It’s one of my favorite quotes to come out of my groupie days that sounds funny out of context. But it popped in my head today as I was musing on how I *am* like a guy in some ways.

The first that comes to mind is how I shop. I don’t really like to go and just SHOP. Girls are supposed to LOVE to shop and spend Daddy or Hubby’s hard-earned cash on flashy shoes, bra-and-panty sets at Vicky’s, and seeking out that perfect pair of rear-hugging jeans. This is a process that typically takes a few hours at a time. And while I do love to spend an abnormally long amount of time in a good bookstore browsing without necessarily having a goal in mind, when it comes to clothing, I like to have a purpose in mind. I’m told this is how guys shop: “I need a white shirt, I will do to X Store and purchase said white shirt, and then I will leave.” With me, it’s more along the lines of: “I need a black pencil skirt. I will spend no more than 45 minutes at these two stores looking for said black pencil skirt, not spend more than $30, and then I will leave.” A feminine deviation, but similar concept.

But I suppose the big way I have some dude tendencies comes down to my early education in music and literature. I entered puberty when the Boy Bands were big. ALL of my girlfriends were into NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, or (for a few) 98*. Me, on the other hand? I had just discovered the Beatles, and in musical grades I had skipped at least three ahead of everyone else (or so I liked to think). But I was SUPER obsessive about my newfound love – I was a crazy girlfriend. I only talked about the Beatles. If you weren’t talking about the Beatles, I would find a work to them in (and was really good at it, too). I had pictures of the Hamburg-era Beatles in my locker. And I learned to play guitar, determined to be like my new idol, George Harrison. I couldn’t stand the music of my own era, stubbornly insisting that no good music had been released since the early 80′s (a statement I have retracted many times over since then).

Eventually the honeymoon ended, I mellowed out, and moved on musically. In recent years I have discovered that many guys (mostly musicians, but not all) went through a similar musical enlightenment with the Beatles at about the same age. I still retain a good bit of all that Beatles trivia I acquired (which is why I won’t play the Beatles Trivial Pursuit until I find a worthy opponent), and can converse with the fellows while dropping some of the tidbits. The boys have been unfailingly impressed with me, and that conversation is generally the start of a beautiful friendship. On a few random occasions I’ve found a girl with similar Liverpudlian convictions, but most girls have The Beatles’ 1 album, sang “Let It Be” in high school choir, and that’s the end of that conversation.

This spilled over the first rock concerts I ever saw. Early on in my show-going career, I saw the Monkees, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, and CSNY. The girls who were really into BSB and the like are now getting tickets to the reunion shows – which I think is way fun, don’t get me wrong – and reliving their pre-teen days. Now I’ve reached a point where I’d rather spend my money on a few good local and/or indie acts than save up for one big show that won’t be as personal. But I digress.

The other way I raised myself as a dude was what I read. I have always been a lover of books. I won awards in grade school for the amount of books I read. For most of the time when I was growing up, I read the usual canon of kid literature – Lois Lowry, Baby-Sitters Club, Island of the Blue Dolphins, etc. But around the time I entered high school I discovered The Beat Writers. I’ve blogged a few times about the Beats and my love-hate relationship with them, but at the time I thought they were the end-all of Great Literature. I entered my Kerouac Phase.

On my book blog from last year, I told of re-reading Minor Characters, a book my Joyce Johnson, a girlfriend of Jack Kerouac when he became an overnight sensation. I love her book to bits, and can relate to a lot of it. Anyway, out of curiosity I asked a handful of my co-workers from the bookstore for their opinion on the Beat writers and their impact today. The response: “The Beats? Who are they?” This set me back, as I thought that everyone read On The Road as a rite of passage. Not so. Just me and a bunch of guys ranging from hairy grad students to nerdy guys who grow up to be graphic designers.

