A Long and Torrid ♥ Affair

I have to confess. I’ve had a one sided love affair going on for well over a decade now. In fact, since about the summer of 2002 I’ve devoted my listening ears to one particular songwriter and (it won’t be a shock to anyone who has been around this blog for more than, oh say, about 10 minutes that) the name of this lyrically limber lexicon lover is Jason Mraz.

Told you it wouldn’t be a surprise. Most of you are probably sick of me writing about him at this point (too bad this is my blog and I’ll fan-girl geek it out if I want to!). Other than a brief mention of a new album here or there would you believe the last post I wrote about Jason was back in 2009 when I saw him in Hershey,PA opening for Dave Matthews Band? Yeah, I wouldn’t have believed it either except I just did the research and it’s the stone-cold truth.

I like that I was a fan years before anyone knew who he was. That I got to see him at Irving Plaza in NYC with only about 100 other people in the place. That Matt and I drove all the way to NJ from MA. Then the two of us, my friend Trayce and her daughter took off for Susquehanna, PA to catch Jason on the ‘Music, Magic and Makepeace Tour’. That Matt and I drove all the way to Hershey, PA (also conveniently close to Centralia, PA [yes I filmed this documentary]) for that above referenced show that I wrote about.

Then about 11 days later my mom and I caught Jason headlining the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston with the smell of the harbor wafting into the enormous tent as we danced our butts off all night long (all night).

And then Matt and I made our way to the Life Is Good festival to see a whole slew of amazing artists (Emily Elbert, OK Go, They Might be Giants, Brett Dennen) and of course Jason headlining the whole night.

That was the last time I saw him perform live.

In freaking 2010.

What a sad, sad shame.

But a lot has happened since September 12, 2010 and as a grown up with big girl responsibilities it wasn’t like I could chase the guy all over the country or anything. No matter how much I really wanted to.

And now we’re in Phoenix, a five hour journey to San Disco Raggaefornia (give or take). And I just looked up the last time Jason played here. It was October of 2012. And we were recently moved into our house so there wasn’t much extra to go around; meaning I didn’t get to the show.

But now this morning I was wasting some moments scrolling through Facebook and came across this:

Um, yes please!

I’d say it’s about time he released something new because waiting between releases has kind of been the norm – Rocket in 2002, Mr A-Z in 2005, WSWDWST in 2008 and then love in 2012.

But we’re only talking about a year since love. And believe me, knowing every lyric on that album front and back (because frankly there hasn’t been another disc in my car’s player since the day I got the album), I’m already ready for more.

But aren’t all the former Sexheads? I mean seriously. The guy’s music is like a drug. A sweet and melodic drug that plays on your mind, body and soul. Best. high. Ever!

Thank god that shit is still legal. 

I just hate that part where I have to wait for it. Especially now that I know it’s on the way.

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Published in multiple print and online sources, Author, Blogger and Freelance Writer Jenn Flynn-Shon has been writing for publication since 2001. Follow her antics on twitter @jennshon

What’s Up with This Gender Debate in Sports Love?

Okay, who out there likes sports? In particular, who enjoys hockey? I do. Not a shock if you have hung around here for any length of time. I mean, not every post I publish is about hockey but a good majority of them are. In fact I just counted and out of my 412 posts since I started this blog in October 2007 I tagged 57 with something related to hockey or the Bruins. 14%? Not a bad stat. But also clearly not all I ever write about (despite what some of you might think come playoff time).

As most of you know by now my first novel, Ripple the Twine, is about a female Sportswriter from Boston who is obsessed with the Bruins. I used to be that girl too; many years ago I was quite the hockey fan. I went to lots of games with friends and family, professional or even just my high school games in town. The Beanpot was something I grew up watching every winter. But I let hockey slide when I got more into football back in the Nineties and only revived my intense love of the ice when I wrote the book. You all know the story by now.

When I came back to hockey a lot had changed as far as rules and the like and I wasn’t well versed in how to follow along with more than the puck. Then I started thinking about it and realized that back in the day I called myself a big fan of the Bruins but if we’re being honest here I didn’t know anything more than the names/numbers on the back of the guys sweaters and that if the puck went in the net you scored a goal.

