. She is a little defiant, sure. She talks back to her parents, yeah. But she also finds a way to surreptitiously teach her brother to dance, so he can take his girlfriend to the Winter Formal and not be embarrassed. She's that kind of good. And at the crusty old age of 36, I find that touching.

The other characters are rich and deep, too. Helen, the dutiful housewife who just discovered Tolstoy and thinks that maybe there's life beyond tuna casserole. Jack, her husband--so much like my Grandfather--who sees the world changing faster than he can order it not to. Jack is a tragic figure, destined to be a grumpy, disenfranchised old man, like so many men of his age became. They knew a world that they liked, a world that made sense to them and then, one day, it was all gone and they were left with a TV dinner and a wife who read Tolstoy. Many men didn't recover from that. I know my Grandfather didn't. JJ, the High School senior who wants his life to be different than his father's...and more importantly, wants his life to be different than his father wants it to be, so much so that he is willing to risk a scholarship to Notre Dame just to break away from his father's oppressive need to control him. Patty is every annoying little sister or brother, ever. Because of that, I can't stand her, just like I couldn't stand my brother when he was 10. I think that I get glimpses of the person she might be, though...if Meg doesn't kill her first.

Finally, there's Will. A little boy with a literal mind who wants answers to some pretty heady questions. Questions like, why did that man shoot the president and what happens to us when we die. Will will be a philosophy major at Berkeley in the 70s, I'm pretty sure.

John is sure that Meg is destined to be a "damn, dirty hippie"--a phrase my Grandfather would have used. She'll be 19 in 1967, you see, and she's already making friends with minorities and beatnik record score drones--and, this week, she was listening to Bob Dylan. Plus, you know...Roxanne. He may be onto something there.

I just hope that we get to see it.

(For the non-TiVo-enabled among us, American Dreams is on Sundays at 8:00 on NBC)

Some Interesting Name Statistics for

Some Interesting Name Statistics for Lori Piper

• The Girl's Name Lori is shared by ~349,200 people in the USA.


• The Last Name Piper is shared by ~24,800 people in the USA.


• The First Name, Last Name Lori Piper is shared by ~30 people in the USA.


• The First Name, Last Initial Lori P is shared by ~8,550 people in the USA.


• The First Initial, Last Name L Piper is shared by ~1,710 people in the USA.

Thanks to Turtle Belly for the link.

So, besides me, the master forger, the swamp lady, and the insurance lady, there are fewer than 26 others in the whole country? Cool. :)

Oh, and of the 1,710 "L Pipers", 4 are in my immediate family. Twisted, but true.

Yesterday I was talking about

Yesterday I was talking about children's literature with Heaton. The conversation started...well, I don't exactly remember. I know we were talking about the Anne Emery book that I just got from half.com., I remember that. And then we were talking about Cherry Ames and the Three Investigators and Judy Blume and Paul Zindel and The Pigman and My Darling, My Hamburger and then Heaton asked me something about one of those books that I couldn't remember and I said, "I don't know...I mean, I haven't read Paul Zindel for 25 years."

I haven't read Paul Zindel for 25 years.

I haven't read Paul Zindel for 25 years.

I haven't read Paul Zindel for 25 years.

Nope, no matter how many times I say it, it still doesn't make any sense. How can I have not done anything for 25 years? Or, to put it more clearly, how can anything that I remember doing have been done by me 25 years ago?

To be fair and accurate, I probably didn't stop reading Paul Zindel till I was 13 or so, making it really only 23 years. Whew! I feel young again!

But it has been 25 years since, for example, I fell off of the sliding board at recess and broke my hand. I remember telling Mr. Zimmerman that I was hurt. I remember him telling me that I was fine and to just to back to my desk. I remember making him let me call my Dad and my Dad taking me for the X-ray. I remember getting the cast put on and I remember, 5 weeks later, my mom cutting it off because I had managed to wiggle my obviously healed hand completely out of it. I remember that I kept the cast and that it still fit my hand for several years after that. I think that the cast is still in my old bedroom back home...unless my mom finally got tired of the smell and threw it away when I wasn't looking.

Speaking of my old bedroom back home, I found this picture, taken the day I started packing for college. I know that I took pictures of all the walls, so I could remember what my High School bedroom looked like, but this is the only one I can find. That would have been 18 years, or HALF MY LIFE ago, in keeping with today's theme, which apparently is that I am old.

Couple of good TiVo articles

Couple of good TiVo articles at sfgate.com, which to my untrained eye is the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle. Being from far, far away from San Francisco, though, I could be misinterpreting that. :)

Anyway, the first is by Tim Goodman and examines the puzzlement you feel when you realize that your friends don't have TiVo and that, therefore, their TVs don't pause or go backward. I have experienced this and it is alarming, finding yourself in front of a TV that only goes forward.

The second is older and is noteworthy because it is written by a woman, Lynn Elber, proving once and for all that there are more than about 15 chicks with TiVos. There are 16. :)

Elber's article can be found here.

So this Supersize Thursday thing--can

So this Supersize Thursday thing--can anyone at NBC tell time? The 40-minute friends was 46 minutes, the 40-minute Will and Grace that was supposed to run from 8:40-9:20...well, that ran to 9:25. The 40-minute Scrubs was therefore actually about 34 minutes, admittedly more than the 28 that NBC usually gives it, but still.

At least ER started on time.

Slimy, NBC.

Site changes

Well, I have finished migrating all the content from diary-x. It was tedious, but I think worth it in the long run. I also did a little work on the style sheet, adding links to some meta-content and some links to my favorite non-LJ journals. Mad props to my husband for navigating the minefield that is HTML with me.

