Kissing Up

Busy! Here are five things that make me smile:

1) My new side project. Youse with kids: won't you please submit some pics?

2) "Tractor." That's HR's confirmed second word. I can't get enough of hearing him say it.

3) This time next week I'll be beginning my vacation at the beach.

4) Did I mention that this time next week I'll be beginning my vacation at the beach?

5) Kissing: one of the better human inventions. I never talk about it, but it's never far from my mind. The subject actually relates to my song pick of the day, so kindly bear with.

One summer I had enough extra lettuce to join the Columbia Tape Club. It happened to be the same summer I made my belated entry into the world of making out. I'd had a couple kisses here and there, pecks really, and that was all well and good. But then there was the dude that wasn't scared of me like the other ones seemed to be and lo and behold I was in the makeout club. Oh, friends. For all its misery, there are ways in which being a teenager wins the award for excellence, life-wise. Even with all its awkwardness, learning about making out is a blue ribbon experience. Without going into detail (a lay-dee like myself has some secrets), I will always remember that summer fondly, even the dude,  although that didn't end so well. The point is, the Juice soundtrack (along with Pearl Jam's Ten, Lou Reed's Magic and Loss and some other selections that will both date me--as if my admission that I belonged to a tape club didn't take care of that on its own--and out me as a musical omnivore) was one of my introductory CDs. I listened to it into the ground, and to my ears it stands the test of time in the way that the movie does not.

Rakim is awesome, and I can't hear this song without thinking of the summer of my burgeoning independence, and other assorted loveliness.