I’m talking about music. All I knew about it up until that moment was Disco Mickey Mouse. And the Annie movie soundtrack. And some really good Frank Sinatra and jazz albums of my parents. All good. None of it, however, quite worthy of blowing my hair back. None of it quite made me want to jump around and scream and yell and sing until I was hoarse and ignited to the core the way this did. You know that kind of music when it hits you. And I’m afraid it puts daddy’s Frank Sinatra to shame.

So back to the story. We were hanging out in front of my friend’s house. It was a weekend I think because we had nowhere to be and lots of time to kill. There was a large community of Americans in Mogadishu in the very early 80s, and my family was part of it while my father was posted there. And so while we were in one of the most desolate and desperate parts of Africa, we were just kids making do and enjoying our weekend, no different from anywhere in the USA. Because there we were. In our dark blue Jordache jeans with skinny red belts, ringer t-shirts, wearing Lip Smacker lip gloss stolen off some sister’s dresser.

It was hot out and dust whipped our stringy hair around. We sad on old concrete blocks under a thorny Acacia tree. The Somali sun never retreated so we had. Goats ambled by, kicking up more red dust. There was nothing to do.

And then a car drove up. My friend’s older sister ran out of the house. She was only an 8th grader but she knew the really big kids who drove cars. We watched her bend in to say hi. A moment passed and doors opened up, they all stepped out. And then it happened. Music thundered from an old tape deck somewhere within.

We stared.

Do you know what song it was? The song that ripped into my heart and made me want to rock my head and smile and move and laugh? Cliche or not, it was Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll.”

I was mind blown.

We froze where we were and listened. As soon as it was done, the song was rewound and played again. And again. Eventually we shuffled quietly over to the back of the car and sat up against its bumper, swaying, nodding our heads, mumbling the words when we knew them. The big kids never noticed or never cared. But we hung there. The whole afternoon. Listening to “I Love Rock n Roll” and “Crimson and Clover”. Over and over.

Joan Jett became a constant by the community pool and at evening social get togethers and at sleep overs and before community movie screenings. Joan Jett’s guitar riffs transplanted a small piece of the U.S. right into an extraordinarily foreign world. She brought some normal, on a loop, over and over.

So of course Joan Jett became my first rock and roll idol. Black leathers, black eyeliner, black shag haircut, bad ass guitar, and a chick-swagger like nothing I had ever seen before. She established in my soul what rock and roll should be, there amongst the Acacia trees and passing goats.

When I arrived home a year later, I snapped on MTV and discovered Cyndi Lauper, Annie Lenox, Toni Basil, Chrissy Hines, Ann and Nancy Wilson… and I got it. I knew it. I wasn’t afraid of it. I was moved and rocked and rolled by all of it. Without any reservation. How could I be, after Joan Jett popped my rock n roll cherry only a year before?

I watched “The Runaways” the other night. It was pretty good and about what I expected. The live show of “Cherrybomb” was sick. Awesome job. And my Joan Jett girl crush certainly never wavered. The 9 year old in Lip Smacker lip gloss lost inside came rushing back and rocked and got light-headed and wanted to scream, kind of.

“Saw him dancing there by the record machine…. knew he must have been about 17.”

OMG. Are you kidding me?

Swooning, feeling, nodding, singing, rocking, loving.

“Uh, you better get here like SO early.” She peered out at me from behind the swath.

“Yeah good call. I was planning on it. How early do you think?”

“Uh, like an hour?” She leaned forward.  “Like, at least? I mean, we did the midnight showing here last night? And like every theater? Was sold out. Seriously.” Her eyes were wide now. I was impressed.

“Wow. Ok, I’ll make sure to get here early. Thanks.”

She smiled widely and her braces twinkled. She and I had connected. She was more than half my age and yet she made eye contact and offered her beautiful smile because she was into what I was into at that very moment. Yeah you’ve probably guessed it (*insert reader eyeroll here*). I’m talking about Twilight.

I’ve written about this before. I’ve justified my fascination in about ten different ways. I felt that I needed to get on my soapbox and spout off why I’ve lost myself in this whole saga. And I got on that soapbox because, well, I am a little embarrassed about liking it. I still am.

And now the third movie has come out and I have collected a small crew of women to head out and see it on Saturday.

Acting, special effects and plot aside – I ask only one thing of it. One thing. And that is to escape for two hours. Make me pretend I am not where I am and somewhere very very different instead. Transport and transform me. For two hours. That’s all I ask.

Because have you seen the news recently? Here are some headlines from today alone.

BP spill sets a somber record as Gulf’s biggest.

Hurricane could suspend oil capping for weeks.

