I think I’ve reached my lifetime wine limit. Or at least my limit for this year. Wine just doesn’t sound good right now. Weird, but true.
Instead, lately I’ve been treating myself to a vodka soda or two in the evening. They’re refreshing, come in a lot of interesting flavors, and low in calories. Last night I enjoyed a cool mint flavored soda by Canteen. It’s tasty.
If you’re thinking “Leslie had NOTHING to write about today,” you’re absolutely right. See, vodka is good for something.
A classmate of mine passed away this week. We’d attended kindergarten together. We were in band together. His family lived across the alley from my grandparents’ home in a small Texas town. I’m sad that he is gone.
I’m sad even though he was pretty cruel to me when we were in junior high and high school. He taunted me more than once. Insinuated some pretty awful stuff about me—none of it true. Made jokes about me even as I sat right there two bleacher seats in front of him at a basketball game. He hurt me emotionally that time. I went home in tears.
Still, he was somebody’s son, somebody’s father, somebody’s sibling. He died too soon, and maybe, given the chance, he might’ve apologized for all he’d said about me. All the times he’d hurt my feelings. I’ll never know. But, I forgive him, and that feels so good.
Studly Doright’s middle sister, Angie, sent us some old photos she found while cleaning out some boxes the other day. And when I say old, I mean OLD.
Here’s Studly and me dancing at the annual Sweethearts’ Ball in Dumas, Texas. The photo isn’t dated, but it must’ve been mid-80’s. At any rate, we were both still skinny.
When I first saw this photo I thought it was taken the same year that the one below was—after all, I’m wearing the same skirt and blouse. I’m thrifty like that. But I had that awful perm in the top photo. I think I should wear my hair like this again. All in favor, say aye.
From left: my sister-law, Angie, her husband Steve, my former brother-in-law, Don, then Studly Doright and me. My eldest sister-in-law, Lyn is seated in the middle.
The next photo cracked me up; my sense of style was a bit skewed. I have no memory of this horrid skirt, and why did I think that necklace would go well with this ensemble? And it looks as if I’m wearing a headband. I NEVER wore headbands. I know we were poor, but yikes! Maybe it was a tacky-themed party? Let’s hope I burned the whole shebang soon after.
There’s nothing like old photos to make one wince, is there?
Recently, it has been brought to my attention that brown eyes are not the most neglected eye color in music. That dubious honor goes to hazel eyes. More than one of my hazel-eyed readers reminded me of that. I thought maybe I should attempt to write such a song, but I’m no songwriter.
Maybe, though, there already are such songs, they just haven’t gotten appropriate notice. Thanks to google, I’ve found a multitude of such songs. Well, no, I found two with hazel eyes in the title.
Kelly Clarkson’s “Behind These Hazel Eyes” is really good. I suspect she, too, was upset by the lack of representation for her hazel-eyed sisters.
I’d never heard of The Darkness, but thanks to “Hazel Eyes,” I’ve enjoyed listening to them this morning. According to Wikipedia, “The Darkness are a British rock band formed in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 2000. The band consists of Justin Hawkins, his brother Dan Hawkins, Frankie Poullain and Rufus Tiger Taylor. The Darkness came to prominence with the release of their debut album, Permission to Land, in 2003.”
But there are songs that mention hazel eyes. Mark Wills, song “Because I Love You,” includes the following lyrics:
Additionally, In my search I stumbled onto Lyrics.com, a site that finds specific words in songs. It seems hazel eyes do get mentioned now and then!
Unsurprisingly, blue eyes get the most mentions.
That’s just way too many, right?
Green eyes are a distant second:
With brown eyes in an even more distant third place.
My eyes are brown. Before my eyelids began drooping my eyes were big and beautiful. Now, they’re just plain—hardly noticeable behind my glasses.
Someone once told me my eyes were my best feature. I took that as a compliment until I realized that the eyes are pretty much EVERYONE’s best facial feature. I mean, a mouth could be, I guess, but the eyes provide color and sparkle and personality. Without the eyes, what do you have left? Not much to talk about, that’s what.
Again, my eyes are brown, and I’ve always felt like brown eyes get ignored in songs. As I’ve listened to hour upon hour of country music over the past three months doing research for my little romance novel, I’ve been bombarded by tales of men hankering for blue eyed girls and green eyed girls, but not a single mention of a brown eyed girl in popular country music as far as I can tell.
But, what about music as a whole? Are there brown eyed girls in those songs? We all know Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl”. It is, for obvious reasons, one of my favorites.
Interestingly enough, though, the original title of Morrison’s song was “Brown Skinned Girl!” Damn.
