unpolished (but, some people really like that)

doll parts, grapefruit, rapeman. (or just another monday night in chicago).

2012-01-24T23:18:00.001-06:00

it's a monday night. super wicked cold, january. we're in chicago, one of the largest cities in the u.s. i'm beat, as i'm pretty sure are you. we're old pals, been together not quite long enough to count on two hands, but longer than most post-collegiate friendships. it's been a while, since i've had the energy or motivation to leave the comforts of my adult married apartment. drinks bore me, at least if vincent's not there with me. but i know it's been too long, we both do, so when we make plans to hang out, i know in the back of my mind i'm not going to flake or bail this time, and you do too. or at least i think you thought that, because you came through on it. instead of overpriced east lakeview manicures at 'this really great asian joint, down on broadway, the price is worth it, go no-chip manicures!', we opt to hop in your little eco-car and we cruise it on down to our old stomping grounds. a mini bar crawl at the dangerous hour of 7:00pm. we opt for the more pricey beers, because well, we can afford them. and they taste better. we talk about our jobs. about love. about past experiences. our parents, and how everyone has some sort of dis-attachment they can't shake from their mom or dad. you, your dad. me, my mom. we talk about others we know, and how we're glad we're not them. two beers in and we're both feeling good, the conversation is on full spigot blast now. we become friends with joey, the little man boy bartender who plays hipster garage rock from three years past on his iPod, who feeds us malort shots and explains, 'they're really not that bad if you expect grapefruit, it's only if you think it's going to be bad it is,' you take the shot, 'this tastes like wood.' i take the shot, 'or a really bad kisser.' but we agree it's not as bad as aqua-net hairspray, which is what i was initially anticipating prior to the grapefruit analogy. we hop next door to an establishment we've frequented many a times in our past lives. it's different, but the same. enigma is still on the jukebox, as is eve 6. we play both, followed up with some deftones and kid rock. but it's only when we play hole's 'doll parts' and both burst out in teenage white girl angst, thrashing our arms at the wooden townie bar, that we realize how badly we want a karaoke night. instead i make small talk on the bulls game, they beat the nets, 84 to 111 (or something, at this point i'm 3 beers in and pretty beat). i'm going to see this game on february 18th with my husband. i bought tickets for valentines' day. being a wife is fun. but instead of our karaoke fix, we opt for cheap mexican food next door instead. you, two veggie tacos, with pretty incredible looking avocado slices. me, a steak quesadilla, side of sour cream of course. we share an over salted basket of tortilla chips that taste suspiciously like frito's corn chips. i pay the bill and it's under fifteen dollars. we drive back to lakeview, with promises to make this a monday night weekly tradition - except that you have a class every monday night starting the following week, and i have spinning classes on tuesdays. we'll make it work somehow, we agree, and you drive past my turn. we hop on lakeshore drive, listening to a cd in your car stereo by an artist called rapeman. surprisingly, it's pretty badass. i want to be in a band called rapeman. you drop me off at home, and i crawl into bed, inspired to write, observing and documenting the little things in my head. i write a sleepy mini outline in my gmail account, since my new laptop doesn't have microsoft word, and wonder how i can put this into prose. i guess this could constitute as a running start, a halfway meager attempt at an outline of sorts, a writing exercise. maybe, maybe not. at least if nothing else, it's an excuse to post a music video by hole on my blog. i'll take that, my friends, for what it's worth.

my morning commute.

2012-01-24T19:29:00.000-06:00

this morning my iPod was on shuffle. and i got a big old good morning from sister yesterday. there are two songs in the world that turn me back in time. back to the days where i'd sit beside my single speaker cassette tape boombox (actually, it belonged to my older brother jamie, but i totally claimed minezies on it when he went away to college) and wait, finger upheld, perfectly above the circular REC button, hoping to capture my favorite songs from the static infested FM airwaves of Madison's own Z104. one of the songs was r.e.m.'s 'losing my religion,' but i liked that one b/c it reminded me of my grandpa's barn in richlan center. the other, i'm not really sure why i was drawn to other than the fact that i was an 8 year old girl, was the track above by miss sophie b. hawkins, a one hit wonder if i ever heard one. but DAMN, that song was catchy. and even though i was a mere 3rd grader, 8 year old jodi felt this jam tug at her pre-pubescent heart strings. how i wanted a boy in my class to hold my hand! look at me like i was pretty! circle YES on a 'do you like me circle yes/no/maybe' notebook note. these things never happened, but listening to sophie b. gave me hope anyway. that even this fully grown babe who could hold the key on eva and eva and eva and evAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA for like 90 seconds, yearns for a dude who wasn't hers, made me feel accepted. and normal. and way too mature for my age.

listening to this song some 20 years later, i still feel my heartstrings grip a tiny bit tighter, but now i can smile back on the days of my youth and assuredly smile that it all worked out in the end. all the while, looking super fly with my eyes half closed, jamming away to my 90's power fem jam on the business insect infested cta bus down lake shore drive.

you a stupid hoe.

2012-01-24T19:13:00.000-06:00

upon first watch, this was a car wreck. i resisted the urge to watch it for nearly 3 days based on the title alone. but as it was destined, i eventually clicked 'play' while louging lazily on my couch. after the first 15 seconds of air horns, unneccessary clapping, adderol infused groaning clashed with accusations of promiscuity, i thought i (maybe) had had enough. my husband turned to me, no longer glued to his nba highlights, 'jodes, i'm not sure i want you listening to this music.' the tone of concern there showed it wasn't just for his own well being, either. but after i finished gaping at this fuck you lil kim anthem, i found my inner concious iPod re-whooping, clapping and stupid hoe'ing all over the goddamn place. so then i watched it again. and again. and again. and now, somehow, miss minaj has won me over all over again. i don't know what it is about her, but she has finally proven she can do whatever the fuck she wants. hell, she could probably even get me to listen to the scatman. and like it. and i HATE the scatman. so maybe it's better i don't think about that right now. point is: nickin minaj rules. so does this obscenity. later on tonight, when you're riding alone on the cta, spacing out after your long shift at work, and the haunting beeping sirens and stupid hoe is firing insisently in yr brains, you can thank me later for that.

bitches, this is my new jam.

2012-01-10T22:54:00.001-06:00

who knew an 8 bones splurge in line at world market would change my very existence. holy shit i be smelling and feeling supa fly. sugar scrub, did done get it. ya'll be feeling exxxtra supple, soft, and hella delicious. yeah, i guess this totally confirms my nearly 30 yr old white yuppiedom, whatevs.

fact vs. fiction

2012-01-10T21:51:00.000-06:00

after a regular day in the office, i came home to an empty apartment. well, not exactly empty. even though my husband is currently pulling a 2nd shift at the hostel and i'm the sole person in my apartment, i am and have been accompanied by the presence of two naughty, yet subdued feline friends, a 47 lb. amazon.com shipment of clay cat litter pellets (tidy cat breeze, you know - so much better than the regular litter (just keep telling yrself that, miss jodi)), a dinner consisting of yellow rice & red beans, approximately 4 cups of a 'treat yrself' $20 bottle of red wine from world market, and the final approximate 120 or so pages of the latest (but not greatest) novel from my favorite author, japanese surrealist fictional writer, haruki murakami.

ever since mr.sassana rolled outta bed that late october eve of the novel's release, and managed to cop me an autographed copy from the midnight release of 1Q84, i've been 'pokeassin' my way through the 924 page experience.

there were times when i flipped through the pages addicted, needing to finish the next paragraph, unable to set the clonker down and complete monotonous yet necessary tasks such as going to the bathroom. i needed to dig deeper, and find where these different paths connected, and to what mystical road this tale would turn down.

i read this on our honeymoon, in sunny jamaica. i read this on lonesome nights while vincent worked overnights. i read this on lazy sunday afternoons, and snuck glimpses into fictional parallel universe just because. and finally, yet still unknowingly inspired by the concept of literature and writing itself, i became motivated to finish it off.

so why am i wishing i had dwelled on facebook and failed at spider solitaire the past two hours instead? what is it, about murakami's latest that has failed to grasp my heartstrings and propel me into his unique lands? why do i feel, dare i say, disappointed? before i come to any conclusions that this book wasn't what i hoped for, i have the need to sit with peers, other fans of murakami, and discuss at length the pros, cons, dissect the characters, plot, symbolism. was it really a failure? or was it show your bones? the yeah yeah yeahs album that almost was, but never quite hit the mark they had set the bar for. but no way could 1Q84 be a case of the sophomore slump, murakami has been at his craft for decades, cranking out masterpiece after masterpiece, capturing the hearts of readers - dreamers and realists alike, for more time than i could appreciate literature.

so why do i feel saddened or let down? like i'm only pretending, to like that christmas gift my mother gave me 3 years past, of elastic waist banded stretch jeans from land's end? i need a book club, or a circle to discuss with. was it the fact that this was murakami's first attempt with a female protagonist in all his years of writing? was it the unnecessary drawn out length, the lost in translation effect of the never-ending stake out, that instead of suspense, only drew boredom?

still, the man is a beautiful writer. there's no fiction in that. his similes and metaphors are almost so obvious that they're genius. his lyrical prose is almost to a disadvantage, it's so clear. and you do hope for the good guys. you want them to win. yet still, i'm so accustomed to his past story telling records that i hoped it wouldn't work out for them. that some sickness would entrap the two main characters. their love would somehow, remain forbidden. and that shit would hit the fan. creating a sense of unavoidable gloom, reminding readers that the world, isn't always the beautiful fantasy we dream it to be.

but maybe that's just me. who am i to judge, anyway? i smell like stale rice and beans, with dried up siracha residue in my short, pink manicured fingernails. sweaty feet, tucked away in my crooked bedsheet and comforter. wearing my cousin lacy's old, blue and gold thin, cotton not quite plaid - definitely not flannel, dress shirt that she gave me when i was 9 years old, and for whatever reason, i still kept and wear some 20 years later, even though i haven't spoken with this cousin in over a decade. feeling the prickled hairs on my legs, tying knots in my messy mane, with oversized tiffany's black square frames sliding halfway down my nose. trying to reconnect with my past by listening to really not that great, even though i want them to be music albums on my ipod. department of eagles. cat power. sounds majestic on the 146 express bus, sure, but not quite so much after a long day of minimal speaking or enjoyment.

ok, enough about me. the facts are that i am still exercising my thoughts. trying to get on the path to writing once again. little by little, i'll release some sort of mental internal wd-brain40, and get my fingers typing the prose they once knew how to conduct. get over this brain blockage, find their way.

fiction will always remain. my polka-dotted tumbler glass of red wine on my nightstand will not. (at least not if miss elliott, who's paw currently dangles centimeters away from it, has anything to do with it).

so with this, i will run a bubble bath and call it a night. dream dreams of a parallel universe made up by one surrealist dreamer from another land. a land where 2 moons exist, and dangers lurk in the hidden crevices. where love beats all, and the unexplainable trumps reality. a fictional world simultaneously both worth dreaming of, but remaining apart of. my real world is much better than one of fiction, my facts are my everything. everyday will become a new mini chapter, in my own personal tale.

cognitive fiction.

2012-01-09T20:23:00.000-06:00

sometimes, but not always, i miss the days of my restless childhood. the days when all i yearned for was to break away, and be free. run away to a city. so big no one could ever find me and i wouldn't have to answer to anyone. thrillseeking. breaking out. making that name for myself, defining who is and what would become, miss jodi robin root, born may 26th, 1983 and raised in south western rural wisconsin.

the days of swinging on gnarled ropes in flea infested hay mows. cuddling half feral, fur matted, eye gunked kittens against their will. tip toeing the makeshift balance beam aisle between the rotating shit belt and mawing cows, subconsciously etching the sounds of swishing cowtails and R.E.M's 1991 hit "Losing My Religion" in my self, so that anytime I would remember my days of girlhood at the Richland Center family farm, the nasally vocals of Michael Stipe would linger on.

wearing breadbags over my shoes instead of boots in the wet winters. oversized glasses. many a puff paint t-shirt, sporting my squiggly 4-letter name. way too many troll dolls, eventually transitioning into way too many lip gloss kits. poorly plucked eyebrows. angst teen journals, shoved into broken shoe boxes, tearing at the creases, secretly jammed under my full bed. only available social activities consisting of strolls to the duckpond on the outskirt of village limits, soaring as high as my pumping chicken legs would allow on the rusty swingset at the town park, daydreaming of first kisses under the baseball diamond bleachers, walks to the bj petro for a mountain dew and icecream cookie sandwich, flavorful chocolate malts and deepfried cheese curds at irma's kitchen. getting the mail at the post office. throwing rocks off the dam in the pecatonica river. fantasizing about first kisses on the merry go round. wishing my glasses weren't so big. and finally, when they weren't, wishing i would grow into my body. hoping my mind would someday soon be appeased. find some sort of something for me in the rural quiet madness.

always writing, always waiting.

i'm no longer in small town wisconsin. nor do i think i ever will be again, at least for the longhaul. my mother has since moved residences, two times in the past ten years. my childhood companion callie has long since passed. my backyard tree fort was sawed to the ground before i reached 20. classmates remain, although ironically enough, their cold shouldered tendencies still manage to haunt my dreams, with dream jodi still vying for nothing more than simple inclusion and friendship. yet regardless of no dreams or aspirations lingering in my past hometown, the skeletons within my subconscious still yearn for my return.

it's been nearly 2 years since i have had a real visit home. there was a 36 hour stint over christmas 2010, in which i sluggishly and slack jawed caved in to a freaks and geeks and law and order svu television marathons on TNT with my stoned 60 year old mother, eating cheeses and slurping box wine all the while. but there was no exploring. no writing. nor has there been in my now, really.

my life has taken off, found its launch pad. its center orbit. meaning, match, purpose.

the skeletons can finally sleep. yet it's still not enough. i no longer need to wait, but the hidden desire and drive to write, to pen it all down for the record, remains.

i wrote a blog the other night while a bit too tipsy for my own good, but never hit publish post. it was a tangent rant of sorts about the plus/minuses of new year's resolutions. i pretty much bashed it since i was too lazy to come up with one for myself in 2012. i figure, what's the point in annual goals? I already have to do that shit at my job, why force myself to commit to ideals for a mere 365 days for self betterment? can't i just do me and live my life how i want, guilt-free if i eat too many calories? i don't commit to tedious objectives, but rather make life long commitments instead. to friends, family, and my husband. i don't need Cosmopolitan telling me to do more ab crunches and what breakfast snacks are sexy. thanks, but no thanks.

i do think, however, that i should make it a point, (note how i'm not saying resolve or make a resolution, here, due to stubbornness alone), to try and write more this year. the desire to describe, and sew a tale of details with words is strong, yet i always seem to stop myself because i never have a solid story to tell. more of glimmers and glimpses into my perspective or ideas that haunt my thoughts. i read a story my husband wrote about a past love the other day. it was really, really good. i got jealous, even, of his ability to craft prose. i caught myself gazing at him while he fake slept in the late morning hours, daydreaming of how happy of a life it would be, if neither one of us had to worry about financial responsibilities, and could rent ourselves a small and simple apartment, big enough for the 2 of us (and our cats), but with separate spaces reserved for writing. 2 desks, and maybe even a typewriter for sport. if we didn't have to work, but instead, were disciplined enough to set time apart each day for our writings. meeting every couple of hours for a lemonade/iced tea break, to chat over ideas and discuss inspiration. collaborating, even, and blending our mutual passion for fiction and non-fiction alike.

that would be nice, is all. but the fact that i even have a husband, career, apartment, and 2 cats is enough for me. but i do think 2012 is my time to discard all baggage. emotional, physical, and ideals. let it all go, and move forward focusing on only my loves and passions. literature, included. penned by others, and possibly even me.

something tells me a trip to wisconsin is in the works. perhaps a trip down nostalgia lane will uproot my humble beginnings and will light that wick, that's been patiently waiting and waivering, inside my creative being for far too long.

moving forward.

2012-01-09T19:39:00.001-06:00

totally fell in love with adele about 1 year too late. this song is intense, reminds me of my days former, when brooding over a man wasn't only make believe. her lyrics are poignant, and an accurate portrayal of a female done wrong in love. brings back the sour taste of past turbulent times. days of weakness and naivety. in that regard, she is a success, and creates the ultimate pop song. girls, just try to not hit repeat on this jam, it's the most addictive chickshit since aimee mann's 'save me.'

music for married people.

2011-11-25T23:06:00.000-06:00

digging through the closet in a half drunken attempt to clean, i came across the shoebox of wedding cards and left-over wedding favors - vin and my mix cd 'vincent and jodi: songs to give you cavities"

here's the tracklisting, we have plenty left-over, so if you want one for xmas, maybe santa can slip one under the sheets? its' a good journey thru vin/my sappy jamz.

(or not). regardless, it's a fun lesson - i think even singlez could enjoy.

1) the flamingos- i only have eyes for you
2) jose gonzalez - heartbeats
3) pixies -gigantic
4) wolf parade - this heart's on fire
5) wild flag - romance
6) beck - think i'm in love
7) robyn - indestructible
8) cut copy - hearts on fire
9) handsome furs - i'm confused
10) hall & oates - you make my dreams
11) mates of state - like u crazy
12) the cure -friday i'm in love
13) bloc party - this modern love
14) yeah yeah yeahs - maps
15) thee oh sees - if i stay too long
16) nouvelle vague - i melt with you

2011's hits & misses

2011-11-25T23:01:00.000-06:00

so it's that time again. the time where jodi is finally de-stressed enough, with a night to herself with no immediate chores/objectives, and just the comfort of her sweat pants, a bottle of yellow tail merlot, the opportunity to run around the empty apartment flashing her tits at the dumbstruck felines, and do whatever the hell she wants. and comes back ashamed to her long term neglected poor excuse for a blog. (hell, it beats folding laundry). just realized it happens to be november, as in the END of november. it's hard to realize this, given i just biked to the radio station after slumming the day off away, wearing only a track jacket hoodie to boot, but eff it, who needs to complain about the mysterious pleasantries? digging the new m83 album, contemplating if there are any additional purchase worth scavenging for at reckless before family burb holiday time tomorrow while the spouse slumbers, but instead i'm focusing on what worked vs. what didn't, this past year in music.

was a pretty nuts year for me. didn't focus so much on the regular rigamarol of musics in 2011. but that doesn't mean there weren't some solid beats slapped on the ole iPod. here's my list so far. perhaps if i get motivated enough before year's end i'll provide summaries of explanation, but without further ado - here's miss jodi robin (root) sassana's top o' the pops.

what i've been listening to (this past week):
1) M83 - hurry up, we're dreaming
2) doomtree - no kings
3) mike & the censations (michael james kirkland) - don't sell your soul
4) dead presidents soundtrack - (yeah, i know it's been around forever, but i'm finally getting my flirt on with my crucial soul roots)

what's made an impact (this past year)
1) jay-z & kanye west - watch the throne

2) pj harvey - let england shake
3) sims - bad time zoo
4) mike & the censations - don't sell your soul5) thao & mirah - self-titled
6) lady gaga - born this way
7) yacht - shangri-la
8) doomtree- no kings
9) lykke li - youth novels
10) wild flag - self-titled

11) tennis - cape dory
12) panda bear - tomboy

honorable mentions (as in, wasn't really expecting much but wound up listening more than i realized)
1) cut copy - zonoscope

2) shabazz palaces - black up

the second date slump
(anticipated top tens of the year, but alas, sadly admitted long-term let-downs, but still solid b/c i heart these guys so much, but let's be honest here, after forcing myself on repeat for 2-3 weeks post-release, i kinda forgot they dropped; just lost that first impression spark :( - (aka 2010's - spoon transference )
1) lil wayne - tha carter iv
2) bon iver - bon iver

3) atmosphere - the family sign
4) tv on the radio - nine types of light
5) bright eyes - the people's key
6) the go team! - rolling blackouts
7) radiohead - the king of limbs
8) the decemberists - the king is dead

downright terrible (and mad at myself for buying into the hype)
1) tyler the creater - goblin

the dream: carrion crawler (empty bottle, thee oh sees remix)

2011-11-22T23:35:00.000-06:00

got plans pre-blackfriday/thursday/wednesday? you know, the nite the real kewl kids come out to play? now you do. empty bottle still has tix on sale. come hither, bitches, and see what miss jodi missed out on in a drunken stupid three quarters into what should have/would have been a super stellar solid set some 5 months prior. thee oh sees are scheduled to rock the empty bottle for two sets, one at 7 for ya'll nerds, and another at 10 for the super kewl dudez (such as yrs truly).

like cool-io, i'll c u when u get thurrr. shit will be bananas.

no kings.

2011-11-22T23:30:00.001-06:00

<br><br>no

ok, so maybe 'ye & jay got my top vote for numero uno for 2011. but fuck if doomtree don't give this egotistical duo a run for their money. (& i just downloaded this noise approx. 1.5 hrs ago, post lame work happy hour).

doomtree 4ever.

my last day as a single lady.

2011-11-03T18:53:00.001-05:00

it rained today. kinda, a lot. i know cuz i was stuck walking in it in a pretty soaked jacket. i really need to get windshield wipers on my glasses, i think - couldn't see a damn thing.

it was my first of 14 days off of work. pretty intense, because that job of mine has consumed 99% of my existence for the past 6 months, and i was pretty nervous to transition the madness on my recently hired soon to be sister in law. don't want her hating me when i come back. she's a tough cookie, though, and can take it.

last night some colleagues from the office took me out for a 'bachelorette' party (although my real one with penis paraphanalia and justin bieber goodies def was waaaaay better and raunchier) at some overpriced irish pub downtown after work. kind of awkward, but also kind of awesome. dr. perlman bought me a shot of citron, and several martinis were consumed, which led to an urgent affair with the porcelain throne soon after my arrival back to the apartment, around 8:30 or so last night. (i'm old, lame, whatever).

the warm wishes and presents from my work acquaintences has been so incredible. i never thought i'd get as much loot as we did from co-workers, but it's definitely helping. turns out planning and implementing a last minute move across neighborhoods and maintaining a comfortable lifestyle in lakeview east isn't the cheapest. but fuck it, we live on the lakefront now. and have furniture. and vinyl. and big tvs. and color coordinated toothbrush holders/soap dispensers/bathroom garbage can sets.

life is comfortable. and sexy. i'm marrying a pretty good catch, tomorrow. his name is vincent. i met him almost 2 years ago, when i began dating a friend of his. this friend, wasn't the fit i wanted in my life at the time. took me on a bumpy emotional rollercoaster of a journey for an entire year. then, as i finally jumped off that dizzying ride, emotionally drained, there was vincent. full of affection and mentally, emotionally and physically, the partner i'd been seeking for all that time. without realizing it. i was very aloof at first, not really ready to break the whole 'bro's b4 ho's' code, but no matter how much i tried to pretend we didn't have an immediate spark, we both knew we did. things got messy for a little while, but after an 'anonymous' love letter, some mystery flowers delivered at my office, and a handful of semi-regular reoccuring 'team friendship' hangout seshes, we inevitably succumbed to our previously denied (by me) romance one liquid courage fueled ridiculous non-date fun night.

we never really turned back, after that. we courted (does that still happen?) for a couple weeks to which point we crossed the official bf/gf bridge. had a lot of fun continuing to get to know one another. butterflies. late night talks. really delicious (too much so) co-cooking dates. a ton of really bad redbox movies. family introductions. a trip to mexico. then, come june 19, 2011, one random bike ride to budacki's turned into a marriage proposal. (in our underpants on a mattress in a bedroom decorated with only a ratted russian doll and a bloody jesus crucifix and a calligraphy poster which read SILENCE). i said yes.

one month post engagement, mr. sassana moved into my dungeon of a garden apartment in the dirty, less hip side of wicker park. we went to jewel a lot. played mario kart. (after we co-invested in a wii together, there was 'no turning back now'). then we purchased a 40 inch flat screen television (now we're definitely in this for the long run). adopted a second cat, the notoriously naughty and awful biter, elliott. we continued to grow and evolve, and became the bestest of friends. had an engagement party that went quite well, thanks to our warm and caring friends and family, and their endless support.

then one day, i woke up and couldn't breathe. not because of my bff 4 lyfe, but literally. and neither could vincent. our apartment had turned into an ant infested dust trap, and living with a 3rd roommate just wasn't working out anymore. i branched out on one of my infamous instant gratification desires to do something new and NOW. 'let's move out,' i said. he said, 'yeah, sure, i can't wait.' but didn't realize i already had a plan in mind. in less than a week, i had arranged for my cousin to relocate from wisconsin, take over my lease in the garden unit, moved to chicago and started a job with my company. vincent got us our dream apartment through his employer, and we now live in a nicer home i've ever had. we have nice things. we clean our apartment together. but shit, was stressful. between moving, working, and barely having a day and half together, we didn't have the time we wanted to prepare for our life together, but we made it work somehow anyway. thanks to friends, family for helping us with our move and planning our wedding on our behalf.

and now here it is, 6:49pm. the night before go-time. vin's in the bedroom, reading a book. the kitties are jingling with their collar bells, and i'm wrapped up in a beautiful granny shawl just presented to me by my good friend sarah, hand knitted just in time for the wedding tomorrow. my nails are freshly manicured, hair dyed, eyebrows waxed, house cleaned, everything except our honeymoon luggage packed.

i'm getting married, tomorrow. to the love of my life - who yes i admit, i haven't known all that long. but even though we may not have met in person years ago, i feel like i've known him (or at least knew of him) my entire life. i wrote about him in my childhood journals, wrote wretched poetry in my highschool years yearning of an intellectual and physical counterpart, and here he is.

tomorrow, i become mrs. jodi robin root sassana. (shit ain't hyphenated, though, just keeping root as a middle name). we're going to celebrate with our friends and family, and then jet off to jamaiaca for a whole week. although i'll miss my babies, i'm pretty sure caroline/renee will take good care of miss mols and els in our absence.

here's to the ending of one chapter, and beginning to a new one - the start to my long overdue and much anticipated, happy ending.

i love you, vincent.

fall is my favorite.

