Melsville

Over the Noise

Debbie Harry rises above the hammering and talk-radio outside my house.  It’s good friends, it’s very good.  Ear-candy with an edge from eye-candy with an attitude.

“Parallel Lines” was the greatest things my father ever brought home; better even than lamajeun from the Armenian bakery.   On a drive home from work, he heard “Heart of Glass” and was enraptured.   He sang the song for me and asked if I knew it.  Tried to sing it anyway; mostly he la-la-laed and hummed as well as he could.  I was twelve,  and had neither a radio nor any idea of what I wanted to hear;  I was useless. 

I’ve always imagined that Daddy spent the next few days humming to record-store employees until someone could help him. n  He was a born performer, and could probably have worked up the high-notes for the chorus. One way or another, that album was on our turntable by the end of the week.

Did you ever see that cover?  Pretty girl,  starlet  blond hair dyed perfectly imperfectly over dark roots and ends,  strappy white dress.  Arms akimbo, she stands over black and white stripes flanked by men in black.  Everything is black, white and red.  No girl in my class had ever seen anything like this.  

My father loved his music one song at a time.  If he found a song he liked, he played it over and over.  Once the song was over, he was right at the turntable to re-play it.  If anyone actually could wear out the grooves on a record, my father could. 

Me?;  I seized what chances I could to play the whole record, start to finish. I lay on the floor of the study half-reading and ignoring whatever Math was due in the morning.   Parallel Lines was not the siren song that lead me into the realm of tweenie underachiever,  everybody travels there sometimes; it was just part of the soundtrack. 

What does Debbie sing these days;  Jazz?  Torch-songs?;  my father would have approved.   Daddy loved Linda Ronstant too, and never more than when she worked with Nelson Riddle.

Mattel has made a Debbie Harry Barbie dolls.   Thanks to a link posted on Facebook by a friend of mine,  I’ve seen this doll.    Not right,  it’s just not right.  Mattel made a decent job of the hair, but they’ve dressed her in neon pink.   If you ask me, she needs that white dress.

After listening to Parallel Lines twice,  I’ve moved on to Bob Marley.  A big Thank You to the builders outside my window.  They’ve reminded me that loud music can be the best way to be alone.

What I've Been Thinking

I’m still feeling very early Beatles.   My Youtube jolt of the morning was  them singing “Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand”  dubbed over a film of them singing, “”I Want to Hold Your Hand”.  Liam and I agree that the song might sound better in German.  When I hear it, I wonder what the lyrics are word-for word.  I wonder that they found a way to make the lyrics fit so perfectly with the music, and that they rhyme. 

I get a kick out of watching the old film with Ringo flipping his hair around because he had hair enough to flip.   That cute haircut, now worn by young boys , used to be radical.    I just laugh.

Every year, Liam’s hair starts too short for my liking and travels non-stop to what most people think is too long.  First Saturday of Summer, he goes to the barber for his buzz-cut.   When he returns a year later,  his hair hangs past his shoulders, and the bangs have grown out completely.  I like it now, he can swing it.

I haven’t posted any views from my window in ages.   Remember that yawning maw in my backyard?;   that sheer drop right up against my backdoor?  It’s gone, gone, gone.  Above the basement that the pit used to be  rises a fully-framed two-storey structure.  It has walls and window-frames; the windows should be arriving this week or next.   It has a roof.  I can walk out the backdoor, Hell, I can climb out my bedroom window, and walk around the spaces where the rooms are going to be.


It’s noisy here.  Last week, just being inside this building being built gave me a thundering headache which shouldn’t have kept my away from Kung Fu practice, but which did   ( Liam told me I should find the commitment of a ten-year-old and g0 ).
Last week, it poured down rain for days on end.   I actually missed the building sounds;  they can be more grounding than the rain, but not every day.

The siding  I’ve  always hated has been ripped from all but the front of the house. Now, we have the pleasure of picking the color of the new siding.   When, Jamie, the kids, and I are driving,   we pass houses and ask each other if we love, or hate, the color.  The kids want red.  Jamie and I just agree that it has to be a full-on color, no beige, no apologies.

Shopping for kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures offers all kinds of entertainment.  You can go around opening drawers to feel how smoothly they slide.  You can imagine your kitchen just the way you want it, even though you know that you can’t have every bit of it.

You can laugh at other people’s appalling taste;  that’s the best part.   I have fun coming up with ways to say exactly how wrong things look.  Some over-large shower heads  look like the bottoms of spring-form pans nailed full of holes.  Some bathroom set-ups have a space-age feel that I just don’t like.  “Too  ‘ ground-control to Major Tom’’”, I say. I’ve seen some blue-green tiles that are beautiful; a color  I’d love to wear, but don’t want to see on my shower walls  For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.  

In Ikea last week, Liam and I agreed that one sink looked like a  urinal.  Not what I would want to  spit toothpaste into for the foreseeable future,  but Liam loved it.  Everybody has an opinion.