'Thinking 'bout This and That'

I made it through the first section of my listen-to-every-CD-I-own project (I really should come up with a catchier name), listening to all 19 Elvis Costello CDs I own over the last three weeks. I listened to angry young man Elvis, politically infuriated Elvis, heartbroken Elvis, romantic Elvis, hard-rocking Elvis, passionately crooning Elvis, the poet, the collaborator, the arranger, the composer, the producer, the jazzman, the New Waver, the balladeer.

In career that has literally spanned my entire lifetime, Elvis Costello has released more than 30 albums covering the worlds of pop, rock, jazz, country and classical. His output is certainly impressive, even if the result isn't always to my liking.

By listening to all these CDs, I've realized that though Elvis Costello's voice is one of my all-time favorites (my elbows and knees get warm when he hits certain notes), it's not always properly showcased (it's a bit too warbly sometimes). I like some of his jazz songs but not the experimental stuff.

This is all down to a matter of my personal tastes and I know that though the CD "When I Was Cruel" will never rate that highly with me, other Elvis Costello fans likely enjoy giving it regular spins. To each their own. And with an artist as prolific and varied as Elvis Costello, there's something within his catalog to satisfy nearly every taste.

For my next step in this process, I think I'll tackle my sizable Madonna chunk. The highly anticipated and well-received "MDNA" comes out in a little more than a week, so I think I'll give that multiple spins and then stack it up next to its predecessors.

Stay tuned.

PaleyFest 2012

When the whole webzine/blog thing started picking up steam a few years ago, I thought it would be fun to start an entertainment zine with two of my friends. Styled somewhat after Entertainment Weekly, the zine would have been written about pop culture fans for pop culture fans. We wouldn't be afraid of calling something out for being garbage if necessary but also wouldn't be too cool to fawn over something if necessary.

The zine would have been divided into three sections—movies, music and TV—with each of us spearheading one section. At that time, I would have been the music girl. It had been my ambition since high school to be a pop music journalist, so being in charge of that section would have been the realization of a longtime ambition.

That idea never grew into more than talk. These days, though, I don't know if the music section would be the most-natural fit for me. I used to consider myself a music fanatic but now I think it's more accurate to describe myself as a pop culture fanatic. These days I'm as likely to become fixated on watching movies, watching TV, reading books, reading magazines, going to plays, going to museums, going to comedy shows as I am in listening to music or going to concerts.

At the moment, the TV fanaticism is the strongest. Unlike my beloved View From My Couch Girl, I don't have multiple DVRs and VCRs set up to keep up with all the show of my much-watch list, but I do have a quite few shows that I really feel like I must watch.



I got to indulge my deep enthusiasm for television last week at PaleyFest 2012. Last summer, I recounted the sad tale of missing the "Freaks & Geeks"/"Undeclared" reunion at PaleyFest. Still smarting from that experience, I made damn sure I wasn't going to miss a single moment of the two (later three) panels I bought tickets for. I had the parking scoped out and my Paley Center membership got me early admission, so I was all set.

The first night of my PaleyFest adventure was the "Community" panel on March 3. In addition to getting the opportunity to learn about the making of this show from cast, producers and writers, the panel was a giant love fest, celebrating the show's long-anticipated return to the airwaves on March 15 and cast member Jim Rash's recent Oscar win for "The Descendants" script.



We got treated to the show's first episode, which I will tune in for again on Thursday. It was definitely a highlight to get to see the first new "Community" in months before anyone, but the standout of the night for me was the relationship between the cast members—they all seem to genuinely like each other. The night was packed with in jokes and little asides. It was really lovely to see.

Jim Rash did bring his Oscar with him and throughout the night, the Oscar would get flashed on the screen, unbeknownst to the panelist. It was a nice in joke for the audience.



Next came the "New Girl" panel on March 5. Again, we got to see the season's newest episode before anyone else. That night's in joke was the Douche Bag Jar, which was presented to the cast by the evening's moderator. Several times throughout the night, Max Greenfield, who plays Schmidt, was asked to throw money in. He eventually threw in his entire wallet clip.



During the audience Q&A, a teacher who's also the mother of a teenage girl told Zooey Deschanel that she's such a great role model for young girls. It was really sweet moment and I have to agree. The thing about Jess, the character, and Zooey, the real-life person, is they're both so happy doing their own thing, going their own odd way, that they're pretty accepting of other people as long as those people are accepting of them.



I look at my four-year-old niece with her thick bangs and large blue eyes and think she could grow up to look like Zooey Deschanel. Match those eyes with my niece's sense of humor and penchant for the dramatically imaginative, and maybe she'll grow up to find a way to be all of the amazing, funny, over-the-top, fantastic things she and be really happy doing it, just like Zooey seems to have.

Like I mentioned above, I'd originally bought tickets for just two panels, but when the cast and crew of "The Office" had to cancel a week out and "Parks & Recreation" was brought in, I thought I might be in for one more night. "Parks & Recreation" is my must-see (and, often, must-re-see) television. I adore this show, the writing, the characters, the town. I'd had such a great time at last year's Television Academy panel (also detailed in last summer's blog post) and the "Campaign Shake-Up" episode was so damn good that I bought my ticket the next morning.

Filming has wrapped for the season, so not all of the cast could be there (the adorable, super-rad Adam Scott was in New York promoting "Friends With Kids," sadly) but anyone who couldn't be there in person was represented by a cardboard cutout.



We got to see last Thursday's episode "Lucky" (and I did tune in to watch it a second time when it aired on NBC) and, very best of all, got to watch the gag reel that was created for the season four wrap party. I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time. Like the cast of "Community," the cast of "Parks & Recreation" really like each other and seem to have a good time working together.

I heard an interview with Maya Rudolph on Friday where she talked about her time on "SNL" and the bond she developed with her cast mates, strengthened by the long hours and hard work. Working on a television show, as Tina Fey pointed out in "Bossypants," isn't as hard as coal mining in South America, but it does require really long hours, flexibility and energy. The only way to get through those kinds of days is to like, maybe even love, the people you work with and have your fun when you can get it.

I hope that pointing out the closeness I saw amongst the "Parks & Recreation" and "Community" casts doesn't give anyone the impression that the "New Girl" cast was icy and awkward toward each other. They were warm and comfortable with each other, but they've only been together for a few months. The "Parks & Recreation" and "Community" casts, on the other hand, have been working together for years and have had the bonding experience of wondering if their shows will air at all or, once on the air, keep airing.

Even though it was very hard to get up for work most of last week because of the late nights I spent at the Saban Theater, PaleyFest was a fantastic experience. In addition to what I mentioned above, a highlight has to be the experience of watching your favorite TV shows with a few thousand other fans. The director of The Paley Center mentions in the video introducing each evening that television is a communal experience, and that's what PaleyFest really was. I do plan to go back again.

There are clips, galleries and other goodies from the panels I attended and the 10 others, here.

Getting Started

Way back in August I wrote about the slightly unusual way I organize my CDs and the idea I'd come up with to listen to every CD I own in order.

More than six months later, I've made my first steps toward completing that task. Over the recent long holiday weekend, I cataloged my collection and cleaned my shelves up a bit (and, sadly, had to toss the Rollins Band release "Come in & Burn" because I'd discovered the disc is missing). A picture of my much-neater shelves (which are actually shoe cubbies) is shown above.

I now have a complete inventory of my CD collection (minus singles and bootlegs because I don't want to delve into that quite yet) that will assist me in this task and be of great service to me the next time I move—no need to worry about my CDs getting out of order and needing to resort to a traditional alphabetized collection because I now have a master list!

For the most part, my CDs are stored in chronological order, starting with the first CDs I got way back in high school. CDs by the same artist are grouped together with the newest purchase slotted at the end. There are currently three exceptions to this practice—Elvis Costello, Madonna and U2. These artists are grouped separately because I have more CDs from each of them than anyone else and it's just so much easier to have their CDs at the very end than taking up space in the middle.

My original thought for this project was to start at the very beginning with the two-disc Doors greatest hits collection I got for Christmas 1994 when I got the stereo I still own and my first CDs. I've decided, instead, to start with my Elvis Costello chunk to prepare for his Spinning Songbook Tour stop at The Wiltern in April.

"Painted From Memory," Elvis Costello's collaboration with Burt Bacharach, is first on my list. I bought this CD when it came out in 1998, intrigued by what these seemingly different legends could come with together and impressed by their first collaboration, the song "God Give Me Strength" from the Allison Anders film "Grace of My Heart" (that song remains a favorite).

Here's what I have to look forward to over the next few weeks. From here, I'll most likely go back to the start, although Madonna's new album could tempt me to spend some quality time with her catalog.

Elvis Costello With Burt Bacharach "Painted From Memory"
"The Very Best of Elvis Costello"
"My Aim Is True" (Rhino reissue)
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "All This Useless Beauty" (Rhino reissue)
"Spike" (Rhino reissue)
"When I Was Cruel"
"This Years Model" (Rhino reissue)
"North"
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "Armed Forces" (Rhino reissue)
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "Trust" (Rhino reissue)
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "Get Happy"
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "National Ransom"
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "Punch the Clock" (Rhino reissue)
Original Soundtrack "De-Lovely"
Elvis Costello & The Imposters "The Delivery Man"
Elvis Costello Live With the Metropole Orkest "My Flame Burns Blue"
Elvis Costello and The Attractions "Imperial Bedroom"
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussant "The River in Reverse"
"Secret, Profane & Sugarcane"

I currently own 19 Elvis Costello albums and have a sizeable list of releases yet to acquire. He releases one album a year, on average, and had a 20-year head start on me when I first became a fan, so I have a lot of catching up to do. About 10 years ago, he had a reissue deal with Rhino Records and re-released 17 of his albums with bonus CDs and detailed liner notes. What luck that I should become a fan when he started that! The deal ended in 2006 so there won't be any more special reissues, but I still have 10 to get so at least have that to look forward to.

Back to the music. I'll be checking in soon.

Checking Off 'The List'

Going to concerts is one of my favorite things to do. I went to my first concert at age 12 and have been happily shelling out whatever money I have (and sometimes money I don't) to listen to my favorite artists perform my favorite songs in packed rooms and sprawling arenas, screaming along at the top of my longs with other fans doing just the same.

In the more than 20 years I've been attending concerts, I've been lucky to be in the same room as so many of the people who've impacted my life in big ways and small: U2, Madonna, Elvis Costello, John Mayer, Brian Setzer Orchestra, The Stray Cats, Rollins Band, Alanis Morissette, The Black Crowes, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, INXS, No Doubt, Depeche Mode, Aerosmith, Green Day, Weezer, BB King, Anne and Nancy Wilson, Prince, The Rolling Stones, Guns 'n Roses, Crosby Stills & Nash, Carole King. Of these, there are definitely artists I will see again and again, whenever and wherever I can.

My list is by no means complete. There are so many legendary live acts I haven't had the pleasure of being in the same room with. As this summer's concert tours are announced, I know there are acts like Madonna and The Brian Setzer Orchestra that I'm itching to see again, but I hope to fit in a few new acts this year, so I'm crafting a list that thus far includes: Bruce Springsteen (touring this spring with The E Street Band), Pearl Jam, Aretha Franklin, Kylie Minogue, Janet Jackson, Paul McCartney.

If I cross any of these off, I'll let you know.

Be Sincere

Have I ever mentioned before how much I adore John Mayer? If you didn't know, perhaps his latest Tumblr entry will shed a little light on why I feel the way I do.

If you want to be truly intimidating,

If you want to make an impact,

If you want to have strong connections with others

just be sincere.

Sarcasm is not an attitude, and it’s not a personality trait. It’s a style of rhetoric meant to be used occasionally to highlight a larger point. Saying you’re a sarcastic person is like saying your favorite cuisine is salt. Sarcasm is easy because you never have to take a stance. And that’s just the problem; It’s so noncommittal.

When you see someone you’d like to have a conversation with, here’s how you really make your impression felt. I promise you’ll be remembered for it: “hello.” I don’t know when the lines got crossed and it was deemed attractive to be ambiguous and critical. Girls don’t like it when guys do it and guys don’t like it when girls do it. I live in a city of cool people with the absolute worst PR representatives: themselves.

Be yourself, even if that means being unsure or uneasy. Let someone else put you at ease. Meet them in the middle. Be sincere.

Going Back in Time in LA

If I'm in a large city packed with skyscrapers and landmarks, I always look up to catch glimpses of the tile work, carvings, columns, inlays, sculptures and other bits of beautiful craftsmanship. Sadly, we live in a world where the unique and beautiful has been replaced by the simple and practical so are subjected to more and more plain, cinder block, prison-inspired buildings, which is why I get so excited to spend time with historic, artistic buildings.

This past weekend, I got to spend time marveling at some of the most-beautiful buildings in LA's historic Broadway District thanks to the Los Angeles Conservancy. For a few hours Saturday morning, I wandered in and around old theaters, movie houses and business hubs, some refurbished, some in desperate need of love and attention.

The tour featured stops in the Million Dollar Theater, Bradbury Building, former Cloons Theater, The Orpheum and a former Panteges Theater. The Bradbury Building and Orpheum are in fantastic shape, having been painstakingly restored by current owners willing to invest the millions is takes to keep 100-year-old buildings looking good as new. The Million Dollar Theater is still being used and maintains a lot of its original grandeur.


Exterior of the Million Dollar Theater


The Bradbury Building decorated for Christmas


The Orpheum's marquee

The Cloons and Panteges theaters haven't fared as well. Once the longest-running movie theater in the area, Cloons is now an electronics store, but walk through a curtain behind the register into the storeroom and the projection room and screen still remain.


Cloons exterior


Old screen at Cloons

The former Panteges, one of more than a dozen theaters built in Los Angeles bearing the name, is now a jewelry mall. Though the floor was leveled, the stage, curtain, balcony, boxes and decorated ceiling still remain, frozen in time above the jewelers' stalls.


Exterior of the old Panteges

Walking through those two buildings makes me wonder about the other hidden gems inside of downtown LA shops.

Following the more than two-hour walking tour, I drove a few miles west to Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, founded in 1884 and final resting place to notable Angelenos. It's also the final resting place of my great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather.

My maternal grandfather lost his mother when he was just 7 years old. She died during the Spanish Influenza epidemic that followed World War I. I know very little about her and didn't realize she had lived, died and been buried in Los Angeles until I got a packet of genealogy records from my paternal grandmother that included the burial certificates for my great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather.

I found my great-great-grandfather, a Civil War veteran, first. He's buried in a special section dedicated to the Grand Army of the Republic. In his section are rows of dozens and dozens of Civil War veterans, all marked with the same simple headstone listing their name, company number and battalion. Some of these markers are more than 100 years old so the names have pretty much disappeared. Looking at marker after marker, trying to make out whatever letters remained, I started losing hope that I would find my great-great-grandfather.


Honoring the Grand Army of the Republic

I did have a clue, though, I knew he was in plot 23. I kept my head down looking for markers, feeling more and more hopeless halfway through my third row when I saw a marker that said 23. I was getting somewhere! Right next to the marker I saw the name, so clear of, of my great-great-grandfather.


Lucky number 23


My great-great-grandfather's marker

It was an overwhelming moment for me and one that I was so grateful to have.

Finding my great-grandmother wasn't as easy. I circled around the cemetery several times trying to find her section. Finally, I found someone who worked at the cemetery to help me. I gave him my paperwork and he located her plot on a large map in a staffroom. He led me to her section at the furthest end of the cemetery, and we started looking for names.

He took one row and I took the other. He asked if she had a marker and I said she must, though it had been so long I didn't know what shape it would be in (the cemetery looked like it took quite a beating in the recent wind storms, so many headstones had been toppled and broken). I looked at the last marker in the row, right next to the fence bordering the street and saw the word "Mama," then the name of my great-grandmother, who was listed as my great-grandfather's wife, and the years of her birth and death.


My great-grandmother's marker

She was 35 when she died and left behind two small boys and a husband.

I thanked the man for helping me find her and then sat quietly for a while as dusk approached. I thought about my grandfather who I still miss so much and how hard it must have been for him to lose him mom, how much he must have missed her his whole life.

I still have so much to learn about my grandfather's family but feel like this trip did start me on the path to discovering so much more about them and our shared history in Los Angeles.

I took 115 pictures on Saturday. Thanks to the wind storms, the sky was bright blue and gorgeous. Drop me a line if you'd like to see more.

Autobiographical

I'm not sure how many CDs I have, but am certain it's into the hundreds (not record-breaking but substantial). I have them fairly neatly organized in the order of purchase or acquisition by artist. Basically, Guns 'n Roses comes first because I got the band's CDs first, and any new CDs I get from Guns 'n Roses are added to the end of those CDs rather than me grouping each band's CDs by title or date of release.

I guess it's a bit like the scene in "High Fidelity" where Dick visits Rob is his apartment just after he's taken all the LPs off his shelves and is in the process of coming up with a new organizational system. Alphabetical? Chronological? "Nope … Autobiographical."

When I first got CDs as part of a for-the-time-massive Christmas present from my high school boyfriend—the stereo I still own (whose remote I've only had to change the batteries on twice in about 15 years) and about a dozen new and used CDs—it made sense to keep the CDs in the order I got them and add any new purchases onto the end. I did contemplate changing that order when I moved and had to box the whole works up but realized my way still makes the most sense to me so kept it.

The term "autobiographical" is a pretty good description for the way I organize my CDs, each time I search for a disc in one of the two shoe shelves I repurposed for CD storage, I remember the time and place I bought it. For instance, Everclear's beautiful and underrated "So Much for the Afterglow" is right alongside the "Romy & Michelle" soundtrack and The Bangles' best of because I bought all of them on a trip to Rhino Records my junior year of college, and I remember that because I used to play those CDs on the player in the school newspaper office on deadline nights.

"Autobiographical" is also a pretty good way to describe the music in my life. At this moment, I'm listening to U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind," a CD I've listened to well over 100 times since I first bought it used at Rhino in 2001, so on every listen that year pours over me, the job I had, the route I took to work, the Elevation show at Staples Center that changed my life, the Elevation Tour DVD I watched when I housesat for my brother while he was on his honeymoon, the friends I made, the outfits I wore, the problems I had, the tears I cried, the color of the sky on certain days, the time I spent on online forums, and on and on.

And that's just one of the CDs I have. I know I could easily come up with similar lists and connections and memories for every other CD I own, which I why I came up with the idea a while back of listening to every CD I own, in order, and doing weekly updates on my progress and reactions for this blog. The idea has kicked around for more than a year but hasn't landed until now, now seems to be the right time to dive back in, rediscover lost gems, reconnect with old favorites, reconsider the growers and maybe even resell a few that haven't stood up to the test of time.

It will take a bit of discipline on my part but I think this will be a fun, challenging, insightful and emotional experience—a bit time travel, a bit self-analysis, a bit of an excuse to crank some amazing music. I won't get to U2 until the very end (my three largest artist collections are for U2, Madonna and Elvis Costello, so those three are pulled aside from the rest of my collection, though I do still add new CDs in the order of purchase rather than chronologically or alphabetically for those three artists) but it's a nice treat to have waiting for me in the distance, especially with headphones. I've never before listened to "All That You Can't Leave Behind" with headphones and, wow, I've missed so much—guitar parts, backing vocals, keyboard flourishes. Amazing.

Even after so many listens to a much-loved CD, there are so many more things to discover. I'm excited to discover the mysteries and hidden treasures in all of my other CDs, too.

For your enjoyment, the record collection organization scene from "High Fidelity." I find it quite "comforting."