The sound of my indie cred dying

It's Saturday night, and in Rachelville (Rachelstan? Racheltopia?), that means it's time to try to go through my RSS feeds. (Does anybody else feel a tiny sense of quiet desperation at having over 600 items? Or a bizarre sense of guilt at not at least skimming the titles of said items? Just me? Okay.)


Anyway, the highlight so far (aside from a picture of a chipmunk holding a flower on Cute Overload) has been Chicagoist's link to a great 80s video. Is it wrong that I know all the lyrics to a Huey Lewis song? Or that I was genuinely delighted to follow the link and find that it was this? Did you know that you could see Huey Lewis's schlong in the Robert Altman movie Short Cuts? It's true. Everyone talks about Julianne Moore's below-the-belt frontal, but the real news is Huey Lewis. (Ha! That was unintentionally a pun. Sort of. Hey-o!)

On to other things. While watching my new favorite show, Pushing Daisies, I saw an ad for Tonka. In the ad, the voiceover tells us how boys are just built different. They then describe the toy, which contains a shape-sorter (obviously girls won't like this - shapes are closely related to math, and math is hard), a push toy (girls don't like to push things around - except the men in their lives!) and a free-wheeling riding toy (even at 2 years old, a woman driver is a woman driver - and you don't want that in your home). The ad then reminds us that boys are built different. It would be bad enough if there were two versions one yellow and construction-y, and one pink and thus girly, or if they just only showed boys playing with it, but to suggest that the toy is not made for girls is stupid. Not to mention that about half of the babies in the country are girls. Why would they cut out that market share? It made me angry, and I don't want to be angry during Pushing Daisies. (Really, it's awesome, if you're into quirk. Also, there's a male knitter in it, which makes it even more frustrating that the Tonka ad was so egregious.)

That's all for now. By the way, if anyone has found my blog from a search for Huey Lewis's schlong, I'm sorry to disappoint. But keep searching, tiger!

The gift that keeps on giving

The little storytime darlings have given me a cold. At least I think so - my allergies have been weirdly intense since September. But I went home early today with that groggy-headed cold feeling. There is a certain degree of tragedy in coming down with something on the first week of my two-week storytime break. But when you work with kids, particularly babies and toddlers, you have to accept the gift of their viruses, right along with the scribbled drawings and and the unabashed adoration. Some of them are more egregious in their germ-sharing then others, though. One of the toddlers used to come to my baby storytime, and during the quieter moments he would toddle up to me and put his head on my lap (which, in all honesty, was a little weird in and of itself). Since he was teething, when he got up he would leave a puddle of drool big enough to soak through my pant leg. It's a little like a college party, dealing with wee ones.


Actually, until around the time that they turn 3, kids really are like little drunk people. Lurching around, grabbing things for balance that aren't stable enough to withstand their weight, falling on their heads without getting hurt, spitting up without warning, babbling incoherently, crying for no reason, lifting their shirts to show you what they've got, coming out of nowhere to hug you without asking - my storytime mornings are one big frat party. But with more puppets. Unless you went to kinkier parties than I did.

76 trombones? Very nearly.

This weekend, the husband and I travelled home to watch my sister compete in a marching band competition. It was actually pretty fun, and her school was one of the five to move on to the state competition, which is a Big Deal.

I have never seen a marching band competition before, let alone an intense and important one. I went to a small high school, whose marching band performed at football games and that's it. Apparently Indiana is known for its intense marching band competitions, but I had never even heard of the concept until my sister joined up at her school. (My parents moved after I graduated, and my siblings go to a giant high school.) Here are some things that I found surprising about competitive marching band:

1. There is interpretive dance. Okay, as I said, I went to a small high school. Our "color guard" carried a flag or two and sometimes threw batons. Apparently, they were supposed to be symbolizing the movement of a butterfly while wearing an outfit that looks like Madonna's Like a Virgin outfit if she had decided to incorporate a playing card color scheme. But a joker tutu will look silly without accessories, which brings me to...
   
2. There are props. Each of the bands divides their performances into four (or so) movements, during which the color guard uses different banners or other props. One school had big umbrella-ish things with dangly parts - they looked like cat toys. Another had things that looked like hamster balls which they danced within. Another band had big wrenches to go with their car racing theme. They also had banners with the faces of famous racers, including, of course, Dale Earnhardt. This is Indiana, after all.
   
3. The fans get into it. Obviously the parents get into it. (One mom, whose daughter was in color guard, not band, would ring a cow bell every time the girl did something impressive. A cow bell. During a band competition.) But there were also peers of the band members who were very into it. There were shirtless teenage boys with their chests painted representing a school that is 120 miles away. Of course, during my own geeky high school years, there were shirtless teenage boys with painted chests at the state Academic Decathlon competition (for reals, people), so maybe teenage boys just like to take off their shirts and paint their chests.


4. It is hard, and my little sister is very good at it. All sarcasm aside, I am pretty proud of my sister. She has spent hours and hours practicing throughout the summer. The weekend before last, when it was in the high 80s outside, she was marching with her clarinet. She has worked her ass off. (Literally - the girl's a healthy eater and a size 2. We are not a family of size 2s.) And while I can not walk in a straight line while well-rested and concentrating, she walks in intricate patterns, often sideways, while playing a musical instrument. And she is a high school girl who regularly appears in public wearing a hat with a giant plume. If that doesn't show guts and determination, I don't know what does.

Just a Region Rat without a home

Look, everybody! I did a blog!

I've been feeling the need for a blog for quite some time now, but haven't been able to come up with a name for it. It's an interesting soul search, finding a blog name. It's also a challenge of one's cleverness and wit. Oh, how I wish I could have a cleverly named blog. But unfortunately, the ability to come up with a clever, not too punny name that would stand the test of time was excluded from my gene pool, along with normal height and thick chestnut-colored hair. (To be honest, I don't know what color a chestnut is. But doesn't chestnut color hair sound wonderful? Better than dishwater blonde, at least?)

So clever wit was out. Instead, I turned to descriptiveness. I am a Hoosier. Growing up, that didn't mean much to me. I was born and bred in Hammond, which is in a part of Indiana known within the state as The Region. It's in Indiana physically, but not ideologically. It's highly industrialized, highly polluted and filled with steel mills, factories, and blue-collar liberals. No one I knew enjoyed watching racing, and everybody cheered for Chicago sports teams, even though we claimed to hate FIPs (fucking Illinois people - see also FIBs (f'ing IL bastards) and FIDs (f'ing IL drivers)). But now that I am a FIP, and it's been three years since the husband and I lived in Indiana, and now that we're gearing up for a move next year, most likely out of the area, I'm finding myself identifying more strongly with my Hoosier heritage. And I'm a little sad that I will most likely never live in Indiana again.