Thriller by Michael Jackson

Sometimes I wasn't a very nice big sister.  My sister and I are very different people and we do not share the same sense of humor.  We also react to things very differently.  I would argue that I do in fact possess a great deal of sensitivity and empathy, but it cannot be argued that my sister is much more sensitive than I am.  She doesn't care for being teased, but I have never minded because I crave attention.  I admit it. 

In the early 80's, we were living in Concord, CA.  Michael Jackson's Thriller album was all the rage.  I remember the stereo was in a closet or cupboard in the front room of our house which was the office/TV room.  Today, I am amazed daily at Dexter's ability to use the iPad and iPhone.  He turns them on, navigates to the folder he wants, and watches videos and plays games.  Now I am remembering I was no slouch myself when it came to technology.  I knew how to turn on the stereo, insert a cassette, press play AND press rewind!  Thriller came out in 1982 and we probably didn't buy the cassette until 1983, making me 5.  3 entire years older than Dexter is now, but still.  Technologically savvy!  I used this knowledge to torment my little sister who was only 2 at the time.  She was absolutely terrified of the maniacal laughter at the end of Thriller, so of course, I rewound that part over and over and laughed hysterically when she would run from the room crying.  I was so mean! 

Happy Halloween Cato!  I hope that nothing scares you today!

Somebody Dance with Me by DJ Bobo

It was early in my exchange year in Germany in the fall of 1993.  I was living with my third host family, the G-Z family.  My first host family was only for the summer orientation program and my original, permanent family did not work out, which is a story for another song.  The exchange program would have easily placed me with another family, but there were no guarantees I would stay in the same town where I had already started school and begun to made new friends.  They said I had the option to find another family on my own and then they would provide support to that new family.  A student at my school, Ariane Z, who I didn't even know at the time, had heard about my plight and she called her mother to plead my case.  Her mother was in Berlin at the time and I can only imagine what she was thinking when she heard that Ariane wanted to take in an American student who had been kicked out of her host family's home!  Luckily for me, her mother was a kind, generous, trusting person who agreed to take me and then championed a huge outreach to find me a new, permanent family.   Those two weeks with the G-Z family were so wonderful and I felt like I had been saved from an unknown fate.  They were spirited, very busy, fast talkers, opinionated, close knit, and loving.  Just like my very own family back in  California.  We stayed in touch throughout my year there, I visited them every time I returned to Germany, they visited me in California, and I am still in touch with them to this day.

During my two weeks, they took me on a few outings.  One of the outings was a birthday party in another village.  We took the train to the birthday party, but when we arrived, to my surprise, I learned that we would now be taking a 1-hour stroll through the woods to get to the party.  Did I forget to mention it was raining fairly steadily?  I thought this was a little strange, not that I was lazy, but we were wearing party clothes and shoes.  After the party we walked a very short distance to another train station and I realized that hike was for fun!  It was actually fun, aside from being really concerned about my hair, as we met up with some of their friends and we all walked together.  Between the families, there were many younger kids and I was plenty entertained.  At the same time, it was really only my 3rd month in Germany and I still had a ways to go before I could really communicate with ease in German.  So I had a lot of time in my own head, with my own thoughts.  I also had my own soundtrack for the day, which was Somebody Dance with Me.  I thought that song was the best thing I had ever heard.  I listened to it over and over, it had an amazing dance beat.  The rapping was kind of cheesy, but I loved the chorus, which was sung with such great emotion.  I loved it so much and I kept playing it in my hear over and over as we walked.  It was also the song of the moment in Germany so I luckily had plenty of options to hear it at parties, on the radio, and on MTV.  A couple years later I heard the recording of a live version in Switzerland and it was amazing.  It made me want to stroll through the woods.  In the rain!

Paul Revere by The Beastie Boys

Washbag was a favorite Big Game Week tradition.  Washbag stands for the Washington Square Bar & Grill in San Francisco.  The Cal Band would descend on the restaurant in Straw Hat attire.  We spread out throughout the entire restaurant, an already fully packed house, lining up the stairs, amongst the patrons, against the bar.  We played a variety of Cal favorites as well as some rock n roll hits.  It was always a lot of fun.  The party continued as we lined up in the street outside the restaurant and continued our concert.  There was usually (ok always) free booze involved in this event, usually from dining patrons who were so caught up in the excitement, they would start slipping us their glasses of wine or beer.   In 1998, either some of the drinking-age bandsmen or perhaps some of the patrons dashed across the street to a corner store and the next thing you know, a dolly full of cases of beer is being wheeled our way. 