I have come to realize that these are two big ways I have come to relate to guys I meet. Not only the subjects themselves, but the intellectual and musical pursuits that resulted. I was afraid one of my girlfriends thought I was stealing her boyfriend because the boyfriend and I became engrossed in a conversation about Paul McCartney and ukuleles and totally bonded. There are some guys I talk to that when I drop “Kerouac” or “Truffaut” or “Jimmy Page” their eyes sparkle for a split second. I have thought that this insight into the male mind would bring me more success to my romantic life, but alas, no. I have made a lot of guy friends out of it, though, many of whom have viewed me as the safe “you’re not a girl but you are” girl they can come to with their own girl troubles. I don’t resent them for it, and generally get a kick out of it, but it has made me think I’m not girly enough or something.

But if I was more “girly” or whatever, I wouldn’t be *me*. You can’t help that. I can’t envision myself any other way! Whatevs. I’m girly where it counts.

Side note: It was in my early 20′s that I finally took some of the Boy Bands a little more seriously and have gotten a lot of joy out of it.

Another wizard rocker, Alex Carpenter of the Remus Lupins, has also put out an EP of songs based on the Hunger Games trilogy. The song “Freedom in Panem” is also getting stuck in my head a lot, and I highly encourage you to buy the EP and enjoy it while you read.

I have been a faithful Paste reader for five years now. I got a subscription when the mag featured my friend Amanda Kapousouz (a.k.a. Tin Cup Prophette) in their monthly sampler CD, and ever since (up until only recently) I could flip through Paste and see mention of a musician friend of mine, or a band I saw open for a musician friend. I discovered other great bands through it, and found new books to read and places to see. Plus, the magazine is based in Decatur, Georgia, my old stomping ground! If I hadn’t moved around so much I would have TOTALLY tried to get an internship with them. Just for the bragging rights, if nothing else. (The only summer I could have done it I got an internship with Brash Music, but that’s for another blog post.)

I’m really sad about this. Print journalism has been seeing a decline for ages, but this hits home more. I’m glad they’re going to try to keep up the website, so I can get a little more of my Paste fix. But this, coupled with the recent news that one of my favorite record stores, 52.5 Records in Charleston, is closing, makes for a little melancholy Amanda Mae.

So it’s interesting to watch this countdown show, and have people profess their love for certain songs, and even say that a certain song was the theme for a particular group of people, or a movement. You know, like Beck’s “Loser” was a melting pot of musical genres, and a call for the nerdy kids with stringy hair who usually stood alone. How “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M. was the really the first indie song to go mainstream in that era. How INCREDIBLY HUGE the boy band thing was. I remember grunge and boy bands making an impression, but being a Gen Y-er, grunge didn’t speak to me, and I always publicly disliked boy bands (I admit, now I have a few of the hits on my iPod). But I wondered, what big musical movements have I gotten behind?

As rock music has evolved in the last sixty decades or so, there are many, many genres to choose from, and saying you like “rock music” these days is like saying you like to eat food. So maybe it’s getting harder to identify trends like that? I don’t know. There was the whole garage band thing in the early 00′s, and I am still a BIG White Stripes fan. (I worship the ground Jack White walks on.) I mostly stuck with a handful of garage bands (the Strokes, the Hives, the Vines, the Libertines…) and oldies until college, when I got into the all-encompassing “college rock” – and even that is too broad now. That evolved into “indie rock,” which led to “cabaret rock,” which led to “baroque rock,” which led to listening strictly to local acts from Athens and Charleston that define genre, though some “Irish rock” is thrown in there somewhere. And now… huh. (Maybe “wizard rock,” but I’m not as involved in that scene.)

People ask me what my favorite band is, and I have a very hard time answering that. It really depends on what I’m listening to that week, if anything grabbed me. (This week it’s ALL CAPS. Rock for nerds.) I could say, “The Beatles,” but that makes me sound like a tool. I could say, “A band from South Carolina you’ve never heard of,” and I’d still sound like a tool. For years people have called me a hipster, and for most people that’s descriptive enough so they know what kind of music I listen to. But I was talking with a co-worker the other day about musical tastes, and it occurred to me that I might be moving on to another genre of music, not necessarily associated with being a hipster. I don’t know what, yet, but I do know that a lot of “hipster bands” annoy me. Many don’t sound good to me. Most of them are emo anyway, and I’m totally not emo. In addition, I own Katy Perry and Lady Gaga records – not something some people in my position would admit to. Either that, or I’m getting old. My mom saw Rush in concert this year, and plans on seeing Metallica in the next few months, and she’s previously stuck with showtunes and oldies, so it could be genetic.

Well, there’s no denying that the VH1 countdown shows will one day touch on “Bieber Fever.” Ah, Justin Bieber, you 12-year-old-looking pop sensation. Did you know that if you slow him down, he sounds like a super-intense new age artist? (And no, I’m not into the Bieber. Just thought it was funny.)

Food for thought.

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*It dawned on my yesterday that my image of “cool” back then was a mash-up between Natalie Imbruglia in her “Torn” video, that bald chick from Empire Records, and Lola of Run Lola Run fame. And they’re all basically wearing the same thing…

“Before you I didn’t even exist.” LOLZ. Major props!!

So, I’m reading the latest issue of Paste Magazine, the best music magazine I’ve encountered, and on p. 26 they have this article and graphic on “Crossover Repeal” – artists well-known in one genre of music who crossover to another, with lackluster results. Renée Fleming is at the top of the list for her recent release Dark Hope. This is an opera soprano singing indie favorites. Paste asks Why They Went There? “A lot of young people don’t buy opera records.” Verdict? “Shouldn’t upset anyone at the bookstore too much.”

I laughed so hard and so loud a girl outside my window getting into her car looked up in fright!! We got a promo of this CD at my store a month ago, and after two days of it being in rotation there was a revolt and the CD “disappeared.” The staff at my store is quite hip for being stuck in Provo, UT, and were disgusted that this opera singer would desecrate Arcade Fire and Band of Horses songs. We definitely did not care for her Leonard Cohen cover of “Hallelujah,” not only because it just wasn’t that great, but because it was such a cliché choice.

So, yes, Paste, it did upset people at the bookstore.

[edit August 2nd]

Got this email in response: “It’s Jeff Vrabel, Paste writer-guy behind the “Crossover Repeal” piece about Renee Fleming, the Arcade Fire and other things that have little to do with each other. My editor at the magazine forwarded your extremely hilarious e-mail, and I wanted to say thanks for the response, and that I will definitely, next time, check with you before making any hasty assumptions about bookstores. Thanks so much for reading, it’s greatly appreciated.

Cheers! – J.”

I adore The Remus Lupins. Taylor first introduced me to wizard rock a few years ago, and I don’t think it quite “clicked” until I saw The Remus Lupins perform at Wrock Chicago. It was one big YES. Totally legit musicians, intelligent lyrics, and so much POWER behind their performance that I couldn’t help but fall under their spell. (And I love to watch Alex Carpenter shred on guitar. Groupie squee!) When people ask me about wizard rock, this is the band I gush about. Of the bands in the genre, this is the band I have all the records of. Can’t get enough of ‘em.

I got to the library about a half hour before the show was to start, and after a bit of wandering found some Hogwarts girls and a rep from the Harry Potter Alliance (I would have joined the SLC chapter, except I’m moving out-of-state in a few weeks.) Wizard rock fans are super friendly and we gushed to each other about how we were looking forward to the show. A few more people trickled in, and we thought it would be a fairly intimate performance, but right before showtime even more people showed up, so if I guesstimated correctly there was 50 – 60 of us. Give or take. Not bad.

The show was in an auditorium, which I was slightly disappointed by because that meant seats and seats = lack of dancing. But I joined my new buddies in the front row, and we promised each other we’d dance. A few people were in Hogwarts attire, many wore t-shirts from wizard rock bands. Many also brought copies of Harry Potter books for the musicians to sign, which was adorkable.

Gred & Forge opened. Jarrod, the main member of the band, has really grown on me over the last year. He’s so funny, and I suppose I *get* his music more now as I’ve let it simmer. He’s got a new CD, which of course I purchased, and played some songs off of that. AND – a non-wrock song about love and Monopoly. Adorkable. See, this is why I love nerds. They can be creative in a variety of ways! It was also Jarrod’s birthday, and some of the lovely ladies I met before the show brought him a Machine Gun sandwich from local restaurant Bruges Waffles and Frites. They win.

