Sleater-Kinney changed my life.

(This is a more personal version of my blog entry for The Detroit News.)

Really. It did.
I remember it well. I was sitting in 10th grade biology with my friend Joanna, who gets all the credit for introducing me to Sleater-Kinney. She raved about the band the entire class period. Told me I had to listen. This was in 1998, in between "Dig Me Out" and "The Hot Rock." I'm glad because I might not have loved the band so much if "The Hot Rock" was the first album I had heard by them. She let me listen to the album after class from her CD player (anyone still use portable CD players?).
I remember convinving my mother (hey, I was 15) to drive me right after school so I could purchase "Dig Me Out."
I was in love.



Sleater-Kinney got me into other Kill Rock Star bands, which got me into other indie labels, which got me into other indie music. And then I became a crazy person consumed by music, which brings us to the present.

Those of you who have no idea who Sleater-Kinney is should change that ASAP. This band is different. It's not another all-girl, feminist, man-hating, punk rock, riotgrrl (I think I covered all the stereotypes) group. With each new album, S-K never fails to astound me. I always think 'there is no way in hell they can get better than this,' but they do. Every time. I have never been disappointed with a new release from S-K, like I have with other favorite bands of mine.

When I was an intern at The State News, I wrote a (badly written) column about a road trip to Cleveland to see Sleater-Kinney.

I bet you're all wondering why I've decided to profess my love of my favorite band. S-K broke up this week. For good. It's over. But my love affair is not.

Eleven years. Seven albums. Three amazing women.

the blog is back!

this isn't going to be just a summer reading blog as i had originally intended, but this first post of 2006 is just so i can keep track right now.

1. "the secret life of bees" by sue monk kidd
started off pretty interesting, then i ended up losing interest quickly and it took me a while to finish this one. i finally just ended up scanning through the last half. it was a good book with a really good plot and story, but felt more as if i was reading a book for an english class since the plot and characters were so rich with symbolism. i bet a professor could analyze this book for hours.

2. "a million little pieces" by james frey
i'm still not done with this one yet, but it's extremely interesting and i want to keep reading every time i pick it up. i don't care about all the controversy surrounding its honesty, it's still an intriguing story with unique characters and unusual experiences.

3. "magical thinking" by augusten burroughs
I still like David Sedaris better, but this guy is really funny and has a different sense of humor than sedaris. it's a little more dark and offbeat, i know sedaris is both of those things too, but burroughs is just a touch more. this is simply yet another book of short, true stories written in a witty, sarcastic format.

4. "i am not myself these days: a memoir" by joshua kilmer-purcell
I might be a little biased because this guy was a former s'newser and he signed my copy of the book with "to a fellow s'newser." Nevertheless, Kilmer-Pucell is hilarious. This is a super fast read and I read it all in one night. He's laugh-out-loud funny whereas Sedaris and Burroughs might be more of a subtle humor. This book is more of an autobiography of a few years in his life as Aqua, a drag queen, while he was in a crazy relationship with a crack addict/gay escort.

next up:
incredibly loud and extremely close by jonathon safren foer
prep by curtis sittenfield
and all three books by zadie smith, all of which I found at the public library. awesome.

i almost want one ... if i had 19.95.

TESTING

top 5 reasons you need cable

1. late-night tv consists of watching the maury povich show and drunkenly calling friends with choice one-liners at 3 a.m.
2. you have watched so many episodes of fear factor, that you can now recognize reruns.
3. you have started watching starting over to get in your real world fix, and are addicted. (the starting over house is the equivalent of real world for middle-aged women with issues)
4. you know all the women's names on the view.
5. your favorite show is blind date.

avril lavigne and the guy from sum 41 are engaged. there's an oh-so-cutesy photo of them in the latest rolling stone. i can see it now — MTV's latest celeb reality show Pop-Punk Heaven: Avril and Deryck (yes, that's how he spells his name.)

quick thoughts on the latest books i've finished.

middlesex: the last half was a faster read than the first half. probably because it seemed more interesting to me, although it didn't take me very long to get into the characters. they were likeable and real.

memoirs of a geisha: amazing. i liked this one better than middlesex. it was really captivating and sucked me in from page one. i highly recommend it. i love books that incorporate historical info/culture into fiction. i want to re-read this one when i get a chance, it was that good. i didn't want it to end. i took my time with this one, savoring every sentence, page and chapter. the characters were fabulous.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time: super fast read, but interesting, too. really quirky and funny. i loved being in the mind of a 15-year-old boy with down's syndrome. on the surface, the book is about a boy searching for answers when his neighbor's dog is killed with a fork, "a garden fork, not the kind you eat with." he ends up discovering a bunch of startling information about his family in the process. it's kind of a quirky, amusing coming-of-age mystery. and that doesn't even begin to describe it. i guess what i'm trying to say is that this book can't be categorized, which is probably why i liked it so much.

