CATS!

It’s been a while since I did this last. Here are more cats I’ve collected from the internet. Because collecting digital cats is only slightly less crazy than collecting real ones.

 

 

Click for GIF magic

Freddie Mercury!

 

 

 

Exactly My Thoughts

While I keep my Facebook pretty locked down in terms of privacy (but keep in mind I’m not exactly running wild there with a gaggle of aunts, uncles, in-laws and a few coworkers on my list), the verbal ephemera that vomits out of my brain is on full access here and on Twitter. I’m just fine with that.

This statement is also of note considering it directly follows a blog post about dog dongs.

I’m a Horrible Person

First blog for 2013! In April! Woooooooooo!

While I could kick off the second quarter of the year with something sweet and personal, I’m cutting straight to the nitty gritty, to the recesses of twisted minds, to conversations I have with my friends.

Today’s was brought on by a news headline from the Oregonian about a loyal police dog passing away from cancer. Being an animal lover, I clicked the link to read more. There I found this photo:

Sweet, right? You look at him and you’re all, “You’re a good boy! Capturing criminals and chasing down perps and… OH GOD NO!” 

Because once again a happy dog photo is ruined by a happy dog dick.

Go ahead and look. I briefly contemplated zooming and cropping for further elaboration, but you have eyes and I have a conscience.

That reveal prompted this conversation with a friend of mine. We’ll call her Stacy. I apologize in advance.

Me: Am i a horrible person for seeing this story, and noticing the red rocket within 5 seconds? {link}

Stacy:  ewwwww

Me:  that’s why dog dicks ruin nice photos!

Stacy’s new status message – Stephanie:  that’s why dog dicks ruin nice photos!   

Stacy:  fair enough

Me:  hahahaha. 

glad my comment on dog dicks warranted a status message

Stacy:  thought you’d be ok with that. glad you’re on the dog penis photo beat

Me:  it’s happened to me too many times. i know to look now. you’d be surprised how many people have framed photos of dog dicks because they just didn’t notice beyond the happy dog face

Stacy:  I mean, what is the photographer supposed to say? “Sorry, but can you get your K9 to put away his schlong?” gross

Me:  i dunno, you just wait it out? splash cold water on it?

Stacy:  I would like to think I am a proficient photographer, but I have no idea how to quell a raging dog boner

Me:  i dare you to google that

Stacy:  absolutely not. i think we both know how to calm a dog boner

Me:  1. get a dog
2. he has a boner
3. ????
4. get rid of boner
5. profit

Stacy’s new status message – Stephanie:  1. get a dog 2. he has a boner 3. ???? 4. get rid of boner 5. profit  

Me:  is it a coincidence that your last name is Barker and you’re a part of this conversation? i think not

Stacy:  hahahhaha

Stacy:  Barker – noun, tender of raging dog rockets

Stacy:  Oregonlive.com – reporting breaking dog boner news

Me:  i’m sure we could make Heater work there too, but it’s a stretch and technically no longer my last name

Stacy:  yes but Duffy sounds like an apparatus a Barker would use in raging said raging dog dong

Me:  Duffy – noun: a device used by a Barker to quell canine erections during photo shoots.

Stacy:  this is so gross. i cant even quote that. but it’s so aptly put

Stacy’s new status message – Stephanie: Duffy – noun: a device used by a Barker to quell canine (censored) during photo shoots.
Stacy:  consider everyone annoyed with me

I have a far less gross, yet still crazy, dog post to share with you soon. 

A Year Immersed in Literature

Today is the last day of 2012 and it has easily been the wordiest 12 months of my 30 years, in terms of how many books I’ve consumed. I say “consumed” of course because many books were audiobooks during my daily 120 mile commute. I last updated on the progress of my resolution to read more back in June. Below is what’s happened in the last half of the year.

But first! Some 2012 totals.

