becky haycox

Month: January 2007

  • music week! day 04


    Vinyl – the warmth of music you can touch

    Today’s post is brought to you by esteemed guest blogger: my darling Andrew.

    I’ve got a Joni record on right now. The thunder that preceded the rain told me in dark tones that Joni Mitchell was the only one who could sooth my crooked back with her sugary-sharp warble. A mug of green tea and the slippers that make my feet sweat. The Old Mission Creek swells with the peels of rain that fall in swirls and race to the ocean over yonder.

    With Joni in air, the creek is my lover. Legs akimbo on the shag rug, I am a woman as well, in a loose dress that falls like the rain to the rug around me. Burnoff from the wick in the candle that should have been trimmed before lighting makes me come back to earth and see my bald head.

    the seasons, they go round and round
    and the painted ponies go up and down…
    — The Circle Game – Joni Mitchell – Ladies of the Canyon

    Photo: Untitled, originally uploaded by flickruser mms0131. Thanks for letting me use it!

  • music week! day 03

    Opera Singer
    MemeMEEEEE!

    Here’s another Music Meme for you to tolerate enjoy. (here’s the first one I did. I encourage participation.)

    iTunes meme

    iRipped from karinski. Thanks for being there for me!

    Within each item, songs listed in Title – Artist – Album.

    How many songs?

    • 5777 songs, 14:05:41:14 total playing time, 20.84 GB
      And my hard drive is only 30 gigs. I blame Niall for letting me rip a bulk of his music.. starting me on a path of needing to feed the iBeast regularly.

    Sorted by song title:

    • First: ¡Que Vida! – Love – DaCapo
    • Last: Zoot Suit – The Who – Thirty Years of Maximum R&B

    Sorted by artist:

    • First: I’m Not In Love – 10cc – Virgin Suicides Soundtrack
      I can pretend this song is not a guilty pleasure as I can pretend it just “came with the soundtrack” to a movie with cred.
    • Last: Treasure – Zuco 103 – The Now Sound Of Brazil

    Sorted by album:

    • First: Untitled 1 – Sigur Ros – ( )
      Why do I have this album? Where did it come from? I don’t listen to it. I keep it as I think it makes me look hip — to the imaginary people looking at my iTunes songs.
    • Last: Lady Stardust – David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust

    Top 10 most-played songs:
    (Most-played song at No. 1)

    Note: this list is not really reflective of my aural reality. I listen to my laptop much less than I listen to the iPod or my motley MP3 CDs in the car. The real list would probably include more workout favorites; Senor Coconut; Cornelius; Beasties; Nouvelle Vague; Beatles (DUH).

    1. The Distance – Cake – Fashion Nugget
      It’s a v.g. workout song. I am trying to make it look like I don’t listen to Cake.
    2. No Return – Kinks – Something Else by the Kinks
    3. Dreaming – Sun Ra – The Singles
      I’d say this album is in my top 10 fave albums, if not top 5.
    4. Who Loves the Sun – Velvet Underground – High Fidelity Soundtrack
    5. You’re Gonna Miss Me – 13th Floor Elevators – The Psychedelic Sounds
      It’s in some fucking TV commercial now, but lord I love this song.. and them. Seek them out!
    6. Groove is in the Heart – Deee-Lite – World Clique
    7. Everybody’s Gonna be Happy – Kinks – High Fidelity Soundtrack
    8. Summer Breeze – Seals and Crofts
      Guilty Pleasure alert!
    9. Side of the Road – Beck – Sea Change
      Yes, I’m moody.
    10. Fruit Tree – Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left
      YES, I’m moody, OK?

    Top 10 recently played songs:

    1. Bagpipe Blues – Rufus Harley – Courage: The Atlantic Recordings
      A bagpipe jazz record? Yes, please! Thanks to Rich for this.
    2. Flying Fiddles – Shay Torrent – Ultra-Lounge Volume 11: Organs In Orbit
    3. E. 2nd Street – John Kruth
    4. Dreaming – Sun Ra – The Singles
    5. Jealous Guy/Don’t Let Me Down – Claudine Longet – Golden Throats 4: Celebrities Butcher The Beatles
    6. The Scat Song – Cab Calloway – Flashbacks #2, 1914-1946, Novelty Songs, Crazy & Obscure
    7. The Robots (Cha-Cha-Chá) – Senor Coconut Y Su Conjunto – El Baile Alemán
      Latin arrangements of Kraftwerk. This makes the world a place in which I happily live. This album is in also my top 10 faves, if not top 5.
    8. Ice Cold Lemonade – Death By Chocolate – Death By Chocolate
    9. Sugar Water – Cibo Matto – Viva! La Woman
    10. Twinkletoes – Max Roach – M’Boom
      Love love lovity love! This is another song that is very close to something from my internal soundtrack.

