What do you Mean ‘Why?’

Last night in Glendale, Justin Bieber took to the stage. A few wonderful ladies I know were going to the show. I wouldn’t have remembered because, instead of seeing Biebs, I was at pool league watching Matt and the guys (sadly) lose last night.

But I was reminded of Justin’s stop in the Valley last night when I woke up to this picture in my newsfeed today**:

My first reaction?

“Yeya! Go Biebs!”

Then I started reading the comments and all I could do was sigh. Well, not all I could do. Because here I am, ranting away about Justin Bieber. You’re welcome.

WAIT! Before you click away because of the subject matter will it also help you to know I’m going to DJ my own blog and mashup all that Justin talk with stuff about hockey too?

Oh, no, that doesn’t help? Sorry, not sorry.

In a no-shock surprise, I’m a huge fan of pop music. I mean, I love to dance. Plus, sometimes it’s perfectly fine to loosen up with something light and fluffy – tons of sugar without one bit of nutritional value. After all, they don’t sell cotton candy at the fair for nothing.

Also, another shock-free admission, I pretty much love anyone who can make themselves into exactly what they want to be, no apologies, no holding back. A person with the talent, drive and determination to stick it out in their chosen field until they are doing what they love and supporting themselves while doing it.

That shit is rare, trust me. Most of the time we get one or the other. Either a paycheck from a job we don’t feel fulfilled doing, or a job we love minus the means.

Bieber is pop and proud. And, from all I’ve heard, living on what he makes as an artist.

I fully respect that. As a gal who has been on both sides of the job / money situation I’ll admit that doing what I love is the more important of the two. But nobody can live without at least some money. So, some money for all the hard work is always nice.

But Bieber and the brand he sells are worth probably somewhere into the billions. More? I can’t fathom that kind of paycheck. In any of my wildest ‘book writing for a living wage’ fantasies, I can’t for a second imagine that kind of cash flow.

Then to see a kid start down the path of that at only age 10, or thereabouts, makes me shake my head.

Say what you will but the kid is a fucking genius at marketing. Or, at least, the people around him are.

They’ve been selling this kid (who by the way is talented which certainly helps, you try singing on key while dancing high-impact aerobics-style moves on cue for two full hours almost every night of your life and let me know how long it takes before you pass out and die) for over ten years now.

And it doesn’t look like the kid will be slowing down anytime soon now that he’s got his young and dumb phase behind him.

So to see Bieber rocking a Max Domi Arizona Coyotes jersey at his show in their arena last night kind of made me proud to be a fan of both. But, then like I said, I foolishly went and read the comments. All these people asking why that happened, why Biebs was wearing a sweater of our team.

Okay, I’m just going to point out some facts.

• Ice hockey, as birthed on March 3, 1875, was invented in Canada.
• The Arizona Coyotes are a professional ice hockey team.
• Justin Bieber, as birthed on March 1, 1994, was invented in Ontario, Canada.
• I feel like I don’t even have to say it, but here it is, Justin Bieber is a hockey fan.

Oh, not only that, but the kid plays hockey. Again, not sure I have to say it but, he’s Canadian. Of course he plays hockey. The kid was probably on skates before he could crawl. Don’t believe me? The ECHL Condors actually offered him a contract to play for them just a couple years ago.

Yeah. Because it’s like that sometimes.

So, all the commenters complaining to the Arizona Coyotes organization that they made a mistake letting Bieber put on that jersey, or that Max Domi is going to get a good ribbing from the guys in the room before tonight’s game, are idiots.

Because here are a few more facts:

• Our little hockey team out here in the desert isn’t exactly filling up the arena every night.
• The Arizona Coyotes need all the publicity and fan support they can get.
• An entire arena full of people (17K strong) just saw their musical idol sporting a ‘Yotes sweater.
• I can assure you that most of those people didn’t know about hockey before seeing him rocking the howling ‘Yote last night.
• Osmosis.

If Bieber wants to meet the team, rock a ‘Yotes sweater and encourage a whole crop of people to maybe buy Coyotes gear (advertising), go to a game (sales), or even write a blog post about how awesome it is to see a Canadian born pop star don a star player’s sweater during his concert last night (marketing), then I’m all for the mashup.

There’s no such thing as bad press, sometimes it takes some controversial growing pains in order to come out the other side more mature, wiser, and ready to get things back on track.

After all, if there’s one thing Justin and sports can teach us it’s this: Never say never.

**Image courtesy of the Arizona Coyotes Facebook page

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In addition to this drivel I also write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Learn more on my author page.

Call Me Shocked

You know how sometimes our celebrity crushes, if you will, come to us via osmosis? When we all fall in love with a celebrity, famous person, entertainer, and then discover someone in their life is just as awesome and talented? This happens to me all the time, usually with musicians but occasionally with other entertainers as well.

I’ll give you an example.

Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan launched their careers by starring in Step Up. Jenna had already been acting for 4 years when the movie came out. Channing, only for two. While his career went stratosphere, can’t grocery shop for himself, paparazzi chase down, hers continued without as much fan-fare.

She had plenty of credits to her name (more than her husband in fact) but the biggest credit probably came when she added the name Tatum to a hyphenated Dewan. Which kind of sucks but only kind of. All of a sudden there were tons of people who wanted to know her, to watch all of her past work, to hire her for future work, just because she and Channing got married.

That desire to know about the people in the lives of the celebrities we love is the reason I came to know Patty Duke.

I read every teeny bopper mag back in the 80s. All of them. Because all of them back then featured a boy who still remains at the top of my celebrity crush list all these years later, Sean Astin.

It was only a matter of time before I read enough about that cutie to find out he came from a very famous family. Hollywood royalty if you will. His dad starred on The Addams Family. His mom not only won an Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, but 17 years later she came back to that story playing Anne Sullivan.

