But What About Sister Christian?

A line up throwing back to the 70s: Tesla, REO Speedwagaon, and Def Leppard. It's gotta be a summer concert. It's gotta be at Jones Beach. It's gotta be awesome. And it was.

More than several years ago, I saw Cinderella opening for Poison, and poor Tom Keifer could barely hit the high notes. For those of you unfamiliar with the Cinderella catalog, it's almost all high notes. Last night, I saw three lead singers hit high note after high note, holding them out, raising the roof, and bringing the house down. Though we were outside and there was no roof and no house, but you get what I mean.

When my brother told me Tesla was one of the acts, I was like, Oh good! I like that one song! You know--Signs, signs, everywhere is signs....



Come to find out that they have other songs. AND I knew another one! It's a love song called Love Song. And it's good! That's what they closed with. Then my brother and I had a conversation about Tesla, meaning Nikola Tesla. The guy who invented things that other people like Marconi and Edison stole. Poor Tesla.

Fun Fact: He had an affinity for pigeons.

Yes, this is the conversation we were having when the roadies were breaking down the stage. Because we are educator nerds. But then we talked about REO Speedwagon.

Fun Fact: An REO Speedwagon is a fire truck.

Yes, this is the conversation we were having. But then I was trying to figure out what songs I'd know. My brother has their greatest hits album and listens to way more music than I do, so he'd know more. Then I asked, pretty sure the answer would be no, if they sang Sister Christian.

He laughed at me and was like, No, that's Night Ranger. Still, I didn't see why they couldn't sing Sister Christian. Maybe they would. I was pretty sure everyone playing would know it. And the crowd would love it.

Then REO came out and that lead singer can get a crowd going, even when the amphitheater is not yet filled. They sang some newer songs I'd never heard. They sang some older songs I'd never heard. These were songs my brother knew, so he sang along, and I took pictures of the sunset while pretending to sing along.

I did not have to pretend to sing along to Take It On The Run or Keep On Lovin You or Heard It From A Friend. I knew songs!



The sky grew really dark and finally finally finally Def Leppard came out.

The first thing I noticed was Phil Collen and how he doesn't wear a shirt and how he was already shiny as if he were sweating but he hadn't done anything yet so I had a sneaking suspicion that he had oiled up before the show but then thought how can you play a guitar with all that oil all over so maybe he was just warm. The reason all this was distracting is he's almost in his 60s and he looks like this:

He was shinier!

Other things I noticed:

1.
Joe Elliott thinks he's a magician. He ends almost every song with his arms straight out to the sides and his head back, very Copperfield-like, and sometimes he wears a top hat.

2.
Rick Allen is still the hardest working drummer in rock. Obvious reasons.

3.
When you sing a Def Leppard song, you don't necessarily have to form full words to sing along. Some of the songs are so high or so low that you can screech or grumble, and you're singing right along. Take the lyrics to Love Bites: Love bites. Love bleeds. It's err eh eee oh ah eeeeee. See? Singing.

They have a new album out, and I've yet to hear it. My brother new some of the new stuff, but there was one song where we were like, Huh? as the video played behind them of a mannequin head--I don't know, maybe that's a throwback to Sugar? Aside from that one song (when everyone seemed to go get a snack or take a bathroom break so we were not alone in this), we knew everything else in some capacity. Speaking of everyone, there was quite a cross-section of humanity there. My brother said that a lot of the young people (omigod, I said young people--you know, because I'm old) were there because of the new album. I figured most of the older older people were there for REO. Who was there for Tesla? Well, there had been about twenty people standing right in front of the stage cheering and jumping when they were singing, so they had their fans, too. Also, we were in the upper upper seats. Like we were in the very last row, which had the best and prettiest views, so I figured that it was also a cheaper way to take the family out to something fun.

Actually, I'm not that old. He asked Who here was alive in 1977? And I wasn't. Which puts me in the category of Young People At The Concert, and he said he needs us young people, Def Leppard needs us young people, and all of rock needs us young people. 

Anyway, back to the leppards. JE had three wardrobe changes, including the aforementioned top hat. Rick Savage and Vivian Campbell and Phil Collen and Rick Allen had solos.

Oh! BTW, if you search on Bing for def leppard band members (because you aren't being lazy for once and want to spell their names correctly), this guy's picture comes up as Rick Allen.

