Welcome to Stevieville

March 10, 2009. I ate like a pig all morning so I would be okay to donate, and even downed a bottle of water and some Lorna Doones right before I went in. I was okay for a few minutes and then got queasy and lightheaded. I grabbed one of the “donor experts” (I think that’s what they called them) and said, “I don’t feel so well.”
The next thing I remember is being in the dark and struggling against being confined. I opened my eyes and had no idea where or even who I was. I was only vaguely conscious of what people are, and that I was one. It looked like a movie or tv show when they show you the perspective of the patient on the operating table with the doctors and nurses looking down. I didn’t recognize anyone and one of them was yelling “Stephanie” at me, and I had no idea who she meant. They were yelling at me because I was kicking and struggling to beat the band and it took a bunch of people to hold me down. Once I remembered where I was I had my consciousness back; then it was just a matter of getting over being scared. It didn’t help that the “donor expert” women kept teasing me about beating them up.
I talked to my former-nurse/brain-science-expert friend and she explained all the science behind why I passed out. She felt that they should never have let me donate because of my low blood pressure (100/68; I never remember what bp numbers mean).
In the end, the only damage was to my silicone iPhone case, and I had a spare, so it’s all okay.

I get emails from places like ticketmaster at least once a week, and I take the time to scroll through them so I don’t miss something important, like the Demetri Martin show next month, for example (yay!). Obviously, it catches my attention when there’s a listing for The English Beat and Bad Manners, and the picture is too tiny to make out anything but a half dozen guys, some black and some white. Why, you may ask, did I not go bananas and call everyone I know to say ohmygodohmygodthebeatthebeattheBEAT ARE PLAYING!!! ?

Well, you’re not all going to ask. In fact, probably no one will, because (A) I’m about to tell you, (B) if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you were around the last time this happened (what year was that? ‘04? ‘05? earlier? later? I have no sense of time anymore) and you know exactly why this is not news to get excited about, or even acknowledge.

Whenever it was, a bunch of us bought tix to see “The English Beat” with Dramamrama at some club in Long Island. I spent days if not weeks beforehand trying to get any - and I mean ANY - information on who exactly would be playing with the Beat. I didn’t know if the guys from FYC would be involved, since according to VH1 they haven’t talked to anyone in years; I assumed we could at least expect Rankin’ Roger and Dave Wakeling, right? But nowhere online could I find any information. I even wrote to John Easedale of Dramarama to ask; he was very nice and replied to me but basically ducked my question. So it wasn’t until the show started that we had any idea who we’d be seeing.

Dramarama were great, the DJ was the guy who used to spin Fast Times at Coney Island High, so it was a freakin’ awesome good time until “the Beat” took the stage. The drummer and the bassist were both essentially kids (and nobodies), and there were no horns, just the keyboard player from Dexy’s Midnight Runners (who despite his talent and awesome DEVO tattoo did not come close to replacing Saxa), and Dave Wakeling. Now I ask you, how can any group WITHOUT Ranking Roger possibly call themselves “The English Beat”? But I was prepared to make the best of it. It’s impossible to fuck up those songs, right?

Oh how wrong. How very, very wrong. Wakeling acted like a New Wave Liberace, flaming it up and making awful puns all night long. Maybe this would have been excusable if his voice hadn’t sounded like utter shit. The only songs he did all night that he didn’t totally ruin were “End of the Party” and “Tenderness” - that’s right, a General Public song! I was thinking he could just as easily have toured as “General Public” as “The English Beat,” even though without Roger it’s still the same crime. And it is a crime, right? It’s fraud. He’s not letting the public know that they’d be better off buying tix for a shitty cover band, because that’s essentially what it is.

So now you know.

I realize that there are some perquisites to having a unique name, but sometimes I get a wee bit jealous of people with ordinary names (especially if they’re short). My new favorite YA author, for example, is named John Green. If you look him up on Wikipedia you will have a menu of 16 John Greens to pick from. While this may make Google searches more annoying, it means when he responds to the name meme, yes many of the results are about him because he’s a “weblebrity” or whatever they call them, but there are enough unrelated results to make it fun. (John Green’s results.)

Now I’m pretty sure I came across this one ages ago and tried it with just my first name. I realize I should try it that way because there are other Stevies in the universe, and if you type my last name in Google you’re going to have to dig through a lot of Patti links to find me. That was my hypothesis, and I can report that it was absolutely correct.