Total number of audiobooks: 38.75
Total number of eBooks: 11
Total number of books: 11.5
Total number of books consumed: 61.25

Books Read or Listened To from July through December:
(for January through June, go here)

JULY
Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World by Lisa Bloom

AUGUST
Little, Big by John Crowley
Rick Steves’ Rome 2012 by Rick Steves
Learn in Your Car Italian Complete by Henry N. Raymond (finished as far as I needed, again)
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

SEPTEMBER
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield
I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

OCTOBER 
Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour by Barbara Tuchman (only half)
The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Argo by Antonio Mendez
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

NOVEMBER
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden
The Fullness of Time by Kate Wilhelm
1Q84 (Book 1) by Haruki Murakami
Harry Potter & the Prisoner from Azkaban by JK Rowling

DECEMBER
1Q84 (Book 2) by Haruki Murakami
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown, Ph.D, LMSW
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
1Q84 (Book 3) by Haruki Murakami
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Free-Range Chicken Gardens by Jessi Bloom
It Starts with Food by Dallas & Melissa Hartwig

Most of those partial numbers in the totals above are attributed to starting an audiobook and then finding the content too difficult to consume by listening. A great example of that is the incredibly informative Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour. I loved the content and found it so interesting, but when I was simply passively listening to it while driving, my mind constantly wandered and I had difficulty focusing on what was being discussed. I made it halfway through before reluctantly throwing in the towel.

July and August were the sparsest months for books because we were insanely busy with wedding planning. Many times I couldn’t listen to a book while driving because I had so much to sort through in my head.

During these past 6 months I also began to actively seek out more award-winning or talked about novels. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex was so wonderfully in depth and detailed. Much loved author Haruki Murakami’s dense 1Q84 was, well, dense. Reading it sometimes it felt like a chore, and the ending was mildly disappointing, but I enjoyed the journey and the astounding creativity required to write it. Swamplandia! was delightful.

I had never even heard of the horror of the Nanking Massacre until I read the Mo Hayder’s historical fiction The Devil in Nanking. I learned so much about the atrocities in North Korea from the true story Escape from Camp 14. The same can be said about the famously loved (and critiqued) Three Cups of Tea, in regards to life and education in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I still haven’t seen the movie, but the first-person telling of the Argo story by Antonio Mendez was straight-forward and engaging.

I’m almost through all of the Richard Matheson audiobooks available for download through the Oregon library, and have finally started reading the works by the splendidly irreverent Neil Gaiman. I’m slowly working my way through the Harry Potter books. Each time I finish one, I get on the waiting list for the next. I should get the fourth book sometime in January.

Portland local Cheryl Strayed’s telling of her hike of the Pacific Crest Trail as a newbie has me now planning a much smaller PCT trek this next summer. I found Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly so moving and thought-provoking that I bought 5 copies to give as gifts this holiday season. Here’s her popular TED talk that addresses the content of the book for a sneak peek. I highly recommend watching that video at the very least, if not reading her book for yourself.

Two listens through Learn in Your Car Italian Complete allowed me to be more comfortable speaking Italian again when we were there for our honeymoon in September. Rick Steves’ Rome 2012 guide was invaluable to us during our few days in Rome, and his free audioguide app was absolutely fantastic when we toured through the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, and other Roman landmarks. His tips saved us time, money and we learned so much more than we would have without it. I recommend checking out the Rome portion of our honeymoon photo album for a complete regurgitation of the info we learned from Rick.

Overall, I have become a much more rabid consumer of information than I ever have before. I reconnected with the bookworm that I was as a kid, the one that five years of college crushed. Now, once I near the end of one book I start looking for what’s next in my queue. I have a pile of books on our coffee table waiting to be cracked open. I skip magazines because they take away from my book time. If the audiobook I’m listening to is particularly engaging, I plug in a pair of headphones and listen to it while doing dishes, folding laundry or gardening. Chores are tremendously more fun while listening to a book!

My long commute definitely makes the consumption of over 61 books in a year much easier. If for whatever reason I’m no longer driving for 2 hours a day, that number will fall drastically. I look at it as one of the few positives regarding my daily slog through the Gorge. If driving through such a beautiful area can be called that. I plan on continuing this trend, this obsession with literature, as long as I possibly can.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do.

