I love Halloween. Any excuse to dress up and ingest large quantities of candy rates high on my list in terms of favorable activities. And usually, I take a lot of pride in my cleverness when it comes to costumes. Rather than take the standard Slutty Pumpkin route I've done every cheeky, pun-ny idea that I could think of. I've been a Freudian Slip (slip + sign), a Blind Date (dress + sunglasses), one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust- ok, that one was a little slutty), and my personal favorite:
Jenna Jameson
Yup. It's me. As a bottle of Jameson. Go ahead and roll your eyes.
But this year, I don't have the slightest clue what to be. This is compounded by the fact that:
1. My boyfriend and I would prefer to do a non-lame couples costume, and 2. Adult-sized dinosaur costumes cost about $200, which seems just the littlest bit excessive.
Halloween weekend is coming up. I better get cracking...
I mentioned something before about having lots of jobs. So what is it that I do, exactly?
Well mostly, I write songs.
I've been playing piano since I was four years old. And for the vast majority of my childhood, I hated everything about it. Hated practicing for an hour every day, hated playing classical music, hated the fact that I was not allowed to quit. Well, shock of shocks, like a lot of other people whose parents refused to let them stop playing an instrument, one day I woke up and just started loving it. I was living in Manhattan at the time, fresh out of college and auditioning for any acting job I could get seen for. Because I had graduated early from school and most of my friends were still back in the freezing tundra known as upstate New York, I didn't have much of a whopping social life. I was also going through that lovely post-academia spiral of terror and "What am I going to do with my life?" panic (I may still be going through that.) I had set up my keyboard in my apartment, more out of habit than anything else.
But suddenly, I had a reason to play. And suddenly, I had something to say.
It probably took me a few weeks to write the first song. When I played it for my parents, they were quiet for a minute. And then my dad very seriously said, "This is what you should be doing."
Now, granted, they were probably a bit biased. So it took me a few months to really believe I had something going. During those months I wrote and wrote, and eventually I moved back to Massachusetts to give this thing a shot. It's been almost five years since I started to chase this thing down, and while it's been possibly the most difficult undertaking of my life, I don't regret it for a second. I have two main areas of focus: solo work, and my band, City of Squares, but I write in a variety of genres and have a blast doing it.
I thought I'd share some of my tunes with y'all as we go along, starting with something upbeat and positive. It's raining in Boston, so it's a good day for something sunny.
I wrote Beautiful View a few years ago, inspired by guys like Jamie Cullum and Eric Hutchinson. It's a story about jumping into things head-on, but with an understanding of what you're up against(hmmm, weird that I would write about that.) To me, that's what makes all the difference between an impulsive decision and a calculated risk- keeping your eyes open and your head up, no matter what happens.
This particular version was recorded by City of Squares in Winter 2010.
Well I've been told that Love is a lonely road And no golden bricks It's Made of myth and Pretty wishes
And you'll grow old And sick of the twists and the tricks The shoot-and-miss The midnight slips And All those bitter kisses
And now a mess of thorns is all that's left of another coulda-been Me and you And I must admit Everything they told me was true But turning back I see the traveled road My lovers littered there like precious stones
And it’s a beautiful view It’s a beautiful view- oo-oo-oo-oo
And I’ve been told the world is a danger zone An all-for-me-nothing-for-free bunch of Battle trench debris And you’ll grow old and weep at the state of the streets The make ends meet The calm deceit, and All those good guy defeats
Now one war’s ended but another one’s set to Sweeping through And I must admit that Everything they told me was true But sergeants surrender everywhere I go And we take to dancing in the rocket glow
And it’s a beautiful view It’s a beautiful view- oo-oo-oo-oo
And I’ve been told that Risk Is a knockout round And you’ll waste your life just swinging blind Shadow-boxing butterflies But you’ll grow old and happy if you stick to the other side of the Safety line No blackened eyes, No chasing titles, losing fights
Now the jabs keep stunning and my blood keeps running and I’m seeing Double, too And I must admit that Everything they told me was true But I’ll keep swingin’ till the final count And if a K-O’s coming I’m smiling all the way down 'Cause I’ve traveled a lonely road and I've danced in a danger zone and I’ve had my jaw broken but kept my eyes open All the way through
And I got a beautiful view It’s a beautiful- whoa-oh oh oh It’s a beautiful It’s a beautiful It’s a beautiful Everything they told me was true But I got a beautiful view.
Eight-inch Christian Louboutin silk and Swarovski crystal-encrusted ballet slipper heels. They were auctioned off to raise money for the English National Ballet.Someday, when I'm rich and famous, I'm going to commission another pair. And hope that all those years of dance training will prevent me from breaking my neck.
One of my multiple careers (you're learn more about others later) is as a part time dance teacher. I've been a ballet dancer- and we're talking the serious ballet kind- since I was two, and have done every other style and variation there is, from jazz to character to hip-hop. I've even had a little flamenco training. Ole!
Anyways, so I'm part of an after-school program that provides extracurricular activities to kids who don't have a lot of cash lying around for all the fun things that lucky children like myself got to do. And these kids deserve it. They are enthusiastic, hard-working, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in bettering themselves. I have a blast coming up with new and challenging pieces for them to do, and I can't wait to tackle our Halloween number:
Because let's face it, every kid should get the chance to act like a zombie on school property at least once in their lives. I'm pretty sure that's written into the Constitution.
Remember that time I swore I would update my blog regularly and then I, you know, didn't? Yeah, that time is now.
To jump-start things again, I thought I'd share this fantastic video made by my friend Alison Bennett. She's a very funny lady from NYC with a fabulous and super-eclectic sense of fashion. Oh yeah, and she's pretty effing smart, too.
If you're anything like me, you might be a bit disturbed that our current definition of "girl power" looks something like this:
Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate underlying message,and I admire good marketing. Hell, I applaud Gaga and her minions for their genius efforts. But let's call a spade a spade. Never have I woken up and thought to myself "My inner moon goddess needs to express herself through a bedazzled lobster fascinator."
For all you women out there who appreciate the humor in the "be yourself" popstar mantra that's running the music industry right now:
