The Vine: August 8, 2006
Musicplasma.com is the music website you’re thinking of. As far as recommendations, I think A might like Thievery Corporation. They are more sort of lounge/downbeat, but I think they’ll have the groove A is looking for, especially on “Mirror Conspiracy,” their best album by far.
A fellow verve fan
Dear Verve,
That’s exactly the site I had in mind — thank you. Trying to think of it was driving me nuts.
Band/artist recs appear below, followed by site recs. If I got it more than once, it gets an asterisk.
Paul Anka’s “Rock Swings”
Asleep at the Wheel
Brian Setzer Orchestra*
New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble
Louis Jordan
Lester Young
Eight to the Bar
Jamie Cullum’s “Catching Tales”
Squirrel Nut Zippers*
Andrew Bird and/or Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire*
Louis Prima*
Amelia
Po Girl
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy*
Flim and the BBs
Dave’s True Story
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies*
Gordon Goodwin’s Big Fat Band
Ken Burns’s five-CD “Jazz” collection
Artie Shaw*
Paris Combo
The Puppini Sisters
Beny More
“Did Somebody Say Swing?”
Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers
Don Byron’s “Bug Music”
Chick Webb
Ella Fitzgerald*
Yoko Kanno and/or the Seatbelts
Jerry Southern
Stan Kenton*
Fletcher Henderson
Gene Krupa
Duke Ellington*
Chuck Hedges
Cousteau
Johnny Favourite Swing Orchestra
Michael Buble*
The Swing Kids soundtrack
Casey MacGill’s Blue 4 Trio
Benny Carter
Django Reinhardt
Billie Holiday
“Shanghai Lounge V. 2”
Tommy Dorsey
Harry Connick Jr.
Count Basie
Pink Martini
“Cocktail Mix Vol. 2: Martini Madness”
The Swingers soundtrack
The Kissing Jessica Stein soundtrack
Indigo Swing
pandora.com*
www.gnoosic.com/tripex.php
www.swingmusic.net/Small_Group_Swing.html
goombah.com
gnod.net*
allmusic.com*
www.last.fm*
music-map.com*
NPR’s jazz site
www.heymisterjesse.com
Love The Vine, hope I haven’t missed a question like this earlier.
I have a very close, loving family. We’re all going on vacation together for a week next month (we meaning my parents, my brother, my sister, and various other relatives who will be dropping in over the week). We each get our own room; we’ll have enough cars/bikes/transportation so we can do our own thing when we want and be together when we want. The youngest person involved is 19. I’m the oldest child (by a good bit). I’m divorced and in a stable relationship with a very good man; we will not be getting married for reasons that could take up a whole other Vine column. My sister is very happily married. My brother is young enough not to want to be married.
I have always wanted to be a mother. About six months ago, I learned that I have a medical condition that will make it much more difficult for me to get pregnant; if I do get pregnant any time soon, the treatment for this condition means that I’ll either miscarry or need to get an abortion. If I go without treatment long enough to detox and manage to get pregnant and carry to term, I’ll be in no physical shape to take care of a baby by myself, which is what I’d be doing most of the time because of blah-blah-relationship-cakes. Adoption is wonderful and probably what I’ll end up doing; it’s just hard to ditch the dream, y’know? I feel broken and am still having a hard time dealing with this, which is why I’m crying over my keyboard right now.
I had a nice long talk about this with my sister when I learned about this. Her best friend had just learned she was pregnant. Sis was pretty jealous and broken up because she’d been trying for a while, so we had a nice bonding cry.
Of course, she finds out she’s pregnant the next week.
I did mention to my mom — once, early on — that it was a bit upsetting to have the fertility door shut in my face. Her response? “Well, you’ll just have to focus on being the best auntie you can be.” True, but ouch.
So, fast forward six months. Should I just keep my yap shut and beam about the impending addition with everyone else, and then drive/bike/levitate off and cry when I can’t take it any more? I don’t want to be a baby (hee); I don’t really like drawing attention to myself, and I feel like I’ve had enough attention with the medical thing anyway. I have a great relationship with my sister in every other way, and I REALLY don’t need to add to her stress right now. But I’m so scared that I will have a meltdown at some point. Every time I have an extended conversation with any family member about the baby, I am so excited and happy about being an aunt, and at the same time I just want to dive in front of a train. I’ve poked around the internet some, and most of the things I’ve seen just quote Dr. Phil and say that I should shut up — it’s not about me! But part of it is, and while I’m ashamed to feel so selfish, it is what it is. And that’s not even getting into the whole dealing with the extra relatives, who I KNOW will ask me how I feel about “losing the baby race.”
