Cranky Mommy

Need Art for Christmas? Sure you do! In fact, buy my art (I have 3 pieces up for auction):

Tickets are on sale now !

Ticket Price:
$25.00 in advance
$35.00 at the door

Buy your tickets @ these Hampden Businesses:

Atomic Books
The Wine Source
Kiss N’ Make-Up

Or, get your tickets
online @ missiontix
http://www.missiontix.com/index.cfm?venue=-hd

for more info go to the Last Big Thing Myspace Page
( http://www.myspace.com/hcclastbigthing)

This past weekend we went to the Ramshead Tavern again and saw the Roches. It was an amazing, fabulous show. After the show I started thinking about the difference in going out to see this show, as opposed to when I first started to see shows in the mid to late 80s.

1980’s — Tickets - $15 bucks max
2000’s — Tickets - $35 bucks ouch
1980’s — Go out at 10
2000’s — Go to the 7 o’clock early show
1980’s — Stand, smooshed up against a bunch of sweaty people
2000’s — Sit, at a reserved table and be served food
1980’s — Lots of dyed hair
2000’s — Lots of gray hair, and chrome-dome baldies
1980’s — Smoky room
2000’s — Smoking not allowed
1980’s — Try to get someone to serve my underage-self beer
2000’s — Skip the drinks, head right for the creme brulee cheesecake, get a stomach ache
1980’s — Get mad at the skinhead girl who took my spot by the stage and threatened to beat me up
2000’s — Get mad at the waiter who is taking forever to bring me my check
1980’s — Come home smelling from all the cigarettes and everyone else’s sweat soaked into my shirt
2000’s — Come home smelling almost as good as when I left
1980’s — Home by when?
2000’s — Home by 10
1980’s — Lots of dancing, moshing, or whatever you call it
2000’s — Signs on the wall say dancing not allowed (fire hazard)

Not that I haven’t seen a few shows in the 2000’s that haven’t included smoky rooms, getting smooshed, and dancing. It’s just nice occasionally to have a grown-up kind of thing to see. Except for the not dancing thing, that is just plain wrong. Then again, some of those chrome-dome baldies dancing, could be hazardous to one’s visual health.

What, I have a weblog?
And I’m supposed to actually update it, regularly?
With actual bits and pieces of information on my life? Oh, yeah… now I remember.
Well, this blog is not dead, yet. I have a good bit going on my my life although none of it very exciting. Here’s the news:

A year ago I wrote on my old blog, after reading Tom Cruise’s criticism of Brooke Shield’s use of antidepressants for post-partem depression, that he needs to grow a uterus, have a baby, and get post partum depression before he opens his big fat scientologist mouth. So when I read this I giggle a bit.
And, doubtful it’s real or he had anything to do with it (newborn poop doesn’t look like that) but there’s one more reason to be irritated with Tom Cruise.

About a month ago I asked my husband if he wanted to see Glenn Tilbrook and The Fluffers at the Ramshead Tavern in Annapolis. He told me he wasn’t interested, so I bought 4 tickets to share with my single friends who wanted to see him.
A few nights ago, I was lying in bed attempting to fall asleep when I asked my him what he wanted to do for our 8-year anniversary. Which is… on September 12. Now what was the day of that Glenn Tilbrook show? I dashed downstairs to check, and realized that I had bought tickets to be out with 3 of my single friends on our anniversary.
Boy did I feel like shit.
I am happy to say that my husband wasn’t mad (or, if he was mad, he was okay with it enough to act like it was no big deal and tell me to go ahead to the show, and we would celebrate our anniversary on the weekend).
I do still feel a little guilty about going. However since I really want to go, I’ve thought of a few things I could do (besides sexual favors) in a week of penance:

1)I hand over the remote and let him watch as much Ravens football or Elimidate as you please without whining about it.
2)All the CDs that I don’t like that you have down in the basement — play them and I won’t complain. much.
3)He can shave less and do the scraggly soap-opera-hunk thing, while I will shave MORE.
4)Eat a naughty chocolate chip muffin from Eddies of Roland Park every and you want and he won’t get nagged.
5)No toilet training duty for with our son for a week.
6)I’ll make that evil chocolate pie that he likes so much.
7)I’ll get up with T when he wakes up at 6:30 - god almighty that will be hard.
8)He can pick the restaurant when we go out for our anniversary.

Had this been our 2nd, 4th, 6th, anniversary things might have been different. But that is the thing about being married, if you are happily married — you tend to tolerate a lot of stuff you wouldn’t have, had it been the first couple of years. I guess he has accepted the fact that he is married to a really dingy person (I will say though, I got lucky. Had he done the same thing, I would have been a little more pissed than he is).