Digital Courtship

The amount of creepy emails I receive from dudes has gone down considerably since I’ve been in a relationship and I no longer troll the webs for the weirdest dates possible. Granted, the weird part wasn’t exactly part of my plan as Single Steph, but that’s how most of them turned out. Nonetheless, I haven’t had to ignore or verbally ridicule anyone via email in a long time. Quitting Myspace was probably also a factor there.

Now that I’m quite publicly an old married lady, that happens even less. So to my eternal delight, a random dude from my high school days started sending me the most verbose, eloquent, and woo-worthy emails of all time on Facebook.

 

Did you see when he took the extra effort and doubled his word usage? Wow-ee! Where did my pants go? I read these and all of a sudden I’m naked from the waist down.

Keep in mind I barely know this person. Haven’t seen him in 12+ years. We now live in different countries. Never spoke in high school. Why we’re friends on FB in the first place is beyond me, other than that surge in 2007 or 2008 when Canada finally “got” Facebook and everyone from my adolescence joined en masse, a flurry of faces from the past coming across my friend requests.

But the best part? The last two of those romantic emails came this week, back to back. Let’s take a look at what my profile page looks like right now.

 

In case you can’t read that giant red type (which he might not be able to either, if it was on my page), I AM MARRIED. THAT IS ME, THE LADY YOU’RE EMAILING, ON MY VERY RECENT WEDDING DAY.

But no, go ahead, I’m here waiting for your next email with bated breath. Still pantsless.

Also in the realm of digital dating, my best friend Pat (who is in that wedding pic between the ‘a’ and the ‘w’) is looking to create an online dating profile. He and I texted back and forth for ages last night, trying to come up with a good username for him. Not too boring or basic, not super nerdy, being mildly funny or interesting, possibly a conversation starter. I can’t repeat all of our suggestions here because we go off the rails, but here are some highlights:

Babybananahammock
Leatherdaddy82
Slothzilla (“because a rampaging sloth is both impractical and hilarious”)
Patypus
Patacular
CabbagesAndDreams
Sleep4ever
Patrick Gosling
Patrocious
FunnyBone
ICP4Lyfe
PatasaurusRex
Gothguy666
ShartedBarf
Patom Bomb
Patetration
Altarboy69
Stainz
Ilovetits
PickledPeen
PrayForMojo
Sexpanther
StarshipPoopers
PushupsBro
VaginaNinja
WearingPants
NotWearingPants
Commander Salamander
CuteNewt
Pastagram
KeyboardPat
Rawdogginit
TheJacketInDrive
AstroDinosaur

Last I heard, he still hasn’t picked one.

 

Playing, Practicing

I haven’t given more than the most basic efforts in digital illustration and color in a very long time. Most of what I’ve done lately has been composition, type, photo editing, and manipulating vector art. So I veered off into something fun. A little refresher course. That said, this is my disembodied head wearing a top hat.

Stories from the Road

Most of the time when I travel I keep pretty quiet. I’m content to look out the window and get lost in my thoughts, music or a book. Occasionally when drunk I get chatty with cab drivers, but that’s about it. I rarely will initiate conversation with my airplace seatmates (“single serving friends”). Somehow in the four legs of travel I had today from Portland, Oregon to Norway, Michigan, I had interesting extended conversations with four very different people.

The cab driver from my house to the airport.
Recently he had a fare where he delivered groceries to a customer at home. Turned out that the customer was his ex-girlfriend from 35 years ago, who he hadn’t seen since. “She looks amazing, aged way better than I have,” he said. They met up a few days later and it went wonderfully. She’s divorced and lives alone with a dog, and he lives alone with his dog. Their next date is this upcoming weekend and they’ll be walking their dogs together. Despite the rain he feels very optimistic about it. I told him it was a meet-cute story from a movie and he considered it for a moment, grinned and said, “Yeah, I guess it kinda is, isn’t it?”
Also: he worked at Tower Records for years and years and was one of the original founders of Portland’s famous Music Millenium.
Awesome.

