Awesomeness

Thanks so very, very much to anyone & everyone who helped with the efforts to get Scarce’s 1995 Deadsexy album released, which I wrote about here a few weeks ago. I just learned from Joyce that UMG has agreed to license it elsewhere and it should be available on iTunes (and presumably the usual other sources) before too very long, so no further correspondence to the record company requesting its release is necessary.  The letters worked!  Thank you all!

So yay! And I know that Joyce & Chick thank you all and appreciate you all SO very, very much for helping (and I do too)! Ahhh, the Internet is awesome always. Thanks so much!

Go Ahead & Sigh, It’s One of THOSE Posts

WARNING:  Total Music Geek post ahead.  I mean, this is a realllllly major one, so you know, many of you are welcome to skip it if you really wanna.

It’s a freakin’ holy grail week!  Not only do I have live, never-seen-before Monarchs video IN MY HAND (thank you from the bottom of my little blonde heart, Muzz!) – which hopefully I will find time to convert and pop on the MySpace profile and YouTube within the next couple of days (as well as put a finish on and unveil the new website)…

But I just found a studio-quality MP3 of something I have not had on anything but CASSETTE in over 20 YEARS!!  It can’t even be found on CD anywhere!  I would tell you what it is, but 99.99% of you (even the music geeks) would have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about anyway.  But YAY!

Thus whittles down the long list I have been carrying around since 1986 of nearly impossible to find, out of print stuff to, like… maybe two things now?

Listen, I could have won $40 million in the lottery today and wouldn’t be any happier.

OK, yes, I know I’m whacked.  But who cares, I’m happy!

Surprise! Look at THIS!

Aren’t they so pretty and nice and springy for such a crummy gloomy day? And what a nice surprise! I am so touched and humbled and honored.

I might tell you where they came from if’n I get permission… but for now, thanks, Nice Mystery Person!

(And nope, ’twasn’t my better half, though he is pretty thoughtful like that on occasion sometimes.)

Tee Hee

(giggle)…

That made my day, totally! Smiley‘s magic, he somehow psychically knew I could use an extra giggle today, I think.

Now, I really must be off to see what Britney Spears has been up to the past 24 hours.

Fox on the Run… Resolved!

My Firefox looks fantastic now, all thanks to Ivy the Great and Powerful and Totally Kickass! Once she took a look at screenshots of my Explorer vs. Firefox (and deemed the Firefox text as “looking pixelated” compared to the same in Explorer, which was sort of what I was blondely trying to say this morning when I said it looked liked crap, heh heh), she went a-hunting and came up with the info needed to fix it and voila, it looks bee-yoo-tiful now and not only that, so does pretty much everything else including my e-mail. What a bonus!

It turned out I needed to flip the switch on ClearType and then tweak it with the ClearType Tuner in XP (which apparently from what we read elsewhere is a default in IE7 even though it’s disabled systemwide in XP), and that did the trick. My blog in Explorer and Firefox now looks almost identical from here.

So now thanks to Ivy, and with some helpful Firefox tips Jag passed along to me today, I’m gonna dig into it and see what all fun I can have, and maybe I’ll fall in love with it like the rest of you now! And be able to do some more worthwhile messing around with Blogger Beta (which isn’t working with IE7). Thanks again, ladies!

And – after being on the national and state Do Not Call lists for about three years now, I got to file my first complaint ever today. Not only that, but it was my former, many years ago, Internet provider, with whom my last year or so of service was a complete and utter nightmare, so I think this is a good case of what goes around comes around and payback. Yes!

So a good day even though I’m still sleep deprived, and tomorrow is my day off. Awesome!

What’s the Story, Morning Glory?

Just a brief update on the Weekend from Hell fallout… my friend who wrecked on the way to come get me and help with my car is gonna be in the hospital for probably a couple or three days with a collapsed lung. Which is not good by any means but it certainly could have been much, much worse, and I’m thankful that was the most of it.

My car still sits (at least I hope it does) dead where I left it but you know what? I can’t do anything more than I can do, so I’m just gonna try to deal with it and try not to let it 100% wreck my week, even if it does 50%, you know. I can only do so much and I’ve only got so much money to do it with, so whatever happens happens.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes and pep talks in comments, I really appreciated it and you guys were a real shot in the arm for what has been a truly dreary weekend. You guys are terrific, all of you. My sweetie called tonight too which also helped, tho I know it’s so frustrating for him to not be here to be able to fix things immediately from afar. And thanks, Newscoma, for going so out of your way as you did, you are a gem and that was really sweet, AND I see my panic attack warranted a visit and pep talk from Weakley County royalty too, how cool is that?!?!