Then Skyway Flyer performed. Skyway Flyer is one of the guys from Ministry of Magic, so he did play a couple of MoM songs (like “Lovegood” which is my JAM!). But Jason/Skyway Flyer is FTW because he does this great parody song called “California Dorks” (complete with music video). This was stuck in my head like crazy last month. I definitely know these lyrics better than the Katy Perry original. And why not. Jason is a great singer, great songwriter, and seems like a really awesome guy to hang with. When dude sings about Star Wars, you know I’m in love. His record is uploading to my iTunes as we speak.

Once The Remus Lupins took the stage, energy was high, more people danced (Alex had us use magic and levicorpus the stragglers), I finally got that rock release I’ve been aching for for months. Some girls next to me weren’t comfortable enough with themselves to dance, and stayed seated, which would have been okay except they kept stretching their legs out in front – into the dance floor – and I kept stepping on them as I danced! I apologized twice, then stopped as they clearly weren’t learning and doing anything about their feet. Sigh. OH! And some dude with a Jewfro was hippie dancing next to me! Almost without fail you will find a hairy guy hippie dancing at shows, so this was a sign to me that wizard rock has fully arrived and matured for that to occur. LOL.

I don’t really know these guys, so I didn’t talk to them much. The library was closing and the liason was trying to get us to buy our band merch and hurry out. Working retail I totally sympathized and skedaddled. But we will meet again at Wrockstock in November (yes, I am going), and maybe then I can get out a few words besides, “That was awesome!”

I just read some blog posts from a gal I only know through Twitter, but with whom I definitely feel a connection: “To Date or Not To Date, Often You Never Get the Question,” and “Courtship is a time for two people to get acquainted.”

I’m not too stressed about marriage. I’m still in my early-to-mid 20′s, I’m making plans for the future, and while I’d like marriage to be a part of those plans, I realize that it can’t be the basis. Especially since I’m a very single Mormon woman with virtually no prospects in that area. It’s not for a lack of trying, either, it’s just luck of the draw. But the issue of Marriage surrounds me everywhere here.

For those of you who are not Mormon, let me explain. Marriage is a very important part of our faith, bringing with it numerous blessings. As a girl growing up, this was drilled into me. Good Mormon Girls marry Good Mormon Boys in a Mormon Temple and have Beautiful Mormon Babies. (Have you seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Very similar. Should I get married, I fully expect my well-meaning relatives to say, “We never thought this day would come!”) A lot of young woman plan on getting married before graduating college, something one of my grandmothers expected to happen, and the other made me promise not to do. LOL.

Since I’m currently living in Utah, I’m surrounded by talk of marriage. It comes up in virtually EVERY conversation. Most of the young women I come in contact with almost forcibly bring it up – they’re either talking marriage with their current boyfriend, debating about whether to go on a mission or not before getting married, complaining about lack of dates (that would be me), or talking about future wedding plans, whether or not they actually need to. It’s REALLY annoying after awhile.

In addition, I have plenty of family members who are willing, or at least claim to be willing, to set me up with guys. Two of my aunts, a few years ago, determined they had found the man for me to marry, got us to friend each other on Facebook, and had the both of us over for dinner. It was a very pleasant evening, and we had a quasi follow-up date later, but then he dropped the ball. Recently a cousin set me up with one of his friends from study abroad, and we did a double date. But my cousin and his friend talked in German almost the whole time about the study abroad, and my cousin’s girlfriend and I just smiled at each other uncomfortably across the table. Cousin’s friend seemed nice enough, we seemed to have a lot in common, and I would have liked to hang out with him more, but he wasn’t very gentlemanly at the end of the date (not in any terrible way, just kinda rude), and dropped the ball. And there are others besides.