35 die in bomb blasts at Pakistan shrine.

Or the horrifying shooting deaths of two Tampa police officers, one a father of four, one husband to a 9 months pregnant wife.

And then there’s the usual stuff. You know, scraping it together to pay the mortgage on a house worth half of that. Parenting boys alone while your husband travels. Never getting anything done – or if done, done well. Ear infections preventing any pool time for two weeks. Forgetting to schedule that mammogram. Frustration over childcare. Screaming tantrums in the grocery line. Jello dropped on the carpet. Missing your mom. A lot.

Life is what it is. Sometimes it’s tough. Sometimes it’s not so bad. Everyone has their stuff. But I am simply looking to the end of this week as a way to check out for two hours into a kind of cheesy, fairly predictable but highly addictive little storyline which takes me out of blistering hot Florida and drops me in a small rainy logging town in the corner of our country.

Is that so bad?

With all the horribleness going on in the world alongside the general stressy crap that goes on in our day to day lives, being this invested in a campy, over commercialised tale about vampires and werewolves fighting over the same girl is hardly anything to get your panties in a bunch about.

Jacob and Edward aside, I’m Team “Mommy go out and get a life”.

I can’t wait.

And before I get any crap for the post I am about to write I want to say two things. Whatever justification I have for my Twilight interest can be found here. Read it and perhaps it will gain me a couple inches of slack. And secondly, I know I know, all crap given is perfectly understood and probably deserved.

You see when I parked my car in front of the theater last Friday, with the kids strapped in the back, car hazards on, and ran up to the ticket counter, I fully realized that being so fired up for a Twilight movie was silly. I knew that.

I KNOW that.

But pride is no matter here.

Escape, reconnecting with the teen within, who the “F” cares, and no kids for a few hours does matter however.

So sue me, “Two tickets for next week’s Friday screening of New Moon, please.” I stuck them in my car visor and looked forward to last night all week.

My fellow Twi-crack-mom and I arrived at the theater early with tickets clutched and “Mom’s night out” lip gloss applied. Once in, we moved to the back of the line waiting for the theater to open. Yes, there were small clutches of tweens in their “Team Edward” t-shirts, but mostly? There were women my age, waiting patiently, hoping no one recognized them (which my friend’s son’s teacher admitted when she was, in fact, recognized.) We waited about 45 minutes until the doors opened, tickets were rechecked and all Twi-freaks present rushed the seats.

Please be rest assured. My friend and I were absolutely laughing at ourselves. We saw humor in our anticipation. We joked that if we were going to do this, we were doing it right. We were committing to this Twilight thing that night, why be half assed? We giggled at the Twilight souvenir cups and promised ourselves some as soon as we were seated.

And honestly? We didn’t expect much. We didn’t. The first movie was just ok. The books were what they were. As addicting as it was, New Moon was my least favorite of all the books. But we were getting a rare Moms night out, with children and daily responsibilities left back in our deed-restricted communities. We’ll make this good even if its wall to wall cheese, teeming with eye rolling teenage angst and super over the top cartoonish CGI. It was all good. Go Twilight. Whatever.

So we scored seats middle center. We scored our souvenir cups. We took pictures. We chatted and wished for wine in our cups instead of Diet Coke.

Not that it mattered. My souvenir cup contained about a gallon of diet coke so I found myself under the influence never the less. I don’t do caffeine all that well. And by the time the lights dimmed, I was jacked the frock UP. That’s me below: wide awake, not blinking, humming with werewolf anticipation and twitching for some Edward action.

“It’s starting. I’m so TOOOTALLY excited and I don’t care. No for real. I’m soooooo into this. Woo hoooooo! Are you excited, I’m excited. I think its starting. Is it starting? Go go go go go New Moon! Wheeeeeee!!!!!!!”

Well. When we walked out of that theater I could not stop smiling. Maybe the Diet Coke was still working its magic but… I wanted to turn around and go right back into the next showing.

Yes. I loved it.

I was lost in the vampire, werewolf, love triangle, teen-aged drama for 2 blissful hours. I can’t remember the last time I was so lost in a movie. (Titanic?)

Sure, I was determined to love this movie. It could have been a steaming pile of over acted crap and I would have probably found a way to like it somehow. I was perfectly aware that I went in using the “kind of average but that’s ok” first Twilight movie as the yard stick by which I measured my evening. My expectations were hardly soaring.

But honestly? New Moon kind of pulled an Empire Strikes Back.

It was so much better than I expected. I loved it. I want to see it again. My fellow Twi-crack-mom thought it was even better than the book. I felt like I just saw the book come to life. I wanted to go back and re-experience it all and lose myself again. Really. I am going again, somehow. And then I want the DVD. And I want the soundtrack. More more more…

Shit. This Twi-crack-mom stuff just notched itself up to the next level.