I've decided to migrate over

I've decided to migrate over all my old diary-x entries. I don't know why I am going to bother, except that it is aesthetically displeasing to me to have them in two places. So, as strange entries appear over the next couple of days, don't be alarmed. :)

But, how do you know I'm me?

So, I cast my vote--pretty literally--for Democracy.

Because it's me, though, it was not exactly that simple. First, there was the pilgramage to the Elementary school that serves as my polling place. I looked up the address on MapQuest, I looked at a map, and then proceeded to drive in circles for an hour trying to figure out where I went wrong. I keep a map in my car--but it apparently doesn't cover the part of the county that I was driving in circles in. Stupid map.

I tried to call Heaton, cause I knew that he would take pity on me and reconfirm my obviously flawed directions. He, however, has class tonight and had already left the office. Stupid friends.

Finally, since I knew that I was at least in the right neighborhood, I decided to Jedi it--you know, give myself over to The Force. Surprisingly, this worked and I found the school in about 5 minutes. After driving around for an hour. Never dismiss The Power of The Force.

So, I get there and find a place to park...and promptly try to go in all the wrong doors. I know that they are wrong, because they are locked. Thank God, there were some lovely women there who were stumping for our Republican gubnatorial candidate and they took pity on me and directed me to the one set of doors that were open. Surprisingly, in addition to not being locked, these doors had giant signs on them that said "enter here". So far, my election experience is less than good. And then it went from good to profoundly disturbing.

As I entered the building, I fished out my Driver's License, so that I wouldn't be wasting the volunteers' valuable time, watching me fumble with my wallet. I got in the line that indicated that it was the line I should be in, and gave the woman my last name. After failing to convince me that my name was actually William, Volunteer #2 handed me a card to sign. Volunteer #1 asked me to verify my address and DOB. I was then directed to Volunteer #3--"the lady in the jeans"--for my access card. I got my card, was directed to a booth, and did my thing. And no, despite the supreme cool-ness of the direction-giving republican women in the parking lot, I didn't vote for their guy. :)

I ignored the doors marked exit and left via the same doors I had entered through--I mean, why mess with a good thing? At least I could be fairly certain that they weren't locked. :)

As I walked to my car, it occurred to me that I was still holding my Driver's License. Which no one has asked me for. I just voted in a relatively important election, and no one even verified that I was me. I mean, I know that I am me, but they don't. I could have been my friend Lisa, or my friend Anne. I could have been anyone. Well, anyone close to my age that would know that I wasn't going to vote today and could provide my street address and DOB. And, that's a longer list than you might think.

It's been suggested to me that the folks in the polling places are volunteers and that expecting them to have any sort of reasonable quality control program is ludicrous...but I don't know that I buy that. We've got, like, dozens of official monitors today in various districts in Florida--many on loan from Eastern Europe for Christ's sake--and no one can ask me for ID? Now, granted, the voters in Florida have long proven themselves in need of hand-holding, but still...no one can ask me for ID?

I hope that I sound flummoxed, cause that's what I am.

I am on record as

I am on record as a bit of a Buffy fanatic. I own the Watcher's Guides, the script books, the literary criticism, the videos, the DVDs, the lunchbox. I read Slayage every day. I watch at least an episode a day most days. I talk about it incessantly. I dream that I am a scooby. I read fan fiction in the off-season, just to get a fix.

OK, let's be frank--I obsess. :) Given all this, I was surprised to find a book about Buffy which imparted new information: Bite Me!, by Nikki Stafford.

To be fair, the book isn't really sure what it wants to be when it grows up. Part fangirl cast bios, part strange episode guide. Part about Buffy (the series) and part about Angel (the series). It's really quite odd. But wicked cool. :)

The coolest part is what passes for an episode guide. I say that, because as episode guides go, well, it kind of sucks, in that it doesn't really tell you much about the episodes themselves. This book seems to operate under the assumption that you have seen the episodes and, therefore, summarizing them would not only be redundant but downright boring. What it does offer, though, is the best compendium of episode trivia that I have ever seen. Anywhere.

A must buy for Buffy-whores everywhere. :)

Heaton and I watched the

Heaton and I watched the movie "Broadcast News" together this weekend. He wrote about his reaction earlier today in his LiveJournal, and his reactions made me think about mine. Damn that Heaton! Always making me think. :)

I don't know when I last saw BN; I know that I watched it after I lived in DC the first time, which means that I saw it at least *after* 1990. I am pretty sure that I have seen it more recently than that, but I can't remember specifics. I know that I bought it on DVD a couple of years ago and had not watched it since. I am really not sure that I can articulate why I own it--it wouldn't make my top 20 or 30 favorite movies, it doesn't have cool extras, it doesn't benefit from my cool home theater setup. I like Holly Hunter, and William Hurt and Albert Brooks, but this isn't my favorite of any of their movies. I know that once upon a time I identified very closely with the Hunter's Jane Craig. I fancied myself as smart and hyperactive as she, and as unlucky in love. It was obvious that she was in a lot of pain and that it was because of who she was and not because of external circumstances. That was me, for a really long time.

I also used to have a friend, and later a boyfriend, who reminded me of the Albert Brooks character. That was a better thing 15 years ago when I first saw the movie. Like John, I found that this time through, I was much less forgiving of Aaron's shortcomings and found myself engaging in that doomed dialogue with the character, the one where I keep hoping that, this time, he will do the good thing, the kind thing. His decision to tell Jane about Tom's character flaws seemed just 15 years ago; now it just seems mean. Maybe I thought mean was more attractive when I was 21. The kinds of men I dated about that time would seem to bear that out. :)

So, I no longer identify with Jane, and I think Aaron's mean. Wasn't what I expected.