she's come undone: i think i understand why elissa hated this book. i wouldn't say i hated it, but i didn't like it either. it took me forever to get into it. i would read a few pages at a time, until finally i said fuck it, and just started skimming, skipping a few pages here and there. i read a good chunk in its entirety though, and it just didn't grab me and i didn't give a shit about the characters or what happened to them. i just didn't care, which is what you need in a book. you need to care to find out what happens next, not necessarily like the characters, but at least care to know what they're doing. this book just didn't do that for me. i just finished it about 15 minutes ago, and very blah. i don't understand what the big fuss was all about for this one. or why oprah picked it for her book club. sure, it's a story of a girl and it goes through her life up until she's 40. it starts with her being 4, i think. and all sorts of bad thing happen in her life, to herself and people around her. depressing things. the usual sob story type of book. but i don't think it's done right. i suppose that's what happens when a middle-aged man tries to write about an entire woman's life in first person.

next up: a long way down by nick hornby is what's sitting next to my ibook right now.

and i'm reading the new chuck klosterman at barnes & noble. my goal is to head over there every afternoon for an hour or two before class or work and read books there to save money because, at the rate i'm going, i'll need to buy a book or two a week for the rest of the summer. and i just don't have the money for that. of course, there's always the library.

facebook

i have never met anyone through facebook and don't plan on it. but there are some who, for some unknown reason or other, believe online communities such as facebook, friendster, myspace, livejournal, etc. are a good way to meet people.
i happened to receive an IM from one such person last week. i had just come home from the bar and couldn't sleep, so i watched some tv. i was pretty wasted. i pass by my laptop and notice i have an IM from someone whose screenname is something like whenidie something or other. very emo-esque. person just says hi. i type hi back. i think i passed out immediately after that. i had forgotten about the incident the next morning, until i notice the person had sent me about 3 more messages after that. he said "i saw you on facebook and thought you're very cute and cool." and "i guess you're not there anymore. lol" and "ok. i guess you don't want to talk to me. lol."
if there's one thing i cannot stand, it's the use of lol or any other type of internet jargon. especially when used more than once. in a row. and especially when the person lol's at what he himself said. and especially when what he said was not even funny, or cause for lol'ing.
i don't hear from emo dying boy again until a few days later. i am about to go out for the night and i get an IM asking me if i remember who he is. and another lol. i have a few minutes to waste before a friend comes to pick me up, so i decide i can get some amusement out of this. i look the emo dying boy up on facebook. he's a freshman. and he's straightedge. i wonder if he noticed most of my interests include drinking.
he proceeds to ask me if i'm "latino" and when i don't respond says he "likes ethnic girls who aren't white". i finally say no. he lol's again, and says he's sorry. why is it funny that i'm not latino? who knows? maybe he just likes lol'ing. i wonder if he's really laughing out loud. then i ask him how old he is. after he tells me, he says he doesn't mind the age difference and that he can be "really wild." he seems to think we're on some dating show. i don't understand when this emo dying kid came to the conclusion that IM'ing someone from facebook equals hitting on them/flirting. i've never been a big fan of having real conversations online.
he tells me that he lives at home this summer, but he makes trips to east lansing often to visit friends. i think he expected me to extend an invitation. not going to happen, mr. emo dying.
what really gets me is that this kid didn't even bother to ask me anything about me. not like i would have told him anything had he asked, but if he really had any real interest in dating, wouldn't he have asked the usual get to know you questions?
i thought i would get more amusement out of the whole thing that i did. he didn't seem to understand sarcasm and didn't give me the humorous responses i had hoped for. so i chose to x out of the IM and left for the night.
he's im'd me once again, but i chose not to respond. i never added him as a buddy, so i can't remember his screenname other than the die part. i'm sure emo dying boy will move on to someone else from facebook. beware. he's out there. and he likes "ethnic girls who aren't white."

just finished/starting

i just finished reading dog handling by clare naylor, a book i picked up from the e.l. public library book sale for 1 dollar in may. it was horrible, to say the least. one of the worse, if not the worst, chick lit books i have ever read, and i have read a lot of them. i could barely finish it, which is why it took me almost a week. i even brought it up north with me and still didn't finish it. the writing was horrible, attempts at being comedic just didn't work, and the lead character was not likeable. she was a complete moron, who treated everyone she met like shit. i wasn't even going to bother finishing it, but picked it up while listening to the thunderstorms and ended up finishing it just by skimming through it and not really paying attention.

i'm ready to begin something with substance. i just received my amazon.com shipment this afternoon. i am going to start with middlesex by jeffrey eugenides tonight. i'm really looking forward to it, although virgin suicides was not really up to par, in my opinion. it was a great, easy read, but just not what i expected, i guess. maybe i should re-read it. i have it at home.

i can always tell by the first page whether i'm going to like a book or not and whether it's worth my time. clever writing and word usage always gets me. i don't think middlesex will disappoint.