5 things i love: favorite songs of all time edition

1. the kinks - "waterloo sunset"



i can distinctly remember the first time i heard this song. i was sitting at my desk in my dorm room during my freshman year at marist college, listening to former LA radio station indie 103.1 on the interwebs, as i was wont to do back then. i happened to catch it right from the beginning, and my god, it hit me like a ton of bricks—in the best way. it was beautiful and sweet and sad all at once, in a way i didn't know a song could be. i listened to every single lyric, and was transported to another time and place i'd never experienced, but i FELT like i had. and i still get that same feeling every time i hear it. when i went to london a couple years ago and we rode by waterloo station, it was as cool as seeing a damn celebrity, as far as i was concerned. don't think i'll ever find a tune i love more.


2. george michael - "freedom '90"








much like "waterloo sunset," i also remember the first time i heard this masterpiece from the late, great george michael. i must have been about five or six, and i was over at my classmate andrea's massive, ugly, museum-like contemporary house in syracuse, and it was playing on the massive, ugly TV. sidenote: for some reason, our parents just let us watch MTV all damn day back then and did not give a fuuuuck, and i very much credit this to why i am the way i am today. anyway, the video. i was straight-up captivated by the fact that female supermodels appeared to be singing, but it was a man's voice. the song just stuck with me from that day on. it's poppy (but not cheesy),  it's sexy (but subtly so), it's got soul (sooo much), and i can always count on it to zap me right out of a bad mood. perfection.

3. guided by voices - "game of pricks"




i don't know if i've met a GBV fan who has a DIFFERENT favorite song by GBV. which, considering that the band has approximately 2489354958490 songs, is pretty crazy. granted, i love "as we go up, we go down" aaaalmost as much, but this one always hits the spot. i swear to god, that melody was just floating around in the universe and we all somehow already knew it, and robert pollard just plucked it out and was like, "oh, you mean this one?" that is my reaction every time i listen. pre-ordained in the ethos, this one.

4.  the rolling stones - "gimme shelter"




the stones are fantastic in general, but this tune is just light years beyond any of their other tracks for me. haunting, melancholic, soulful, yearning, and all of that good stuff. also, one of the coolest experiences i've had in my 32 years on this earth: when i interned for the florida film festival back in 2013 and we were screening 20 feet from stardom, I MET MERRY CLAYTON, the iconic woman who sings on it!!! hell, i not only met her, but i got to see her sing in a room with like, five other people as she sound-checked for the evening's performance. total diva, but i'd probably be one too if i were her.


5. blind melon - "no rain"



it's possible to have a spirit animal, but can you have a spirit song? if so, this is my spirit song. yup, if i were a song, this would be me. kinda upbeat, but go-with-the-flow, sunny, frolicking, bee girl dancin' in a field while long-haired stoner hippie dudes play me on in 1992. happiest guitar solo of all time! 

nautical, fried vibes: portland 2018

i'm sure it comes as a surprise to absolutely no one that i went to portland, maine again this weekend. it's the fourth year in a row that i've visited in late summer when the weather is primo, so my idealistic view is "extremely skewed" according to my friend jacob, but i am totally fine with living in blissful, skewed denial because it was glorious as always. except for the short time at the end of saturday night when i finally laid down and my stomach was all "DID YOU REALLY NEED TO CONSUME THAT MUCH, YOU HEATHEN?"...just like it does every year. by morning i was ready for breakfast at like 7:30 though, so it was fine!

i drove into town listening to "deserted" by blind melon, and had a flashback to last summer when we were eating big sicilian-style slices of pizza at a place called slab and "no rain" was playing in the pizza place. it then occurred to me that blind melon's sound is like, the sound of portland to me—all hippie and jammy and early '90s and chill—so they will now and forevermore be my official portland band.

ANYWAY! jacob no longer lives in the dreamy east end apartment where i took these pictures over the past few years and as i mentioned in a recent blog post, i am still very, very sad about it:

i know, i know, i need to accept this ending and move on, even if it's extremely difficult. his new(ish) place in the west end is nice as well and has v charming historic details on the stoop (below). as a bonus, it's a two-minute walk from tandem, which i have written about before, but will write about again (later).

FOOD

the porthole

after strolling the eastern promenade, we wandered down to this big, standard seafood restaurant with a standard name in old port to get the "nautical, fried vibes" going, as jacob so eloquently put it. we sat on the deck, and i had a beer and biiig lobster roll with drawn butter, which was actually one of the best lobster rolls i've ever had. i also stalked this beee-autiful boat.