In any case, every one of you folks that dropped by is tops in my book… from the wonderful Weakley County Duo to the fabulously fun Sista, wise and wonderful John H, kilowatthour who’s always such fun and a cheer-up, infectiously optimistic good man Smiley, Ivy the great and wonderful and kickass, super sweetheart KathyT, and the absolutely inspiring AT even tho he despises Blogger (heh), the fab Bez (my comrade in GuruNess!), and happy and also optimistic Jeffraham who is always so cheerful, as well as Shauna who was monitoring the whole disaster from NIT this weekend… I hope I didn’t leave anyone out but it was all so very much appreciated. You guys are all awesome and getting to be like family I didn’t know I was missing and that’s so cool, and I’m so looking forward to meeting everyone in person soon in Middle TN, and hopefully AT before long, and kilowatthour, who’s been thinkin’ she should gather up a blogger meet in Tennessee and I say come on down after the holidays, heck yeah! OK, stopping before I gush anymore, but I am very touched, thanks, and y’all are good folks. (PS Jeffraham, hit me up if Bez can’t get you with the Gurustuff, I got tons.)

Overheard in New York also did a bit to cheer me up last night and got me cracked me up a bit too so that was a cheerer-upper. People are funny/strange, for sure.

Today’s probably gonna suck too, but hopefully not quite as overwhelming and anxiety-inducing (at least I hope not)… if things don’t go well it’ll probably be the bitchfest from hell later. I was kinda annoyed yesterday because I had a post nearly finished before all this happened about how the city of Mempho is turning into a police state, but not only will I just save it for later – if my car got towed to the city impound lot, no doubt I’m going to have even more to say about that subject! Will update later on how things go… fingers crossed the car’s still there, that will just be such a hassle…

Thank You

Oh, yeah – thanks SO much to the “SHRUBBERY FISHSTICK PEACHES” person, whoever you are, for making sure my Friday was so much more fun than it otherwise woulda been today. Big thumbs up on that! Heh.

F-I-S-H-S-T-I-C-K (Redux)

I promise I might talk about something besides music again this week. I know everybody’s not obsessed like I am.

I was perusing site statistics last night tho, and among other things (like wondering who the heck the stalker might be who is apparently searching for an old friend of mine), this one entry’s search terms jumped right off the screen at me (it did!) and sent me into paroxysms of giggles:

“SHRUBBERY FISHSTICK PEACHES”

Ah yeah – the sign of someone special. I knew IMMEDIATELY what they’d been looking for. It does my heart good just to know there are still other old Government Cheese fans out there lookin’ for stuff.

We had lots and lots of great bands bangin’ around Nashville and the ‘Boro in the ’80s, but the Cheese was by far my fave of the bunch. And given the opportunity to take 10 discs with me to last me forever on the proverbial deserted island, there’s a specially-made-for-me Cheese compilation from old vinyl that would be one of the ten… no contest.

No idea where/how*** anyone can get copies of any Cheese stuff anymore except Tommy Womack might be able to hit you back still, or at least point you in some direction of some sort. But if you find any old tapes or vinyl around somewhere in used shops or rare record specialty shops, I highly recommend you grab ‘em. Priceless. And even if they don’t suit you personally, I swear you’ll be able to sell it on eBay for a pretty penny to some desperate Cheese fan, so grab ‘em anyway.

So anyhow, I clicked to do the same “SHRUBBERY FISHSTICK PEACHES” search and got to smiling and giggling even more when I hit the number one link at Blogcritics.org ‘cos man… besides Government Cheese, I own nearly every other album they talk about on that page, or something by almost every band and artist… AND one of my ex-boyfriends is indirectly referenced in the article. Hehe. When I get some time, I need to go hunting down that earlier article they’re talking about, too. But read this article, it’s pretty neat and right on the money as far as that old scene goes.

There’s many a day that I wish I’d never left Nashville. And much like dude in the article said, I too cannot walk down the canned fruit aisle at the grocery store without thinking/humming/singing/whistling, “You’re gonna learn to like ‘em, yellow cling peaches…” Tee hee. :)

*** UPDATE – Thanks to another Cheese fan with obviously a sharper eye and better attention span than yours truly, I just learned that Tommy now has all the Cheese masters and a lot of video shot by their label, with plans for remastering and making it all available as time allows. AWESOME news! Thanks for sharing the love, Tim!

You Take the Skyway

(Non-music junkies may move along…)

Thanks and undying gratitude to dearest, sweetest, most adorable darling little Matt Tomich way over on the other side of the world… I am sooooooooooooo relieved that The Skyway is back online finally.

A Lynnster Zone (any version!) without the all-time longest-running and best Internet repository of Replacements sh*t in the links is like a…something terrible, lonely, and barren.

Happy dance ensueth…

That’s What Friends Are For

How can one get soooo behind in not even a week?! Augh. Anyway, because I’m so loopy and behind at the moment, I did not notice something, and many of you wonderful and kindhearted friends and whatevers o’ mine who participated in the Dockers Khakis-sponsored 24-hour donation for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s Link @ Life a couple of months ago probably got the same e-mail I did today regarding today, which is World AIDS Day. Allow me a little Lynnster graffiti leeway here…

All I ask is that you all please take just a moment out of your evening or day to remember the thousands upon thousands who have lost their lives to this horrid disease that’s become the plague of the century, and hope for a moment with me that someday the death toll of this disease will disappear forever. Even if you’ve been fortunate enough not to have lost a friend or loved one to this disease – in which case you should also reflect on how fortunate you are – if you know me, and especially if you know me well, then you’ve been affected because I have been affected. It’s my hope that someday they’ll finally find a cure and I will never, ever again have to watch someone I care about lose their life to this nasty disease long before it ever should have been time for them to go. Anyone who’s never seen it cannot possibly imagine the horror, and I hope that none of you will ever have to know.