Guy to my left on my flight from Portland to Minneapolis.
He’s a Portland firefighter about 13 years older than I, married with a couple kids. Former Marine who’s been a firefighter for 22 years. Very friendly, initiated almost all the conversation topics but not to an annoying extent. We chatted about various things (mutual acquaintances, search and rescue, traveling in Europe, industry in the midwest, books we like) for a solid half of the 2 hour and 45 minute flight. He was traveling to Appleton, Wisconsin, where they apparently manufacture most of the nation’s fire trucks.
Early in the flight a stewardess came on the loudspeakers and asked if there was a doctor on board. When no doctor popped up, Mr. Firefighter went to the back of the plane, where a younger guy had passed out and had since recovered. Luckily it wasn’t an emergency and the guy seemed fine, but Mr. Firefighter got hero status with the stewardess for the rest of the flight.

Guy to my right on my flight from Minneapolis to Green Bay.
Once again someone who initiated lots of conversation. He’s a mid-40s-ish guy from the midwest, lives in Montana, and works for a global company that puts coatings on papers (like the wax-type coating on beer boxes to keep them water resistant) and makes tissue and toilet paper soft and/or absorbant. He manage the North and South America division, and last week was in Brazil. Was contemplating visiting a coworker in Paris over the weekend on his was to company HQ in Swizterland, followed by a trip to Finland. This is his regular schedule. Obviously there was no ring on his left hand.
When I said I had gone hang-gliding and white water rafting in the Alps in Switzerland, he knew immediately where I had been. Then he told a tale of a Swiss hotel that banned his company from holding their annual meetings there any longer. Apparently the last time involved the guy from China putting the dude from Korea in a stranglehold, the Argentinian pissing in a plant in the hotel’s lobby, and a Finn taking a camera into the sauna (who was subsequently fired).
This guy also had the remarkable ability to remember every bar and retaurant ever, it seemed. He knew the three worthwhile things to see in the small town where I’m staying, knew the dive bars to check out on the way there, knew a number of restaurants and bars in Portland, and had notable stories from each.
He said his vacation will be at home in Montana this December, during which his phone would be off for the entire month.

Guy driving me from Green Bay to Norway
This one I actually know, since he works for the company that prints our beer labels and who picks me up and works with me every time I come out here. We have 90 miles in the dark to get to BFE Michigan, and always have tales to share.
One of his more notable ones was about his grandma, who lives at an assisted living home and has ever-worsening Alzheimer’s. Over the years she established a tradition for calling family members on their birthday and playing “Happy Birthday” on one of her harmonicas. Apparently the G harmonica was the best for this. On the day he and some family were visiting her recently it was a faraway grandson’s birthday, so she asked for the family to get her G harmonica from her “bag of harmonicas” so she could call and play it for him. They couldn’t find it anywhere in her sparse, 1 bedroom apartment. After extended searching she reached in her shirt and found it in her bra. She had put it there that morning so it would be handy for that evening’s phone call. She also had a BB gun hidden in her underwear drawer, and gave it to her son claiming she “didn’t need it anymore.”

Moral of the story
Sometimes popping out of your personal reverie and talking to someone new is totally worth it.

Spam Sandwich

No, this isn’t a recipe for hyper-processed meat sammies. Although I did try Spam for the first time in recent weeks (it was a garnish on a particularly spicy bloody mary) and found the texture horrifying. No, this is about one of the first awesome spam emails I’ve received through Facebook.

“Dear Duffy

I am Barrister Bruce H.Goldberg, a personal attorney to the late Mr. Michael Duffy,a national of your country who worked as a director in petroliers total , Benin Republic. On the 23th of July 2008 he was involved in an auto accident and all occupants of the vehicle lost their lives. Since then I have made several inquiries to your embassy to locate any of his extended relatives but to no avail until I found you after reading your profile in the Internet.

I seek your consent to present you to the bank as his next of kin. You will stand as the right beneficiary of his sum of $9. 7Million USD deposited with one of the Commercial Bank and his un-supervised estate left behind. I will forward the details to you for perusal upon receiving your information as below to help me know you more properly:

Your Full Names and Address,
Your Email Address
Your Age, Occupation and Position,
Your Telephone/Mobile Phone Number for Communication Purpose.

Finally, we will discuss on the sharing ratio of this fund as soon as I receive your information through my private e-mail address here (bruceh.goldberg@yahoo.com) Thanks for your understanding and future co-operation.

