Pushup Boobs, Pianos, and Punk Rock Hair.

I'd strangle my mama for a cup of good coffee right about now. All we have in the house is swill.

I'd strangle my mama, your mama, your grandmama, and your next-door neighbor's cat for a Starbucks white chocolate mocha latte. Even though they're ridiculous, overpriced, loaded with fat and sugar, and a monument to capitalism at its worst, they're just really fucking good.

I almost wore the corset last night, but I wound up chickening out. I can't walk around with my ta-tas pushed up to the sky. I felt like the ghetto version of a Pussycat Doll, a One-Eyed Alleycat With A Chewed Ear And Possible Rabies Doll.

I had a good time last night, although I've recently been spending more time chatting it up with the bartenders than dancing. My bad knee keeps crapping out every few seconds. It feels like the damn thing is popping out of the socket.

I watched Shine for the first time last night, and I really enjoyed it. It was bizarre to watch someone really play the hell out of a piano. God, that Rachmaninoff. Unreal that someone could play like that.

I played in a lot of piano competitions as a child, including a few at the state conservatory of music (nowhere near Rachmaninoff level, though). I started lessons with my grandfather at the age of four, continuing with my aunt as I got older and I began to frustrate my grandfather with my lack of proper finger placement. I play the piano the same way that I type - making very few mistakes, but never using the correct method.

I learned to read music at exactly the same time I learned to read words, so the piano was less of a hobby and more of a second language. I feel very lucky to have been encouraged in that direction. Unfortunately, I took it for granted that I could play a passable Tchaikovsky and could sightread nearly any piece of music put in front of me, and I never made any huge efforts to take it to another level.

I wanted to be able to play by ear, and I never could. I still can't. I can't play even the simplest song by ear - I have to have the music in front of me. I always believed that a "true musician" could instinctively play by ear without relying on sheet music, so I never really considered myself to be a really good pianist. Since I wasn't really good, I didn't bother with it very much.

I occasionally played background music for parties. I played the organ at a church for quite a few years. These were fun little side jobs that paid well and provided interesting social interaction. My skill at the piano started to wane with time, though. I stopped taking lessons in high school and no longer practiced on a daily basis.

I stopped playing when my vision started to worsen, because the black dots and lines blurred together on the pages were impossible to translate, and my fingers wouldn't work without my eyes.

I miss it.

My piano hasn't been tuned in a few years. During the few times I've sat down to attempt a little Beethoven or Chopin, it has sounded tinny and old.

I hated taking lessons as a kid, as do most kids, I think; but I always really enjoyed watching people while they listened to me play. There's something very heady about having musical talent. People look at you with a sort of respect. I look at people who can work out complicated math problems in the same way. I wonder how they learned that strange numerical language when I had to wrack my brain to grasp its most basic form.

There's something about the bond between musician and instrument that seems sort of other-worldly, too. I can't describe it, but I remember feeling it. I felt as if I understood and responded to the piano, and it understood and responded to me. It didn't feel like person and machine or person and tool.

I play the saxophone as well, but I never had as much of a knack for it. We asthmatic heavy smokers don't generally do well with wind instruments. I never felt as comfortable with the sax as I did sitting at the piano, back ramrod straight, fingers flying.

I'd like to try to learn to play by ear. I'm not sure whether this is something that can be learned, or whether I can unlearn so many years of reliance on sheet music, but I think it's worth a shot. This house needs a little music. I wouldn't mind teaching the J-Man to play, either.

Then I can go all psycho like David Helfgott's father and say, "SAY IT! SAY 'I'M A LUCKY BOY!'"

Heh.

My hair is turning into a giant ball of white fuzz. It's starting to grow out a little, and if my woolly hair is not immediately thinned it begins to expand like a sponge, soaking up all the oxygen in the room, growing and pulsing like a living thing.

I look like I have a small sheep on my head.

I've been applying every sort of gunk and goo and grease and pomade and gel and spritz and mud and plaster and joint compound and putty that I can find, but nothing is taming the stuff. I could massage an entire can of Crisco into my head, and still my hair would reach hopefully toward the sky.

I can really work that punk rock look right now, because my hair wants to spike. It wants to stand straight up and attract attention. It wants to escape from my head.

I just don't want to look like some chick drag version of Billy Idol or that butch-looking woman with the platinum blond spiked hair from the eighties fitness videos.

Tonight is this, which I'm looking forward to, even though I will more than likely be sitting in a corner and feeling like the biggest geek that ever lived.

What else is new?

Happy Saturday.

12:26 p.m. - 2004-02-21
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