But no one was kicking me out of The Garden or laughing at me because I couldn’t talk Goalie GAA and didn’t know what a two-way forward was. I stood up and cheered when those pucks hit the twine along with the other 17,000 some odd people and I’d wager that a good majority of them were just like me.

No, not female. Clueless in general. But not because of gender.

Fast forward to doing the research for Ripple, I got into a whole world of new information. I mean I was writing the character of a Bruins-obsessed Sportswriter. A female one in a man-centric world. I had to know more about the sport so I could make her convincing. I had to know what would make her tick and I really started to pay attention to the game. To the players, how plays form, how a winger knows exactly what his line mate is going to do and why. How it’s so much more than scoring and/or stopping goals.

And let me tell you I was hooked. Pun intended.

The action, the pace, the skill level of these athletes is, in my opinion, unmatched in the world of sports. Because they train and battle just as hard as any other athlete but they do it on a slippery surface in skates at extremely high rates of speed. Hardcore.

And then there was the cuteness. Now as a self-proclaimed Tomboy I’m pretty much always going to have a thing for the rough and tumbled Townie types. Not sure just what that is? Here’s a visual guide:



Andy Ference, Keith Yandle, Carey Price, Zach Parise, Rick Nash, Patrick Kane, Jerome Iginla



It seemed great that I could watch sports and appreciate the game play but that as a female (who is attracted to men) I got the best of both worlds in that I could appreciate the hotness of the players too. I never thought twice that it would be considered a bad thing to think a guy was attractive. All those guys in that graphic up there are current roster players on one team or another (But yeah, I omitted Sydney Crosby just because).

It never occurred to me that females were frowned upon in a sports community because they could enjoy a good looking man in addition to a hard hitting sport. Or that their knowledge of a sport would be called into question because of their gender. Or that just because they like the color pink they’d be labeled idiots in the eyes of the “official” sports police: aka men.

It never occurred to me I’d have to defend my knowledge base to men. I just liked talking about and watching sports.

Kathryn Tappen moved from NESN to NHLSN and she certainly isn’t laughed at. Naoko Funayama is the ice-level commentator for the Bruins. It never occurred to me that females would let themselves be frowned upon. And then I came across this controversial article the other day (this is a re-post of the one from the NY Rangers site that was taken down after the deluge of backlash that ensued).

You should read it, I’ll wait.

You got all that? Yeah I just have one question for the writer of this article:

Um…what the fuck?

Now here’s the thing. Do I begrudge this writer her opinion? No not in the least. If she’s more comfortable going to 70% off sales and asking the man in her life for advice on how to be a fan of sports then that’s her business. What I can’t get behind is her willingness to just put it out there so casually as if the entire female population should nod along in agreement and start saying ‘Oh good, finally I can stop watching sports seeing as though I only did it for my dad/grampa/husband/brother/boyfriend/uncle/friend and get back to Macy’s where I belong.”

The Rangers were smart and took it down but this narrow view going up at all makes me sad. I wonder if the man in her life is writing the ‘Men’s Guide to Asking Women About Shopping’. Because lord knows none of them ever did anything for themselves before we came along, right ladies? Thank goodness we were able to save them from all that confusion!

Really?

I’m not saying that women shouldn’t ask those in the know for help if sports is something they don’t understand and want to take a more active role in enjoying. And I’m definitely not saying they shouldn’t ask a man for that help. All I’m saying is why assume it has to be something a man knows and a woman doesn’t? Or that a man cares more than a woman?

In our house my husband taught me the finer points of baseball and I taught him the finer points of football and hockey. Neither of us looked down on the other for not knowing. Matt does most of the cooking. He’s the romantic one most of the time. I know lots of stuff about tools and construction.

Does this make us any less man or woman? Hell no.

So as the controversy continues to swirl about this posting I beg all of you to think more about how this relates to the perceived notions of the sexes and their roles in society and not how women can be just as big fans of sports as men.

Because in the end I don’t think the article had as much to do with sports fandom as a gender’s alleged place in the lineup.

Photos from here, here, and here

Sir Matt

There are days when I feel like my husband should be knighted for his awesomeness. Or maybe proclaimed to be a saint. Because most of the time he just can’t help doing the right thing without a single moment of hesitation. Saturday August 18 was one of those times.

Normally this knee-jerk reaction to him needing high fives for being a good-person-overachiever has to do more with the fact that he’s somehow managed to put up with my ass for the past thirteen or so years. But on Saturday Matt just jumped into action like there wasn’t a question about it.

