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Marnie fuckin’ Stern. You make me revise my opinions about positively everything.

Marnie Stern and bass player whose name I don’t know and Kelley Deal!

Yiddish lessons with Marnie Stern

A few good things that happened to me today, and one from last week

Well, Kevin Bacon checked out my ass on tenth street. He thinks sunglasses hide all sins and indiscretions, but he’s wrong. Didn’t mind.

Immediately after that Amy Sedaris was in my line at the post office, which was already pleasing enough. But then when it was her turn at the counter the following things happened: she took off her New Balances to pull up her slouchy white socks (always an annoying sensation, the slouchy sock) and then, when the postal employee found her the envelope she was looking for, she sang “mystery solllllved!” in an exaggerated Broadway vibrato. I’ve never seen a postal worker laugh before.

Later, on my walk home from the subway I passed by a toddler barely old enough to use a fork and knife or dress herself singing “It’s a Hard Knock Life!” at the top of her tiny lungs. Bless!

On this same walk I realized Marnie Stern’s “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!” is an incredible song in the classic relating-to-lyrics sense and in the Throwing Musesy tempo changing sense and also in the guitar wizardry sense. I can’t find a decent video of her playing it but you can still love the song if you’re willing to try.

I saw Marnie play live last week and she was mesmerizing. The audience was half-full (Rosh Hashanah revelers? Personally I told my Mom I was celebrating “with my friend Marnie … yeah she’s cool, she’s really into music, she’s originally from New York”— totally worked) and didn’t act New Yorky at all. Kids were wearing backpacks and head-banging. Her bass player was a jerk to her onstage and I’m still mad at him. I’m having a hard time finding a video that shows the insane ballerness of her lead guitar playing and wacky vocals but am discovering many short tour videos taken by her bandmates that show her to be a very adorable human. So with apologies and your welcomes both, here’s Marnie talking about how much she loves her mom on a ferry.

What should go in the Amanda Knox cocktail I’m going to create? Brainstorm for me? It’s gotta be good enough that I won’t feel pathetic drinking an Amanda Knoxtail alone while live-streaming her court scene from msnbc.com.

Marnie Stern, “For Ash.” Amazing.