Helen Keller was a woman we studied in school. Probably because her primary place of residence, and where Helen first encountered Anne, was in my home state of Massachusetts. And I grew up idolizing that woman’s story.

Deaf and blind. Not only learns to speak but goes on to become one of the most accomplished women in history. She spoke to huge crowds. She wrote numerous books. She was a leader and activist who helped change perception of deaf and blind people.

That woman, along with Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale, were my childhood heroes.

So when I found out that my celebrity crush’s mom played a woman I idolized, I knew I had to see the movie. But there was no Netflix, Amazon, or internet back in those days. If it wasn’t available on video I had to wait to watch it on television if it made the rounds.

I rented it. No way I was waiting.

I watched it and I cried. For the first time since I got interested in learning real stories about real people, I discovered an actress who left it all on the screen. All of those connections – her birthing of my favorite actor, portrayal of one of my favorite women in history – made her a permanent fixture in my brain.

Osmosis.

Then I needed to watch, learn, read all about this amazing woman I’d discovered, Patty Duke.

Her book, Call Me Anna, was the first Autobiography I ever read. I found her journey to, through and out the other side of the Hollywood machine (somehow still intact as a person despite the bipolarity), to be so inspiring.

Back in those days I still had these delusions of grandeur that I’d become a world famous actress. So it was cool to read about a woman who not only did it but seemed to maintain some type of family values, teach them to her kids, and hold onto her soul in an industry that can, and will, suck it right out of you if you’re not careful.

She became a new hero to me. I bought her book and read it about 10 times. Tried to get my hands on everything she’d ever made so I could watch her performance of literally becoming a different person for the cameras. She told stories, some salacious and irreverent, others powerful and moving, but her resume is huge.

To learn of her passing yesterday hit me a lot harder than I would have expected considering I didn’t actually know this woman. Just her name, face, relations to the actors I liked, work she’d done starting back in 1954. She was about 12 years old, I wouldn’t even be born for another 19 years.

I couldn’t explain it, the reasoning for feeling so sad, but maybe the woman she embodied said it best:

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”- Helen Keller

To celebrate your life I will once again read your Autobiography. RIP Anna Marie "Patty Duke" Pearce.

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In addition to this drivel I also write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Learn more on my author page.

Weather, I like it or Not

Yesterday, as I sat in the living room typing away, clouds rolled into the Valley. Actually, to say they rolled in might give the impression of a calm, fluffy, fluttery softness. When in reality, clouds blew in with the furious moving winds that came with a front.

Weather is one of those things that fascinates me in general. I love keeping an eye on the sky and paying attention to the patterns of fronts and wind. I’ve said it before that maybe I should have been a meteorologist. But I’m not. Instead, I’m just a gal who enjoys changes in my sky every here and there.

Moving to Phoenix might not seem like the best plan for a person who wants some type of variety in my weather. But don’t be so quick to judge.

Phoenix might be known for our summer heat but it also might surprise you to learn that our temperatures from highest to lowest can range up to 92 degrees. No, that’s not a typo. While some parts of the country enjoy 92 as a daytime high in the summer, we could jump as many degrees over the course of a year when conditions are right.

Want proof? Check this out. With just a few clicks you’ll see that in January 2013 the lowest recorded temperature was 23. In June of 2013 we apparently maxed out at 115.

Of course those readings were taken at the Deer Valley airport. Heading north out of the city where things can be “cooler” than down in the bowl. Because I remember that the recorded temperature, only days after we arrived in the Valley back in 2011, was around 119 at Sky Harbor airport.

When the temperatures fell into the low 20s for a couple nights around our neighborhood, a friend’s pipes froze and burst.

Luckily, we grew up in the northeast so we knew the slow trickling faucet trick and our pipes were okay.

But today we’re nowhere near the low or the high. In fact, today things are split pretty much right down the middle. The high for today is only supposed to be 68 and according to our weather peeps, the clouds are (allegedly) due to stick around all day.

I have no problem with that. Growing up in Boston, clouds were a regular occurrence. Not to say we were as overcast as, say, the northwest, but New England had a fair number of cloudy days. And most of the time those clouds came with rain.

By 2011, I had all I could handle of clouds. I wanted to see sky, sunshine.

Rain, rain go away.

You know that saying about wishing for things and being careful? Lesson learned. Why? Because we’re 89 days into 2016 and so far have recorded only about 1.5” of rain. According to the Maricopa weather tracking site we had measurable precipitation on 5 days this year. The last? January 31^st.

Yes, 58 days ago.

So to say that I’ll be excited if the clouds hang above the house all day, falling droplets of water or not, would be an understatement. Though, some rain, someday, would be nice. I clearly moved from one extreme to another but finding a place in this country that fits all my conditions is pretty much a unicorn.

• No snow.
• Warmth and sunshine 75%ish of the time.
• Clouds and rain the other 25%ish.
• Beach and ocean within proximate driving distance.
• No temps above 95 or below 60.
• Affordable.

See? It’s that last criteria that really puts it over the edge. Because southern California generally fits the bill otherwise.

So I’m not in SoCal, I’m here in Phoenix where today will be 68 but by Monday we’re cruising back up to the low 90s again. In early April. And I know those temperatures will only get higher as each day wears on. Plus, clouds or rain aren’t likely to make another appearance for at least two months.

Winter rain season is over. Now we have to wait for monsoon season to hope for any measurable liquid.

When rain does arrive it will give me and all the other Valley peeps something to celebrate. Even if those rains come with unconscionable high temperatures.

But hey, I’ll take it because at least we don’t get snow.

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In addition to this drivel I also write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Learn more on my author page.