Rollerchick

I'm thinking about how much I miss roller skating. That is a fad that needs to come back in a big way. What happened to it? We used to love going to the rink and checking out boys and trying to get our fries and soda back to the table at the snack bar without falling on our asses. I'd go every week if they had an 80's night. I wanted those Skechers roller skate sneakers they had out a couple of years ago, but I didn't get them and now they're discontinued. I heard a Wham! song today and that's what brought this on. You know the song that goes "And now you tell me that you're having my baby / I'll tell you that I'm happy if you want me to"? It's called Everything She Wants and it was a roller rink staple at the place I used to go to.

You know how that is when you're a kid, you remember a place that you almost think you made up because you only went there once, and you try to quiz your parents about where it was, and they think you're insane because for them it was somewhere incredibly nondescript and forgettable? There are a couple of places like that for me, like The Furniture Store with that Room with the Pit full of Sponge Cubes and That Weird Bus Station or Something that We Went to and I Specifically Remember "Arthur's Theme" by Christopher Cross Being on the Radio.

Speaking of which, there's this radio station here that I love, right? 93.7 Mike FM. "We play everything" is their tagline. And, God love them, they do. This morning they played "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark, right between "Uptown Girl" and that Depeche Mode song that goes "PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE SO WHY SHOULD IT BE / YOU AND I SHOULD GET ALONG SO AWFULLY." It is just fabulous that there's a station out there that actually plays songs, and random perfect fucked up whoa-what-the-hell-I-haven't-heard-this-in-ages songs, in the morning instead of some asswipe who thinks he's funny but so isn't.

Beautiful disaster

First of all, please tell me that Weezer intended their new song, "Beverly Hills," to suck, as a "Fuck you" to the music industry or to Top 40 radio or something. Because it really does. Suck.

Second, Britney and Kevin: Chaotic was a sucktastic, sense-numbing train wreck last night, and I know it's only going to get better... I mean worse, I mean... whatever. I learned two things from watching it: 1. Britney's natural speaking voice is not the babyish squeak she uses during public appearances, and 2. that she is married to the sorriest clump of cells and sperm in the universe. And that includes whatever primitive microorganisms may exist on other planets.

Sticks to the ribs

A couple of weeks ago Joe and I saw something dismaying up in New Hampshire. It was a Saturday, pouring rain out, the day after the Green Day show, and we had slept until noon. Around 3:00 we were kicking around the Portsmouth/Newington area and we went to lunch at this rib place called Smokey Bones. My Cobb salad and Joe's baby back ribs were good, the ambiance was rustic and comfortable, and we liked it overall, except for one thing: they have little speakerboxes on all the tables, with channel guide, so that you can tune into TV while you eat. That just really seems to take things one step too far. It's one thing to glance up a couple of times during a meal to check the score of the Red Sox game (because come on, it's the Sox), but isn't the point of going to a restaurant to talk to the people you're with? I keep picturing tables full of pasty people snarfing platters of barbequed meat with their glazed eyes on the TV and one ear cocked to the little box to hear how the Nascar race is going.

Augh. Life in America is altogether depressing sometimes.

Babypalooza

Last night Carly and I babysat for my boss’s twin almost 4-month-old babies and her 5-year-old son. Jesus, that was WORK. I don’t think I’ll be sneering at any mothers in the mall for a good long while. At first she was going to leave all three of them with me and I knew right away I was going to have to call in reinforcements. Carly generously agreed to put aside her Cinco de Mayo plans and come over, which was awesome. I thought the two of us would be enough, but the babies were so needy that she and I couldn’t do anything except attend to them. We didn’t have that fabulous swing contraption that keeps at least one of them happy while you try to placate the other. So we knew there was no way we could prepare bottles, order pizza, find binkies, and keep the prince and princess dry and quiet and also play with the older boy. We summoned Kevin to pick up game-playing, ball-tossing, boy-bonding duties, and he did great.

It was quite a time. Carly had great instincts, which she attested to owning a dog. She was patient and got them calmed down a lot better than I did. I was the one panicking when they were both crying their lungs out, and she’s the one who put them on their blanket and rubbed their tummies and got them quiet again. They never liked what you were doing for more than a few minutes--rock, walk around, lay down, rub head, binky, rub tummy, hold upright--so it was a constant guessing game. It has to be different with your own, because you can tell what they want, right? I hope? Fortunately, every time my boss called they were quiet, and they were both sleeping when she got back.

Anyway, I’m exhausted, my arms are sore, and it’s going to rain all weekend. I plan to sleep until noon tomorrow, as long as I make it through today.