Barrister Bruce H.Goldberg
Attorney At Law
+229-99703732″

You’re telling me that I marry a dude, change my name, become next of kin to another dude who died in an African country hardly anyone has heard of, and get 9.7 million scrills? UPGRADE!

Please, someone other than me, contact this guy. Then tell me how it goes.

Secrets Behind the Photo

So I posted this photo on our brewery’s Facebook page yesterday, announcing our collection of holiday beers to the public with a link to the press release.

As of this writing is has 265 likes, 28 comments and 25 shares. A pretty decent response!

The thing is, there are only a few of us in the marketing department here. And while we get professional, studio product shots for our major release beers, we occasionally need others for occasions such as this. That’s where my ghetto photo studio skills come in handy.

At a previous job I took a lot of product shots using mainly natural light, with one fixed light in the “studio” that was really a corner of a dark warehouse near a south facing window. I got pretty good at it, and combined with learning how to style and subsequently edit product shots, became a somewhat competent one-woman team. That company still uses my product shots to this day, so that says I didn’t wholly suck.

This experience also explains my naive surprise at the elaborate set up at the photo shoot I did earlier this summer. I had never really seen an honest-to-goodness commercial photo shoot that wasn’t at least 80% DIY and improvisation. That is exactly what that photo above entails.

Here’s an unedited photo from early in the day.

They’re on a piece of scrap cardboard, with another piece propped up behind them (notice the lovely touch of packing tape on the left side). There you can also see a smidge of the background beyond the cardboard– that’s our warehouse, and this is taken from our shipping desk. Glamorous!  The normal light source was dead so for these shots I am actually kneeling on the ground, holding the camera with my right hand and a small studio light with my left, over my head, and attempting to not cast any weird shadows or glares on the labels.

Here’s another unedited early shot while I figured out the lighting and angles.

That glare’s a real bitch. Eventually I snagged some little watch battery-powered LED lights that had been abandoned from another project and were sitting in a box at my desk for over a year, and put them behind the bottles to cast a bit of a cool glow on the cardboard behind the scene. That allows the outlines of the bottles to show, which is important here since there are three different bottle shapes featured.

Here’s another crop of the final, edited shot to show you how that worked.

You can see that bluish light from the LEDs poking through the two middle bottles. In editing I patched out the tape, blurred a bit of the cardboard texture, tweaked the levels, darkened and lightened appropriate areas on the labels, and got rid of smudges on the bottle. If I’d had more time I would have done more with this, but it was a day-of project, so a quick turnaround was needed.

People who are far better than I at photography/photo editing/etc. would likely scoff at this attempt, but based upon the above mentioned reactions from our fans (and my completely objective opinion), I’d say it was a successful shoot.

The All-Important Wedding Playlist

Wedding music is tricky. Not only are you picking songs that represent you (as a couple and individually) on this highly important day in your life, but you’re also selecting music for a lot of other people from a broad cross section of generations and preferences. If you want a good party you must keep your audience in mind. It’s really true for any playlist or mixtape you make– keep the listener in mind. I’m a consummate people pleaser and definitely would run through the playlist and guest list in my head, guessing how they would react to it. I’ve been to too many weddings where the couple selects only their favorite songs, which is great for them but unfortunately many of their guests do not know or appreciate the music. That there is a party killer, and the event goes downhill quickly, its only saving grace being the free food and booze.

For months I collected the names of great songs as I heard them on a note app on my phone. Then I’d transfer them to a Google Docs spreadsheet that Sean used to collect the MP3 files, whether they already be in our extensive joint music library or freshly downloaded. This is not something you can throw together in an evening! Even the couple weeks leading up to the day we were still adding music. Instead of hiring a DJ (the mere idea makes me shudder), we had a friend and coworker MC the event for us, and all the music was prepared in a series of playlists for his convenience.

The reception is the one playlist you can’t get too obscure with, for the sake of your party. This is also where you need to blend the hits from today and yesterday to get as many people on the dance floor as possible. That said, we avoided most of the standard wedding reception songs for ones we thought would work just as well, if not more so.

