Brass In Pocket

Have I ever mentioned how awesome Chrissie Hynde is? I learned all about her from Mandy, and really, at the time, Mandy was kind of obsessed. Actually, that's an understatement. She spent a lot of time on the Talk of the Town Pretenders Official Fan Club message board, and met a ton of Pretenders super-fans from all over the country. She scored these crazy awesome 1980s tee shirts and had them altered to fit her teeny teenage body. Even her email password was a Pretenders lyric. In her defense, nothing I was into back then was nearly as cool as Chrissie Hynde, and she started this obsession when she was like, 15. We've been to her hometown, saw the official Pretenders archive, and found places to stay through the Pretenders network on our epic cross country road trip of 2003. We've seen Chrissie together twice, and I'm sure she's got a few more without me and we're actually going to be seeing her perform tonight in Portsmouth. It reminded me of this one time we had a birthday party at Bull Moose for Chrissie.

Every year on September 7th I think to myself, "Why is this an important date?" I'm terrible at remembering birthdays, every year I have to call my mom and ask her to remind me what my father's birthday is, and they've been divorced for ten years. September 7th is Chrissie Hynde's birthday, and one year, possibly 2002, Mandy, Hilla and I were all working, and it was a Sunday. I think on these days we were open from 10-6, so it was eight hours of pure, unadultered Pretenders. She brought in t-shirts for us to wear, made a banner that said Happy Birthday Chrissie! and threw a party for her idol resembling her own birthday parties growing up. She is an only child, afterall.

Hillary and I were pretty good sports about the whole thing. We told anyone who'd listen about the Pretenders, and played the Pretenders discography from beginning to end. It was a long day. The customer base at Bull Moose Lewiston was mostly high school kids in the surrounding area, the occasional Batesy, a lot of numetal dudes, some DJ-types, and the oldie-but-goodie crowd, who were just venturing into the short lived world of compact discs, desperately in need of that Connie Francis album their mom used to play. There weren't a whole lot of people who were into the alternative 80's scene, so our Pretenders preaching was falling on mostly deaf ears, except this one guy, Dave. Dave was probably the only customer who cared about the Pretenders at all, and he'd always say that he saw Chrissie open for the Stones back in the 80s (or whatever, I was a fetus) and that she blew him away. "Not a lot of musicians can hold their own when opening for the Stones. She was hot." He came in frequently, was enthusiastic, and could take a joke. He was kind of a middle aged guy, and I seem to remember him wearing an Grateful Dead tee. I had no idea what he did for work, or much about him, but one of my coworkers once spotted him coming out of the Blue Goose in the middle of the day. The Blue Goose is an infamous dive bar in Lewiston. At the time I had never drank, didn't really understand the reasons a person could be coming out of a bar during the day, so I thought, whoa, what an alcoholic! Now, as a person who's been known to do that very thing, I think, whoa! I wonder how early they open. All day Mandy was looking forward to Dave coming in. She left for fifteen minutes to grab us coffee, and she missed him. He walked in the store, Hilla and I just burst out laughing, knowing full well that Mandy was going to miss him, and she was going to be incredibly irritated and disappointed to not be able to talk to the one person who she thought would truly understand her excitement. Sure enough, she walks in, we tell her she missed and and a string of "What the fucks" come out of her mouth intermittently for the next hour or so.

What happened that day, though, even more than her and I almost fucking dying driving to Connecticut in a Nor'easter, because she spent $80 a piece on this Foxwoods concert, was that her love for Chrissie was seriously tested. I'm a fan, I genuinely like the Pretenders. I'm into the first three albums, Pretenders, Pretenders II and Learning to Crawl. I can listen to these albums from beginning to end, and thoroughly enjoy them. But sometime in the 90s, Chrissie lost some of the zsa-zsa-zu that made her so awesome and her songs so captivating. Since it was the Unofficial Chrissie Hynde Tribute day, and we had to play all of the albums back to back, even the bad ones from the 90s...  And Mandy had a meltdown. We were all feeling a little punchy, probably because of the ridiculousness of the situation. We begged her to stop playing this particular album, it was so terrible. On principle, she made us keep in on. But couldn't disagree that it was really bad. I remember her laughing hysterically at herself, rolling around on the floor, surrounded by Chrissie tribute banners, t-shirts, etc, and saying that this album in question wasn't just the worst Pretenders album, it was the worst album she'd ever heard. But she kept it on. 