    Find sex; how many songs?

    Total: 33. Top 4:

    1. Everyone’s Got Sex Appeal For Someone – Ronald Frankau & Monte Crick – Flashbacks #2, 1914-1946, Novelty Songs, Crazy & Obscure
    2. Let’s Talk About Sex – Salt N Pepa
    3. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – Ian Dury – Stiff Records Boxed Set
    4. Sex Bomb – Flipper – Generic
      Fun Fact: One time at a Flipper show in ’83 I got hit by flying glass! SF Old School!

    Find death; how many songs?

    Total: 47. Top 4:

    1. Death Of A Clown – Kinks – Something Else
    2. Death of a Party – Blur
    3. Death Trip – Iggy & The Stooges – Raw Power
    4. Death Valley ’69 – Sonic Youth – Bad Moon Rising

    Find love; how many songs?

    Total: 301. Top 4:

    1. (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love & Understanding – Elvis Costello – Armed Forces
    2. About The Strangeness of Love – Johannes Ammon/Igor Tkachenko – Snow Music
    3. All The Young Girls Love Alice – Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
    4. All You Need Is Love – Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour

    Find peace; how many songs?

    Total: 12. Top 4:

    1. Centrepeace – Badly Drawn Boy – Have You Fed The Fish?
    2. Chenresie, Flame Of Peace And Compassion – Oliver Serano Alve – Exotic Sounds From Many Worlds
    3. Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) – George Harrison – The Best Of George Harrison
    4. Love And Peace – Jimmy Sturr – Polka Christmas

    Find rain; how many songs?

    Total: 64. (not accurate as this search included songs with “brain”, “train”, etc. in the title)
     Top 4:

    1. Chief Sitting In The Rain – Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer – Appalachia Waltz
    2. Dry the Rain – Beta Band – High Fidelity Soundtrack
    3. Fire and Rain – James Taylor
    4. Here’s That Rainy Day – Johnny Frigo – Debut of A Legend

    Find sun; how many songs?

    Total: 134. Top 4:

    1. Ain’t No Sunshine – Eva Cassidy – Time After Time
      The original recording of this song (by Bill Withers) used to give me a sad, sad stomachache when I was small. I do not listen to this version, as Eva Cassidy is dead and that doesn’t help the sad.
    2. Always the Sun – Stranglers – Greatest Hits of Stranglers 1977-1990
    3. Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden – Superunknown
    4. Don’t Steal Our Sun – The Thrills – So Much for the City

    Thank you for listening.

    Photo: Opera Singer, originally uploaded by flickruser Andwar. Thanks for letting me use it!

  • music week! day 02

    Imaginary
    Soundtrack of our lives.

    Link: Bob Thompson — Overlooked genius of pop music

    Listen to this MP3 Starfire (from Bob Thompson’s site, above) and you will get a glimpse into a sound that is very close to a piece off my own, personal, internal soundtrack — that late-50s, perky, plink-plink-plink violin sound is often what I hear in my head when I go grocery shopping or drive on specific parts of the Pacific Coast Highway.

    This phenomenon affects several family members as well. Ask any one of us at any moment and we will tell you what’s playing on the brain jukebox. Oftentimes my nephews A and P unconsciously sing out loud their underscore. They have been doing that since they were tiny. I find it deeply endearing.

    Just so you know: right this second, my internal soundtrack is playing tribal, hollow, a cappella keening, a kind of high-to-low Doppler effect sound. Kind of pretty, kind of tedious — very Monday morning.

    Photo: Imaginary “Violin” Solo, originally uploaded by flickruser Clouds76. Thanks for letting me use it!

  • music week! day one

    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/70/171347622_48eb34ab75_m.jpg

    As I continually compile and save little snippets of this-and-thats for potential posts (the modern equivalent of clipping recipes and stories from Parade and Reader’s Digest to send to family members), I find that I’ve been ruminating quite a bit on music.