Now my grandmother (the one who thought I’d get married in college) has done some matchmaking as well. She always has someone I should meet. I have yet to meet any of them, but I’m still willing. I’ve been on precious few dates in my life, so I’ll at least take the experience. I have an (obviously) great deal of interest in the arts, and my family out here jumps at any man who mentions “drama,” “music,” or “film” as one of their interests, no matter how vague. This is all fine and well, but I can be a bit stand-offish until I get to know them a little better. Sometimes those artistic types are better left at arm’s length, or as eye candy, than as a companion for Time and All Eternity (as us Mormons say). I’m fairly certain members of my Utah family find me a little (or a lot?) odd. My interests are different from theirs. My background and life experiences have a lot of differences as well. I’m over 21 and have yet to receive a single marriage proposal. Some of them don’t quite know what to do with me. Hence, some weird suggestions of guys I should meet.

Dating has become a real knot of a problem for our church leaders. The way of the world is to postpone marriage for awhile, or as long as possible, or why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Mormons have a very different set of morality laws to live by, and this obviously conflicts. One of the outcomes is a lot of Mormons (mostly men) who simply don’t grow up. They’re in their late 20′s/early 30′s, still relying on Mom and Dad for everything, living beyond their means, and adopting a cavalier approach to dating and marriage than leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This is in direct contrast to the way that Mormon girls are raised. Us girls are taught all the way growing up, “You want to marry in the faith. You want to marry in the temple. Marriage is double-plus important.” (I don’t want to make it seem like we’re being brainwashed, but it is a mantra that as some of us get older becomes a thing to say in a jaded voice.)

We have romantic notions in our head (no doubt helped along by Disney) that our Returned Missionary in Shining Armor™ will arrive sometime shortly after high school graduation (if not sooner), we’ll date a few months, meet each others’ parents, he’ll propose in some wonderfully romantic and expensive way I can brag to my friends about when I show them the rock, and a few months after that we Meet in White™ at the temple, and a year or so after that be blessed with our first bundle of joy, to be joined by many others.

This is a lovely thought. It is. And I’ve known people who have had this happen to them. They are lovely couples with beautiful children, and lead happy lives. But for a majority of us, this is not happening. I’ve gone on plenty of first dates with a wide array of men. Some needed to be thrown back to their mamas, they weren’t done yet. Some I thought I felt a connection with, but they didn’t reciprocate. Some were total jerks. A small percentage were Mormon. A good percentage of the Mormon boys were the total jerks.

See, this is the problem I’ve had: most of the men I found to be gentlemanly, charming, educated, mature, and well-rounded are not Mormon. I feel more connected to non-Mormons than men of my own faith. This is something I struggle with because I really do want to marry in the faith. But I sometimes hang out in bars (nursing my water). I stay out late at night (and go to church the next day). I read banned books (and point out life lessons and differences of thought). I listen to “edgy” music (yeah, that’s right). I didn’t attend Especially For Youth or go on a mission, but I got my Young Woman of Recognition Award (Mormon Girl equivalent of an Eagle Scout). I graduated from both Seminary and Institute. I share my last name with an important figure in my church (we’re not related, but…). However, I’m still too “weird” or something. The non-Mormons find me a bit of an enigma, being a church girl and all.

So here I sit, my “spinsterly” self, unable to even become friends with guys out here because they automatically assume I’m hitting on them (yeah, don’t flatter yourself, fellas). Sigh. Those Wedding Bells may not be Breaking Up This Old Gang of Mine, but they are playing that “Does this bug you? I’m not touching you!” game with me, and I’d like to give them a good smack.

Someone on an informal Internet forum for employees of my company posted a list of behaviors that people only seem to do in bookstores, and nowhere else. This person is on to something, and I thought i’d paraphrase.

Do you wait in the checkout line at the hardware store to ask a question? No! You go to customer services, or find someone on the floor. Clearly the person working the register is working the register, and you wouldn’t like it if some idiot waited in line ahead of you to ask a question and stop the line from moving, would you? And yet people do it all the time. If I have no one in line, sure I can help you. But if there’s a line, the person at the register only wants your money. Leave them alone until you have the product you want to buy.

