A Witch Hunt For Another Girl

The Cure - New Music - More Music Videos

If you read Velocity, you'll find out tomorrow that I planned to spend this summer writing a YA novel. Now the summer's half gone and all I've managed to do is move two miles down the road and stare at my monitor a lot while listening to "Sweet Home Alabama" (yes, that's what's playing right now, I am a hick).

I have been doing loads of research, though, or so I call it when I feel guilty for sitting around reading Evermore or watching Make It Or Break It.

However, most of my days are spent across the pond in merry old England as I'm in the midst of making my way through The Other Boleyn Birl and catching up on Skins as I eagerly await the season three premiere on Thursday. I'm also watching The Tudors at bedtime and come to think of it, that might explain why I'm having such weird dreams lately.

Life in the UK sure has changed in 500 years. England in the 1500s seems like no place to be. Even if you're a courtier, life pretty much sucks and there's always someone scheming to take your place. Henry VIII is kind of a jerk, too, always sleeping around and ordering beheadings and hangings. I bet he'd be wearing Ed Hardy if he was alive today. I find it interesting that all the political tension and violence centers around religion, something true since the dawn of time, I suppose, and obviously true today. Makes you wonder if we'll ever all just get along.

Modern day Bristol, where Skins is set, is no picnic, either, come to think of it. If one thing hasn't changed, it's that where there's youth, there's drama. I'm going to miss Tony, Sid, Maxxie and Anwar as we head into a new series of the show with all new characters, save Effy. I'm sure the new lot have just as much trouble, angst, sex and sadness headed our way. I think Skins is one of the best shows to depict the realities of being a teen and of course it's all set to fab music.

I know my teen years seem a lot better in retrospect when replayed against a backdrop of The Cure, Bauhaus, et al. I can remember them as somehow rosy when I know they were really just a series of embarrassing events that included lots of boy rejection, watching kids blow pot smoke in a guinea pig's face, buying beer and driving my friend's mother's car when I was 15, sitting in the middle of the street drunk while Liz and Clint made out in the bushes, and so on and so forth. There were good times, though: running through the park at night, driving through downtown Dallas hopped up on speed listening to Guns n Roses, walking in on the panther backstage at the Motley Crue concert (my friend Steph was engaged to their pyro dude), the first time I heard Robert Smith's voice, putting baby powder on my face and laughing with my friend Amy about how we'd always want to look as pale and wan as possible.

Maybe someday I will capture these moments in words that make up a story that someone can read but in the meantime I'll just say goodbye on a night like this...