Boozyisms: Friday

Me: Good news honey... Rebecca Black is recording a new song!

Mr Boozy: What's it called? "Just Kill Me Now?"

Touché.

My Tribute to Rebecca Black

Last night I had a bizarre dream that I was Rebecca Black on LSD. This is how it went...

Yes, I love that girl. You should too.

No Trespassing!

I'm having flashbacks, ya'll. Flashbacks to the movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. To the scenes with Todd and Margo Chester... the yuppie couple who live next door to the Griswolds. The ones who just want a peaceful quiet existence and can't seem to have a smidgeon of it because the Griswolds keep hijacking their Zen-centered tranquility. Oh sure, those scenes are hysterically funny in a voyeuristically sadistic kind of way. Unless you're poor Margo Chester, who apparently I am.

Let me take you back to yesterday. When I was attempting to sit quietly in a lounge chair by my pool enjoying the waning sunny hours of a beautiful warm Sunday afternoon. Attempting, I say, because my next door neighbors, the Griswolds, were entertaining the majority of the northern hemisphere, and their guests decided to invade my little corner of paradise.

Our home is situated on a lovely lot that has water on two sides... a long channel behind the house which sweeps around forming a small lake on one side. It's mostly private, but that was not the case yesterday. In fact, it hasn't been the case for the past several months because the Griswolds have been entertaining every Sunday and we have become accustomed to unsupervised children merging into our yard. At first it was harmless enough. Little kids with fishing poles just mindlessly inching over. But yesterday became a study in full-blown trespassing - and not just by the kids.

Imagine sitting on your lounge chair, relaxing with a glass of chardonnay and a magazine only to have your backyard assaulted by throngs of people crisscrossing back and forth. To and fro. Children, 'tweens, and adults just kind of on safari, having a wonderful time adventuring in your yard, casting fishing lines wherever they please and basically showing no respect whatsoever for boundaries or property lines. At one point, one of the fathers was walking up by the screen enclosure and almost trampled through our landscaping! It was really quite astonishing. So astonishing that my exceedingly patient husband, who was watching television inside the house, finally had enough and came out to shoo them away. Do you think they were even the slightest bit contrite or embarrassed? Nope. Not only were the interlopers not contrite or embarrassed... they were incredulous for having been interrupted. In fact, they were acting like they were entitled to squat on our land! One of the adults even tried to justify their encroachment by explaining that they were just fishing the bank as they moved around to the lake. The tone was like: dude, don't be such a buzzkill. Big mistake. At that point my husband got a little pissy and they finally left. When word got around to the Griswolds, I heard a woman (Ellen?) say, "That's just ridiculous that someone would be offended," loudly enough for me to hear. In psychological terminology, that's called projection bias. Whatever. Just fish in your own yard and keep yo asses out of ours, 'kay?

Well, in a perfect world, that would be the end of that. But naturally there were a few subsequent incidents where our yard was just too too enticing for the children to resist. One boy kept saying, "But mom! I know where the fish are, and they're over there," pointing to our bank. Which he brazenly breached without correction. Then, about a half hour later two little kids walked back into our yard. The girl looked sheepishly around and when she noticed me, ran back to the Griswold's crying, "I wanna go inside!" All I did was look at her, I swear.

So now there's like weirdness between my next door neighbors and us. Or should I say, more weirdness. In all honesty, there has always been weirdness because they're kind of weird people. Not weird bad... weird quiet. Quiet almost to a fault. Quiet almost tending toward creepiness. They rarely speak or come outside. They have two daughters I didn't even know existed for the first couple years they lived next door because they were never allowed out. But god love 'em, they're great little entertainers. And lucky us that when they decide to break loose and get un-quiet and un-neighborly, they do it up in a big way inviting all their friends to come along for the ride.

I think there's a lot of wisdom in that good old 17th century proverb: Good fences make good neighbors!

Crying all the way to the bank...

For the past week I have been obsessed with Rebecca Black's viral YouTube video "Friday." And not just the video, but all the covers and parodies that her video has spawned. It's like this life force that keeps growing and growing and shows no sign of slowing down.

As of 11:13 this morning, Rebecca's video has logged 42,872,054 hits on YouTube. Most of them mine.

We, we, we,  so excited. We so excited.

When I first saw Rebecca Black pop up in the media, I ignored the stories thinking she was just the newest youngster to release a music video. Yawn. They are a dime a dozen, right? Then her name wouldn't go away. It was everywhere. Then it showed up in the facebook comments of my friends, and I started paying attention.

In fact, my entire life changed that magical day last week when I clicked the play button and heard "Friday" for the first time. Let's reminisce, shall we?

For the first twenty seconds or so, I sat there blinking. My mind quickly uncoiling. WTF? What is going on here? What is this? This is not a song, this is an embarrassing weird monotone something, but it's definitely not a song. It's got to be a joke. Twenty more seconds and a smile swept across my face. Yes! It's a song alright! It's quite possibly and unintentionally the worst song ever, but it's a real honest-to-god song. Then I was sad. How awful for her. Oh no... poor Rebecca Black.

Fascinated, I started clicking away and did my homework. In the course of one week, Friday had morphed from an appropriate 4,000 YouTube hits to millions and millions (and millions and millions). Good Morning America jumped on the Rebecca Black bandwagon and featured her in a human interest story:

Rebecca is such a sweet girl. It broke my heart that comments about her video made her cry. People can be so mean. And yet... look who is crying all the way to the bank!

There is so much to say about this video - most of it having already been said. Yeah, the song is dreadful. Yeah, it's fun to make fun of. Fun, fun, fun, fun. You know what it is.

It's been a week, and I still find myself inexplicably drawn to this song. It's ricocheting around in my head as I type this. I hum it at work. I even downloaded it on iTunes. Yeah, I did. And I'm not the only one. Friday is currently #31 on the top 100 downloaded songs list (down from #13). Now, I'm not a math wizard or anything, but I think that makes Rebecca Black an overnight millionaire and will probably garner her a spot on the Forbes Richest People In America List - somewhere around the Oprah position.

Did you know... the Jonas Brothers spoofed her in concert? Jay Leno featured her on the Tonight Show? Conan parodied her with his own version "Thursday." The list goes on and on including sixteen other worthy covers and parodies, the Groundhog Day remix, plus the Christopher Walken version which is probably my fav. Even Hitler, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Taylor Hicks, and the Abominable Snowman respond to Rebecca Black!

And then there's "Gang Fight" by Bad Lip-Reading.... This is what happens when you have too much idle time on your hands. But gosh, it's freaking hilarious!

So yes, Rebecca Black is now a household name. She's only thirteen and she's famous. And she's rich. Except she is donating all the proceeds of the sale of her song and video to disaster relief for the earthquake vicitms in Japan. How do you like her now?

So, who gets the last laugh here? Beckydoodle, that's who. And she who laughs last, laughs best.

Change is in the air...

I'm leaving. I'm packing up my pots and pans and I'm blowing this popsicle stand. And do you know why? Do you? Do you feel even the slightest responsibility for why everything is changed and why what was good and was hopeful and was exciting is now drudgery? Grin-and-bear-it monot-monot-monotony? You should. You are the exclusive architect of it all.

But I have learned how to dance, darling, and dance I will. I will turn and swirl and pirouette and spin all around the truth so that you are dizzy and confused. You won't know which end is up. You will watch me disappear in a cloud of smoke (do I smell something burning?), and I will be gone. Never to return.

Except, of course, I will return, you just won't recognize me. I will return as a beautiful butterfly with a lightness of being. I will float in jagged little patterns to and fro. I will light on beautiful and interesting things and savor the luxury of time. I will waste time, if I wish. Then I will float on. I will spend lazy hours where before I spent frenetic lifetimes stepping and fetching and pandering to you. I will be kind to you because I have always been kind. I am kind. But I will also flip through my mental rolodex and remember all the times you weren't kind. Oh, you could have been. Should have been. It's in the contract. It's in the spirit! Instead you spoke only of the dark side until I realized there indeed is a dark side and the dark side is you. Until I watched it leach out of you like a grimy poisonous gas reaching closer and closer. Until it tried to choke the spirit out of me.

Fortunately, my army has always stayed close by my side. Honor, Perseverance, Humility, Courage. They will not let you near me. I am protected. I am safe. I do not fear you. I am free of you.

Fix yourself on someone else. Spoil some different meat. Set your snares and spring your traps on someone new. Someone younger, weaker, more naïve. Or here's an idea... don't. Instead, take a lesson from this. Find peace inside yourself. Peel the grease off yourself and start over. Start clean.

I am.
I am a beautiful butterfly.

Born This Way

Have you ever known a person that, for some mysterious unidentifiable reason - maybe no reason at all - you just don't like? Someone who aggravates you by an expression they make, by the way they comb  their hair, by blinking, or just by breathing the same air?

You have? 

Well, is it me, because I seem to have that affect on people a lot. No really, I do. Always have. I must have been born this way.

I don't bring this up to illicit sympathies from anyone. I'm just saying. Some people have the god-given talent of unintentionally annoying others. Of rubbing them the wrong way by simply existing. Hello. I'm Boozy Tooth... nice to meet you.

[I will pause here briefly so you can roll your eyes and think to yourself that I really ought to get over myself and stop being so gd melodramatic and hyper sensitive. (Don't lie, you know that's exactly what you were doing.)]

I admit that I certainly have had my share of pissy days and bad moods. Made my share of mistakes. Done my share of evil deeds and whatnot. I mean over the course of five decades you can't expect me to have been absolutely perfect. Who is? And I will gladly accept my slice of just deserts for all that, but in general I don't do particularly well being an object of disdain for no apparent reason. I don't appreciate being the target of nasty critical people. Or holding the dubious distinction as chief recipient of perpetual unfairness by those who hold no greater station in life than the overinflated manufactured one in their own minds. In other words, back off you miserable unhappy purveyors of gossipy harsh undeserved judgmental BS.

Okay. So you're probably wondering what brought this rant on, right? This SameShitNewDay rendition of a popular tune some of you hangers-on may remember from my old Casa H ice ramblings. It's my little pity party for one that I throw on occasion to help me navigate my way through someone doing me completely wrong. In this particular case, it's a low-frequency, barely-detectable, flying-under-the-radar-yet-oh-so-potent resentment that I seem to have cultivated in someone who shall remain nameless. Someone I don't even come in direct contact with but whose bad juju is so strong it still reaches me and clouds my sunshiny optimism. It drives a stake in my happy heart and is slowly chipping away at my joy. It's a problem created by someone who has decided to complicate my life because of a perceived (albeit bogus) threat they believe I have imposed over them and I am becoming very impatient with it.

As if that isn't bad enough, this person is now messing with me and trying to manipulate me in a stealthy behind-the-scenes kind of way and I'm not going to stand for it. I'm taking equally stealthy behind-the-scenes action and I'm nipping this business in the bud now!

I know all about feelings of unworthiness and fears of failure. I know all about being intimidated by someone else's talents. I know all about struggling with confidence issues and standing in the shadow of someone else's success. And you know what? I got over it by growing up and taking control of my life. By applying myself and striving to always do my best. To work hard. To be happy for others who have achieved success. To follow their example. To not compare, but to be inspired. To not wallow in mediocrity, but to rise above it. I have learned that I am the master of my own destiny and nobody else.

I guess there isn't much I can do about rubbing people the wrong way. It's going to happen occasionally and I just have to accept that. I can't and won't change who I am to assuage someone else's feelings of insecurity. I will not appease unhappy people by sinking to their level and joining in their unhappiness. I will not allow anyone to have power over me or allow them to steal my joy - not any more. Love me or hate me... it's up to you. But know this... if you hate me because you think I'm better than you, that's your problem.