omg hi i love records

Good evening, wherever you are in the world right now.

On Saturday morning at 6:30 AM, I woke up and said to myself: I should probably get to my local record store if I want any Record Store Day releases.

Now, I had resigned myself to not getting any of the most sought-after records-- including the Fleetwood Mac Rumours picture disc that I wanted desperately but couldn't justify dragging myself out of bed and camping out at my local mom-and-pop shop for, especially not in this cold and rain.  But I figured: it'll do me good to stand around and get my steps in for a few hours in preparation for my upcoming Disney vacation, and I love supporting my local record shop.  So I wiped the crust away from my eyes and chugged a Fairlife shake and hopped in the Bronco headed towards the town next door to me.

As you can well imagine, I was about 150 people deep into the line when I got there at around 7:45, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well I fared.  No, I obviously didn't walk away with Olivia x Noah, though I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't sell out until about 40 people ahead of me were set to be let in.  And I didn't get Rumours, or even my third, fourth, and fifth choices (Thin Lizzy: Live at Hammersmith 16/11/1976, Ramones 1975 Sire Demos, and Jim Croce LIVE: The Final Tour).  But I did walk away with both of The Rolling Stones' releases, Wallows, and hell: I even picked up my second The Tortured Poets Department vinyl while I was there because there were only two of those little RSD cards left. 

At the end of my shopping spree, I drove back home with a massive headache and crawled right back into bed.  When I woke up a few hours later to eat dinner and go back into town with my family, I lamented that I wasn't able to get the Rumours picture disc I wanted.

"I have the original one in the basement."  My mom informed me.  "I have a lot down there.  You should check them out."

Of course curiosity got the best of me, so I went downstairs that evening and looked in every cobweb-covered Rubbermaid bin we had.  Just when I was about to give up, something caught my attention: a stack of concert programs coated in a film of brown dust.  The Monkees, The Go-Go's, Barry Manilow, Donna Summer, and every single Bruce Springsteen concert tour he did for the first decade of his career; all here in the basement on a table next to family photo books and my infant toys. 

Not far from it was the most water-damaged, palest cardboard box you could imagine.  I was scared to open it in fear that it would have contained exactly what I was looking for: my mom's old records, in unplayable condition from the years of collecting dust and stagnating in a musty basement.  I took the lid off and sure enough, right there at the top of the pile: Rumours.

I sifted through the remaining contents, briefly, and found every act that my mom had a concert program for.  The Go-Go's.  Rick Springfield.  Donna Summer.  The Monkees.  And so much damn Springfield.  She had not one, but two box sets of the Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band 1975-85 Live recordings.  One was a vinyl set, one was a cassette tape set.

I grabbed whatever looked interesting that my arms could carry and scurried up to my room.  I didn't know if it was possible to absorb 16 hours worth of music before I went to bed that evening, but I tried my best.

I listened to a few tracks from the discs just to see what kind of condition some of these were in (the Springsteen ones were impeccable).  As I cycled through them, I eventually reached Stevie Nick's Bella Donna.  

When I felt mentally prepared to hear what Edge of Seventeen sounded like on vinyl, so I cautiously slid Disc 2 out of its protective casing, then something gave me pause: a set of fingerprints on the B Side where Edge of Seventeen was the first track.

There was a brief moment of, "shit, this isn't good, this is probably going to impact how the record sounds," but then a different thought crossed my mind.

These were my mom's fingerprints, encapsulating a very specific moment in time.  A moment where she was my age, maybe younger, where she picked up her Stevie Nicks vinyl after spinning it who-knows-how-many-times in her bedroom in West Orange, and slid it back into the sleeve for the very last time; packing it up in a box that she'd move into this house with.

And here it was, 20, 30 years later: uncovered again simply because what's old is new again and a curious daughter wanted an Audio-Technica turntable for her birthday.

Was Stevie my mom's Taylor?  Her Olivia?

My mom had a rabid Springsteen obsession in her 20s that I often joke about was the predecessor for my insane Jonas Brothers mania. But more often, I find myself thinking about her love for The Monkees, a made-for-TV band from the 1960s.  She very casually told me once that they were her favorite band growing up, and that she had seen them in concert twice and it's always been interesting to me.  Her love for them is especially fascinating to me in the context of the 60s where Beatlemania reigned supreme.  But my mom wasn't a Beatles fan -- she sat in front of the TV and watched The Monkees every week and never saw the Beatles in concert.

The Monkees would later inspire Big Time Rush, a similar made-for-TV band, who would face an eerily similar fate: they were talented enough as a group, but were quickly overshadowed by One Direction; another British boyband that would become one of the biggest acts of the 2010s.

Coincidentally... Big Time Rush was my favorite band when I was in high school.  And I saw them in concert twice when I was younger.

I've actually never heard anything by The Monkees other than "I'm a Believer," but maybe I'll dust off one of mom's old The Monkees LPs and give it a spin when I'm done listening to Bella Donna.

I'm careful enough not to touch my vinyl where I can hurt it, but as I'm listening to Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, I can't help but wonder if maybe one day, 30 years down the road, I'll have a teenage daughter who asks for a turntable for her birthday, and she'll go down to the basement of our house and open up a cardboard box and dust off my Sunset Boulevard yellow 1989 (Taylor's Version), only to find my finger prints right where I last left them.

Oh, and I eventually was able to find Thin Lizzy: Live at Hammersmith 16/11/1976 on Rough Trade's website today.  I've accepted the Rumours picture disc as my Record Store Day White Whale, but I have a different copy of Rumours now, so I think that should hold me over until at least next year's RSD.

love you like i do it for a living

kait

omg hi it's my first post

When I was young, my mom would drag me to the supermarket on Sundays, and I'd plant myself in front of the magazine rack while she did her weekly grocery shopping.  There I stood, Tiger Beat magazine in hand; pouring over the latest Niley drama, making mental note of the lip gloss Ashely Tisdale was carrying in her purse, and reading about Zac Efron's rumored girlfriend.  I didn't realize it at the time, but it was just the beginning of my life-long love affair for pop culture.