    I’ve got enough to write about it every day for the next week and declare it HaMuBloPoWe (Hambox Music Blog Posting Week)! Hot diggedity.

    Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Earliest musical memories:

    • The hottest hits playing on my cheap plastic kid’s turntable: Alice in Wonderland soundtrack; a kid-friendly classical music compilation (given to me by my brother Paul); Sesame Street 1 & 2; and the personal favorite of my mother and me: Cinderella soundtrack
    • Looking at a picture of the Beatles in a magazine and being cognizant of the fact that they had broken up recently (I was 6 or 7)
    • Sitting on the school bus (1st grade maybe?) and requesting that an older girl repeat the line “I won’t wear green ’cause I look like a bean” (from a song that is otherwise totally lost to memory) and cracking up every time
    • Sound of Music, Original Broadway Cast Recording. Over and over. Over and over and over. I’ll get back to that one this week.

    Photo: We’ll Sing for Food!, by flickruser Ange. Thanks for letting me use it!

  • Protected: devil’s cake: post 16

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  • F***balls!

    Kathy on the monitor

    Kathy on the monitor, originally uploaded by hambox.

    My friend Jen and I saw Kathy Griffin at the Chumash Casino a couple weeks ago. It was a rockin good time, from the candy-fueled drive to the crazy, alpine, seemingly-middle-of-nowhere casino, to the fascinating/scary casino dwellers, to our complete incompetence at gambling, to the show itself.

    KG is an acquired taste (and it tastes gooood) but there’s no reason to transcribe any of her foul-mouthed, pop culture-laden bon mots here (go see her yourself!) but I will relay part of an annoying/hilarious exhange between the couple next to me. It seemed like they a. had no idea who it was that was onstage, and b. spent zero time watching trash TV (and in the woman’s case, accessing any media at all).

    Throughout the entire set, the woman asked her companion “what did she just say?” or “who is she talking about?” after every line. The man did his best with his limited knowledge.

    Woman: “Who’s Al Sharpton?”
    Man: “He’s a, a, civil rights leader. I think.”

    One of my favorite lines of the night. I did not make this up:

    Woman: “What’s Project Runway?”
    Man: “It’s a show about models. But it’s set on an airstrip.”


  • Protected: devil’s cake: post 15

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  • the mod lady with the impossibly hip kids

    mom and kids

    The picture is taken by my dad. My mom surrounded by her children. Peter, Annie, me, Paul, Lisa. My mother’s handwriting reads “Lisa off to college in ’65 or ’66.”

  • frugal bugle vol. 1

    So, the road to getting a grip on my finances is annoyingly rocky and inconsistent. I haven’t followed through with some of my intentions, and so, in addition to feeling poor and out of control, I feel guilty. I am hoping that taking on a car loan will kick me in my atrophied ass — I’ll be in such debt that it will be imperative to saddle up and get back on that dreary, dreary road to financial freedom. Flawed thinker=yours truly

    I try to warn the general public from time to time: please don’t look to me as any kind of role model. There is a reason I’m childless and poor. However, my own search for money role models has uncovered some interesting, thrifty living-oriented nuggets that have enlightened and freaked me out in equal measures.

    Violent Acres is not a blog for the easily-offended — her tagline might tip you off (“I’m just like you, only I’m interesting and my life isn’t devoid of meaning”.) However, I can’t stop reading about her tough-love approach to whipping her own monetary ass into shape. A sample paragraph:

    Is anything that you own worth living paycheck to paycheck for? Is the extra square footage and the swimming pool and the new car worth it knowing that something as little as a traffic ticket can screw you up for the month? Is a playroom full of toys for the kids necessary when all you’re doing is teaching them that mindless consumer excess is not only normal, but the key to happiness?

    That’s good stuff right there. I bow down to the size of her cojones, witnessing the drastic measures she went to, ending her plastic addiction and murdering her debt.

    The Credit Card Quagmire is so incredibly bad and gluey and yet seductive. I wish there would have been a way for the warnings to penetrate 24-year-old Becky’s ears before she got into some bad, bad habits that continue to today. Here’s an interesting quickie on how to consolidate your credit cards. I myself went to a credit counselor and had them talk to the bullies (Chase Visa & Bank of America Visa) on my behalf. The Cutting of the Cards has yet to happen, because I am wussified.

