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LOOK AT THIS DOG

This is awesome. I stole it from lauren, who picked it up off of boingboing. Check it, love it, tell all your friends.

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20 tunes from the 90’s

This list is for Claire and Walt, and it lays no claims to being the best, or even my favorites, absolutely. It is merely the 20 most nostalgic/sort of good 90’s hits that I could find right now, in my itunes library, in the order in which they occurred to me. They are not ranked or arranged in any other way. I do not even claim that they’d make much of a playlist in this order. This is just what you get right this minute, at 2:30 am on Friday night. (Clearly I am le popular.)

Now, to be fair to myself, I will preface this briefly by saying that not all of these are songs I CURRENTLY think are awesome. A few of them have been included because, terrible or not, they defined the decade, and I (for one) will admit to knowing all the words.

1. Crazy – Aerosmith: Come here, baby. It is so disturbing that Steven Tyler put his daughter in the naughty schoolgirl role in the music video that goes with this. Also, baby Alicia Silverstone! Creepy old man undertones or not, this song rocks, and also makes me want to go sit in a convertible and make out with the captain of the football team. (Or, you know, car dance in a convertible. Either one, really.) Not that that’s something I actually would have done in the 90’s. I mean, cut me some slack, I wasn’t even a TEENAGER for most of them. Also, I have no idea who the captain of the football team was. No matter what his name was, I can assure you, we definitely did not run in the same circle, NO SIR INDEED.

2. Holiday – Weezer: I used to rock out to myself singing this song in the shower when I was high school. Why this one? No clue. I can tell you though, that whole “heeeart BEEEAAAT” part is really awesome with echoey shower acoustics. [note: I totally saw them live on this tour, although not at this venue. They are AWESOME live. Seriously. Awesome. My first concert was Weezer, with Tenacious D and Jimmy Eat World opening, and it was inCREDible.]

3. Shoe Box/Light Up My Room – Barenaked Ladies: I know it’s cheating to list two songs together, but I really couldn’t decide between these two gems. I mean–yeah, no, I can’t choose. The Barenaked Ladies are like Canadian crack. Once you start listening to their albums, you can’t stop, even when you figure out that some of them are about teenage boys having affairs with grown women (although the music video would suggest that we should switch the genders there?). Somehow, from the laydeez, it’s just charming. And then you find the ones about lighting up a lightbulb by biting it in the middle of a hydroelectric field, and since you’ve never SEEN a firefly, this spontaneous light thing is utterly fascinating.

4. Hannah Jane – Hootie and the Blowfish: HAH. HOOTIE FOREVER. To be fair, this is not a song I actually listened to in the 90’s, but rather one that I decided I must love after I heard it played in the first season of Felicity (which I watched long after the 90’s, during my freshman year of college). I will not apologize for my hootie. Bring on the slap bracelet.

5. Save Tonight – Eagle-Eye Cherry: Frankly, I can’t believe this song didn’t make it at least on to Claire’s list, cause this is a classic of the 90’s. I have a confession to make, though. The reason that I remembered to put good ol’ Eagle-Eye on this list at all is that this song (and a shocking number of others on this list) was on a playlist I already had chilling in my itunes, entitled “sexy,” proving once and for all that my pre-teen music taste has warped me permanently.

6. I Will Buy You a New Life – Everclear: I feel all nostalgic about this one, largely because I remember first hearing it riding in my sister’s Mustang on the way to a movie. She used to drive us to our violin/viola lessons and also other places, generally without complaining about it (at least to me), which is one of the reasons she rocks. Coolest. Sister. Ever. Can you believe he actually thinks that I am really alive?

7. Something to Talk About – Bonnie Raitt: “People are talking, talking ’bout people…I hear them whisper, you won’t believe it! They think we’re lovers, kept under cover! [...] maybe they’re seeing something we don’t darling…” I love this song. I don’t care that it’s smaltzy and probably terrible. I love it anyway. You and me, Bonnie. You and me forever.

8. Every Morning – Sugar Ray: I can never understand what he’s saying, and even when I look the lyrics up, they make no sense. Why has she hung her halo on the corner of the bed? Does this mean she DOES deserve it, or she DOESN’T? Does she suspend the halo for the night *wink wink nudge nudge say no more say no more*? I am so confused. And the whole borrowing thing? Can you borrow a halo? I just…confused.

9. Kiss Me – Sixpence None the Richer: Oh please. Y’all know I’m a total sucker for this one. It’s just….so terribly deliciously girlie and cutesy and whatever. I can’t help it that 90’s cheese completely formed all my ideas about the romantic. It was beyond my control. Like the weather, or who wins the World Series. [About the video: Yes, yes I WILL make you watch Logan and Veronica make out. How dare you complain!]

10. Brick – Ben Folds Five: Now, this is a genuinely good song, no matter when it was made. It is a trifle (ok, hugest trifle of all time) depressing, but it’s great. I remember listening to it on some mix CD on a bus ride somewhere, like maybe to San Diego in 8th grade? The CD was one of those Alice series things, made to combat some disease. (AIDS, I think?) Anyhow, I loved it. I love it still. Shhhh, Ben is singing. *sigh*

11. Black Balloon – The Goo Goo Dolls: The Goo Goo Dolls love you, and you love the Goo Goo Dolls. They’re always so emo, but before emo was a thing to be, so they’re like the original emo. Pre-Emo. Premo. (I like it.)

