I might be holding Rick Springfield responsible for my latest brain malfunction.

All of a sudden, although that might be inaccurate because he's been kind of lurking assertively for a couple years now, and actually never really totally went away... Rick Springfield has become ubiquitous. He is so everywhere right now that this blog post involves my mom, my sister Sweetie, and my husband Jethro, Dave Grohl, and Jack Frisco Wagner Jones. See?  Everywhere!

Clearly, I'm not sure when the saturation started, or re-started.  I know I saw him on a talk show at some point discussing his memoir, which I would probably read if I weren't so darn lazy.  (Seriously my unread book pile is becoming dangerous.) I was thinking the ol' feller's looking pretty good.  He's like, 63 now.  Considering all the bad stuff and meltdowns and problems maybe a few mugshots and serious nasty depression problems...  I think it shows on him.  Not in a bad way.  He just has the look, to me anyways, of a person who's been through some crap and dragged himself through it.

Funny thing is, I generally find older men better looking now.  Either I'm getting old (yup) or men look better with some age on them.

Also, he's taking on the Depp look.  Well that always works, right?  Haha.  

Anyways.

I can't talk about this without bringing my mom into it.  As most of you know, I live with my family in my parental home.  I am 42 years old and live with my parents.  One big happy etc etc.  We'll get to my mom, but first, my childhood memories.  If you were alive in the very early 80s, you remember Rick Springfield.

We were visiting some friends of ours, back in the day, and the evening had progressed to the stage where dinner had been eaten, parents were upstairs talking about mortgages and car repairs, and now that I think about it, probably waiting to talk about us kids until we were down in the rec room goofing off loudly enough to hear none of it.  One of the girls was older than me and so super cool.  She was showing me her new posters and records in her bedroom.  One record had a really cute picture of a dog.

"I asked my mom for a Bruce Springsteen record, but she got this one by mistake, but I don't mind because it's pretty alright."

Okay, so that's the 80s.

Now, we're back to 2013.  Is your head spinning yet?  No? Oh, just wait.

It was a quiet winter morning.  I'd been out to the barn and come back into the house to do those other chores. I upended a basket of laundry to fold, because I have a weird affliction that prevents me from folding laundry unless I have the TV on.  And I fold perfectly.  While watching crap on TV.

Well isn't that good ol Rick Springfield on The View.

Sure enough... there's a guitar behind the couch!!! He picks it up and starts playing. Just to make sure we know this is live, he sort of stops playing for a second and says something, then starts again.  It's a little trick performers use.  He wound't have had to; he's old enough that he comes from an age when musicians had to ACTUALLY PLAY MUSIC AND SING because editing and tuning required 2" analog tape, razor blades and scotch tape. (Do not get me started...!)

He plays that riff we all know and love.  And laments about his covetous lust of his best friend's girlfriend.  And he was good.  He was really good.

But it doesn't stop there.

So I get into the house after getting Bucky at the bus stop.  Grandma is watching the Ellen Show. I walk past the living room, hear about the secretive jealous longing, and take two steps back to get a look at the TV.  Yep, there he is.  Cuz she's watchin' him with those eyes, yeah she's lovin'im with that bodyahjustknow it.  

And then... one camera angle caught the drummer.

"Is that... Is that Taylor Hawkins???"

"Who's Taylor Hawkins?"  My mom's not up on popular rock drummers.  It's ok, it's not her job.

"Foo Fighters."

"Oh.  Okay."  She does know who the Foo Fighters are.  She's hip.

AND THEN.

"Is that... THAT'S DAVE GROHL!"

This, people, lead to my first moment of Springfield related brain malfunction.

Not only could I not figure out what the connection would be, but at the end of the performance, Dave Grohl, prolific songwriter, great singer, bitchin guitarist, enthusiastic supporter and collaborator of fellow artists, recording enthusiast, studio owner, and absolute nicest guy in rock and roll, threw his arms up in an "I'm not worthy!" gesture and grinned at Rick Springfield like he was saying to the world, "Dude!  That's RICK SPRINGFIELD."

Jethro later informed me that this little collaboration has something to do with his new favourite movie, SOUND CITY, which is about a recording studio going out of business and Dave Grohl deciding to make a documentary about it.  Oh yes, that guy is also a documentarian now.  Also, used to be in Nirvana.

And... has jammed with Rick Springfield!!!!!!!!!

(If it hasn't already, that name is going to start sounding really funny to you soon.)

So now back to my mom.

It turns out my mom might have had a little crush on the man too, back in the day.

You see, Rick Springfield didn't just have a music career, he also had an acting career.  He was on General Hospital, which my mom used to call My Story as we were growing up and now calls My Show or simply GH.  She has this thing on the DVR and watches it with gleeful scrutiny. I don't have a show.  Although I think New Girl is hilarious.  But since I share a house with my mother, I often end up seeing My Show when I happen to be indoors, a process I call Not-watching.  On rare occasions I quit not-watching which I call not-not-watching.  For some reason my sister thinks this is odd.  But the two of them call each other at least once a day to discuss what happened/ is happening/ will probably happen on GH.  This results in Jethro and the kids and I referring to My Show as... wait for it.... It's Getting Really Good Right Now.  Because THAT is what we hear Mom and Sweetie saying to each other when they're talking about Their Show.

Stay with me, I'm getting to it.

So It's Getting Really Good Right Now is throwing itself a big 50th Anniversary Thing.