If you're reading this post (and thank you so much for taking the clickbait btw), you probably know that I'm Kait and I love all things pop culture and Disney and Jonas Brothers.  But what you probably don't know is that I also love writing.  

Or maybe you do know that I love writing because I like to send too-long paragraphs about my opinions in group chats and I'm always making long Twitter threads that never seem to really go anywhere.  But the point is, I was a fierce writer for many, many years, which has been fueled by my love for Disney.  On the first day of 6th grade, my teacher unceremoniously dropped a brand new composition notebook on everybody's desk and told us to write about what we did over the summer.  I picked up my pen and started writing about our week at the Contemporary Resort, and I like to joke that I haven't put that pen down since that moment.  I was just weirdly comforted by writing about my vacation -- whenever we'd have a moment of "free writing" time in that class, I'd go right back to that part of my notebook and I'd continue detailing that vacation like I was in a trance.  In high school, when my family started visiting the Parks on a yearly basis, I discovered a message board where I started writing similar trip reports about our vacations -- I'm still fiercely passionate about them and continue to write them for that same message board today.

In 2016, when I was accepted for my first Disney College Program, I started my own blog.  I was really motivated by other DCP blogs and vlogs of the time, so I started a Wordpress operation where I could talk about what I was doing, how my job was going, and everything else I thought others might find interesting about the program.  When my Program ended, I moved off of that blog and founded a collaborative blog with a few of my friends on the Program where we took a broader approach to Disney Parks content.  That project lasted for a few months before I started a project called tinkerkait.

tinkerkait was my biggest project to date.  This site you're reading right now actually hosted tinkerkait for the 3-ish years I had it.  I launched tinkerkait alongside a Disney instagram account and I loved it because it was my personal corner of the internet where I could talk about anything I wanted, mostly Disney related.  Not to toot my own horn, but I was really dedicated to it and impressed myself with how committed I was to releasing weekly content.  I remember I'd make these graphics that I'd use to promote my blog posts on Instagram -- I was just really proud of the work I was doing.

tinkerkait peaked mid-2019 to early-2020 when I was accepted to and began my second Disney College Program.  I was accepted as a Character Attendant, which was a job I had wanted since I was in high school -- it was also one of the most competitive roles in the Program, so this was a huge honor for me and it felt like I had accomplished a lot just by being accepted.  I was also an admin for the largest Facebook group dedicated to that season's DCP, and I found that I really loved helping first-time applicants and participants navigate the crazy world of the program, so I wrote a lot of blog posts detailing the ins-and-outs of this program.  Eventually, Programs staff started noticing the work I was putting in to helping other applicants.  In February 2020, I was 22 years old, fresh out of college, in my dream job at my dream company, living in my favorite place on earth and doing what I loved most -- I felt like I was on top of the world.

When COVID-19 took that job away from me and sent me packing back to NJ a month later, I felt like my entire life was starting from scratch.  I knew I couldn't go back to the Program, no matter how soon the Parks reopened.  I needed to stay up here and start a career with the degree I had just paid an absurd amount of money for.  As I'm sure many of you reading can relate, the months following the initial world shutdown due to COVID-19 were some of the most depressing of my life, and subsequently, I fell out of love with both Disney and writing.

It's now 2024, and I am wildly grateful I never returned to my "dream job."  Today is February 1, 2024, and I'm three years into my career at a company I love.  I'm working in a desk job, which I always thought I was too stupid & unqualified to do, and I'm in a role where I'm fiercely passionate about the work I'm doing.  I have a strong circle of friends, I had an amazing 2023 full of concerts, and I'm at peace with my life.

If you're still here, 1) god bless you, 2) you might be thinking "Kait, why did you cold drop this link on twitter and make us read this entire essay about your life?" And that's a really great question.  The point of this is that I'm falling in love with writing again, and I'm ready for my next blog.  I'm ready to be more open and vulnerable with all of the friends I've made in the past 3 years because of Jonas Brothers or maybe a different band that I followed around the country.

And... I'm ready to have some FUN!!!!  Feels like this post has been kinda somber so far.  Not like a eulogy, but definitely more like a quarterly deliverables report when the vibe I'm going for is Pop Star Magazine or Hannah Montana Fan Club Newsletter.  I promise we just needed the context so I could get to the reason I've gathered you all here today.

A couple of months ago, I put out a poll on Twitter asking if you guys would read my blog if I restarted it.  32% of you said "no" but that's too bad, because popkaiture is here!  I'm back with a zest for life and a renewed passion for FUN music, CUTE movies, SEXY television, and GIRLY things that make life worth living.  

I'm also learning how to auctioneer!  On Youtube!

If you're interested in Disney Channel Original Movies, or my thoughts on Saturday Night Live, or my ranking of the Jonas Brothers' discography, or even just hearing about how my week went, you're in the right place.  If you'd rather not hear about all of this then idk, you can go back to not reading this blog or whatever you were doing before you came here.

But if you do want to read my posts, we'll have fun here.  I'm going to use this blog to cultivate the type of vibes you can only cultivate at a middle school sleepover (the ones you had with real friends where you saw a movie in theatres and debriefed about it in your friend's living room while you ate candy and pretended to have an intense sugar rush).  And this time, there's no graphics or Insta promotion.  It's just for my besties and I to talk about our favorite things.  It'll be like a secret that I'm sharing with the whole world :)

love you like i do it for a living

kait