28 Up (and Down)

As in, the Flick Picker has been kicking around for 28 years as of today. It's a pretty big score to have a birthday that almost always falls on a holiday weekend, so I'm down in Virginia spending the weekend with my mom and my brother. And grading 64 student essays. And nursing a slight cold. And worrying about Derek's bronchitis that won't go away. And, most importantly, helping my mom around the house and to her hospital appointments, as she has just been diagnosed with a pretty rare and probably temporary nerve disorder that's making it hard for her to walk or pick things up. Scary, but it looks like she'll be okay, and she has at least tested negative for all the really frightening diseases this sounds like.

Glad as I am to be here for Mom and have family around, I'm hoping my patron saint is having a more auspicious birthday—her 36th—than this. Even though, to quote pre-nipplegate Janet Jackson, PJ doesn't even know that I'm alive, it's still fun to share a birthday with popular music's biggest living genius. My laptop's CD player/burner went kaput yesterday, so I've been impeded in my usual ritual of cranking out b-day recitals of "I Think I'm a Mother" and "Hook" and "Rid of Me" and "The Sky Lit Up" and "Dress" and "Darling Be There" and "Shame" and "97°" and the inexhaustible well of other PJ classics. (Editor's note: all PJ songs are classics.) Plus, honestly, to take Mom's interests to heart, I'm not sure that "Meet Ze Monsta" and "The Faster I Breathe, the Further I Go," et al., are really what the doctor ordered in terms of convalescence music. Unless you're me: if I'm ever in the ER or the ICU, my neighbors better get ready for the purrs and the slink and the wit and the caterwauls and the offhanded genderfuck. Blow out those candles, PJ, and turn out the joint with a new album sometime soon!