Coping strategies? Train timetables? It’s not about me?
The Smallest Feet Around Here Are Size 10
Dear Feet,
Let me tell you right up front that any relatives who ask you in so many words “how you feel about ‘losing the baby race'” are assholes. That fact needs to be brought to their attention, gently; either stare at them levelly without responding until they get uncomfortable and go elsewhere, or ask them why they would say such a thing to you. I mean, my God.
As to the feelings themselves…well, obviously you feel like shit about “losing the baby race,” thanks so ever so. You know intellectually that it isn’t in fact a race or a competition, that your sister’s pregnancy doesn’t take anything away from you and it’s not a zero-sum situation — but emotionally, you feel angry and ripped off.
The sad fact, though, is that expressing that anger to your family won’t solve the problem. It won’t change the situation; it’ll just make things awkward and confrontational. If you need to take a little time each day to just get away from the baby talk, seethe instead of smiling, and work it out, do it. Go for a walk or a bike ride, or run an errand, or go into the bathroom and splash some water on your face. But: keep it to yourself, pretty much. If you have friends to unload on with this, or a journal to write in, you should take advantage of those outlets, but unfortunately, other women aren’t going to stop getting pregnant, other people aren’t going to stop being happy for those women, and I’m not saying you have to repress every emotion you have about this, but you do have to do a little compartmentalizing with it.
Dear Sars,
I dated a guy. I loved this guy, crazily, and he loved me back in similar fashion. However, he was incredibly selfish, and even though I loved him crazily there was a point where I had to break up with him or go…crazy. Everyone had been telling me to break up with him for ages, including my then very close (female) friend, who was actually one of the strongest supporters of the “dump him!” concept.
So, that sucked. But then my close female friend, who I’ll call Jane, started talking about how my now ex-boyfriend had met her before me, and had at the time been “about to ask her out” but of course had then met me and fallen crazily in love. I had never heard of this before, and it was a little disturbing considering what Jane is like.
What is she like? I remember when she was rejected by a guy just after I met her, and she was crying and freaking out and saying that guys NEVER EVER rejected her. Now, I agree with you on the stupidness of the concept of sluttiness, and that’s not my beef. But Jane manipulates men with sex. She finds a man. It doesn’t matter is she is in a relationship or he is in a relationship or what. She targets him, and she…seduces him, you could say. VERY persuasively. She targets guys and she will do ANYTHING to make them have sex with her. And when the men resist, she hates it, she absolutely despises it, because that’s her modus operandi and her whole way of living. She’s totally the one in control, just taps into the guys’ hormones and oops, they’re having sex every night. And she doesn’t get emotionally involved; she’ll claim she loves her boyfriend even as she’s going off to have sex with her current targeted male.
Additionally, after I had broken up with my ex I had gone on a few dates with another guy, and then one day he told me that she had called him and asked him to come over and hang out, and once he got there? Tried to seduce him. And he got really upset about it, and so did I, because she didn’t care about this guy, and she knew that I was interested in him at least a little bit, so…why?
So, with this background in mind, alarm bells started going off in my head with respect to her and my ex, and I kind of started to wonder why before I broke up with him he was awful and now that we were broken up she was acting like I was the bad guy for hurting my poor ex’s feelings. And…she had a boyfriend, but she was bored, I guess, and she was still hurting from way back when when my ex had chosen me, so guess what? Suddenly Jane, who was also my roommate, was gone every night. Fucking my ex.
In her defense, I had said it was okay. Why? Because I had broken up with him, and so I really didn’t have any right to tell him what to do. But mostly because Jane never lets ANYTHING get in the way of her seducing a guy that she’s decided to seduce. I knew she would just lie to me and do it anyway. And guess what? Our other friends told Jane and Ex that they were wrong to be fucking every night because she had a boyfriend, and so they lied to everyone and said they had stopped when they really hadn’t. This kind of proves me right in saying it was okay. Perhaps. I just don’t think it would have done anything but make me a big bitch in people’s eyes, and it wouldn’t have even stopped them from doing it.
Anyway…Jane stopped talking to me. She started doing the total “taking sides and this one is mine” thing. She also — and Ex admits this — said things to him and things to me that were designed to perpetuate breakup-arguments between us.
