I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE PRETTIOTS–Tiny Desk Concert #448 (June 15, 2015).

I hadn’t heard of the Prettiots before this set, but I loved them right from the bat.  The band plays super catchy, simple (funny) pop songs.  Kay Kasparhauser plays ukulele and lead vocals and bassist Lulu Prat sings great harmonies.  Kasparhauser is quite mobile, singing and bouncing around.  While Prat almost stares down the camera.  Meanwhile,  drummer Rachel Trachtenburg from the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players sits mostly stone faced as she thumps along on the drum.

Their songs are rather funny (even when they aren’t).  The first song “Boys (I Dated In High School)” names the boys she dated, whether they were good at sex and why she dumped them.  All with a call and response in the verses that’s fantastic.

“Stabler” is an ode to the guy From Law and Order, which I don’t watch, but I can still appreciate it.  It ups the musicianship a bit from the much simpler first song.

“Suicide Hotline” is a humorous look at a dark subject: The lyrics name check lots of famous suicides and starts with the lyric “On a scale of 1 to Plath I’m like a 4.”  Prat switches to guitar for this last song and it boosts the sound a bit.

I actually don’t know what the band really sounds like–I sort of picture them being bigger and more punk, and yet their lyrics work perfectly in this more acoustic style.  (They have two songs on Spotify and they are still quite acoustic in their sound).  I’m looking forward to hearing more from them.

[READ: July 15, 2015] Displacement

I enjoyed An Age of License, even if I didn’t always love Knisley’s attitude.  This book, which is sort of a companion to License (although not really, it’s more like another travelogue released around the same time as the first one), was something I wanted to read.

In a nutshell this book is another travelogue, but it is not anything like the previous one.  In this one, Lucy volunteers to go on a cruise with her 90 year old grandparents.  The grands wanted to go on the trip, but no one in the family felt that they should go alone.  Lucy thought it would be a good way to spend time with her grands and also to get a chance to enjoy a cruise (which she would never be able to afford).

Knisley ends each “chapter/day” of the cruise with a quote (and her own illustration) from a book that her grandfather wrote about being in the war.  A decade or so ago he decided to put down all of his memories about his time in the service.  He had them bound and gave a copy to each of his children.  And his stories are exciting and scary and thoughtful.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if Knisley had the whole book published with her illustrations–I’d certainly read it).  So, after a trying day with the grands, we get a perspective of the man she was looking after as a young man in a really serious situation.

Her grands are a little worse mentally than she realized–between medication, slight dementia, incontinence and old-fashioned stubbornness, Lucy has her hands full.

Her family is happy that she is going but, she feels not terribly helpful about the whole thing.  Especially when she tells them how exhausting the two flights were and how it would be nice if she could get them a direct flight back.

The airport and preparation are of course a ton of thankless work, with the grands and Lucy being exhausted (and packing preposterous things for a cruise).  But once they are aboard things seem a little better. Lucy even decides that she can take a snorkeling expedition as her one treat to herself.  And I have to say that she has earned it–even if she felt guilty while doing it.

The grands are quite demanding–they can’t exactly look after themselves, and they tend to get very confused, oftentimes wondering if they even know who Lucy is.  It is sad and depressing, but their moments of lucidity make it worthwhile.

Knisley shows just how hard it is to look after older people when you have no experience doing it.  She tries so hard to get them to do things–takes them to shows and tries to get them involved in activities.  But really the only thing that seems to make them happy is swimming (which she wishes she had thought of sooner in the trip).

It was an exhausting trip for her.  And of course, given Lucy’s psyche, she feels guilty because she wonders if she did enough for them or if she did all of this just to be a martyr, or whatever other kind of thoughts she might have.  But I think she did a nice thing, she took her grands on what is surely their final vacation and allowed them to have a good time.  And yes, I think she earned some karmic brownie points as well.

And her grandfather’s war stories are really great.