Tearjerker Alert: Danny & Annie

TRIGGER WARNING: The following video depicts a story of true love, voiced by the actual couple and displayed in heartwarming cartoon medium (think: UP). If you have a beating heart, this will likely make you feel a little blubbery. And if it doesn't, get out of here: you have no soul.

Earlier this week, my friend Beth sent me this video during the work day. "Maybe save that for later," she warned, "#tears" — so like the smart young lady I am, I waited until I was out of my open layout office space and alone in my apartment to watch it. 

Thank God I did, considering I not only got teary-eyed, I actually got so choked up I made one of those weird, hiccup-y cry noises that made my cat Layla look at me suspiciously. 

Without further ado, the story of Danny and Annie (presented by StoryCorps). This is the kind of stuff to melt cynics' hearts everywhere. Enjoy.



"You walk in with me, you walk out with me."

A Big Open Book Between Us

“Some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.” — Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

When I was a kid, my mother loved to take pictures of me reading books. Curled up in the recliner on Christmas morning, reading a new book while still in my pajamas; stretched out on a towel on Wrightsville Beach; laying across the floor at Grandma Hamm’s house. All with a book in my hands.

I didn’t realize just how many times she’d taken photos like this until I graduated from high school, and she gave me a present: A photo album that chronicled my life so far. All 18 years of it. And on almost every other page, I’d find these sorts of photos.

My favorite, though, is one that my mother didn’t take. That’s because she’s in it. It’s from 1995. We were at my Uncle Gary and Aunt Deborah’s house, probably for Thanksgiving. I love it because of our matching smiles, dorky glasses, and the way we both have one hand placed on the big book open between us. Mostly I love it because it says so much.

I couldn’t tell you what the book was, but I do remember the comfort, the safety, of being curled up next to my mom on a couch, reading a book. I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember—even when I wasn’t technically reading, but as I listened to her as she read us The Berenstain Bears books, my brother Jay and I on either side of her.

It started with the Berenstains. Later, we had Laura Ingalls, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden. And then: Margaret. Steph. Deenie. Sally J. Freedman. Karen.

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you might have recognized many of those names. They’re all characters from Judy Blume books. By the time I became familiar with these girls, I’d outgrown the nighttime ritual of Mom sitting at the end of my loft bed, reading me Little House on the Prairie books or her old Trixie Belden’s.

But it was because of my mom that I did get to know them. And when I say get to know them, I mean exactly that. Like so many other young girls, I devoured Judy Blume’s books—always finding something in each protagonist that I would identify with so deeply, so intensely, I’d think, How did she know? or, It’s not only me!

Then, in high school, I snagged Mom’s paperback of Summer Sisters. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with Vix, the main character. I obsessed over Caitlyn, her “summer sister,” just like Vix did—and resented her, too. It felt real.

I’ve read Summer Sisters almost every single summer since that first reading. I took it to Wrightsville Beach, the summer after Mom had died, when it was just Dad and me. I sat on the balcony of our hotel reading it, just like Mom had sat reading books so many different summers when we had visited, all as a family. Reading it was like taking a vacation from my heartbreak. I didn’t feel sad or angry or confused. Everything felt right again.

I owe my mom and Judy Blume for that gift. From my mother, I have my love of reading, a lifelong comfort. When I want to talk to my mom sometimes so badly that my chest actually hurts, I can pick up a book and feel okay again—or at least not think about it anymore. And obviously, so many women have Judy to thank for writing the stories she has, for sharing these characters that so many of us can find ourselves in, even if it’s in a small way.

Last night, I had the absolute thrill of meeting Judy Blume. She finally made a movie out of one of her books, Tiger Eyes. Out of all of her books, she had to make a movie out of the one I never read! The movie played at a theater nearby last night, and Judy Blume was there for a Q&A session following the screening.