Late afternoon on Friday my Mom came up and planned to spend the weekend. We hung around for a couple hours and chatted before Matt got home. While we were hanging out the movie “It Could Happen to You” came on and we ended up watching the whole thing sitting there in our bathing suits. We were getting in the pool but that movie is so dang cute neither of us wanted to stop watching.

So what does any of that have to do with Matt’s newly bestowed title? Well Nicholas Cage plays the leading man, Charlie Lang, a cop in NYC who never fails to do the right thing when it comes to being a decent human being. His wife in the flick (Rosie Perez) can’t understand how he could have promised half of their lottery winnings to some random waitress (Bridget Fonda). But Charlie doesn’t back down on his promise. He never stops being a kind, generous and wonderful person despite all the crap that gets thrown at him.

The movie came out in 1994. I promised myself after watching it that I would find a guy just like Charlie as the leading man in my own life. Maybe he screws up occasionally, maybe he isn’t perfect, but somewhere deep down in the depths of his soul he’s just a decent and kind human being.

Well by some miracle of fate, I happened to find the real life Charlie and even more odd, they’re both from New York!

On Saturday morning we all discussed taking a road trip to somewhere none of us had ever been before. With Sunset Crater chosen as our destination, we hit the open road and headed north toward Flagstaff. The place was pretty cool, lots and lots of lava flow rocks from the volcano that erupted only about 1000 years ago. But the place we really wanted to see was up the road – an 800 year old pueblo that was mostly still standing. Um, cool!

We made it there about an hour before sunset and headed up the short path to this former house on top of a rock. There were two other groups there at the same time as us (which was weird because it was in the middle of nowhere. On our way up the path the couple with the fancy-pants camera set-up made their way back to the parking lot with a scowl. I wanted to say ‘gee, sorry to interrupt your photo op in this public state park’ but kept my mouth shut. The other group was a mom and what looked to be her two teenage children.

Mom, Matt and I explored the various rooms and the last three people eventually left. We had the place to ourselves so we acted a little dorky and took a whole bunch of pictures. Like this one taken earlier:

We headed back out to see that we weren’t alone in the parking lot. The minivan with the small family was still sitting there. Which I thought was strange because they’d taken off at least fifteen minutes before we made our way back to our car. The daughter was walking towards us. All of a sudden I hear “Excuse me, can you help us with a tire? We have a flat.”

Oh no.

Here’s what it looks like out there:

Um…

Luckily they had a jack and a spare. But this was a minivan, not a car with a trunk or a Jeep with a tire mounted to the back. Take a wild guess where the tire was located? Give up? Yeah, it’s under the vehicle. You have to use this weird contraption that forms the shape of a T and release some cable – done from the inside the vehicle - in order to drop the thing down so you can access the donut.

Now my phone chose this exact moment to die so the most important pictures weren’t even captured. Stupid roaming killing my battery too quickly!

But here’s a free piece of advice for everyone out there – NEVER approach a writer who is currently working on a suspense novel when she and her family are in the middle of nothingness, without another soul around, the Ranger’s station approximately two miles away, and a situation that is way too obvious as a trap because she won’t actually believe all you need is help changing a tire until you’ve already driven away with a donut attached to your car.

Here’s how the situation went in my head – the teenage boy takes the contraption shaped like a T, knocks Matt over the head with it and then kidnaps Mum & me to sell us into some kind of underground slavery ring while Matt lies bleeding out at the end of a dead end street in the middle of the desert.

Yeah, I really gotta find a way to separate fantasy from reality.

Because the actual scene looked a lot more like this:

Yeah, yeah. Perhaps I’m just slightly biased as to the inherent sexiness of my husband in a crisis situation but I think all five of us who were standing there watching him jack up that minivan to replace the tire would agree that he’s pretty kick-ass.

And nary a tire iron swung at anyone’s head during the entire experience. Imagine that!

They thanked us profusely and said “can we give you anything for your trouble?” Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t accept a dime from someone in this situation, we were all just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but I thought it was kind of them to offer anyway.

Matt said “all you can give me is the knowledge that you get home safely tonight.” Seriously, who’s in charge of the sword on the shoulder thing? I’ve got your candidate right here.