Fun Club - June, 2001

The party continued on the bus ride home, beers in hand.  Bryan H. stood up in the front of the bus, microphone in hand, and proceeded to sing/rap the entire Beastie Boys classic, Paul Revere.  He had it down, from the lyrics, to the accents, to the intonation.  It rocked and everyone enjoyed it so much.  I remember looking around the bus and everyone was smiling, clapping to the beat, totally in the moment.  I didn't know Bryan very well at this point.  I knew him mostly as Kathy R's boyfriend, but after this, he became Kathy's cool, enviable boyfriend.  It turned out, Bryan was cool without trying and even better, he was so friendly and it was the easiest thing in the world to like Bryan.  I got to know him a lot better in the years following college when he and Kathy would come over to my house for dinner (or vice versa) or when we would meet up in the city for drinks, dancing, and Fun Club.  Bryan was 100% fun, full of life, adventure, and positivity.  He will be missed, but will live on in my memory whenever I hear Paul Revere.

Me and Bobbie McGee by Janis Joplin

We were in Mitch's car, heading back from the Bison or perhaps a party in the East Bay.  Mitch lived in Pacifica at the time and passed by my place in San Francisco's Mission District so I often caught a ride with him on the way home from wherever we were.  Mitch was playing Me and Bobbie McGee which I had never heard before.  He said it was a classic and turned it up.  It starts off folksy and quiet and builds into this crazy frenzy of la da das and you cannot help but sing along with it, at the top of your lungs.  And that is just what we did, cruising along Highway 80/101 through San Francisco, la da daing away.  It was about at this point that we decided we were not ready for the evening to end so we headed into the city for a Mitch adventure. 

One of the stops we made was at the Westin St Francis on Union Square.  We walked through the main lobby and over to the elevators.  They are glass elevators that give you an amazing view of the city as you ride up, up, up into the sky.  There is a nightclub at the top, but that is not what Mitch wanted to show me.  The fun part is riding the elevator down.  You are supposed to lean your head against the glass (a la Ferris Bueller in the Sears Tower) and as you approach the ground floor, there is this fence with kind of spiky things on top.  It feels like those spiky things are going to drive right into your skull!  It is awesome!  I loved this so much I started incorporating it on my own tours of San Francisco with visitors to the city.  Oddly, most people did not find this as exciting as Mitch and I did.  Well la da da da da da da!  Hey Hey Hey!

Fruitcake by The Superions

When it is time to decorate the house for holidays is about the time I load up my Christmas playlist.  Last year I was decking away with lights and bells and garlands galore when this bizarre song started playing.  My favorite lyrics:

Artificial color, artificial flavor,
If your family don’t want it,
Give it to a neighbor!
It’s fruitcake!

The whole song is just weird, but it's the kind of weird I like and I have a bunch of Bob Rivers Christmas parodies on my list so this was right up my alley... but I had never heard it and I didn't remember purchasing it.  Then I remembered....

Earlier in the year, while sitting at the pool, Heather L. so kindly offered me her username and password to Amazon so I could share her music.  I had never used the Amazon mp3 downloader so I just selected Download All and this gem of a song was one of my lucky downloads.  Thanks Heather!  So I think of her when I hear it, but not because she is a fruitcake.  We met Heather and her husband in a Labor and Delivery class when we were both pregnant.  We hit it off right away based on our common uncomfortable feeling with the calming breathing techniques and utter grossed out feeling after seeing the birthing video.  Plus there was that whole new parent thing.  They lived in Livermore, too, and I was excited to have my first local Mommy friend.  Scarlett and Dexter spent the first year of their lives playing together whether in swim lessons, out to lunch, trick or treating, shopping, or playdates.  Sadly, the L. family moved to San Jose and later, we moved even further away to Fresno....and now they are moving all the way to Florida! We will have to keep in touch through Facebook and plan to meet up in the future at Disneyworld someday!

Romeo by Dino

It was a Friday night in October and a bunch of excited tweens (although that word didn't exist in 1990.  We were just 8th graders).  It was Emily H's birthday party!  It was going to be quite the evening.  The party started out in the garage, continued in the neighborhood with a scavenger hunt, and concluded at the high school football game.  I was so excited because my crush had been invited and he RSVP'd YES!  I think just about everyone's crush was coming, including Mikhaela D's and Katie S's. 

A few days before the party, we were at Emily's house planning everything (we might have been filming a movie for English class.  I definitely remember doing that, but I don't remember if that coincided with today's song).  Katie S. was also very excited about the party and she had come over to help as she lived right down the street.  She was putting together the music selection and the first song was Romeo by Dino.  Trust me, you want to click on the link and watch the video.  It is so quintessentially 1990...and so horrible, but in 1990 I am sure we thought the dancing was amazing and the high waisted shorts just the epitome of fashion.  It starts out with a little rap and then the music kicks in.  Katie was super excited about this song and she was really into it.  I loved that because Katie was normally very quiet and laid back and to see her really get into something made me smile.  I hadn't heard this Dino song and I agreed, it was so cool, I was sold, this music selection was going to make the party extra awesome. 

