It may have been that I was overwhelmed by the joy I was feeling just from being in Ohio, but the following two things made me cry for no good reason last week:
1) The scene in “Glee” when the kids from the deaf school perform John Lennon’s “Imagine”. I generally find the show cheesy and overproduced, but I was unexpectedly emotional about the unconventional solo and the sappy joining together of the two rival choirs.
This is where my video clip would be if Fox wasn’t overly protective of their stupid show, didn’t hate free publicity, and hadn’t ratted me out to YouTube. You are dead to me, “Glee”.
2) At a screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox, my best friend and I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie Babies. I don’t even LIKE babies, but everything about this is wonderful. Especially the part that says, “THE BABIES ARE COMING.”
Every Thanksgiving, my stepmother-who-I’ve-known-my-whole-life-and-think-is-the-best-possible-stand-in-for-my-actual-mother-who-died-of-brain-cancer-in-2000 puts pieces of dried corn next to each person’s plate at the dinner table and tells us we have to give thanks for one thing for every piece of corn we have. Her kids, who are adults and not 14-year-olds as you might expect, seem to think this is a real challenge, even though there’s usually only two pieces of corn at their plates. Every year, I want to scream, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST SAY YOU’RE THANKFUL FOR JESUS AND REGULAR BOWEL MOVEMENTS!!” But their grandfather is always there, and you know how hard it is to get geriatrics off the topic of bowels once it comes up.
Anyway, to prove how totally easy it is for me to come up with things I’m thankful for, here’s a short list:
1) My dad, who I look forward to seeing at every holiday gathering both because he always eats more pie than I do to keep me from looking like a fatty and because he’s totally fine with discussing right in front of everyone what a disappointment I am for not bombing abortion clinics every chance I get.
2) My best friend, Tracey, who pretends with an uncanny level of believability that she misses me when I’m not in Ohio with her and who doesn’t mind if I steal all of her Vanilla Coke Zero when I’m in Ohio with her. And also who doesn’t have sex with her husband for entire weeks at a time when I visit because I’m latched on to her at all hours of the day.
3) Kamran.
4) My best New York friend, Beth, who wears Prada shoes but totally doesn’t mind my Chucks, who drinks artisan cocktails but will totally buy me a Woodchuck or a Magners, and who only listens to Madonna but will totally go see Sufjan with me. If I buy her ticket.
5) Bachelor Girl, who posts things like this without any consideration for the fact that I’m building a stalker case against her publicly in case anything bad happens to me. You are my BBFF, baby.
7) The part of Band of Horses’s “Ode to the LRC” where he says, “The world is such a wonderful place.” Because it really feels that way at that moment.
9) Everyone who reads this thing, including the people who find it by using Google search terms such as “never thought i’d be a homewrecker” and “i scraped off a mole with my fingernail”.
which is a five-day street fair in a town ten minutes away from where I grew up, beloved by the world and chock full of country charm such as
the belief that pumpkin-related foods are entertainment,
so many effin’ pumpkin displays it makes the pie center of your brain kick into triple overdrive,
inappropriate signage,
and so much food that you start to force feed it to your family pets just to get rid of all the treats you bring home with you.
All of our eatin’ is cataloged here at donuts4dinner.com, because you non-food-loving types don’t deserve to get to see photos of deep-fried peanut butter.
The view down a lonely Williamsburg street at the last rooftop party of the summer.
Emily brings her hypoallergenic Yorkiepoo to work, and I convince Jack to stick him in the fridge. Emily is not amused.
Steve receives an Amazon gift card from Michael Jackson with the following note: I’m really happy for you, Elvis, and I’mma let you finish, but Steve is one of the best kings of all time. Of all time.
An accidental snapshot confirms that I’m a robot with lifeless doll eyes.
This weekend, instead of properly paying attention to me, Kamran combed YouTube for all of the songs listed in New York magazine’s Brooklyn Top 40, the top 40 songs coming out of Brooklyn and defining what it means to be indie right now. He made a playlist of them, which you can enjoy here:
I feel so close to all of these artists somehow. Both physically, because I live down the street from them, but also . . . not spiritually, because that’s lame, but somehow like spiritually, because this sound is so distinctly Brooklyn to me, and I feel so distinctly Brooklyn myself.
While we sat on Kamran’s loveseat, him reading cases for law school and me scanning blogs as we listened to the playlist for the second time, he looked over and said, “We should be doing this!” I said, “Oh, um, I don’t know if we could do this.” He said, “Well, not THIS. This is good.”
This is the song he was talking about:
We decided that when we need to feel better about ourselves and how easy making music is, we’ll listen to this:
I forget sometimes that I’m so freakin’ lucky to live in a city where this stuff is being made and is readily available to me. I saw Crystal Stilts open for Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, saw Amazing Baby open for Cold War Kids, saw MGMT play in an abandoned pool, saw The Dirty Projectors play on the Williamsburg waterfront. Remind me of this when I say I can’t be out at a show until 2 on a weeknight.
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