Brass in Pocket, their first single. Well, second after their cover of the Kink's Stop Your Sobbing, isn't a great example of their best stuff, but I sing it at karaoke sometimes. I'm not trying to tell you I think I'm special, I'm trying to channel our love for Chrissie.

The Worst Date Ever

In response to a recent post about the second to the worst date ever, some of you have inquired about the worst date ever. Here it is:

I was 17. I'd never met or dated anyone I'd just randomly met. In my innocent, virgin, straightedge mind, dates consisted of ice cream sundaes and holding hands in a movie theater. He was handsome, for a dude-bro, and he came by Bull Moose to pick up a Spoon album. I walked him over to the section and said, "Girls Can Tell?" and he responded, while leaning his body towards mine, "I don't know, can they?" I blushed, ran away, and he asked me for my phone number. He worked at the Gap, and his best friend in high school (two years ahead of me, from across the river) was dating the head cheerleader/class vice president from my class. Maybe I thought this was going to be some sort of 'She's All That' kind of nerd makeover story or something.

We agreed to meet at my job at a specified time, since this was almost ten years ago and not everyone had cell phones yet. He was an hour late, and made no apologies, no excuses. I pretended not to notice, since I didn't know what else to do. He used the bathroom at the store, then again two or three times when we went to Friendly's for ice cream and grilled cheese. I think I also saw him pop some pills. He's still cute, but we don't have anything to talk about, and his behavior is not normal.

I suggest we go to the movies. We get there, and we've missed all of the shows by five minutes. Not a problem. Even back then I had my finger on the pulse, so I suggest an indie hip-hop show at Bates. (His interest in Spoon was a fluke. This guy was way more WBLM than WRBC.) We arrive and the show doesn't start for another hour and a half. I'm baffled. He uses the bathroom again, then suggests we just go for a drive, normal small-town teenager passtime stuff. We were in separate cars up until this point, but he volunteers to drive. Why the fuck was he peeing so much?

We're out over by the Lake, and I'm assuming he's just going to take us on a nice drive around the lake, something we do sometimes when we get bored. But then he turns right, down a wooded, unpaved road. There's a road closed sign. I start to panic a little. My mom had no idea where I was, in fact, no one knew where I was or who this guy was.  He keeps driving and I'm seeing signs like, "Road Closed in .5 Mile, Turn Back Now!" "Where the Hell do you think you're going? ROAD CLOSED, Dummy!" I started getting really scared.

He parked the car in front of some blockades and leaves the car to pee again. I wonder how lost I'd get in the woods and how far exactly I was from Route 4 if I tried to make a run for it. This wasn't part of the Girl Scout curriculum.  The woods were pitch black and if he didn't murder me out there, I figured there was a pretty good chance I'd get eaten by some wild monster/animal (Did I mention I'm scared of the dark, sometimes?) It'd probably take them weeks to find my body. He went in for the kiss. I don't remember specifics, except it was the worst kiss of my life. We made out for a few minutes and I'm seriously regretting putting myself in the situation. He makes a move for my belt buckle, and I push his hand away three times. The fourth time, I stop and tell him flat out, "I'm not going to have sex with you, I'm a virgin." He was really surprised, but got the point, and we headed back in town.

Finally, we arrive at Bates, he pees again and pops another pill, and I'm glad I'm alive and able to focus my attention somewhere other than this creepshow. We stay for about half an hour, I tell him I'm tired and we leave. He kisses me goodbye, tells me he'll call, but he doesn't.

This guy came into the store again once or twice, a year later, and I pretended I didn't know him. There are a few lessons to be learned from this story: tell someone where you're going, meet at a public place, have a cell phone, and remove yourself from a situation as soon as you start feeling uncomfortable. Crazy, huh?

Pulling Mussels from a Shell

My sister has two young children. A few weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to spend the weekend with them. Andrew is 3, and Alahna, or “La La,” just turned one. She isn’t the happiest baby; she smiled like three times over the course of 48 hours. I have no idea what the timeline is for babies growing and developing, when they start getting teeth, crawling, walking, resenting. La La eats potatoes, chicken fingers, toddler-ready meals, and just about anything else you’ll put in front of her. She’s kind of huge. I hadn’t seen her for a few months and she had grown so much in the lapsed time that I accidentally exclaimed, “That baby ate my niece!” (This is probably only second to the time in the hospital, Andrew, the hours-old newborn wouldn’t stop crying. Partially because I’m not comfortable around babies, and partially because I deal with my feelings by making jokes, I got really close to my sister and said very seriously, “You know, Ashley, I hear that babies really like it when you scream in their faces and shake them.” Holy shit, was my mom pissed!) I’ll be allowed to joke about La La’s weight until she’s old enough to understand. I kid because I love.