 

gorgeous gelato

i'd never had gelato in portland for some reason, so late saturday afternoon was the perfect time to remedy that (except for the fact that this place was POPPIN' and a little overwhelming). the orange chocolate flavor was delightful! apparently, portlanders tend to have a favorite between gorgeous and its competitor, gelato fiasco. fully planning on heading over there next summer to see who reigns supreme.

paciarino

an airy little bistro specializing in pasta, paciarino was mostly a lovely choice for dinner, but the service left a bit to be desired. as you can see from the pictures, we were basically the first people to arrive for dinner and it filled up fast, but our food took a solid 45-50 minutes. like, i'm usually very laid back about that stuff, but literally 3/4 of the other tables had their meals. so, jacob's boyfriend said, very nicely, "could you check on our food, please?" to the waiter, and he replied with a flippant "no, it's okay, it's coming." and, funny enough, it arrived like 15 minutes later. anyone want to bet he forgot to put the order in?

my maccheroni paesani (or "MACKERONEY PAYZANNY" as my american ass probably pronounced it) was quite good, but it reminded me that i have this weird pasta issue where i don't really like short noodles? i know, it's incredibly stupid and makes no sense to me, either. but i basically only like angel hair, spaghetti, linguini, and fettucine, and i feel like long noodles just enhance every dish. what i'm saying is i would have enjoyed this meal 200% more if it involved larger pasta. which is obviously why i ordered a dish that was explicitly described as having short-ribbed pasta!

 
the bar of chocolate

fiiiiinally! we went here once before despite being too full to eat any dessert and i had like, a piece of bread and jacob had a ginger ale and it was very pointless. this time, after a beer at lone pine, i remembered that this place existed and just had to get myself a cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting because at 32, that's just what you do on saturday nights at 9, right? hit the spot.

silly's

very, very, extremely silly in the best way. it was like willy wonka and clarissa darling opened a restaurant and i was all about the bizarre mishmash of decor and color, even though it was bit much to deal with at 9am. they even had a little trough for pups! i got the "sillytoast," which had whipped cream and berries and almonds, but my pun-tastic favorites on the menu included "holla-daised and confused," "what the shell is that!" and "don't lose your tempeh."

 

DRINK

tandem 

this may be the only spot i've been to every single year. it's your typical hipster coffee shop in a converted gas station, but...it has a secret weapon: malt iced coffee. yup, you read that right, and it's just as delicious as it sounds. unfortunately, bon appetit declared portland its "2018 restaurant city of the year" in this month's issue and they began the article by recommending good ol' tandem, so the line was around the corner almost every time we walked by. we lucked out at one point, and i got to drink that sweet, sweet fuel, and then we took pictures of each other.

el rayo

didn't eat the food here, BUT i had a cocktail that consisted solely of fresca and tequila (that had a little plastic shark in it) and then drank it on a patio, so what more could you want?

lone pine brewing company 

we met my friend jenny here for a beer, and the atmosphere on the patio was lovely. there were some acoustic pop/rock/country covers happening in the taproom and it was very bright and very loud, so we hung outside with the dogs and the breeze instead.

FUN

record shopping

we went to all six (?) of portland's record stores and i got are you experienced, which i already had, but the first one i bought was used and scratched to shit and i've never been able to listen to it. so...redemption! this store i can't remember the name of also had the best categories ever.

funny signs and graffiti

as a very amateur photographer, i guess i tend to be on the lookout for unusual things to begin with, but i aaaalways see so much weird graffiti and so many silly signs in portland. jacob even joked that i'm "portland's foremost graffiti-spotter" because he'd never noticed any of the things i point out.

oh, speaking of weird stuff, in case any of y'all voted in the only instagram story poll i've ever done, here were the extremely close results:

  spoiler alert: we did not go to see lil' jon. but we did see some other equally amusing stuff.

GUITAR GRAVE

oh god, not the vegan vandal!

 

it's not funny, but strange maine put their sign back up and i was so happy!

i kept calling this "ye olde vape"

big mood

"rocket ships" lolz

i googled this and it's just a food truck so i'm going to pretend i didn't google it

church

jacob's bf is a classical pianist, and sometimes plays at this unitarian church in portland. so he let us into this big-ass gorgeous church while i was drunk on fresca tequila and played songs for us! is being drunk on fresca tequila a mortal sin?

wall-posing

portland has so many murals and so much street art, and it just brings out my inner basic bitch. and this year, it was even worse because i had that '90s huji app. oh god.

and that's a wrap on portland '18. already looking forward to another dose of blind melon vibes and hippie magic next summer!