2011-09-29T23:11:00.000-05:00

while it seems impossible for me to evade stress longer than quarter hour intervals, i'm really fucking happy its finally autumn. i guess i never really realized that this is my favorite season. being a bratty spoiled lil piglet, i always presumed summer was the best - school was out, then it was tommy bartlett time, then it was suntanning on the rooftop, unemployed benders with the crew. . . but after this past summer, my energies of youthful regrets went ignored. instead i complained about the heat and cursed the upstairs neighbor with control of the central air thermostat. hid in my dungeon basement unit, only crawling out for the occassional free show or pitchfork. but now that it's autumn, man oh man.

something about the cool breeze at night. the smell of the rain. the chill up my spine in the morning when i finally crawl my lazy ass out of bed. not to mention that nothing makes me feel sexier or more confident than wearing a pair of comfortable skinny jeans, sneakers and a cozy zip up hoodie. for a while i tried to fight this boring ass girl-boy style, but now i relish in it. too bad i cant get hitched in my acid washed forever 21 jeans and my pixies hoodie. . . oh well, the pin-up bride motif i got rockin will have to do, i spose. . .

something about the season takes me back to being 14-15 in argyle. god, i actually kind of miss that place. i would love to go home for a 3 day weekend, but with all the upcoming events and life changes, don't think i can swing it. maybe in january. . . i miss kicking dirty ass moldy wet leaves in my cara beth burnside signature skater vans. drawstring brown baggy jeans from maurice's, and my red and black zip up flannel. blue lipstick. unplucked eyebrows. flat chest. infinity angst and burning scorn. writing desperate letters of desire and affection for an escape and a love in my 9th grade journal. the days when i swore that sublime, beastie boys and blink 182 all tied for best band ever award. (not drinking, ever). pretending to be a skateboarder. working nearly every single highschool football game concession stand to raise funds for whatever miscellaneous nerd club i was involved with happened to be sponsoring that week. going to the goetz theater in monroe. wal-mart.

it seems as if my life finally began in fall. in the year of 1998, was it? 1997? not sure. it was one of those, though. and then suddenly i blinked and all of highschool was ancient history. and then college. and now here i am in chicago, 5 years plus going strong. about to get married. working a big girl job. wondering what will come next. already got a new cat. (thank god). cats are awesome. ANIMALS RULE. i wish i could still pull off blue lipstick (or maybe begin to pull off, not sure i rocked it right the first time around). i wish my fashion sense still consisted of oversized bad alterna-band t-shirts ordered from music mail catalogues, vans sneakers, feather boas, super tight bra-less camisoles, plastic vests and baggy jeans. i was a fashionista.

and i didn't give a damn. i worked my little ass off bussing tables. writing poetry. yearning for more.

now i do give a damn. still working my (no longer) little ass off, but this time in politics. at least politics of the office sort. not really writing poetry. not really yearning for more. i mean, sure i want - but my wants have changed. instead of dreaming some big bold aspiration of moving across the world and becoming super famous and rubbing it in every asshole hater/hateress's faces - i now just want a kitty/boyfriend snuggle party. and maybe some bubblebaths every now and then. (and a new apartment!!!)

but anyway. fall is my favorite. i better enjoy it while it's here. i only have a month before it's time to hang up the rooty ways and settle on down for good. and then it's jamaica. who the hell wants to come back to chicago in november after a week at a tropical getaway honeymoon? not this girl.

man, i wish i had some apple cider and a good ass book and my dude to cuddle up to right now. oh well, this rain fragrant breeze and holey ass rainbow afghan and biting kitten are a second win, i spose.

done rambles. sleep now.

35 Days Until. . . .

2011-09-29T22:55:00.002-05:00

these things dj at my wedding reception. if any ya'll heart me, YOU WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN. 11/4/11, happy village. KITTIES ON DEXXX. they be playin me some hall & oates on da real.

introducing miss elliott root-sassana

2011-09-10T01:08:00.000-05:00

reason number i-lost-count why i wanna (and will, in 55 days to be exact, at least according to our target wedding registry) marry mr. v. sassana - he asked if we could get a 2nd cat. while our initial plans and dreams of adopting a white tiny fluffball male kitten named lyle were diminished (he didn't exist), we did find a 2nd best option--a tiny, 10 month old grey tabby girl by some lame ass name of 'feist'. b/c she was like, feisty, or something. whatever. we adopted that kitten cuz she cuddled the shit outta us and was cute as hell. took her home, and she drools everywhere and refuses to leave the comforts of our bed or her grey kitty bed (that looks like her! ps - i know what ya'll are thinking, mols is mos def not feeling any sort of reverse favoritism, she too got an orange cat bed that looks like her from walgreens - i'm a very considerate cat lady like that).

anyway. this kat is super kewl. mols and elliott don't even h8 each other. (not like creepy cousin kronos). and she's our baby. so that's pretty kewl. getting married. adopting cats. contemplating futures. planning weddings/receptions in dive wicker park bars. life could be worse--(you could find a string in your hoagie).

CATSCATSCATS

this is it, ya'll.

2011-08-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

engaygement party is tonite, kiddos. yers truly is really gonna take some grown up shit kinda leap in the near future. . . .tonite's the closest to a wedding many will get til the reception/soiree next spring/summer, city hall's a mere weeks/months away and then that trip to the exotic island. . . see ya'll tonite, maybe the last party as a root woman. werd. (word? weird? both).
werd.
xoxox miss jodirobinroot

holy crap, writer's block times ten, you guys.

2011-08-10T00:18:00.000-05:00

the past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. albeit not by choice, i wound up taking a 3 day hiatus from chicago to travel across the country for a brief business trip to seattle for a little chummy time with our west coast office folk. it's had its ups (fresh fish & coffee) and downs (miss my 3's company like fam back in the basement), but one thing's for sure and that's that i'm tuckered out. (who knew? jet lag can really catch up with you when you're working all day and night).

i get to know these people i work with on a more person to person basis, and as i learn more about them, i uncover these secret normal people tendencies that i would never expect to find out. but then i pause and think, well my dear, what did you expect? not everyone you don't know is a robot. take myself, for example. i get engaged 2 months ago and then i fall off the blogging planet. i don't write music reviews anymore. i don't write rambles anymore. i don't go out boozin' it up like the social butterfly (deranged, wings torn and ready to crawl back into her cocoon) i was. i don't make unwise decisions (for the most part). and i have this stinking suspicion that i'm growing up. oh, shit.

it makes me yearn for my old individuality. not in the sense of independence or anything. but i want those old traits that always made me stand apart and cause people to raise their brows in confusion. a glimmer of that cascaded after a business dinner this evening. after sitting all day in a pristine office on the 42nd floor of the seattle columbia tower (bestfuckingviewever,btw) following a day of sitting for a 5 hour flight followed by 6 hours sitting in another pristine, (but mere 18 floor) office building - my ass was goddang restless. i mean, literally. having to shove it in tight, black legging tights and parade around in a business suit and skirt didn't help the cause, either. sitting in the midst of an overpriced french cuisine dinner (i literally had no idea what i even ordered, it was some sort of sausage but resembled a $25 morning microwavable sausage link one-two atop some shitty ass garbanzo beans - eventually traded in for another doctor's salmon dish after he peaced out early, thankyouverymuch), i realized i could not stop twitching. like, literally. my legs and ass were asleep and itchy. sweat stuckto my thighs and it was the most uncomfortable dry dance ive never requested. concerned some doc may catch a peek at my cat skull and cross bones foot tattoo, i tried to wait out the twitch routine, but eventually gave in to the nerves and excused myself to the restroom.

fast forward 3 hours and several physician medical jargony conversations later, i was long relieved those tights were crumpled in my fake leather thrifstore maroon sorry excuse of a purse. i was free! no itchy ass cheeks or chaffing thighs! on my way out, one doctor wrinkled her nose - 'are those reaaaal tattoos? wait, what is that - i can see a moon and stars, but on your other foot?' as she peered down at my grotesque feet, i stuttered and tried to convince her they were temporary tattoos. when that tactic failed, i rambled that i had an image to portray and that tattoos weren't perceived as professional or 'clean and polished'. this just confused her more. 'clean and polished?' yes. clean and polished. just like me and the stanky ass tights crumpled in my purse.

this makes me kinda sad that my only alter ego superhero personality or double secret life lies within my tattoos. especially days after i made the decision to remove my nosering indefinitely. you know, to like, be a grown up and stuff. so what is my alter ego? where is my channel of unique identity? sure, i've got the radio thing - which is awesome and i love it and blah blah blah, but that's a hobby. what about me? where do i differentiate between the norms and my peers? why is it that everyone has this preconceived notion that they must be special and stand apart - this entitled feeling of invincibility. or whathaveyou.

really, i just want to be appreciated. or loved. or something. by my family. sure, my friends too. but really, i just want my mom and older brother, sister and their children, to look at me as a role model. or a positive influence. an example that you can pave your own way. and still not be a complete geekazoid.

it's scary, really. to know that i'm typing this longwinded ramble (that's going nowhere, btw) on a work issued laptop. nursing a bellyache from a work induced food coma. wishing i was home in bed with my non work partners in crime. cuddling. feeling warm and not worrying for once.

you guys, i'm actually getting married. and i'm actually doing ok at my job. and my friends honestly don't seem to hate me for being too busy to knock back brews with them anymore. is this luck? is this fate? is this just the turn of the tides? i don't know. i do know, however, that the last secret identity, superhero, alias, whatever you wanna call it, would be that of a semi-successful married business woman. i mean, for real?

i guess so. with that, i reckon i will call it a night and turn in.

hope to see you all a week from this coming saturday. it may be one of the last occassions you see me as an unwedded single woman in a large group setting. . . .

all the single ladies.

2011-06-19T20:44:00.000-05:00

umm, so this weekend didn't exactly turn out the way i anticipated. what i envisioned my regular lazy boyfriend weekend in edgewater to be started off about right, a bike ride, greasy food from budackis, a quick hangout in the park, and random regularities. and then, post greasy food bloating session, laying down for what i thought would be a quick catnap wound up with a marriage proposal. and of course i said yes, duh. even though as my mom kept saying 'O-M-G, Jodi! You told me time and time again you would NEVER get married. And now look at you. You're like a real grown up now!' Yup maw, O-M-G, indeed.

http://www.holyshit.com/beinginloveisawesome

yesteryears & other nostalgia.

2011-06-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

today was one of those days. the grey, wet ones that most people have a tendency not to care for. i'll admit, i sure as hell wasn't eager to get out of my bed this thundery morning, especially with my napping snuggly partner in crime to my direct left (that's his side). but i did, staggering ten stubborn minutes late to the office or not. and as expected, it was a late one. but even with the the 180 window view on murky, lake michigan, i was more exhilerated than not with the mucky weather.

for whatever reason, i dilly-dallyed around the office longer than i needed to, munching like a peasant on the leftover pasta salad from lunch knowing it'd save me money and efforts in wrangling a dinner at home, and then when i finally shuffled down michigan avenue, feeling like a bloated school marm in my lesbo power suit, i had some sort of deja vu. or not really. maybe i thought i saw a ghost or something. but right by the bus stop by the stupid whatever store on my direct left, i swore i saw the cottony top of my grandmother's somehow still classy and blonde, yet never dyed, white crispy head of hair. and of course i knew it wasn't her, (having her passed on some 15 years ago), but yet, i paused.

realized it's been a long time since i was that jodi robin root. the one with grandparents. and i stopped for a minu-second, wondering what she would think of me now. would she be proud of me? all jaded and never-stop-just-go, shuffling along in the dirty city, bitch face 'dont-you-dare-ask-me-for-money-you-cracked-out-fake-homeless-man' permanently slapped on my freckly face? or would she see me as the weirdo tattooed loudmouth fast talker caffeine junky redhead i've become? or maybe, but i doubt it, i'd still be her stable, but good girl grand daughter. the one who got straight a's and never touched a drop of alcohol and swore to always do good no matter what.

whatever she'd think, it was a mixture of both sadness and bitter joy. or something. lately i've been distracted, apart from myself. finding my way. instead of doing the basics, i've been going on this gut kick to follow my heart (or some similar faggy something or another). i feel as if its finally time for the bitter, headstrong and hurtful j.root to retire and allow the kinder, live and let live, even if you fuck me up, kinda flourish. or something.

i miss being 26. thin and simultaneously selfless and selfish. my only responsibility being my nikes and sneezing cat. praising the goodness that be poster of kanye west. singing to tori amos' 'cornflake girl' at the top of my screechy lungs, and not thinking there was anything weird with hating showers. but even now, while i admit to still holding some of these tendencies (but really, mostly missing my smaller figure), i'm happier now than i've probably ever been in my entire life.

so why am i sitting here, squinting and rambling? well, because i have an album review due, of course. and writer's block for assignments ultimately trump writer's block for rambling seshes.

plus, this gives me an excuse to test out my new laptop and show off my mother's newest 'ohjodi, whydidyoudothat' body accessory.

ps - the handsome furs' new album is kewl and stuff, but i still would rather youtube classics such as this vs. write.

erg. (booty, booty, booty, booty backin' e'rywhere).

gagA.

2011-05-24T22:02:00.000-05:00

hey you guys, the new lady gaga came out yesterday. my birthday's thursday. (hint, hint?)

i know, i'm a 15 year old gay boy. i don't care.

heart and soul.

2011-05-24T21:57:00.002-05:00

huey lewis & the news are my ultimate happy cheer up oh my gawd life was once so easy anthem makers. like, 'heart & soul?' instant nostalgia. a time machine to 2009. tessa's car. cruising the express highway in the midst of minneapolis/st paul suburbia. hands in the air, hair in the wind through the moonroof. CRANKING huey Lu like tomorrow wasn't coming. screaming at the tops of our lungs. without a worry in the world. . . heart and soul, indeed.

verymuchonthefence to play this jam next week on chirp. let's see if the wind's in my air for the bike ride to north center. . .

re-offender.

2011-05-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

ok, so this band makes super shitty music videos. that's no secret. but godDANG, if i'm not on an 'ohmygodimisstravis' kick lately. is it something in the air? am i super wimpy all of a sudden? i dunno. but between this and why does it always rain on me, i'm missing these scottish dudes big time. they's can re-offend me anytime they want. (as long as the whiney singer one isnt wearing another goddamn faux hawk like in his other vid). faux hawks are sick.

i have tiny eyes, you guys.

2011-05-24T21:50:00.002-05:00

but god dang, if gettin' new glasses ain't the best. tiny eyes or not, i like looking like a geek.

summah, summah, summurr tyieeem

2011-05-24T21:45:00.000-05:00

dudez, it's here. even though it's a 3 day work week for yers truly, that doesn't necessarily lessen the intensity or long hours playing corporate grownzup. but last night i made the best decision in forever when i drug my workerbees and sexted a few galpals to meet me at milennium park for what was the first rendition of downtown sounds.

yeah, sure, bonnie prince billy was kewl or whathaveyou. but really, drinking brews from walgreens, talking smack to little boys blowing bubbles, watching some warlord play with his 'davidbowieball' (ashleymeekeristhebest), and squirm around in corporate wear while proudly letting my tattoos hang out was really what it was all about. beautiful evening. warm wine/budweiser buzz. relief of an extended upcoming weekend (with zero plans!).

tomorrow marks the end of the work week for me, and then 5 days of nada await. gonna pretend im unemployed again, and ride my birthday bike, like, everywhere. go grab some longoverdue drinks with whoever the hell is out and about, thinkin' rainbo with lisalisa on thurs where i'll proceed to request nonstop 50 cent bday shout outs and then my cookout/beachwood soiree on saturday. will just crawl around my apartment like one of those creepy cave dweller mole creatures before/after. eat cheetos and kiss molly. this is what i want for my birthday. (well, i mean other than introducing the beau to the maternal unit and hammering NUMEROUS shots of cuervo in a hottub, how the hell can you up that?)

but yeah.back to the music i was rambling about or whatever. this summer is going to kick ass. i just know it. work is shmerk, but at least i can afford to have some fun and i got a great dude to rock it with. i don't think there's a show on memorial day monday, but i know there's one the monday after. 6:30 every week, a whopping 2 blocks down michigan ave from my office. iron and wine, ted leo & pharmacists, a whole slew of other indie bands i kinda wanna see but not really as much as i wanna drink outside and roll around in the dirty grass and swear at toddlers.

god damn, summer in chicago is grand. here's to hoping i ain't too old for it.

i'm old.

2011-05-13T23:52:00.000-05:00

it's officially may again. aka, christmas for the rootabega clan. my nephew just turned 13! (holycrap marbs is going thru puberty im dying). my mom, 60. sister, somewhere in her 40s. mothers day. and then, yers truly ages in 2 weeks or some shit. dang, 28 sounds old. i just wish i had balloons and kool-aid mustaches again, really. this getting old thang sucks without the help of cupcakes at school and mr. montgomery's 4th grade phys. ed 'spanking machine.'

i gotta admit, im long overdue for some family time. stress always gets thebest/worst/everything/of/me, so when i'm exhausted/overexerted, sometimes i just need to hide with my criminally insane pack of genes and pretend to hate every second of it. lately, im exhausted to the nines, and if it werent for my supersweet-but-spills-wine-on-me-in-my-sleep-and-pretends-to-wipe-it-off-me-and-says-nothing-until-i-confess-i-have-a-purple-'funguy'-rash-boyfriend, i'd be a mess times a million.

such is life.

got a couple big weekends ahead of me. time to lay low, relaxxx to the maxxx. have some brews, good food, good company, and hopefully turn off the smartphone and ignore the fact that my job consumes 95% of my existence.

one of these weekends is the celebration? (nah, more like, stubborn stance of declaration) of my birth. or something. but instead of getting krunk as hell before 60% of my guests show up and then one yanks my iPod party, ima grill out on that deck of mine and move that shit over to beachwood. memorial day wknd. shit will be bananas, ya'll. but really, i don't give two cahoots over my birthday. instead, i'm just stoked as all fucking hell to see A) my family and B) my friends and C) have 5 days without having to go to michigan avenue in a pencil skirt and heels with a fake ms. jodi root smile plastered on my face.

the one perk to bdays? early birthday presents. what can i say? i've got the best dude, ever.

musick.

2011-05-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

omg you guys, i think i found a contender in my top 2011 releases. two super righteous female acoustic musicians ganged up together and dropped a long awaited debut album on kill rockstars, the one and only thao & mirah. dry, yet fluid, the combination of thao & mirah's soft, yet effective vocal work is undeniably a success. bursts of riot-inducing percussion, more clapping than you'd find at a pep rally in high school musical, keys, synth, girly goodness, it's all there.

this album is the fucking shit. opening up with 'eleven,' listeners are gripped instantaneously. this ain't yer every day girly album. although i'd be lying if it didn't make me want to jump around on my bed, swing molly around by her lil kitty paws and frolick in a field of lilies.

it's been a while since i've had even five minutes to listen to music outside of the radio station, so when i accidently make a discovery like this, it fuels me back to my roots and gets me to where i gotta be. while i'm trapped in my cubicle like a corporate wench, at least i now am supplied with an appropriate soundtrack.

additional 2011 albums that may make the cut released to date? interesting. . . how about?

sims - bad time zoo
lykke li - wounded rhymes
pj harvey - let england shake
panda bear - tomboy
(thao & mirah - self/titled)

maybe?
the go! team - rolling blackouts
shabazz palaces - black up
tyler, the creator - goblin

not making the cut (dang). . .
atmosphere - the family sign
tv on the radio - nine types of light

mission accomplished.

2011-05-13T23:30:00.001-05:00

so, i like, kinda sorta radio dj sometimes, right? no big deal. only like, my creative passion or whatever. sometimes, the initial thrill of it all gets lost in the shuffle with the corporate 9-5 madness (or more like, 8-forever if we're counting the daily hours these days, who-em-i jokin'?) but tonite was one of those shifts where i get a real rise out of it.

forcing myself to prep more and get my rambly sweet self a bit more together, i like to think the past few weeks have been more cohesive and whatnot, but tonite i had a random listener live gchatting away with me for a good duration of my show. i, assumed it was my peer co-dj who is assigned for a show critique and will give me tips and 'jodi-don'ts', so willingly and enthusiastically engaged in miscellaneous music chit chat for a better part of an hour. it was only when 15 mins left of shift, i asked my mystery friend if he knew we had something in the library to which he responded 'how would i know?'

umm, woops. well, regardless, i gained a fan tonight. but more importantly than that, i turned the mystery fan into a fan of that dog. a group which, probably released the most underrated classic album of all time. their 1997 release, retreat from the sun, is a collection of pop hook goodness. sugary sweet female vox with solid upbeat keys, guitar, violins, whatever. it's the best ever. and they now have one more fan 14 years after the fact.

i consider that pretty much, mission accomplished.

oh, and i snuck some 'ye in the shuffle. so that's umm, pretty much always a win in my book.

school spirit, motha fuckaaaa.

setlists and molly hurr: http://chirpradio.org/schedule/94325/jodi-root

tomBOY.

2011-04-18T21:02:00.000-05:00

noah lennox's latest effort, tomboy, is a very likely contender (def top runner as of now) for my top ten of 11 list. a bit more cohesive than yer standard AC, this record embraces all the abstractyfunpop goodness that is found in animal collective releases, but is still off kilter just enough to leave listeners feeling a bit dizzy, like punched in the gut by some love demon or coming off some ferocuious hallucinogenic high. the production is right on, and ditties like the title track, 'last night at the jetty' and the 2nd to last jam are just unmistakenably memorable and amazing. perfect dish washing, make-out or bbq soundtrack, this album is def destined for much radio airplay this spring for yers truly. sofuckinggood.com

i wish i could still write like this.

2011-04-18T20:55:00.000-05:00

since i've been too busy/tired/awesome to actually write write, (thank you CAREERJOB/RADIO/BOYFRIEND), i think i'll just post jodi classix. now that i got my story journal and my folder of witchboard suicide graphic tales from junior high, ya'll prob won't miss half the garbage coming outta me anyway.

behold my first entry, dated September 4th (friday), 1992. this woulda made me 9 years old. dang, i was smooth. droppin' aesop's fables like nothin', son.

"The Bear With Golden Hair"

Long ago there was a bear

With ice-blue eyes

And golden hair

And pale-pink paws, A bright

black nose, And a shiny, silken

ribbon More red than rose.

But though he was a perfect bear,

he had one secret, deep despair:

he did not have a thing to wear

Except a lot of golden hair.

"I Wish," He'd sigh, "I had a pair Of

socks or shoes In reds and blues.

Some pale plaid pants I'd also choose."

For hours he would sit and muse

On splendid clothes That he would wear

Were he not such a fair-haired bear.

One Wednesday Also long ago,

This gold-haired bear Went

to and fro To see the spring

And sniff the bud, When

Amelia Ellen Whitely

Who was holding him quite tightly,

Tripped a little more than slightly

And he fell into the mud.

Amelia Ellen had to stare

There lay her once-so-golden bear

Now muddied up from here to there.

Now muddied up from there to here,

From toe to toe To ear to ear

To heel to heel To knee to nose;

His ribbon hanging limply down,

A wet and brackish Blackish brown

a lot more mud than rose.

She took him home and ran the tub--

And started in to soap and scrub,

To comb and brush, To rinse and rub.

From dusk she worked Into the dawn,

And as the sunlight lit the lawn

No mud was there upon her bear.

But, oh, Amelia had to stare, His hair was

also gone. then, her needle threaded tightly

Amelia Ellen Whitely Sticked with

energy and care Daily, noon, and

nightly. She made bear pairs of socks

and shoes. In rosey reds and azure blues,

Jackets, Gloves, and pale-plaid pants

At which each passerby would glance,

Exclaiming with approving "oh's."

"I say, my dear, Do give a stare

At yonder very-well-dressed bear.

If I but had such splendid clothes."

Long ago There was a bear Without a

single golden hair. He also did not have

a care. Oh, happy hair-free

carefree bear.

jodi robin root : the weirdo.

2011-04-18T20:42:00.001-05:00

st8 outta my 4th grade story journal. my teachers hadtouv thought i was hella kewl.

in case you can't decipher my A+ penmanship, a transcription of pure poetry:

"My Favorite Place"

My favorite place is in my closet. It is a very big closet. I have some stuff in there. My cat likes it as much as I do. She used to eat and drink and go pody in there. I like it very much.

I think it is very nice. It has very beautiful wallpaper. It has all of my games and instruments.It is the biggest and prettiest closet I have ever had. It is very peaceful. It is very pretty.

yeah i came to party, but i dont wanna party witchyoo.

2011-04-18T20:30:00.000-05:00

what has happened to jodi robin root the first?
does she still live for discovering new jams?
sweet beats? ramble about lame nobody cares about trend buzz bands?

sorta, kinda. this week at least.

e'rybody knows i heart me some mad slug action. and dang, was i super hella righteously stoked for the family sign. ever since i caught word that sluggo was droppin' a new full length, his follow up to 09's 'when life gives you lemons, you paint that shit gold,' and 'blood makes the blade holy, to all my friends' dual ep effort, i was like WHOA. the first single 'just for show' was bangin' on the nose. total ex-lover 'you dont really want, you dont really want me to goooooo'. that shit was on repeat.

but then that second single, 'she's enough?' sigh. cmon man, you can do better. and then i heard that camping song. and then the over synth dub. and then. . . aw man, where the heck is my lucy ford, god loves ugly, reflections, modern man hustle? well, it ain't on this record. but you know what? just like lemon's, this shit eventually grew on me. there are some pretty tight joints on here.

i wrote a ramble for chirp. a review of sorts (which got chopped down cuz i sorta geeked out a lil.) if you weren't a fan of atmosphere before the family sign, you def won't be after the family sign. but if you were hardcore gangstaaaa like me before, i wouldn't give up just yet. mr. sean daley always has a welcome spot on my iPod, fleckled in bird poop residue or not.

Atmosphere/The Family Sign/Rhymesayers/2011

The last couple Atmosphere records took more than a handful of listens before I was able to fully appreciate the newer direction Slug, aka Sean Daley, aka ½ of the Minnesotan indie hip hop duo Atmosphere, has taken his and Ant’s latest dark grown up style--(And this is coming from Super Atmosphere Mega Fan 10000, for realizes Google image “slug atmosphere” and you’ll see me geeking outs aside him SXSW ‘08 on page 6). Long gone are the days of over honest grit rhymes of slitting throats, bitter tales of self-deprecating love gone awry, groupie invitations and Midwestern binging.

While 2008’s When Life Gives You Lemons took a more story telling turn, The Family Sign continues on a fictional spiel of adulthood, but regardless of slick production and Slug’s conversational speak rap delivery, some of the tracks may leave listeners scratching their heads. The production has never been better, yet numbers like “Became,” (Camping? Wolves? Really Slug? I get this is a metaphor and stuff, but dang . . . gimme Lucy Ford back), and “Bad Bad Daddy” (almost killed the record) are straight up cringe worthy if you pay a millisecond to the lyrical content. Those bummers aside, The Family Sign remains a pretty solid effort. From the opening dreamy guitar/bass strums of album beginner “My Key,” to the synth heavy beds of “Ain’t Nobody, “its apparent fans are taken on a different kinda ride than past Atmosphere efforts. The real treats are hidden amongst the album, including the slow-down gem “Who I’ll Never Be” and the western accordion infused “Ain’t Nobody.” Album closer “My Notes” is a brief (1:39) flirtation to what the album’s got to offer if you want just a taste; while singles “Just for Show” and “She’s Enough” are exactly the banger beats you’d expect outta Daley.

Recommended: 4, 8, 10, 5, 13, 14, 1

said you were an ugly girl, but i like the way you play.

2011-04-18T20:14:00.000-05:00

ughldahliejlg,. i like tori amos. and the early 90's. and angsty ferocious estrogen infused fuck you piano rock. this song makes me want to give myself a facial (just did), run really really fast (noway, it's snowy outside and i just inhaled 3 slices of hella greasy meat lovers' pizza) and give everyone in argyle the middle finger.

instead, i'll just ramble and post some dumb youtube vids and yell insissently at a snottynosed molly.

the metamorphosis.