Over the last few months they've been dragging out every actor who's ever been on the show and who is still alive.  This has resulted in shameful and embarrassing amounts of me not-not-watching.  I can't help it.  Some of these people were around in my childhood.  And some of them look like they've been pumped full of plastic and hair dye.  But you can imagine how It's Getting Really Good Right Now has been a huge conversation topic for awhile now.  (Actually, as I write this, they are discussing it RIGHT NOW!!) Well, except for the vampire/ insane lady storyline, which had them rolling their eyes and groaning about how they'll be glad when that storyline gets resolved, but I was like, hey, vampires and insanity?  Time to start not-not-watching full time!  But then the rest of it started irritating me so I went back to not-watching.

BUT WAIT.

Guess who showed up to attend the Nurse's Ball / Opportunity To Do A Makeover On The Mousy But Secretly Hot Young Nurse / Oldies Reunion?  Yep.  Dr Noah Drake.  Rick Springfield.

How come none of my doctors have ever looked like beleaguered rock stars?


In the time honoured tradition of actors who are pop stars on their shows becoming pop stars in real life - well I really only know of two and I'm getting to that right now but I figure that's time honoured enough - Jack Wagner showed up to do a thing at the big soiree which is a good excuse to dress everybody up and have their characters perform while we suspend our disbelief that most people don't even have the nerve to Karaoke unless they're sloshing drunk.  I'm not sure what the Frisco Jones character supposedly did for a living other than go off on some kind of top secret excursions on the other side of the world when he wasn't Being A Pop Star. As one does when one is a soap opera character. But it's a paying gig, I guess, so there he was.

I was suffering some cabin fever at the time, and being a weekend night, got the sudden urge to go grocery shopping with Jethro.  If you know how I despise grocery shopping, you'll understand how much I did not want to be a part of the Frisco Jones experience.  But alas!  He started into his "hit" before I managed to get the guys mobilized and car keys located and shoes on.  My eyes must have been bulging.  Poor Jethro.  I'm gritting my teeth and trying to whip my coat onto my flailing arms while hissing, "This song sucked 30 years ago and it's even worse now."

That safely out of the way, I figured I could be in the house without much more of that.  But It's Getting Really Good Right Now wasn't done yet.

I was doing whatever it was I was doing, probably folding laundry - there's so much of it - when I heard somebody on the TV introducing... "MR RICK SPRINGFIELD"

(Oh wait - before I go on, I have to report that just now, over the phone, Mom and Sweetie are discussing "who else will they bring back?  Have they had everybody back yet?  Oh, Blackie."  Now this perks up my ears because "Blackie" was John Stamos and I'm not even going to pretend that he wasn't the reason I watched that damn show when I was a kid.  I watched every day looking for him.  Big time crush.  Still think John Stamos is the bomb.  Hated the show with all the kids but I confess to watching one of those other hospital shows - oh dear hospital shows forehead smack - and if he shows up on It's Getting Really Good Right Now I am definitely going to not-not-watch!!!!)

Okay.  Sorry about the digression, I'm just having so much fun live-blogging the discussion here.  They should get paid to discuss this show so thoroughly.

Anyways.

"MR RICK SPRINGFIELD"

This is where my brain snapped.

Jack Wagner was Frisco Jones, but Rick Springfield is Rick Springfield.

Whaaaaaaaaaaat....?

And there he is, taped this time of course, Jesse is a friend, you know he's always been a good friend of mine.  Damn that song holds up.  A monster hit is a monster hit.  Did you know he won a Grammy for that?  Yep he did.

But I was sitting there in disbelief, most likely with a handful of socks, I couldn't figure out if there was some kind of fourth-wall-breaking artistic license going on, or if we're supposed to just give up and go, "aw what the heck, we all know who the heck he is, doctor? Who are we kidding, okay" or if like, somebody on the team of writers forgot that THIS IS A TV SHOW AND IS THEREFORE FICTION AND WHAT THE HECK WITH THE REAL PEOPLE NOT BEING THE CHARACTERS THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH THIS I WRITE FICTION THE PEOPLE IN MY HEAD ARE NOT REAL OR OH MY GOSH ARE THEY??!!!

I'm okay, by the way.  I haven't totally resolved this head problem of mine but I'm dealing with it by reminding myself that my grasp on reality isn't real strong to start with so why should this cause permanent damage, am I right?

So back on It's Getting Really Good Right Now, once Jesse's Girl had been run through the tape machine, haha, one of the female characters in her fancy dress walked up to Rick Springfield who was no longer in his rock star uniform of black leather jacket and guitar, but rather his doctor at a fancy dinner thing uniform of tuxedo and bow tie.  She said to him something like, "Dr Drake!  I had no idea you looked so much like Rick Springfield!"

He - whoever he is - looked at her incredulously, and said the only reasonable thing, which was...

"You're kidding... right?"

Twitch.  Twitch.

Well they're off the phone now and It's Getting Really Good Right Now is back on.  The party's over and people who aren't Rick Springfield are having heavy conversations about who they weren't supposed to sleep with or who recently returned from the dead.  I am not kidding.

I guess we're going to be watching Sound City this weekend.  Did I mention this movie features Dave Grohl and Rick Springfield?

Have we repeated that name enough now that it's sounding ridiculous?

Rick Springfield.


Rick Springfield.

Rickspring.  Field.  

aaaarrgghhhhhhhhh

I have laundry to fold.