A Girl...

Everyone Deserves Music, Sweet Music

Hoping to stave off a crappy-television bender of embarrassing proportions, a few weeks ago I asked for your book recommendations--epics of around 700 pages that would give me something to do besides sigh and pine while Simon's in England. I got some fantastic suggestions, and I was really looking forward to picking out something fresh and new, but then my copy of Rebecca came in the mail from Amazon and I doubt I'll get through even 100 of its 500 pages over the next ten nine days, having since compiled a list of Things to Do While the Cat's Away that will probably keep me busy into 2009.

"What's on your list?" Simon pryed as we drove to the airport yesterday afternoon.

I wouldn't let him read the list because there were some Top Secret items on it.

"Mostly just organization-type stuff. Re-ordering the filing cabinet, putting away that box of odds and ends that's been sitting by the bed for six months, cleaning up the piles of miscellanea by the computer desk."

"That should make your OCD very happy."

"I know. I can't wait."

Tonight I think I'll alphabetize my tape collection, and do you have any idea how exciting that will be?!

And hey, speaking of tapes, is it weird that my high school boyfriend put "Brown-Eyed Girl" on a mix tape for me back in the day? I mean, it's not like it was "Fat-Bottomed Girls" or "Yellow Submarine" or anything, but still, my eyes are quite obviously not brown. That one snafu aside, he made me some really fantastic mix tapes, effectively introducing me to Cat Stevens, for which I will never be able to thank him enough.

Some of my favorite musicians have come to me via someone saying, "You'll love this; take a listen," and maybe part of the reason I do love them is because they were handpicked for me: From David, Cat Stevens. From Simon, a very long time ago, Nick Drake. From Teddy, the Decemberists and the Old 97s and Andrew Bird before anyone had heard of him. Will shoved so many wonderful things in my direction over the course of a very difficult year that I thought I was in some alternate-reality Heaven where the walls are spray-painted with grafitti and the volume isn't loud enough until your ears bleed.

Before Simon left I pulled together a mix for his iPod, mostly stuff from 3hive's somewhat loosely interpreted "country" category. What better way to keep his heart firmly tethered to America than with some honky-tonk tunes? As mixes go, it's pretty mediocre, but what I gave up in song quality I made up in "new-to-himness" and a little something called thematic relevance (the songs have a narrative arc that, at one song per day, will mirror his journey there and back *nerd alert!*). Anyway, song quality aside, it's the thought that counts, right? Especially since the lyrics to Jerry Jeff Walker's "Champagne Don't Hurt Me, Baby" effectively give him permission to be both debaucherous and disheveled, if only on Day 4.

In the spirit of spreading some love and maybe even introducing you to a new artist who may give you joy for years to come, may I present to you Mika, who comes to us from Beirut and Paris and London and possibly Willy Wonka's technicolor dreamworld. I heard a ten-second snippet of one of his songs on the teevee and promptly downloaded the entire album. Take a listen to "Lollipop," which sounds like a candy store exploded all over a Mardi Gras/Gay Pride parade. It's just so...flamboyant. I dare you not to smile, even if you're shaking your head and rolling your eyes when you do it.

Happy Tuesday, everybody.