2011-04-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

ok. so i'm not exactly a bug or frog or something. but goddang, if i don't feel like i've been through several physical/mental/emotional/whoa-yer-a-different-jode-a-ma-toad-something stages.

i had 2 schlitz's (in a mug). a double cheeseburger (courtesy a co-worker). and one extremely delicious $10 maker's manhattan (my newest vice, but really only at the swanky-slash-shitty-basement-bar in the nbc tower after work).

so i guess, sure, i've had a couple beverages or whatever. but dang. walking home, or at least to my public transit to the blue line, i had this crapshoot of an epiphany. i was just strollin', enjoying the spring weather, early/late sunlight, breaking into sunset. 7:15 pm, strolling pseudo-drunkenly past the beggars, walking under trainlines. saw the skyscrapers. the river. the skyline. the, (sigh), downtown chicago cityscape. and naturally, i was listeining to the most random selection on my ipod, and was just digging my grubby lil' unpainted claws into no doubt's '93 release 'tragic kingdom.'

wasn't sure if it was, 'whoa-my-god, i'm not 13 anymore, i think i got my revenge finally' epiphany from the angsty days of 'oh-just-you-wait-argyle, ima bigger and better girl than all ya'll cowdudes', or if it was 'awww man, i miss the days of denying a not-really-but-kinda-i-have-an-8th-grade-crush-on-ryan-wilson (even with his big ears) kinda thing. who cares. i all of a sudden realized 2 things: 1) i'm an adult. like, totally and unescapedly, ima fuckin' adult. i have not just a job, but a grown-up career job. (as i stumbled in my $90 express slacks and non-dry cleaned wrinkly suit jacket). and 2) im not in wisconsin, anymore.

finally gone. and separated. from my (jodi) roots. from my childhood. early adulthood. youth. whatever.

i'm in this purgartory of sorts. but shit ain't all that bad.

still, something about gwen stefani's nasally mall-pop girly vocals (and the sad but still guilty pleasure fact that i knew all the 'super deep men suck' lyrics) just hit me hard.

while i tried to fake stroll in my cheap pay less 'walking' shoes, (because let's face it, while i can rock them 4 incher heels in the office, homegirl cant quite exactly strut down michigan ave at a clipping pace down that subway tunnel), i missed them old days. the days before boys. the days when no doubt and garbage OWNED my cd walkman. when dark blue lipstick from deliah's mail order catalog and long skin tight ankle dress skirts (withOUT bras) was totally in. (or at least according to the wormy unibrowed vision of 14 year old miss jodirobinroot). white mascara. booty shorts. yellow hypercolor platform shoes. doc marten boots. snowboarding. pining after boys from neighboring rural villages. purple/pink lava lamps. feather boas. vinyl vests and pink pleather pants. spencer's fucking gifts.

14 was so fucking cool. and 15? goddamn, i had the courage to chop off all the locks and rock the butch lezzy cut hot. and i didn't fucking care one bit. now? i dream of a cute pixie do. but the best i can do is take misleading facebook profile pics and try to fake out my pals. i mean, fer real? what happened to ballsy jodester. i used to legitimately not give a fuck. sure, i was clueless. but shit was real.

so yeah, i got down to some spiderwebs. im just a fucking girl, dawg. did i silently sing all the words to 'happy now?' spitefully in my head to every ex-makeout/bf/not-really-love-interest in my head on the cta? hell yes i did. walk into my apartment, peeing full stream and glaring at my pay less kicks, i totally drunkenly let loose to some tone def shout singing of 'don't speak,' much to miss molly's dismay. sunday morning? kel-nik, can't miss you damn homegirls enough. r.i.p. east wash and jt's friendly fucking tavern. (not to mention, jodi discovering her womanly curves at much too late of an age, awkwardly sucked into a skintight gadzooks' floral tan mini dress that belonged to one miss kelly blanke while coffeetabletop jukin' to some kanye's workout plan).

the dells. river falls. argyle/oakley. minnesota. argyle, mother fuckin' wisconsin. i love my girlfriends. i loved me. being all awkward and cute as fuck. without having the slightest clue.

so here i am, 8:30 pm. sitting in my bright ass rainbow afghan, cat calmly chillin' at my feet. too apathetic for productivity, (although i feel like finally i'm an official chirpette! 7 months in and i'm on-air, a member of the music & promotions dept, and have a realzies chirp email address). loving that i'm living my dream. community radio. cat lady. city girl. and i guess, a 'corporate animal,' (at least according to one of my physician colleagues, that is).

oh, and i happen to be dating the man of my dreams - is that a bonus too?

now, if only no doubt wasn't lame and the blue lipstick/white mascara/short-boy-haircut/no bra look would make a comeback. . . .

dang.

it's happening again.

2011-03-30T00:20:00.000-05:00

it's the next chapter. the circle is folding. people are departing chicago. but this time, i'm staying put. i am losing my grip it took so long to attain. but i have bigger things, now. better stability. good job. good apartment, roommate. boyfriend. feeling of belonging. but still, i will never forget my friends. the key ingredients that helped me re-find myself that summer of 2009. i love you more than you will ever realize. thank you for helping me be me. angel pelipada, i'm going to fucking goddamn miss you more than you will ever now. goddang silly half intoxicated non-stop tears and bff who make steak dinners and call me out. why does all that is good end. sad face.

infatuation intoxication (translation: writer's block).

2011-03-21T23:19:00.000-05:00

it's 10:39 pm on my sunday, real time monday. all i want to do is write. or sleep. or distract my mind away from sunny beaches and crashing oceanic waves. but alas, i have this wonderful obstacle known as writer's block. i need an assignment. a nagging 'do this' something or another to pressure me into pummeling out a masterpiece. i've been wracking my brain for some sort of inspiration or real life tale to transcribe into my first masterpiece, but i don't think the things i've been circuiting with for the past few months would amount to anything more than two word mentally disabled nonsensical outbursts. 'CATMAGNET'. or maybe, 'CLOWNSHOW.' fuck, i can't think.

this year's been surreal. pretty awesome, though. but still, i sometimes catch myself waiting. things can't always continue to progress better and better, can they? is there going to be a secret catch? there usually 9 times out of 10 is one. and when i finally catch onto the snag, i realize that hook is going to cut a lot deeper than i ever would have imagined when i first tossed the lure. but instead of overworrying and being catlike cautious, i'm trying something new. i'm going with my gut, head and heart. (this typically works better than going solely with my vagina).

so far, so good.

i have a careeresque job. i live in a convenient and nice neighborhood with a decent apartment and roommate. my cat continously advances in her daily affections with me, today we crossed the line from hugs and kisses to her feebly, yet insisently making strides towards biting or batting my nipples. i'm in a pretty incredible relationship. just got back from a trip to mexico. saw, splashed and loved the salty, light waves in person for the first time in my 27 years. excessively indulged in never ending buffets and mexican beer and fruity cocktails. copped a tan. got sand in my ass. copped a bloody, fatlip. rode in a taxicab backwards down the world's steepest cliff mountain road. ordered a meal in spanish at a chili's in the guadalahara airport. una mesa para dos personas por favor?

my break was a good one. but still, the break after the break back in my own bed in my own apartment in my own city was the best part. relaxing, sleeping, snacking, and laughing. is romance the ultimate cockblocker for productive writing? it seems to be a double edged sword - love and romance. when you are swept up in its seductive whirlwind, your head is full of x's and o's, fantasies of last name swapping, rainbows and candy colored hearts - ultimately preventing any sort of rationality, let alone energies to dedicate to actually putting sentence A behind sentence B in a constructive manner.but then, after it all crumbles or comes to its ultimate demise, the sorrows and brokenness, the jadedness, the hurt and poison, it floods more quickly onto the scroll than the ink from the quill. so what happens when you find yourself dealing with tidbits of column A and column B? humility from your own naivety of former self destruction and the sense of being robbed. but then, a heavy, pounding, unavoidable intoxication from cupid's sweetest bow? i guess you are kept in check, kinda. but you still can't write for a damn.

growing up is hard. adults really need to take more vacations. longer vacations.

i'm starting to get sleepy. i am dreading returning to the madness of my office tomorrow morning, especially since i managed to lock myself out of my remote email account so i wasn't able to even take a sneak peek at the turmoils that await my return.

i realize it's been a while since i've mentioned anything of music as of late. tomorrow, (if i'm not dead as a doornail), i plan on checking out fujiya & miyagi at the mid. their newest album, ventriloquizzing, was hardly mind blowing (at least compared to their sophomore effort), but i've got a stack of free tickets and a handful of lovely ladies interested in being my date(s), so i'm gonna do my best to make it happen. doubt i'll have the energy for a review, but SIMS is playing schuba's on 3/27, and if he brings even an iota of a fraction of what he brought at the fine line in mpls last month, shit will be dope as hell. then, tv on the radio will be at metro in april, and i just received three 3-day passes for pitchfork. who's to be my date is to be determined at this point (until a certain someone requests off from work, that is). but i must admit, reading all of the blogs and twitter feeds re: sxsw this past week made a small pocket in my gut weep. i missed a kanye/jay-z collaboration. doomtree was there. the strokes. but whatever, even after my OD of pina coladas and warm bottles of dos equis, i would never trade the 4 days i had on the beach with my boo for any orgy of over hyped chillwave buzz acts and tangles of american apparel accessories. (although the shiner bocks would have slid down my throat a tinnnny bit easier).

rambleocity.com.

that's where i'm at. hopefully this week won't be too brutal. in addition to my new responsibilities with CHIRP in the promotions department, ima try to collect some organized thoughts into constructing some readable words for this here lil blog.

til then, ima drool all over this cathairy pillow and dream of Chewy, el triste hombre de puerto vallarta and his poor lost hermano.

mylifeisarunonsentence. (or a prolonged indian chant).

2011-03-07T22:31:00.000-06:00

funny how long it can take for things to progress. seemingly stewing in a relentless rutting slump. when in reality, things are transitioning behind the scenes more quickly than you could ever begin to fathom. chapters progressing. pages flipping. next thing you know, it's years later. acquaintences forgotten. next steps and stories only half written, crumpled in a ball, stuck between the sticky dirty bedroom wall and plastic garbage can.

today i thought about friends forgotten. realized some good quality people in my life are no longer in it. i remembered one of my best girlfriends in college, who now has two children that i have never even met. i couldn't even tell you their names or how old they are. i thought of friends i spent the past two summers with, who have all gone one way or another, traveling or relationships or just outgrown chicago, the city i've grown to know and love. on the dreary rainy friday this week past, i rode the brown line to irving park from downtown. remembering my 4 year former daily commute, and how i had memorized each stop. the nostalgic feeling of routine. standing against the filthy metallic pole, gripping more tightly than i need to, (as per my usual uptight self), it hit me that it has been ten years since highschool graduation. five since college.

where had everyone gone? my distant twisted family? forgotten childhood neverquite friends and classmates? batting my sleepy eyelashes and keeping my angry 'im-on-public-transportation-perma-bitch-scowl-dont-bug-me-you-creepy-homeless-man-frown', it suddenly hit me that i wasn't really sure where i went either. what happened to me. when did i ever decide what to be when i grew up? am i grown up? it's been ten years. i'm sure as hell not in argyle anymore. yet, here i am. living life day by day, growing past each obstacle and hurdle, making the most out of what i can.

not doing such a bad job, either. but still. who the hell woulda ever thought id be who i grew up to be. or live where i now live, with who i live with. be friends the people i've met. i have no regrets. although i'd be lying if i said i wouldn't do things differently on an impulse. if i had the option and put thought into it, i dont think i'd make (m)any changes, but if it was on impulse, i know i would. i can be a bit of a hostile firecracker at times. especially if you fuck with my shit. i'm a lioness and shit. leave my cubs the fuck alone. but as much sense as i don't make right now, i have this gut feeling shit is working out the way its supposed to.

i was watching my so called life tonight. and the concluding scene was the episode where angela ditches on her mom's mother/daughter fashion show so her little sister can have the chance to work the runway. the song they play at the uplifting heartwarming life lesson narration is none other than enigma's 'return to innocence.' this pure moods shit took me back to fifth grade. when i shamelessly rocked the ugly big glasses/wet tangly curly mullet look. and sang indian chants in my bedroom. and the lion king was by far, my favorite movie.

this made me proud that i now am the person i was then. and still am. i may no longer croak indian chants in my bedroom and would never willingly grow another mullet, but was i just crooning whitney houston's 'i will always love you' in my bathroom while flossing my teeth sporting a wicked foul high pony? yes. have i listened to the bodyguard soundtrack in the last 13 years? no. am i a weirdo? thank goodness, i reckon so.

so this prolonged tangent ramble about absolutely nothing is this and this only. i miss yesterday. and the day before that. but i think more than that, i just am having a hard time waiting for tomorrow. because goddamn it, i'm ready for that next novel to fucking take hold and remove itself from that wilting shoebox that rotted underneath my childhood bed.

.(to next chapters and new beginnings).

david lynch is my lifeline.

2011-03-01T22:29:00.000-06:00

the other nite when i was at chirp getting ready for my marathon friday shift last week, the dude before me was rocking some surfer blood, track 'twin peaks.' i have the surfer blood album and was always kinda on the 'eh, they're pretty decent but nothing mindblowing' sorta fence with these hyped dudes, but for obvious reasons, was always much more apt to play this particular number vs any other. (completely 150% based on title track alone). and while i didn't rock any surfer blood myself that set, i did drift toward's beach house's 'silver soul,' in which the enchanting miss victoria legrand ghostly croons, 'it's happening again, oh-oh-ohh, it is happening aga-ah-eh-ah-eh-a-ennnnnnn,' taking me back to my most beloved gentle giant in the black lodge.

it was a sign. a sign that as each chapter evolves in my life, i need to turn to my homeboy david lynch. he first was my depressing solace from a pretty major break-up. then, he was my first professional job distraction pride and joy distraction. then, suddenly twin peaks turned into the soundtrack/back-up of my 'imboredandneedsomethingtotalkabout' existence.

but no matter what, i can't tire. no memories of tp cohorts or situations can spoil my love for special agent cooper or his lameass witicisms. i will never forget my head scratching flabbergast of the moment josie turned into a drawer doorknob. or the fucking jaw dropping amazement of the show finale as coop turns to the dark side of bob and all that is evil of the black lodge. i can shrug off the ridiculousness of nadine and her roided out sick excuse of a plot twist high school love affair. even norma's dumb husband and leo coke trafficing whateverness. but leland palmer's geek out? the man from another place's ritual boogy moves? that creepy fucking dumb opening sequence number of synthed out chimework? omg, i need you back in my life pleez.

if only to visit me. i found this on my own. i loved this on my own. i pushed it onto others, and regardless of their love/disdain, twin peaks still belongs to me. and mr. lynch, i see absolutely zero reason why a happy girl can't get sucked back into your finicky fables.

josie, i'm sorry you got twisted into wood homegirl, but my ladylove margaret is calling me back. time for some fucking tar gum, bitches.

reason 5,999 why the go! team is the best ever.

2011-02-27T23:53:00.000-06:00

my gay former step dad (the monster).

2011-02-27T23:41:00.000-06:00

my mom called me the other day. 'so it's official,' she sighed, taking a drag on her cigarette.

'what's official?' confused, my mom has a tendency to lean towards drama.

'him. he's got a boyfriend now. it's all over facebook.'

my mom, trying to be strong and remain cool, unaffected. here's a woman pushing 60 who doesn't even know how to leave a voicemail message on her answering machine, let alone use a computer or navigate a facebook page. and despite the difficult past year and a half that she has led, she's still standing on her own two feet. single for the first time in 21 years. completely independent and not having anyone else relying on her for the first time in 42 years - no children or partner needing her financial and emotional support to get by day to day. no pets.

both my brother and i grew up without fathers. neither of us have ever met our biological fathers, and neither of us ever considered any of my mother's suitors a worthy replacement enough to refer to some man as 'dad.' i guess i had a closer excuse to that of a father figure than my older brother did, mom having been with this particular man for 21 years. age 7 to adulthood. but that monster was never my dad. i guess in college it got easier describing him as my 'step-dad' to people who didn't know him personally vs. 'my mom's fuckhead asshole live-in boyfriend.'

i never liked him. maybe it was the time he chucked a bag of m&m's at my leg, splitting the candied pieces and bruising my thigh and calling me an 'impatient fucking little bitch' when i was 7 and asked for a snack.

maybe it was how he encouraged my mom to have 'just one more' drink. or maybe it was how he called me a 'worthless fucking cunt bitch' on my 16th birthday after i failed my driver's exam. it could have been the time he threw me down on the floor and chased me with a chair, threatening to slam it in my face when i neglected to take my laundry upstairs in a timely fashion. oh, or the thanksgiving i surprised my mom with a visit from college and he locked me outside in the below zero temperature without a jacket. that was a good time. or the time i came home seeking comfort after an instance of sexual abuse and he told me to 'quit being such a selfish cunt' because i was upset that he and my mom went out bingedrinking instead of my mom spending the day with me.

he had a temper problem. always so angry. so fucking out of control. he would break things. slam cabinets until they fell off their hinges. shatter glass windows. scream and scream and scream. yell so hard he would foam at the mouth and spit in your space. break everything. i finally hardened up around high school and would never sleep without a secret knife tucked under my mattress in my bedroom. i dont' know if my mom ever knew about that. but i had to watch my back. and phones. i would never leave my room int he midst of one of his fits unless i had a cordless phone with me, with the '9' and the '1' entered, thumbing the second '1'.

he tried so hard to get me to call him dad. my mom would try to guilt me into sending him fathers day cards, which i never did. even at age 7/8, i was so puzzled by my mom. why did she choose him? why, when he would say these incredibly offensive slurs to me, would she stand beside him? wasn't i her baby? wasn't i good enough for her love? how could she be with someone who called her little girl a cunt?

i'll never know the answer to these questions. but being an adult now, and having found myself in some less than ideal relationships, i guess i can empathize with how love can make you blind. maybe. but still.

that never changed my love for my mother. despite her poor taste in men, she was still all i had. i was lucky enough to have one incredible older brother who would step in when necessary and play the parental role. buy me christmas/birthday presents. tell me he loved me. congratulate me on good report cards and cheer me on at my track meets, school plays. when mom would be drunk/passed out. when her partner would encourage her alcohol/drug abuse.

the fucker crossed the line. anyone who knows me personally knows the jist of what went down. asshole had a temper tantrum at his work. lost his job. mooched off my mothers' $12/hour temp work salary. maxxed out credit cards to pay the mortgage. lost their house. started hanging with some young boys. got beat up (multiple times). got arrested for drug possession. beat up the young boys. got arrested again. beat my mother up. got arrested again. turned her world upside down. got arrested again.

she's been on her own without him in her new house since december, while they've been split up really for over a year.

apparently he got a facebook page. you can look him up, brent duckwitz, a real winner. with his meth face and yellow teeth. he's in a domestic partnership. and is interested in men.

so i guess my former-abusive-step-dad-but-not-really is gay. my mother's ultimate humiliation. he's slurring her name all over facebook. referring to her as a drunk and 'crusty.' if i ever see this man in person ever again, EVER. i don't think i'll be able to hold back my claws. that knife that was stashed under my mattress however many years ago, he's somehow managed to get his hands on and delve into my mother's pride and being. it makes sense, i suppose, where all of his unnecessary anger was stemming from. from this denial to admit who he really was his entire life. he was married for years before my mother too.

i hate him. so much. my mom is better off now. she might be lonely for a while. and embarassed. and sad. but at least now she is safe. and her eyes have opened up. but i have to say, when she started choking her sobs and muffled over the phone, 'jodi you were right all along, i should have listened to you from day one. . .' it wasn't the 'i told you so' gratification i had so yearned for in high school.

fucking facebook. fucking assholes. fucking life. just let my mom be.

i can't remain angry forever. but still. god. damn.

it's not going to stop. until you wise up.

2011-02-27T23:14:00.000-06:00

tonight i stood in the rain for what felt like an eternity. but it wasn't. in actuality, it was probably more like 28 minutes. the bus tracker currently stuck on '2 minutes' or 'arriving now,' whereas it must have been the ghostbus from ghost world because that shit never came. i was in a really strange mood. not gloomy. not sad. in fact, if anything, i've been on a really great path lately. seeing things for what they are. phases in my life leading in more appropriate directions. more positivity. sans manipulating mind games. you know. wake up call. and it turns out it's pretty nice to be awake.

but seeing the rain. it wasn't cold. it wasn't warm. it was steady, quiet, and real. the white flashes of sky lightning, without any jagged bolts. just flashes of white, illuminating the dark sky. the wetness reflecting the christmas hues of red and green from the stoplights onto the surface of slick ashland avenue. the desolate streets without their typical traffic. the wetness in the air. my glasses smeared, and foggy from the rain. still i stood alone in the bus stop, waiting, patiently for once if you can believe it, for the forever delayed number nine.

after my recent download music kick, you'd think i'd be in paradise with my ipod. pop in some old animal collective, some gritass tyler the creator, pepped up go! team or fuck, even that new guilty pleasure lady gaga single. but nah. instead my thoughts turned to the apathy and numb void of yesterday and i hypnotially rolled that wheel up to my a's where i landed on aimee mann. the magnolia soundtrack. this film. this soundtrack. so fucking heavy. yet, these songs of hers strike and affect me unlike any other female songbird. i never really had any personal memories or instances that these would allude to, nor do they remind me of anything in particular. but recently, on that goddamn busride through the snowtacular of northern wisconsi last weekend, i had some time for massive overdue personal reflection. these songs played on shuffle.

wise up. it's a message. to all of those in need of a new personal path. i guess this was me, a month or so back. stuck on this circular path of self destruction, intentional or not. knowing i needed to 'wise up' and face the music. the future. and step into a new pattern. which i did. and now in retrospect, i realize it wasn't just me who needed this education, this straightening up. it's so fucking cliche and lame, i know this. but come on. it's not going to stop until you fucking grow up. and if you don't take chances, you're doomed to lead a very miserable existence. after about 7 consecutive listens to this track, i yearned for yesteryear. the days of argyle, wisconsin. where it would rain and rain and rain and rain. and i would sit on that damned stoop on 503 north state street. and maniacally run into the bare streets and scream. throw my body down the hill into the park across the way. get sopping wet. dirty. and just lose myself.

i really wanted to run into the streets of chicago tonight. not to get hit or anything, there were barely any cars present. but just to lose that grasp of reality, the struggle of balancing pain and pleasure. of knowing what's right and wrong. of having to feel. i just wanted that release. and to just escape the world. even for five seconds. but the flash of lightning brought me back. and the song eventually changed onto 'save me' which then brought me to the present day. of how i am where i am now - emotionally, professionally, physically. i'm in a very good place. it's not always simple every step of the way, but for the first time in my adult existence, i feel confident and assured that things are as they should be. i smile more than not. i'm comfortable. i look forward to tomorrow. even when stress is running rampant, i know that everything is going to work out. i've found my strength. that slap in the face that i neeed for so long finally came, and now my eyes are wide open.

i have finally allowed myself the privilege of happiness. but i still sit here in my bed, curled up with my cat in my feet, holey flannel cocooning my body, wishing that things hadn't evolved in the ways they have. people have been hurt in my life recently and i almost feel guilty or ashamed that i'm doing so well. my mother has called me a few times in the recent days and i wish there was something i could do for her. my friends have undergone some shitty personal times and i feel bad that work makes me so exhausted that i'm unavailable for friend/shoulder to cry on movie nights. i feel bad for things out of my grasp and control. is this the control freak in me? perhaps. i would be lying if i said there wasn't a tiny part of me that wasn't still angry. angry with the world. with individuals. with circumstances out of my reach. angry that i'm angry. but as each day passes, i begin tofeel a stronger wave of calm. i'm ok with things. i'm allowing myself this rite of happiness. taking the path that feels right.

in 2.5 weeks i'm going on vacation with someone that makes me fucking happy. typically i wouldn't splurge on last minute impulsive trips to mexico, but what the hell. after the year i've had, i fucking deserve it. i think it's karma, or something. i was blinded for so long, that i finally wised up. took care of myself. got my life back to pieces. and now it's time for me to reap the rewards.

i guess, what i'm getting at is that it's not too late. after my own personal do-over, i realized there's still opportunities. for second chances and new beginnings. just know, it won't stop. until you make a change.

which is precisely why i did not run into the rainy streets this evening. but instead, bit my tongue, and eventually changed my iPod to the new radiohead album instead.

dizzy spells of musical infatuation.

2011-02-27T22:50:00.000-06:00

animal collective pretty much blew my mind 2 years ago. merriweather post pavillion nabbed my top pick of 09 records, and i'll admit i never really paid much attention to back homework for past releases. nor did i focus on solo albums. but the minute i popped in panda bear's latest single off his upcoming release 'tomboy' at chirp last friday, i've been screwed. noah lennox's swimmy, disoriented ambient dizziness is a spell i can't shake. 'last night at the jetty' is one of several hot jams with the jodester right now. even though the girl with green hair who lives above me is having some rough sounding sex right now, i don't care. not even slightly annoyed. because this ditty is on and it makes me want to swim in the dirty rain heavy streets of chicago. just chill. cannot wait for this record. if you wanna stream it, its at p4k. if you wanna trust my indiesnob judgement, i've attached a legal free download link for you here.

sometimes?

2011-02-23T22:55:00.000-06:00

sometimes i run, sometimes i hide. sometimes i put awesome bitchin' heart signs high above my head. sometimes i deserve assholes to pollute my aura. other times i deserve total awesomeness to unsuspectedly infest my life.

right now i just feel like a choad. britney spears suxxxx. but this song reminds me of highschool. and sometimes, baby all i need is time. other times i just need a dreamy beach brah to toss a football alongside me on the beach.

right now i just need a vacation.

thankgodforawesomeboyfriendsandpuertovallarta.

a dedication.

2011-02-23T22:46:00.000-06:00

when i was 14, i had it in for this dude. it was some total romeo and juliet kinda ish. he was the 'wrong side of the traxxx' sorta dude. i was the 'not really white trash but sorta' kinda tween.i wore long skirt dresses and had bushy eyebrows. outgrew my deliah's dark blue goth lipstick phase but hadn't quite adjusted to the contact lens kinda spurt. pretended to almost wanna skateboard. not quite hick-punk, almost there.

i remember buying third eye blind's 'semi-charmed life' single on cd. it came in an orangey yellow kind of cardboard sleeve with a cheap black plastic pull-out disc holder. they bleeped out the part about doing 'crystal meth until you break' verse. that was funny, because landis and i totally knew what they said. we were hardcore like that. stephen jenkins was sort of my dreamboat. (funny, how this preceded my mark hoppus infatuation period but stemmed after my post antonio sabato jr. phase).

i remember this dude i really dug when i was 14. my first real date. or series, really. he's a solid dude. i still talk/know him to this day, although regrettably i haven't spent much time with him or talked to him as much as i should. we lead different lives. followed different paths. perhaps i knew this was our route back then when we first met, but somehow some odd 14 years later we still know one another, and i sincerely wish him the best. but yeah, damn. time passes. and quickly. i met him at a classmate/friend's wedding thing, at least that's what i think it was. we talked until 5 am, which is a long fucking time for a freshman in highschool. it was in monroe, wisconsin, at some ghetto ass townie motel.

i don't remember much except for innocent punching and sorta not really smack talk flirting. we eventually had a secret makeout session under some baseball field bleachers about a year later when i was a whopping 15 (learned how to pluck my eyebrows, but still into blink 182). it was secret, though. for whatever reason. all i can remember is something about a camoflauge mini dress, ugly yellow platform boots, a bad movie at the goetz theater, and throwing my icecream cone on the ground. even then, i was smooth. mad moves, sweetie.

the next few years were a bit tumultuous. if that's a word. he was the first dude that bit me by the love bug. a lot has gone down since that day. but i remember between the icecream throwdown and the baseball dugout makeout sesh, (still bushy eyebrowed jodi), listening to this song after i purchased the 3eb cd and watching the vid relgiously on 120 minutes, thinking bout this dude. cursing myself, 'HOWS IT GONNA BE' and just wanting, waiting, watching to run into him to silently mouth the lyrics, whether it be the mcdonalds drive-in in monroe, walmart, or his cousins trailer park.

here i am, 15 years later. and still applying this song to past dudes. the thing is, they don't deserve the right to this teenage angst. if i were to pick one guy to prove my dedicated angst to, with my bleach blonde back up bassist and bald sweet sungalsses bro to jam to, no dude i've known since i was 19 deserves this credit. i kinda wanna mouth to every ex homeboy "hows it gonna be, when you dont knoooow me, ' but i know it already. its gonna be you snooze you lose whatever dawg. whereas, to my 14 year old boo, i still think of you dude. you have a wife and child, and i am eternally grateful that you finally found happiness. like, legitamatly, cuz let's be real, we were'nt supposed to be. even in 9th grade.

but i am happy i got to experience raw emotion at14-15. and here i am, 28, and still reflecting fondly, to 3rd eye blind's hows it gonna be. no anger, resentment, bitterness, exactly how it should be.

to all yall post dudes, sorry, but even though itd be righteous to dedicate this noise yer way, you dont ruffle my feathers enough. you dont deserve my stephen jenkins blue eyed noise. i will only stalk junior high ex-boo's elevators with my 1990s alternative backup band.

jodi & molly - separation anxiety, the february edition.