She was wonderful. She was down to earth, kind, and full of joy. She choked up talking about how meaningful this story was to her. She talked about her son, Larry, who directed the movie, with such love in her voice. When the Q&A was over, even though she had made a comment about how exhausted she was from all of her traveling and weekend’s events, she still stayed and talked to the people (mostly women), who were lined up waiting to meet her. My favorite was the woman, probably my age or younger, who was standing behind me, clutching a beat up paperback of Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. She’d had her mother FedEx it to her so she could have Judy sign it.

As for me, I stood clutching Mom’s now very worn paperback of Summer Sisters. I nervously handed it to one of my lifelong heroes and asked her if she would sign it, telling her it had been my mother’s.

Judy flipped to the title page and sort of raised her eyebrow at me before she started to sign. “You must have been pretty young when this came out.” Then she laughed. “And I was 60!”

It was a quick moment, and nothing extraordinary. But to me, it was extraordinary. Like this wonderful writer (and person) wrote in Tiger Eyes, “Some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them.”

No one but me knew that at that moment, I felt as content as I did sitting on a hotel balcony reading my mother’s old paperback. No one but me knew that for just that quick moment, meeting Judy Blume, I felt like I could almost hear my mom laugh again. Almost. And it was enough, almost.

I think of Davey, the protagonist of Tiger Eyes, so distraught over the death of her dad, but yet still so strong. At the end of the movie, she dives in the ocean and swims. You know she’s going to be okay.

Thanks to a little help from Judy Blume, so many of us know the same.

Mix Tapes, Thursday Edition: Falling

Look, it's likely I'm going to have nightmares about this video, but it (and the song, duh) is just too awesome not to share:



It's probably best that we follow all of that up with something a bit, you know, lighter. So c'mon. Join me in my love of HAIM, which only grows stronger by the second thanks to:



Speaking of love, I absolutely love this and I really want someone to love it with me. Won't you? ("give me a chance I'll make you a ring/and we'll fly to our wedding")



And finally, this. It was as if Kendrick Lamar was just thinking to himself, what song could I remix that would make Alison Hamm feel overjoyed? And then he did exactly that.

Let's Go Get the Shit Kicked Out of Us By Love

It's that wonderful, terrifying time of year again, when I walk into Target with a plan of buying cotton balls and conditioner and instead leave with multiple bags of dark chocolate and hot pink socks and an overwhelming sense of confusion.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

It's Valentine's Day week.

[via here]

Not one minute after I tweeted this the other day:

I was snarling at my Facebook feed that was inundated with articles about love and dating while unwrapping my Dove heart-shaped dark chocolate when I saw it.

Dove had written me a little love note on the wrapper. It said:

Be your own Valentine.

Goddammit, Dove! Stop writing me notes about how I should sleep under the stars tonight and listen to my heart. I just want to eat some chocolate. Leave me alone!

***

Valentine's Day has always annoyed me. Now, before you all start thinking, "oh here we go, another bitter feminist eating dinner with her ten cats and bitching again," just hear me out.

I'm all for love. I'm all for flowers! I'm all for chocolates! All of these things are awesome. So when I say Valentine's Day annoys me, I'm not saying I hate the idea of people taking a day to show another person that they're special. I'm not saying I hate the idea of people thinking February 14th is a great time to get naked together and eat lots of chocolates shaped like hearts. Because that's what Valentine's Day is all about, right? Chocolate and nudity?

But seriously, my annoyance simply stems from all the silly pressure and expectations and inevitable disappointment that can come along with that. I'm not mad about it, though. Hell, I might even wear pink tomorrow. (Actually, that's a lie, I'll be wearing black, like I do every day.)

So now that we're all clear on my stance on this oh-so-important holiday, I'm ready to do something I don't typically do. I want to talk about love.