Heh heh. I love the interwebs.

When they got to Hysteria, my voice started to go and I fell back in time as photos of them popped up on the screen from when they first started (when I had yet to be born) and when the album Hysteria came out (when I was like 11). If you've never listened to the Hysteria album, stop what you're doing and go buy it on iTunes (if you can navigate that horrible site--if not, get it on Spotify or whatever else you tech-music people use) and listen to it straight through at least three times. It'll change your life. And if it doesn't, listen to it until it does. Even if you haven't heard the whole album, you've probably heard most of it since they had at least 7 singles from it that all played on the radio and were all popular, including Armageddon It and Pour Some Sugar On Me, and if you watched MTV when those songs came out, then you know that those two videos were almost exactly the same and no one cared because the songs were just that popular.

Singing along is such a treat because if you actually do know the words, you know that a lot of the time, they are a little bit silly. Like, well, Pour some sugar on me in the name of love. Which would be really sticky, but that comes up, too: I'm hot, sticky sweet, from my head to my feet.



Or really simple like: What do you want? I want rock n roll. What do you want? Long live rock n roll. And back to silly: Still rollin, keep a rollin. Because a rock rolls, you know.

This? Is brilliance. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.  

They encored with Rock of Ages (of the aforementioned rolling rock lyrics) and then Photograph, which is my brother's favorite song, so I'd like to think they did that specifically for him. Because it was his birthday. Which is a great way to celebrate. If not for my brother, I probably would've never listened to Def Leppard or any of the hair metal bands of the 80s or the classic rock bands before them, so it's more than kinda great that I have an older brother who listened, and still listens, to damn good music. Even if I don't get all of it. Still great.

No one played Sister Christian, unless Tesla sang it before we got there. Probably not. But who needs Sister Christian when you've got an entire discography of Def Leppard at your fingertips? No one, that's who (in case you don't get rhetorical questions).

Ok, so he also likes the Stones, so I badly photoshopped this photo to add his name over that guy's.

And now for the encore:


[As usual, not proofread, but this time, any errors can be blamed on my feeling hung over because I was out late and woke up early.]

Sabbaticalling: Weekly Roundup #6

I’m writing this on Valentine’s Day, just having come home from the Waffle House. I have traveled to my breakfast mecca and life is good.

Books read: One full novel that was a challenging read, and then started a non-fiction book.

Journals and mags read: The Rumpus, back issues of Fence and This, and McSweeney’s. Read through The Paris Review for poetry and interesting tidbits about the world—these tidbits usually lead to poems. I added Blunderbuss and Flapperhouse to the list this week.

Listened to: The Catapult Podcast and I’m still not caught up. Getting there. I tried out Literary Disco but couldn’t get past the introductory episode, maybe because it was just people talking about how they knew each other in college and not about literature. I also listened to Serial because I’m incredibly into it, though it has nothing to do with sabbatical.

On Writing: The Workshop was back this week! We revised poetry and discussed stories and did all kinds of artsy things. By the time I got home, I was a big ball of revising energy. Then I wrote poems, some about critters and creatures, others about outer space.

I followed up on last week’s Poetry Has Value posting by crossposting on this blog and then re-Tumbling and re-Tweeting all I could find that was relative.

I sent some pitches to some non-poetry places. Those were rejected. I love not waiting and wondering. I also received some poetry rejections, one in snail mail form. It was a week of “we don’t want your stuff,” which means it was a typical week for writing.

Submitting: I submitted poems to six journals. I’ve found that in January, I submitted to most of the journals on my list that have reading periods through February. March should see an uptick in submitting again.

Reading: The Poets in Nassau reading I coordinated at TheCradle of Aviation happened, and it was an amazing night. I’m already planning another one. 

This is the exhibit that sparked our reading.

Most photos courtesy of John Brennan

Crazy poet face!

Photo courtesy of Marie Ilardi at the museum. I'm with a new colleague.

Business-y stuff: My email events list saw an update as I added new people who signed up for it at the Cradle reading.

And now it’s back to my love to spend the rest of the day indoors because this Valentine’s Day is arctic.

That temperature is in Farenheit.

Two Uninformed Trivia Buffs

Team Nine, Feelin' Fine!

