Powered on Dreams

Stuck in a Dress, Green Glasses Powered on Dreams

When my sister and I hit our early teens, we formed an underground band. You probably haven't heard of us because we were that cool. Or that obscure, but you get it. We dubbed ourselves Licorice Snap, an electronica-infused, spoken word phenomenon that was bound to blow the minds of our then emo, pre-hipster audiences.

Every spare afternoon, we headed into the recording studio to lay down some sweet tracks. It was the start of a new millennium, hot on the heels of Ricky Martin and MTV Total Request Live. YouTube and widespread recreational music programs were a mere sparkle in the eyes of their future creators.

At the time, Licorice Snap had a new sound. Eva cranked out sweet electronica beats and I rocked the spoken word. We even had a handheld dictionary called Franklin (which, incidentally, you could play hangman on too) that would talk in a Stephen Hawking-like voice. We programmed (fine, manually typed in; this was before smart phones!) our background vocalist to say "Lambs Love School" for our house remix of Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Our songs were about loving yourself like the fabulous queen you were or aspired to be. Miss America (I Wanna Be) should have been a number 1 hit. We should have been on the cover of "Rolling Stone" playfully giving everyone the finger or using said finger to rage on a keytar. 

Alas, our unabashed ode to peace, love, and fierceness was too ahead of its time.

No one heard our music because we didn't know where to play it or who would listen to it. How would we even lug our sweet sound machine, a desktop computer in our parents' house, to a gig? Our studio was our parents' house. Pretty soon, we unceremoniously lost the music-making program when the computer went out of commission. The dream seemed to die. I clutched our EP, emblazoned with Eva's color pencil cover art, to my chest like my Christina Aguilera drag queen cookie held her sugar dough baby.


 With the looming Amendment One vote to ban gay marriage and benefits for unmarried or domestic partners in North Carolina, up for vote on May 8, we can't afford to keep our fabulous soundtrack of hope locked in the archives.

Licorice Snap's opus, Powered on Dreams, says that anything and everything is possible. The imagery of a flying car that puffs purple exhaust describes a utopia that will overcome bigotry, homophobia, and racism if we just believe in ourselves. And yes the song is kitschy, because it's our right to be tongue-in-cheek with a message. Politician Harvey Milk understood that balance of theatrics and politics. When he was running as the first openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s, he said, "You gotta give 'em hope."

If Powered on Dreams inspires you to go out and be fabulous, or more fabulous than you already are, then Licorice Snap's ten-year hiatus was well worth the wait.

Licorice Snap Track of the Week: Powered on Dreams

Easter "Candy"

Sigh...Photo by Ginnerobot

Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Christmas form a holy trinity of holidays where I gorge myself on candy. Whether it’s Dove chocolates that predict my future (as seen in my Valentine’s Day with Christina Aguilera) or the jaunty candy cane filled with Hershey kisses (time better-off undocumented), I am guaranteed to be sugared out and ready to party before 10am.

But since age 11, Easter has been a cautionary tale. That’s when I became the Drew Barrymore of Cadbury Creme Eggs. The cream, with its orange-food-dye-as-yolk center, flowed from the cracked chocolate shell down my throat faster than booger sugar up a supermodel’s nose.

Even my mom, a lifelong purveyor of the Hershey’s assortment packs, was worried. She tried to cut me back to one a day, but the only thing that stopped my rampage was an unflattering picture. Under a canopy of trees, I stood in an enormous polo shirt, clutching my Jack Russell Terrier against my giant pink-swathed belly. He looked like my afternoon snack. After that, I went cold turkey. By next year, I had the wherewithal to pop just one a day.

While I’ll eat two cream eggs for the Easter Bunny’s birthday, I always remember the slippery slope of having one before bed for the entire month.

Q: What's your Easter chocolate vice?

The Fabulous Kakapo - Randy Overeaters!

   

I don’t usually play the “What kind of animal are you?” game. Taking a quiz to see whether I’m a ferocious lion or a mole with tiny eyes doesn’t add to my life. Then I read a scathing article in The Daily Mail (is there any other kind?). The article’s writer sounded like a stage mother claiming her daughter is too fat. That’s where I learned about my bird doppelganger, the Kakapo. The female Kakapo is an endangered, flightless bird in New Zealand that likes alone time, becomes randy from overeating, and only gets busy every two years. If someone wanted to interview me about my habits, I would say, “Read this Kakapo article and get back to me.”

    

Our 27th President
WilliamHoward Taft
wants in your pants.

The Kakapo wants to love you...
every two years, baby.

While the mossy green-feathered Kakapo (or “night parrot”) and I would be awesome roommates, Mail paints our fabulous qualities as flaws. The article title smacks of old school imperialism: “Do some animals DESERVE to go extinct? The parrot that can’t fly, mistakes predators for mates and only wants sex every two years.” Geez, why don’t you tell everyone that we don’t wash our hair every day too? Way to make an endangered species feel even more down on itself.

 First off, lady Kakapos don’t always need a roll in the, uh, leaves. Sure, the male Kakapo has urges and gets blocked up (see this video of one getting frisky with a conservationist’s neck), but we have standards. Do you know what a male kakapo looks like? That's right, our 27^th President William Howard Taft. Even the BBC reporter in that video describes a male Kakapo as “old-fashioned… with his big sideburns and his Victorian gentleman’s face.” Is that what you want, our 27^th president or an old Victorian dude amorously chasing you around? Maybe I’m going to the wrong nightclubs, but if I had a dime for every time this has happened to me…

Overeating, not bushy mustaches, get us in the mood. Mail says, “Conservationists discovered that the more females are fed, the more horny they will become.” Amen to that! But our aphrodiastic can’t be just any food. Kakapos, like me, have specific dietary needs. They eat fruits from the rimu tree, which comes into season once every four years. I’m like that with cherries. They’re a whopping $4.99 per pound during the winter and an affordable $2.99 in the summer. So for one season of the year, I enjoy bowls and bowls of cherries. After I’ve eaten too many, I am guaranteed to make a pass at you. I apologize in advance for spitting red juice on your neck.

Jujubee: Kakapo Pride!

Since only 127 Kakapos exist in the world, there’s more pressure to make babies. Mail says “the chubby, land-bound parrot is so uninterested – and hopeless – at mating.” Maybe that’s because you keep calling them fat. Plus, wouldn’t you be lacking in the bedroom if humans were destroying your house to build a Super Wal-Mart? Kakapos are the original anti-corporation hipsters. They lay their eggs in rotten trees and don’t eat food unless it’s locally-grown. Bohemian-chic seekers pay good money to make their homes resemble the dankness of a forest.


I decided Mail (gasp) was a hater and perhaps (second gasp) not entirely factual. So I did some research. To my delight, “The Fabulous Kakapo” webpage is aptly named with solid, albeit slightly outdated, information. The best of the best, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation website, calls us “an eccentric parrot which can live for decades” and a “unique treasure.” That’s what I’m talking about. We are as beloved as Madonna, Cher, or that fierce drag queen who should have won “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (we will never forget, JuJubee).

It’s not easy being green, especially with Mail ruffling our feathers (my last cheap bird joke). Although 11 bird babies were born in 2011, Kakapos are still critically endangered. We’re not rolling mad deep, but we do have a rotten tree clubhouse stocked with rare fruits. When someone asks, “What kind of animal are you?” you proudly say, “I’m a flightless, endangered bird who will go to town on you after too many nachos!”

Appropriate Valentine Behavior (and Xtina melting into a drag queen)

Some people call it the most romantic day of the year. For others it’s Singles Awareness Day, when you can eat a very unromantic yet satisfying burrito at Taco Bell. I for one don’t believe in either. Valentine’s Day is a time for me to gorge on heart-shaped Dove chocolates. I look forward to it every February 14. Unfortunately, I bought two bags too many to prove my fortunes wrong.

Actual Photo of Christina Aguilera, "The Voice"

What used to be the best part of Dove chocolates was a happily prophetic message inside each wrapper. I’m always a fan of finding out what’s going to happen to me without asking someone who actually knows me. Now the tide has turned, and I’m no longer simply told to “Remember my first crush.” This is Chinese fortune cookie realness. One morning (yes, that’s right) I opened one to reveal this command: “Watch the sun come up,” and then a second to “Share a sunset.” This had to have cosmic meaning in my life, but I didn’t know what.

I turned to the one person who could succinctly sort this out. My bus friend, we’ll call him Jeff, always has a solution. Since he had taken his car to work, I emailed him my problem, imploring, “Is the universe trying to tell me something?” I waited impatiently for an answer like he was a shaken Magic Eight Ball that hadn’t settled yet. Then the blue triangle finally flipped. “LISTEN,” he wrote, “they are in the wrong order. It should be, ‘share a sunset’ then ‘watch the sun come up.’” Lastly, with his (and now my) juvenile penchant for adding “in bed” to the end of fortunes, I got the message. I was not a very romantic person.

I’ve never watched a sunrise. And romance? Last Valentine’s Day my bestie and I loudly read from “The Vagina Monologues” and baked a giant sugar cookie replica of Christina Aguilera that melted (our goal was to make a drag queen clutching a shank and a baby, so close enough). I never begrudged not having a Valentine because when I did, it was the worst. Such a commitment meant you couldn’t phone it in. You had to wear diaphanous polyester tops to look “soft and feminine” and say “I love hydrangeas” even though you are so Madonna about them.

Since childhood, I have practiced Appropriate Valentine Behavior. Hands to yourself, candy in those hands. In second grade, Timothy Ducey unceremoniously broke my rule of Appropriate Valentine Behavior. He was my first man friend (non-dad category) that I babbled to about my life over lunch. One day at recess, I fell on the basketball court and Timothy used the opportunity to clumsily kiss me. I was not happy.

Source of My "Misfortune"

That Valentine’s Day, I made an effort, thanks to my mom trying to make me less brazen towards non-people. I baked Timothy a sumptuous heart-shaped cookie smothered in fresh frosting. I picked a card that said, “Like You Lots,” with Barbie giving vapid bedroom eyes. If that was not suggestive, I didn’t know what was. What sexually-charged Valentine did Timothy give me in return? A baseball card that said, “You knock it out of the park” or some other lame sports double entendre. I palpitated with liquid hot rage. Here I had poured my feelings out and he replied with a handshake. Going back to being lunch besties was not an option.

Share a sunset? Watch the sun come up? I was still stuck in second grade. Luckily, my "misfortune" had inspired me to school myself on finding romance my way. Which might involve first making a heart-shaped or drag queen cookie. Or both.

By the way, Jeff unfortunately knows all about my Timothy Ducey issue, which just shows how you bring baggage into a new man friendship. Thankfully he gives me sound advice or makes me laugh. I’ll need it. The last two times I went out for Chinese, I got these fortunes: “A chance meeting with a stranger will probably change your life” and “Watch for a stranger to soon become a friend."