Recently, I was rejected. (Boo hoo, blah blah, I'm not going to get into details.) For whatever reason, it got me thinking about this time I was rejected by a boy in high school. I was completely enamored with this guy—in spite of the fact that he really wasn't all that nice to me and constantly flirted with my best friend and very likely still had another girlfriend at his old high school that he pretended not to have. So it shouldn't have been that big of a surprise to me the day he announced to me while we were sitting in the gym bleachers that he liked hanging out with me and all, but he didn't want to be my boyfriend. Instead, I felt like he'd just drop-kicked me in the gut and then laughed hysterically as I writhed around in pain. Big, fat tears started falling out of my eyes that I quickly wiped away when I saw some younger girls across the gym smirking at me.

Whyyyyy? I asked myself. Why aren't I good enough? What's WRONG with me?

After school, I promptly went home and cried to my mother. Always my cheerleader, she shook her head during my story and then said: "He's clearly an idiot." Then she launched into a tirade about how smart and beautiful and funny I was, ETC. ETC.

On the one hand, fuck yeah, Mom! On the other: Yes, that dude was kind of an idiot, but the thing is, he wasn't an idiot for not liking me. And I wasn't an idiot for liking someone who didn't like me back in quite the same way.

Quite simply, it just is what it is. Sometimes we get rejected. Sometimes we're the ones doing the rejecting. It's the nature of love and dating.

But while I'd like to think that now, 10 years later, I'm way too mature and self-assured to immediately launch into the same "Whhyyyyy? Why aren't I special?" line of thinking after getting rejected by someone, that same whiny voice still pops in my brain.

It blows. No one likes getting rejected. But what can you do? Absolutely nothing. You can't trick someone into thinking you're the most badass person on the planet and that obviously they could never love another person more than you.

Unfortunately, my 28-year-old self can't run crying to my mom with tales of my failed romantic endeavors. However, my 28-year-old self can buy wine at the liquor store down the street.

So after my most recent romantic rejection, after allowing myself one night of crying into my wine and contemplating breaking framed photos over my knee, I decided to accept it.

It didn't work out. But you know what? Something will.

My main boo Aziz Ansari put it best when he told the A.V. Club:

AVC: Do you have any basic advice for people who think they’re falling in love?

AA: Does the person love them back? If so, enjoy every single second of it. This is the most fun part. I believe it’s really hard to meet someone you have that much of a deep connection with, so you should cherish it.

If the person doesn’t like them back, oof. I’m sorry. That’s a hard situation and it’s not always easy just to move on. When you meet someone you really like and connect with, I think that’s very special, and not to be taken for granted. They discuss this in Before Sunset, one of my favorite films, in a way that really struck a chord with me. Julie Delpy’s character says when she was younger, she thought she’d meet many people of the opposite sex that she would have a special, deep, personal connection with, but as she got older, she realized that’s not the case, and you realize how rare those kind of connections really are. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found I agree with this sentiment.

Sometimes it can be easy to romanticize our unrequited loves, though, so maybe be wary of that. Again, you want what you can’t have. And if someone’s being shitty to you, just move on. If someone’s being shitty to you, no matter how great they are, that’s shitty, and you don’t want be with someone who treats you shitty. Ultimately, there will be someone you meet that you like as much or more, there always is.

It's really true! There always is.

So I just want to say to anyone reading this out there on the Interwebs: Don't let tomorrow bring you down if for some reason it doesn't work out the way you hoped it was all going to when you were eating pints of ice cream and watching Sleepless in Seattle for the 20th time while weeping.

Maybe tomorrow will be great! Maybe it will be the most romantic day of ALL OF OUR LIVES! Or maybe, it will just be Thursday.

Whatever! Just remember, as my dear friend Beth put it so perfectly last night as she quoted Love Actually for some reason while staring into a basket of crawfish:

"Love actually is...all around."

Don't forget that! And whether you're single, married, or juggling 15 different admirers right now because you are just that much of a boss, the fact is, somebody out there thinks you're awesome-sauce. Because you are. (Unless of course, you are this guy. In that case, nobody thinks you're awesome. I hate you.)

But for everyone else:

So let's do it. Let's go get the shit kicked out of us by love.

Happy Valentine's Day!

xo,
Alison(composes)

[seriously. crawfish.]

Monday Mix Tapes: The Ambiguity of It All (Maybe, Perhaps?)

Some songs I've been listening to, and loving. Maybe they have a common theme (in my mind)? Maybe?

In this first video, Sharon Van Etten talks about her song, "It's Not Like," saying it's about "being happy, and being sad; cliché human emotions that everybody feels about love; frustration and excitement, the ambiguity of it all" and I really love it. I listened to all of her albums at work today for the first time before I listened to her new album that's streaming on NPR. Her new album is called "Tramp," and I love that, too. The title and the content.

Without further ado, here she is talking about, and singing, "It's Not Like":



I also recently spent a day listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen after listening to his newest album, "Old Ideas," on (surprise!) NPR. It's fantastic, and I listened to it three times in a row.

But you might know this track a little better. I just love every damn lyric in this song, from "I used to think I was some kind of gypsy boy" to "You held on to me like I was a crucifix" to "I'm cold as a new razor blade/you left when I told you I was curious/I never said that I was brave" ... but that's kind of just Leonard Cohen for you, isn't it? Okay, I'll shut up now.

Just listen:



When I was home a couple weeks ago, I snagged a copy of my dad's 92.3 WTTS Collector's Edition, which happened to include a live recording of Ray LaMontagne singing "For the Summer" at The Lawn at White River State Park in Indianapolis—the same performance I saw with my family this summer. When I listen to it, I remember exactly how I felt that night at the show. And how I felt moving back home for the summer (well, a little longer than just the summer) as an adult two years ago.

Here's Ray singing "For the Summer":



"The ambiguity of it all," right? Maybe it's not always good, but it doesn't have to be bad, either, I don't think. After all, like Ray sings, 

Through the years I have learned / Some things worth the tellin' / And you'd be right in guessin'/ that each and every lesson they were hard won

Now, so long. "It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again."

Someone Like You

Adele's voice, and this song in particular, is rocking my world right now. This is one of the most beautiful new songs I've heard in some time. The sentiment behind it is also beautiful, and something universal I think we all can understand in one way or another.

Also, I want to live in Adele's house. Her keyboard player can stay. That's fine.

there’s a dinosaur in my vodka

at this time yesterday I was OK
but not, swilling my glass and feeling all my thoughts.
i had put on the little black dress,
my lacy tights kept catching
on my stupid belly ring
and there were two giant elephants
in the middle of the party.

believe it.
i did not.

we walked through that one exhibit
my hand safe on your arm
back in that time when i was drinking
white wine when all i really wanted
was a vodka.

what a time that was,
there, with the elephants and Sue
i’m like a kid at the fucking prom
wishing you’d just ask me to dance
checking out the girls’ party outfits
and the ties, oh the ties
mini cupcakes and quesadillas

we kept looking for the lions
no one got why it was so godammned important:
the lions!
i sat at a table alone while you had a smoke
feeling all my thoughts
white wine and vodka
and not enough soda.

i wanted to read everyone’s brains
cause then maybe i wouldn’t have
to feel like i was alone at the prom.
granted, a much, much hipper one
with a giant T-rex
but still, the awkwardness and the
teetering girls in heels
and just like at my prom,
white boys everywhere.

believe it.
i did not.

you are the opposite of my prom
and that is why i love you
even still, even still

if only we had found the lions,
maybe it all would have been different.

La Confusion Exquise

see? it is all there.
pieces of it, if i could just see them.
but i can’t, so i feel them out,
my mother’s green blanket wrapped
around my shoulders like armor.

this is how i write best.
i hope you get that right now if you speak
it might be spanish and it might be english
but i don’t speak either because i am stuck

here in this in between of guessing
and almost knowing
but feeling it so exquisitely

like this movie (see?)
it’s better with the subtitles off
i might actually understand it more
like when you speak to your mother
and i get it but don’t know a word.
comme ça?
remember, j'ai étudié le français
(whoops)

i was supposed to habla español by this point
i had so many plans
i was supposed to go to the landmark alone
and watch that woody allen film
i was going to take the train
to do something, i forget
i was going to paint my lips red
and wear the right things
instead i wore that sweater i shrunk
to my new job with a pair of nikes
and pulled my hair in a braid

and then i came home
and it was just like this
it was just like this
it was nothing like that

oui, c'est tout

Magnificent Mo'Nique

Until I saw the movie Precious (based on the novel "Push"), I really had no feelings one way or another toward Mo'Nique. I've never watched her show, and honestly can't remember too many (if any) of her comedic performances in movies. So basically, to me she was just a comedian to whom I'd never given much thought. Maybe she's hilarious. Maybe not. I really don't know.

But I really don't care. When I watched Precious, I was blown away by her performance. I was so happy when Mo'Nique won best supporting actress at the Oscars last night.

If you haven't seen this movie, please, please do so immediately. It's not an easy movie to watch, that's for sure, but it's the kind of movie that sticks with you, and makes you think. And hopefully makes you feel.

Mo'Nique's character, Mary Jones, is awful. She's abusive, hateful, and cruel to her daughter Precious. (I'd tell you more about the storyline, but seriously, you already know about it, don't you? C'mon.)

Yet Mo'Nique manages to portray something in this character that I believe is so important. Even though Mary Jones is a monster, you begin to look at what made her this way. As she tells Mariah Carey without makeup, errr, the social worker, in her final, powerful scene:

"Who else was gonna love me? Who was gonna make me feel good?"

I love what Mo'Nique says in this interview below. I also love how she just took over this press conference, bossed the journalists around, and still called everyone 'baby':

"Have you ever had a dark moment, when you were unlovable? Didn't you want someone to love you through it? ... For as cruel as Mary Jones was, for the monster that she was, everybody—and I don't care who you are and what crime you've committed, everyone deserves to be loved, even when they are unlovable. This role was so not about my acting career. This role has shaped my life, to allow me not to judge, and to love unconditionally. Now if that goes into my career, great. But if it doesn't, and I'm just a dynamic person that I strive to be, I've won, baby."

Kudos to you, Mo'Nique! Please also read this letter by Sapphire, the author of "Push," about why stories like Precious need to be told.  I also loved Mo'Nique's interview with Barbara Walters, where she unflinchingly and unapologetically speaks of her abusive brother, her open marriage (and how she defines "open"), and yes, that she doesn't shave her legs.

Maybe Mo'Nique will never become my favorite comedian. But that doesn't matter, because she has now joined the ranks of my female role models. So in honor of International Women's Day, I'm giving this shout out to Mo'Nique, who not only has given this powerful performance in Precious, but has spread the message that no matter who you are, where you come from, what size dress you are, or even if you (gasp) don't shave your legs, you are deserving of love. We all are.

Happy International Women's Day!

Will I Ever See Your Sweet Return?

" ... maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong / but tonight, you're on my mind so you never know...

so I'll wait for you, and I'll burn / will I ever see your sweet return / oh, will I ever learn

oh lover, you should have come over / cause it's not too late ..."

The 'aww' factor

Last night I was talking to this couple who are getting married next month, and they were so happy and in love, talking about their wedding, that I actually said, “Awww.”

And meant it.

But Jesus, they were talking about being best friends, and you could tell it was actually true. They even looked a little teary eyed! It was so heartwarming that I actually found myself being genuinely interested in their wedding plans. I was so stunned by it all, I accidentally gulped down half of my Tecate in one drink.

Basically what I’m saying is that I’m not always the angel of doom. I think I’m growing.

But I still think diamond rings are bullshit.