Chapter 184: Here’s To Life

As mentioned many times in the past week, the blog has followed a very specific theme this week: Barbra Streisand! I have spent the past week really discovering her music, which I knew very little of before now, and have completely fallen in love with her. Seriously, I cannot say enough good things about her music – it is inspiring and her voice is such a genuine joy to hear sing pretty much any song you could think of. I am particularly fond of her works in the 60s, especially the music from “Funny Girl,” and have also really fallen in love with the sensibility of that music from the early/mid 60s. They had a very different style back then and I really appreciate it. I always kind of related the 60s with hippies and Woodstock and all of that but through Barbra, as well as the film, “A Single Man,” I have really discovered a very different concept of the 60s. Aside from the whole “Flower Power” thing that went on then there was this whole other side of life that I like to refer to as a sort of suburban glamour that is just gorgeous. I suddenly started recalling all kinds of things from that time period, like Mary Tyler Moore, Doris Day, “That Girl,” “I Dream Of Jeannie,” “Bewitched,” even the movie “Hairspray,” which was set in the 60s. These are all things that I was really drawn to as a child, watching Nick At Nite and such. It is really funny actually, because a lot of people my age talk about the things they remember loving when they were kids, including “Fraggle Rock” or “Jem” or various other children’s shows. I remember enjoying those things, as well, but when I look back on my childhood entertainment the things that really stick out to me are the sitcoms of yesteryear, like all of those mentioned above. I don’t know why but I was always drawn to TV from the 60s, (although, until now, I never actually realized they were all from that era.) Don’t get me wrong, I was also really into things from later periods, like “The Brady Bunch” and “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and films like “Grease,” “Saturday Night Fever,” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” but it seems like the stuff that really sticks out to me the most was the stuff from the 60s. Listening to Barbra this past week has really reminded me of that period and caused me to fall in love with it all over again. In addition to Barbra, I have wound up developing a bit of an obsession with 60s glamour. It is just gorgeous.

So, since I have already listened to everything from the 150 song retrospective that I downloaded while writing the past 6 blogs, I decided to stick with the Barbra theme for the seventh day to make it a complete week and am listening to her 2009 album, “Love Is The Answer.” This album mainly consists of covers of jazz standards and such and, as I have mentioned before, Barbra’s voice just seems to have gotten better with age. This album is really gorgeous. My favorite track on it is probably the opener, a song called “Here’s To Life,” which is basically about celebrating the lives that we have created for ourselves and appreciating the gift that it is to simply be living. I really love this song, mainly because it is a philosophy that I developed myself a few years ago and have worked really hard to maintain ever since. It is so true, though, life is full of beautiful things but the most beautiful thing of all is simply to be living. It is a wonderful gift and I, for one, am extremely grateful for it. Another favorite track of mine on this record is called, “If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas,)” sung partially in French. It is a gorgeous song, originally performed by Jacques Brel. I am also really in love with the song “Make Someone Happy,” which is originally from the Broadway Musical, “Do Re Mi.” It is also one of those really simple, universally true sentiments – “Make someone happy and you’ll be happy, too.” It is a beautiful song and Barbra sings it brilliantly. Like I said, though, I have completely fallen in love with her voice, so my opinion is kind of biased. Still, as I said in last night’s video blog, anybody who only has a passing knowledge of Barbra’s work or isn’t overly familiar with it, I HIGHLY recommend becoming familiar. The woman does not disappoint. She is absolutely brilliant.

So, aside from Barbra, today was a pretty good day. I woke up at 9am this morning to my Mom kind of getting ready to leave the house. As I briefly discussed in last night’s video blog, my phone kind of went berserk and I had to wind up ordering a new one. To get a little more detailed about that I have a touch-screen phone, the HTC Touch Diamond, and had noticed recently that it was acting kind of funny. Then last night, after my piano lesson, I was trying to send a text message and it wouldn’t let me type properly. It was very odd. It was as if the on-screen keyboard were getting stuck on every letter on the right-hand side of it. When you hold down one of those letters for too long, it changes to a letter or symbol, so they kept getting stuck and typing those letters a ton of times. After closing the messaging section and trying to just function within the non-keyboard related sections of the phone, I found that the touch-screen kept registering that I was touching a different area of the screen than I actually was. Now, this kind of freaked me out because if the touch-screen goes out on a full touch-screen phone, you don’t really have another option to use. This whole thing really freaked me out and I decided that perhaps it was time to move forward with my previously tossed aside plans for getting a new phone. For a while there, I was pretty obsessed with the idea of getting a Blackberry. Still, I didn’t really have the money for the Blackberry at this point, so I discussed it with my Mom and decided to check out the Sprint site to see what options they had for a free phone. I was pretty much planning on going with something like the phone my Mom got free from them, the LG Lotus. That isn’t even a smartphone so that would have been a major downgrade but, at the same time, I have kind of been feeling like I wanted a bit of a simpler, less technologically advanced phone. One of the main reasons for that is because I kind of wanted to get a phone that could work with a less expensive plan. My current plan isn’t that bad for just me but since we now have two lines on the account the bills have been very high and we have been having a lot of trouble keeping up with them. So, something that didn’t require a really big, expensive plan seemed like a better idea at this point to help lower the bill. Still, I didn’t want something completely old school. I, at least, wanted to still have a smartphone. Like I said, I figured I’d go on the site and see what was available for free or for a very low price. The first thing I noticed on the site was that the Palm Pixi was free right now with a new contract. So, I read all the fine print, as well as going through quite a few different reviews on various tech/nerd sites and on YouTube, and slowly started to really fall in love with this phone. So, I went ahead and ordered it.

One thing in the fine print, though, was that in order to do an upgrade your account had to be in good standing, without any past due balances on it. My account currently had a small past due balance but I went ahead and placed the order. It allowed me to place the order but when I woke up this morning I found that the order status stated that there was still “validation” that needed to be done and that I could call to get the order pushed through. I felt like this may have been caused by the fact that there was a past due balance on the account. I mentioned this to my Mom and she went into her computer and made payment on the account so it was all up to date. I felt really bad about this because I felt like she may have taken my mentioning that as putting some sort of pressure on her to make a payment. I didn’t really mean for it to come across that way and she says it didn’t but she did make the payment. After that she left the house to go get some coffee and go look for yard sales around town, as she likes to do sometimes. She later explained to me that she just felt like spending some time alone, which I can certainly understand. While she was off doing that, I called the number provided to get the order pushed through and after only a few minutes on the phone with them, they told me the order was complete and that I should be receiving the new phone in 2-5 business days. I checked the status of the order a little later in the day and found that it had already shipped and had an estimated delivery date of Monday, May 10, 2010. That is the day after tomorrow. On the UPS tracking site, it was listed as being sent Next Day Air. I was very impressed with that, particularly considering I didn’t pay a dime for anything. It was a free phone, with free shipping and my plan has changed to one that is about $30 less than what I had before. That should actually manage to take my phone bill down to less than $200 a month, which is a MAJOR improvement. I am extremely excited about this phone, too, because the Palm Pixi has all the bells and whistles of my current phone, including touch-screen, but also has a full keyboard so if there were any issues with the touch-screen it could still be functional. Plus, this phone runs the Palm WebOS operating system, which is pretty damn fancy, and has app functionality. The HTC Touch Diamond doesn’t have apps, so that is a pretty big plus. All of the reviews I have read or watched on YouTube have made this phone seem pretty amazing. I am very excited to receive it and play around with it a bunch. Fortunately, it’s not that long of a wait until I get to.

So, my Mom didn’t get back from her running around until around 2pm, and we decided to go out to lunch. We went to Grand China Buffet, one of the many Chinese buffets here in town, and ate way too much. Then we drove out to Lido Beach, going over my Mom’s favorite bridge, and to Siesta Key, where I always love to check out the boys on the beach. It was a nice little ride, listening to music and singing and just having a genuinely good time. My Mom kept talking about how she wanted to go to the pool when we came home and I could tell that she was hinting that she wanted me to go with her. I really enjoy the pool here at the apartment complex but I much prefer it when there isn’t anybody else in it. Still, I told her I would go with her and she seemed really happy about that. When we got home we changed pretty quickly and headed over to the pool. There were five or six kids jumping around in the pool, being pretty noisy and such, so we decided to go into the Jacuzzi first. It was a very hot day but the hot water in the Jacuzzi felt really good and eased a lot of the tension in my muscles. A few more people came and put their kids in the pool and joined us in the Jacuzzi. We made conversation with these people, although the woman who did the most talking was one of those people who spent the whole time talking about how poor and downtrodden she was and we both got the feeling she was wait for some sort of handout to be offered. My Mom and I both agreed that we are not really in a position to be giving any handouts even if we wanted to. Those types of situations always make me feel really awkward because you kind of want to offer people help but you also know how people take advantage of that sort of thing. It wasn’t long before we got out of the Jacuzzi and joined the kids in the pool. The pool felt amazing today with how hot it has been and we just kind of stuck to one corner of it while the kids played in the rest. It was really nice and we wound up waiting everybody else out and eventually had the pool all to ourselves, which was nice. Eventually, we both started feeling kind of light-headed and tired, so we came back to the apartment.

Once we got back to the apartment, we pretty much spent the rest of the evening watching the first four episodes of the second seasons of two of my favorite shows, Showtimes “United States Of Tara” and “Nurse Jackie.” We don’t have Showtime anymore but my Mom’s boyfriend recorded them for us, (on VHS tapes and everything – old school!) For those who don’t know, “United States Of Tara” is a series about a woman with multiple personality disorder, played by the AMAZING Toni Collette. This series is also executive produced by Steven Speilberg and written by Diablo Cody. It is such a completely off the wall concept but the series is absolutely amazing. The entire cast of this show is brilliant, as well. In particular, I am obsessed with their teenaged son, played by Keir Gilchrist. This kid is confused about his sexuality and Keir Gilchrist plays this part brilliantly. He really does a great job of really capturing the pain and frustration and curiosity and confusion that comes with identifying one’s sexuality. Aside from him, the daughter on this show is played by former (maybe current?) pop star, Brie Larson, who also does a brilliant job of playing the rebellious adolescent who is constantly exploring new and interesting ways to find her own identity. That is probably my favorite thing about this show – the show is centered around a woman with multiple personalities, trying to get back her true identity, but every single character on the show is struggling with their own identity in one way or another. It is just a brilliantly put together series. I am really a big fan of Diablo Cody’s work, I’ve decided after this series, “Juno” and “Jennifer’s Body.” I really think she is an incredible talent. “Nurse Jackie” is another series with a very off the wall concept, about a nurse who is addicted to painkillers and goes to extreme lengths to hide this from everyone around her, all the while slowly but surely getting herself in deeper and deeper by stealing drugs from the hospital she works in. This is one of those shows that I love because it really is a reflection of real life in the sense that genuinely good people are also capable of doing really despicable things, especially when they are suffering from an addiction. It doesn’t make them any less likable or in any way a bad person, it just makes them human. It seems like the entertainment industry has a really long history of breaking characters up into just being generally good or generally bad when in real life we are all a whole lot of both. “Ugly Betty” did a really great job of showing that, as well. I just really appreciate art that is a real, honest reflection of human nature like that. I highly recommend both of these shows to anybody who hasn’t seen them – they are both amazing.

So, that is about it. I am ready for bed. I actually have been for a couple hours now but around 12:30am when I came into my bedroom to start writing this blog my Mom got off the phone with her boyfriend and asked if I wanted to watch “Saturday Night Live.” We had both been pretty excited to see this week’s episode because tonight was finally the night that Betty White was hosting. After the huge Facebook campaign to get her on the show, we were both very curious to see how it would go. After all, the woman is 88 years old. She is also a comedy legend. The episode was amazing – probably the best episode they have done this season, aside from the Taylor Swift episode, of course. Betty White did an amazing job as host and, to make it even more exciting, a whole slew of former cast members came back specifically to be a part of this episode, including some of my favorites like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Rachel Dratch, Molly Shannon and Maya Rudolph. It was a lot of fun and had me laughing out loud many times throughout the episode. I really couldn’t have expected anything less, though – like I said, Betty White is a comic legend. She definitely knows what she’s doing in terms of comedy. They even did a sketch of a show called “CSI: Sarasota,” which was about a CSI style show set right here in Sarasota, FL, investigating crimes in retirement homes, which was hilarious. I am glad I watched it, even if it kept me up considerably longer than planned. For now, though, it is time for bed. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and I have got the meal I am preparing all planned out. I am really excited to see how it goes. It should be a lot of fun. I’m pretty sure both my brother and sister are going to be coming and it should be a really good day for my Mom. I’d better get rested up for it. Goodnight!