Three trips to the DMV and three smog inspection stations later...

I'll spare you the story and skip to the moral: If you're thinking of buying a car and plan on moving to California in the next few months, just wait until you get to California to buy the car.

Grammar Police to Prince: Come Out With Your Doves Up

When it is the object of "Dig, if you will, the picture / of," it is not "you and I engaged in a kiss"; it is "you and me engaged in a kiss." If your high school English teacher taught that it is always "you and I," then you've been misinformed. Please forgive me for correcting you when I sing along.

Black Thumb of Death

I bought FoxyJ an orchid for Valentine's Day, if I recall correctly. I kept it alive and thriving until we moved in July. I managed to keep it alive through a month of moving from my sister's place to my mom's to my in-laws' to our new place. A month after moving in here, it died.

When we moved in here we bought two majestic palm plants at Ikea. Within a week or two the leaves were turning brown on one of them. I fought and fought but in the last week or so I've accepted that it's time to give up the fight. The plant is dead.

If this were a matter of me being airheaded and just forgetting to water or otherwise neglecting my plants, that would be one thing. I'm an obsessive person, though, and I've obsessed over these plants. I looked up proper care for each of the plants, I bought orchid food, I tried to find the perfect spot in the house where they'd get the right amount of sunlight. All to no avail.

The powerlessness of it all is kind of depressing.

Today's Life Lesson

This afternoon I was in the kitchen with FoxyJ when a neighbor walked by our dining room window. He was an older man with a little pot belly, and he was wearing a wifebeater. After he passed I turned to Foxy and said, "You know, I can see how a wifebeater on a man who has a nice body could be attractive, in a white trash sort of way, but on an old dude with a poochy tummy sticking out--"

And then I stopped because I looked out the window and there he was, passing by on his way back wherever he'd come from. And the window was open.

Had he heard me talking about him? How embarrassing. What if he thought I was a horrible person? Worse, what if he thought he was a horrible person for having a poochy tummy and wearing a wifebeater? What if he went home and he was so distraught that he actually beat his wife? Who was I to cause such turmoil in this man I'd never met?

And in that moment a heavenly light shone down on me (Foxy had turned on the kitchen light) and I learned an Important Truth: Before you go mocking some stranger who you've no right to judge, be absolutely sure he can't hear you.

Speaking of the Beatles...

The other day my father-in-law sent a link to an article about religious leaders in California joining forces to end gay marriage once and for all. In the past, Cool Guy has expressed his concern over the LDS church allying itself with evangelical and southern Baptist groups who would just as soon see Mormons burning in hell as homosexuals. He closed his email the other day on a somewhat ironic note: "There is much power in declaring a common enemy."

Thing is, I thought Mormons and Evangelicals and Baptists already had a common enemy. I guess he wasn't enough of a threat to bring them together, though. Turns out the Beatles may be bigger than Jesus, but only the gays are bigger than Satan.

In Which I Blaspheme Someone Who Is Reportedly Bigger Than Jesus (and quote a swear word while I'm at it)

I am about to say something that is potentially more outrageous and offensive than anything I have ever said on this blog. Ready? Okay.

I think that some Beatles songs are done better by people other than the Beatles.

Yes, I recognize the absurdity of someone who hardly even knows what a chord is daring to criticize the greatest band in the history of humankind, but bear with me for a minute--assuming you haven't already left.

I actually feel this way about a few of their songs that have been covered by other artists, but the one I'm thinking of at the moment is their first single, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." In the YA novel Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which I'm reading in preparation for the movie, one of the characters explains why this is such a great song (and uses a bit of profanity, which I preserve because you didn't really think that G rating would last long, did you?):

Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful love song of the past fifty years can be traced back to "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding. Trust me. I've thought a lot about this.

He's right, it's brilliant, but the thing is, I don't think the song as the Beatles perform it conveys that message as powerfully as it could. It's a beautiful idea, this simple yearning for a simple touch, and it's all there in the lyrics and the melody, but then they've got all this other stuff going on--drums and harsh rock-n-roll guitar stuff--that makes it sound more like a party song. Granted, it worked for them, else we wouldn't even know who the Beatles are, but I don't think it serves the song itself as well as, for instance, T.V. Carpio's version from the movie Across the Universe.

In the film, Carpio is a teenaged girl watching her secret crush from a distance, dying to have that one touch, that magic that passes between two people when they hold hands. To emphasize her beautiful vocals, the instrumentation is limited to an acoustic guitar and, I believe (but may be revealing my music ignorance here), a subdued bassline. The bass strums out the beating of her heart as her voice trembles with raw desire. It makes me feel all tingly inside.

You don't have to take my blasphemous word for it, though. I've included both versions below so you can listen to them simultaneously and judge for yourself.

Attention Parents!

Please encourage your small children to read my blog. You've nothing to worry about--I'm officially family-friendly, as you can see below.

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