Sweet Country Lovin'

Country music is one of my so-called guilty pleasures. My mom and I sang along to it in the car when I was little (actually, we still do!), I got massively teased about it in high school, dropped it, came back to it-- I can't call it love/hate, because it's really only ever been love. Love, love, love it. Love Top-20, love the eighties power-ballads, love the ridiculous fashions, love the alts, the oldies, the personalities. Okay? I admit it. I love country music. And I refuse to be guilty about it ANY LONGER!!

First off, can we talk about the gorgeousness of country musicians? Lots of eye-candy to choose from, but let's just pick the two most famous redheads of the bunch, as I happen to be partial. We have Willie Nelson to start, whose rugged mug graces the beginning of this post. I have a massive crush on Willie-- looks, politics, music, he's got it all. I'm slowly working through his discography, which is MASSIVE, but I just picked up "Stardust" which is a cover album. You should definitely check out "Georgia on my Mind" if you haven't already. I think part of the reason I love him so much is that he just seems like such a pure, bright spirit. I'm sure he has his share of jadedness after almost 50 years in the music business, but it doesn't show. I've taken to wearing my hair in braids. Maybe if I spend some more time in the sun...

Next up, we have Bonnie Raitt, hardcore-cool, whom my friend Jericho and I have decided is "my" diva. She's had the same hairdo since at least 1982, and baby still rocks it. She's one of the most gifted slide guitarists to sling a bottleneck, and she 's deeply committed to preserving the music and history of the blues. I love picturing her backintheday, the little roundfaced redheaded white girl, opening for Sippie Wallace, Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker (click to listen to one sexy-ass song). She's been active in civil rights, environmentalism, and women's rights. Yah, I want to be Bonnie when I grow up. 

Do you think we can convince them to get married? And adopt me?

Have you ever...

Shuddered with delight upon climbing into bed? I mean, I have serious love for The Bed at any time of day or night, but real, true physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion combined is rare. Tonight, I've got it. Oh, I cannot waaaaaaiiiiiiit. 

Ilya had a reading in LA today, so we hopped in our little car and drove up today-- which would be exhausting anyway (we went 90 most of the way, made it to LA in 1 1/2 hours, which is SWEET time, but spent another 1/2 hour to go 5 miles. Really. I blinked at my speedometer, said boo, but it was only five miles. Insane!), but I spent 11 hours writing a paper last night, and stayed up till 5 am to do so. It was a very good paper, but I am ZONKED, especially after making nice-nice with the poets and organizers (easy this time because they actually WERE nice-nice), and attempting to find some food and gas in downtown LA, which is deserted after 5 pm. Ghost town. With tumbleweed and everything.

But tomorrow, tomorrow my friends, will be a vacation. We're going to this macaron shop I've been waiting to visit for months, and then we're going to museums, and we're going to eat vegan sushi. And it will be fabulous.  

3 Wishes

I've given a lot of thought to what my three wishes would be if a genie popped out of, say, the vase I picked up from my last trip to Goodwill. There are a lot of reasons for this, I'm sure, including a passionate love for fairy tales, fantasy novels, and men in parachute pants. So, after at least twenty years of mulling over this question, I'm ready to reveal my three choices:

1. I wish to be able to change shape into whatever animal, vegetable, or mineral I desire. (This requires amendments)

• I have to be able to change back!
  
• There have to be some  formal words to think or say aloud in order to do this, lest, you know, mid-coitus, the image of a porcupine should pop into my head and my husband would end up doing some SERIOUS explaining in the hospital.
  
• I need to be able to change from one shape into another without going back to my intermediate human shape.
  
• When I change back into a human, I need to be wearing the same clothes and retain whatever objects I had with  me before I changed.
  
• I need to be able to retain my human brain and consciousness in whatever shape I change to, even if it's a flea, or say, a diamond (a diamond shape would actually be really useful if say, a piano was about to fall on your head.)
  
• I also need to be able to retain the abilities and instincts of whatever animal I change into. It wouldn't be much help to change into wolf form and then not be able to run because I don't know what to do with my tail, or into fish form without knowing how to breathe through gills. 
  
• I also want to be able to change my human shape. So I could be a man, or a child, or an old woman, convincingly. Even better, I should be able to know the things a helicopter pilot, or doctor, or painter should know, if I change myself into one.
  
• I should also be able to wish to be myself, but in a different place. So this takes care of teleportation, basically.
  
• I have to be able to retain the memory of being whatever I change into, and what happened while I was in that form.
  

2. I wish to have the power to know the answer to any question. (This is another one that can bite you, so more amendments).

• Again, there have to be some sort of magic words uttered so I don't find out things I'd rather not know, which seems to be the fate of many people who receive this wish. I don't want to KNOW everything, I just want to be able to find things out.
  
• I want to be able to find out not only factual things, but also more subjective things. For instance, it would be very helpful to know what the best way to go about getting someone to give you something.
  
• I want to be able to forget anything I need to.

3. Free the genie. Duh.

I'm fairly confident these are the best wishes ever. Shape-shifting is awesome-- I can experience anything, from flying to deep-sea diving to watching my neighbor's HBO. Knowing anything I want to know could take care of me for the rest of my life-- in trouble with the law? Instant blackmail! Need money? Find some local buried treasure! Want to cure cancer? Bingo. And if you're tempted to ask a question you know you shouldn't (does he really love me, what do my friends find most annoying about me, what am I really like?) you can forget about it. And everybody knows you're supposed to free the genie. If you think you know different, you obviously haven't read  "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" by A.S. Byatt, and if you haven't already, you should. 

Anybody think they have better wishes? Or think I left something incredibly important out of my amendments?