2011-02-09T22:54:00.001-06:00

so after the snowpocalypse of 2011, (fuck the snow, i'm more bothered by this cold shit), i had a pretty busy weekend/week. too many consecutive days without my furrball and gushy, comfy bedzone.

it was pretty badass, though. family time was pretty kewl.

example A: kronos

example B: the maternal unit

then before i knew it, i had to rush off to seattle for business shenaniganry. kinda was dreading a trip solo (don't ask me why), but i wound up having a super fantastic time.

Example A: super sweet view from my hotel balcony

Example B: got to spend time with an old (new) friend

Example C: BABY pac-man (duh)

Example D: SECKSI PINBALL

Example E: room service, bitchezzzz

Example F: Last Minute Dinners with Old Pals

But really, even after beautiful lukewarm temperatures, super soft hotel beds, free food & entertainment up the wazoo, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super happy to be back in frigid, hellacious Chicago. And there's one very obvious explanation. . .

Example A: miss mols

jodi hearts you the mostest mixxx

2011-02-09T22:19:00.000-06:00

on account of my shitty vaio refusing to burn cds, im afraid only a very select handful of individuals will get the smeary glitter glued, lacy, hand written playlist versions of this year's heart day mix. i tried to embrace technology and upload the playlist on mediafire for those of ya'll not copping a hard mix. (sorry dude/ttes, i suckkkk).

i still heart you the mostest though! ain't nobody else nerdy enough to make a v-day mix for you luverlies! feel free to cop it hurr: http://www.mediafire.com/?ruv0ycdh2gfec

p.s. if you wanna hear me ramble times a thousand and play volume 1 & 2, i am hosting a valentines day specialty luv fest on CHIRP! this friday, 2/11/11, 6-8 pm central time. hope ya'll can tune in. lemme knows if yer listening and i'll even dedicate some sappy ditties in yer honour.

xoxo

miss jodi robin root (hearts you the mostest)

Jodi Hearts You the Mostest Valentines Mixxx (v2.0)
1. Outkast - Happy Valentine's Day
2. Wolf Parade - This Heart's On Fire
3. Beck - Think I'm In Love
4. The Bird & The Bee - Kiss On My List
5. Pixies - Gigantic
6. The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
7. Jose Gonzalez - Heartbeat
8. The Morning Benders - Excuses
9. The Cure - Just Like Heaven
10. Robyn - Indestructible
11. Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
12. Band of Horses - No One's Gonna Love You
13. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Home
14. Nicki Minaj - Your Love
15. GAYNGS - Faded High
16. Mariah Carey - Always Be My Baby
17. Blur - Tender

business time.

2011-02-06T22:55:00.000-06:00

it's 11 pm and i can't sleep. had a really great weekend. family time was more than tolerable, it was dare i say, enjoyable? the puppybowl is still awesome. as is pizza party. tenting adventure with foot paddling static electricity. good company. and while i'm tuckered out and sleepy, the non-stop chaos which was muddling up my head prior to the weekend is slowly returning and bogging me down.

i guess i just need to view it as business time. throw on some swagga and just get my jodi suit on. gotta catch my plane to seattle in 9 hours, giving me approx. 5.5 hours of sleep now before i manically flee to o'hare and play business woman. first travel adventure of several in the works. jodi root: office manager to the stars ( or maybe just doctors, but stars sounds more fitting).

i gotta quit drinking champagne on sundays. (or do i?)

wish me safe travels, g. it's business time.

wisconsin pride: weezy edition.

2011-02-06T22:46:00.000-06:00

so normally, i could give two shits about football. b/c like, who cares? wisco breed, chicago transplant. bears are pretty cool since they got the superbowl shuffle, but lil wayne has officially bumped the packers to my first choice new faves. this track rules. it's officially the most obnoxious pro-sports endorsement joint i've ever heard. but i fucking love it. i played this song for my mom, brother and 12 year old nephew post spotted cow binge this weekend and the commentary was hilarious.

brother: (perturbed: 'the packers are green and gold, not yellow,' (scoffs), 'jodi, how dare you play music with the N word in my house?')
mother: 'he's shitting on his shoes?? why is he shitting on his shoes??' me: 'no mom, he's shitting on fools, not his shoes.' mother: 'oh, that makes more sense i suppose.'

nephew: (shakes his head and says nothing).

self: drunkenly slurring, 'yeaaaah!! green and yell-ow, green and yell-ow!'

so. much. fun. here's to another 365 days of being obnoxious and pumping this jam 24/7.

go pack go.
What up? I got Nosk in here with me
This ain’t a diss song, but uhmm
Yeah, uh-huh, you know what it is
I’m a cheesehead, y’all n-ggas Cheez Whiz
Pittsburgh Steelers, thats nothin’
That Super Bowl ring, thats stuntin’

Pull up in your town, when you see me you know everything
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
I put it down, representin’ for my team
I’m in green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow

Money green, yellow broad
Aaron Rodgers, MVP award
This is Green Bay, bitch we go hard
This is Packer Country, where ya green card?
Terrible towels, that shit’s borin’
We got the ball, you know we scorin’
Yeah, and thats how we rockin’ heavy metal
I’m up in this bitch wit’ more Bloods than a blood vessel
Pitt goin’ down, say hello to the devil
Just beat the Bears, now we got the Steelers on the schedule
Yeah, no love for ‘em boy, break ya hearts
We gon’ toast these n-ggas, pop tarts

Yeah, uh-huh, you know what it is
I’m a cheesehead, y’all n-ggas Cheez Whiz
Pittsburgh Steelers, thats nothin’
That Super Bowl ring, thats stuntin’
Pull up in your town, when you see me you know everything
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
I put it down, representin’ for my team
I’m in green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow

Got a call from my homie, this just in
The Packers in the Super Bowl and they better win
They call him Big Ben, but he weak though
We in Dallas, but we Lambeau Leap hoe
Long hair, don’t care, Clay Matthews
We shittin’ on these fools, no bathroom
Yeah, got a pocket full of big faces
Throw it up, touchdown on Ike Taylor

Yeah, uh-huh, you know what it is
I’m a cheesehead, y’all n-ggas Cheez Whiz
Pittsburgh Steelers, thats nothin’
That Super Bowl ring, thats stuntin’
Pull up in your town, when you see me you know everything
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
I put it down, representin’ for my team
I’m in green and yellow
Green and yellow
Green and yellow
Green and yellow

Uhh, big Gs on the helmet
Steel Curtain? What is that, velvet?
And if we win, I’mma throw a Super Bowl party
And blow a cigar like Vince Lombardi
I’m in Wisconsin, smoking Amsterdam
Yeah I’m from New Orleans, but I been a Packers fan
We knocked the Eagles and the Falcons and the Bears off
Now we ’bout to cut Troy Polamalu hair off

Yeah, uh-huh, you know what it is
I’m a cheesehead, y’all n-ggas Cheez Whiz (Go Pack Go)
Pittsburgh Steelers, thats nothin’
That Super Bowl ring, thats stuntin’
Pull up in your town, when you see me you know everything
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow
I put it down, representin’ for my team
I’m in green and yellow, Green and yellow
Green and yellow, Green and yellow

Uh, go Pack go
Uh, go Pack go
Uh, we yellin’ go Pack go
Yeah, like I said, this ain’t a diss song
I just love my team, that’s the team with them big Gs on the helmet
You know what it is, Oh yeah, Young Mula baby

soundtrack to the post apocalypse

2011-02-03T17:22:00.002-06:00

memememememeemeeee!!

last minute show swap tonite, kiddos. tune into tonite! (thurzdaze, feb 3) from 6-8 pm central timezzzz. im feeling in a kinda sweet mood tonite, so expect some upbeat polite jodifer action. (although next week, fri 2/11 is where it will REALLY be at when i have my valentinez day special).

www.chirpradio.org

was snowbound yesterday. trompled thru snoMOUNTAINS to work today. booked a last minute biz trip to seattle (only costing $800 for travel!) for monday. family weekend 2mrw. OMGMYLIFEISSOFASTPACED.

so yeah, slow down and catch up with me the only way you'll be able to, over the air.

i'll c u when u get there. - coolio

new cut copy, g's.

2011-01-31T23:49:00.002-06:00

http://cutcopy.heroku.com/

i guess it's bout time for a dance party. shit was overdue.

i have some pretty funny cds.

2011-01-31T23:47:00.002-06:00

there was a time in 2007/08 when i LOVED lady sovereign. sickkkkkkkkk.

things i like.

2011-01-31T22:52:00.000-06:00

1. indulgent date night with dara

2. cooking fancy dinners for cute boys

3. da baus!

4. plaid, polka dotted socks, dangling bras & cat.

5. drunken journalism.

6. getting humiliated at work (but in the best way).

7. jenny bushey. (and being unapologetically the sexiest bitches alive).

8. lisa frank cat.

9. lesbians.

10. lisalisa!

11. funny cute drunk girls who pretend to play the guitar.

12. when my friends say i look like peggy bundy.

13. birthdays.

14. laura palmer.

15. my job.

i'd like a refund, please, mr. lost creator guy.

2011-01-31T22:23:00.000-06:00

uggggggggggggh. i just spent the last two months of my life getting sucked into the seduction of mr. jj abrams or whatever the fuck his name is creator dude of lost. i feel jipped and lame. every winter i pick one show to get sucked into. this year i chose lost. now i want to get lost. and blow up everybody on that damned island. i almost caught myself weeping like a baby at the series finale tonight, but then i realized how cheap the conclusion really was. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. ugh ugh ugh. i think i should start running or something instead of being such a lazy fatass with my roku box. i can't even bitch right now, i'm just so ughhhhghghghghgghg.

on the upside, i made a suuuuuuuuper kewl valentines day cd mix again this year. didn't think i'd up last year's but i'm feeling pritt-eee awesome with myself right now. if yer lucky, you might find a hand crafted glitter heart and scribbly mix cd with yer name on it. (but probs not unless you RULE).

sex appeal.

2011-01-31T18:23:00.000-06:00

here's to making positive life choices, ya'll.

SLICING UP EYEBALLS. I WANT YOU TO KNOW.

2011-01-27T22:29:00.000-06:00

who wants to shake their booties to some debaser with me? just got word frank black and crew's selling a gig at the forever crumby rave in milwaukee. april 23rd. i totes wanna go. anybody wanna take a mini vaca to the miller city with me and get our surfer rosa on? pleez? they say 3rd times the charm and this would totes be my 3rd time checkin out da pixies. i promise to sing my best rendition of gigantic and dance really awesome. c'moooon. . . .

i have way 2 much fun wit my new fone.

2011-01-27T20:44:00.001-06:00

omg.omg.omg.omg.omg.omg.

couple's skate, anyone?

2011-01-27T20:38:00.000-06:00

found these sweet blades in my hotwater heater/fusebox room. they're pretty nast. i tried to squeeze my foot in one, but then thought it was better not to after i heard and felt a mystery crunch. gross.

but man, do i miss the days of riding the school bus to the den in monroe every second friday of the month. riding with the kids from pec. always hoping, never succeeding, in getting a hand up my flatchested shirt or slobbery smooching some pimplenosed four eyes nerd like myself. back then, kids with bowl haircuts and oversized nike 'just do it' shirts were cool. i was not.

i was perhaps even more painfully awkward than dawn weiner of welcome to the dollhouse. she at least had that one druggy poor kid who got mad when she called him stupid bc he had a retard brother wanting to 'rape her' after school by the dumpster. i just had giant oversized pickles for 60 cents and flourescent glowsticks and belly shirts. man, did i get a rise out of the 'crazy skate,' though.

anybody wanna take me rollerskate/blading? i'd so thrive at a blacklight rink now. these days, some fifteen years later, i can finally pride myself on being one of the 'cool kids.' plus, it'd be pretty kewl to finally score a hand up my shirt.

now i just gotta pick me up some sweet new blades.

monsters are real.

2011-01-27T20:15:00.000-06:00

but unfortunately, they more often that not inhabit a human life form. if i didn't know a handful of 'em personally, i'd be all boutitboutit havin monsters like deez over at my crib. FIRST THINGS FIRST I EAT YER BRAINZ. embrace the evil and there ain't nuthin to be scurred of. h8rs.

birdz & beez

2011-01-27T20:06:00.002-06:00

this video's really faggy. but the song makes me happy and i kinda want that girl's hair cut. that's all.

not the baby daddy.

2011-01-27T19:48:00.000-06:00

i've had really bad writer's block lately. like, real bad. i want to fix this. need inspiration. some focus. i have a glimmer of an idea, maybe a shitty unroganized rant. . . maybe something bigger.

thinking on the topic might take me 15 more minutes, 30 seconds or a few days.

in the interim, i remembered a piece i put together back in 2008. a story from my past. i have no recollection if it was written well or not, but i thought i'd dig through my old correspondances, find it, and post it here.

if nothing else, it sheds some perspective on my life without a father. which the other topic kind of spawns into.

this is a true story. although, there's several others where this came from. the moral of the story? social media's a funny thing. as are male 'role models.'

jodi

________________________________________________________

I hope I never end up on Maury Povich. For all of the obvious reasons, of course, but also for two very specific and valid reasons as well. A-I hope I never have to endure public humiliation for the sake of a paternity test; and B-find out the man I am about to marry is my brother, cousin, uncle, etc. Let me backtrack for just a moment here, the paternity test in question is not due to my own infidelity or active love life, let me make this very clear. No, the paternity issue at hand here stems to the origin of my very own existence.

What happened those twenty-six odd years ago, I'm pretty sure I DON'T want to know. Although for the majority of my life, up until age eighteen or so, that's ALL I wanted to know. I would ask my mother meekly and desperately, time and time again, the same exact question.

"Mom, when will you tell me about my dad?" Well, maybe not exact question, but same gist. "If you won't tell me his name, will you tell me what he looked like?" "What did he do for a living?" "Where did you meet him?" "Do I look like him?" "Why won't you tell me something—anything?!"

I would receive the same eye crossing, quiet and unenthused response from my suddenly hushed mother, "We'll talk when you're 18."

This never satisfied me. I was taunted by classmates in grade school. Teased, ridiculed, questioned. You would think it's not that big of a deal, being raised in a single parent household, especially in today's day in age. But you have to realize I came from a village of 789, where everyone knew everyone else's business. We knew about the town mayor's extramarital affair with the country club owner's drunk wife; we knew that 89% of the community sans the overly righteous elderly Christian clan were habitual marijuana users (my mother included); we exchanged inside scoops of our first-hand experiences with the "cult" outside of town that was from Chicago; (Apparently, the barn they seasonally lived in had drains in every room for the purpose of draining all the goat blood from the annual sacrifices—however, they reportedly bottled the blood as well, so I'm not sure how they managed to funnel all the animal fluids down through the drains into a functional cannery system, but that's beside the point. They also rode cows and padlocked their front gate. I can't say I blame them. I personally wouldn't be surprised to find out if they were actually just Amish.); etc.

Point being, the town loved to talk and they especially liked to gab at one another's misfortunes or expenses. Grade school children were no exception; teasing and taunting at personal issues such as being a bastardized single child on Welfare with coke bottle eyeglasses was an especially simple target.

That target was me.

But this isn't the Jodi self-pity train Lifetime Original Movie screenplay, yet. This is the daddy dilemma. So Joan wouldn't break. Even when she received a phone call from Mrs. Geirhart, my fifth grade computer science teacher (and math, and homeroom, amongst several other subjects—that's how the Argyle school system rolled—we maybe left to move onto a different classroom twice a day; this typically would have been a sign of short staffing, but with a class of 32 kids, it made sense); my mom didn't even raise an eyebrow.

"So why did you get a detention, Jodi?" my mother had lightly quizzed when I shamefully walked into the living room, tossing my Gitano backpack onto the floor 30 minutes later than usual.

"It doesn't matter," I mumbled, pushing my owl like glasses back up my nose.

"Yes it does, just tell me—I won't be mad. Mrs. Geirhart mentioned that you have to write an apology letter to Matthew Stamm, what happened between you two?"

"I flung applesauce at his head."

"What?" my mom replied, surprised but still doing her best not to laugh, (She knew I was a bit of a nerdy outcast so that required some courage, flinging applesauce at one of the athletic popular kids). "Why would you do that?"

"He said my dad was Tiny Pickett."

My mom hushed, "That little bastard," she bit under her breath.

Tiny Pickett was kind of like the town drunk—but when you live in a town like Argyle, there's no such thing as the town drunk. You're more likely to stand out and be the point of ridicule if you're NOT the town drunk. In Argyle, drinking and praying are all that there is to do, and maybe milk cows. There is something like eight different churches and four different establishments to wet your whistle, which doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind there are under a thousand souls within a 10-mile vicinity.

Anyway, Mr. Pickett's real first name was not, in fact actually Tiny.

Obviously, this is another prime example of small-towner's instinctive wit. Tiny weighed somewhere between the 300 and 400 pound range. And he was a bachelor—a very drunk and sad, lonely one at that. Even at age 11, I knew that. And I felt embarrassed by Matt Stamm, not just personally for not being able to prove that Mr. Pickett was not my father--"Well then who is your father then?" he laughed, with fellow classmates chiming in, "Yeah Jodi, everyone has a father, you can't just not have a dad."

"But I don't have a dad," I would insist as my only line of rebuttal, because that's the most Joan had ever explained to me.

I wasn't just embarrassed for myself, however. I was pretty used to being heckled and teased, that's just part of the childhood experience. It was the shame I felt on behalf of my mother. Without even thinking, I had picked up that spoon and scooped the applesauce from the corner dessert section on my mint green plastic lunch tray.

As the kids laughed and elbowed Matt Stamm, "Hey, good one!" high-fiving, I was furiously flinging that spoonful of sauce in a heat of rage right at pudgy Matt Stamm's flat top white hair.

And then he just looked at me. Kids may be clever, but try flinging some apple sauce at their head and then see what they have to say. The rest of my class turned to look at me, the nerdy girl who got free lunches because her mom couldn't afford the $1.50 lunch tickets that everyone else still had to buy, and dropped their jaws in confusion.

That was when Mrs. Geirhart came back into the room. "What on earth is going on in here? Matthew, what is on your head?"

"Jodi flung applesauce at me!" the little pussbag squealed.

"Jodi, now is this true? Why on earth would you do that?" She demanded, arms crossed and looking down at me in disapproval.

"He said Tiny Pickett was my dad," I quietly mumbled.

Her facial expression quickly softened into one of sympathy in my direction and she turned sharply to face Matt. Even my fifth grade spinster teacher knew who Tiny Pickett was. "Matthew, Jodi, come with me."

And with that, we each trudged out into the hallway. She explained to us that Matt was not to say such things to me and that I was not to fling apple sauce. We were assigned the duty of exchanging letters of apology, Matt for saying mean things to me about not having a father figure, me for flinging applesauce. And we also had to stay after school for 20 minutes. Then Mrs. G strolled into the office and called each of our parents.

Apparently, she had left the discussion of why we had detentions to serve up to us. I guess she was too embarrassed to tell my mother I was being punished for defending my mother's less than conventional lifestyle. Or maybe she told Matt's mom what he said and left it up to me to explain the applesauce bit. Either way, I don't think my mom knew what exactly went down.

"Mom, can you just tell me who he is? It's not really Tiny Pickett, is it?" I asked, almost crying. This was some heavy shit for a 5th grader, I can tell you that. I may not be smarter than a 5th grader by Jeff Foxworthy's standards, but I bet my 5th grade days were much heavier than those nerdy little geeks'.

"Oh Jodi, I'm so sorry," she replied, almost crying a little herself. "Come here, I love you, give me a hug."

And after our mother daughter embrace, that was the end of that conversation.

The "Who's My Daddy?" debate went back and forth, up until I was about to graduate from high school. At this point I had pretty much given up on the whole thing. This topic was obviously taboo and off limits, and Joan Root is one stubborn lady. If she has her mind set on something, she will not budge, not even an inch. Not then, not now, not ever. She wouldn't even lapse the slightest hint or clue, as I'd try to trick her after her daily rounds of Absolut and Tonics.

So you can imagine how surprised I was that day. The day I picked up the mail from the post office and dropped it off to her in the bedroom. I'm pretty sure it was a Saturday because she was home and awake. Joan worked the third shift, 11 pm to 7 am at a chocolate factory, so I only got to see her on the weekends. I handed her the fistful of letters and walked down the hall to my bedroom. Since our bedrooms were separated by a thin wall and connected with the same air vent, it wasn't unusual to communicate to one another by talking through said wall. "Jodi, come here," she said, but something in her tone of voice had dramatically changed in the two and half minutes since I had handed her the mail.

Confused by what she could want, I walked back into her bedroom. "Sit down," she instructed and she looked kind of scared and shaken.

"Yeah mom, what is it? What's up, you look kinda freaked out."

She handed me a letter. "It's about your father."

My heart stopped. My throat clenched. She said the forbidden word. The one word I knew absolutely nothing of, not even just personally as in WHO my father was, but WHAT a father was. What a fatherly figure did, what they were for, the relationship between a daughter and her father—I knew nothing of this other than how I watched my friends interact with their dads when I would hang out at their houses.

"What?"

What. That was the only word I could get out. She took back the letter.

"Your father, he knows about you."

Of course. Of course all this was happening now. In less than three weeks I was graduating from high school and moving to Wisconsin Dells for the summer. Finally escaping Argyle, my mother, my life as I knew it. The next phase was finally about to begin and I was never any more ready to get away. I was scared, to leave home and work a new job where I knew not a single soul, and then to move directly to college approximately 400 miles away in practically a different state.

Everything was happening, changing, so fast, but still not fast enough.

"Mom, what are you talking about?"

And then I stopped talking altogether and just looked at her trying to hold back the sobs and offer up an explanation. She was still in bed wearing that hideous, old white cotton lint ball infested bathrobe my brother and I both so detested and tried to replace with new ones for birthdays and Christmas. (Side note, said brother is actually biological half-brother, but I don't consider our relationship half anything, so I never use that term. His dad decided to go to Vietnam instead of sticking around with his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend. Jamie's dad stood him up on his 18th birthday for their first introduction; to this date my brother has never met his biological father either.)

"I met Kevin through Cousin Linda; Linda's still friends with his sister. Linda had one of your senior pictures in her wallet and her friend asked who the pretty young girl was. Linda said she couldn't lie or hide it anymore, and well, she told her that you were her niece."

My eyes bugged out of my head. I never considered having any other relatives. Suddenly questions raced through my head at a million miles per hour—did I have other siblings? Cousins? Aunts, uncles—grandparents?!

"Anyway, Kevin found out and he wants to meet you. He wants answers. He never knew anything because I never told him. You know that Upper Level Lounge quarter sleeve shirt you found in my closet and are constantly wearing? (I did, it was one of my favorite "vintage" shirts I had raided from her closet the previous year.) Well that shirt is from his bar, he owned that place. Maybe now you can see why I reacted so strangely to you taking it before."

Suddenly, I realized this was oddly symbolic, bizarre, and creepy and this was no longer to be my favorite shirt.

"Jodi, I hope you realize I had my own reasons for not telling him about you. We weren't together; he wasn't in a good place back then."

"But he owned a bar; he had to have some cash right? He could have at least paid up child support."

"I didn't want him taking you away from me. Jodi, this was a onetime deal—I used to go to the Lounge and he and I hit it off one night, and then . . ." she trailed off.

"It was drugs, wasn't it?" I asked while knowing it was exactly what she wasn't telling me.

"Yes."

"Pretty bad?"

"He was a notorious coke fiend."

"I get it, mom. This is why you kept it from me, right? One night stand with a cokehead?"

And this was when Joan Root broke down into tears.

"Mom, no. I'm not trying to be spiteful or mean . . . I get it, it sucks and it's an odd fucking situation, but I can see why you chose to do what you did. And why you never told me."

"But do you?" she sobbed, "Honey, I'm so sorry," she shook with tears and I scooted closer to her on the bed and we embraced.

"I love you mom. It's okay. But this is all just so weird, you know? Never hearing ANYTHING about this and now, you know, getting hit with all this just weeks before I graduate, turn 18 and move out."

"I know. But I told you I'd tell you when you were 18."

Even though my dialogue sounded cool and collected—I was anything but. I just knew I had to be the rock; the steady one of us two or we'd both be a mess. I've always been the parent in the relationship, taking on responsibilities typical kids probably wouldn't, raising myself on up from age 12 due to my mother's job schedule and joy of drinking. But still, it wasn't fair, and I knew I was getting the shit end of the stick.

"Anyway . . ." I started, transitioning back to the bombshell that just landed. "Kevin, you said that's his name right? He wants to meet me? Did he say when? Where does he live? Did he mention if I, umm, you know, have any brothers or sisters?"

Joan wiped her red, watery glazed eyes with a tissue and blew her nose, sounding like a trumpet. "Kevin, yes. Kevin Guhl (pronounced like the ghostly creature, I counted my blessings I was not named Jodi Ghoul, imagining the taunting that would have preceded me back in the Mrs. Geirhart days). He lives in Iowa, plays in a blues band and works for some computer company. He has no children, but mentions here in the letter that he has always wanted to be a dad . . . With your permission; he'd like to drive up and meet you. He included his phone number."

I got numb. This is really happening. Fucking weird.

"Should I call him? I will, for you."

"Mom, look at the timing. This is all too much—I'm leaving!"

"I know. But should I call him?"

"I guess . . . yeah. I need to know."

"Ok honey, I love you," she sniffled and we hugged one last time before I left the room to grab the phone.

That night I went to bed at my usual time, but I didn't sleep a wink. I was so confused, but still so excited. I don't know what the hell was going on. I was happy—I think. I also secretly changed into my Upper Level Lounge shirt when I went to bed to sleep; I wasn't ready for Joan to see this though.

Not a week later, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table next to my nervous and rigid mother and some roly-poly balding man named Kevin. Apparently, this red faced, self-proclaimed "blues man" was my father. Weird. I didn't look a thing like him.

After an awkward exchange of "Hellos," and a weird handshake thing, my mom opted to kick things off with baby pictures. She left the room to dig out some obscure photo album and left me alone with Kevin.

"So Jodi, your mom tells me you're off to college in the fall. Where are you going? What are you studying?"

Weird, weird, weird, weird, think Jodi, say something. Without looking him directly in the eye I replied, "I'm going to UW-River Falls, it's up by the Twin Cities, I'm going to study broadcast journalism and theater."

"Wow, so you'll be on TV? A big actress?" he mused, pretending to be super surprised and mutually impressed.

"Umm, no. I want to be on the radio and act in plays—I did forensics and a lot of plays in school now, so, I just thought it sounded nice. And write, I like writing."

"Oooh, big superstar. That's great, it really is. When is graduation?"

"In two weeks."

"Isn't your birthday coming up too?"

"Yup, same day as graduation."

"Then what?"

"I'm moving out, going to Wisconsin Dells. I got a summer job there and figured it's something better than Argyle and Pizza Hut, so I'll be leaving the day after my grad party."

"Wow, good for you!"

And then my mother rejoined us, thank god. "I wasn't able to find the one I was looking for, but here are some pics for starters." My mom fake smiled.

After the baby pic fake small talk episode Joan encouraged us to go on a lunch date to "get to know one another"—gross, he was supposed to be my dad, not a blind date. Although that's certainly what it felt like, a blind date to meet my father. We drove the 12 miles west to Monroe to grab Chinese at Chopstick's on the square. (Argyle only had the Norseman Supper Club, which was closed before 5 PM and Irma's Kitchen, a small town diner based out of, you guessed it, Irma's kitchen. A lot of townies ate there. I wasn't quite ready for my daddy daughter reunion to be the talk of the town so we headed to Monroe.)

It was the weirdest lunch of my life. And to be honest, I don't remember too much about it. It was full of small talk and lame jokes. I do remember he tipped really shitty, but paid for the lunch. Being a waitress the past 2 1⁄2 years, I threw an additional fiver on the table after he turned to leave. Cheap ass. After a few more minutes of small talk, Kevin dropped me off and headed back to Iowa.

He called two days later and wanted a blood test. Just to, you know, make sure.

Joan and I got our blood tested. I don't know the logistics and specifics of the types, but apparently our blood types were compatible, A and B or AB positive, I don't know. But it was enough at the time.

Another three days after we got the results back, Kevin wanted an actual full out paternity test. I was graduating in a week and a half. I had finals; I was about to leave all my friends to make new ones,
start my life, I was pretty confused. And pissed, I thought our blood types were compatible? He still needed more proof? Joan was equally baffled, but we agreed to do the test anyway.

It was a swab test. You put an oversized q-tip looking swab in your cheek and throw the stick in a Ziploc like bag, ship to the lab and badda bing badda boom, bingo! You have a daddy!

We mailed the results to Kevin per his request, even though the instructions specifically instructed to ship overnight to the testing lab or freeze until you can ship it. Kevin insisted it was no big deal to send to Iowa, so that we did.

When the results came back negative, (the day before my high school graduation), I wasn't surprised. It would have been too simple, too good to be true to finally know. I was pissed though. Joan played the shock card. "Jodi, I don't know! He is your father! He could be lying, remember the instructions said to ship directly to the lab—the results are wrong!"

Kevin at least had the tact to call my mom and tell her over the phone that he was upset by the turnout and that he had hoped for a happy ending. He would retake the test, if we wanted, but this was 99% effective.
Joan swore up and down, Kevin was it. He was now the bad guy and was obviously lying about the results (we did not receive the results directly from the lab, just word of mouth). So now I had a father
figure, and he was already a deadbeat loser.

I thought this closed the story. Gave me my closure, the knowledge I had relentlessly sought for the past 18 years. I was 75% German, (he was 100%), 12.5% Irish and 12.4% English. I knew what I needed to. I focused on my graduation and only cried a little bit when I was alone in my bedroom before I fell asleep. But I had gone through way too much in my life and was not about to let some loser stranger drag me down. I would be out of Argyle in days, off to venture bigger and better things.

Fast-forward six years. I'm living in Chicago and I wake up with a slight hangover. It's a Sunday in June of 2007 and I've just woken up. I'm sitting on the couch in my apartment living room, sitting criss-crossed with my hair a rat nest from sleeping on it on top of my head. The taste of PBRs still lingers in the back of my mouth and my head is throbbing like a mother fucker. Like the internet socialite I am, I grab my boyfriend's Mac laptop and open up my email, Facebook and then MySpace.

Once I open up to the MySpace page I see I have "New Messages!" and I eagerly click the link to see who messaged me. I see the profile pic of a chubby and hairy looking old dude with sunglasses, playing the bass guitar. Oh god, another old perv trying to pick up young chicks on the web. Good. Maybe it will at least be amusing, but still—gross, what the hell would this guy have to say.

The message was titled "Are You?". Weird. My profile was named "Jodifer the Great," and my profile was set to private, so it's not like people could go Jodi Robin Root hunting. But that's exactly what this man had done.

The first and only sentence was, "Is this Jodi Robin Root from Argyle?" He had found me.

"FUCK!" I slammed the laptop down and screamed. "FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK," etc.

My boyfriend had been in the shower. I heard him slide the shower curtain aside and turn off the water, "Jodi? What the hell is the matter with you?"

I probably freaked him out a bit. I got quiet and walked into the bedroom and looked at the calendar. Of course—it was Father's Day. Boy, wasn't this the icing on the cake.

Mike walked into the bedroom, looking concerned and waiting for me to fill him in on my outburst.

"I'm kind of freaking out right now," I started, voice shaking but stern and noticeably pissed off. "Kevin emailed me, on fucking MySpace. On fucking Father's Day."

Mike looked puzzled, "Kevin?"

Right, Kevin was before his time. "My alleged father. He fucking sent me a fucking message on fucking MySpace!!"

Mike shook his head, "Girl you've got some messed up shit in your life."

"I know, it's a fucking soap opera."

"What did he say? What does he want?"

"I have no idea. He just asked if I was Jodi Robin Root from Argyle—what a fucking creep!"

"Well what did you say back?"

"I just told him it was but that I was in Chicago now. I played dumb."

"How weird."

Exactly. It was weird. The communications continued, however. I ended up getting emotionally involved again, as much as I tried to fight it off. I still had a shot at my happy ending—and as much as I had been hurt before, this stranger sought me out to try and make that a possibility.

I still have the messages in my inbox.

Date: Jun 17, 2007 12:35 PM
Flag as Spam or Report Abuse [?]
Subject: are you?
Body: jodi robin root from argyle?

From: Jodifer The Great
Date: Jun 17, 2007 12:59 PM
That's me! Now Jodi Robin Root in Chicago. . .

Date: Jun 17, 2007 8:58 PM
Flag as Spam or Report Abuse [?]
Subject: RE: RE: are you?
Body: we met once....about six years, one month ago. i just came across some stuff i kept about you. i wonder if you ever solved the mystery?

From: Jodifer The Great
Date: Jun 17, 2007 7:12 PM
i remember you.
sort of caught me off guard.
my mom swears (to me at least) that she's sticking to her story. so i don't know. i guess if your test was 100% accurate, i'll neverknow. she says you're it. i don't know. the whole situation is a little overwhelming to me. i wish i knew.

Date: Jun 18, 2007 5:17 AM
Flag as Spam or Report Abuse [?]
Subject: RE: THE subject
Body: i've wondered..........the reaction(by Joan) at the time was sorta bizarre. did you see your mom swab her cheek? that's really the only way it couldn't be accurate. i've always wondered..............sorry if i bum you out after all this time

From: Jodifer The Great
Date: Jun 18, 2007 4:41 AM
tell you the truth--i don't remember.
the whole "father" subject with my mom has always been taboo. I get the fact that she didn't conceive me in the typical "family way." I know I wasn't planned, whatever. I think she's sort of ashamed or embarrassed. Whenever I would ask, she would mumble, "when you're 18".

well, as i turned 18, you magically appeared. and i think with my graduation, moving out, turning 18, she was overwhelmed to say the least. so i don't know. why would she have had to have been tested anyway?
pretty obvious she's my mom. but oh well. i don't know how she'd react to find out you messaged me.

please don't be angry or take this the wrong way--but you have to understand i'm a little weirded out by this--why did you look me up on myspace and message me on father's day 6 years later? b/c as much as I would love a happy ending here, i don't know if emotionally i can deal with a message, just to see if i "solved the mystery."

i mean, i am sort of glad you found me. i would love for it all to work out. but if it's just opening another old wound, i've got lots of stuff going on and it may be hard to deal with again. so was it just plain out curiousity? or doubt? b/c if you think here's a chance, i'm down to this whole "reunion" mystery thing. if it was just, did you find a dad yet? then i'm not interested.

i have to go to work now.

Date: Jun 18, 2007 7:11 AM
Flag as Spam or Report Abuse [?]
Subject: RE: RE: RE: THE subject
Body: Certainly not to be cruel !! I'm the king of tact sometimes...........obviously.
the truth.....somewhere in the back of my mind or in my gut it never seemed right. then last weekend we had a 50th birthday celebration for a friend here in Miami and i spent some time with my old college roomate who was in town from Houston. We were talking about his kids and he brought up the subject. That brought to the fore my wondering and i just kinda did it.

so, so sorry to cause you pain and distress. i had hoped you found out something. absolutely no intention of being an a**hole.

From: Jodifer The Great
Date: Jun 18, 2007 7:51 AM
so is this it then? do we do anything from here on out?
or has your question now been answered?

Subject: questions
Body: no, i still have questions. maybe always will. don't know what they are right now. i don't know what to do. there's no instruction book available.

i know i'm sorry i upset you. don't know what i was thinkin' except i was wonderin' about you. does that make any sense?

Subject:RE: one more thing
Body: i'm still here. gonna try to think a little more about what i write next. i saw your profile...cool, artistic, like i knew it would be. do you have another email? off myspace?

And that is where our MySpace friendship concluded. We next transitioned to Gmail.

fromKevin L Guhl kevguhl@juno.com
tojodi.root@gmail.com
dateSun, Jun 24, 2007 at 1:04 PM
subjecthi

after a few days to reflect i still don't have anything "figured out" i've re-read our email exchange a few times. last time you wrote "i'm a little burnt out" from us corresponding? or just in general?? i was ready to write you a couple pages...but i want so see how you respond to this one.

tell me to fuck off if that's what you feel. i'll hafta be OK with that. i didn't message you out of just plain curiosity, so you know (that's part of my couple pages.....another time, maybe)

Kg

fromJodi Root
toKevin L Guhl kevguhl@juno.com
dateSun, Jun 24, 2007 at 1:50 PM
subjectRe: hi

I'm cool. Write away--I won't tell you to fuck off. But you have to think about how this came out of nowhere--how am I supposed to respond? My friends I've talked to think I should tell you to fuck off--but I just want to know what it is you want. What do you want? I'm not trying to be rude, I just was really not expecting this.

I'm tired right now, my car just broke down and I'm stuck in Madison. So right now I'm just burnt out on life.

So yeah, write me back if that's what you want but I want to know what your intentions are if you're going to keep messaging me.

fromKevin L Guhl kevguhl@juno.com
tojodi.root@gmail.com
dateSun, Jun 24, 2007 at 6:53 PM
subjectRe: hi

sucks to have your car break down on a Sunday. i hope you can find a place to get it fixed. how are you connected when you're on the road? wi-fi? dedicted cyber-girl.

well.......i'm looking for the answer. the test was the test. why does it still not set right with me? why do i still question after all this time? you love and trust your mother obviously. i'm not sure how to get the answer without dragging you through more trauma? I don't want that.how do you think about me? that i am your biological father and i'm just a schmuck that didn't want to be in your life? was the staus quo ok before you heard from me last Sun?

sometimes i kick myself for messaging you. why did i contact you, sure to drag up old hurts. more than a little inconsiderate of your feelings, and i appologize for that. "out of nowhere" ........that's how i felt six years ago
it wasn't the first time i'd thought about you for sure, i bonded a little bit that day in april six years ago. i looked you up on google a couple years back and found you at the radio station in Oshkosh. Then recently the bright idea of doing the myspace searching you out thing. you wrote "i am sort of glad you found me" -- me too.

well i've written a bunch of stuff but still "figuring" how or what to do from here. will i sort it out through a series of mini-blogs? i dunno

kg

fromJodi Root
toKevin L Guhl kevguhl@juno.com
dateMon, Jun 25, 2007 at 9:48 AM
subjectRe: hi

Let me know what you decide. I don't think I can handle all of this going back and forth whateverness.
I'm a 24 year old independent adult. I'm college educated, have a great job and am self-established living in a great city with a great boyfriend. I've taken care of myself for the past 6 years, and some before that. My mom is my mom. She said you're my dad. The test didn't. I just took her word for it. After the results were negative, I took that. Obviously, the two stories clash and do not coincide. But I was fine the 18 years before that without a father figure and am still just fine the past 6 years. The whole situation was just very bizarre to me. My friends sometimes ask me if it's weird not having both parents. The answer is no. It's not. Because living with a single mother is all I've ever known. Sometimes I envy my boyfriend's relationship with his father, but not really because I now have a relationship with his father as well.

I didn't think you were a "schmuck." In all honesty, after that situation went down I just thought to myself, "Well that was weird. Oh well." I asked Joan after the fact and she stuck to her story. Is she lying? Maybe. But I don't think so and I haven't thought that much about it. But you obviously have.

And yeah, this whole message exchange thing is getting a little annoying. What do you want? An answer. Ok, gotchya. Are you looking for another paterntity test? Is that it? If that's all you want, research it and tell me what to do. If that's not what you want then I don't know how to help you. I'm sorry if I'm sounding bitchy and rude, but I'm not going to put myself in the same vulnerable emotional state I was in 6 years ago. I'm not going to get all sappy when I've already been down that road.

Like I said, I've taken care of myself up until now and I've done pretty damn good for myself. But if you're that set on an answer, give me the swab and I'll play your game. I don't think it's fair to drag my mother into it, however. That's just awkward for her and it's not fair.

Didn't we do some sort of blood comparison type test too? Wasn't that a match?

Whatever. I'm super exhausted after my weekend trip went foul and I'm busy getting caught up at work right now.

I hope that answered your "questions." Sorry I'm such a crab.

As it turned out, Kevin opted to have another paternity test. I took the El to the shadiest neighborhood I had yet visited in my year long residence in Chicago somewhere on the south side. I had another swab test, this time administered by a registered nurse. I'm pretty sure the whole testing debacle cost him somewhere around $600 to a grand.

I never heard back from Kevin or the DNA lab. I eventually followed up with the lab inquiring the results, although deep down I already knew what they would be. I received a letter in the mail the following week explaining there was a 0% chance of paternity.

I called Joan up and she played dumb, calling Kevin "a creep." I agreed.

I still wanted to know but I knew she would never tell me the truth.

One night when she was in one of her typical drunken states I pressed hard enough, only to find out it could have been "the short, blonde guy" whose name she never bothered to write down.

The weird thing is, I'm taller than my mother, brother, aunts, grandparents, and I'm not blonde. So I guess I will never really know the answer to the question of my conception.

But something's telling me I probably don't really want to know the answer either. I guess some things in life are just better left unknown.

(good ending, right?? gosh jodi wasn't emo at all. . . )

burn it down.

2011-01-27T14:42:00.001-06:00

friday, feb 18th. megabussin' that noise up to minneasnapolis for a mini vacay. gonna see this shit live on saturday for sims' record release party for bad time zoo. shit. will. be. real.

that's all.

1.11.11 - hardly da best. (aka ramble city)

2011-01-11T23:01:00.000-06:00

today is the 11th day of the new year, also the first day i've even thought about writing anything in weeks, maybe months. so in vain efforts of getting some flow going, i'm forcing myself to ramble here.

this may be a bit of a rant. . . so here's your warning to go somewhere like http://www.cuteoverload.com/ for some kewt puppy action instead.

rant 1: writer's block sucks. like, big time. today i emailed one of my editors and asked him to reassign some of my pieces. no matter how hard i try to sit down and focus. . . i can't. plus, not having a computer with iTunes really puts a damper on downloading new music to write said reviews. i'm disappointed in myself, yet relieved. it's pretty twisted.

rant 2: i sat in an airport or airplane for 90% of my day today. it was a shit ass snowy day, apparently all over the country. sitting on a tarmack for 2+ hours for a 1 hour flight after a 16 hour day is bad news. business trips ain't all they's cracked up to be, specially without the expensed mandatory booze on the plane.

rant 3: i can't sleep. or maybe, i can sleep, but can't stay asleep. or maybe it's just my dreams. but it's probably general anxiety. whatever it is, it sucks. i woke up every 30 minutes last night from the time i conked out around 11:30 until i had to roll outta bed at 5 this morning. it sucked. it's been progressively worse. i can't tell if it's because i'm watching too much lost and think that my life is too, some sort of twisted conspiracy theory, or if the external factors in my life are starting to twist a bit too much out of my control. maybe i'm just bored with my routine and this is my inner concscious's way of telling me to snap the fuck outta it and make some lifestyle changes. or maybe i really just need to start exercising and lay off the booze. or maybe. . . my life is a conspiracy theory and the paranoia is REAL LIFE? probably.

rant 4: well, i'm done bitching, really. like i said before, i'm trying to just get some sort of writing accomplished - even if it is unthought out garbage. i've got a couple shows in the bag for the upcoming weekend, (if i'm still alive after the workweek i've got ahead of me, yeesh), and hopefully those will help me knock some werdz out.

rant 5: george really needs to quit shout singing off-key in my kitchen. i'm tired and grumpy and ready to go shove a drumstick up his ass. like, now.

ok. well, this was hardly entertaining for anyone to read, but i think it's time for me to set some delayed new years resolutions, focusing on creating a less anxiety ridden environment. laying off the booze consumption. focusing on positive extracurricular activities in its place (ala chirp, maybe spending more time with my nephew & nieces). creating a healthy work/life balance. getting a little exercise. quit focusing on what i don't have (co-dependence), and instead appreciate what i do (baller status destiny's child independence).

ok, time to (try to) sleep. hopefully i'll have some music or kat newz soon.

kanye & jay-z dropped a single today, with a full collaborative album in the early spring pipeline. this is very good news, perhaps i'll write more later bout it bout it. . . .

radio killed the social lite star.

2010-12-21T23:27:00.000-06:00

jodi update: i got official word that i will be a regular on-air contributing dj to CHIRP! starting friday, 1/7/11, yers truly will be rockin' yer virtual beatbox from 6-8 pm central time at http://www.chirpradio.org/.

this is a pretty awesome thang considering i've done virtually nothing with my radio/tv/film degree the last five years since i ventured into the windy city. a boost of self confidence and a confirmation that sometimes a leap of faith is all it takes. fake it til ya make it.

minus a couple temporary setbacks, i know 2011 is going to be my year. big things await. working. writing. radio. relationships. independence. (cats).

b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

that is all.

triple x.

2010-12-21T23:23:00.002-06:00

or maybe just a double will suffice. goddamn, i forgot how much i love the xx.

kanye 4 lyfe.

2010-12-21T23:17:00.000-06:00

i like kanye. he helps me kick ass when i need a boost.

yet he keeps it real and admits he's not perfect. (i can relate).

some of his songs take me back to pastimes with good pals. dance parties.

while others remind me of not so great times.

regardless, yeezy is my unofficial yet most effective video journal. songs remind me of times. people. slumps. triumphs. today/tonight i crossed a bridge. in more ways than one.

i even got mike to admit his new song with bon iver 'wasn't terrible,' even if did remind him of 'club music.'

funny, how, two + years ago he would have been the last person i'd ever anticipate dissecting kanye too. instead of dwelling on the no-no ye's, ima rock it raw with the inspiration shit.

homeboy's got some sort of power on me. hate all you want ya'll, that pic of west and his mama ain't leaving the confinements of my bedroom anytime soon.

back on the prowl.

2010-12-21T18:00:00.002-06:00

he once told me i wasn't 'book smart.' 'street smart,' sure. but not academically. the biggest crime? i believed him and let it fly.

well, sweetheart, i'm smarter than any of us thought now.

to moving forward, 2011, get fucking ready.

am i rambling now?

handsome furrrrrrrrrz.

2010-12-20T19:03:00.000-06:00

Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry of Handsome Furs are not your typical indie rock couple. Named after one of Perry’s short stories, Handsome Furs have been cranking out jams since the duo released their 2007 debut Plague Park. Their 2009 release Face Control upped the ante with addicting experimental, dancey guitar and synth heavy rock bangers. When this duo isn’t busy busting their asses making sweet electro indie rock love all over the WORLD, (seriously, you can check out their web documentary series “Indie Asia” on CNN.com), Perry keeps busy as a writer while Boeckner recently retired from some Canadian indie rock band you might have heard of once or twice, (Wolf Parade, cough cough).

Out of all the male/female relationship rock duos out in the indie scene today, (Matt & Kim, Mates of State, YACHT), you two are by far the most badass. How does being in a relationship affect your creative collaboration process when making music?

Alexei: Shucks and thanks. Seriously. I think our musical relationship is much the same as our relationship in general: we tend to run things on the hot and heavy. It makes the most sense for us to try to get all of our guts out in our music – all the sex and bad demons and high energy. I think we’re dang lucky that we both have the same work ethics; having both come from a string of shitty jobs we never undervalue the fact that we get to do what we most love for a living. We work insanely hard, and happily, at this and I feel pride in seeing Dan be most himself on stage. It really is living the dream.

Did you ever think that Handsome Furs would turn into as big of an act as you have?

Alexei: Oh man, we still show up in a shitty economy sized rental car with a few knapsacks full of gear to every show – now matter the size of the venue or festival - so I don’t think we’ve gotten so big really! But to answer your question honestly, it’s been a truly wonderful thing to be able to get crowds the size we have in many different places on earth. It’s wildly alarming. Showing up in, say, Chiang Mai Thailand or Cluj Napoca Transylvania and having even a handful of folks do English-as-a-second-language renditions of our songs will never stop surprising me. It is an honour that people pay attention to us. I mean we’d do this regardless, but it is flooring every night that people feel kinship with what we have to say.

I read that you two got your band name based from a title of one of Alexei’s short stories—what was the premise of the story and how did you decide to turn that into your band name?

Alexei: It’s a rather bleak premise really. Basically this one-lunged woman stops being able to tell the difference between living and dying before a flood allows her neighbouring zoo animals to escape and trample her to a very much needed death. It turned into our band name because I think we both share the struggles the protagonist did and understand how important a happy calamity is in life. Even if it’s death.

If you two ever have kids, will you let them become members of Handsome Furs?

Dan: No. Never. Unless we have some kind of fast growing, multi armed super baby.

You two toured your asses off back in support of Face Control back when it dropped in ’09. I must have seen you four or five times in the next year alone—since wrapping up that tour what have you two been up to? Is there a new record in the works? If so, when can we expect to hear it?

Dan: We're going to start recording as soon as we get back from Chicago. Day after the show, as a matter of fact. From the airport to the studio.

How will the upcoming tour fare in comparison to the last time HF was on the road? Any new material?

Dan: The Chicago show is a one off or us. We will be playing about 50% new songs though....

Do you two have any pre-show rituals when out on the road?

Dan: Stretching. Booze. Cigarette. Pre-show kiss.

We’re doing this interview via email as opposed to on the phone because you two have limited phone access. I imagine you two must be somewhere pretty awesome doing super rad things. After over a year of being off the road (as HF), what sparked this new tour and what are you looking forward to the most?

Dan: We decided to tour the Balkans in December because...well. we got offers and really wanted to go back to some of our favorite place like Belgrade and Bucharest. Writing this from a hotel room in Istanbul, day of show here. Today I'm looking forward to digging through a shop full of old Turkish 45s and eating a fish sandwich on the Bosphorus.

Any Chicago specific plans you’d like to knock out?

Dan: I'm definately getting Al Pastor tortas at Bravo Gallo. Telenovas on a 8 foot high flatscreen are best when you are loaded and hungry after the show.

2010 - i'm back again.

2010-12-05T22:23:00.000-06:00

this year was a very odd 365 for yers truly. looking back, it's pretty crazy that it's at its close already. it's like, what the hell did i do this year? where did the time go? holy shit. let's backtrack here, shall we? obviously - the biggie for me was losing my job this past february. another victim statistic in the economic downfall, being laid off was the weirdest experience i think i've ever endured. looking back in retrospect, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. i was burnt out at that company, and as much as i learned and took away from the position, there wasn't room for any additional opportunity or growth. i was tired. and cranky. and the general atmosphere of that particular office was perpetual poison. but i wasn't a fool - there was no way i could have walked away from my steady salary, title and benefits. so the fact that that ship sank (and ironically, was just bought up into a sister company), and i was hauled offboard in the first round of layoffs, was a blessing in disguise.

but man oh man, were the last 9-10 months a fucking whirlwind. countless days of despair and apathy rotted away into nothingness. laying in bed for 14 hours straight. multiple night boozing benders. more self destruction than my early 20's. just overall loss of control. and anyone who knows me personally, can attest i am a control freak. so having no control, well. let's just say i wasn't myself.

that's not to say some good didn't come out of the whole time. because a lot did. i finally networked. i began writing and secured a lot of connections. got published. interviewed great bands. got my name out there. i became involved with some local music promoters and the congress theater. even last night, i worked a shift, made some pocket cash and checked out edward sharpe. cheap labor = free shows. muy bueno. i also finally stepped up and joined CHIRP. back to my radio roots and it feels fucking fantastic. i never thought i'd be behind a mic again, and here i am, 5 years after my days of radio mayhem. i've stepped outside my circle of insecurities and 'there's no way anyone would want me involved' scaredycatness and made an effort. and it's paid off. i write for 3-5 site/magz/blogs regularly. i'm on the radio. i work the chicago live music scene. life is good! and if i had been rotting in my dead-end job, there's no way i would have stepped up.

i met some great new people this year. friends of friends and peeps through events and said extracurricular activities above. in addition to new friends, i've become better accquainted with old friends. i moved in with my childhood bff/neighbor who i hadn't seen in nearly ten years. it's been a fucking fantastic living situation, exceeding my hopes. it's like we're family, a slightly dysfunctional one, but a family nonetheless. i moved in next door to a pal from college who i just know, 5 years later, have gotten to know more personally on a deeper friend level. i've reignited former friendships and while some are coming across more slowly than others, i have faith that things will work out as they're supposed to. i consider myself incredibly blessed to know the people i know, and even though i may come across as a deadpan bucket of sass and assholyness, i promise you i appreciate you. if you've ever been inside my clusterfuck of a bedroom, then chances are you've seen your face taped up on the wall by my full length mirror. my photostripcollagemayhem. my shrine to ya'll, my luverlies.

my mom's had a pretty rough year. with her separation from her boyfriend of 23 years, the dude was pretty much a monster to her. broke her down emotionally, physically and mentally. my mom is one of the strongest women i know. stubborn, bullheaded, but fiercely intelligent and warm hearted. she was just taken advantage of. and this asshole, the fucking year of pain he's put her through, boils my blood at just the thought. especially with his latest venture of breaking in and pushing her around. well guess what? that was just the final piece. dude got his ass thrown in jail, my mother got a restraining order and the whole fucking community in my hometown came to her side when i couldn't. they packed her shit up and moved her into a new house within 24 hours. fucking incredible. my mom is an amazing person. her strength in this situation of her separation never ceases to amaze and inspire me. if she can move on and pick herself up, well, shit. helps put things in perspective. her life is finally being turned around. she's started over. on her own. and she's well. this is also fantastic news.

the past 9 months had some pretty dark moments and some pretty crazy joyrides. i've fallen in and out of love and back in it again. i've felt betrayed and betrayed others. i've been selfless and selfish. didn't necessarily take the best care of myself. it was like my 'finding yourself' journey i've never really had. the lack of employment forced me to get to know me, what makes me tick and what makes me fall. spend some time figuring out what i want and need. spend some time figuring out what i DONT want and DONT need. moving forward. looking back. my mind is an overanalytical fried up machine. i've made some mistakes. but i've come back up for air every time. i think i'm finally on the right path. the first time i've gone without a job or regular routine. thrown completely out of sync. but i made it. the year is nearly done and i'm still here.

oh, and yeah one more thing. i just got a job. like, a really good one. i dont' know what it is about the medical field that keeps sucking me in, but this is the third professional opportunity i've stumbled into involving the medical world. as some of you may know, i began temping with a company a month ago, on the first of november. i had no expectations. low temp wage, basically making the same as what i had on unemployment. was it worth giving up the security of free money for the last few months? what if i hated it? what if the assignment suddenly terminated? I was broke, no cushion. after the first day it's pretty safe to say i despised it. it was not at all what the staffing company said it would be, and even they didn't hype it up to any amazing standard. i was seriously thisclose to not returning for a second day. somehow, i've magically been able to turn it all around. i proved myself as a valuable asset as a self-starter and proposed several new initiatives. i went above and beyond what the average employee had been doing. my manager noticed. i got my official job offer last week. the salary/benefits/perks and job description are beyond what i could have ever imagined or hoped for. i work on michigan avenue near the tribune building. my cube overlooks the lakefront. i'm in charge of internal marketing, project managing training and quality assurance. people listen to me there. it's a challenge day-to-day and so far i fucking love it.

my self esteem and overall feeling of worth has risen exponentially in the last month. i'm using my brain again. my confidence is carrying me into my next chapter and i finally feel optimistic and at peace.

2010,
you were a pretty tough cookie. but you know what? you were also the optimal test. i may have flunked out on some of your tricky pop quizzes, but it seems i got an overall passing grade and have since graduated.
2011, bring the mother fucking noise.
love, jodi

TOP 10 OF '10, YA'LL.

2010-12-05T21:45:00.000-06:00

so i wrote up a list of my top ten releases for the year for the chirp website. it'd been on my to-do list for quite some time, and the fact that it took me as long as it did to get around to it kinda bummed me out. i had been thinking about the list all year, as i always am a nut with music and wonder, 'but does this have any longetivity? will i listen to it to death for the next 2 weeks and then shelf it into oblivion?' kinda bums me out to say 2010 was a bit lackluster of a year for releases. sure, there was shit i dug and listened to to death. like, the new nicki minaj album and even girl talk, i like them both immensely now - but did either of them make the cut for this list? negatory.

plus i guess i spent a lot of time this year revisiting older shit, like my massive siouxsie and the banshees phase this summer. oh well. ramble rant aside, i did manage to come up with a list of ten albums. this isn't to say i didn't enjoy additional records, i guess i could say some honorable mentions would be peter wolf crier (inter-be), yeasayer (odd blood), atmosphere (to all my friends/blood makes the blade holy), and stars (the five ghosts). but man, here's to hoping 2011 has some more 'blow my face off' ammo than this. too bad kanye only dropped one record this year, otherwise he'd have all ten of my slots fo sho.

1) Beach House/Teen Dream/Sub-Pop

No other album could possibly come close to the heavy rotation Teen Dream got on my iPod this year. The combination of Victoria Legrand’s lush vocals and dream pop instrumentation is seriously too good to be true. Tracks like the dizzying “Norway,” epic “Zebra” and the surreal “Silver Soul” are twistedly abstract, romantic and damned enchanting.

2) Kanye West/My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy/Def Jam

Love him or hate him, Kanye knows how to get your attention. After a pretty rough couple of years, West came hurdling through the haters with his most epic release to date, dropping My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as his musical redemption. West proves he’s got power with his sleek beats, addicting hooks and rhymes (seriously, who else can get the masses singing toasts to ‘douchebags’?) and featured partners in crime ranging from Elton John, Jay-Z to Bon Iver.

3) Robyn/Body Talk/Cherry Tree

Released just in time to secure a spot on my top 10 of ’10 list, our favorite Swedish pop princess compiled her Body Talk trilogy into one cohesive album. Body Talk as a cumulative whole, vs. the three separate eps, rivals the greatness that was her breakout self-titled 2008 comeback. Dropping dance party anthems like “Hang With Me,” “Dancehall Queen” and “Indestructible,” girlfriend proves she won’t be dancing on her own any longer.

4) Arcade Fire/The Suburbs/Merge

While we will sadly never again experience the epic greatness of another Funeral, Win Butler and crew made a damned fine attempt with The Suburbs. Blowing away their sophomore release Neon Bible, The Suburbs was one consistently memorable collection of epic instrumentation and overall indie goodness. Tracks such as “Month of May,” “Sprawl II,” “Ready to Start” and “The Suburbs” are undeniable examples of awesomeness.

5) GAYNGS/Relayted/Jagjaguwar

Not such Broken Social Scene has the indie music scene witnessed such a superhero line-up. The debut release from Midwesterners GAYNGS, Relayted is such an irresistible compilation of sleek, synth heavy, 80’s throwback baby making music that George Michael was pretty much forced into retirement. Who knew the dudes from Bon Iver, The Rosebuds and Solid Gold had such a seductive side to ‘em? Burning hot.

6) Phantogram/Eyelid Movies/Barsuk http://goo.gl/cHLwl

The majority of male/female duos are shiny, happy pop music. (See YACHT, Mates of State, Matt & Kim, etc). Phantogram is not one of those bands. Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter make musical love into mystery, driven with their synth and bass driven melodies and gaspy, seductive shared vocals. Eyelid Movies is eleven tracks of electronic indie dance bliss.

7) Gorillaz/Plastic Beach/Virgin

Anything Damon Albarn touches turns to gold (or at least it should). Even after just releasing the greatness that is Plastic Beach in 2010, Albarn has already announced his intentions of a follow-up album, which was recorded on their current tour—on an iPad. Not sure how he’ll get guest artists like Snoop Dogg and Lou Reed onboard with this current method, but by now I’m pretty sure whatever Albarn’s got up his sleeve is destined for greatness.

8) Vampire Weekend/Contra/XL Recordings

Who knew some random Polaroid photo from the 80’s would blow up into the biggest indie lawsuit of the year? Luckily for the gentlemen of Vampire Weekend, it turns out there’s much more to Contra than their obscure album art. Tracks like “Giving up the Gun,” “Cousins” and “Holiday” are just a few of the album’s upbeat pop ditties, proving these prep rockers are more than a one album success act.

9) LCD Soundsystem/This is Happening/DFA

James Murphy is a pretty righteous dude. This is Happening was one of the year’s biggest hypes, and if you’ve listened to the record, you’ll see why. “You Wanted a Hit,” “Dance Yrself Clean” and “Home” are several exemplifications of how Murphy and co. have raised the bar on electro-indie bangers once again.

10) Caribou/ Swim/Merge

Daniel Snaith is a mathematician by trade, but he’s better known to the masses as the indie electro composer Caribou. Swim is his best release to date, bursting with formulaic layers of samples, reverb, synth, bass and whatever other magical components he throws into the mix. Impossible to stand still while listening to, this album is consistently mind bending from start to finish.

if columbus was wrong i'd drive straight off the edge.

2010-11-27T16:23:00.000-06:00

today i reached a dreaded certainty. everything in my life is finally alligned. things are swell. yet - there is still this twisted knot, eating, rotting and corroding my insides full of anxiety, sadness and torment. it's so obvious. but do i have the courage to admit it?

i've got a big fat fucking bone to pick, with you my darling.

Wolf Parade: 11/23/10 - House of Blues, Chicago

2010-11-24T22:06:00.000-06:00

I think I kind of have a music crush on Dan Boeckner. Between Handsome Furs and Wolf Parade, I’ve caught the dude blowing my mind (and eardrums) probably around 7 or 8 times by now. When I heard Wolf Parade would be back in Chicago after their brief, but enjoyable performance at Pitchfork, I knew I had to check it out—even if that meant going against everything I stand for in music venues and returning to the dreaded House of Blues. Now to be fair, I had only frequented HOB once a few years back; ironically enough, to catch Wolf Parade—but the bad taste that was left in my mouth from the obnoxious security personnel and staff just wouldn’t fade. (Seriously, who the hell doesn’t let someone with a press pass in with a PEN?! I mean, I know I’m super cool and Wolf Parade would probably throw me on their guest list once they got to know me on a friend to friend basis, but . . . seriously.)

While the security personnel allowed my blue point bic hassle free this time around, I was slapped with a handful of even more painful fun killers--$6 cans of beer (sober night), a crowd of obnoxious underage fleece sporting nerds and bros (almost had a $6 high life spill on my kicks when some 17 year old flew down the stairs at my feet; not to be topped off by the drunk jerkstore on my right who “loves snorting lines of coke off his iPad”), and the most god awful opening band in all of history. I could almost dedicate this entire review to how terrible a pair-up whatever nonsense it was that opened up for WP sounded (and I’m not talking about the cutesy Japanese band, either), but I think my six-word scribbled descriptor of “cringe-worthy nasal nuisance nineties reject rock” did a fair enough job of summing them up. And of course, they had the longest sound check of all time—so by the time Boeckner, Krug and crew eventually took the stage around 10:15, it was safe to say I was on my last nerve’s end.

It only took the first key chords of “Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts” to quickly turn me around, however. Instantly clicking with an old personal fave from Apologies to Queen Mary was just the anecdote to my unease, and I realized that maybe the next 75 minutes would prove to be worth the wait after all—plus I got the spiteful amusement of watching the staff finally catch on to some underage drinkers and throw their asses out. While banter was somewhat consistent between songs, it remained at a fair minimum—with Krug throwing in self-deprecating retorts to Dan’s annoying female “I LOVE YOU DAN! WOO’S!” along the lines of, “Well can you say Spencer, you fat fucker? I mean, I am getting a bit older, things are changing.” Additional awkward quips of watching themselves on the HD TV—“infinity mirrors” and commentary on the overwhelming odor of popcorn VS the typical ‘weed smoke smells’ followed; proving maybe Krug should have either stuck to sucking his bottle of Jameson or belting out his fantastically wavy, garbled wails.

Awkward banter aside, Wolf Parade succeeded in their rocker mission of the evening—coming across as cool and crisp in their overall instrumentation as one could hope for with their guitar, keys and percussion dead on the mark. While the majority of the songs represented stemmed from their most recent release, Expo 86, there were a handful of oldies in the mix too, with At Mount Zoomar’s “Soldier Grin,” “Fine Young Cannibals,” the 10-minute rendition of “Kissing the Beehive,” and Apologies’ “I’ll Believe in Anything, the encore closer “You are a Runner And I am My Father’s Son,” and my personal highlight of the night, an electrified, dancey rendition to “This Heart’s On Fire.”

By the end of the night, I was a pretty sleepy, yet content gal—even despite the high influx of drunken bros polluting the crowd. While I would have admittedly liked to have heard more Apologies’ numbers, I felt satisfied with the equal representation of WP’s catalogue and look forward with what’s to come in the future. But here’s to hoping dudes will wise up and rock The Vic or Metro next time around.

Side Note Non Review Addendum/RANTS

Dudes, it is not smooth, cool or ever a good idea to interrupt someone who is obviously in deep thought taking notes - ESPECIALLY if said person is female and you are trying to get in her panties with lame slurs like, 'arrrrrgh yew rigghtin' a revuue?' 'that's shlooo aweshum,' 'what bhlowg? i liv in shikawgo so i probaablee reed it.' gross bros, piss off. if i wanted you to read my shit or talk to you, i wouldn't give you my meanest bitch face with my arms crossed. i also wouldn't say 'a blog' when you asked where i wrote. I HATE DRUNK BROS.
To the guys to my right who wouldn't quit saying 'NOW THAT WAS A JAM!!!' you are very fortunate i did not reach over the railling and bash your respective craniums into the stair banister. seriously.
That new song in the setlist i didn't really mention above in the review, I had never heard it, i just know they kept singing, 'search for discovery' and something about a 'precious stone.' this song ruled. i want to hear it again. that is all.
Never again will I go to a show 100% sober.
While I love Wolf Parade, they need to shorten up some of their songs. Strictly personal opinion, but I was getting bored with some of the extended outro jam seshes. (NOW THAT WAS A JAM!!!)

ok. set list time:

Wolf Parade Set List – 11/23/10 – House of Blues, Chicago

1. Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts
2. Soldier’s Grin
3. What did my Lover Say? (It Always had to go this Way)
4. Ghost Pressure
5. Cloud Shadow On the Mountain
6. Fine Young Cannibals
7. New song
8. Palm Road
9. I’ll Believe in Anything
10. This Heart’s On Fire
11. Kissing the Beehive
12. Yulia – encore 1
13. You Are a Runner And I am My Father’s Son—encore 2

dresden dolls do chicago : amanda palmer is cooler than me.

2010-11-21T13:38:00.002-06:00

The Dresden Dolls have always been one of those bands on my radar that I consistently enjoyed, but never really put much effort into. Every song I’ve ever heard, whether it be through my former college radio roots, via friends’ recommendations, or on blogs – I’ve thought to myself, ‘Man, I really oughtta pick up their discs and give this a full go.’ But, alas, I have failed – and after last Wednesday night, I see how dire my failure to myself really truly was.

First off, it’s no secret that Amanda Fucking Palmer is a rock goddess. The woman is truly amazing. I don’t think words can really do justice to her impeccable showmanship and dedication to her craft. After I saw her at SXSW in 2009 when she was touring her solo debut, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, I was stricken stupid. Her solo album became one of my top releases for the year instantly. But still, I neglected my back research on DD. Fast forward to now, nearly two years later, and I’m finding myself speechless in my vain efforts to write a review of what could possibly be one of the top performances to grace a Chicago stage in 2010.

While specific song titles elude me, I will do my best to give an overall recap of what went down at Chicago’s Vic Theater on November 17th, a night I can best summarize as one of tantalizing magic, seductive mystery and cabaret triumph. From the moment Palmer and Brian Viglione took the stage, the crowd completely lost their shit. Screams, shrieks, desperate shouts and cries were only overtaken by the thunderous applause. Palmer strutted in a red cloak of sorts, tight black pants and a captain-esque cap as Viglione sported the token bowler cap and vest—both of which get ups didn’t remain on for long. After shredding and chucking a fan-given bouquet into the audience, the duo wasted no time to getting down to business.

The sold out venue was overflowing with positive energy and the crowd was one of the most diverse I’ve seen in ages – parents, LARPers, cabaret kids, and random dudes from the street you’d never guess in a million years knew, let alone adored, the Dresden Dolls made up the mix. Not a single soul ceased to be entertained. For the next 90 or so minutes, Palmer belted out a good majority of their catalogue as if her life depended on it. With her very articulate, yet powerful vocal delivery, it’s amazing how Palmer is so muti-faceted to concentrate on both singing and her intense piano pounding, and at other times, drumming. Viglione was an incredible yin to her yang, never once slowing down the energy levels on percussion and back-up vocals. I don’t think there was a single song in the set that didn’t involve crowd sing along participation.

The aroma of incense wafted amongst the front of the house, adding to the surrealism of the red, purple and blue illuminated stage. Whether I was at the top of the balcony area, back by the main bar or elbows propped on stage in the photo pit, the sights and sounds were pretty fantastic. After a couple whiskey cokes, I got swept away in the magic of it all and my notes transitioned from song titles and stage banter to scribbled notes of “Amanda Palmer is cooler than me,” and creepy illustrations of what I imagine a Coin Operated Boy would resemble.

As she crooned in “The Kill,” Amanda Palmer may be an anarchist, atheist, and even the Antichrist, but she sure as fuck knows how to put on a show; plagiarist, terrorist or not—one thing’s for sure, she’s one helluva entertainer. I feel down right humbled and extremely fortunate to have caught this show, especially considering the limited run and mark of the duo’s ten year mark.

jodi robin root : takes over the world.

2010-11-21T13:28:00.002-06:00

(circa 2001)

doodz. im pretty sexxxcited. turns out my radio shenaniganry went a lil smoother than i anticipated it would and i have my first official subbing on-air shift! considering five years of my life were invested in noncommercial radio and i've been a music obsesser since i escaped outta argyle approx 10 years ago, this is pretty big news at least for me personally. ive been on this whole 'finding myself' bullshit cliche kick since i got laid off last feb, and it looks like i'm finally (kinda) getting there. romance and career bullshit aside, i've definitely grown and networked my lil wormy way now into magazine publication, blogs, city-based webzines, major city venue production/jack of trades and now finally fucking radio.

had my first shadow shift last night and hearing my creepy voice in the studio phones felt like home. i'm back, bitches. although only subbing for now, i think it'll be a perfect fit. when yer bored of shoving yer face at your fam's cribs on turkey day (this thurs), make sure to stream my noise on http://www.chirpradio.org/. i'll be the awkward homegirl pumping robyn from 3-6.

luv.

cryin' over peter wolf.

2010-11-17T00:30:00.000-06:00

The only thing that pains me more than seeing one of my favorite bands put on a poor performance is having to write a poor review on it—especially when it’s factors out of the musicians’ control. Ever since seeing Peter Wolf Crier blow me away as my personal top performance at South By Southwest 2010, I have been all about any and everything these two Mid-Western dudes have been about. Their debut album, Inter-Be, was one of my most played this year—both intimate yet powerful with their folky drum and guitar acoustic collaboration. “Crutch & Cane,” “For Now,” and “Untitled 101” are my jams, period. So when I was randomly selected as a winner on Lincoln Hall’s Facebook page for their gig last week, I was beyond stoked. I didn’t even realize these dudes were in town, since they were the opening act for Dawes and Vetiver, it wasn’t publicized very much. I quickly became giddy with excitement, even recruiting a girlfriend to whom I oohed and ahhed relentlessly to about how powerful Peter Pisano’s falsetto melodic vocals and drummer Brian Moen’s eerily animalistic mad drumming skills were.

Seriously--I was like their biggest fan. And well, to be fair, I still kinda am. When my gal pal and I secured our spot up front and center of the stage, I was sure we were in for a special treat. Up until, some bro dude to my direct right shouted at a semi-glassy eyed Pisano, “Yo Peter! Whatchya’ drinkin’ man?” To which Pisano politely forced a smile and quietly and forcibly replied, “Maker’s. It’s a whiskey; I’m feeling a bit under the weather.” “Dude, I know what Maker’s is! Right on!” Oh no, I thought. Peter’s sick. How the hell is he gonna cry for us tonight? I cursed the bro man to my right for wasting the limited and valuable vocal chords of my beloved crooner.

Around 9:00 pm on the dot, Pisano and Moen got down to it. And at first, it was promising. They opened up their 30-minute set with my personal fave, the album opener “Crutch and Cane” and then transitioned into the addicting, two minute tapper “Untitled 101.” But then Pisano’s voice began to dry up. And looking back on my videos, the sound itself was less than satisfactory. I’m not sure if it was something that was up with Lincoln Hall’s acoustics, the fact that the main room was emptier than what I’m accustomed to (since I’m not usually there early enough for the openers), or if it was the fact that I was so close to the speakers on stage – but as you can see in the video, the sound was distorted and not the clear, crispy goodness I’m so spoiled on with this venue.

Pisano’s typical honey dripping serenade was a forced, throaty series of croaks and my heart instantly sunk. I can barely drag my own butt out of bed with a sore throat to work in a mere cubicle; I can’t even begin to imagine how much it has to suck when you make your money with your voice and it’s shot. To top it off, Pisano’s parents were in the crowd. Poor guy seemed to be having a rough night.

On the upside, Moen was his usual full forced self, banging on his drums for dear life, and Pisano, although ill, still managed to tear up his guitar seemingly unaffected. But unfortunately, any fan of Peter Wolf Crier can attest that Pisano’s vocal range and prowess is what makes the group stand apart from their competitors, and even Peter Wolf Crier can’t wail with a sore throat. For anyone who has seen PWC prior to the LH show, you know what I’m saying that it would be a crime to pass up the chance to check ‘em live; but for those of you who’s first encounter was this past Thursday, I beg of you, pick up their record and give them another go. They’re one of the only bands this past year to give me goose bumps, just more so with the crying vs. the croaking.

well i guess this is growing up

2010-11-16T23:22:00.001-06:00

wow. wow. wow. so many things about this video. where to begin? i guess i could start with my confession of undying adoration in my teenage years for blink-182. this vid, being the kicker for my 3 something year infatuation. thanks to 120 minutes, this was the beginning of my skater girl 'punk' phase. (popunkpopunkpopunk).

embarassing fact #1: i had the poster for enema of the state with mark/travis/tom in their boxers tacked up above my bed on the ceiling.

embarassing fact #2: hotmail never accepted Root as my last name - it would always reject it and say my last name was 'invalid' no matter how many times i tried. so instead, not knowing how email worked, and that everyone who would receive a message from me would see it, i saved my last name as Hoppus. As in, Mark Hoppus, cuz you know, we were all gonna get married and stuff. *sick.

embarassing fact #3: i met the boy i lost my virginity to and deemed my first 'true love' in high school at the movies seeing 'american pie.' the only ppl in the theater were me and a girlfriend (who i probably haven't spoken to since), said virginity taker, and his two friends. we shouted at each other across the theater about who was the bigger 'blink' fan and contested each other with random trivia. 'well, do you have cheshire cat??' 'whatever happened to scott?' 'college, duh.' so i guess, thanks, american pie and blink - 182 for the hot 16 year old pop-punk affair.

but anyway. goddamn. i don't care how embarassing it is, but embarassing fact #4: i still think Dude Ranch, as obnoxious and harsh as it is, is a fucking killer album. Even with those needless filler tracks of tom kissing some horses' balls, or whatever the fuck that is, that's my shit. enema of the state, god, i haven't heard that since i was maybe 19 or so and i guess a listen would be amusing for a bit, but that's where i have to draw the line. i always pretended to be the biggest fan of their first album, cheshire cat for 'street cred,' but let's face it, that album sucked. (even though i think that shitty 'carousel' song was me and v-card's 'song'.)

but this video? the reason i even youtubed it in the first place is that whenever i'm having a new quarter-life crisis of sorts or am pissed, sad, stressed, whathaveyou, i think back on the wisdom of my husband that never was, the frost-tipped (seriously, what's up with that hair? totes forgot about that bad bleach job), barking, 'nobody likes you when yer twenty-threee' mark hoppus and his solid life advice: "well i guess this is growing up.' and i'm like, yap, mark, feel yer pain brotha. growing up suxxx. (embarassing fact #5: i remember the part in the song where it breaks and on mtv springbreak 2000 and the show i saw in tinley park when i was 16 when BAD RELIGION and fenix tx opened up for blink 182 and mark raps 'ice ice baby'. stop, collaborate and listen. .. oh gawd.) but yeah, well i guess this is throwing up.

but yeah. whatever did happen to scott? (shouting across the theater: 'HE WENT TO COLLEGE!')

sucker.

levi's puppet vs. dub-step = girl talk

2010-11-15T22:54:00.000-06:00

The 9th track on Girl Talk's 'All Day' had a familiar electro beat featured post bassment jaxx where's yo head at breakdown. you may or may not recognize it yerself in the old skool levi's commercial above. is this what dub-step is? i'm so confused. it seems like every electro party or gathering with dub-step kids this same bassy line is repeated over and over again while the club kids go nuts. didn't these drug happy dub-steppers watch mtv in the mid-to-late 90's when levi's was pumping this shit out every fiveminutes? i only know one other person who remembers these commercials and suffice it to say i'm pretty confident my former junior high/high school gf isn't down with the dub-step know-how (or anything non-godsmack/nu-metal related tunes) these days. although side note: that puppet is the same puppet as featured in the british office when ricky gervais is giving a tour of the office and shows off the hilarity of a zany puppet hanging out on the coat rack. i don't know why, but i really love that puppet. but really, really, really fucking hate dub-step. i'da rather get dubstepped on then have to ever endure another minute of that electro-drug craze. gag.

girl TALK.

2010-11-15T21:02:00.001-06:00

ugh. so i totally grossed myself out this past weekend. sometimes i let my ultimate warrior she-ra guard down and end up getting effed. this isn't a post about why i just spent the past 4 days rocking the same stanky clothes with unwashed hair in my crumb infested nest of a bed, but what rousted me outta it. (and sadly, forced me to change my underwear). let's call this my 27-something-slump. but you know what? fuck that noise. i'm better than them demons that haunt me (both imaginative and unfortunately, real). so ima rise, just like niki manaj (if you get that reference than you rule. weezy 4 lyfe).

today, after a slew of unanswered text messages beeped me to life, i finally rolled over my slumbering kit kit and reached for my laptop to plug into the virtual world. and there it was in my in-box, 'new girl talk drops today - for free.' whaaaaat? totally unexpected. it'd been 2+ years since 'feed the animals' dropped - i don't remember exactly when it dropped, 'cept i was still living with mike, who surely did not share my sentiment for booty shaking mash-up retardation. 'feed the animals' is still on heavy rotation, to this day, whenever it is i need a swift kick in the ass to get ready for the morning or wake the fuck up. so when i read this email, i carelessly tossed my laptop to the side and stumbled outta my room for the first time in what felt like years - (seriously, ya'll, i'm pretty sure i morphed into one of those creepy bat dwelling critters that never see the light of day after not leaving my apartment for 3+days after something like 80 consecutive hours of slumber). i ran to my living room comp and in dismay, attempted said download of girl talk's latest release, 'all day' time and time again.

just like every other rotten hipster in the universe.

turns out illegal-art's servers were in such heavy demand some shit down the way crashed - prohibiting my stanky ass noon dance party. after about an hour or so, i finally mcgyver'd that shit and found an alternate link. (want it? just google 'girl talk AND all day AND mediafire' yer welcome). and i gotta say, that while girl talk was inspiration enough for me to get the fuck up and quit rotting away in girly-god-i-hate-boys-and-life-what have you, i'm just now, 7+ hours getting the chance to rock the album in completion for the first time. i'm sure a full up review will be up in the near future - but for now, it's safe to say this shit is rad as fuck. 'tenderness' + 'can i getta?' omfg. luv.

but i gotta say, the theme of today, girl talk, is my fucking savior. my boo lisa, like a fucking saint, swooped down from the comforts of lincoln square down to my dirty dwelling to cheer my ass up. nonjudgemental. nonbiased. pure girly power. we rocked some bigass fucking burgers complete with waffle fries. went to kmart where we pretty much cleaned out the beauty product section. rocked more junk food from jewel than the homies from half baked. indulged in facials, cukes on the eyeballs and all, and rocked strawberries & champagne, topped off with half a can of redi-whip with the comfort of girly classics clueless and pretty in pink in the background. man. i thought i was bummed out - at least a rich boy didn't invite me to prom and then take it back!!!! (seriously, that movie is kinda rough to watch. most rigid and awkward concluding kiss finale of all time. i'm glad i aint' molly ringwald, that shit looked sick). and man, at least i didn't fall for a gay boy and then fall in love with my step brother! talk about dramance!!

anyway. girl shit rulez. both solid homegirls and dance party shit. im listening to a mash-up of big boi's 'shutterbugg' and portishead's 'dummy' right now. and jezus christo. this is my shit. it sure as hell beats listening to gayngs on repeat with eternal sunshine of the spotless mind on the background.

as a one genius mark hoppus once stated, 'well i guess this is growing up.'

this person is cooler than me: wendy's fan.

