I need some fine wine and you, you need to be nicer.

I can't take credit for that title. It's the title of track 5 from the new Cardigans album. My sister turned me onto them a while back, so I rushed out and bought their new album. And let me say, isn't that song title is worth the $15 alone? (yes, I still pay for music. sometimes) Just when I'd started to lose faith in the music industry I find a song title like that. Or things like the Marie Antoinette soundtrack get published. Or I happen upon the Brazilian Girls' new song "Last Call", produced by Ric Ocasek. Someone somewhere still appreciates The Cars. All is not lost.

Life has been good and pretty mellow in this year of being 29. I spent my birthday doing nothing, which was lovely. I bought myself a book (Fargo Rock City) about this guy's journey through loving hard rock in the 80s and got a coffee and just read and read and read. I know more about glam rock than I ever thought I would. If a better understanding of the dynamics of KISS isn't a good birthday present, what is? As I read about Klosterman's journey through metal land, it reminded me of my relationship to music and how much stronger it used to be back when I had the gift of focus. That sense of discovering something new and obsessing over it. I mean, I still obsess, but I don't pour over the liner notes the way I would back in the day. I bought 4 cds today and I'm not going to tell you what they were because you might make fun of me. I'm reconstructing the life I had in high school, when I'd buy tapes and hide in my room and the only person who knew the crap I'd listen to was my sister. So that's been some fun birthday aftermath.

I also read a bunch of books last week while I was in the east coast for wedding #2049420209 and work meetings. And by "a bunch" I mean 5 (yes, that's the sound of me patting myself on the back). So it seems that my youth is back in full swing. Books and music and locking myself in my room for either has returned. All that's missing is my hot pink shag carpeting. And I swear, if someone could tell me where to find it again, it would be mine.

It's funny how the older you get, the more things stay the same (to mix metaphors). While visiting one of my editor friends in NYC, he handed me a copy of the new book he's publishing "Mortified". People - put DOWN the "tuesdays with morrie" already and go RUN, don't walk, to go buy this one.

The premise is this: various individuals have allowed the publication of their most private childhood/teenage writings for the purpose of their own Mortification and our subsequent entertainment. The general set-up is an intro giving you some context, the writing (edited to make sense, but no additives), and in many cases an adult p.o.v round-up. I have never laughed so often, or so loud, in public as when I was reading this book. There are essays, there are journal entries, there are letters, and there is (disturbingly) some Duran Duran fan fiction erotica for good measure. It's all there.

No matter whether someone was writing to Mr. Belvedere or ranting about how much they hated Black History Month ("for the privilege to be the only black girl in class? Thanks alot Martin Luther King."), there's something incredibly healing in reading about other people's agonizing childhoods. Everyone was tormented. I mean, people talk about how much their childhoods sucked, but hearing it in their voice at age 9, 12, 14 is a whole other story. The message is "you are not alone". You definitely get a good dose of laughing at people, but it's one of those rare cases that you are laughing with them as well.

But bringing it back to the birthday and me (because it's my world, you're just living in it) -- when you look back and laugh at someone's obsession about how they came off to a particular guy or how fat they were or how they were going to accomplish their goals, you realize how silly a concern it was... and is. How things seem so big at the time. Read it. And if nothing else, come Thanksgiving, you will be so damn happy they didn't get their hands on whatever it is you were writing back then.