It was the summer after my freshman year in college, 1996, and I was back in Germany for a 2 month visit. I had landed a 3 week summer internship at Hewlett Packard, thanks to Bastian's dad, which would end up paying for my fall semester tuition and also afford me plenty of time to enjoy the summer and my time in Germany. Did I mention I was living at my boyfriend's house for the summer? It was heaven. There are so many memorable events and amazing stories from that summer, but today we are going back to the very beginning of the summer. A group of friends were all meeting at the Kroko Kellar, a disco in Karlsruhe. I had been there once before at the beginning of my exchange year in 1993. Discos and drinking and techno and the whole scene was all very new to me back then and my first experience left me feeling mostly out of place. Fast forward 2 years. I was 15-20 lbs lighter, thanks to being finally diagnosed (and treated for) hypothyroidism. I felt cute, stylish, and I was there with my boyfriend. I also had an entire year of college behind me and felt completely comfortable with the drinking, dancing, party/club scene. It was going to be a great night.
Tons of our friends were there and it was a big reunion for me. I was enjoying myself thoroughly. But the best part was yet to come. One of the songs of the summer was by Robert Miles (Roberto Milano in Italian). His music was very different than the cheesy Euro techno that had been popular up until then. It was actually more trance than techno. I learned that he created it because there were an extraordinary amount of car accidents caused by young people in Italy and his theory was that the music they listened to was too aggressive, causing them to drive aggressively. His music had a driving beat, but it was more soothing, rhythmic, and calming. It is really good stuff and immediately caught my ear that night in the Kroko Kellar. But what caught my eye was this German guy doing the absolute, most perfect white man's overbite and air drums as he enjoyed the song. Most American guys back home wouldn't be caught dead listening to techno, let alone visibily enjoying it. It made my night.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Have You Ever Seen the Rain by CCR
In a class of about 550, 6 of us were accepted to UC Berkeley and 3 of us attended. Maggie C, Mikhaela D, and I were in a lot of the same classes in high school, but weren't close friends. Mikhaela and I were close early in high school, but by the end we were in 3 different circles. Maggie was in sports, Mikhaela was in Drama, and I was in the Band. We weren't in any of the same classes at Cal as we again, went in 3 completely directions. Mikhaela is now a doctor, Maggie's a lawyer, and I ended up in Marketing/Sales/Consulting. What we DO have in common is that we all have naturally curly hair. And one weekend my sophomore year at Cal, Mikhaela offered us a ride home to Turlock for the weekend.
Mikhaela had a pickup truck and I seem to remember the three of us sitting side by side in the cab, cruising down I-5 (my preferred route and I was pleased that Mikhaela also chose this route). We talked and talked all the way home. At one point either on the radio or on a CD, I can't remember, John Fogerty starts singing Have You Ever Seen the Rain and all three of us chime in spontaneously with the chorus, singing happily with the windows down, hair blowing, in the middle of nowhere, California. It was a great moment. Maggie decided to drive her car back to Berkeley on Sunday and I rode with her, possibly because we both lived on the north side of campus so it was convenient this way. We never carpooled back home again, but I am glad we did so at least once. Maybe I will see both of them at our 20th reunion next year (if any of us go!) and we can reminisce!
Mikhaela had a pickup truck and I seem to remember the three of us sitting side by side in the cab, cruising down I-5 (my preferred route and I was pleased that Mikhaela also chose this route). We talked and talked all the way home. At one point either on the radio or on a CD, I can't remember, John Fogerty starts singing Have You Ever Seen the Rain and all three of us chime in spontaneously with the chorus, singing happily with the windows down, hair blowing, in the middle of nowhere, California. It was a great moment. Maggie decided to drive her car back to Berkeley on Sunday and I rode with her, possibly because we both lived on the north side of campus so it was convenient this way. We never carpooled back home again, but I am glad we did so at least once. Maybe I will see both of them at our 20th reunion next year (if any of us go!) and we can reminisce!
Monday, April 7, 2014
Cattleprod by Lo Fidelity Allstars
Remember when I moved from the Mission District in San Francisco to Daly City and I had to buy a car? My apartment was just far enough from the BART station to necessitate driving, mostly because the walk home was almost entirely uphill. That was almost the extent of my driving - to and from BART, as well as trips to the grocery store or some other errand. I took full advantage of my short little drives to play music at top volume in my car. My rocking Hyundai with the CD player hooked into the cigarette lighter. It was a little "me" time, alone in my car.
Cattleprod was one of those songs that I listened to as I drove up, up, up to the top floor of the BART station to find a parking space or after work when I was winding down on my way home. It has this killer beat and bass line that I couldn't get enough of. My mornings could be really stressful because I started work at 8am, just like practically everyone else in San Francisco, which meant the parking lot filled up all at once and I could miss getting a space by a minute or two! Eventually BART started charging for parking, with the option to purchase a reserved spot on the 1st or 2nd level. I purchased the spot, not because it afforded me the flexibility to arrive at work whenever I wanted, but because I didn't need that kind of stress in the morning. Yet there was something about the dark, concrete parking structure that I really liked because I felt like I could just blast the music almost in private and really listen to it, as opposed to being focused on driving. My driving "skills" have been talked about before, so there is no need to point out that a parking lot/structure is probably one of the most distracting, accident prone places to be. On the other hand, all of the commuters were on autopilot, just like me, so there was rarely a case of someone waiting on a space or driving slowly while looking for a spot. Everyone knew to just keep going up, up, up to find the last remaining spaces. Sometimes I really miss commuting and that "me" time.
Cattleprod was one of those songs that I listened to as I drove up, up, up to the top floor of the BART station to find a parking space or after work when I was winding down on my way home. It has this killer beat and bass line that I couldn't get enough of. My mornings could be really stressful because I started work at 8am, just like practically everyone else in San Francisco, which meant the parking lot filled up all at once and I could miss getting a space by a minute or two! Eventually BART started charging for parking, with the option to purchase a reserved spot on the 1st or 2nd level. I purchased the spot, not because it afforded me the flexibility to arrive at work whenever I wanted, but because I didn't need that kind of stress in the morning. Yet there was something about the dark, concrete parking structure that I really liked because I felt like I could just blast the music almost in private and really listen to it, as opposed to being focused on driving. My driving "skills" have been talked about before, so there is no need to point out that a parking lot/structure is probably one of the most distracting, accident prone places to be. On the other hand, all of the commuters were on autopilot, just like me, so there was rarely a case of someone waiting on a space or driving slowly while looking for a spot. Everyone knew to just keep going up, up, up to find the last remaining spaces. Sometimes I really miss commuting and that "me" time.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Barbie Girl by Aqua
The majority of the songs that I listened to during my time in Germany and Spain never made it to the US. I think that when it comes to music, Americans take themselves (a little too) seriously and a lot of the Eurotrash dance hits simply weren't sophisticated enough or "real music". Then again, Who Let the Dogs Out was an enormous hit in 1999 and that was one of the dumbest songs I ever exuberantly danced to, so maybe my reasoning is completely false. In any case, competing for THE dumbest song I exuberantly danced to is Barbie Girl. It was an enormous hit in Spain in 1997 and you would often hear it in the discos. It always makes me think of Albert B. because he liked it (and me) so much, he created an alternative verse, just for me:
I'm a Yankigirl, in a Yankiworld
Life in dollars, it's fantastic
You can dance with me and go to Sabadell!
Albert was the first friend I made in Barcelona and of course I immediately fell head over unrequited heels for him. He was cute and hilarious and completely unpredictable. He would often show up at my door at any time, sometimes even at 10pm and suggest going out somewhere and I almost always did. He was completely ADD and talked faster than I do using all the latest slang and idioms. It was a challenge for me when I was just learning the language and often resulted in me unknowingly using the most inappropriate expressions to his great amusement.
Yanki is what Spaniards call ALL Americans, no matter how many times I told them that we only use that for the Americans in the Northeast. I found the expression so endearing however, that it became my email address for the longest time. Sabadell was a town just outside of Barcelona and Albert drove me and a couple friends up there to go to some disco that wasn't any better than any you could find in Barcelona. I can't remember what he thought was so great, but I do vaguely remember his car breaking down and it being some big, stressful, dramatic ordeal to get back to the city. I found the whole experience to be oh so typical Albert and a good story to boot.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
U Got 2 Let the Music by Cappella
Once I settled into my fourth and final host family in Germany, I found myself in a pretty nice situation. I had my own room with a queen sized bed in the basement. The laundry room was also downstairs with me. My host mom and host brother were on the 3rd floor. On top of me was the main floor with the kitchen and living room, then the second floor was a guest room and my host mom's workshop (she was a seamstress) and then my host mom's room was on the 3rd floor and my host brother had this little nook off of her room. My bedroom's location afforded me a ton of privacy. My host mom also afforded me boundless amounts of freedom, but that is a story for another song. I had TV in my room and one of my host sisters was in the US working as an au pair for the years. She had left behind a bunch of really great CDs with a lot of the latest German hits so I was in heaven.
I remember a lot of my free time being consumed with correspondence. This was back before email and the internet and I had a lot of penpals. There were all of my regular penpals like Monica and Sergio W in Canada, Gretchen R in Washington, Lauren Y and Ryan C in California, all of my Turlock classmates and family members, some friends I had just met at a Dude Ranch that summer, and even some new friends also doing the exchange year that I had met in Duisburg. I was receiving mail almost daily and it was great. There was a real art to letter writing and I lament this basically extinct form of communication. People would include quotes, pictures, songs, artwork. Sometimes letters would be written over the course of a few days. They were personal, funny, intimate. I loved it. I felt pressure to respond as soon as possible and I found myself responding to one or more letters almost daily. When I wasn't writing letters, I was writing in my diary. I wrote all the time. I almost always listened to music either on MTV or CDs while I wrote and U Got 2 Let the Music, a very typical example of Euro dance music, is one of those songs I listened to over and over in my room that year.
You might wonder when I had time to study when I was writing so much? I didn't. I have no idea why I got away with this, but my German teachers expected absolutely nothing out of me. I didn't have to do homework, take tests, or even participate or attend classes if I didn't want to. This was inexcusable on my part, not to mention monumentally boring, but I took advantage of the situation. The most important thing, in my opinion, was that I learned to speak German so well that I was often confused as a native or at the very least, a foreigner, but NOT an American. Major feat. The other issue with school was that in some cases, the kids were so far ahead of the typical, even honors American student in classes like Math, Biology, and Chemistry, that I couldn't have caught up if I wanted to. So I had an easy year, academically, all the courses transferred over as "P", and I had a rough Senior year catching up on the requirements I missed my junior year. I survived.
I remember a lot of my free time being consumed with correspondence. This was back before email and the internet and I had a lot of penpals. There were all of my regular penpals like Monica and Sergio W in Canada, Gretchen R in Washington, Lauren Y and Ryan C in California, all of my Turlock classmates and family members, some friends I had just met at a Dude Ranch that summer, and even some new friends also doing the exchange year that I had met in Duisburg. I was receiving mail almost daily and it was great. There was a real art to letter writing and I lament this basically extinct form of communication. People would include quotes, pictures, songs, artwork. Sometimes letters would be written over the course of a few days. They were personal, funny, intimate. I loved it. I felt pressure to respond as soon as possible and I found myself responding to one or more letters almost daily. When I wasn't writing letters, I was writing in my diary. I wrote all the time. I almost always listened to music either on MTV or CDs while I wrote and U Got 2 Let the Music, a very typical example of Euro dance music, is one of those songs I listened to over and over in my room that year.
You might wonder when I had time to study when I was writing so much? I didn't. I have no idea why I got away with this, but my German teachers expected absolutely nothing out of me. I didn't have to do homework, take tests, or even participate or attend classes if I didn't want to. This was inexcusable on my part, not to mention monumentally boring, but I took advantage of the situation. The most important thing, in my opinion, was that I learned to speak German so well that I was often confused as a native or at the very least, a foreigner, but NOT an American. Major feat. The other issue with school was that in some cases, the kids were so far ahead of the typical, even honors American student in classes like Math, Biology, and Chemistry, that I couldn't have caught up if I wanted to. So I had an easy year, academically, all the courses transferred over as "P", and I had a rough Senior year catching up on the requirements I missed my junior year. I survived.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
U Can't Touch This by MC Hammer
Once Science became its own class, it stopped being of interest to me. I didn't like it in 6th grade. I actually titled my science project "My Science Project". That is how over the whole thing I was. I didn't care for it in Junior High. In High School, Biology and Chemistry were the 2 classes I could never pull off an A and our Chemistry tests were all open book! I just didn't get it. My brain doesn't work that way, I guess. I am not into tons of research and experimentation, especially when experiments and hypotheses and whatnot do not work the first time out of the gate. It is not my thing. At all.
Luckily, I got to sit next to my friend Justine P. in 7th grade science class with Mr. Moon. Mr. Moon was very nice and he was a good teacher and I did try my best, but it was still the beginning of the end of science for me. We had to dissect a frog, first of all. It wasn't 100% horrible. We didn't have to put the frogs to sleep with a chloroform soaked cotton ball, like in E.T. They arrived dead and we got to then dissect them. I remember the smell being unbearable (although that may have been the fetal pig smell I am remembering from Biology. So. Gross.). And it was a frog, after all. I didn't have an sentimental attachments to frogs and they are pretty small. Once you cut into them, it wasn't so bad and there were some interesting things inside. Honestly, tt was the colors that I found so great. There was one innard (maybe the intestines?) that was neon yellow. I liked it so much that decorated a cake and called it Frog Dissection cake. I was really into cake decorating that year and I died the frosting neon green and decorated with squiggly neon yellow lines and some other stuff.
