Weeds, Bruce, and the need for Killer(s) theme songs

My favorite TV show, the darkly comic Weeds, is ending in a few weeks, and with it I bid a sad farewell to one of the best theme songs ever:  "Little Boxes," a folksy tune that pokes fun at suburbia and our petty little conformities.  

“Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky.” After you’ve heard that line, how can you not laugh whenever you drive by landscapes full of overdeveloped, ridiculously priced, scarily manicured McMansions? Which is always,  because this is eastern Massachusetts. 

Little boxes by the turnpike.

  

The first Weeds season, the theme song was a scratched up 60s version sung by composer Malvina Reynolds. The next few years, it became a thing for various performers to lend their voices to the opening credits. Joan Baez, Death Cab for Cutie, and Linkin Park are just some of the names that threw down the gauntlet and shoved the dark side of American class aspirations in our boob tube-deadened faces. 

The show dropped the song for a few seasons. But this final eighth round, Weeds has dug deep and returned to its literal roots. Since the opening episode’s return to the original Reynold’s classic, the song has been belted out by a pantheon of our quirkiest performers. My favorite so far is a hysterical duet by the joyfully idiotic Kevin Nealon, a Weeds regular, and Steve Martin at his dry, tongue- in-cheek best.  I will miss Weeds and its irreverent ode to our uniquely American inanity.  

 

I like to run with music. I have several go-to songs, but my favorite for years now has been “All these things that I’ve done,” by the Killers. 

One of the reasons the song initially attracted me was because of a great youtube video of my hero Joan Benoit crossing the finish line of the first women’s Olympic marathon, back in 1984. That video, "The First Gold," by fancyboyproductions, is set to that Killers tune.

The pairing is perfect. The song is about underdogs and overcoming. So was that first marathon gold. Benoit was a dark horse. She’d just recovered from knee surgery and wasn’t considered a serious contender for an Olympic medal.

“Don’t put me on the back burner.” Everyone put her on the back burner.

“When you can’t go on, go on.” She did. 

She changed everything for a whole generation of women, including me. That was nearly 30 years ago, but I’m still that dreaming “gold-hearted girl I used to be.” (The Killers verse says boy but I’m not.)   

I once hummed “All these things” for four hours, 34 minutes, and 57 seconds. That’s the time it took me to run the Boston Marathon in 2009, 25 years after Benoit won her gold in Los Angeles. Sometimes it hurt. But I smiled the whole way. You can’t tell me theme songs don’t matter.  It was my best marathon ever. 

Even today, the song still works for me. I hear that repeating first note, a G sharp I believe, and my heart speeds up.  I suddenly want to “shine on in the hearts of men.” I need to leap tall buildings in a single bound. I crave the road.   

Lately  I’ve fallen in love with a new song. I’m not abandoning my Killers. I’m just expanding my theme song repertoire. "Wrecking Ball," by Bruce Springsteen, is also about hard times and coping. On the surface, it’s about the demolition of Giants Stadium. But like all Springsteen songs, this one goes deeper. Supposedly, it’s also an ode to the American worker and our limitless capacity for handling crap. For me, it’s more.

“Hard times come and hard times go, just to come again.” Tell me about it. Struggling here, but not dead yet. (Yup. I made a "Holy Grail" reference.) 

John Cleese is furrier than I remember. 

 

These past few weeks, I’ve been playing "Wrecking Ball" a lot. The song is helping me cope. Some of the stuff I’m dealing with is minor, like getting through a hot run, for example. Even having to come to terms with the fact that I need to put out some hefty dollars for a new oil burner is trivial, in the grand scheme of things. 

Because unfortunately there’s a dark cloud on the horizon, a huge twister of a mess heading this way. I’m taking deep breaths and keeping my eyes focused on what lies ahead.  I’ve got my theme songs set on repeat. It's going to be a long, hard run.  

Take that, wrecking ball.

What I did instead of working on my book

The summer before my senior year in high school, I dyed my hair. I used a product called Sun-In. It came in an orange spray bottle and cost $2.99 at CVS. 

I was working six hours a week at Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips, for $2.10 an hour. I was rolling in dough, hence the extravagant purchase. 

What a nice, laid back summer that was. I sat out in the backyard every day and devoured my mother’s collection of Reader’s Digest condensed books.  I applied Sun-In every hour or so. 

