I love writing about music. Even more, however, I love listening to music. From Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" to Aqua's "Barbie Girl" (which is easily one of my favorite "guilty pleasure" songs) to Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and a little bit of everything else inbetween. Except rap. I have to say, no matter how much I try to appreciate it, I just don't. It isn't music. There isn't something I can sing along with or harmonize with. I just have to take a pass on it. Everything else, though, I will usually find something that I like.

The guilty pleasure/pure cheese songs are so much fun! Just about anything from "Glee" is awesome. I love Forbidden Broadway, too. "Wickeder" cracks me up, but so do most of the Forbidden Broadway songs. Some songs are just perfect for singing and dancing around with a hairbrush...like O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei" and if you're the "Numa Numa boy" they might even make you famous-ish. I could dance around singing Kris Phillips (Fei Xiang)'s song "For You Only" for hours. His song "Love Me", too if I knew all of the words. Sucks that I don't know enough Mandarin, though.

I have so many that I love putting on and cheesing out to. Not all of them are cheesy, it's more likely that I was doing something cheesy when I heard the song and that is a memory associated with it now. For example, Asia's "Heat of the Moment" isn't pure cheese on its own, but the first time I heard it I was 16, working at McDonald's, and back doing dishes in "the dives", having water fights with a co-worker and I loved it. Or, years later, discovering that the same co-worker was roommates with my (at the time) future husband and sitting in their dining room with White Town's "Your Woman" looped on repeat. For years I had trouble remembering the name of that group and the album and song name so I just called it "The Star Wars Song" because of the music that the song opens with.

Random others that are just fun to listen to in my list are: Dexy's Midnight Runners/Save Ferris "Come on Eileen". I love both versions. Same with Cheap Trick/Save Ferris versions of "I Want You To Want Me". Both are great. I love Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" and The Cars song "My Best Friend's Girl". I can totally rock out to Rockapella's "Zombie Jamboree" or "Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?"

There are others that I love that I can only listen to when my kid isn't around. They are certainly not "Quin Appropriate" songs. Unfortunately, those few are some of the most very favorite songs on my list. Ugh!!

Off to cheese out to some of the more not kid friendly songs for a bit. I am kidless for a few days and loving that I can listen to anything that I want!

Take care,
Cindi

Attention All Villages

Call your idiots. They're missing. I know where they are, too. At whatever restaurant I am eating in.

When I go out to eat, which happens rarely enough that it is a treat, I don't want to be seated next to the village idiot. Unfortunately, that happened the last time I went out to a "nice" restaurant. I'm not talking about kids being loud, either. Ya know what? It happens. I've got one, I know how they get sometimes. I mean those people who really should know better, but act as if they don't.

We had two different tables of them.

The first group was the one that kept sending all of their food back. Each person at the table sent their food back to the kitchen. This is a nice restaurant and their chef is damn near amazing. I have a hard time believing that every person at the table had gotten bad food. Then again, it isn't completely impossible, so send it back once and it's all good, right? Wrong. These people took a handful of bites and sent it back again. So, with far more patience than I would have displayed, the chef cooks a new meal for them and they try again. Third set of meals. Three of the people at the table quiet down to grumbles and the fourth of the group takes some bites and starts the cycle again. Bitch finally gets her meal and eats. And the angels sang.

The whole time I am watching this process, the group was rather loudly complaining "amongst themselves" about how bad their food was and how irritated they were. Like I said, the chef at this place is wonderful and I have never once ever gotten a single bit of food there that was less than amazing and I am a phenomenally picky eater and not so easy to please. I'll be the first one to send food back if it is legitimately not right. Four tries before it was corrected, though? Not buying it. This particular group was trying to not buy it, too. Their meals, anyway. I don't know the outcome of that, but it looked from my seat that they just wanted to eat at a wonderful restaurant for free. They were just irritating, however.

The other table was the "we're getting toasty, look how much FUN we're having" group. Look, I love a good glass of merlot (Echelon, in particular) as much as the next girl, but I don't do it at the top of my lungs. I talk nicely, using my "inside voice". I am all up for having a good time and enjoying a night out, but you have to be able to judge your environment and determine if you are behaving appropriately to the location. These people were partying like they were at a pub and doing so in a restaurant that sells bottles of wines that cost in the multiple hundreds of dollars range. We were not at Denny's at midnight. The more they drank, the louder they got. It wasn't just that they were chit-chatting. It was the annoyingly artificial "look at MEEEEEE" shrill laugh that the woman was doing that was grating.

Dude, I was looking, and frankly, you weren't having nearly as much fun as I was. Quin and I were trading bites of dinner and dessert and being silly. We have fun together and this was no exception. We were having fun quietly, though. With inside voices. No making a spectacle and causing a scene, just enjoying our family night out.

So, as I get ready for another outing at another restaurant tomorrow, I just want to request that all villages call your idiots now. I don't want to sit next to them.

Take care,
Cindi