The  music that played before the ceremony, during the cocktail hour and dinner were a little more obscure to the general population, using songs we both loved, but also set a mood and undertone to that time of day. The pre-ceremony playlist was dreamy, soft and often acoustic, befitting a glowing late summer afternoon. The cocktail hour had a little more swing (without resorting to the standard Rat Pack playlist either) to increase the energy while we were off taking photos and our guests were getting their first drinks. Dinner contained some songs from both prior playlists, with more bluesy guitar and uptempo mixed in, slowly getting livelier as time wore on. By the time the reception rolled around, everyone was raring to go.

PRE-CEREMONY/SEATING PLAYLIST
The Avett Brothers, “I And Love And You”
Mumford & Sons, “Sigh No More”
Bon Iver, “Skinny Love”
Damien Rice, “The Blowers Daughter”
Band of Horses, “No One’s Gonna Love You”
Regina Spektor, “Us”
The Temper Trap, “Sweet Disposition”
Lisa Hannigan, “Knots”
Florence + the Machine, “Dog Days are Over”
The White Stripes, “Lord, Send Me an Angel”
Cat Power, “Sea of Love”
The Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”
Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs”
The Black Keys, “You’re the One”
Old Crow Medicine Show, “Wagon Wheel”
First Aid Kit, “Emmylou”
The Beatles, “In My Life”
Iron & Wine, “Such Great Heights”
The Lumineers, “Ho Hey”

PROCESSIONAL
Sigur Ros, “Starálfur”
This song was just as perfect as I had hoped for such an integral, emotional moment. I was mildly concerned about playing a song in Icelandic (about a staring elf, no less), but Sean’s grandma even thought she recognized and loved it. I came to the end of the aisle, arm-in-arm with my dad, around the 2:28 mark. I got to the “altar” right around the 3 minute mark, ending exactly where I had planned.

RECESSIONAL
Karen O & the Kids, “All is Love”
Also perfect. Upbeat and very obviously a love-focused, celebratory song, featuring the lead singer of one our favorite bands that we’ve seen live together.

COCKTAIL HOUR
Bright Eyes, “First Day of My Life”
The Ramones, “Baby, I Love You”
She & Him, “I Was Made For You”
The Beatles, “Here Comes the Sun”
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “American Girl”
Flogging Molly, “If I Ever Leave This World Alive”
The Pixies, “Where is My Mind?”
Otis Redding, “Try a Little Tenderness”
The White Stripes, “Hello Operator”
The Turtles, “Happy Together”
The Four Tops, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)”
Fujiya & Miyagi, “Collarbone”
Cat Power, “Sea of Love”
Bonnie Raitt, “Angel from Montgomery”
Dean & Britta, “Friday I’m in Love”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”
Loretta Lynn ft. Jack White, “Portland, Oregon”
The Lumineers, “Ho Hey”
Cat Stevens, “Wild World”
Louis Armstrong, “La Vie En Rose”

DINNER
Fun., ft. Janelle Monae, “We Are Young”
The Black Keys, “Tighten Up”
Bruno Mars, “Marry You”
Bloc Party, “This Modern Love”
Cults, “Go Outside”
Dobie Gray, “Drift Away”
Coconut Records, “West Coast”
First Aid Kit, “Emmylou”
Grouplove, “Tongue Tied”
Band of Horses, “No One’s Gonna Love You”
Mumford & Sons, “Awake My Soul”
Arcade Fire, “Wake Up”
James, “Laid”
The Black Keys, “Girl is on My Mind”
Cream, “Sunshine of Your Love”

CAKE CUTTING
Loretta Lynn ft. Jack White, “Portland, Oregon”

FIRST DANCE
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Little Shadow”
We actually didn’t finalize this choice until the week before the wedding. There were ones with lyrics more obviously suiting, there were ones we couldn’t quite figure out how we’d dance to, and then there was this. Tender, soft, dramatic, heart-wrenching.

FATHER-DAUGHTER DANCE
Taken By Trees, “Sweet Child o’ Mine”
It’s difficult to find a song to dance with your parent(s) that isn’t horribly inappropriate or saccharine sweet. A stripped down version of the GnR hit (piano replacing the guitar and a simple female vocalist replacing shrieky Axel) seemed a decent choice.

MOTHER-SON DANCE
Loggins & Messina, “Your Mama Don’t Dance”

About half way through the song they insisted everyone join them on the dance floor.

GRANDMOTHER-GRANDSON DANCE
Doris Day, “A Sentimental Journey”
Sean did this specially for his grandmother. His grandfather passed away a little more than a year prior, and he donned Grandpa Darwin’s cap for this dance with Lucy. There were many a teary eye in the crowd.

BOUQUET TOSS
The White Stripes, “Conquest”

GARTER TOSS
Placebo, “20th Century Boy”

RECEPTION
Stevie Wonder, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”
Michael Jackson, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”
Flo Rida, “Good Feeling”
Soft Cell, “Tainted Love”
Queen, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”
Urge Overkill, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”
The Romantics, “What I Like About You”
Wreckx-n-Effect, “Rumpshaker”
LMFAO, “Sexy and I Know It”
The Troggs, “Wild Thing”
Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Come On Eileen”
Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together”
Elvis Presley, “Jailhouse Rock”
The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”
Rihanna, “We Found Love”
Usher ft. Lil Jon & Ludacris, “Yeah!”
Earth, Wind & Fire, “September”
Daft Punk, “One More Time”
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, “Home”
The Kinks, “All Day and All of the Night”
Wings, “Maybe I’m Amazed”
The Contours, “Do You Love Me?”

Packed!

Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx, “Gold Digger”
The Black Keys, “Gold on the Ceiling”
Bob Seger, “Old Time Rock and Roll”
The Pretenders, “My City Was Gone”
Salt-n-Pepa, “Shoop”
The Notorious B.I.G., “Hypnotize”
Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”
Edwyn Collins, “A Girl Like You”
Elton John, “Your Song”
Otis Day & the Knights, “Shout”
Montell Jordan, “This is How We Do It”
Enur ft. Natasja, “Calabria 2007″
Nelly, “Hot in Herre”
M.I.A., “Bad Girls”
Hall & Oates, “You Make My Dreams”
The White Stripes, “Hotel Yorba”
The J.Geils Band, “Love Stinks”
Van Morrison, “Crazy Love”
Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce, “Telephone”
2Pac ft. Dr. Dre, “California Love”
Savage, “Swing”
The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So”
T.Rex, “Get It On”
Don Henley, “All She Wants to Do is Dance”
Vanilla Ice, “Ninja Rap”
This was the only song Sean picked that I almost nixed. I didn’t think it was popular or danceable enough to warrant its inclusion, even though both of us were huge TMNT fans as kids. I should have known better with a large group of late 20 and 30 something, super fit jiu jitsu and mixed martial arts guys in attendance. It resulted in an epic dance battle that included flips, jumps and tons of swagger, the onlookers chanting “GO NINJA, GO NINJA, GO!”, and a photo like this:

Yes, that is my husband.

Wham!, “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”
Ini Kamoze, “Here Comes the Hotstepper”
Michael Jackson, “Smooth Criminal”
Outkast, “Bombs Over Baghdad”
Dr. Dre ft. Snoop Dog, “Nuthin’ But a G Thang”
Jimi Hendrix, “Foxy Lady”
The Proclaimers, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”
K-Ci and Jojo, “All My Life”
The Pretenders, “I’ll Stand By You”
Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, “Get Low”
The Black Keys, “Lonely Boy”
The B-52s, “Love Shack”
50 Cent, “Disco Inferno”
Jay-Z & Kanye West, “Niggas in Paris”
Robyn, “Stars 4-Ever”
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, “The Message”
Boyz II Men, “I’ll Make Love to You”
Journey, “Don’t Stop Believin’”
The Foundations, “Build Me Up Buttercup”
Queen, “You’re My Best Friend”
Oasis, “Wonderwall”

Not all of these songs ended up playing, and that was the only playlist that was not played in its original order, which is fine by me, as our MC Jason was awesome enough to read the cues and know what to play. Also, I had factored in a slow song every 5-7 songs based upon what I had heard from other people, but we barely touched the slow songs. In fact the party raged so hard I eventually pulled the plug, because our friends were clearly going to dance all night if we didn’t.