Jams Of The Week (Song Math Pt. 2 Edition):

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~sarah p.

Deep, Dark Secrets: I Like HBO's 'Girls'.

How many times have I been sitting around for drinks, when someone mentions that they find Lena Dunham to be a deplorable human being, at the epicenter of the worst show on the entire planet: HBO's 'Girls'? I sit quietly and stare into my vodka/soda... I care if Hannah follows her dreams to become a writer. I want Marnie to find love within herself before trying to find comfort in men. Jessa? She needs to realize how much everyone just wants to help. And Shoshanna. She'll be fine. She's perfect. Yep, the fine folks at the ol' Home Box Office network has finally sucked me in. They've had shows about murders and drugs and gangs and dead people, and the one show that sucks me in is about some stupid rich, spoiled girls.

In some ways, Lena Dunham reminds me of myself. She tries a little too hard, and is only funny about 50% of the time, and anything even remotely controversial that she does causes major uproar. She's awkward and sometimes mildly annoying. However, I challenge you to find a millennial that is not kind-of aggravating, with the Tweets and selfies and faces buried into their phones all day. Yes, she's a kid that had parents with waaaay too much money. She had parents that allowed her to "follow her dreams". She was clearly told she was special on a daily basis. If she wasn't writing shows, she'd be painting or roasting coffee or knitting teeny hats for kittens and selling them on Etsy, and her family would be enthusiastically funding the whole damn thing. That being said, she's writing, and not only that, writing one of the most poignant shows of our time. It's an uncomfortable show to watch at times. It also hits sore spots so very, very hard. I was not a rich girl, but I did have breakups that shook my soul, and went to bad parties, and did things that would make me ashamed in my older years.

Also, not to mention the outfit ideas! The wide variety of body types portrayed!  The lack of diversity purposely righted by adding a black Republican! Actually, scratch that last one. That was weird.

As I sit around a table of girls whining about 'Girls', I picture Hannah and Shosh and Jessa and Marnie all slandering a similar show. "It's just not... Realistic", my friends say, and leave to go back to their family-funded downtown condo to text boys that are significantly too hot for them, and finish a painting and a full bottle of wine on a weeknight.

~sarah p.

Jams Of The Week (Song Math Edition):

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 ~sarah p.

The Birth Of My Skepticism.

I was not always a skeptic. In my childhood, in fact, I was the exact opposite. I believed in things with the very fiber of my soul. If you told me something, anything, with a straight face, I took it at face value. I guess it was a combination of stupidity, over-trust, and blind faith in the universe, but boy, was I ever raised in the wrong era. If I were growing up today, I would have easy points of reference. If someone told me something, I could just whip out my phone, Google that shit, and if they were wrong, I could shove it into their face until the end of time.

However, I was raised far away from the information age: in the early 80's. "Doing research" meant going to the library, and because I was an inner-city kid, that meant waiting for my parents to take me, finding books via Microfishe, and asking the librarian to photocopy the pages you needed (first page was always free, and 5 cents thereafter).
With a lack of nickels, two working parents, and a genuine bewilderment at the Dewey Decimal System, I turned to other sources; sources I had deemed trustworthy, such as teachers, comic books, and the almighty television.

Social causes were rampant in the 80's, and scare tactics were the preferred method of communication to young naive North Americans. Reagan's America taught me that a drug dealer was going to hold me down and force me to do cocaine (like the library photocopier, first one's for free, then you pay, but this time, it was with your life). Smokey The Bear taught me that I was going to have to save my entire family from my burning house, while simultaneously accidentally starting a whole forest on fire. The Zzzzzap Program said that there were live power lines down all over the city, and they were going to burn my arm off. Ambie The Ambulance (who comes up with this shit?) came to my school to remind me how to dial 911, because my teacher was probably going to drop in front of me in cardiac arrest. Oh! And did I tell you that I was probably getting AIDS? But, I was quick to remind myself and everyone around me, I would not be contagious unless I was having sex or bleeding.

Most kids would have brushed this off, but me? Nope, it wasn't if I was going to kidnapped and have to escape from a van, it was when. My parents daily told me I was over-reacting, and I would just think to myself "We'll see who's over-reacting when I'm saving your ass from getting your face blown off in a convenience store robbery, fools".

The year before I entered junior high, the race riots happened in Los Angeles. I prepared myself to get shot in a violent drive-by shooting, but the summer came and went without incident. I started into the dating world, where sorting through reality and bullshit becomes downright survival. I worked on a fine balance through my early teen years, and I am thankful I did.
By the time Tupac got shot in 1996, I had just enough skepticism to wonder if we were getting the full story on his murder, and just enough reality to know that OJ probably (definitely) did it.

~sarah p.

That Time We (Almost) Went To A Hip Hop Festival.

Calgary did it. We had our very first hip hop festival, and where were we? Eating cro-nuts, defeated, in my basement apartment.

For the record, we tried. We really, really tried. We secured a spot on the guest list months ahead of time. I laid out an outfit. I packed a bag. The weather forecast wasn't in our favor, but dammit, Calgary was having a hip hop festival, and we needed to be there.

 My heart sank when Saturday rolled around, and for once, the forecast was right. It was pouring, but we bundled up, packed our umbrellas, and left to fill our stomachs before braving the festival. Pre-eating prior to drinking, while in your thirties, is just as important as pre-gaming in your twenties. While sitting and having burgers, staring out the window, we said it for the first time of the day: "We are being such troopers right now".

We finished eating, and went back to my place to add layers of clothing and get bigger umbrellas. I think we knew we were in over our heads, but still, we trooper-ed on. We went in search for a cab, and for the first time in two years, couldn't find one willing to pick us up. After trudging seven blocks in the storm, we reached a giant mass of people, peppered with snapbacks and Nikes and beanies. This was the lineup, and the lineup was insane at the best of moments.

 We huddled ourselves into the masses, and the phrase of the day became a steady mantra in my head: "Troooooopers... We're being troopers". My feet were soaked, and we were freezing and tired. Dexter, in a strike of a total genius, had brought a giant umbrella, and booze-breathed, not-so-genius, hipsters used their heavy self-entitlement to insert themselves under the umbrella with the two of us, un-invited. In the distance, we could hear Raekwon echoing through the crowd.

With FOMO at an all-time high, we champion-ed on. We were cold and annoyed and had been waiting two hours. I looked back at Dex, and, with some bitch's feet continuously stamping on mine, and some stranger's dick in the small of my back, said through gritted teeth, "We are being such. fucking. troopers". Wale took the stage as we hit the front of the line. That is to say, we thought we had hit the front of the line. Prepped for the mandatory pat-down that comes with all rap shows, we told the ticket-taker that we were on the guest list. She looked at us with furious concern. "You didn't go get your tickets at the box office first?",  she said, and directed us to the other side of the field.

We looked at each other. Our hearts were in our feet by this point.  We searched for the box office for a minute, before our age and patience got the best of us. We slinked back home to cover ourselves in one million blankets. We bought a box of cro-nuts, and ate our disappointment. Calgary had a hip hop festival, and we missed it. Well, we didn't miss it, we just spent it in a line-up, starting at wet sneakers and asses. We were feeling really sorry for ourselves, until we realized that we were there, and those damp shoes and stupid entitled asses were there, supporting rap music on a large scale, and that this whole city, for one day, were troopers in the name of hip hop.

~sarah p. 

Jams Of The Week (By Your Side Edition):

 

 ~sarah p.