You don’t go to Walgreens, grab a stack (STACK!) of magazines or the latest James Patterson mass market and sit in the pharmacy area for hours reading, do you? NO! You BUY them. LIBRARIES are places you can sit for hours. They’re government funded. There is no exchange of money. At a bookstore, we are in the business of SELLING things to you. I’ve even read books that advise you to go to the bookstore, grab a stack of magazines, and sit in the cafe for a few hours (for various reasons), and I want to SMACK the author for perpetuating this bad behavior! If you’re just coming to the store to sit and read, you’re taking space from paying customers, and using product so no one will want to buy it. This means we lose money, and the economy continues to tank.

Will someone please tell me why they think it’s acceptable for a person or group of people to camp out at the bookstore and have a picnic with food from outside the store’s cafe? I really don’t get this. I once had a pair of business ladies bring their “power lunches” to the store, drag chairs from the cafe to the OTHER SIDE OF THE FLOOR and proceed to have a pleasant hour of conversation and eating. Seriously, WHAT THE HECK?! You don’t go to Applebee’s with food from McDonald’s, do you? In addition, why do you leave a mess for me to clean up after all that? Seriously? No, if you’re going to sit in our cafe for a few hours, at least buy something from it! A coffee! A cookie! Anything to pay “rent” on the chair and table you’re taking up. And please be nice to the baristas. They have enough cranky people to deal with. (They get the brunt of it, I think, because they deal in caffeine.)

Ooh, and then there’s the people who think “retail” means “unpaid baby-sitter.” This hasn’t been as much of a problem at my current location, but at my last store, a woman brought in her two kids (both under the age of 10), left them in the kids department, sat herself in a chair out of eyesight, and proceeded to talk on her cellphone for a few hours, ragging on about her impending divorce and idiot husband to whatever friends she had on the other end. I wanted to maim this woman. Her kids were terrors and made a disaster area of the kids department (clearly in need of discipline and attention), and were all but ignored by their mother. My manager had to talk to her two or three times before they finally left. They came in again the following week, but we were all better prepared and told those kids to stay with their mother. We were militant. They were not to leave her side. They didn’t stay long. And were essentially banned from the store.

I do watch out for those little ones who run as fast as lightning for the door, but their parents are never far behind. But you DO NOT let your children run amuck in the kids department, messing up our products to no one else will buy them, and then leave a mess for us to deal with. How would you like it if I went to your office, took a box of your letterhead, tossed it all over the floor, and took your dry-erase markers and drew all over everything? Then left it for you to pick up? You wouldn’t like that, would you? Well, don’t do that in my work, either.

And you know what I really hate? People who decide that the person helping them find a book is their therapist. I don’t want to hear about your marital problems. I don’t want to hear about your kidney stone. I don’t want to hear about all the financial trouble you’re in. I don’t want to hear about the kid you kicked out of the house. These are not things to tell the bookseller. We have other people to wait on besides you. We can’t offer advice. We just sell the books. If you come in regularly, are nice, and buy things once in awhile, we could become friends. But until then, keep your problems to yourself.

Sigh. I feel better. I didn’t even had a bad day today, I just had things building up that need to come out in a constructive manner. Please be kind to the wage slaves. A few less idiot customers makes a better day for everyone.

In the meantime, please add to your Google Reader my other project One Year, Fifty Books. It is what it sounds like – me and some of my friends are gonna read fifty books this year, and blog about it! I’m up to #15. I have a stack of unread tomes, and I keep adding to it. For the time being, I’m more bookworm than groupie. But who knows? I may move and get back in the groove, or I may finally meet some Utah musicians who don’t make me gag with their emo-ness. We’ll see.

As a side note, and to touch base with the intent of My Girlfriend’s Jeans, the DVD of New Moon comes out on March 20th (this Saturday), and I’m working the midnight release at my store. Should be fun. In honor of that, a new group called Armored Bearcub (comprised of members of wizard rock groups The Whomping Willows and The Moaning Myrtles) have debuted a new song, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have: