My Puberty Journey

and other silly stuff

Dear Fauxs,

I hope this epistle finds you well.

First off, I’m excited to share this little video teaser for “Out of Picture,” last week’s song entry into the “Mixed Up Files” collection.

You want to see Faux Jean dancing like a robot fool?¹

click on image to be whisked away to robot dance world.

My Daughter, who came up with the song’s title², saw me editing the video, and kind of took the reigns on art directing an album cover shot.³

I asked her to quickly sketch her idea of what she thought I should look like on the cover and she made this little thumbnail of me stepping out of a picture frame.

She then demanded that I model so she could take a photo (using an old iPod) to get in the spirit of the album cover, which yielded this.

I stopped her, thankfully, from taking this painting from its frame to further the project:

“I think we can photoshop that, darling,” said I.

She also demanded that I write some lyrics for the song, so stay tuned on that front…

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This week’s new song addition to the “Mixed Up Files” record is an instrumental four track cassette demo for the song “The Bridge to Nowhere.”

Listen in this player as an mp3:

Listen in this player as a wav file:

The song file, which I found in a folder titled “Unknown Album” (sub-folder “Unknown Artist”), said the file was created in 1969 and modified in 2004. That is false.

faulty metadata.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was recorded in my apartment on Lake Street in Minneapolis in 2003, but it could be older.

This song has haunted me for a long time.

I was happy to finally release a version back in 2021, which included poetry I had written while sitting in a Lincoln Towncar, from back in my limo-driving days.

But this version I’m setting free today, which is a bit of a mess, kind of warms my heart, by reminding me of the struggle this song has presented.

I hope you enjoy the struggle as much as I do.

I’m getting kind of a Charlie Brown/Vince Guaraldi coming off the rails kind of vibe from this recording.

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Anywho…

I was yakking with my son the other day about how our bodies change as we get older and he used the phrase “My puberty journey.”

I guffawed at this turn of phrase, which he had more or less intended to be facetious, methinks, and we riffed on the idea of writing a YA novel titled “My Puberty Journey.”

“But noone would be caught dead carrying around a book called “My Puberty Journey!” He declared.

“Yes, well,” I replied “you’d have to own that in the first pages of the book, that most kids would be embarrassed to carry a book with such a title, but YOU, brave reader, YOU are above such trivial middle-school shyness!”

He wasn’t buying it.

Gonna marinate on that one, all while remaining your humble servant,

OX&C,

Faux Jean

Juice Newton owns this suit.

1. Then watch this video; I veritably shake a tail feather for the whole thing.

2. See last week’s edition of the newsletter.

3. Her idea for the album title is “Out of Picture.” I told her the working title for the next full length record of new material is “You’re Magic!” But she proceeded undeterred.