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When I Grow Up I Want to be Neko Case

Last night I had the privilege of witnessing an extremely talented artist in concert. If you are not familiar with Neko Case then I recommend you stop reading now and immediately purchase her music on itunes or at your local music store. (Side note: when is the last time you went to your local music store? There is a CD Warehouse across the street from our office and everyday I'm impressed not to see going out of business signs up.) Neko undoubtedly has the most powerful voice I've ever heard in person (and yes I'm including Celine Dion since I did attend her concert when I was in high school, but that's another story for another time). She sounds exactly like she does on her CD which you might think would be a given attribute of a singer, but in this age of auto-tune and shock value it's clear that actual singing ability isn't a 'must have'.

The concert was excellent. Along with her awe-inspiring voice, her band and back up singer are extremely talented as well. Part of what I love about attending concerts is getting to see a piece of the artist's personality. I was surprised and a little disappointed that Neko seemed uncomfortably shy and I've never seen a backup singer do most of the talking between songs. I understand being shy in front of 1,000 people but I just wish we could have heard a little more explanation from her regarding the inspiration for certain songs.

Overall I give the concert a 9.2 out of 10. Points were deducted for the lack of talking and also I wish she would have played longer. Points were given back because while she did make the audience endure the terrible tradition of clapping her back out for an encore it was a very short period of clapping and begging (I'd say it was 2 minutes). I really wish artists would just say, "These are the last 3 songs and then you can clap and give me a standing ovation only once. I respect you and will not force you to grovel when we all know I'm coming back in 4-6 minutes regardless of how loud you are." I'll never understand the encore.

And finally, as if you needed another reason to be sold on Neko Case, can we just agree that her latest album cover (pictured at the top) is simply amazing. It was ranked #1 album cover of the decade by Paste magazine and I can't say I disagree. For your viewing pleasure, here's a video of an old song called Favorite which I think really demonstrates her powerful voice - enjoy! (video is not from last night although she did sing it last night)

He's Making a List, Checking it Twice...

I love lists. In my opinion, there's not much else that can compare to the thrill of crossing something off my to-do list. (It's an exciting life I lead, I know.)

To-Do lists aren't the only type of list that excite me though. I also love all the "best of" end of the year lists that usually start coming out around this time. I remember growing up (before the days of mp3s and even CDs) the local pop radio station would countdown the top 500 songs of the year. During this countdown I had my cassette tape in the stereo ready to push Record & Play to create the ultimate mixed tape every year. It was a challenge to not walk away from the stereo for more than 3 minutes for fear of missing the beginning of the next song. And I always hated it when the DJ talked over the beginning of the song...oh the struggles I endured during childhood.

With this being not only the end of another year but also the end of another decade I feel like the lists are out in full force. If you are strictly interested in music lists Pitchfork has quite a collection. They've already revealed their lists of the top 500 tracks and 200 albums of the decade. However my favorite end of the year lists so far have been on the Paste Magazine website. They have a feature which I check periodically throughout the year called 'List of the Day' in which one of the writers composes a list about a topic of their choice. Since the beginning of November, in honor of the end of the first decade of the 2000's, they have been composing "Best Of" lists for the decade on different subjects. If you have some time to kill or want to walk down memory lane I highly recommend perusing through all of the lists. Some of my favorite subjects have been: The 25 Best Moments on Live TV, The 25 Best Documentaries of the Decade, and The 50 Best Albums of the Decade.

For old time's sake I might just have to make a mixed CD of my personal favorite songs from 2000-2009. Hey Ya anyone??

Taking the Chance Card...

We had a "fun day" at work a few weeks ago - that's right, a designated day that we were required to have fun. To achieve this fun day we went uptown (what Charlotte calls downtown) to a nice restaurant for lunch and then went bowling. As I'm sure you know times are still tough in the economy, so to save money on the fun we were encouraged to take the "new" light rail uptown. Prior to this fun day I already had some personal issues with the light rail: A) It only spans 10 miles. I understand expansion takes time but seriously, is taking a train 10 miles that much faster than driving 10 miles? B) It's on the other side of town from me so it's not really convenient.

I decided to drive closer to uptown to park before getting on the light rail because I had a haircut appointment right after work. So my plan was to get on the same train that my coworkers were on but at a later stop. I timed everything perfectly, pulled into the parking lot at the stop that I was getting on with about 10 minutes to spare before the train would arrive. I walked up to the ticket machine and the screen read "Insert Credit Card". I didn't think anything about this, I assumed I would get to pick which type of ticket I wanted to buy after my credit card was entered. However, after I swiped my card the screen then read, "Ticket Printing." Hmmm...that's odd, I didn't get to pick round trip or one-way. I pick up the ticket and turn it over to see it is a Youth One-Way ticket and it cost me $0.75. I wanted an Adult Round-Trip ticket which would have cost me $3.00. Great.

I then realized someone must have picked youth one-way on the machine and then walked away leaving the insert credit card screen up for the next innocent person to inadvertently purchase a youth one-way ticket. So I had a choice: just take this ticket that I've already paid $0.75 for and risk making it uptown on a youth-ticket or spend another $3.00 for a round trip adult ticket.

