In a good way and bad way
- “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” Everytime I hear that Will Smith song, I have to get up and dance. I just can’t sit still. I get up, no matter what I’m doing. It was on the audio on the plane the other day, and I was sandwiched next to this grandma, but my little butt was moving in the seat. I was looking out the window at the mountains and thinking, “Yes!” Oh, God! It just sends me through the roof.
- My husband, Jim Everything should be done my way, and any time my husband and I go away from that, it drives me crazy. I know best. I’ll say, “Go to the store,” and he goes to the store so wonderfully and beautifully for whatever it is I need. He’s amazingly nice about it. (It’s also because he’s not allowed to smoke in the house. I try to take advantage of that fact and get him to go to the store a lot.) The problem is, I’ll say, “Get this,” and I have to be so specific because otherwise he’ll just kind of pick up whatever or forget something–I feel like sending him out with whatever it is tattooed on his arm. Once, he went out to get milk for the baby, and he came back with a gallon of half-and-half. I said, “It says, ‘Half-and-half.'” He said, “Well, it’s red.” It was orange and was clearly marked in big letters as a marketing tool: half-and-half.
- My son, Nicholas It’s really annoying that I can’t keep my child still long enough to get all the cuddling I want. I actually have to sit him down in front of a video to get to snuggle with him. Otherwise, he’s too busy running around. His little body also drives me crazy–his puffy, stuffy little body sends me into=85I just have fits. I want to chew him up. I want to chew him so hard. Then there’s that sickeningly good baby smell. He’s unbelievably edible. It just makes me crazy. I walk in at night and look at him in the crib and freak out because I don’t know what to do. I shake because I feel like I’m going to grab him and shake him so hard.
- Viagra I’m really excited for Viagra. If older men are less grumpy and embarrassed, they won’t make as many wars, be so evil to people and so power mad. If they’re getting a lot of sex and feel really good about their erections, I have a feeling the world will be a nicer place.
- Work Work When I’ve just woken up in the morning, and my manager comes over and starts trying to show me my tour-date schedule, I start to, like, slug him. Because I don’t like to be made to work work. I like to just think of it as, “Oh, next Tuesday we get to do this.” When I see a schedule written down for me way into the future, it drives me crazy and I have to punch someone. It definitely has something to do with the way I feel about touring–that sense of panic and entrapment: You’re gonna have to deliver the goods.
- The Food at Glacier National Park I went to Glacier National Park two summers ago. I was pregnant at the time, and they served nothing but fatty white starchy stuff–like white biscuits with disgusting white cream gravy and a slab of hearty beef. It was horrifying. I love hiking, but how are you supposed to hike based on a food source like that?
- Speakerphones They annoy the hell out of me. Why? They just piss me off.
- The clothes on the Home Shopping Network I hate it when they’re selling some crap on the Home Shopping Network. Like this piece-of-shit dress that looks terrible, and they’re going, “You can wear it anywhere.” It’s something like the Thousand-and-One Dress–it’s just a long tube with a layer of elastic somewhere in the middle. They go on and on: “Wear it to the office, wear it out to dinner, your kids will wear it! They’ll love the fashion sense of wearing a different dress everyday!” No teenage girl in America is going to wear this stupid dress. And they go on and on with those disgusting cheerful smiles. It makes me want to die.
- Clothes I love clothes–a million different kinds. Give me more and more and more. I had my credit card revoked by my accountant because I shopped so much last winter. I shop in large pieces all at once. I don’t wonder what I’m going to do with my day and go, “Let’s go shopping.” In that case, I’ll just go outside and do something. But when I do set about getting new clothes, I absolutely love to get a ton of them and continually reinvent my wardrobe, even if I can never wear them again. Agnes B., Barneys, Cynthia Rowley, J.Crew, Bebe, Henri Bendel–I shop at them all. One of my favorite items is these black Joseph pants. I accidentally shrunk them, and I hemmed them to high, but they’re so comfortable that I wear them all the time–even though when I look in the mirror, they make me look pouchy through the stomach.
- Keanu Reeves et al Keanu drives me mad. And Matthew McConaughey. And I find myself attracted to George Clooney. How can I explain it? They just turn me on. There’s absolutely no reason.
By Liz Phair
Jane, September 1998