None of these phrases using “Stevie D’Arbanville” were found in Google searches. Here are the alternative results:
Q: Type in “[your name] needs” in the Google search.
A: stuff about “Lady D’Arbanville”

Q: Type in “[your name] looks like” in Google search.
A: Patti D’Arbanville filmography

Q: Type in “[your name] says” in Google search.
A: ZoomInfo business people information

Q: Type in “[your name] wants” in Google search.
A: Patti’s MySpace page

Q:Type in “[your name] does” in Google search.
A: ZoomInfo again

Q: Type in “[your name] hates” in Google search.
A: The Steve Dahl Show - “Just as Steve was trying to download Lady D’Arbanville by Cat Stevens…”

Q: Type in “[your name] asks” in Google search.
A: Patti in Andy Warhol’s Interview

Q: Type in “[your name] likes ” in Google search.
A: Alibris - “Patti D’Arbanville Movies (Used, New, Hard-to-Find)

Q: Type in “[your name] eats ” in Google search.
A: My WRG blog from the first chapter. Hey, it’s something to do with me and not Patti or Cat Stevens. Okay, not really about me: “That knot top is eating a whole turkey!”

Q: Type in “[your name] wears ” in Google search.
A: Guiding Light Cast: Patti

Q: Type in “[your name] was arrested for” in Google Search.
A: Blockbuster Online - Person Detail Information Page, something about a movie Patti was in.

Q: Type in “[your name] loves” in Google Search.
A: the Wiki on Patti.  Perfect ending.

Got this from Sheila O’Malley - I tried to find where the meme began but gave up after half a dozen links or so.  Confession: I didn’t read her answers or any of the others. I’m so solipsistic!  Here goes:

What was your first introduction to William Shakespeare? Was it love or hate?

My first intro was reading Romeo & Juliet in 9th grade. It wasn’t love so much as surprise: I will never forget when Mr. O. made us sit and paraphrase the balcony scene line-by-line, because it seemed so “blue” to me - I thought I had to be getting it wrong. Shakespeare is all classy and sophisticated, right? What’s with all the dirty stuff?

Which Shakespeare plays have you been required to read?

In high school: R&J freshman year, Hamlet & Macbeth senior year. In college: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Henry IV, Part I, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (the only real comedy)… I think that’s it.

I’ve read many others through Shakespeare Club, although I don’t feel it was “required.” As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Merchant of Venice, A Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, all the Henrys & Richards (except Henry VIII), Julius Caesar (which I think I have some kind of block about - I never remember it very well). Someday I’ll hit the rest of the later stuff.

Do you think Shakespeare is important? Do you feel you are a “better” person for having read the bard?

Now aren’t those two different questions? I absolutely think Shakespeare is important, and maybe only because our culture has decided to make him so, but the fact that the cult of Shakespeare is so pervasive makes it relatively accessible, which makes it an effective link to a past point in British culture and specifically in the English language that, for me, has been very educational. To segue into that second question, I think it’s helped me to learn things and figure things out. Does that make me a “better person”?

Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play?

I can never commit to a favorite anything. The more time I spend looking at any one play, the more I enjoy it. Othello & Macbeth are good examples of that. Henry IV Part I probably made me laugh more than any other. Hamlet is probably pretty close to a favorite.

How do you feel about contemporary takes on Shakespeare? Adaptations of Shakespeare’s works with a more modern feel? (For example, the new line of Manga Shakespeare graphic novels, or novels like Something Rotten, Something Wicked, Enter Three Witches, Ophelia, etc.) Do you have a favorite you’d recommend?

I feel most of them are too gimmicky to be taken seriously - although I’ve liked a few here & there. Michael Almereyda”s Hamlet (aka Hamlet 2000) is pretty cool in a lot of ways: I love the techno motif and the casting in general, but I always get annoyed at specific cuts in dialogue and other weird choices. I have that problem with every Hamlet adaptation I’ve seen. Hamlet 2 was awesome, but really had little to do with Shakespeare.

What’s your favorite movie version of a Shakespeare play?

Probably Branagh’s Henry V. It would be his Much Ado About Nothing, were it not for Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton. But I love Denzel Washington and Emma Thompson in that.

So far? Helped to throw out a dead kitten. I guess the day can only get better, right?

As if life needs to get surreal-er: