Hi Darling Ones,

Last night I had a dream about watching a pornographic version of Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison” video with my mom, sisters, niblings, and Hanif Abdurraqib. What makes this odd is I do not remember what the “Poison” video looks like. I refuse to go look, on principle.

This dream is why I’ve been listing to New Edition today. Obviously.

I loved New Edition as a kid and that loyalty is why I never feel for New Kids on the Block. I liked the other kids, so much so that the first concert I ever paid my own money to see was Bell Biv DeVoe with Keith Sweat and Johnny Gill as openers.

As I was listening to “Cool it Now,” a video I do remember, and was in awe of brains. Mine specifically.

The stroke may have stolen my balance, the calmness inside my head, and my ability to walk, but I still know the “Cool it Now” raps by heart. Yes, both of them.

Then, as one does with songs they loved when they were 12, I tried to figure out what the song is about. Bobby falling in love with a girl. Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky, and Mike telling him to cool it, take it at her pace or risk losing the girl who is right on time. The Bobby’s all, “If I love the girl, who cares who you like?”

Why must he cool it? Because they don’t like her or is he moving too fast for her?

OR is this song the first in that weird little spate of pro-abstinence AIDS-awareness adjacent pop tunes like Jermaine Stewart’s “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off” and Janet Jackson’s “Let’s Wait Awhile”? Mid-80s was early AIDS awareness time, right? I figure it must have been if I was working at an AIDS project in Eau Claire, WI by 1994.

That’s how my mind is wandering today.

#TeamNewEdition for life,
Jodi

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Ugh, Darling Ones,

This week has been utter shit and it’s bringing me down.

1. I’ve had the song “The Freshmen” by The Verve Pipe stuck in my head since Christmas time. It’s 100% my fault. A few years back I made an incredibly singable playlist of one-hit wonders from the 90s. My sibs & nibs all love this playlist and whenever it’s on someone is bound to burst into song. It’s fun. At least it was fun for that week in December when they were here. Having “The Freshman” on repeat in my brain whenever I’m not actively listening to music grows less and less fun as the weeks go. I just caught myself softly singing the stupid song and immediately strapped my cans to my head and turned on some Material Issue (“Freak City Soundtrack” if you’re curious).

2. My nephew and his live-in girlfriend of three years broke up and he’s moving to Portland. He moved a bunch of his stuff into my loft Tuesday night and last night he spent the night here. It was fucking rough, man.

He’s so tired and broken and it sucks. It sucks so much. I thought dealing with my own heartbreaks was tough, but fuck. . . I’d go through every break up I’ve even been through to save him from this. I don’t know how parents deal with their children and this kind of suffering. It’s the worst. Like, I know the only way is through and this is part of being a human, but it sucks.

It doesn’t help that I’m a giant cry baby. I cry when I’m happy and sad and angry and hilarious. If someone cries in my presence, they never cry alone. So I cried with him. After BFK fetched him to to bring him to the airport I cried a bunch more for myself and how much I’ll miss him. I liked having him near. I’m crying again just remembering crying earlier. Also, shedding a few tears over how much I love BFK and how it makes my heart warm that she’s family.

3. Everything I touch turns to shit. Or at least that’s the way it feels. I’ve had some fuckups at work. One that I’m about 89% is my fault and one that is not so much my fault but I should havre been smart enough to prevent it. It sucks. Making mistakes sucks and taking responsibility for it only made me feel moderately better. I’m so so so so burnt out and I’m really hoping that lull comes to visit.

4. On top of all this, I still have ever-present, free-floating anxiety I cannot shake.

Everything is a drag right now. Every thing.

Despite my vow to curtail frivolous spending, I decided to shove some capitalism into my soul full of holes. I was banking on this making me feel better. Shoppers high? Shiny new thing?

Instead of buying a thing, I decided I would buy myself a fancy treat. Cookies. Chocolates. Something like that. I found some cookies that looked really good and I was in, until I learned it was $27 for four cookies. FOUR COOKIES FOR 27 DOLLARS! That’s craziness. So instead I bought myself some Little Debbie Valentine’s Snack Cakes for $2.49. This still seems like a ridiculous price for Little Debbies, but what can you do?

At least the free grocery store flowers I got last week are still going strong (pictured above) so I got that going for me.

Blah,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Sometime last week while I was dealing with the consequences of all my bad decisions, I read an excellent essay by Caryn Rose that has been rattling around inside me ever since.

In her essay, “‘no commitment’ will end up meaning exactly that,” Rose writes about the dismal state of touring for musicians, annoying people who talk through concerts, and how nobody cares about music the way they used to because they got no skin in the game.

Because we are cranky old ladies of the same ilk, I agree with 99% of what she has to say. The only point I disagree with is that people who care the most get to shows early so they can be In the front. I only disagree because when I went to shows I cared a whole bunch and never once was in the front.

I’m 6’5″ which is a heinous crime to a lot of concert-goers. I’m not allowed to be any place in the venue where I might block someone’s view. I’ve been poked, pinched, kicked, and yelled at by people who were offended by my existence in front of them. And I always, always, always stood at the back of the room. Always.

But did I not come to argue with Caryn, I came to agree with her and Trent Reznor, whom she quotes as saying, “People listen to music while they’re doing something else, you know?”

This quote reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend, EM, a few months ago. EM is also a music person and a Westernerd. Even though the Venn diagram of our musical tastes is quite pathetic (I think we have three bands in common), she gets it. She reads a lot about music and knows a ton of musical history that is not really in my wheelhouse (early punk & new wave).

So it came as kind of surprise to me when she was stunned by my revelation that I often do nothing but listen to music.

What I mean is that listening to music is my activity for some period of time.

Sure I listen to music while I clean, work, cook, whatever. But there are many, many times a week where all I do is sit and listen to music. Most of last week instead of watching TV I listened to the Plains’ record I Walked With You a Ways

When my mom came over for family dinner last night, I was sitting on the couch listening to music.
”What are you doing?” she asked, looking at my TV that was turned off.
“Listening to music,” I said.

EM found this habit equally befuddling.

“What do you do while you’re listening?” EM asked.

“I listen to the music,” I said. “I pay attention the lyrics. I think about what the song says and what it sounds like. I try to figure out how it makes me feel. Sometimes I do it with my eyes closed. Sometimes I look out the window.”
“Huh,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.

Her curiosity stunned me. Don’t all music people do this?

When I was a kid my friends and I would do this all the time. We’d sit in my room for hours listening to records and then talking about the records. When I was in college we’d drive around and listen to music and talk about the CD we’d just listened to.

Did music streaming ruin this too? Was it the intentionality and physical act of choosing the music, popping it on that led us to focus on it. I mean why put in the effort to argue about what you were gonna listen to if you’re just gonna talk over it?

Now, there are a lot of people who think they’re music people because they like it and whatnot, but they are not. They are, I believe, the backgrounders. They listen to music in the car or whatever. Usually their taste in music stops whenever they graduate school, whether it’s high school or college. They are not on an eternal quest for a new favorite song.* This is not judgement, just facts.

I was recently informed by a friend that we do not judge people based on their music taste like it’s 2005 and we just got our hands on the binder of CDs they keep in their car. And in response I said to him, “Fuck that noise.” Because dude had just admitted that “Under the Bridge” might be one of this Top 10 songs for sentimental reasons, and if you cannot judge your dearest friends for shit like this what is even the point of living?

Speaking of points, I kind of lost mine there.

I think my point is that everyone should try to do nothing but listen to music sometime soon. Just do that. Don’t do the dishes or read a book or crush candy on your phone. Don’t relegate it to the background, let it be the foreground. Just sit there and listen to music and I bet you feel something brand new or hear something you never heard before.

Turn it up,
Jodi

P.S. Last night was the first time I had Family Dinner since my dad died and I was super anxious about it. It went really well and I managed to keep all my sadness inside because didn’t want to be a giant bummer. I hosted a lot of family dinner that were just my parents (The Olds) and my nephew + his girlfriend (The Youths). I liked watching the Boomers and the Zoomers talk and interact over dinner. It made me really miss my dad and the outlandish stories from his past he’d tell to make The Youths laugh.

 
Currently my favorite song is “666” by Jeremy Messersmith. I’ve watched the video so many times that I’ve got most of the dance moves down and can be frequently spotted doing the “Shake it the left, shake it to the right, shake it like you’re horny and it’s Friday night?”

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Dearest Darling Ones,

Thanks to childhood trauma and a heavy assist from poor self-esteem I have a phobia about being forgotten and/or abandoned.

My mom’s go-to for everything she didn’t do or feel like doing was “I forgot.” This applied to everything from lunch money to attending school plays to putting down the deposit to reserve my place in the freshman class at college.

My dad was a big fan of abandonment as a form of punishment, which isn’t exactly like being forgotten but feels roughly the same.

When I was 15 he got angry at me for wandering off to the music section at the K-Mart in Coon Rapids and left me there. I spent 45 terrifying minutes wandering the store looking for him and my three sisters. Eventually, I gave up and walked to the Country Kitchen where my mom was working. He refused to pick me up, so I had to call Jodi Hanson whose aunt came and rescued me.

When I was 17 I attended my mom’s BFF’s wedding in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. My mom and I stayed at a hotel with the rest of the wedding party. The day after the wedding my mom went back home because my family was moving to Chippewa Falls, WI the next day. I was staying in Grand Rapids for a week to babysit the happy couple’s children while they honeymooned somewhere.

Everyone checked out of the hotel and forgot about me. I spent hours nervously wondering what to do. I didn’t have any money. I only knew a few phone numbers, and they were all long distance. Eventually, I called home hysterical because what else was I going to do? My dad got angry because I couldn’t calm myself down and hung up on me. At some point, the bride’s siblings came and got me.

After that week of babysitting the groom’s parents dropped me off at a Country Kitchen in Forest Lake, where my cousin was supposed to pick me up and bring me home. She forgot. When she finally rescued me, she dropped me off at home, which was empty because my family had moved to Wisconsin in my absence. All my stuff had been moved out of my room and put in the basement, which was where I was going to live for my senior year in high school while my cousin and her family lived upstairs. At some point Jodi Hanson came over with leftovers because there was no food in the house.

There are, of course, a million other ways I’ve been forgotten or abandoned or stood up. I like to believe this has happened to everyone at least once in their lives. I know I can’t be the only one.

Like Rob Gordon in “High Fidelity,” I too ponder what came first, the music or the misery?

Did my love of songs about not being forgotten take root in my heart because of being frequently forgotten or, well, I guess that doesn’t really fit here. The universe wasn’t like “hey, she super loves songs about being thought about or remembered, let’s make sure she has a reason for that.”

Damn you, Nick Hornby.

Regardless, those great “don’t you forget about me/don’t forget me when I’m gone/I won’t forget you baby/love letters in the sand, I remember you*” 80s songs had a special place in my internal jukebox. Still do, really.

However as I have matured, my musical taste has matured, and I’ve taken a hankering to a special kind of don’t forget/remember me song. Specifically, I love the “think of me when I’m not around song.”

One thing that has occurred to me as I type this is how all the “don’t forget me songs” I mention are by dudes, and the “think of me” songs I’m going to mention are by women. There’s probably some sort of cis-gender binary thing going on there. Men making pronouncements and commands, and women being much more emotionally subtle and yet totally more devastating.

It’s similar to how when a guy says his ex is crazy and you kind of roll your eyes because it means she showed emotion regarding their break up. When a woman says her ex is crazy you know that dude is dangerous.

One of my favorites in the “think of me” genre is Lydia Loveless’ “To Love Somebody.” It’s a sonic go-to when I’m feeling a certain way. Loneliness mixed with nostalgia for one that got away or frustration over that one who refuses to come here. The second verse of this song is frequently how I feel about all things romantic. And I never did want that much from you, or at least not everything. I never did want you to be mine. Well, at least not all the time, but now I want to be on your mind.”

My new favorite song in this genre, and all the genres really, is Madi Diaz’s “Think of Me.” In my heart the math goes like this Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know” + Loveless’ “To Love Somebody” = “Diaz’s “Think of Me.”

Diaz’s song has all the fury of the Morissette’s song plus the lovely longing of Loveless’ song. It is amazing and I listen to it about five times in a row every morning to get pumped up to do the adult things that are required of me. I put this song on every time my energy starts to lag and couch dance while sing/shouting “I hope you fuck her with your eyes closed, put the shame off with some benzos.” I don’t even have anyone specific I hope is fucking her with his eyes closed, but rather all of the dudes I’ve ever had sex with. All of them.

I also hope they think of me always.

Yours,
Jodi

 
*Holy Buckets! How did I forget what a thing of beauty 80s Sebastian Bach was? Damn. Between this video and Confetti-era Evan Dando I’m really putting some real thought into my “blondes just aren’t my thing” policy.

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Hello Darling Ones,

In honor of this historical day I’ve made a list of 22 of my second favorite things. Second favorites have been on my mind a lot since I made that Bittersweetheart Playlist. “Bittersweetheart” is my second favorite Soul Asylum song. “Marionette” is my favorite for cute boy singing it to me at an Olive Garden in Eau Claire, WI in 1996 reasons. Obviously.

Before I get to the second favorites, I have to brag a little. I fixed my janky-ass ice maker all by myself, and once again have refrigerator ice befitting a woman of my stature and social class (kidding, I’m a sloppily-dressed bog witch and we all know it). Thanks to listening to my brother-in-law when he fixed my ice maker last summer I knew that one of the things a functioning ice maker would do is “call the water.” I noticed despite the lack of ice, the ice maker was still calling for the water. With the tiniest amount of googling I learned you can turn the ice maker on and off. I turned it off for a day or so, turned it back on and VOILA! I got fancy-ass ice cubes coming out of my ice dispenser again.

Now, without further ado, 22 of my second favorite things as of 02.22.22.

You’re my favorite thing,
Jodi

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