Saturday 9: Fun, Fun, Fun!

 

Hello, world, how are you? Nice to see you again. Yes, I am still alive, heh. I've got several "drafts" saved in my account, but I've been too tired, physically and/or emotionally, to finish them. That's why I haven't been here, too: Lots of gardening has been happening and it has been wearing me out! Carrying on...

I've been having trouble getting to the specific post of Crazy Sam's for this week's quizzical, so for now I'm going to have to bring you to this more generic link and have you find the "Fun, Fun, Fun" from there, if you wish to play along this weekend. And now:

Saturday 9: Fun, Fun, Fun (1964)
Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here!

1) This song is about a girl who borrows her father's Ford Thunderbird. When is the last time you drove someone else's car?

Oh, a long time. When we still lived in Virginia Beach and the kids were Littles, I was driving an Odyssey and Rob drove his 2003 VW Jetta. Once in a while - not often - we had to swap cars. That little Jetta had so much rev rev rev behind the wheel, so when we had to do such a swap? I didn't mind at all.

2) The teen in question is well known for ability to drive "like an ace." If we were to ask your high school classmates what they remember most about you, what do you think they'd say?

Ha - that I talk entirely too much! 

And I still do.

3) She told her father she needed the car to go to the library but used it instead to meet friends. Can you recall a time your parents caught you in a fib? 

I can't think of a specific instance, but I'm sure it must have happened.

4) For this girl and her friends, fun centered on cars and fast food. What did you and your friends do for fun during your teen years?

Well, we had a lot of sleepovers, or just dinner, at each others' houses - although mostly not at my house because my stepmother was a horrid human being. If I had someone over and we stupidly left the sanctity of my room for a meal or something, and she was there, she would grill my friend(s) down to the minutiae of what chores they did at home vs. what chores I had to do. She never got what she wanted out of them (i.e., they did more chores than I did, or they weren't paid for doing all the chores, or they weren't so strictly required to clean when they had exams or projects or jobs or anything that I also had but wasn't excused from having the entire house clean by noon on Saturday -- every Saturday, and that went on ad nauseum).

And so every time someone came over to my house - which, you'll understand, I tried to avoid, but sometimes I just needed a friend wherever "here" was, or a parent of mine wasn't willing to bring me somewhere - "the b*tch from h3LL" would grill the poor child, who did not understand what her digging was about. (I must've forgotten to warn EVERYBODY). And evil stepmother would literally SCREAM at my friend, because she wasn't happy about the answers she was being given and tried to feed new ones into my friend to try to make our normal into her normal. It was exhausting.

• Sometimes, my friend who expected to spend the night, called her parents after an incident such as this, to pick her up right then, instead of spending the night
• Sometimes we'd just go upstairs to my room, locked my door, and try and pretend that we were invisible. Sometimes it worked. And she and would breathe a deep sigh of relief, and then she'd say something like, "Dude. Whoa." which is exactly right.
• When one friend went home and reported this BS to her parents, she was banned - BANNED! - from ever coming over to my house again. And so it was... and more!

And that was just the beginning of my daily life in that hell house. Joyous as all hell.

5) Legend has it songwriters Brian Wilson and Mike Love got the idea for this song from a Salt Lake City disc jockey. He told them he'd lent his T-bird to his daughter so she could go to class at the community college but discovered her deception when the car was ticketed in front of a fast food restaurant. Can you think of another song inspired by true events?

Not terribly exciting, but I know that this song, "Smoke on the Water," by Deep Purple, is about when they were trying to record one of their albums. Their plans went up in smoke (see what I did there? Well, they did it first, I guess) when someone with a flare gun burned down the hotel where they were going to record it.

 

6) As in the song, the disc jockey punished his daughter by taking her driving privileges away. Were your parents strict when you were growing up?

Oh, I didn't answer that clearly in #4?

7) This song was recorded on January 1, 1964. The Beach Boys had to work on the holiday because they were under pressure to meet a February release date. How did you spend New Year's Day 2026?

I don't know if that video is going to turn out right, at this point. I know I spent the day with my husband and two surviving kids, but my Google Photos account only shows these Blooper reels of my trying to make a video of a sleepy Paco, and also that I did my Duolingo. So, sort of a regular day but festiver.

 

8) 1964 was a great year for Capitol Records. They had chart-topping hits by the Beach Boys, Barbra Streisand and, most spectacularly, The Beatles. The Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles is considered iconic and it's a stop on tourist bus tours. Have you ever been to Southern California? If yes, what did you do?

First, I was only flying through LAX on my way to and then back with Rob and baby Chloë, to live on Guam and then cancel that, in 2002-2003. After that, in about 2006 or '07, when Chloë had begun acting, she and I flew to LA for a multi-day acting competition slash meet-and-greet with managers and agents. She did sooo well and was signed to an LA agent right away, as well as one in NYC, one in Orlando who was interested in her, and she retains to this day the one in the Hampton Roads, VA, who loves her. 

We went back to LA twice for her to audition - one had to be picky about that because it can be a very costly habit, right? - with no success. So all of the acting and modeling jobs she's gotten, I think, have been in Virginia or DC.

 

9) Random question: What's the last compliment you received?

My husband just told me that he thought I was cute, sexy, and beautiful. I'll take it!

I hope y'all have a beautiful week ahead. And now back to that garden... and Paco!     xoxo