Of course, the more important take away from that class was that Justine and I figured out the precise lyrics to U Can't Touch This. We had a very serious discussion about this very important topic during class or some experiment and determined that it is: It's Hammer, Go Hammer, MC Hammer, Yo Hammer (and the rest can go and play. Can't touch this!). Yes, an entire year of science and THAT is the ONE thing I took away from the class.
Luckily, I got to sit next to my friend Justine P. in 7th grade science class with Mr. Moon. Mr. Moon was very nice and he was a good teacher and I did try my best, but it was still the beginning of the end of science for me. We had to dissect a frog, first of all. It wasn't 100% horrible. We didn't have to put the frogs to sleep with a chloroform soaked cotton ball, like in E.T. They arrived dead and we got to then dissect them. I remember the smell being unbearable (although that may have been the fetal pig smell I am remembering from Biology. So. Gross.). And it was a frog, after all. I didn't have an sentimental attachments to frogs and they are pretty small. Once you cut into them, it wasn't so bad and there were some interesting things inside. Honestly, tt was the colors that I found so great. There was one innard (maybe the intestines?) that was neon yellow. I liked it so much that decorated a cake and called it Frog Dissection cake. I was really into cake decorating that year and I died the frosting neon green and decorated with squiggly neon yellow lines and some other stuff.
Of course, the more important take away from that class was that Justine and I figured out the precise lyrics to U Can't Touch This. We had a very serious discussion about this very important topic during class or some experiment and determined that it is: It's Hammer, Go Hammer, MC Hammer, Yo Hammer (and the rest can go and play. Can't touch this!). Yes, an entire year of science and THAT is the ONE thing I took away from the class.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
PYT by Michael Jackson
As a very young child, I struggled mightily with weak lungs. Allergies, hay fever, bronchitis, and pneumonia were frequent visitors to my kindergarten self and I missed about half of the school year due to the disruptive coughing. The doctor suggested that my mom get me enrolled in swimming posthaste as a way to a, get me away from pollen and b, strengthen my lungs. It helped significantly, but what ultimately did the trick was moving to Twain Harte, located in the Sierra Nevada foothills, away from pollen and pollution. I still have fond memories of those swim lessons and being a Pleasant Hill Dolphin.
My husband tells me that swimming isn't really a team sport. I can see his point in that there isn't a lot of communication while swimming and you aren't really relying on anyone else, except maybe during relay races. Regardless, I remember cheering on my teammates during their races and we had team meetings and even a song about the PHD's. I don't remember any of it, but we got to yell PHD and it was great. I am fairly competitive and I loved winning ribbons and even a trophy once. I also very distinctly remember cheating. It was during the breaststroke which I disliked (so boring, so slow) and furthermore I wasn't very good at it, so in the middle of the race, I decided to go ahead and flutterkick and hope no one noticed. They noticed and I was DQ'd, but I knew I totally deserved it. I also remember my dad usually bringing me a donut with blue frosting and sprinkles. I loved having my parents come to my meets which means I am going to have to sit on the soccer field for hours someday watching my kids, as much as I don't want to now!
We typically carpooled with one mom or another to swim practices. On one of the days my mom picked us up and we were driving home, at least three 6-year olds crammed into the backseat, singing along to PYT at the top of our lungs. My parents had the cassette which I have referenced it before. My favorite part was yelling out "PYT" in response during the chorus and giggling with my friends. I felt super proud of my mom for playing the total "it" song for us, which I guess makes my mom a cool mom, not like a regular mom.
My husband tells me that swimming isn't really a team sport. I can see his point in that there isn't a lot of communication while swimming and you aren't really relying on anyone else, except maybe during relay races. Regardless, I remember cheering on my teammates during their races and we had team meetings and even a song about the PHD's. I don't remember any of it, but we got to yell PHD and it was great. I am fairly competitive and I loved winning ribbons and even a trophy once. I also very distinctly remember cheating. It was during the breaststroke which I disliked (so boring, so slow) and furthermore I wasn't very good at it, so in the middle of the race, I decided to go ahead and flutterkick and hope no one noticed. They noticed and I was DQ'd, but I knew I totally deserved it. I also remember my dad usually bringing me a donut with blue frosting and sprinkles. I loved having my parents come to my meets which means I am going to have to sit on the soccer field for hours someday watching my kids, as much as I don't want to now!
We typically carpooled with one mom or another to swim practices. On one of the days my mom picked us up and we were driving home, at least three 6-year olds crammed into the backseat, singing along to PYT at the top of our lungs. My parents had the cassette which I have referenced it before. My favorite part was yelling out "PYT" in response during the chorus and giggling with my friends. I felt super proud of my mom for playing the total "it" song for us, which I guess makes my mom a cool mom, not like a regular mom.
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