12. Argue – Matchbox Twenty: We’ve discussed our mutual love for this band, yes? Oh, we are ashamed, but we love it nonetheless. This was one of the first non-Disney CDs I ever bought, too. I bought this and No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom at CD City in the mall. It was a brave brave day for music.

13. The Distance – Cake: Now, I didn’t really listen to Cake in the 90’s when this stuff was getting made, but now I fully appreciate it. Cake is always good times.

14. Loser – Beck: I’m a loser baby….so why don’t you kill me? Nothing else to say, my friends. Nothing else.

15. Bitch – Meredith Brooks: If you haven’t sung loudly along to this with a group of girlfriends in a car with all the windows down, you haven’t lived. Ok, maybe if you aren’t a girl, you don’t have to have done this, but if you are, there is NO EXCUSE. None at all.

16. Head Over Feet – Alanis Morissette: Ahhh Alanis. So Angsty, so guitar-ey. So indispensable. [the video is bizarre.]

17. All the Small Things – Blink 182: You can try to deny it, but we all know the words to at least one Blink 182 hit. [This video is so inappropriate. Hell, Blink 182 is so inappropriate.]

18. I Want You to Want Me – Letters to Cleo: 10 Things I Hate About You, or 10 Reasons I Want to be Sung To. Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you crying?

19. Never You Mind – Semisonic: I didn’t really discover Semisonic beyond the joys of “Closing Time” until Claire made me an all Semisonic all the time mix CD, but I think I listened to that thing non-stop for about two weeks. What?? It was a very pop-ballad moment in my life! I was 17! Shut UP!

20. U2 – One: I still don’t believe that we can count anything by U2 as a “90’s Hit.” They’re too good. They have no set place in time, they flow like the wiiiind.

There. Finally. It only took me a weekend. I hope you have enjoyed this little trip through the nostalgic regions of my brain. Join us again next time for our regularly scheduled obsessing, analysis, and over-thinking. Thank you, thank you, and goodnight. (Well, not goodnight. But I’m going to go eat dinner, so goodbye.)

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Fighting the Emo

I’ll be honest with you here–the main point of this entry is that it pushes my emo outburst about what is (essentially) merely a hilarious mishap a little further down the page. The further I get from that throat sinking moment when I read my name on her wall, the more trivial the whole giant ick feels.

And so, with that, we bid it adieu. And we laugh at it as the door hits its giant butt on the way out. (Not that the person in question HAS a giant butt, just that it’s a good figure of…you know what? Forget it. We’re moving on.)

I’ve been debating with myself lately about just how open and transparent I can be here, now that I have real, actual people who are not related to me reading the things I write. [Which, sidenote, I checked out my stats on this page for the first time ever and was kind of taken aback by the IP addresses I knew didn't come from Stanford or people I'm sure I know. Dudes, one day, 45 whole people came here! 45! I know this is small potatoes, but there is no way I can name 45 people who come here because I told them to. Anyhow. This (of course) doesn't mean that I don't WANT you here, random people,  because I do. I wuvv you. It's just kind of creepish that I don't know who you are.] Anyhow. Back to the subject at hand: my internet honesty.

For instance, if I tell you about boys who are current rather than past objects of my obsession, will this make me obsess about them more, or WORSE, will they READ it? I can no longer gossip about my friends because they (and people they know) read this, I can’t really whine about my life because I do that anyhow in real life, and who wants to hear me whine about the same thing twice? (No one.) In short, can something so public be confessional any more?
Do I spend too much time thinking about this? (Yes.)

How do you guys deal with the private and your blogging existence? I mean, aren’t the private squishy gossipy things the interesting things? Is there anything else left?

Facebook Drive-By

Have you ever had a moment in which your life suddenly seems much more like a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad movie? When you wonder if you’re about to take a pratfall on a banana skin or suddenly discover that you’ve arrived in class sans clothes? Yeah, I’ve had one of those moments today.

Now, I realize that by telling you about this moment, I have made you want to know what it entailed, and because I am a glutton for punishment, I am about to tell you. For the protection of the (not very) innocent, I will conveniently blur some things. Like their names. And their pictures. Oh, I am a goddamn saint.

For those of you who don’t recognize (or believe) the above, yes, that IS in fact a facebook wall post. As in, public wall post. As in, anybody on the friends list of the person to whom this wall belongs could read it at his or her leisure. And…. yeah. I mean, really, it needs no explanation. I have no idea in what planet this seemed like a good idea to the person who posted this, but yeah. I just about died. And also made a truly alarming squeaky noise like a dying rubber duckie. I am told this was fairly amusing to watch.

He claims he thought it was a message. Clearly he is a HUGE champion. I say a whole 24 hours is an awfully long time to not notice that it’s a wall post. And anyhow, isn’t there some rule about the gentlemen and the kissing and telling? This does not make me want to hook up with anyone EVER again.

I guess at least I got a good review? A 10 out of 10 in the Hookup Zagat?

Eew. And aaack! And goddamn facebook! (although now that I have blogged it here and preserved it for the ages, really I guess it’s more MY fault than facebook’s.)