My brother and I teamed up for trivia again. This time it was 2015 in review. We learned that we spent no time paying any mind to anything that happened in 2015. Out of 50 questions, we got, I think, 20-something right. That might be a stretch. It may have been 19. We did learn things, though. Like we don't know anything.

We teach. We mold young minds. Yet we cannot win at trivia.

I chalk it up to being more informed about other things like going to see The Breakfast Club for its 30th Anniversary.

Apparently our idea of being-in-the-know is living in the past.

What we did know the most were the sports questions. They came first, so we had a really positive attitude about the whole thing. Then there was a soccer bonus question that we got wrong. Then there were some tennis questions. And then they asked who beat Ronda Rousey, and my brother didn't even know who that was. I knew who it was and I could see the face of the woman who beat her, but I am not an artist and I don't think a sketch of her face would have done any good. So I wrote the next best thing: I did.

Later on, they asked what Australian actress and model showed up on Orange Is The New Black. Again, I saw her face in my mind, but I couldn't come up with the name. So my brother answered: Mrs. Crockadile Dundee.

Basically, I'm calling for half-points next time to be granted to the most creative wrong answers. I'm seeing a future for this trivia thing. It's called I'm Not Going To Win But I'm Sure Going To Pretend To Know Things. Kinda wordy, but I'll work on it. 

We came in 8th place out of 10 teams, so not last! Not last! Not last!

Also, I got my sweatshirt and gift card for donating to Sip This's Kickstarter, so we did not leave empty-handed. It was a win all around.

The Many Maniac Faces

Poetry out loud in your face is my favorite thing to do, and even though it's not Eddie's favorite thing to do, he accompanied me to two readings in one week.  TWO!  That's like, double the pleasure, double the fun, in that "this is not pleasurable or fun for me" kind of way.  He actually doesn't mind going to places and listening to poetry all that much. He simply minds awkward encounters, which we always have.

Reading 1: Astoria
I know my way around Astoria in the same way one knows the way around a dream.  It's like, I totally know where I'm going, but I also, at the same time, have no clue. Thankfully, Eddie drove as I navigated, and I got us to the right parkways and correct exits, and then we were under the El. I can't drive under any elevated trains ever because I get confused as to where is the lane and where is the place you park and how do we turn the car without hitting pedestrians or cyclists or hoverboarders or other people or animals that might be getting across the street in some new-fangled way.

Astoria Coffee was the easy find. We drove right past its big bright window and saw it was about the size of a walk-in closet, which was adorable! And a bit frightening simply because that meant the reader would be really in someone's face, and while I love poetry out loud in your face, I didn't mean it incredibly literally.  I like my face to be several feet from the faces of strangers because, you know, germs.  And smells. Anyway, we found it easy-peasy, and then we drove around for about a half hour looking for parking.

This was like parking in Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge.  Many a time we've driven in widening circles around Brooklyn, looking for parking.  Once we drove into Brooklyn for a drop-in appointment at the chiropractor, and after driving around for 45 minutes looking for a spot, I was like, We need to go home now, and we did.

We found a spot because I noticed a few blocks ahead of us reverse lights go on.  This never happens.  I never see anything blocks away.  This was a proud moment.

Astoria Coffee offers hot chocolate.

Eddie was one happy camper.  That and a croissant meant heaven.  I had green tea and it was uber delicious green tea.  The only drawback was that the place was about 105 degrees so I ended the tea drinking for a while to cool off.  I'm never hot.  Ever.  I peeled off layers of layers and then held up my hair for a while.  It was that warm.  No one else was that warm.  Maybe I'm getting hot flashes already.

So about the poetry.  The Risk of Discovery series puts on a fantastic show.  We were four features, two of whom were more performancy than me and the other poet, which meant for a lot of variety.  But before that, there was an open mic, and that was really interesting.  One poet read a pantoume (I THINK it was a pantoume, but it might have been a villanelle--I can't remember which at this point, but anyway, both forms involve repeating lines and usually are done horribly) and this piece was excellent.  It was so very well done, and at the end, I asked the poet to email it to me so I could read it again.  Other open-mic-ers were fun to listen to, and the other most memorable was a poet who learned that a publisher wants to publish his book but he has yet to put his book together.  That's not why he was memorable though.  What made him memorable is that he talked a bit about how summer was ending, and then he whisper-sang two lines from that song Summertime Sadness before  his poem, and it was all kinds of amazing.

That aforementioned awkward moment was later on when this poet came over to talk to me and I couldn't answer anything he said at first until I hopped myself back up on a stool because he was about six feet tall and that's simply too far away from my ears for me to have any kind of normal conversation.

I read for a bit under 10 minutes.  I did not use the mic because the room was small and I have a big mouth.  Also, the mic was over my head and I didn't feel like playing with the stand to make it lower.  And I made these faces.

Stank face

Contemplating my collection face

Waving around a post-it note face

Hey! I'm smiling!

I walked away from that reading with a book and a CD from one of the singer-poets who agreed to exchange books with me, and I also sold two other books.  Oh, and somehow it cooled down and I finished my tea, which was, again, delicious! It was a good night.

Reading 2: Hicksville
Finding the room for the reading in Hicksville Public Library poses a challenge.  We asked the librarian who gave us two options, one for stairs and one for the elevator, and both sounded confusing, especially for two people who get lost in parking lots.  We took the stairs and found that we couldn't follow the directions well.  However, we did find a door and surprisingly, that door led us to the right room, and we had to walk down the stairs of a stage to get to the seats.

After meeting and greeting and picking out seats, I opened my bag o' books to put out some candy I'd gotten previously in the day (more on how I made an ass out of myself when I got the candy at some other time!), I found a spider in the bag.

Earlier that morning when I pulled my car out of the driveway, I found a spider web connected from the dash to the passenger seat.  Along that web I found a teeny-tiny spider. I grabbed him up in a napkin and swept away the web.  I think that maybe he had a large spider friend lurking who made its way into my bag.

OR I'd picked up the spider in my travels throughout the week.  Or it came in with the money exchanged for the books.  Or it crawled into my home office, where I've found large cave crickets before, and into my bag.

Really, it didn't matter where it came from. All that mattered was it needed to get the fuck out of my bag.  (Sorry for the language--spiders and I don't get along ever since one bit me and I had to go on keflex for a week when my hand blew up and I had scarlet striations from the back of my hand all the way up my forearm). Eddie, who also does not like creepy crawly things, decided I should remove all the stuff from the Ziplock that it had crawled into, and he would throw out the plastic bag with the spider in it.  Okay, fine.  That actually worked, but not without my freaking out in silence as I pulled each item out of the plastic bag and put it into the larger bag that contained the plastic bag, each time the spider moving more towards me rather than away from me.

Crises averted, I put out the candy, and people went nutso over it--especially the host who was quite fond of BubbleYum. What made this even better was the mom of the usual host who was out for the night attended and brought cookies.  She's a fantastic cookie baker, and at the end of the reading, upon insistence of the host who held out the tray of cookies and said, You have no excuse, I ate an oatmeal cookie that was delicious.  Actually, I ate half of it and gave the other half to Eddie to hold when someone came up to ask me to see my book and he stood there holding the cookie until I told him, You can throw it out, and he was like, Why don't you just eat it?  And I was like, Oh, yeah, I can do that, and I did. See? I sometimes create my own awkward moments for him.

The reading went well.  There was another event happening on the other side of the folding accordion wall, so I again relied on my big mouth teachery voice to get the audience to listen to me.  I read from both collections. I made the following faces.

Mid-poem face

I'm so drunk right now face

Sleepy reading face

Hey! I'm smiling again!

Then the host ran the open mic. That was again interesting because there were poets there whom I had never met before (ooh, that reminds me! the host said she was impressed with my correct use of whom versus who!).  Then, as aforementioned, a bunch of people came up to me afterwards to chat, and I sold some books.  I also chatted a little about how to get published, and I made this face.

I'm clearly a maniac, and my husband thinks this is funny even though he's trying not to laugh face.

There you have it. Poetry things are happening, and I cannot bluff my way through poker. And now to get a feel of what all this sounds like:

See? Poetry out loud in your face.  It's all the rage.

Lobster, Windmill, Pollock, and One Not So Big Duck

The final Sibling Daytripping Summer event: Windmill in Watermill, lobster rolls at The Lobster Roll, awesomeness at the Pollock Krasner house, and the Big Duck in Flanders.