Occasionally, I’ll tell someone a little bit about my Lewiston upbringing, the current state of my family- my mother has worked the same job at the hospital for 30 years. My father has been unemployed since, well, I don’t know when. My sister, bless her heart, is struggling through community college, while taking care of two (healthy and happy) babies. I’m a student, working at a coffeeshop. I surround myself with inspiring, engaging, artistic people, musicians. There are no babies, no welfare, no blue-collar boyfriends. And they can’t put two and two together, other than that time that I met this girl Bitzy at a part and she said, “Oh! You LOOK like you’re from Lewiston!” which was weird.

Anyway, we were at breakfast at Uncle Andy’s Diner, “Where the Elite Meet to Eat.” Ashley, La La and I were out to celebrate Mother’s Day. Since our mother was working. I figured, hey, Ashley has kids, which makes her a mother- consider my Mother‘s Day obligation fulfilled. We’re feeding La La some chocolate chip-strawberry pancakes (my idea, fucking awesome.) Sometimes we broke off pieces and put them in front of her to let her pick them up off the plate, and sometimes we put the fork in her gummy little mouth and fed her that way. Because she’s a baby, and doesn’t like, know baby sign language, and hasn’t been watching Baby Einstein, and isn’t Stewy, when she’s done eating, she just stops. I put a piece of pancake in her mouth, and she just pushed it out with her tongue, wearing a completely blank expression on her face. She drools on her chin a little bit, and the slimey pancake bit falls to the floor. Now picture me, as an adult, doing that in a fancy restaurant.

Which takes me to the night before I was scheduled to go on my first ever trans-Atlantic flight. I was so nervous and excited- this was it. I was going to FRANCE. Twenty four years old, and leaving the continent for the first time- I had a Passport (which, holy shit. You try and use a Passport as a form of ID at a bar… Prepare to feel the heat. In my early days at Pizza Villa, this one DMB-listening-douchey bartender gave me a really hard time about using it as my form of id. I was like, REALLY? I can get into UZBEKISTAN with this thing, but I can’t get a vodka soda at Pizza Villa? SERIOUSLY?) Angela Pizzo had a gift certificate to Ribollita, and we went there as a sort of, a "This trip could change your life and you could be a different person when you come back/what if something goes wrong and your plane crashes or worse, you end up like Tom Hanks in Terminal, stuck in the airport for ten years, or whatever" meal. It was... amazing. Since breaking my veggie edge, discovering Thai, Indian, Sushi and fine dining in my adult life, as a Portland resident, I've also developed a love for seafood, mussels in particular. The amazing thing about eating mussels is that the broth can be complicated or simple, fancy or traditional, and the mussels can be just as good. Mussels at J's Oyster Bar, the Blue Spoon, Local 188 and the Dogfish Bar and Grille (coconut milk base, ridiculous,) have been contenders for the top mussel-spot, but something about these Ribollita mussels were indescribably delicious (obviously, I'm not a food writer.) The bread they served with it was buttery and fluffy fococcia... maybe it was the lighting in the restaurant, or the wine, or the fact that I knew I could possbily never be the same after this trip... I dipped that bread in that broth practically up to my wrists. I was like a mad woman, having to consciously restrain myself from licking my fingers. Angela was really into it too. They were so. good.

In Lewiston, cloth napkins are few and far between. It's not that I don't have manners, per se, I know how to say please and thank you, and wait my turn to speak. But sometimes I'll pick a wedgie, or wipe my hands on my jeans (worn-in, faded jeans are the best, so I tend to move the process along as fast as possible,) completely forgetting that it's inappropriate in public.

That night at Ribollita, I forgot my table manners. But it wasn't my fault, I could have died. Angela and I both wore dresses, and I remember the hostess having some kickass boots. Cue the shoe-envy. We had probably been talking about work, or something work-related, my nervousness about flying to France, alone. All of a sudden, I was sopping up a particularly huge piece of bread in the mussel broth- it was like a sponge. I made sure to get bits of the floating onion and garlic. All of a sudden, something hard crunches between my teeth. This isn't supposed to be happening, it was just soggy bread. Flashback to all of the many, many times I've had nightmares about my teeth falling out. In waking life, too, they've been through a lot. Fillings, root canals, my wisdom teeth being taken out. I chew slowly, with my mouth full of food, wide open. See-food. It's a shell. It's a triangular, dagger-like piece of shell, and it was in my mouth. My life flashed before my eyes. If that thing went down my throat, it would rip through my esophagus like it was warm brie, and I was as good as dead. France? France what? So I pushed it out of my mouth with my tongue, just like the baby. It fell into the plate, at the restaurant, where we were probably going to spend over a hundred dollars on dinner. You can take the girl out of Lewiston, but you can't take the Lewiston out of the girl.

There's a song I always sing to myself when eating mussels. This is it:

Lewiston High School, Class of '02

This is a re-post of a story I wrote back in `08, which I retold to Tess Van Horn and a friend earlier tonight. I think it's still funny. 


The girls and I decided to eat massive Rosie's cheeseburgers this weekend before going out to karaoke. I'm sitting there, burger juice dripping down my arm, and I see a man who I'd met a few weeks before. Since he was new in town, I prayed there was no cheeseburger on my face, turned around and said hello to the Carhart overall-wearing man on my left, Matt. We exchanged pleasantries, but it was brief, since it's not exactly polite to carry on a conversation while holding a giant cheeseburger.


A few minutes goes by, and a man comes over to our table, and crouches next to me and introduces himself.

"Hey, so how do you know Matt?"

"Matt??" I did not see the people Matt with the Carharts came in with.

"You know, my friend Matt," he gestures.

"Ohhh. That Matt." I explain that he's a friend of a friend, who I'd met only once before, meanwhile I'm thinking, what the hell is this guy doing over here, where could this possibly be going. You see, this man, who for the purpose of this story shall remain nameless, taught at my high school. It escapes me what exactly he taught, Jobs for Maine Graduates or something along those lines in the vocational wing. His classroom might have even been attached to the school store. Anyhow, I knew of this man for two reasons- the first was that my locker was right outside his class, and he was a young, handsome new teacher; the second was that he had to leave his job because he slept with student. That's right. He's Mrs. Robinson. From what I understand, the chick was 18, not that it makes it okay.

So he's going on and on. "You look so familiar, where have I seen you before, do you work downtown, etc." I'm thinking, "Holy effing shit I can't believe this is happening." Two of the three other people at my table had no idea what was going on, the other watched in horror.

It was at this time that I decided to go big or go home. I looked him directly in the face and said, "I went to Lewiston High School." He shut right up. 'Caught with his pants down' as my mother would say. It looked like I had sucker punched him in the stomach, and I wish I was quicker at the draw with the camera on the iPhone. He proceeds to make some even more awkward conversation about the high school, finally asking me if I was proud of my Lewiston heritage. I blinked twice for emphasis (did he really just ask me that?) I said I didn't know how to answer his question, because really, nine o'clock at Rosie's was neither the time nor the place for me to explain my complex feelings of being born and raised in Lewiston, let alone in front of two Bates graduates (humble, but proud and very defensive.) Finally acknowledging his defeat, he stood up and left with a meek, "Go Blue Devils."

Fo' Shizzle

Mandy might be one of the whitest white girls you'll ever meet. Not only does she have flaming red, Irish hair and the palest porcelain skin to match, she's also extremely... white. She's from Mechanic Falls, Maine. She'd never had rice until age 21. She listens to Black Music that Black People Don't Listen to Anymore, and wears scarves and drives a Jetta. Which makes the story I'm about to tell so. much. funnier.

Snoop Dogg, legend of hip-hop, played at the Gray Cage at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, my hometown last week. ("Seriously? Snoop is playing in LEWISTON? They hate black people there." Well, kind of.) Snoop Dogg is kind of a big deal and he's had a pretty huge impact on my life. The week leading up to the show, I kept getting this one song stuck in my head everytime someone said his name... the one where in the background someone sings, "Snoop-dogg-y dooo-ooo-awg."  When I decided to try drinking alcohol for the first time, I went with gin and juice, because that's the first thing that came to mind. When "Drop It Like It's Hot," came on the radio in my car, I'd crank it and try and click my tongue along to that part. You know the part. See? I'm really white, too.