2010-11-11T23:28:00.000-06:00

while waiting for the cta earlier this evening, i decided to flip through some old photos on my camera and clear up some memory space. that is when i stumbled upon this particular goodie. i spaced out, amazed and flabbergasted - but finally managed to track this back to a night of post drinking at rainbo. stumbling home on division with a couple other pals, they didn't even notice when they crossed the street and i stayed amazed at my discovery on the southern side of the road. the fact that someone took the time to measure the exact size of the drive-thru wendy's face to blow up the picture of their own girl and then perfectly cut out the bangs and glue it onto the flourescent sign, well, quite frankly that is the coolest thing i've ever seen. intoxicated or otherwise.

no way would lincoln square's wendy's have a creepy mexican baby's face glued onto its drive through sign. this is reason one of many why i really like my new neighborhood.

who said lucifer wasn't a crafter?

2010-11-11T23:19:00.000-06:00

to keep myself from going nutso with the upcoming winter months and just b/c im a crazy betch in general, i decided its time to layoff the hardcore boozing and try to get myself involved in more extracurriculars. now that i got somewhat of a 9-5 thang goin (temporary whateverness it may be), i need something to look forward to and prevent me from getting locked up in the looney bin. (something tells me that my roommate and kitty cat don't enjoy my shout-singing at the top of my lungs rendition of kanye's 'SO HERE'S A TOAST TO THE DOUCHE BAAAGS,' every five minutes). plus, i need to save moneys and not get super fat from pbrs. so venturing out, this past week has been a bit of an experiment. A) What can I do that does not involve alcohol - or if it does, small amounts of it? B) Will it kick ass or will i just get super bored? C) can i survive with little to no sleep?

The answer is all three things are def possible. With the exception of my day off on Tuesday which was my typical funemployment style day off (i.e. sleeping in bed with instant netflix streaming shitty movies all day), I managed to get out and do shit all week. Participated in volunteering activites for CHIRP radio. Caught 2 different sets of live music (both free! both with only 2 beers each!). Saw some gal pals. Made crude jokes (gotta love tampon and pubic hair humor). Have some upcoming art shows and other nondrinking activities in the works for this weekend as well. But tonight was probably my highlight.

Since my attempts at craft night, albeit were succesfull at eliciting responses/interest, pretty much sucked with everyone consistently bailing on me - it was nice to hear a friendly female companion was equally interested in her own type of alternative craft night. Homegirl had hella snacks, a lotta cool new peeps, and a Lisa Frank sticker collection to make any former 8 year old girl salivate (even 20 years later). I managed to make some creepy cat head earrings (see above) and her dude even stole some hot glue gun sticks from the local CVS as his contribution. With a glass and a half of wine in me, I still succesfully managed a social and fun evening and am now innocently enough, in bed tucked in before 11:30. Greatest part is that this will be a reoccuring activity. Now hopefully with 'The Sewing Circle from Hell,' as it was so cleverly deemed (logo and everything!) and book club, I'll manage to maintain a healthy balance of movies in bed winter hibernation and nonlethal social interaction.

P.S. if anybody wants some creepy cat head earrings, holler at me and they're yers.

aaagghh! real monsters : lawn gnome edition.

2010-11-10T23:58:00.000-06:00

so i got to thinking after i pummelled out my monster in the attic bit that i have probably encountered more unusual/maybe/sorta/kinda paranormal happenings than the average person. i credit/blame this on a handful of factors: 1) my mom and aunts let me and my cousins watch whatever the fuck we wanted growing up (which of course, was freddy/chucky/jason movies; at like, ages 5-10); 2) my mom bought me a ouija board when i was 9 (i didn't even know what it was, let alone asked for one); 3) i was a loser in gradeschool/junior high/highschool (still now); thus totally cast spells and shit on kids who made fun of me and boys who refused to like me; 4) i've survived 7 concussions without any severe trauma (other than a loooooottttt of childhood memory loss).

that being said, i've seen (or at least thought i've seen) hella crazy creepy shit. i could go on and on. and maybe i will. i need more reoccurring column/post/whatever thingies on this joint, so why not exploit how lame and naive i was and still am when it comes to ghosties and things that go bump in the night?

i'll start with my first (or maybe it was my 2nd or 3rd ) sighting. (unless you count the time i was in my first apartment growing up. mom was brushing her teeth in the bathroom. i was standing directly parallel to her with the bathroom door open, staring out on the open balcony - we lived on the 2nd floor. i turned around to a quiet whirring noise. there was a fucking mini truck-trailer thingy driving around in circles on our balcony i shit you not. i asked my mom, 'why is there a tiny truck driving around on our porch?' this was not a toy. it was like, the size of a medium sized dog. i swear to this day this is what i saw. i turned around when my mom gargled, 'whaaat?' spitting out her toothpaste in the sink. 'right there' - i pointed. and of course it was gone. now this wasn't scary or anything, up until last year when i saw a full sized replica of the same exact fucking truck driving in chicago. maybe it'll end up running me over someday and i foreshadowed my death. or maybe as my mom said, 'jodi your imagination runs wild.' whatever i totally saw that fucking mini truck thing.)

tangent - let's try this again.

so i was at some creepy extended relative's house. if i had to guess, i'd say i was maybe 7 or 8. i don't remember who's house it was but i think it might have been on the root side. any of you who know me know i don't know my dad or who he is, so you're probably thinking, i thought there was ONLY the root side, but truth is my grandma was Turner, my stepgrandfather, the one i grew up with was a Parr, but my biological grandfather who died 3 years before i was born and was divorced from my grams years and years before that, was the Root. George Root. I hear he was a real asshole. Anyway, we never really hung with that crew so that would explain why this particular family outting was different than the rest. It was like some of them had money! I remember vividly that they had this nice house, different from all the rotting trailers and decrepid farmhouses or lurky marijuana basements the rest of my family resided in. A huuuge, green backyard, with plenty of floral arrangements and mini gardens. The food/picnic was awesome, with branded chips! No Roundy's! Real fruit punch! But all the relatives were weirdos and the 'cousins' i was sposed to play with dressed better than me.

One or two of my first cousins I grew up with were there too. But the details are kinda foggy - because, like i said, i was A) only 6 or so and B) survived 7 concussions; there's a lotta shit i don't remember from growing up.

The shit I do remember though still haunts me to this day. Ever since I was little, probably from the day i first saw that whirring mini truck circling around my balcony, I've been able to get weird feelings. Not the sense of, 'man this dude is a date rapist i should flee' or 'this toothless homeless person might rob me,' but like, unmentionable weird creepy vibes. like something is super not right, even if it looks right. I mean, here I was, pretending to not be white trash! Eating hella candy and playing with rich kid toys! I shoulda been happy as a clam! ( i dont get that expression). Instead, I caught myself looking over my shoulder constantly. I tried to play inside with my other first cousins, but my mom and aunts kept shooing us out, to play in the yard since it was such a nice day. blah blah blah.

I didn't like that back yard. Not one bit. The front yard was fine. That's where the picnic set up was. The people. Grown Ups. The back yard, on the other hand, just had the lawn gnomes. Those. fucking. creepy. ass. lawn. gnomes. Now, I'm not scared of lawn gnomes. I think they're just as quirky/kitschy as the rest of ya'll. Ha ha funny gnome. Let's steal it and take polaroids of it. Whatever. But these gnomes were different. Straight outta some R.L. Stine Goosebumps shit. But this was years before that series.

There were 3 or so of them. And they were placed at different spots by one of the mini gardens in back. I don't remember if we were playing freeze tag or just randomly rolling around in the grass. But everytime I'd turn around, those fucking gnomes would have switched spots. There were only 3 or 4 of us kids and I was the closest one to the house, so it wasn't like anyone was sneaking behind me and moving the gnomes to freak me out. Plus, these kids may have had richer parents than me, but they weren't that fucking clever at age 7. At one point, I elbowed one of my cousins and pointed out that these creepy little fuckers were moving. We started staring at them, and I can't be sure if I saw anything or not, but at the time I remember swearing I saw one move. Whether or not they did, fuck if I know. But I'll never forget that pinching, exhilirating rush I felt as the adrenaline of fear rushed through me. Taste of batteries in my throat. Racing heartbeat.

At one point I ran in the kitchen. "mom. mom. come out here." 'jodi go back outside, what do you want?' "mom, the gnomes outside are following me, i can feel their eyes." 'jodi, quit being ridiculous.'

by the time i was back outside, my cousins were fully aware of the creeping lawn gnomes. they too got freaked out and we spent about a half hour just staring at them. we got too freaked out and hid in the basement and played board games for a bit. maybe an hour or two later, we rolled back outside. the lawn gnomes were all back in their original spots - but each gnome in a different place. none of the adults ever ventured outside as they were all too busy hitting the keg and smoking joints in the garage. the lawn gnomes never moved super far, but i'm telling you they moved enough to notice. maybe like, a couple feet total. like i said, this story is lame and very well could be the result of my 'wild imagination.' but at the same time, while the names and faces of my extended cousins are long forgotten, the fucking pinching oh-my-god twisty feeling in my gut that i still get from time to time is far from long gone.

that shit gave me the creeps. and that, (other than the creepy truck thingy), was my first 'are ghosts real?' contemplation. from there on, it just got creepier and creepier. but i can't give all my secrets away now right off the bat, right? i kinda want a lawn gnome now. i would name him gerard.

that is all.

i almost cried for peter wolf crier tonite.

2010-11-10T23:15:00.000-06:00

out of sadness. and out of laughter. this isn't my official review (which will follow later), but my 'man-i'm-so-exhausted-i-can't-believe-i'm-still-awake' genuine first rambly impression).

first off, i love peter wolf crier. inter-be is a fantastic album. 'untitled 101' and 'crutch & cane' are two of my favorite indie jams of 2010. truth. but doods, i knew from before the set even started by the glassy look in poor leadman peter whatever his last name's eyes, that dude was sick. bro in crowd shouts ' yo peter whattchya drinkin??' like they're best pals and homeboy sadly smiles, 'makers. it's whiskey' 'OH BOY I KNOW WHAT MAKERS IS," bro shouts back. "i'm under the weather," peter force smiles.

awwwwww. anyway. yeah, poor dude had a sore throat. and as badass as he and his drummer were banging their shit instrumentation wise, his voice sounded like a croaking frog. like, in 'crutch and cane' instead of smoothly cooing in his sexy falsetto honey way, 'babeeee zan-zo-barrrr,' he throatily croaked, 'babreeee zshan-zsho-bhar,' and i thought, 'dayumn. i cant even crawl into a cubicle feeling like that. i can't even begin to imagine the frustration if my voice was my carurrr.' and to top it off, his parents were in the crowd. awwwwws all 'round.

so that sucked. the show didn't quite suck, but at the same time yeah it kinda did. but then megan points out the sexy drummer dude's hair (future man i want to date for sure. gotta google stalk that bitch's name. full package : sexy glasses. sexy tattoos. sexy little boy haircut.) the three little cowlick tendrils are fucking blowing in some mysterious windy breeze i can't even see where it's coming from. this is in the midst of 'down down' which is a pretty slow and quiet song. so us geeky dorks (sober, mind you even), attempting to gulp our urping stifled laughter just made it that much worse as we dreamily stared at the blowing hairs.

yes. we are dumb. whatever. that made the show to me, to be honest. at one point i turned to megan and said, 'that man needs to be my boyfriend. now.' and then he started making possessed like facial expressions, banging on his drumkit, appearing to lip sync the words 'bow wow bang bam' or something of the sort. hairs blowing in the wind.

i'm laughing out loud now. i think it's time my sleep deprived ass got some shut eye.

men i want to date: michael ian black

2010-11-09T22:56:00.000-06:00

i woke up to a text message this morning and saw that i had also received an additional unread text which i apparently sent myself at approximately 3:05 am. it read of three simple words: 'michael ian black.' oh, the foggy late nights of estelle's and the effects it has on me. luckily for my wallet, (despite losing twenty bucks today somehow after being so proud of not spending it last night), it was a relatively tame evening so i was able to retrace my way of thinking to why i would text myself such a cryptic message. between amazing infomercials of collapsable deep fryer collanders and whatever else garbage is on the tvs at estelles post 2 am, i caught a glimpse of michael and michael have issues on comedy central. seeing mr. michael ian black's mannequin boy like face made me remember my days of lusty crushhood on him. i figure, even though i haven't thought about this wise cracker in a while, he still deserves a place on my men i'd like to date roster.

reasons why i want to date michael ian black:

1. even with his obnoxious facial expressions and mannequin like mug, i still think he's super hot

2. i bet he could help me get a copy of the state on dvd

3. he could totes introduce me to the gang from reno 911/the state. i've always wanted to sing 'AND THE INSPIRATION IS FREEEEE' to them personally.

4. if we went out to like rainbo or estelles' or something, ppl i know would see me with him and whisper, 'hey check it out, jodi's out with that i love the 80's dude' and i'd be super popular

5. he could be fulfill my one time 'older dude' conquest

6. i could see if shit he says in real life are as clever as his tweets

7. he was in wet hot american summer. (maybe an introduction to fellow man i want to date paul rudd??)

8. he makes really convincing condescending facial expressions so i could bring him along to job interviews if they're not going well to pressure the man into giving me a job.

9. supposedly he's got a talk show in works for mtv next year. if this is true and our relationship worked out, i could attend filmings and find out if my suspicions of news anchor john norris are true and that he really is the crypt keeper

10. again, he's hot.

walking with THEE.

2010-11-09T22:30:00.000-06:00

i see that clinic is playing lincoln hall this thursday. if my week wasn't already super jam packed with randomicities (thurs being craft night), i'd totes check em out. not super familiar with their catalogue, but i def have a special place reserved for 2001's single and vid 'walking with thee.' as you can see above, these brits got mannequins that bone. super sweet boots. twister. bad hair. and erect nipples. takes me back to my first college radio show, with me and tessa blaring this on our monitor, screaming in an awkward british nasaly accent, 'NOOOH!' to which abeolicious would bust in and blurt on air. good, innocent, dorky times. if i could get abe and tessa down to chicago in a day's notice, we would totally rock out at the clinic show. instead, i will just watch this video on repeat. friends. why they gotta get married and have families and live so far away and shit.

sidenote: i totes want a mannequin now.

let's have a toast for the scumbags

2010-11-08T00:15:00.000-06:00

it's november. my least favorite month of the year. two years ago i went through a pretty damn tricky emotional rollercoaster the last week of october/month of november through, well, damn. i guess june of the next year? but 2008 winter was particularly cold. 'the coldest winter' i guess you could say. there's a song called that, you know. by a one and only mr. kanye west.

now before you start with the involuntary eye rolling, this post isnt about how awesome/amazing ye is and how he's my hero with his bravado and ego antics and sneaker collection. i don't care what kinda dude he is, and even though i'll step up and speak on his behalf (at the chirp hip hop primer/education night last week they mentioned ye, called him a 'horrible rapper' to which i spoke up, 'dudes he rapped with his jaw WIRED SHUT,' to which someone said, 'no that was fiddy,' 'HIS BREAKOUT SINGLE WAS CALLED THROUGH THE WIRE, ABOUT HIS CAR ACCIDENT AND HOW HIS JAW WAS WIRED SHUT,' 'well, whatever, his album with autotune was obnoxious, his crying about getting dumped' 'HIS MAMA DIED.', the subject quickly changed and i'm pretty sure i lost all musical credibility with everyone in that room.) but whatever. you know? i hold a special spot in me for some yeezy. tangent aside, he was kind of non-ironically speaking, my savior of sorts.

sure, i enjoyed college dropout. late registration was a cool enough record. (now days ill retract both statements and say AMAZING albums, but at the time, i was ambivalent with slight interest). graduation i enjoyed, but was re-emphasized to me by a certain pal who meant more to me than they'll ever realize, with really poor timing.

2008 was a life changing year for me. i fell in and out of love. with different people. but i was in a relationship. a serious relationship. so the falling out of love part, well, that sucked. and anyone who knows me knows i'm no longer in said relationship. to this day, we're pals and i'm ever so grateful for that, truly. and i'm good and over the dissolution of the romance, but at the time it was like getting hit by a car and only realizing you'd never walk again months after the fact. at the time, just like any breakup, i knew it was for the best and i was anxious to get away. but then when it inevitably happened, well, anyone who's experienced a breakup from a serious relationship knows what i'm getting at.

this was right before the coldest winter. i had no friends in the city. even though i lived here two years, i realized i could count my friendly acquaintences on one hand. one, being my roommate, who conveniently enough, had her heart smashed to smithereens the same time as me. and we were both pretty fucking miserable. in our case, misery did not in fact, love company. well a certain somebody (mr. west!) had just gotten dumped by his fiance and lost his mama. so yeah, his least credible record to date, 808's and heartbreaks, was the ending result. autotune overload. hardly his masterpiece, i can't really argue with critics who trash it. but do i want to jump up on my soapbox and defend it to pieces? fuck yeah. just like the smelly kid in gradeschool, you KNOW homeboy smells, and chances are 9.5/10 that you (and me, cuz i was that kid), didn't defend the kid at the time - but looking back on it now, don't you feel like a shithead? well, i will admit proudly that i still enjoy 808 and heartbrakes, but tangent aside, the reason this record means shit to me isn't because of 'robocop.'

anyway. fuck. this ramble is going longer than i projected. something about 808's matched my mood at the time. i think 'heartless' is still my number one most played song on my laptop's itunes 2 years later. i couldn't stop. i just kept listening. as lame as it is, there was something with that album that reached out to me and kanye helped fuel my depression, empathize with my broken heart, yet encourage my desire to move on simultaneously. and like the winter of 2008, as soon as it blossomed into spring/summer that next year and my feelings finally returned to that of a normal, hopeful - even, human being, i shelved that record into my dusty cd rack to be forgotten about.

2 years. man, that's a long time. a year later, i met somebody else and couldn't believe my luck. how happy i was! i met so many new friends. i was in a good place. emotionally/physically/professionally. then shit fell apart. lost my job. went through another kinda/sorta/notreally/butyes,really breakup. drifted apart from friends. had some fallouts with my family. which brings me to now. i'm starting to rescrap from the ground up. the dark period is behind me. it's time to stand up proud, and say fuck all ya'll haterz (or douchebags, jerkoffs, scumbags, assholes - as ye puts it). and you know what? dude is kinda retarded. the video/film he made for 'runaway' is laughable to put it lightly. dude falls in love with a bird. they try to feed the bird a bird and she freaks out. some ballerinas come out. bird hangs out with deer and shit in kanye's yard. then the bird bursts into flames and kanye's sad. but you know what? i get where he's coming from with this song. it's his 'fuck you guys, i said i'm sorry and i tried to do right. if you still can't be down with me, i ain't gonna let you drag me down anymore. good bye deadweight.'

i like that philosophy. hence, tonite was my toast to the douchebags. i locked myself up in my bedroom and went through some much needed personal self-therapy. watched bad movies i've secretly been jonesin' to see for months but was too embarassed to admit. enjoyed a glass of wine. cuddled with my kitty and meowed at her like i was in heat. ate a steak dinner for one. listened to kanye's 'runaway' on repeat on my new headphones. and took a 90 minute steaming bath where i treated myself to every miniscule beauty treatment i possibly could endure in the convenience of my own bathroom. fuck, gave myself a foot scrub/massage. haven't done that shit since, well, 2008 i guess.

moral of the story is: everyone's got that one trigger. maybe it's not music for everybody. maybe it's a location. time of year. food. scent. person. for me, i guess everything that sort of narrates or relates to my emotional struggles and triumphs comes down to music. and kanye is hardly the maestro to my life; the soundtrack of my life is much more expansive, i assure you. but you better well goddamn believe that he's at least a chapter. and to say i have high hopes for this new record is putting it lightly - but expectations? non-existant. i'll either love it or not love it. there's always going to be november 2008.

so i think it's time for us to have a toast.

welcome back weezy!!!!

2010-11-05T00:18:00.000-05:00

so dudes, today was a pretty special day. for those of ya'll not in the know, mr. dwayne carter III, aka the martian, aka weezy, but probs best known as Lil' Wayne, was freed from riker's island after serving 8 months behind bars for violating some sort of weapon possession charge. (holy run on sentence). while i admit i haven't given his latest ep 'i am not a human being' a single second of my time, (not really diggin' where he's going with this recent bout of experimental 'rock' garbage), but i still got nothin but mad love for this dude. supposedly, he'll be dropping the anticipated tha carter IV on 12/15 - (40 days ieeeee!!!), but any fan of wayne knows he's a pusher-backer when it comes time to throw out shit. not that he doesn't keep his fans happy with leaks and mixtapes or what have you, but let's face it, the carter series are the epitamy of his existence.

tha carter III remains one of my fave releases to this day, and tha carter II is perfect chill-'im-so-street-and-not-a-scrawny-white-girl-from-wisconsin' record. i also feel quite attached personally to him as he drops more oshkosh reps than fellow emcee sean daley. but whatever, i already dedicated a post from 'men i want to date' bout weezy so im not gonna spend more time professing my confusing admiration for him anymore. but cmon everybody, WEEZY'S FREE!!!!!!! i haven't been this stoked since gucci mane got released (but according to what i've read this past week, he may be soon again behind bars for driving on the wrong side of the road, destroying govt property and other badass shenaniganry).

i want a rapper man. 4 realzies. specially weezy, cuz lines like these make a bitch weak in tha kneez.

'abracadabra, im up like viagra.'
'you like a bitch wit no ass, you ain't got shit.'
'i got summer hatin on me cuz im hotta than the sun.'
'thats why she wearin tha jeans that show her buttcrack, my girl cant wear that; why? that where my stash at.'

the books - vic theater, chicago, 10/28/10

2010-11-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

The Books read mystically into musical purgatory in Chicago
(from Venuszine.com - http://bit.ly/9hPuS1 )

After a near death experience with a maniacal cabbie, I wasn’t sure I made it to the Books concert as a living being or if my soul was swept into some form of musical purgatory. Once I arrived, the first thing I noticed was how cold the venue was—it was literally winter jacket inside cold. Perhaps it was because of the Vic Theatre’s more intimate set-up, with lines of folding chairs versus standing general admission, or maybe it was because the crowd was much more tranquil themselves, quietly conversing in polite anticipation for the experience that was to follow. And quite the experience it was.

It’s hard to summarize what the Books put on as a performance per say as the entire showcase was much more of a multi-dimensional experience of visuals, recordings, and peaceful yet subdued instrumentation. The 80 or so minutes the trio of musicians were on stage included several songs from the latest release The Way Out (Temporary Residence), starting with the hypnotic narrative album opener “Group Auntogenics I.” Visuals swirled on the oversized backdrop, with various images complementing each specific track’s samples and overall vibe.

With the shadowy stage and artsy film series, it was easy to forget that musicians were actually seated on the stage. The melodic guitars, strings, and vocals were ambient, while gripping, but still seemed secondary to the experimental loops and samples displayed. The overall sound was crisp, sounding like a stripped down and non-dancey version of fellow electronic indie artist Caribou.

Banter was minimal and somewhat dry, which was surprising considering the humorous and lighthearted content on the screen above. Whether it was a song about golf, the infamous Home Alone Talkboy, family, or even a death march, the crowd was thoroughly immersed, clapping treating them to a standing ovation prior to the three song encore which featured their Dark Was the Night compilation contribution “Cello Song.”
It was perhaps one of the calmest events in an otherwise hectic and party-filled Chicago for Halloween weekend, yet the overall contemporary and soothing sounds made for a perfect hideaway—leading me once again to ponder if I had indeed survived my hectic, high speed cab ride or if the experience was all a peacefully haunting glimpse into the afterlife.

night (terrors).

2010-11-03T01:34:00.001-05:00

wikipedia defines night terrors as such:

A night terror, also known as a sleep terror or pavor nocturnus, is a parasomnia disorder characterized by extreme terror and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness. The subject wakes abruptly from slow-wave sleep, with waking usually accompanied by gasping, moaning, or screaming while waking. It is often impossible to awaken the person fully because they are so concentrated on waking, and after the episode the subject normally settles back to sleep without waking. A night terror for some can rarely be recalled by the subject. For others it can be. They typically occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep. Some recall a blurry face within the first five minutes of sleeping that floats towards then. When swinging or yelling at the face, it disappears.

i've been extremely sleep deprived, especially the past week due to this shit. the worst part is, i'm part of the % that remembers their terrors. in fact, i'd say i remember them clear as day 90% of the time. the dream itself isn't the terror, the dreams are usually lucid and typical whateverness. but the terror is always the same.

i'm in my bed, aware of my surroundings, in my current bedroom. just like i'm asleep as i went to sleep. wearing the same pajamas, spooning my pillow the same, etc. nothing out of the norm. and then i hear footsteps towards my bedroom. the door opens. someone crawls into my bed with me. i'm asleep, but unable to wake. i don't feel comfortable with the idea that someone is crawling uninvited into my room. for a split second, no matter how many times i experience this, i always feel relieved and think, 'oh it's just charlie, coming over after work to surprise me,' and then i realize - charlie doesn't have a key to my apartment. he doesn't come over to my apartment unannounced and would never just crawl into my bed. he's also no longer my boyfriend. then i feel overwhelmingly sad for a split second, and then even worse, paralyzing terror.

who is this, then, that is crawling into my bed? i feel the bed shift. i feel the weight of another person crawling under the covers beside me. i struggle to wake, try to thrash my body, arms, head, neck, anything, any which way but am paralyzed. i just want to open my eyes! say something! tell my intruder to begone! i'm always sleeping on my stomach in the terrors and i always physically feel the pressure of another person's body pressing on top of mine. not in a sexual way, but in an intimate embrace. then usually, their hand will envelope mine and nonintimidatingly hold me. but i don't know who this is. and i don't want them in my room.so i'm simultaneously sad, terrified, and confused. and i struggle to gasp for breath so i can say anything. so i can scream. so i can tell them to get off. to buck my hips and body weight to remove the intruder. but i'm helpless. every. fucking. time.

and i physically in real time feel myself levels and levels deep into subconcious. i can hear real sounds - if my roommate is banging things around in the kitchen in real time, i hear it. if molly's knocking things over in the corner, i hear it. but i also feel this body. so it's very real.

i wake up every time with a struggle, gasping for air, moaning and sometimes without even realizing it, sobbing. disoriented, i'll turn into the wall and clutch my pillow and try to fall back asleep. usually this doesn't work out too well because i'm too freaked out. last night i experienced this exact same terror on three separate occassions.

basically, night terrors suck. anyone have personal experiences/advice/remedies? maybe i just need a real person to come and hold me in my sleep so this intruder will disappear for good. or maybe i need a regular alarm clock. whatever it is, fucking sleep deprivation blows.

aaaghh! real monsters : (monster in the attic).