There’s been recent whisperings amongst many of the mothers of little boys these days to other mothers of little boys.
Are you taking him to see Cars?
I’ve had 3 mothers ask me that. And the answer is for now, (probably), no.
I have to admit Disney did a brilliant marketing of Cars. It’s the perfect thing to market to little boys since most of them love cars. And, with toys and T.V. ads everywhere, and even those cars on my son’s pull-up diapers, it’s hard to ignore the blitz. My son, who usually doesn’t pay much attention to ads, has even been bugging me about it.
I thought about going — He does adore cars and trucks. And, he’s never been to a movie before. But I have my reasons not to go. 1) I hate getting sucked into marketing schemes for kids. 2) I’m not really that into cars (although I’ll hold my nose just to make my son happy). 3)The reviews have been okay, but not overwhelming blow-your-mind-good. 4)Those Pixar movies can be a little violent. Even if it is mild, (like one bug punching another in A Bug’s Life) is that really a good thing for a 3-year-old? I think not.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back on why I am not going to take my 3-year-old son to see Cars, is that 5)Its 116 minutes. That is nearly 2 HOURS. What 3-year-old can sit still, or even should sit still, for 2 hours? Or, even a 6-year-old? It’s summertime, shouldn’t they be running around outside in the fresh stinking, hot humid summer air, burning off steam outside so they don’t tear the house apart?
So I think one of two things will happen. We will either rent it on DVD when it comes out and watch it in parts, or, if my parents really really want to, I’ll let them take him to see it when we visit them. They can deal with the bouncing-off-the-walls aftermath that happens when a young kid sits in place for two hours eating sweet things if they want to, or not. I think he would be just as happy going to the aquarium (but what do I know, I’m not into cars.)

I’ve won very little in my life. I can name the few times I’ve won something on my fingers.
When I was in 8th grade, my class went on a school fieldtrip to see the filming of the gameshow Tick Tack Dough, and I was the audience member who won 50 bucks (which made up for the fact that our class didn’t get to see teen dream Ricky Schroeder in Silver Spoons). And, I did win a scratch off for $80 bucks in the mid 1990s. That’s it.
So, yay for me, I won something!
I entered a contest to win 2 tickets to see Jackie Greene given away by WTMD. I grabbed a girlfriend, a.k.a. my yard decorator, to go out to the Rechter Theatre to see him. She was the only friend I have who had heard of him. It was nice to have a girl’s night out… I haven’t been out to do a girls night out in like… forever.
Jackie Green and his band were pretty good - not phenomenal, but they put on a competent show. Sort of blusey rock with a little country thrown in, Van Morrison with a touch of Bob Dylan. It will be interesting to see how he matures as a performer over time.
Although, it made me feel old. He is in his mid-twenties but looks about 16. And it was really a college crowd (Although, I was not the oldest person there — quite a few 40-to-60-year-old beer-gutted men in pastel polo shirts, with their female counterparts in bad perms… I imagine they were regulars at the Rechter or something).
Also making me feel old - got tipsy on my one drink. And, was home by 11:30.
Oddly, at the show I was suprised to see a neighbor who lives on our tiny street. She also won tickets to see Jackie Greene. Maybe I’m not that lucky after all - the place was only about half full.

As we drove out to the Sears outlet store today to get a new dryer, I decided to search through my glove box for cassette tape that I hadn’t heard in a while (yes, we still have cassettes!). Inexplicably, I found a tape that totally doesn’t belong. Not only does the tape not belong to me or my husband, but also no one I know would ever even admit to owning it.
It’s a Poison tape. The “classic” Open Up and Say Aah.
Yes, you remember Poison, that 80’s hair band. Who could forget Nothin’ But A Good Time? Or, Girls Girls Girls? Dear God. I’m a very cheesy person but, even that is too cheesy for me. I draw a line in the sand in front of that one.
I am at a total loss as to how that tape got there. I have one friend, a.k.a. Thrift-Store-Decorations-In-My-Yard-Girl, who occasionally likes to do odd pranks, but she was never into that hair band stuff. Still, I will email her and ask her if it was her doing.
Or, maybe Goldilocks is a metalhead and took my car for a drive.

See, I can write a (mostly) positive and upbeat post! Just watch me.

I managed to get rid of those tickets on Freecycle. (Only today, my thinking-more-clearly-than-I friend suggested that I go to a Stereolab Fan Yahoo Group and try and hock them there. A great idea too late). Instead of the hubby and I going out and seeing a band, we watched the medicocre Walk The Line. Bleh. I don’t know who raved about it (it seems like everyone and their uncle liked it) but we sure didn’t.
It was simplistic and slow. Not Akira Kurosawa Good slow, just bad slow. Johnny Cash’s character and motivations weren’t developed enough, so I couldn’t empathize with him much. And okay, Joaquin Phoenix looked and sounded a good bit like Johnny Cash (perhaps an octave higher) but it just made me want to listen to the real thing.
And then there were little things that really bugged me, that prevented me from suspending my belief any further. Like, when Joaquin Phoenix goes off to the Air Force and says good-bye to his mother, and I’m thinking his mother looked young enough to be his girlfriend. And, how Jerry Lee Lewis’ character was wearing a bad wig… with a $28 million dollar budget, couldn’t they have afforded a better wig? And, how the guys rockin’ out in Fulsom prison looked more like out-of-work L.A. actors than prisoners.
It was nicely shot. And, the acting was…okay… but it didn’t make up for the simplistic script.
Seeing Walk The Line reaffirmed the fact that I should pay absolutely no attention to award shows for films (at least the Academy Awards and The Golden Globes). In fact I am struggling to think of a single Hollywood film in the last ten years that has made me go, Wow. Until Hollywood makes something worthwhile in films, I seek my solace in television. If it isn’t good, it’s at least cheaper. I’m look forward to the antidote: Dead like Me Season II.