While I’m at it, now seems like the perfect time for something I’ve been meaning to do, which is to give a great big rousing Lynnster Zone salute to one of the Zone’s best friends and supporters, as well as being one of my own dearest and favorite friends, Stefanie O. way up in Boston, who missed the chance to participate in the Dockers thing a couple of months ago and instead made a mighty and wonderfully generous donation to Memphis AIDS resource center Friends For Life in memory of the three friends I have lost to this disease. I simply cannot say enough about this way cool chick’s kindness and generosity, not only regarding FFL, but also in being a fabulous friend whose (generous and wonderful again) support of the Zone has very much helped to keep the Zone online this year as well as helping your Webmistress keep her sanity intact over the past year or so, helped keep said Webmistress from doing a lot of really stupid things, and basically has just been one of the very best friends a blonde chick could ever ask for, and she already knows this but I thank her anyway. If you look up “True Friend” in a dictionary, Stef’s picture would be there (lookin’ like Julianna Margulies and all, heh… and speaking of, we think y’all should know that it would appear that 9 out of 10 people look like someone on ER. Really, think about it, you’ll see!). (giggle) Anyway, this is my public salute to the mighty Stef here on World AIDS Day for such a generous and kind donation to Friends For Life, and ‘cos Stef’s just the coolest anyway.

There are three people you unfortunately will never have the pleasure to know because of this awful disease. Christy, she of the famous (to the Zone, anyway) brother Jay W. who continues to be a thorn in my side to this day… Christy who told better jokes than me, had a messier dorm room than I did back in college, and wanted everyone to know she got this disease from the only guy she ever slept with, back in the time when most of us didn’t even really know anything about AIDS except that it was what the actor Rock Hudson had died from. She may not have become famous like the late Alison Gertz, but she was just as brave and always hopeful that someday the world would stop seeing AIDS as just a “gay disease” and understand that it could happen to heterosexuals, and females, like her, too. She was darned angry, and rightfully so, to be dying before the age of 25. When my own 25th birthday came along, as much as I hated it and griped about it (a day which still lives in infamy among my current and former co-workers), I was just glad to be having one. It is now somewhat unbelievable to me that this beautiful young woman who was so full of life has now been gone from this earth for almost a decade now.

Then there was Scot D., kind and gentle and generous and in my life all too briefly and had a cooler and bigger record collection than I. I didn’t know that this disease had taken him until it was too late to do anything or say goodbye, and for that reason I am truly grateful for Memphis’ Friends For Life, which was there for him when he needed it.

And finally, another in a long line of Scotts and Scots and Skots I have known thru the years, my beloved, sweet, dangerously funny John Scotti Coletta, who I always threatened to marry if he hadn’t been so doggone obnoxious, prettier than Brad Pitt and sharper-tongued than me on even some of my best Dorothy Parker days, but a kinder-hearted soul you’d rarely meet under all that jest and bluster. KC complains that he never finds anything really gross on the Web anymore without Scot’s e-mails; I miss the early morning phone calls at my office, rattling away in my ear about something ridiculous when I’m not quite awake yet; and another Scott/Scot/Skot, Scott the Producer Guy, mused a couple of weeks ago that hanging out downtown just didn’t seem quite right without Herr Coletta’s trademark, way way too loud laugh punctuating every turn of the dinner conversation. It broke my heart like nothing else to see this tongue stilled so long before he took his last breath and left us all. I know Tim Vine stands with me in thanking so many for rallying ’round, in person, e-mail, or otherwise. Scot would be pleased, I’m sure, for me to tell everyone he was a real obnoxious pain in the neck, but he was a nice pain in the neck. (giggle)

Anyway… these were real people and friends to me just like yours are to you, or maybe just like I am to you if we’ve had the good fortune to meet, and there are thousands of others just like them from all walks of life, homosexual and heterosexual, black and white and others, male and female, who have left us because of this needless waste of a disease. All I ask is that you take a moment to remember all those thousands. But, if you’re so inclined and would like to do something else, Stef and I would be honored to direct you to either of these two things… you can click here to visit the Until There’s A Cure website and check that out, or you can contact Friends For Life at this snailmail address: 1450 Poplar Avenue, Memphis TN 38104. Whether you choose to purchase a bracelet from UTAC, make a donation to Friends For Life, or just take a moment right now to think and remember, we’re just as grateful.

I guess the moral to this story is don’t waste your life on stupid stuff and do it up right while you can. Actually, that might even be a better memorial to them and all the others than anything else. Thanks for listening, and good night for now… still gotta unpack, blah…