As I've said, times are tough and spending another $3.00 was not something I really wanted to do. So I took the chance and decided I would buy an adult one-way ticket once I made it uptown to get back. The train with my co-workers arrived and I got on as planned. I honestly didn't think much about getting caught because I just didn't think that a police officer would be checking tickets on this 10 mile stretch of a light rail. My hunch was right and I made it uptown on the $0.75 ticket.

We had the "fun" uptown and then I walked back to the uptown train station with my co-workers only to find that there was no ticket machine. At least, I didn't see any ticket machines at this particular stop. I looked around on both sides of the track for a good 5 minutes but then once the train arrived I just figured I would chance it again and hopped on the train ticketless.

I took a seat at the front of the train with some co-workers and began discussing options for how to get my haircut. Then all of the sudden I heard a co-worker yell out my name from the middle of the train. I turned around and that's when I saw him. A police officer making his way up the train checking people's tickets. Thanks to the non-discreet yelling of my name the officer and I made eye-contact when I turned around and I knew he knew I was a suspect. I calmly pulled out the one-way youth ticket that I used to get uptown and turned it over to the side that doesn't show what type of ticket it is. When the officer came up to the front row asking for tickets I showed him the side with the picture. He didn't buy it. Our exchange went like this:

Officer: "Other side ma'am."
Me: I say nothing and turn the ticket over and smile the most innocent smile I can.
Officer: "That ticket is expired ma'am."
Me: "Oh well yes I actually know that but you see at the 3rd street station uptown there was no machine to buy a ticket from and--"
Officer: "Ma'am there are ample ticket machines at every stop."
Me: "Huh, really? Because I looked around for a while and just didn't see one - and you looked too, right Lisa" (I then looked at my co-worker sitting next to me who nodded vigorously)
Officer: "Ma'am you're going to have to get off at the next stop."
Me: "What!?! Are you serious??" (half laughing, he's not going to really make me get off the train over a $3 ticket!)
Officer: "Yes ma'am it's either that or I can give you a $50 ticket." (not laughing)
Me: "Okay, okay...I'll leave." (not laughing anymore either)

I then got up and made the walk of shame down the train with co-workers laughing and cackling on either side of me. The train stopped and I exited. A nice manager got off the train with me so that I didn't have to stand there by myself. Then the nice manager took out his blackberry and emailed everyone who wasn't on our train to tell them how I broke the law.

The next day at work I was greeted with the following envelope filled with coins on my desk:

I also got this:

Instructions on how to purchase tickets for the light rail.

And several people stopped by my desk to offer me $3 throughout the day saying , "Wow, we didn't realize times were so tough."

...Yes, it was a "fun" day indeed.

Charming...

That's all I have to say about this:



Oh and also Emily Blunt is the luckiest person alive. That's all.

And I'm back!

Today is my 29th birthday. 29 - yikes! A friend from college wrote a blog post about the age of 29 that I found to be so true and hilarious. I think her post perfectly sums up why the age of 29 is somewhat of a quandary.

In high school I made a pretty big deal about my birthday complete with a countdown to remind all my friends how many days they had until they could celebrate me. Looking back now in my wisdom as a 29 year-old I realize this sounds extremely narcissistic. But at the time I honestly think I just enjoyed any reason to celebrate anything. Thankfully I have always been blessed with wonderful friends so they didn't get too annoyed (I think). For my 18th birthday they took the opportunity to make sure everyone in the entire school was aware of the blessed day. Travel back with me to that day...

November 3, 1998: I wake up, get ready for the day and then head outside to get in my car and that's when I see them. My 1993 Mitsubishi Eclipse (affectionately known as Mitsi) is covered in small pieces of paper donning my high school crush's face. 'My friends are so funny!' I thought sarcastically. I spend the next several minutes removing the papers from my car before driving to school.

When I do enter the school I see that my sweet friends have painted happy birthday signs on butcher paper and hung them in different hallways! I love the signs and decide that maybe I can forgive them for the incident with Mitsi. I make my way to my locker and see that someone has taped up this Titanic Poster of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet dancing with one slight alteration - my face was taped over Kate's. If you'll remember 1998 was the height of the Titanic phase which also happened to coincide with the height of my Leonardo DiCaprio obsession phase. Again a nice gesture and since I didn't even know what photoshop was in the late 90's taping my face to a poster was definitely the next best thing.

I walk to class, and wait - what's that I see people wearing? Oh Lordy, my "sweet" friends have passed out the tiny pieces of paper with my crush's face on them and people are wearing them as pins on their clothing. People I don't even know. Unbelievable. I get to class and see more papers with his face on them all over my chair and hear the laughter of my friends as my face turns bright red. Admittedly, this whole scenario isn't quite as bad as it could have been however because my crush was older than me so he thankfully had graduated and therefore was not completely freaked out that someone was semi-stalking him (at least as far as I know).

I'd say the memories of that birthday are right up there with the "Backwards" party I had in elementary school. Everyone wore their clothes backwards to the party and we did an obstacle course in the front yard backwards. For the record I still think this is a genius idea for a birthday party - try wearing your clothes backwards for a while and you'll see how fun it is too...okay so maybe it's more fun if you are under the age of 10.