I was up for the long drive because Southampton was my MFA home.  I drove out there once a week and spent 10 days each summer there as I earned my degree.  I love the vineyards.  I've been through corn mazes out there.  Visited the lighthouse a few times.  It's my territory for fun stuff.

On a Thursday midmorning, it took like three hours.  What the?  I understand summer traffic going out east, but this was ridiculous.  My brother was getting a kick out of my astonishment of the traffic.  We saw some cool roadside art and I noticed an art museum I'd never seen before, so that distracted me from the drive.

We finally got to our first stop in Watermill.  We were wondering how we'd find the windmill when suddenly, it appeared. 

Oh, there it is. (Anthony Rau photography)

(Anthony Rau photography)

Then back in the car!  We'd parked behind a car from Maryland on the side of the road, hoping that we wouldn't get a ticket.  Also hoping that they didn't come all the way from Maryland to see only this windmill.  It was pretty and nice, but it took maybe ten minutes to walk around it and take it in.

Back in traffic, we finally found The Lobster Roll in the middle of nowhere in Amagansett.  The parking is tight but we luckily pulled in right as someone was pulling out.  It was busy but we didn't have to wait long to get a table.  I'd been thinking I'd have to split something with my brother because the serving sizes looked huge, but on the menu they offered sliders.  Lobster Roll Sliders!!  He got a shrimp roll and I got a lobster roll slider and we basically devoured our food, saying over and over again, This is so goooooood!  We'd driven three hours to eat for maybe twenty minutes.  It was worth it.

Famous people who've eaten lobster rolls

Lookit how tiny it is!

Because you gotta make it black and white (Anthony Rau photography)

Then we found the Pollock Krasner house.  It's a museum as per the wishes of Lee Krasner upon her death.  The tour is $5 unless you have a SUNY ID.  Which means for me it was FREE!  We took the spiral bound book self-tour and followed its instructions to take in the view of the water first, the studio second, and the house third.  While we were in the studio, we had to put on these ridiculous slippers, and my brother somehow found the wrong size and was busting out of his.  While we went around reading the explanations on the walls, some guy was talking to the docent really loudly, namedropping artists and actors and telling the story of how he worked on the set of the movie Pollock.  That was a really good movie, but reading was difficult with the guy's yammering on.  Everywhere else was quiet, and the guy finally stopped talking and we were able to take in the rest of the studio in peace.  It looks very much the same as it does in the photos from the past.  Very eerie and quite exciting.

There's a photo of Pollock and his mistress sitting on these rocks the day they died.

I kinda wanted to keep these.

Name Those Artists!

Dried paint and a turkey baster

I'm an ass.

The rest of the book had the entire history of Pollock and then of Krasner and of the grounds.  I read a lot of it out loud, but then it got to be tiresome, especially after we'd seen everything.  At the back of the book was a map of how to get to the cemetery where Pollock is buried, but we didn't do that.  The house and studio were the best way to remember him.


We headed Westward, homeward, and The Big Duck was kind of on the way because really anything West of where we were was homeward and on the way, so we decided to stop to see it.  It took like an hour to go five miles.  I took my traffic frustrations out on the duck.  When it finally appeared roadside, I was like, It's not that big!

Lame duck

I was expecting a gigantic duck, and really, it's more of a medium duck.  We went inside, and I was delighted that we could actually go inside, and the woman there explained to us the history of the duck.  There used to be a duck farm there.  Also, any building shaped like what it sells is called a duck.  So this building shaped like a duck sells duck stuff, so it's a duck.  A boot-shaped building that sells boots is called a duck.  An apple-shaped building that sells apples is called a duck.  And so on.  This duck is also a national landmark.  Because we learned fun facts such as these, I was no longer disappointed in the duck. 

Duck with a door

Not much smaller than the duck but okay, it's still a big duck

Duck's ass HAHAHAHHAHHAHAAAA!

Sepia duck (Anthony Rau photography)

Back into the traffic once more, and this time, it was rush hour.  However, when you're so far out, rush hour isn't really the issue.  Once we hit more civilization, we flew towards home because we were pretty much behind rush hour because no one who lives that far out should be commuting this far in.  Thinking it over, however, sitting in traffic for a few hours at a time to see everything we saw ain't all that bad.  One trip Eastward and we got to take in art, seafood, wind mills, and ducks all in one day.  Day tripping at its best.