A song from my childhood, “Birds and the Bees” specifically mentions big brown eyes. I always imagined it had been written just for me. Of course at the time I thought we were talking literally about birds and bees.
A google search of songs about brown eyes turned up a few more. Actually, quite a few more. There are a couple of redundancies, but brown eyes do get some attention. And Crystal Gale’s “Don’t it Make My Brown Eyes Blue” is arguably a country song.
I’ll not rest, though, until brown eyes take their place alongside the blues and greens of this world. It’s my new mission in life.
Nowadays my ears are constantly attuned to finding new protest songs. If ever there was a time for such songs, it’s right now, and I’ve been hard pressed to find ones that make me think, “hell, yeah!”
Surprisingly, several of the ones I have found have come from the country genre—typically the bastion of conservative thinking.
There’s The Chicks’ “March March” which pulls no punches when addressing racial inequality. Of course, The Chicks have never shied away from addressing injustice. Their outspokenness cost them millions of dollars during the younger Bush’s time in office, but they never backed down. That’s righteous.
Then Eric Church has a song out that challenges the status quo. The first time I heard it I did a double take. Was he saying what I thought he was saying when he recorded, “Stick That in Your Country Song”? Yes, yes he was.
Studly Doright and I have been watching “Dexter” on Netflix. We’re just finishing season 2. The show is gory and sexy and yes, darkly amusing. Dexter is a serial killer, but he only kills serial killers. And he’s killed a bunch of them.
Michael C. Hall plays Dexter. He’s also a forensics specialist for the Miami police department. That makes his “hobby” as a serial killer both easier and more difficult. He has access to the inner workings of the police department, but he also has to watch every move he makes lest his off duty habits raise suspicion amongst his highly observant peers.
The supporting cast is great: Jennifer Carpenter as Debra Morgan, Dexter’s sister, Luna Lauren Vélez, as Maria LaGuerta, a tough and loyal department captain, the gorgeous, yet troubled Erik King, as Sgt. Doakes. The lovable David Zayas, as Angel Batista, and sweet Julie Benz, as Rita Bennett, Dexter’s girlfriend.
One would think that a serial killer wouldn’t engender feelings of sympathy. Honestly, we should be hoping that Dexter gets caught, but episode after episode we root for him, hoping he’ll evade the authorities and live to kill another day.
Maybe we don’t want him to continue killing, but we don’t want him to be discovered either. If Dexter dies, there’s no more series, and the series is so blooming good.
I don’t recommend “Dexter” unless you have a strong stomach, and a perverse sense of humor. Apparently, I have both.
I was telling Studly Doright about my recent blog posts dealing with songs featuring younger men in relationships with older women. He’d never heard the term May-December romance.
“That’s us,” he said, when I finished my explanation.
“That’s not at all us,” I countered.
“Sure it is. You’re way older than I am.”
To be fair, I’m a year and almost two months older than my husband. Certainly not enough to make our 44 year relationship earn the May-December designation, but try telling that to Studly.
At any rate, my blogging friend, author, Shehanne Moore, shehannemoore.wordpress.com, turned me on to another song written about a younger man involved with an older woman. “Desiree” by Neil Diamond fits the bill even if the lyrics were somewhat censored.
According to Shehanne, “…the words, ‘Became a man at the hands of a woman who was twice my age,’ were changed to ‘Became a man at the hands of a woman who was wise and sage….’ Which does not have quite the same raunch and ring.”
I agree! Why’d they feel the need to change perfectly awesome lyrics? Confession: I’m not a huge Neil Diamond fan, but I listened to “Desiree” for research purposes this morning, and it does meet the May-December theme even in its sanitized version.
Okay, now I’m sure there are more similarly themed songs out there. It’s not like I know everything after all, even though I pretend to on occasion. I’ll just have to keep looking.
The song is about a May-December romance in which the male is May and the female, December. That’s not exactly the norm in American society, but it certainly makes for a good story.
I wondered if there were any other songs that spun the tale of a younger man in a romance with an older woman. For a whole day I pondered the question, but couldn’t think of a single one. And then, while listening to the Garth Brooks channel on Sirius XM satellite radio, I remembered “That Summer.”
Garth’s song, “That Summer” tells of a teenaged boy working on a ranch one summer for a “lonely widow woman” who one night brings the boy a cup of coffee and a smile. We all know what the combination of coffee and a smile does to a man’s libido, right? Oh, okay, as far as I know there’s no connection there, but what if there were?
So surely that’s the sum total of songs featuring a younger man being romanced by an older woman. We can’t count “Mrs. Robinson,” I don’t think, because the song itself doesn’t tell the story of the seduction and/or romance. Am I wrong or have I missed any?
Praying for Eyebrowz 