Anyway, Mandy talked to Snoop Dogg on the phone once.

Last week wasn't the first trip to Maine for Snoop. Back in 2004 (I Googled it), Snoop played at now-defunct the State Theater. That night, Mandy, age 19, was working at the Bull Moose warehouse in Scarborough. It was 10pm, there were, possibly, two customers in the store, and she was working with a girl she describes as a beautiful, voluptuous, lesbian named Jamie. They're getting ready to close the store, when a giant limo speeds into the parking lot, almost crashing into the front windows, tires squealing. Mandy assumes that it's a fancy date, prom or something, until two black dudes covered in bling step out of the car.What the fuck? There are hardly any black people in Maine, and none of them ride in limos and have bling. It's just not how we do.

These two guys walk in, one is older, with a bulldog face, droopy red eyes, and the other is a little bit younger and slightly overweight. He says to Mandy when he walks in, "Yo, girl! Yo, girl, where's your soul section?" So she walks him over to the section, and as she's about to walk away he's like, "I need some babymaking music, I need some BABY-making music. You know anything about soul music?" Which is a little bit ironic, because at the time, Mandy was a virgin. Technically, she didn't know anything about babymaking music (disclosure: neither did I.)

She's not really sure what he's looking for- like, if he wants the best one she has, or an assortment, so she starts grabbing whatever and throwing it in his arms, running back and forth to the used section. Compilations, Al Green, Otis Redding, and before she knows it, there are like, 20 cds in his hands. At some point, the bizareness of the whole situation just gets to her and she asks, "So you mind if I ask, what's going on here, who are you?"

"Oh, yo girl, I'm Snoop Dogg's cousin!" WHAT?? And that's when it dawned on her, holy fucking shit these cds are for Snoop Dogg, because he's playing tonight, in Portland. "Yo girl, Snoop told me to come down here and get some BABY makin' music for after the show. Yo girl, you gotta help me out."

Now, maybe I'm being stereotypical here, but this guy was 30ish, and the other guy was probably closer to 45. How is it that they had no idea about any soul music at all? "Yo girl, you think this one would be good, you think this one'd be sexy?" This guy probably said babymaking music like fifty times... to Mandy, the 19 year old virgin. He's probably got like hundreds of dollars worth of cds in his hands at this point when he's like, "Yo girl, I like what you got for me here. But hold on, hold on just one second. We gotta make sure, we gotta make sure just one second." He pulls out his cell phone, which back then was probably a Motorola Razor, and makes a phone call. Mandy, again, is thinking, what the fuck.

"Yo Snoop, yeah, yeah, I'm here. I'm lookin at the soul music right now- I got this girl, she's helping me out. Let me read off to you what I got," and he names a few things and pauses after each one then stops. "Hold on- hold on Snoop, Hold on." And hands the phone to Mandy. "Yo girl, Snoops on the phone. You gotta tell him what we got, he's gotta approve."

She stands there for a second, with the cell phone extended to her, and she knows that on the other end of the line is Snoop Doggy Dogg, waiting to talk to her.

"Hello?" She's like, terrified.

"Yo girl, I hear you're picking out some babymaking music for me tonight." So she starts explaining all the different gospel soul, southern soul, modern soul, and even though this sounds completely ridiculous, after every single thing she said, he responds, "Fo' shizzle."

Mandy: I've got D'Angelo, Untitled.
Snoop: Fo' Shizzle.
Mandy: Sade, self titled.
Snoop: Fo' Shizzle.

She finishes reading off everything and asks what he thinks, is that good, is that enough.  "Yo girl, that's great girl, I can't wait." She hands the phone back, ending the coversation. He called her girl like five times, and said fo' shizzle like 50 times. While she's ringing them in, the older guy speaks up for the first time and says to Jamie, the lesbian, that he think she's pretty attractive, and the young guy disagrees and says that Mandy is more attractive. Then they give the girls the room number at the Eastland, where Snoop is staying, so they can come party after the show. Mandy doesn't go.

This is an excerpt from the article I found in the Press Herald about the 2004 show:

"If you're wondering what the kids mean when they say "fo' shizzle" after you ask them if they want takeout for dinner, you can thank Snoop Dogg for the linguistic confusion. Meaning "for sure," the phrase is part of a slang vocabulary created by Snoop Dogg, aka Snoop Doggy Dogg, Snoop Dizzle, the …"