I am sure I put on my best t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and made sure my bangs were as flat as a curly haired girl could get them.  I had to look my best for my crush and the high school football game.  We got paired up for the scavenger hunt and I was paired with my crush.  He was really competitive and we actually won the hunt.  We talked and talked throughout the entire football game as well.  He never became my "boyfriend", but I never stopped trying to impress him because he seemed encouraging.  A crush was all a 13 year old really needed anyway. 

Anywhere Is by Enya

Zoom in on a dorm room in September, 1995.  I was having a storybook dorm experience.  I had purposely requested Freeborn Hall, in its inaugural year as the substance free dorm.  My theory was that it would be cleaner and quieter there because the drinking and partying would be done elsewhere.  It had also been recently renovated and it was actually on the clean, quiet side, as dorms go.  I requested a triple, which after now looking at the floor and if I am doing the math right, it was 170 sq ft.  I must've been insane.  I was obviously much more open minded and tolerant back then and I also wanted to save my dad some money.  Luckily, it turned out to be a wonderful experience, one of my best roommate experiences by far.  I was living with 2 girls from So-Cal and even though I was the last to arrive, they selected the bunkbed, giving me the loft bed to myself.  We had a corner room on the 7th floor with a view of the Bay and San Francisco.  I was the only blonde on the entire floor and I wasn't even highlighting my hair back then.  It was light brown and still the blondest on the floor.  It was an all-girls floor which I hadn't requested, but was thrilled about after seeing the co-ed bathrooms about a week into the semester.  (Boys are yucky). 

The dorms were all about making new friends.  There were conversations going on all the time in the hallways, in rooms, in the lounge.  Doors were often propped open, music was usually playing.  There were all night study sessions with a lot of jumping on sofas and talking mixed in.  Group excursions to the dining commons (DC) the second dinner was served.  Plentiful discussions and advice on hair, clothing, makeup, and the latest party.  It was the perfect introduction to college and everything I had been conditioned to expect from books, TV, and movies.  One of my roommates, Kat D, had a great music collection, but my favorite CD was a compilation of stuff I'd heard of and others I had not.  One of the songs was by Enya. This particular song is so upbeat and positively joyful.  It sounds very plinky, like raindrops or drops of joy.  Plink Plink Plink!  Ashwin A, who lived on the 8th floor, overheard it one day and he got this goofy grin on his face and said that he just loved the song.  He started this goofy, joyful little dance to go along with the Plinky Plinky and we were immediately all smiling and choreographing little moves to it.  It was such a funny thing, to hear a boy say that some song by Enya is something he loves.  Enya.  Ashwin was in the US by way of London (if I recall correctly) and maybe even somewhere in Asia before that, so maybe it was from being so wordly that he had an appreciation for all kinds of music.  Even Enya. 

Straight Up by Paula Abdul

It is the spring of 1989 and all 4 sixth grade classes are up in the foothills, just outside of Sonora at Foothill Horizons 6th grade camp.  I remember not being very excited about going after having a less than good time at 4-H camp the summer before.  There were all kinds of rules and they made this big deal out of the shower situation - it was one big room and you had like, 3 minutes to shower.  Everyone was in varying stages of puberty, it was all very humiliating.  My mom had to take me shopping for jeans (not Guess jeans, of course, they were unnecessarily expensive and I was also overweight at the time) and bras and clean, new underwear, to minimize the humiliation of getting dressed in front of my peers.  I made it to camp and it was surprisingly more fun than I expected. 

I was in a room with a bunch of girls, but I specifically remember my bunkmate Jamie J and 2 popular girls.  Jamie and one of the popular girls thought that our counselor was just the coolest.  She was in high school and I don't remember much about her, but I remember that Jamie and Bethanni T. just idolized her.  That left me and Linda H. without a buddy.  I absolutely idolized Linda.  She was very popular and very pretty.  She was also very smart and I competed with her grades-wise whether she realized it or not.  We had never really spoken before, but for that week of camp, we were mostly thick as thieves.  During any activity with our cabin, Linda and I hung out together, but during meals or other all-camp activities, it was back to our circles of friends, hers much larger than mine.  We had so much in common from our taste in music, to our hobbies, to our parents' rules and opinions.  After camp, we never really talked again.  I was not popular whatsoever and we certainly did not have the same circle of friends.  I was also pretty shy, due to feeling extremely insecure.  We had a German class together the next year with a random group of kids, but we never really reconnected and she signed my yearbook to the effect of, I'm a nice girl who doesn't talk much.  I know, shocker. 

Getting back to camp, our cabin had to come up with a skit to present to the rest of the camp.  Our first idea was a song and we started creating lyrics to the tune of Straight Up.  I was ecstatic.  This was my absolute favorite song.  I had the single.  I listened to it constantly and I knew all the words and the tune.  I was beyond thrilled to sing it.  I remember the lyrics started off with: Lost in the woods.  Don't know which way to go.  Something something, straight up now tell me are we going to Foothill Horizons.  We later ended up changing up the lyrics to another song about Rise and Shine and Sing out your Glory Glory.  It was still a huge hit.