Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"I want to know what love is."

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The title of this blog is also the title of my favorite song from one of my favorite bands, Foreigner.
I remember hearing it as a youngster, how it swept me away, especially in its chorus:
"I wanna know what love is/ I want you to show me/ I wanna feel what love is/ I know you can show me."

and then there's this tasty stanza:
"In my life, there's been heartache and pain/ I don't know if I can face it again/ I can't stop now, I've traveled so far/ To change this lonely life."


Even during the handful of serious relationships I've had in my nearly 33 years, I still wanted to know what love is, which probably means I hadn't found the truest form of love, huh?

So what is love, exactly?
My Random House Webster's College Dictionary defines it as:
"a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, esp. when based on sexual attraction. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection. a person toward whom love is felt. a love affair. affectionate concern for the well-being of others," etc, etc


Yeah, that really clears it up - not.

I think I'm ready to start defining love - my way.
- It's the way he looks at me.
- It's the way he holds my hand as he's driving, or I reach for his when I am.
- It's being so excited to see each other - every time we see each other.
- It's the way we're there for each other: to vent, to listen, to take care of, to be a sounding board.
- It's the way we make each other laugh.
- It's the way I feel when I'm near him, when I'm laying in his arms, when I'm looking into his eyes.
- It's hearing him tell me I'm beautiful, even when I don't feel it.
- It's him telling me how cute I am when I'm in my retched "Nikki-is-cranky-because-she's-hungry" mood.
- It's the smile I can't wipe off my face when I'm near him, talking to him or thinking about him.
- It's a million things that aren't going to make this list because there's not enough time or space on the Internet.
- It's hearing him say he loves me and having my heart swell every time.
- It's saying those three words and have them mean exactly what they're supposed to mean - for the very first time in my life.

Love isn't something that can be defined in a big old dictionary.
Love is a definition you come up with on your own - and it only took me 33 years to figure that out.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Books of 2010: "I Am Ozzy."

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You may know Ozzy Osbourne for being Black Sabbath’s original vocalist, or maybe you know him from his successful solo career. Or perhaps your first thought is of him as one of the stars of the massively popular MTV reality show “The Osbournes.” But now people can know Osbourne as an author, thanks to his New York Times bestselling autobiography “I Am Ozzy.”

Co-written with Chris Ayres, “I Am Ozzy” recounts Osbourne’s life from his humble beginnings in Aston, England, to rock superstardom with and without Black Sabbath — and everything in between.

It was while working in a factory in Aston, and hating it, that Osbourne first heard The Beatles, and “a light went on in my head.” If those working-class kids could be in a band, “then maybe I could, too.”

Osbourne soon put up an ad in a record shop which led him to his Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. The foursome eventually went on to become one of the most significant heavy metal bands ever, selling more than 15 million records in the United States alone until Osbourne’s firing in 1979 for his drinking, drug use and “slagging off the band in the press.”

“I’m a lunatic by nature,” Osbourne writes, and readers get to see just how true that statement is. The singer has done just about every drug under the sun — including when he drugged himself with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, while on tour in Germany: “F--k me, this stuff is real! … Then I was trapped between the bed and the wall, unable to move or talk, for about five hours. So I can’t say I recommend it.”

Anyone who’s watched “The Osbournes” knows Osbourne was often incoherent and indecipherable, but that’s only added to the Prince of Darkness’ charm, a charm that’s carried over into the book full of rambling storytelling. It’s also chockablock of delicious British words and phrases, like “bee up his arse” to describe someone who’s upset.

Obviously, it’s easy to wonder just how much of his life the perpetual alcoholic/addict actually does remember, but a disclaimer in the beginning of the book sums it up best: “Other people’s memories of the stuff in this book might not be the same as mine. … What you read here is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story. Nothing more, nothing less.” The tone is distinctly “Ozzy” and oftentimes laugh-out-loud funny — and oftentimes shocking. Forget Osbourne biting the head off a bat and a dove or relieving himself on The Alamo; they’re just the half of it. There’s the tragic plane crash that killed his guitarist Randy Rhoads, Osbourne’s attempted murder of his wife Sharon, scaring his children with drunken/doped-up antics, killing a whole flock of chickens, and so on.

While not as riveting a read as other rockers’ tomes, like Nikki Sixx’s “The Heroin Diaries,” “I Am Ozzy” is an amusing tale of the singer’s life of debauchery that he somehow miraculously survived, how Sharon ultimately saved his career — and saved him from himself, or tried to at least — and how he became a household name again to become “no longer famous for being a singer. I was famous for being that swearing bloke on the telly.”

Rating: W W W 1/2 (of 5 Ws)

* This review originally appeared in the Wednesday, March 17 issue of the Weekender with the headline "The madman writes"*

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Let's play catch up, shall we?

OK, it's not that I've been all slacker with blogging.

Yes, life has been full and rich and fantastic (knock wood) the past month and a half since I last wrote, but most of it is because I still have not called for high speed Internet, and my computer is a persnickety little bitch sometimes that just refuses to let me onto to Blogger.

And I hate it and curse at it and come thisclose to hitting it with a hammer, but then, there are times like tonight when I actually had a rare burst of patience and it loads up just fine because I give it the time it needs to load because I'm doing Other Things Around the House.

It's win-win for both of us methinks.

Now let's bring Ramblings On up to speed:
- I'm still working two jobs, and while I enjoy the extra stipend, it's a pretty exhausting life I'm living, but I'm making it work. Or at least trying to.
{Pray that my dad wins the lotto one of these weeks, OK? Thanks.}

- I'm still struggling with the diet and exercise. It's hard dating a fellow foodie, but I'm happy, incandescently, stupidly happy with the boyfriend, so I take that, too, as a win-win. I just have to find that balancing act between the good eats together and the me doing Healthy Things in between. I'm getting there. Slowly but surely.

- We just got back from another romantic trip to New York City, where we walked the streets, saw the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA (and an installation that included, but is not limited to, naked men humping a mountaintop, woman dancing in the rain nude and live naked people), ate cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery and CupcakeStop, took in an independent film ("When You're Strange," about The Doors)at the Angelika, shared a Monster Pizza and grew even closer to each other. I'm crazy about this man and I don't care who knows it.

Wow, a month and a half so neatly packaged into two paragraphs? Who knew?

Hope all's been well with you, if you're still out there and can bear with someone who still has dialup. I hope you can, because I feel like I'm getting into a really cool creative place again, so I hope you'll stay along for the ride.