my 2 dads and other random stuff

No, I don’t have two dads, but rockstar baby thinks he does! He still calls me “Dada” despite our repeated attempts at correcting him. So I’m his dada, and so is the hubs. I wonder how long he’ll keep calling me that. He knows about 20 other words but apparently “mama” is not one of them. Hrmph.

So I have a new job. Well, it’s still the same job but with a whole new team. Every year, the attorneys here get re-assigned to a new judge. I had a cushy assignment for a year that didn’t require me to do any actual trial work, but all that changes starting today. I actually have to work lots now. I’m already stressed. *pulls hair*

Sometimes, I just don’t feel like blogging even though I have tons of stuff to talk about. It’s hard to find time to write properly and express your thoughts exactly the way you want to, and sometimes when you do, you just feel like, why bother? Who the hell reads this stuff anyway? Having a blog is a great outlet, but it’s also a commitment.

So I went to the Justin Timberlake show at Madison Square Garden last week. What an awesome, awesome show! But what surprised me the most was that a few friends of mine found it surprising that I went. I mean, they all know I like all kinds of music and go to at least one show a month yet they actually expressed disbelief at my going which I thought was weird. Go figure. At any rate, JT was the shit and the concert I went to was even filmed for an HBO special to be shown on Sept. 4. Check me out! Hahha…

Speaking of shows, I have about 3 of them coming up in September. What I realized during the JT show was that I had booked a flight to Atlanta the weekend of The Cure concert! Egads! Where has my head gone?! Luckily, I’m scheduled to arrive Sunday afternoon and the concert doesn’t start until 8 pm or so. Luckily. Please cross your fingers that all is well and all the flights are on time that day!

Atlanta: I’m going there in September to visit my friend Trish! Trish moved there from NYC last year. It’ll be me, Girlie, Sol, and Gail visiting Trish for a fabulous ‘Five Locas’ reunion! I can’t wait! It’ll also be my very first trip WITHOUT rockstar baby in tow. I know I’m already going to miss him!

I have come to the conclusion that my salary blows. Well, I’ve known this for a while, but you can really feel it especially when the bills come and you have very little money left over for savings, if at all. The thing is, I really like my job and like the fact that I’m serving the public everyday. In that same vein though, I think it’s shitty that I’m wasting an Ivy League degree on a job that pays me less than $40,000 a year post-taxes. But that’s my lot in life and it’s my fault I chose this occupation I suppose. Would you leave a job you like for more money? I guess I will have to cross that bridge… I just want to be able to provide for the family the way my parents have provided for me –and this won’t happen unless I get paid more, that’s for sure.

I’m glad that I have very generous friends who give me fabulous stuff because they know I can’t afford it. My friend Girlie, for instance, gave me a gift certificate to Bliss Spa for my birthday because she knows I need a facial (she has pointed out my ginormous blackheads for proof) and haven’t had one since before I got preggo with rockstar baby! She even bought me dinner a couple of weeks ago at Sushi Samba! Yum! Thanks Girlie! You rock! Thanks also to my friend Karen who bought me dinner when we went to SF and buys me fancy chocolates from Jer’s, Annie and Roops for tickets to see JT, and my friend Alina who gives the best jewelry like this necklace.

Now back to work…

how i got into music

I’ve written before about how I think most people are divided into two camps: you are either passionate about music (you know what you like, you’re educated about it, you can answer Jeopardy! questions about bands, etc.) or you are not (you listen to music, buy the occasional CD, and that’s that). I can attribute my passion for music to one single individual in my life, and that is my high school boyfriend (aka “my first love”). He literally changed my life by introducing me to music, and for that, I will be eternally grateful to him. This is why he’ll always have a place in my heart even though we don’t talk anymore.

So anyway, his name is John and I’ve mentioned him in passing in my older posts. Picture this: Los Angeles, spring of 1991. We met towards the end of the 8th grade; I thought he was cute so I tried to find out more information about him. He was this quiet, unassuming kid with coke-bottle thick glasses (while I had crazy octagon-shaped lenses!). This was before contacts were popular, people! Anyway, school let out, but we continued to talk over the phone. My parents hardly ever let me out, so meeting up was quite rare until later on. He and I were going to different high schools so I never thought anything would happen from our phone conversations. We became friends, then we became more. I don’t really remember how it happened but it was just decided that we were now “going out” as they say, and we were happy and made it work for a long time.

The first thing we talked about was music. I found out what kind of music he liked, at age 13 (and I was 14), he already had a great cassette tape collection going and he made me mixed tapes and copies of the albums he had. He introduced me to The Cure, The Smiths, early U2, Depeche Mode (who I already liked by the way), Joy Division, The Clash, L.A. punk music, goth…you name it. I honestly didn’t know which excited me more, him or the music. He really educated me; not only did we listen to all these bands, he knew their backgrounds, how they formed, everything.

Thanks to him, The Cure became my favorite band and not just because he liked them. It just spoke to me. The first song he played for me was Lullaby, and I had to go out and buy Disintegration right then and there. Pretty soon, I loved The Cure more than he did and he didn’t mind.

We devoted a lot of our time to music. We listened to KROQ and made fun of the people who called in “Loveline.” We stayed up all night on the phone talking and listening old and new songs. He taught me how to play guitar. We even started a band together doing cover songs. If he found something new to listen to, he’d play it for me, and vice versa. Good times, good times.

I went to my first Cure concert with him in 1992 (or was it 1993?). Our friend’s car stalled and we hitched a ride with this guy named Raoul just to get back home. Craziness. We watched a slew of other bands that played in the L.A. area (assuming we got in –we were underage, after all). We saw Bad Religion, Sonic Youth (my pick), underground punk-metal bands, stadium concerts, etc. He really opened up my world and my eyes.

I even remember the day we first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” He recorded it off the radio and we spent an hour on the phone just to bask in its glory. And he figured out how to play it on the guitar that same day in its entirety.

We broke up in the spring of 1996 for various reasons. Mostly because I thought I outgrew him and it was time to move on; I was 19 and he was 18. By then, I had moved to New York and he flew from L.A. so we could say good-bye to each other. And that was that. 1996 was the beginning of my hip-hop phase and a whole new genre of music to discover. But I realized that my true love would always be the music he introduced me to.

The last time we spoke was in 2003. He’s with someone else now and he’s happy. He’s in a successful band, and I found out that we like the same (new) bands that are out there, like Interpol for instance.

I really have to thank him one day for introducing me to a whole new world, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance. I think that door is closed. Instead, I wrote a song about him which my band plays. It’s partly about him, and partly about how people just think back fondly of someone in their past. If you want to hear/see it, click here (it’s not a very clear version though).

So here’s a 40 for you! *pours a 40 oz. on the ground* Thanks for the memories and the music!