    25 Gadgets That Actually Save Money is such elegant and sensible article. Just the way I imagine the perfect father to be. I really feel that if I buy all the listed products, that somehow I’ll be saved from financial ruin. Setting up unreasonable expectations: another father trait!

    I haven’t had a chance to check out the rest of the Simple Dollar site, but it looks promising. There’s another so-sensible-it’s-scary feature, 31 Days to Fix Your Finances. Yikes! It’s starting to become clear that getting a grip means doing painful amounts of self-assessment and homework.

    Consumer Reports is awesome, though I don’t really use it as much as I should. I am grateful to ex-friend JF for guiding me to the CR Car Buying Guide, which is an invaluable resource, especially when buying used. (Thanks, JF — even though you were one of the most annoying humans I ever met.) Also, check out CR’s vintage testing photos. This is the kind of stuff I can look at all day.

    I was pretty obsessed with David Horowitz in my teenage years. I looked at him less as an object of desire and more as a superhero, who battled big businesses for the little guy. It is with great glee that I discovered that his consumer rights show, Fight Back, is still active in web and radio form.

    Consumerist — Shoppers Bite Back. I’ve mentioned them before. This site has become a consumer rights juggernaut, embarrassing crooked businesses left and right. They also spot rebates, discounts, and deals all over the place, and it’s all done in a snarky, hipsterish internet style that I like am used to.

    Cosmetics diet: This New York Times article has gotten a lot of press lately. In a nutshell: there appears to be a “back to basics” trend among dermatologists, who recommend that really, only a one-two duo of simple cleanser and sunscreen/moisturizer will do for most of us. None of that $400 youth elixir made from virgin puppy plasma. Actually, my dermatologists have always recommended inexpensive potions to me — I don’t think it’s anything new that doctors don’t get sucked into too-good-to-be-true health cure-alls. And I always go the cheapie route, anyway; I may just try the two items recommended in the article: a Cetaphil cleanser and Anthelios SX sunscreen with moisturizer.

    Special offer to Bay Areans: it doesn’t appear that Anthelios SX sunscreen with moisturizer is sold in your neck of the woods. But it is in Ventura (?!huh?!). So, if you like, I can buy you some and bring it up north in February. C’mon people — it’s recommended by the New York Friggin Times!

    Can my dreams of being financially secure actually come true? And can I be put in a light coma while the rehab is happening?

    Update: the awesome Evany hands me a verrrry good article about how to replace your flamingly expensive cosmetic with a frugal (and nearly identical) product!

    Those links again:

    photo: eat now, pay later by flickruser inkynobaka. thanks for letting me use it!

  • the Tiny Bag

    The time has come to relate this tale (though some of you are intimately familiar with it). I was enticed into purchasing a subscription to Jane Magazine a couple years ago, partly because they promised a “Free Fashion Bag”! The picture of the purse made it look like a nice messenger-like sachel, in olive green with a millitary vibe.

    Well, the purse arrived, and it was a teeny tiny little purse:

    does this bag make my hand look big?

    Weensy! I wish I had the original promotion to see how they shot it to make it look about 5 times bigger than it was. I assume there was dramatic lighting, a low point of view, or a child model involved. I tried to take photos that attempted to make the bag look bigger and I just can’t. Not even surrounding the bag with tiny robots could make the bag look any bigger.

    Funnily enough, it has turned out to be very handy when travelling. I can cram my keys, wallet, cell phone and camera into it, and it’s simple and small.

    I told my sister Annie the story of the bag, and she saw a level of humor in the tale that I had not seen before. The Tiny Bag! Now, every time she sees the Tiny Bag, she cracks up.

    When I was in Cambridge last month, Annie and I (sporting the Tiny Bag) went on a quick thrifting expedition. We were browsing the aisles at a shop in Central Square, when a lady walked up to me. The following interaction ensued:

    Unknown Lady: Girrrrrrrl, you got that bag with a subscription!

    Becky (as a feeling of total surreality envelopes her): Um, yes, I did!

    Annie: (begins guffawing)

    Unknown Lady: I was pissed! I cancelled that subscription!

    Becky: I didn’t, obviously…oh god…

    Annie and Becky: (helpless laughter)

    The Tiny Bag started off as a little ember of funny, and has grown steadily into a roaring conflagration of hilarity payoff. And I will continue using it with cringing pride. And hope to attract another fellow subscription victim.

    Not exactly the sort of tiny that I love!