After a while, my lovely nasty horn-dog Ex decided that he actually loved me and he didn’t really want to be fucking Jane. Oh dear. Jane really didn’t like that, and so even though the fucking ceased the little battles over Ex continued. Every damn day. Every day is a power struggle to see who Ex loves more.
And Ex does love me. And he wants to get back together with me. As to the issues that made us break up in the first place, he really thought them over and admitted he was being a dick. But…first of all, I really love this guy, and the fact that as soon as he was unattached he just ran out and started screwing my roommate…makes me kind of feel like he didn’t really love me that much, because you really don’t go and do that. He gave in because he was horny, just like all the other guys. But…my friendship with Jane is destroyed. I mean, I was there for this chick, we were really close. And she did this…just for kicks. Just to keep her crown as Never Refused Queen of Sex. Just to gloat, because she ALWAYS FREAKING COMPETES with me. She has even said to me that the first thing she ever thought when the met me was “I can’t compete with that.”
So I don’t want him back now…well, I do, but I want a him that didn’t fuck Jane for a month and a half. The worst part of it all is, she’s still around, she’s still his “friend.” He says she’s a friend for fun whereas I’m a friend for really talking to and going to with problems. But…she’s NASTY. She’s cruel, she’s manipulative, she uses guys for sex and then ditches them when she’s bored, she cheats on all her boyfriends and leaves them wandering after her with broken hearts, she WILL NOT STOP competing with me over him all the time. And Ex? He lies to me, really transparent lies, usually to cover up the fact that he was hanging out with her because “he knows it makes me feel bad” or something. In public, she’ll arrange something that I’m not invited to. Or if I am there, Ex will sit between us so that there are two ladies fighting over him, which I hate.
Honestly, how has she been a friend to him? She used him for sex to prove a point to herself. Now she calls him a friend to his face and basically still acts like a girlfriend, falling asleep on his floor, asking him for help with little things, et cetera. Behind his back, she insults him.
And he defends her. He says he wants to be friends with both of us. He also says he’d do anything to do the last year over, and NOT fuck her for a month and a half, because that’s the biggest reason I don’t want to get back together with him. He says he loves me, he’d die for me. But he still hangs around with this nasty, using, manipulative girl — a girl who hurt me a WHOLE LOT, who still does it to other people, who just…isn’t nice. I don’t like her, and I don’t like her being around him, but what can I do? He sure just wants to be friends with both of us.
So WHY won’t he ditch the manipulative, competitive bitch? What in her does he see that he wants to be friends with? I hate what she does. I hate it when she does it to her old ex and he goes nuts and goes all crazy-depressive. I hate the fact that she totally stank up whatever was left of Ex’s and my relationship…just because she could, just to show she was that Sexay, because she enjoyed the attention that used to be mine.
Do I say to him, “Look, I still can’t believe you fucked her, but you being around her all the time basically acting like her puppy just sucks, and no way will we ever get back together if you don’t ditch the cruel bitch”? Cos…I’m afraid he will say no, even though he claims to Love Me. God knows I love him or I’d have ditched him long ago.
I want to be with him again. But Jane just reminds me of what happened, and of course she still won’t stop with the competing, the possessiveness. I want to be with him so badly and she just won’t…go away. What do I do?
Sign me,
Bad Judge of Character
Dear Slow-Moving, Too,
What do you do? You cut him dead; you move out of wherever you live and cut Jane dead too. You tell them both to fuck off, and you move on, and you don’t look back.
Look, this guy doesn’t love you. He just doesn’t. He fucked Jane shortly after you two broke up; he won’t tell her to get lost even though he knows you can’t stand her; he’d rather be fought over than make a choice, and he can’t stand up to Jane’s manipulations because he’s too immature to see them for what they are. He was driving you nuts before this — why would you want to go back for round two knowing it’s going to be more of the same?
“But I love him!” You think you love him; you’re actually just afraid to lose him, or to lose to Jane. Not the same thing. Love is not a garden party every minute, but it isn’t supposed to be this tense and competitive and wretched all the time, and it’s never going to get better than this, because your ex doesn’t love you enough to treat you well (or just isn’t a good match for you, fundamentally), and you don’t love yourself enough to insist on it. He makes you feel like shit. This is not a recent development. End of story.
These people could not care less about your feelings if they were dead and in the ground, and they’re going to keep proving it for as long as you put up with it. That’s not love, it’s a bad habit. Break it.
[8/8/06]
Tags: Ask The Readers boys (and girls) etiquette friendships kids popcult