But when Eclipse is released I don’t think I will be laughing at myself waiting in line an hour before it begins. OMG. I CANNOT WAIT.

Ok. ok.

I’m waiting for it.

Go ahead. Laugh away. Yes, I know. My street cred is in serious peril over this dribble. I know.

And to be fair, MSNBC was far from impressed. Maybe you might consider them as cooler heads prevailing and me simply just a mom that needs to get out more. Maybe my expectations are set so permanently low for fun and excitement that anything escape-ish in nature is a mind blowing experience.

Ugh, well that’s kind of depressing to consider.

Whatever.

Still, I sit here. In a satisfied after-movie glow hoping I can go again with New Moon. Somehow, somewhere… soon. It sure as hell was good for me. Was it good for you?

This weekend I had the opporitunity to try out a very fun new kind of movie making software called Muvee Reveal. Lucky me, I was approached last week and asked if I would like to do a review of the product. Considering I have a lovely new Canon HD video camera and the overwhelming project to create a “Best of my kids’ Christmases” DVD as a gift for my family… well, this review could not have come at a better time.

A newly updated version from the muvee autoproducer family, Muvee Reveal was explained to me as a very easy to use software that will create professional movies in a matter of four simple steps. I could not wait to try it out.

Sure enough. As soon as I downloaded the software, I added one hour of film I happened to have on my computer already. Then, clicked the transition I wanted, added a couple songs and pressed play. VOILA. Muvee Reveal took my film and transitioned through different scenes to the length of the songs I chose. While it did pull scenes randomly and flipped thorugh them fairly quickly, if I added more songs, it would lengthen the “show” and it really did a great job of picking nice scenes. I’m not sure how it does that. However, after doing some reading, apparently this software has a mind of its own and has been designed to focus on faces and sync them to the beat of the music. Um, how cool is that?

Now, if you want more control over the scenes, the transitions, the music, etc. – you can have that too. You can label scenes, do voice overs, add titles and credits and control which scenes you want in there. And then the software will help you share your movie just about anywhere such as the web, HD TV, a DVD or even your PSP.

So, do you want to play around with this software too? Well, guess what? The folks at Muvee were kind enough to offer TWO sets of software – valued at $79.95 – for a giveaway here on Morningside Mom. What a fun gift for someone (maybe even yourself) this holiday season, right? Read on for more details…

Muvee Reveal Blogger Cheer Giveaway

Well, if you know me, I like to do as much paying it forward as possible around these parts. And with this giveaway, I’d like to pay it forward to other bloggers. You see, I haven’t been reading in my google reader enough. I haven’t been spreading Blogger Karma NEARLY as much as I like to. So, maybe this contest can help with that. Especially with it being the holidays - lots of bloggers have ads on their sites and more hits could bring them a few more pennies from heaven. Lets help up some of their traffic!

Giveaway Rules

1) Go find your favorite blog, read one of their posts.

2) Comment. Tell them they wrote a great post and tell them you are going to post it here for this blogger cheer contest.

3) Come back here and paste their post link here.

4) You can enter as many blog sites as you would like. Each will count as an entry. I would encourage you to read some of the links others have posted too and comment on those!

5) I will pick two winners at random on Friday, December 19th.

That’s it! Now go love your fellow blogger and come back and tell me about it. I can’t wait to read some good posts and do some more giving this month. Good luck!

The best way to spread holiday cheer,

is reading blogs far and near!

Please tell me you do this, because I do this ALL the time.

And guess what? I consider you are all close friends of mine, so I am going yammer on here for a little bit. Inspired by my “always the link lover” friend Florinda at the 3 Rs, I want to share some links that have me thinking this week as well as just some stuff I like. I am warning you, it will be haphazard, one sided and excessively chatty. But you all don’t mind right? That’s whats friends do, at least what my wonderfully patient friends do, I guess.

First of all, Ike. Yup, the hurricane. It busted right through Texas last week, remember? I know all I saw were live garbled feeds of newscasters positioning themselves in the wind, doing their damnedest to get knocked over. (Is that like some sort of notch on a weather forecaster’s belt? To get blown over during a hurricane?)  And then I saw some pretty insane damage being reported the following day. But then little by little, I haven’t heard much else thanks to our piss-poor economy and election updates.

Well, here’s the scoop. A fabulous blogger, Julie Pippert, expereinced the hurricane for herself. Please read her plea for help here. Things there are NOT ok. And as you will read in her post, a donation to the red cross, even $5, will make an enormous difference. Please consider giving.