Good times.

Here’s how you apply Sun-In. First, make sure your mother is not around. She’ll just yell at you to stop  reading and tell you to go clean your room. If the coast is clear, quickly stick your head under the kitchen faucet, then get outside fast before she sees you. Once you're safely in the backyard, spray on a generous amount of Sun-In. Comb your hair thoroughly, until the product is evenly distributed. If your hair is sticky and lemony, and flies start following you everywhere, you know you’re done. Cook in bright sunlight until your hair feels hard and crunches when you turn your head.  Comb out dead flies. Repeat process. 

Flies loved me.

The directions on the side of the bottle said the product was suitable for blondes and light brunettes. I was neither. Before I started using Sun-In, my hair was dark brown, nearly black. When I went back to school in September, my hair was Crayola orange. People stared. Some told me they loved it. I loved it too. 

Then it started to grow out. 

In my high school graduation pictures, my hair is two-toned and newly bobbed. The hair cut was a desperate last-ditch attempt to look normal. Instead, I looked like a punked out version of the Pennsylvania Dutch Boy logo. My hair was black and glossy on top and orange and fly-away from my ears down. 

My haircut wasn't half as hot.

I avoided dying my hair after that.  I didn’t mind the few greys that invaded my personal space through my thirties. They pretty much kept to themselves, and stayed hidden under thick curtains of brown. I didn’t see them unless I searched them out. They left me alone. I left them alone.

Then one night they attacked. I awoke one morning in my early forties to find patches of grey everywhere. 

My youngest daughter, whose dark head mostly matched mine, got in the habit of sneaking up on me when I was reading, or watching television, or napping, or just plain zoning out. She liked to pluck out the springy little intruders. She got quite good at it. It was really irritating. I finally had enough, and decided it was time to dye my hair. I came home one day with my brown hair striped with gold, instead of grey. 

"The joke's on you," I said. Now she had nothing to pluck. 

She pouted. "But Ma, we don't match anymore." 

She was right. We didn't. 

I let the dye job grow out. It faded over time and I never looked even half as bad as I did back in high school. At least that's what my friends said. 

Many years have passed. I have many more greys.They sprout around my ears like cat whiskers. They spring from my ponytail like party favors. It is clear I am losing this battle. And yet, sometimes when I am standing in front of the bathroom mirror my daughter will come in. She'll rest her head against mine. Though I am much greyer, we still mostly match.  

Ready, set, slog

Starting lines are among the most important things in life. You can't see the course and all its possibilities, if you don't drag your sorry butt to the starting line. That's a mashed up quote from Dr. George Sheehan, a great marathoner I never had the privilege to meet. (Though I've met many spectacular marathoners and hope to share more about them at another time.)  

I love the quote. I love the picture it calls up. Me the conqueror, hands on hips, chest puffed out, standing on a windswept mountain top, surveying all that lies below: streams, valleys, bookstores, adoring fans, the Hollywood sign. It's mine. All mine. All I have to do is start.

You see, I'm writing a book. Or rather, stalling when I should be writing a book. I'm stuck up to my pudgy thighs in a muddy third draft and the water is rising fast. (I'm figuring it's rainy season and I'm stuck in the Amazon.) I'm grunting and swearing and every time I try to wade forward I sink in deeper. I suck at this.

Just got back from a writers' conference where I workshopped my novel, At the Starting Line. This is what I came away with. My main character is likeable, but she tends to humiliate herself just a tad too much. The good buddy sidekick needs to be a little less cardboard cutout. The villain is overly nasty and needs one or two redeeming qualities for the story to make sense. I need more subplots and less navel-contemplating. I need a grander ending, and a simpler start. I've got a lot of work ahead of me.

Crap. Now I'm up to my armpits and there's a crocodile staring me down. Great.


Once when things got bad in another part of my life, my mother reminded me I needed to step back and look at the big picture. She was smoking at the time, so imagine a smallish darkish woman with hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail, cigarette clouds all around her. (She loved her cigarettes.) Here's what she said: "Hey, you're not sending your kid to Afghanistan. You're not in prison. You're not battling cancer. It's not that bad. Get over yourself."

She was right. It took a mighty effort, but I managed to pull my sniveling self up and out of that muck. Life got better for awhile, though we have a new crisis now. But I don't want to talk about it just yet or maybe at all. What I want to do now is write.