jlamontagne’s posterous

I arrived in Long Beach yesterday bleary-eyed after a week of VERY little sleep (you know what I'm talking about). My cousin Sabina greeted me at the airport with her two towheaded, pre-teen daughters in their rainbow flip-flops. Sabina and I are born and bred New Englanders, so I can't help marveling at her decidely SoCal daughters. Having just left the delights of single-digit temperatures in New York, it's hard to imagine why she gave up the northeast. But the answer becomes clearer as we lounge on the patio eating strawberries beaneath the shade of a grapefruit tree. The girls have prepared a special gift for me: a small, stuffed zebra in a shoebox terrarium complete with shredded papertowel bedding and heart-shaped pipe cleaners (the pipe cleaners double as a necklace and will bring me luck with my upcoming presentation, I am told).

 

Sabina has a penchant for vinyl and by early evening we've got the suitcase record-player cranking and we're squabbling over what plays next: The Clash, Carol King, Tatto You, Air Supply. I find the cover art intensely evocative, the crackle and pop of the acoustics delicious. And for the first time, I get the vinyl thing - maybe because I'm sitting on the floor of a 1970's ranch in Southern Califormia with that older, hipper cousin I always admired. Maybe it's because I'm giddy with sleep deprivation. I don't know. But there's something really beautiful about watching digital native kids get a lesson in proper placement of the needle.

 

Tonight I will sleep beneath the watchful gaze of my host's favorite teen idols. Tomorrow I will check into the Long Beach Hilton fed, rested, beached, and ready to go. Go team. Go TED.