2010-11-03T00:18:00.001-05:00

cooped up with the sniffles, 4 loads of laundry and a struggle with alligning a regular sleeping pattern now that i've rejoined the corporate 9-5'ers, i took advantage of some instant netflix streaming this evening. still in the halloween spirit, i decided to finally give paranormal activity a shot. i had heard mixed reviews from horror buff pals and scaredy cats alike, so had always been pretty indifferent as to whether or not i gave it my ever so valued 90 minutes. gotta say - it was better than i had anticipated. call me a cynic, but any modern 'horror' has failed to make my eyeballs bulge or shift in my seat since probably wes craven's 'scream' in 9th grade. and well, that was 9th grade. sooo. . . .yeah.

anyway, this isn't a review of paranormal activity. although i will say that after viewing the first i'm halfway intrigued in viewing the 2nd, even if just for the last ten minutes of the first flick. that last scene was creepy, whether or not the movie is worth a second viewing. but yeah, this is more my rambling recap of my own personal paranormal experience. (one of several). maybe this should be a reoccurring column since i've seemingly run out of 'men i want to date' as of late. (what's up with that, jodi? normally bitch is boiiii craaaazy). ghosts intrigue me. while i may not be a religious person, persay, i definitely believe in some form of afterlife or spirituality. not atheist, not quite agnostic, just kind of in between. i guess i believe in ghosts.

(take heed, my peers. if i suddenly croak in the near future, you KNOW ima haunt yer ass. droppin bars of soap in the shower, making creepy meowing sounds vs. the atypical ghostly boos and whatnot. can't wait, jus' like tori amos ima be a 'happy phantom.')

again. tangent. i blame this on the two glasses of yellowtail and recent bout of severe sleep deprivation and night terrors. (which are AWESOME, btw). *sarcasm*. but that's another post. . . . ok, ok.

Monster in the Attic.

this shit is real. out of all of my supernatural/freaky/whateverthefuckyouwannacall'em experiences, this was by far the fucking scariest and had multiple witnesses.

it was winter, 2005. a fucking cold ass winter, only to be rivaled by chicago's own in 2008. i was living in oshkosh, wisconsin - about halfway between milwaukee and green bay, wisconsin, in the mid to upper east side of the state. i was just finishing my last semester of school and preparing for the 'real world' as a college graduate. i was dirt ass poor. i lived with two other girls, one of which was graduating in the fall semester on the 4.5 year plan like myself and one who was done that may. it was a bit of a struggle to find an apartment willing to accommodate a 6 month versus 12 month lease for us december grads, but thanks to a highly personal incentive investigative journalism final piece the previous semester, i had finally found a rental company willing to work with us for an august-january lease.

the semester ended mid december, and shit it was cold. neither of my roommates had a job other than being a full time student, and my gigs as student paper managing editor and music director at wrst left little room for me to work other than the spare change i picked up working the front desk of one of the dorms. thus, we had no heat. we flat out refused. we were going to beat the man, goddammit. and that we did - kinda. we taped plastic on our windows. tacked multiple layers of heavy duty sleeping bags, blankets, whateve we could find. space heaters. electric blankets. multiple layers of socks, sweatpants, hoodies and t-shirts. this still didn't stop us from waking each morning to our heavy clouds of breath.

but again, i digress. let me back up. my two roommates lived in remote parts of the state which basically left it up to me for us to find a place to live our final fall semester. the apartment itself was a pile of shit. drafty as fuck (hence the cold). an oblong, twisty hallway shape. an upper level of a two story apartment with a recently renovated unit below us. our unit, on the other hand, hadn't even received a touch-up paint job or safety check in years. piece. of. shit. but it was cheap. for 200 bucks a piece, we had a 3 bedroom space big enough for us all a mere 2 blocks from campus and the bar scene. we had free water and electric was cheap. it had free parking, and most important of all, allowed us our temporary lease. when i first signed for the place, the landlord had mentioned a few off-hand comments i paid no attention, something along the lines of, 'well the upper unti hasn't been rented in quite a few years, but since you're only renting to december/january, there shouldn't be a problem,' as well as 'just don't go in the attic--you won't see it, the walls are boarding up the entry way, just stay clear.'

easy enough. no bigs.

so we lived in our college slum and coexisted peacefully, while freezing, from august until december. after annette and i graduated, she decided to peace out while rachael and i decided to stick around for a bit longer. our landlords were slumlords and didn't give two shits what we did as long as it meant more money in their pocket, so out went their 'as long as it's only to december/january' stipulation in lieu of 'month to month is fine by us.'

uw-oshkosh's semesters had an especially lengthy hiatus between fall and spring. while annette moved on, rachael still needed a place to reside while she continued her studies. i, on the other hand, had no particular desire to return to argyle for a month and a half, so decided to pursue a temporary job situation since graduation. i had tentative plans of relocating to chicago but knew i wasn't getting there with my mere $50/week i picked up from whoring my plasma out, so stuck around and got a brief horrendous stint at an old navy outlet (we're talking 3 shifts people) and a humiliating caffeine induced, flair sporting, waitressing position at the newly opened red robin. (that's a whoooooole other post there. eeek.com). rachael was close with her family, so had opted to go home for the last half of december and the month of january. my current beau at the time decided to head home too, so i was mostly on my own, working and hanging with random acquaintences for the interim--sleeping alone in the creepy, drafty, empty apartment problem free for nearly 2 months.

it wasn't until the night before spring semester started in the end of january that we heard the monster. sure, the apartment was drafty and old--we had upstairs squirrelly and birdie upstairs tennants. we'd occassionally hear the roll of acorns and scampering of tiny rodent feet. how cute, our friends are lively, we'd joke. whatever, right?

well, fast forward to the first night rachael and mike returned to join me in occupying the apartment. sleeping as typical (cold frosty breathy air included), mike and i awoke around 3 am to a quiet, whimpery kind of moaning sound. unsure where it was coming from, it was still subtle but disturbing enough to wake us both up (and we're both pretty heavy sleepers). i got out of bed, moved the pounds of bedding away from my bedroom window, and sought out anything unusual on the street below - it sounded as if a dog had gotten hit by a car and was painfully suffering its last lag. a very distinctive, ueeeeuuuuhhhhhh? uuuueeeeeehhhhh? low, but repetitive. after finding nothing, mike and i shook it off and passed back out.

we weren't asleep for long, however. fast forward to four am when we woke up to a THUNDEROUS and defeaning thumping of some creature running in circles above our heads at approximately 5,000 miles an hour. literally. this shit wasn't any squirrels. and it wasn't slowing down. it ran. and ran. and ran. very heavily. very noisily. and extremely rapidly. 'what the fuck' mike whispered. i just whimpered. and then it made the sound i will never forget. at first, a series of the low pitched ueeeeehhh???'s, but then followed by a ferocious and gutteral shrieking monstrous growl i can only describe by typing as RHHHHHEEEEEOOOOOOOORRRRHWWWWWOWWWH. (extremely high pitched in volume). never once, slowing its rapid race around my attic. this is when i heard poor rachael from the other side of the apartment shriek, 'joodiiiiieeeeee????!!!!!" 'i have to pee.' i whispered nervously to mike after nearly two hours of this horrendous debacle. it was 5:45 am. this shit started at 4. "just. wait. until daylight." he whispered.

oh shit. the boyfriend was even scared. dudes aren't supposed to get scurrred, and mike of all dudes was the last person i'd ever take as superstitious or supernatural. we didn't sleep any more that night. eventually the madness ceased and i called the landlord. 'ummm, there's something in our attic. not squirrels. something big. something loud. and something very very terrifying.' they assured me they would send someone right away. as rachael and i prepped for our morning routines (her class, me work), mike got the fuck outta there and ran home.

eventually two old white dudes with greying hair and sporting bib overalls and oversized utility belts strolled up our apartment. 'so ye gurls got squirrels, eh?' one croaked. 'um, i wouldn't be so sure they're squirrels,' was all i could retort. the oldies got to work unnailling the wall that led to a mysterious staircase to the upper level, disappeared for about five minutes and thumped around with flashlights and hammers, trying to 'scare the squirrels out.' they set up a trap, came down the stairs, reported no findings, and said they'd be back the next day to 'catch them squirrels.'

whatever. they totally thought we were dumb defenseless girls. but they didn't hear that shit.

luckily, they nailed up the temporary wall to the attic and then were on their way. rachael and i were frustrated, but relieved to know there wasn't a gigantic wildabeast terrorizing our attic.

the next night, nothing. the men return as promised and tear down the nailed wall once again. this time mike convinced me we should follow the old dudes and get a glimpse of this mysterious attic ourselves. terrified, i reluctantly agreed once curiousity got the better of me.

it was a fucking apartment. well, kind of. there wasn't a bathroom. or any running water, but what we walked into could hardly be considered an attic. there was a former bedroom with rotting caved in ceilings. a living room like area complete with a lazy boy recliner, a tv stand with an ancient tv set, looking as if it had been one of the fresh models when color tv was all the rage. random portraits hung from the walls. a love seat. a table. poor, rotting, unkepmt condition, but a separate apartment sans kitchen/bathroom nonetheless. now why would they nail this up and not renovate it for a couple extra bucks as an add-on to the apartment rachael and i currently resided in? made no sense. what also made no sense was when the oldies found not a trace of a living being and condescending laughing, took their empty cages back down telling us girls to 'not worry our pretty little heads about any more squirrels - them little critters wouldn't be back no more.'

and they weren't. for like, two months.

one night, mike and i had met a mutual friend for a couple pitchers of lizard lager down at peabody's. in a semi intoxicated haze, we reiterated the one night of terror we had experienced the februrary before. laughing it off, 'whoa, what a weird experience!' at this time, rachael and i had found a new roommate to occupy annette's empty room, a dude i had waited tables with at the lovely red robin SMILING BURGER world. mike and i had stumbled on our jolly way home, and without any instances, knocked out per usual. until around 2 am, we heard a familiar, uuueeeeehhhhhh??? uuuueeeehhh?? whimper. we woke up. 'no fucking way.' i shivered. it was fucking eerie. 'you've gotta be kidding me.' was all he could say back.

that's when the running started up again. i forgot to mention, when the oldies were stomping around after the last occurrence, their 200 lb per dude weight had sounded nothing like the weight of the beast running above us. that made it even scarier to hear the heaviness race at mach speed in circles. once again rachael screamed, 'jooodi!!!' and the new roommate, also a mike, muttered a 'what the fuck?' so that made four of us. all fucking petrified in our beds. the growl shriek returned and we were frozen stupid.

once again, the next morning, i called the landlord as early as possible. but this time, the monster didn't stop with the daylight. like paranormal actiivity, i busted out my handheld camcorder in hopes of capturing the 'uuuueeeeh's' and moaning. the screaming had subdued and the running slowed down, but that beast wasn't done crying. in fact, it was still fucking racing around--DOWN THE FUCKING STAIRWAY KIDDIE CORNER TO THE BATHROOM WHERE I WAS BRUSHING MY TEETH. it hurled its body down the stairway and flung its body against the barely nailed on makeshift wall. i belted out a scream any 70's cult horror flick female victim would kill for, unaware my body was capable of belting out such a bloodcurdling scream. rachael was freaked. i was freaked. new roommate was freaked. mike, had of course, peaced out.

even by the time our old dudes returned, chuckling at the scaredy girls of squirrels, we could hear the quiet 'uuuueeeeh's?' the old dudes weren't having it, though. conveniently enough, the sounds ceased as soon as we finished insisting the sounds were'nt squirrels and they once again disappeared up the stairs and this time the monster sounds stopped. the old dudes once again stomped around, pounded on some windows, and returned down the stairs without any condescending 'oh you girls' comments. they retacked the wall to the stairway back up and promised to return, telling us 'you better not go up there.'

we didn't. the next night was even worse. the running resumed. the shriek growling continued. the whimpering as well. but this time there was a series of loud thumping sounds in addition. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. as if someone was standing on a table, dropping heavy bags of groceries onto the floor above our heads. what. the. fuck. mike was a good enough boyfriend to still keep me company at night, despite the madness ensuing above our heads - why we didn't spend the night at his house across the street is beyond me, but we still stayed in my bed. didn't sleep very much, though.

when the oldies returned the next day i took a peek upstairs. the lazyboy chair was flipped upside down. as were the pictures from the wall. the tv stand knocked over. well, there were our thumps. i raced outta there and the oldies took their equipment, pounded around some more, and then nailed that wall up super tight.

after that, you better damn well believe there were sleepovers at mike's house. rachael suddenly started going home on the weekends. this was early may. one other occurrence, that was never really quite explained, was when this dusty, gross looking old stuffed sheep toy suddenly appeared at the top of our stairwell. i assumed it must have belonged to rachael, being a crafty and kinda sentimental stuffed animal kinda girl, like maybe as a childhood toy or something. after two days of kind of ignoring it but wondering why she left it in the middle of our stairway, i asked her jokingly, 'dude aren't you lonely without your stuffed lambie?' her face grew pale. 'i thought that was yours.' 'what?' 'yeah.' 'no.' we reluctantly went back to the toy, which appeared to have been from another generation entirely, absolutely positivie it didnt come from the oldies during their last stay and knowing it wasn't ours. we were too scared to touch it. we kicked that mother fucker down the back stairway where it remained until we eventually peaced out.

no more sounds from the monster - but again, i basically moved in with my boyfriend at the time at that point and rachael got the fuck out too. we had given up any hope of getting our security deposit back after our new roommate had taken the liberty of adopting a baby pitbull which he then locked in his bedroom during work, and pissed and ate up the carpeting. awesome. well, we were surprised to get the full amount back, no questions asked.

we moved our separate ways and that was that. the 'dont go int he attic' 'you're only living until january (prior to the monster occurrences)' and 6 month leniant lease were suddenly making more sense, especially with the oldies grave faces the final time they visited. the reason we got our security deposit back is because the landlords never even bothered to check the fucking place out.

mike and i had returned to oshkosh after our move to chicago in september 06 for a friend's wedding. after a couple too many beers, we thought it'd be a good idea to see if we could break into the old place since it didn't look like anyone lived there.

the front doors were unlocked. noone lived there. in fact, our keys were still sitting on the kitchen counter where we were told to leave them when we moved out 4 months prior. i found an old cd i had forgotten in my bedroom closet. the place was creepy and eerie as fuck.

to this day i have no idea what the fuck went on at 611A wisconsin, and you know what, i don't think i really care to know. whatever it was, it certainly wasn't human - but also left no evidence or trail other than the flipped furniture and nightmares etched in my roommates and my memories.

to put it quite frankly, it was pretty fucking awesome. but i'd sure as hell never live there again.

ouch. (the owls are not what they seem edition).

2010-11-02T00:41:00.000-05:00

sometimes, when we are young, we do foolish things. like, oh i don't know, decide to get tribal tramp stamp tattoos. and then a year later, 'fix em up' by adding emo stars to each side. and then hell, why not add an ugly tribal sun tattoo to your shoulder which slightly unintentionally resembles the 'godsmack' logo and then later on 'fix that one up' by adding your zodiac gemini sign and an ugly misplaced star?

or wait. maybe that was just me.

well, the tramp stamp is here to stay, tacky emo stars and all. (at least until i 'fix it up' with maybe some sweet fairy or butterfly wings, that is). but the godsmack (seriously was NOT my intention until a certain 'clever' gentleman brought the resemblance to my insecure attention) sun is now, thankfully, long gone. half twin peaks inspired (the owls are not what they seem, ya'll), half 'i just need something bad ass to cover this shit up with,' i went under the needle for the, let me see here, 15 or 16th time last week (although this is technically tattoo number 13 since it covered one up, 'fixin's and all'). 4 long hours of ouchies with one very talented and patient tattoo artist, and i now got a badass owlie covering that shit up. see pics above for the before, during, and afters. as soon as this shit heals in the next couple o' weeks i'll be heading back for final touch ups.

bad. ass.

kaaaaaaaaate nashhhhhhhh.

2010-11-02T00:29:00.000-05:00

so i got an email asking if i'd do a phoner interview with the lovely brit pop songbird kate nash this week in preparation for her 11/9 gig at the vic. (anybody going? or want to go? good chance i can cop a plus one). this is kewl, bc she is neat. this is unfortunate b/c A) i have a cold and sound like a nasaly geek and B) phoners with brits (as i learned with al doyle of hot chip) are extremely difficult to decipher, specially with my shitty speaker phone and lack of proper interview equipment.

that being said, all i really wanna ask her about is how awesome it must be to be married to one of the jarman brothers and if she gets to hang out with johnny marr all the time since he's dropped outta the modest mouse roster and joined forces witht he cribs. does her husband's lip still bleed all the time? does that affect makeout sessions? as you can see, im at a loss for proper interview content. i dont really give a crap about her new record, sure it's dancey and quirky and sassy and fun. i know this already. what do i not know? has she overcome her jitters from her 08 performance at the vic? (painful to watch, sadly).

erg. i wish my chirp 'how to interview bands' workshop was this week instead of after this interview. OH WELL. maybe i can record it and bring it in as an example of what not to say. suggestions for questions in comments, 'preciated.

the vaselines slather up tha' sexin' at lincoln hall

2010-11-01T23:14:00.001-05:00

I may not have known shit about The Vaselines other than what Nirvana taught me up until a few weeks ago—but I got one helluva semi-private lesson at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall this past Thursday night. The Scottish duo Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee came off as a blink-and-miss-it blip in the mid-to-late 80’s alternative rock scene, forming in ’86 and releasing their debut record Dum-Dum in ’89—only to break up shortly after its release. If the garagey lo-fi outfit hadn’t found a fan in a certain Seattle grunge ringleader, it’s hard to say if The Vaselines would have the reputation they have for themselves today. Thanks to Mr. Cobain, (who even named his daughter after Ms. McKee), several of us are more familiar with the work of The Vaselines than we may even realize after covering tracks such as “Molly’s Lips,” “Son of a Gun,” and “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” on Insecticide and MTV Unplugged, respectively.

Twenty some odd years later, for whatever reason, Kelly and McKee decided to give their simple, two-bit guitar cult status another go with a reunion tour in ’09 and a sophomore LP release, Sex With an X on Sub-Pop Records this year. Their performance last year at the Metro had stirred up a lot of hype, and after hearing several friends and critics’ raves, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check them out personally at the always incredible Lincoln Hall.

Unfortunately, opening act Dum Dum Girls had to cancel the most recent lag of their tour for undisclosed reasons; while McKee still made light of the situation, claiming it was Kelly and the trio of male back-up musicians’ overtly sexual come-ons that frightened them away. I can’t remember another show that came remotely close to cracking me up as consistently as McKee and Kelly’s humorous, sexual charged stage banter. Poor Kelly served as the butt of McKee’s constant cracking; from his lack of groupies, (“Just put a paper bag on Eugene’s head, ladies—any takers?”); his fashion sense, (“What is up with your t-shirt?” McKee jabbed, “It’s my comfort shirt, c’mon,” Kelly pleaded); to his desperate, (yet somehow endearing), come-ons to female members of the crowd (“Who smells so good? Is it you, pink scarf girl?” to which McKee retorted, “How can you smell that far? Are your senses heightened because you lost all your hair? Or is it your bad teething?”). McKee also made stabs at herself, coming across like an adorable, yet sadly, sex-starved rock heroine; joking about ‘relieving’ the male band members and nightly gangbangs—only to turn around and assure the crowd they were more of the ‘tea and scrabble sort.’ The comedic routine nearly exceeded the performance itself—but not quite.

The sound in Lincoln Hall was crisp and clear, as always. Red and gold hues illuminated the stage with blue strobes flickering the background. The crowd, whilst sparse and maybe 40-50% at capacity, made up for the lack of bodies with their enthusiasm. Those in attendance weren’t your typical arms crossed hipster dudes, but hardcore, vinyl collecting, fist pumping, older white men without rhythm--who you knew that if they didn’t now, had worked in a record store at some point in their life. Dancing, swaying, and lots of applause echoed the crowd’s enthusiasm for the stellar showmanship that took hold of Lincoln Hall. If you haven’t had a chance to catch The Vaselines live yet, or visit their classic release Dum-Dum, do yourself some much needed research and check ‘em out now. Better later than never.

Set List:
1. Oliver Twisted
2. Monster Pussy
3. I Hate the 80’s
4. The Day I was a Horse
5. Sex With an X
6. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam
7. The Devil Inside Me
8. Molly’s Lips
9. Slushy
10. Poison Pen
11. Bitch
12. Such a Fool
13. No Hope
14. Rory Rides Me Raw
15. Ruined
16. Son of a Gun
17. Let’s Get Ugly
18. Mouth to Mouth
19. Dying for It
20. (Enc 1) Sex Sux
21. (Enc 2) You Think You’re A Man
22. (Enc 3) Dum-Dum

the vaselines rule.

2010-10-30T16:43:00.000-05:00

i caught the cult 80's alterna-blink-and-miss-em legends the vaselines at lincoln hall the other night.ima write a review too. i'll post 'er up yonder when i get around to it. let's just say it was a pretty stellar show, but you can see for yourself with some vids i captured here.

KEYBOARD CAT RULEZ.

2010-10-30T16:36:00.000-05:00

happy halloween ya'll. i was thisclose to being a crazy creepy cat lady for halloween this year but figured that wouldn't really require any sort of costume since i already am one. . . so instead i'm winging it and going as my favorite internet meme. la keyboard kat. i've included a few of my favorite clips below and above for your viewing pleasure. photographic evidence of my attempt at recreating said ball of adorable fur may or may not soon follow in the coming dayz. trick or treaaaaaaaat!

men i want to date : Stefon Alexander

2010-10-24T21:58:00.000-05:00

i had to flip through my archived men i want to date posts to double check i hadn't already rambled about the sexy mastermind maestro better known as p.o.s previously. i'm still having a hard time believing i haven't. . . but whatever. i'm doing it now. mr. stefon alexander is a leading force in both the doomtree collective and rhymesayers family, since i can't really post about wanting to date eyedea out of simple taste, p.o.s is not a bad secondary subject of lust. plus, i've seen him live (both performing and not) several times - so maybe not a likely choice, but one i can at least realistically creep on ala mel on flight of the conchords style.

reasons why stefon alexander is a man i want to date:

1) he has tattoos AND glasses- tattoos are sexy, but glasses are even sexier
2) an incredible hip hop artist, his rhymes are both upbeat yet grounded, simultaneously getting listeners fired up and to give a shit - ain't alotta positive rap out these days
3) he's in GAYNGS so if our date wouldn't go well, he could probs pass me justin vernon's digits
4) i've always wanted to kick it with fellow doomtree goddess dessa, so hopefully if we get married she and i could hang out
5) whenever i'd get pissed off at any of my pals for blowing me off, i'd just have stef rap 'goodbye' to them and i'd win
6) he's minneapolis born and bred - a relocation i would not mind in the least, maybe we even have some of the same friends!
7) his style is so versatile i've seen him perform with fellow rappers, some punk shit and even cursive once - which was kind of awkward, but not as painfully awkward as when i starstruck deer in headlights approached him at the bottom lounge to tell him i was a fan
8) i'd get free tix for rhymesayers events for lyfe.
9) i'd get to kick it with slug on a regular basis
10) he keeps it real with his fans - when he busted out 'purexed' at sxsw in 08, he saw me freak out in line for the portapotties and pointed me out with a big ole grin. made me shudder SWV style all weak in tha knees.

muzik trivia.

2010-10-24T21:26:00.000-05:00

CHIRP will be a hosting a sort of gameshow music trivia event at the empty bottle early next month, and in exchange for volunteer hours they asked us to contribute some of our musical know-how. i think my questions are pretty easy and blatant, but what the hell. while riding the rickety #9 up to the metro the other eve, i scribbled down the following q's for submission.

i just realized i've reached official dorkdom after rewording and researching these mere 6 questions the past two hours. slurping on microwaved spiked apple cider, taco sauce ring around my mouth, and pita crumbs and slimy hummus residue caking my authentic 2001 bleed american jimmy eat world hoodie. who needs friends & social interaction when you have rainstorms, a sneezing cat and snacks. not me.

anyway, if you so feel inclined, feel free to leave yer answers/guesses in the comments section and i'll school you on random 90's alternative know-how. at least then i won't feel like i'm a complete waste of music nerdom space.

1) Which member of the superstar troupe Gorillaz contributed to the 2002 world music project entitled Mali Music in which proceeds benefited UNICEF?

A) Del the Funky Homosapien (Deltron 3000)
B) Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto)
C) Damon Albarn (Blur)
D) Mick Jones (The Clash)

2) The 1929 silent surrealist film Un chien andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí inspired which 80’s alterna-rock hit?

A) Bastards of Young – The Replacements
B) Debaser – The Pixies
C) Cities in Dust – Siouxsie and the Banshees
D) There is a Light that Never Goes Out – The Smiths

3) Which 90’s alternative songbird’s given birth name is Myra Ellen?

A) Fiona Apple
B) Ani DiFranco
C) Tori Amos
D) Natalie Merchant

4) Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws is an English musician and actor. What do we better know him as here in the States?

A) Plan B
B) Tricky
C) Buck 65
D) Neon Indian

5) David Lynch’s ’92 Twin Peaks prequel film Fire Walk With Me featured which prominent rock musician(s) in its supporting cast?

A) Tom Waits        E) Both A & D
B) David Bowie     F) Both B & C
C) Chris Isaak       G) None of the Above
D) Robert Smith

6) Which alternative rock maestro is linked and credited for working on such 90’s hits as “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana), “Bull in the Heather” (Sonic Youth), “Only Happy When it Rains” (Garbage), and “Disarm” (Smashing Pumpkins)?

A) Billy Corgan
B) Dave Grohl
C) Butch Vig
D) Thurston Moore

raping my writer's block.

2010-10-20T23:24:00.000-05:00

words have been difficult to come by lately. the motivation and drive to pummel out material has been dried up and nonexistent. ramblings and reviews have been trickier to knock out than convincing my roommate to do the dishes. in other words, it sucks. in efforts to make a change, i've been stepping up and agreeing to additional obligations beside my norm monthly load. i joined CHIRP. CHIRP is cool. it gets me free tickets to shows and excuses to write as i knock out reviews for albums in rotation. for those of you who don't know what CHIRP is, it's the chicago independent radio project, a volunteer grassroots effort for a noncommercial radio station. currently we're streaming online at http://www.chirpradio.org/ and are fighting legislative powers to pass a motion for low power fm stations to have power in major cities. its a struggle, but hopefully one we can win.

CHIRP has been a great way to meet and connect with new people, and in addition to having even more access to new music, i get the opportunity to attend interviewing workshops to strengthen my current skills and have dj training this saturday with a possibility of being on-air once again after a 5 year hiatus. radio roots. its' a good thing. finally, 5 years after college graduation i'm doing something halfway relevant with my journalism and radio/tv/film degrees. too bad i can't get paid for it. . .

regardless. in addition to chirp, my gigs with venus, chicago innerview, i recently started contributing to another local blog, secret note. so far, i've only contributed one assignment but the editors seemed happy enough with my excerpt and have expressed interest in additional pieces. to try and keep myself on track, i sought out confirmation for some upcoming chi shows. here's what i've got on the books thus far. i still need concert attending buddies, so if yer planning on attending any said shows or would like to, gimme a shout. i could use some music pals.

10/22 - deerhunter/real estate - metro
10/28 - the vaselines - lincoln hall
10/29 - the books - vic theater
11/17 - dresden dolls -vic theater
11/21 - no age - lincoln hall
11/23 - wolf parade - house of blues

i'm also thisclose to shelling out the monies (a mere $15) for junip (jose gonzalez) & sharon van etten at lincoln hall on 11/6 - anyone interested in being my date? i'll hold your hand and lean on your shoulder.