How much disposable stuff do you go through? How many paper towels? How many grocery bags do you stuff in your closet or throw away? How many diapers do you use? How many wipes? The Crunchy Domestic Goddess is running a Ditch the Disposables Challenge for September and October. She is asking all of us to try and cut down on some of your disposable products. My goal is to not use paper towels or paper napkins but use cloth towels and sponges. (Shoot, its partially a selfish thing, paper towels are expensive!) Also I am desperately trying to keep using those cloth grocery bags. I think I am doing pretty well with it actually! They stay on my car front seat so I have them ready to go. Also, I am using my old plastic grocery bags as my trash bags and won’t buy actual trash bags either.

Can I just make one more plea for folks? Join the 29 Day Giving Challenge! It’s really been a lot more do-able than I expected. Plus, I am having fun trying to think up a new thing to give everyday. Often I have 2 or 3 things on my list!

Um, this is kind of an obvious one (but who am I to ignore the obvious). A veeery important election is coming up. Have you registered to vote? Do me a favor and please make sure you are registered.

If you know me, you know I feel very strongly about equal rights. One of these rights is marriage – loving couples of every sexual preference deserve the right to marry. A fantastic writer and person, Lesbian Dad, is living in CA. right now with her family. Please read her blog when you can, and this post has a great video to watch. If you live in CA., vote no on Propostition 8. But you certainly don’t have to live in CA. to donate to the cause, so please consider doing that if you can’t vote. There is a long way to go to change discrimination against same sex couples. Did you know that here in Florida, a same sex couple, or single homosexual person, cannot adopt a child? It’s outrageous.

Speaking of discrimination, do you know what I have been recently stressed out about? Racism in this election. I wonder why this election is so close when Obama seems like such a strong choice. I wonder if he were white, if the spread would be larger. I wonder if this country really wants change… or can change. I know there is a post coming about this in my future but read this post here from Momocrats about individuals out rightly admitting they would never vote for a “black”. (Shudder.)

So why should you really vote for Obama? In case you still need more convincing (and assuming race has nothing to do with your decision… please, tell me it doesn’t), the amazing Queen of Spain did a fab job this week of continuing to back Obama. Read about it here. Don’t know who Queen of Spain is? If you have been watching CNN recently during both the DNC and RNC, you’ve seen her. Shoot, here she is – just a mom blogger in her own right – interviewing Obama himself.

After posting about my son C. getting his doll, I read this article here from Motherhood Uncensored about her son playing with “girl” toys. I thought it was fantastic.

Oh and hey, did you know I am writing for Type A Moms now? I am their “Liberal Moms Editor”. Perfect, huh? Here’s the funny part, I am nervous about having a grown up EDITOR title and, as a result, I am having some major writer’s block for my next (and really first ACTUAL) post. I’ll come up with something - I have ideas of course, but nothing seems good enough quite right. I just need to get into the groove of it and gather some confidence, right? Wish me luck.

Finally, I want to list some fun stuff I just plain old really like.

My 5 year old T. and I have been reading these “From the Black Lagoon” books about different people he might meet at school. They are hysterical and I really recommend them for your children if they are just starting at a new school too!

My 2 yo C. and I have just started Music Together classes. He loves them and the music is fabulous (we truly enjoy the 2 CDs you are given when you sign up, one for the car and one for home). There is great teaching about children’s development for the parents and I honestly get a workout every Friday jumping, spinning, dancing, and marching with my kid. If you’ve got the time, I wholeheartedly recommend signing up for a class with your children in your area.

Need a good gift idea for someone or for Christmas coming up? Hyper-dashis a huge hit in my house. I bought it on a whim and both kids really love it. It really gives them a work out too! Yay for tired children more likely to nap…

We recently were given a subscription to High Five Magazine. What fun for my kids to get a magazine in the mail too! They read it cover to cover, T. loves the Spanish learning section in particular.

And another adorable book that I can’t get enough of? The Peace Book. LOVE IT.

Maybe you haven’t heard of the website Starfall? It is honestly the best letter and phonics learning website out there. And that’s not just my opinion. My teacher friends, my pediatrician and my speech pathologist aunt all heartily agree. T. likes to put it on with C., teaching him the ABC’s while playing fun songs and games. Its really terrific, they are on it right now.

Oh and I saw a pretty funny movie last night that I hadn’t even heard of. The Promotion. Great actors you (and esp. your husband) love to watch: Sean William Scott (aka Stiffler) and John C. Riley. And the story is just about regular guys trying to get ahead and take care of their families. I really enjoyed it!

And…. I’m spent.

And how was your week?