The Entertainment Meme

I was tagged by Joan Havest to do a meme. (Check her out, she’s on my blog roll.)  All you have to do is write a little about each of the following topics - books, television, and music.  I’m hoping that I can do it in my alloted internet time this morning.  My house is full of people who want to be on the internet, and i’m having a hard time finding time to post.

Books-

I taught myself how to read when I was four.  I swear to god.  I can remember spelling my long-ass last name, even writing it in cursive for the neighbors in my condo block.  My mother had just gotten married when she was 5 months pregnant with her 2nd out of wedlock baby, and was a little pre-occupied.  Oh, she also was and is bi-polar.  So i have no idea who really taught me how to read that young, so I’m taking the credit myself.  I devoured every book I could find.  However, at the time I had very few children’s books at home, just at my great-grandmothers house.  So I discovered my mom’s feminist books.  I was reading every classic 70s novel I could pick up.  My favorite boo at the time was Wifey by Judy Blume.  By the time I was in 1st grade, I snuck the book to school and read it to my classmates at lunch, hidden behind my mad magazine comic book.  We were fascinated about all the sex.  OMG, when I look back today this is horrible, but at the time I just felt very grown up being able to understand the sex lives of upper middle class jews in New Jersey.

Television-

Tv and I have had a long love affair with one another.  We were BFF’s growing up.  When your mom lays on the couch for most of your childhood, and you aren’t allowed to even cross the street until you are 8, you can understand the attraction to this magic box of info.  I always say Tv raised me.  I loved your typical shows like the Brady Bunch and Happy Days, but I also watched plenty of Twighlight Zone, Maude, and Hart to Hart and Quincy Jones, M.D.  Ha ha … But surprisingly, before the Dukes of Hazzard introduced me to Bo Duke, my favorite show was M.A.S.H. I loved Hawkeye Pierce.  He was so much fun and serious, like me at the time.  He knew how to have a good time, party it up with the opposite sex, but always had that sensitive soul and wrote the best letters to his dad back in Crabapple Cove.  I felt like I really understood what he was going through, even though I was a child of 8.

Music-

My first true love has always been music.  It covered the noise in my house, whether my mom and step-father were beating the hell out of each other, or covered the screams of my hyperactive half brother.  The Beatles were like my friggin’ saviors in the Mouse House.  Plenty of the time I laid around listening to vinyl, and just put myself into what my boys from Liverpool were singing about.  I could understand the pain both Paul and John had inside of them.  Even though they were on top of the world, they were hurting and that is what comes out in their music, a little bittersweet sorrow.  I loved this about them.  I can remember swinging at Wildwood Park for hours by myself, singing Yesterday or Eleanor Rigby.  I felt they wrote the best lyrics of any group at the time, and I will probably always feel that way about them.  The Beatles were also special to me because it was the only thing my mother and I had in common together.  They only thing we connected on.  She loved The Beatles very much, and had the horror of getting tickets to their first show in L.A. and seeing her step-father rip up those precious tickets.  WTF!  This story always shed chills down my spine.  What kind of evil person would rip up a ticket to The Beatles?