Random Thoughts of a Little Monster Mom

“See the lonely girl, out on the weekend, tryin’ to make it pay. She can't relate to joy, oh-oh she tries to speak and can't begin to say…” -         Lady Gaga, intro to “Fooled Me Again (Honest Eyes)” (unreleased) “I'm perfectly imperfect, you know? It's like…and we all are. And we all have our things that we go through.” -         Lady Gaga, interview with Oprah Winfrey on the WW “2020 Vision Tour”, January 4, 2020 When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. Like… a lot . Entire weeks during the summer. Lots of weekends throughout the year. Days off from school. My grandmother was basically my primary caregiver after Mom went back to work full time when I was three, so she was a huge influence in my life. She loved art, music, and books—anything creative, and she passed that along to me. When I expressed an interest in writing, she bought new ink ribbons, gave me her old manual typewriter, sat me down at her dining room

“My threshold for, like, bullshit with men is just…I don’t have one anymore.   I just don’t care.” “In relationships, you have to…I don’t know…you’ve got to move together, I guess, as much as you can.” -         Lady Gaga, from the documentary, “Gaga: Five Foot Two” My fellow Monsters, I have been struggling so hard for the past few weeks to complete this post.   It’s probably the most difficult piece I’ve written in my entire life.   It’s not a happy post; I just don’t have one of those in me right now.   I’m not sure when I will have one. The most challenging part of sharing what I’m feeling compelled to say is being entirely honest with you, my Little Monster family.   I think maybe it’s part of human nature to want to make yourself look as good as possible when you’re telling your side of a story like this one, where there are (at least) two sides, and those who are hearing or reading it will form their opinions of your part in it as they follow along.   It’s tr

“Teeth” represents the  Fear of Truth Monster  from the series of 8 new songs in Lady Gaga’s re-release of The Fame. – Information found on Genius.com When I look back at my childhood, I can see that there were a lot of contradictions in the way I was raised. My mom and stepdad loved watching stand-up comedians.   Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, and George Carlin were all favorites, and we’d watch their cable TV specials whenever they came on.   When video rental stores started popping up in our town, they’d rent tapes of their favorite performances.   I was never sent out of the room due to the language they used or the subject matter discussed. My dad loved watching horror movies, and again, I was never sent away while they were on.   (A week’s worth of nightmares once made 6-year-old me wish I had been, but that’s got nothing to do with the topic at hand.) Swearing was not unusual among my family members, in either household.   The men were mostly former military, a

“Social media, quite frankly, is the toilet of the internet…” – Lady Gaga on “Jimmy Kimmel Live”, February 27, 2019 This is one of my favorite Lady Gaga quotes.  I have many of them, it’s true—I think she’s an incredible speaker, on top of being an amazing musician and songwriter, and her words never fail to move and inspire me in one way or another—but this one just kind of cuts right through all the bullshit, and it’s dead-on accurate. Ever checked out the comments section of almost any public Facebook or Twitter post?  (Those are the two platforms I use most and am most familiar with, but I’m sure Instagram and others are just as bad, if not worse.)  If you have, you’ll likely already be nodding in agreement with that quote.  Especially if it has anything to do with politics, religion, current world events, or celebrity gossip, it really can be like stepping into a nasty public restroom; you can almost smell the filth and feel your shoes sticking to the floor, and when yo

I have no musical talent of my own (just ask anyone who’s ever heard me sing), yet I’ve always felt that my life has its own soundtrack.  Almost all of my clearest and most heartfelt memories are connected with music in some way. The Beatles, John Lennon, Elvis, Barbra Streisand…they’re all my mother.  I hear Barbra’s version of “The Lord’s Prayer”, Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, or The Beatles’ “Let It Be”, and I’m back in my childhood bedroom, tucked under the covers with my nightlight on and Mom singing me to sleep.  I hear Ringo singing “Octopus’s Garden”, and Mom and I are cleaning the house on a Saturday, and I’m running around in circles in our living room, listening to the album on our huge 1970’s console stereo and laughing at the bubble sounds in the background.  I hear “Give Peace a Chance” and I’m playing hide-and-seek, huddled among the clothes hanging up in Mom’s bedroom closet, staring at the poster of John that she’d tacked up on the wall as if she was embar

"I just wanna be myself and I want you to l ove m e for who I am..." I have to admit, the first time (or first few times) I listened to the song "Hair", I didn't really care for it.  It wasn't so much the sound of the song that turned me off as what I thought was the message behind it--that looks were all that mattered, and you should change them in order to be accepted.  It seemed so much the opposite of everything I had tried for years to un-learn for myself and what I was trying to teach my daughter.  But I was a brand new Lady Gaga fan at that time, and I hadn't yet learned about the difficult experiences she'd had with being bullied in school.  I hadn't yet realized how easy it would be to relate to her and that song. By the time I was in sixth grade (about 12 years old, roughly the same age as Mini Monster is now), I was already painfully aware of the fact that I was not what anyone--except perhaps my own family--would consider beautifu