My Brief Career in the Rap Industry

You know how rappers feature guest artists on their tracks?

And you know how those artists are usually women, tasked with the role of turning a meandering jumble of verse into a song by belting out a meaningful hook that brings it all together?

Once upon a time, I was one such artist.

I should probably stop there and let you imagine all sorts of horrible or awesome things, depending on how you view the genre, but the story is just so bizarre that if my sister weren’t there to witness the actual recording process, I probably would have convinced myself that I imagined the whole thing.

I’ve been a rap fan for awhile…well…I should clarify. I’ve been a fan of white rap for awhile. Which makes me sound racist, except it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with sound. White rap is just different from black rap…which is different from what I would currently categorize as dance rap.

But anyway…

The story picks up in Peoria, Illinois. I’m sixteen or seventeen, and in the midst of a major crush on a local rap artist, when I’m introduced to a local rap duo. Now I can’t for the life of me remember their names. Something like Doughboy and Rocket (yeah, real winners). But they were local CHRISTIAN rappers.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the best part of the story.

So anyway, I head them perform at my dad’s outreach event a few times and in turn they heard me sing to my accompaniment tracks. (Classy!). And the next thing I knew they approached me, told me how great I sounded, that they were looking to re-record one of their songs (because the original vocalist on the record was Doughboy’s wife and they had since divorced and I guess there’s something uncool about a rapper still performing with his ex-wife’s vocal track…because we all know rappers must must must be bitterly divorced…), and that they thought I would be perfect for it.

Now, I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of communicating their excitement here, but they were PUMPED UP. I mean it was as if they won the lottery. Or as if the biggest problem the world had ever thrown at them had been solved! And now everything was going to be great and they were gonna be rich and famous, rapping about Jesus. (Which hey, Toby Mac did it, so it’s possible…)

Now before you laugh at me and wonder what the heck I was thinking, remember:

This was a time in my life when I was convinced that I had a shot at making it in the music industry.

This was also a time in my life when I had a major crush on a local rap artist and I thought in some crazy way that doing this would make him notice me.

So, I said yes.

A bit later my sister and I drove to their recording studio which was in some guy’s basement, and almost as soon as we got there, they shoved me into the booth with a pair of the biggest headphones I’d ever seen, and they started playing the track.

Mind you, I WAS SIXTEEN. I had no idea what I was doing. So for some dumb reason instead of making the song my own I tried to recreate what Doughboy’s ex-wife had done.

Note for note.

And I’m REALLY good at recreating vocal stuff.

I imagine Doughboy had some kind of panic attack as the ghost of his ex fluttered through his thoughts. He asked me to re-do it. Then he asked me to switch it up a bit. And after only about three tries, all of which I was very proud of myself for NAILING the original sound, they brought me out of the booth, told me what a great job I did, and then …

Some random guy… maybe it was Rocket. I can’t remember. I guess he’d been singing along while I’d been recording. Someone suggested he try laying down a track or two. And then someone else said that they could layer us.

And I can only imagine that Doughboy saw this opportunity to forever erase his wife’s stamp on the song, because he took the idea and ran with it.

Random guy was thrown in the booth and started singing.

AND. HE. WAS. HORRIBLE. Flat. Weak. No breath support whatsoever.

And the end result? A chorus in which the two of us are singing the exact same melody. One of us sounding like the ex-wife. The other sounding like a dying mouse.

I’ve often wondered if maybe I was biased. If maybe it really wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered, and if I was simply reacting out of jealousy and anger and hurt. So, I asked my sister about it a few weeks ago.

And she was like “Yeah, that guy sounded horrible. It totally ruined the song.”

Every time I think back on that experience, I cringe. And not just because I never got my promised CDs and t-shirts. Or because I blew it.

But because the end product was SO BAD. And they probably re-re-recorded it soon after.

AND because I realize now that featured artists are usually introduced somewhere in the song. You know, where they’re like…

“Doughboy!”

“Wassup?!”

“ROCKET!”

“aw yeah!”

“And introducing…AMAAAAAAAANDA PAAAAAAAANDA…”

*cue hook*

Bummer.

Now, even if the recording survived, no one will ever know it was me.

Though maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

Helo's Big Adventure, Part 2

GO HERE to read Part 1 of Helo's Big Adventure.

We live in a small-ish neighborhood that is tucked behind a couple major roads. To put it in perspective, the big indoor mall in Fort Wayne (population 250,000) is about three quarters of a mile from our house (as the crow flies), and the highway is about a mile and a quarter away from us in another direction.

So even though we live in this quiet, remote, woodsy subdivision, it's blocks from lots and lots of civilization and one of the most trafficked areas of the city.

The moment we realized Helo had left our neighborhood (and had probably done so within minutes of getting hit), the whole plan of finding him seemed that much more impossible. According to Tad, Helo had been broadsided. He rolled up on the car's hood and winshield before being thrown into the snow.

So he had to be hurting and running on adrenaline at this point. And what chance does an injured black dog have of crossing a six-lane road at night without getting hit?

So, we set out to find him. Because if we didn't, chances were he'd end up having to brave a night of freezing temperatures and snow. And, of course, possibly death.

The snow, however, ended up being our best friend.

We had about six inches of it on the ground, and despite the police officer losing Helo's tracks and being unable to find them again, we found them (says a lot for Fort Wayne's finest! ;). This was a moment when we thanked God for Helo's massive paws. Because there was no mistaking our boy's tracks.

So, we followed his path. Through people's yards (one lady sent her dogs out after Tad, thinking he was an intruder) and across streets where we'd pick them up again hundreds of feet away from where they left off.

Basically, there was a lot of putting our ears to the ground and fingering the snowy soil and smelling scent rubbed against trees and you know. Aragorn-type stuff. Or Sully-type stuff, if that's your thing.

We followed the tracks until we lost them at the big road I mentioned. The road that is some hundreds of feet away from a giant, massive intersection.

Tad set out on foot, and I took the car. I knew that there is a trailer-type neighborhood behind the businesses on the far side of the road, so that's where I headed. I drive up and down these dead-end roads, until I spot a set of tracks that just seems a bit random. Like it doesn't lead to a mailbox or door or anything. Something tells me to check these tracks. So, I get out, and I'm convinced they're Helo's. I follow them to behind a garage, where I lose them in a rust pile.

Just beyond the rust pile, and on the other side of a really big garage, is a gas station and what would be another super major road in Fort Wayne. So, I get Tad, he stays at the rust pile to see if he can find where the tracks pick up, and I head to the big road.

I'm driving up and down this major road, hoping and yet fearing to see a black dog on the side of the road. Hoping, because the Interstate is now a quarter of a mile away, and Helo is headed north in its direction.

I eventually meet up with Tad, who picked up Helo's tracks and then lost them in a car dealership lot. So, he leaves word with the people who work there, and we go north to a neighboring fenced-in hotel complex. We can't find him or his tracks, and I'm beginning to wonder if Helo somehow snuck around the fence and is heading toward the Interstate. So, we head to the Interstate.

At this point, we start praying like crazy. Clearly, we've lost his tracks. We have no idea where he is, and he's been missing for almost two and a half hours. That's plenty of time for him to get far, far away. Or get snatched by someone. Or, get hurt even worse. Tad calls a bunch of other people, and they start praying. We pray, because we have nothing left. Which is really sad in retrospect, because it's totally one of the first things we should have done.

No tracks in the field leading to the Interstate. So then, we head north on this main road, wondering if maybe he stuck to IT instead of veering off of it (and onto the Interstate). It was here that we got a phone call.

Helo had been found. It's 9pm.

We go to the hotel, and the guy who called us says that it's actually the dealership that has Helo. So, we go to the dealership, and standing inside of the showroom, looking out the window, is our dog.

We run in there and get him, thank the people (the guy closing up for the night had found Helo between two big SUVs), then lift Helo into the car. He's limping. So we head to the emergency pet hospital.

After a quick exam, we head home at 10:30pm. Helo simply has a bruised hip and a few scratches. His prescription? The doggy version of Ibuprofin.

And it's at this point that someone asks us how the car who hit him fared.

Probably not as well.

I strongly feel that God led us to Helo. We never failed to find Helo's tracks, no matter how crazy of a path he took. And we talked to the right people...people who would be instrumental in helping us get Helo back. And, we found him a mile away from home. Think about your hometown or city. Think of where you live, or a spot in town that is heavily populated and trafficked. Then, choose a spot a mile away. A mile isn't that long. But when you're talking highways and crossing city streets and passing block after block, it's VERY long. So long, that had there not been snow, I don't know how we would have found him. So that's my God post for the month or year. I don't do these very often, because that's not the type of blog this is. But I had to do it here. Because I thought it was a pretty crazy story.

Helo's Big Adventure, Part 1

WARNING: If you are crazy in love with dogs, read with caution.

WARNING: If you think people are crazy for being crazy in love with dogs, read with caution.

ACHTUNG: If you are easily offended by God-talk, read Part 2 with caution.

Now don’t say I didn’t warn you....

Tad and I have a dog named Helo. He is only a year old, but he is pretty massive. So massive, that when Helo decides it’s time to play or be crazy, cushions are flying off the couch and random crap is falling down all over the place.

We got him from the animal shelter last January, and he is THE MOST SPOILED DOG IN THE UNIVERSE. He is more than our child (because I like to think he gets away with way more than our children would). He is our obsession. He sleeps in our bed with us, under the covers. He eats stupid expensive dog food. He gets a new toy about every month. He goes bye-bye with me on all my errands. He is our best friend.

So imagine our horror a few weeks ago when he got hit by a car.

It was dark. Around 6:30pm. We were packing up the car for a Christmas trip to my parents’ in Illinois. Helo ran into the street right when a car was coming. I was inside, so I didn’t see it, but I heard it. Tad yelled. Then the impact. Then Tad screamed. That scream, my friends, was the same scream that 60 year-old men give when they’re letting their little dogs run free in the park behind our house and their little dogs come straight for Helo. It’s the scream of a grown man who is suddenly terrified that his dog will die before his eyes.

So I rushed outside.

This part is still a blur. I remember not seeing Helo and seeing Tad run off through someone’s yard. Or maybe Tad said something to me? I can’t remember. The only thing I do remember is eventually talking to the guy who hit Helo.

Now you must keep in mind that I’m freaking out. I’m not a screamer and I’m not a crier. I’m just one of those people who covers their mouth and says “ohmygoshohmygoshOHMYGOSH.”

So I find out from this guy that yes, he hit Helo and yes, Helo ran away, and yes my husband went after him.

So then sirens.

Cops approach me cautiously as though I’m some crazy lady, pacing outside in 28-degree weather without a jacket.

They ask me if everything is alright and I’m like MY DOG GOT HIT BY A CAR AND RAN AWAY. And so they stop and they ask me about it and then they say that they got a call about a domestic disturbance. I say it was probably the accident that neighbors heard. And the cop looked at me and very sensitively asked ... “was...was it a loud impact?”

And I said yes. And that my husband screamed.

And he said “Ok, that accounts for both of the noises that were reported.”

So then the cops join the search for Helo.

So at this point I become the person who is at home, coordinating search parties and telling people what to do and when it’s okay for them to quit (NEVER). Eventually, I let the guy who hit Helo go home (he had graciously agreed to drive around the neighborhood to look).

And then the MOST UNHELPFUL thing happened. Animal Control called and was like “Ma’am, your dog was recently reported last seen on the yada yada block of yada yada avenue...”

“YES, I KNOW. WE’RE LOOKING FOR HIM RIGHT NOW.”

“One moment.”

Moment.

“Ma’am, police have cleared the area and can’t find the dog.”

“NO, ACTUALLY, THAT’S NOT TRUE. THEY’RE HERE RIGHT NOW LOOKING FOR HIM.”  Ugh...dude was totally wasting my time...time that could be spent worrying! and pacing!

So then the Animal Control guy comes to the scene and drives around but can’t find Helo. And he’s convinced that Helo is curled up somewhere, dying. He won’t give me even a glimmer of hope. So, I send that guy packing.

Then the one cop who went out on foot to track Helo through the snow returns without any luck. And another cop leaves to respond to a call. And the third cop is just enjoying some Internet in the warmth of his tax money cop car. And these neighbors are screaming Helo’s name in their redneck accents (pretty sure Helo doesn’t speak redneck) and every second, Helo is getting farther and farther away.

And I quickly realize that if we’re going to find Helo, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

So, around 8pm, Tad and I thank everyone for looking, and we set out on our own...only to quickly realize that Helo had left the neighborhood long ago.

To be continued...

A Testament to my Beastlyness

Would you believe it if I told you I was the runt of the family? Me. Oldest born. 5'6". Runt.

You see, my family...we are not small people. Nor are we wimps.

This is my dad. He’s a bit over 6-feet tall. Former wrestler and high school Hot Rod of the Year. Descendant of vikings and barbarians.

This is my mom...well, she’s one of those perfectly petite people, so we’re excluding her from this study, since viking blood doesn’t flow through her veins. (She brings to the table my French ancestry...wonder if that explains my hatred of guns and love of cheese).

This is my brother, Ryan (his wife, Laura, is with him!). Again, over 6-feet tall. People used to always ask him if he played football, but this was before Tim Tebow revolutionized the rules for homeschoolers and sports and so he’d always reply “No” while probably thinking to himself “Can’t a guy just be big for no reason?”

This is my sister, Emily. She is like 5’9” with epic, strong hair. The hair of a Valkyrie.

This is my brother, Jared. Though the slimmest of all us kids, he’s like 6’3” and his skinny jeans don’t help with the super tall illusion. He can build shelters that blend into the forest and traps that catch wild animals.

And then, again, there’s me.

At eight, I’d play wrestling with Ryan and his neighbor friends.

At eleven, I was my dad’s go-to person to help him move all of our furniture into the moving van.

And then again at twelve. And thirteen. And fourteen. We moved a lot.

At sixteen, despite my ho-hum skill, I got to play the position of catcher on my softball team a few times. (We all know that’s where the beastly players play...that, and first base).

At 25, I killed it as lead paddler on a white water rafting trip. Not to mention, I was running 6 miles a day at the time and lifting rather frequently.

And today, at 28, I’m considering training for a Tough Mudder.

All this to say, despite being the runt, I’m no wimp. But I often get the feeling that I come across wimp-like.

I opened a new gym membership, and part of the whole deal was I got a one-on-one assessment from a personal trainer.

Now, I hadn’t exercised or done anything remotely healthy for about a year leading up to this (I have the number on the scale to prove it). Yet when my super-buff trainer, Craig, handed me a kettlebell, I manhandled that thing. After one round of reps, he was like “do you want a heavier bell?” and I was like “yeah, this feather-like joke of a kettlebell is about to fly out of my hands” and he was like “you can go pick whichever one you want” but I had already gestured at HIS kettlebell. The one that he had selected for himself to use while demonstrating the moves.

“You want this one?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay” but I could hear the doubt in his voice. As if he said, How can you, a wussy blond who hasn’t lifted a thing in the past year aside from her laptop, even think to be able to use MY kettlebell? Can't you see my muscles, woman?! Can't you smell protein shakes on my breath?!

To which I replied, “I am Amanda, daughter of Randy, sister of Ryan, Emily, and Jared. Great granddaughter of Carl Oskar Johansson of Sweden and Hulda Edin of Mora, Minnesota. My ancestors raped and pillaged yours. I think I can handle this kettlebell.”

And I did.

Amanda Raeanne Heinsch - the formative years

So a bit about the aforementioned Heinsch family video Christmas present ..

There is a side of me that wants to burn the video. Burn it so that the world may never know what I was like in my 13th year. Burn it so that no one can see my ungraceful and awkward transition from childhood to young womanhood. Burn it so that humanity can be spared raw footage of my acne and wretched fashion sense.

You see, homeschooling allowed me to miss out on any public documentation of my beastly transformation. I have no school photos, no yearbooks, no school plays or choir performances recorded on videotapes. Nothing...except this.

Sure, there are a few family photographs, but those can easily be dismissed. I mean who doesn't look bad in a photo or two (or three or fourteen)? But when you have a living, breathing, moving representation of who you were in the midst of puberty, well there's just no forgiveness. The video camera doesn't lie.

So with no further adieu, here are 15 observations on my life from 1996 to 2002:

1) When I get to heaven, I need to thank God that cheeks thin out as one ages
2) Hair down to my butt, parted in the middle and quasi-greasy. WHY DIDN'T ANYONE LOOK AT ME AND SEE THE PHYSICAL MAKINGS OF A FUTURE DRUGGIE?! WHY WAS THERE NO INTERVENTION?!
3) Gah! So tall at such a young age!
4) Dear Mandi - why don't you wear shirts that fit? Sincerely, Stacy and Clinton
5) Ugh, my facial features are being eaten BY MY OWN FACE.
6) I had better softball form than I remember...still, the glasses that take up half my already-large face are unforgivable. My high socks are awesome, though.
7) Yep, there I am. Left field. Probably batting 8th. It wasn't that I totally sucked...I was just going through this funk with my swing...oh, and I was afraid of sliding and getting dirty.
8) And BIG SIGH OF RELIEF. We cut to high school graduation and I'm actually starting to pull it together. 9) I open my mouth WAY too much when I laugh.
10) Hey, my makeup was really nice on grad day! And my hair very acceptable. I think I'm very datable!
11) Ugh there's the girl who got the solo that I wanted. *crosses arms*
12) I graduated with high honors! I forgot about that...funny how everything you do in high school means nothing down the road.
13) And there I am walking down the graduation aisle with the tallest boy in class. I remember feeling weird about that...but it turns out it looked ok. And at least I got to walk with a boy, am I right??
14) My close HS friends are all in this!
15) And then we cut to Ryan's basketball game. Note to self: when filming future sporting events, do NOT tape the whole thing.


And there you have it. Adolescence in a nutshell...and the joy of growing into your own.

28 years old, despite my best efforts

Well I did it. I outlived Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and most recently, Amy Winehouse. The 27 club is no longer a threat. Yay me!

It wasn't easy saying no to all those drugs and late-night partying. But I did...and I lived. Despite my very edgy and death-inviting lifestyle, of course. There were the times I operated a moving vehicle while suddenly being overcome by a blinding migraine. Times I didn't clear all of the snow and frost off of the car windows and decided to take it out for a spin anyway. The times I pet strange and possibly violent dogs. The time I used Craigslist to find and rent a house. The time I considered renting a particular house that ended up being on the very block of a double homicide/suicide just days later. The times I drank hormone-infused milk and ate non-organic potato chips. The time my friends Michaela, Beth and her husband Mark had dinner at a tavern nestled in the Rockies and spent the whole time laughing loudly and unashamedly at the drunk people. (We probably should have at least gotten beat up for that or something...isn't that how bars in mountainous regions work?).

Yep, I did all this and lived to blog about it. But I'd say the one thing that really threatened to give me permanent 27 club status, was the restrung right-handed guitar I played in high school.

I'm a leftie. Have been all my life. I'm also a music enthusiast. Have been for a good chunk of my life. Somewhere around my 14th year, I was gifted a right-handed Yamaha. We made it work by restringing it and the rest is history. It's what I used to learn all of my mad guitar skills.

Now despite how embarrassing it was to have this "wrong" guitar (I was clearly unaware of its cool factor), I took it out in public, performing in churches and at coffeehouses in the area. And it stayed with me for about four years, until my grandma gave me enough graduation money to buy a left-handed Ibanez.

For all of you struggling to find the point to all this, Cobain was known for his backwards-strung acoustic. Hendrix, for his backwards-strung Stratocaster. And they both died in their 27th year.

Me? I lived! I made it! And I'd like to believe that it was because I bought that Ibanez in the nick of time...
That, and I never became a drugged up rock star.

One of the two.

family archiver

It’s official. I’m the Archiver of the family. You know, that person who insists on family photos and preserving stories and digitalizing film and uncovering deep, dark secrets. That’s me. I’m not as aggressive as most, and to be honest, scrapbooking has zero appeal, but still. I’m the one who cares about where I came from. And about keeping that history alive.

It all started last year, when I decided to give my parents and siblings DVD copies of our Family Video. The video was on some ancient c. 1982 VHS tape, and time and use had taken its toll. As our family continued to grow and spread out over the midwest (I have a sister and brother in Minneapolis, a brother in Detroit, and parents in the Chicagoland), I started to panic. Who would preserve the memories?! Who would protect them from being lost or damaged?!

The easy solution was “me!” and so for Christmas last year, I had our super old VHS transferred to DVD. And somewhere in the process I even let the scrapbooking bug bite me, and I got crafty with the cases. 

But archiving is a slippery slope.

Sometime mid-year, I began to think long and hard about my heritage. My dad’s side includes some German lineage, but the Scandinavian ties were always the strongest. My dad and Nana and aunts and uncles would talk about eating lutefisk and blood klub (or something of the sort), while we feasted on Swedish pancakes and pickled herring. They’d talk about my great-grandfather Karl Johnson (originally Johansson, according to Ancestry.com), who came over from Sweden and married a Minnesota Swede named Hulda.

The more I thought, the more I wanted to learn. And so I found myself on Ancestry.com, researching all I could late into the night for days on end until I came across a family tree that linked my family all the way back to 1744 Sweden.

1744! Just a few hundred more years, and I’d be able to prove that Thor was my next door neighbor or something like that.

And so it continues. I’m slowly taking on the role of photo-keeper and digitizer, document hoarder and memory saver. Eventually, I imagine I’ll grow a long, white beard and smoke a pipe while my children’s children’s children seek me out for answers to questions such as:

“Why am I so tight-lipped?”

“Where do I get my blue eyes?”

“Who do I look like most?”

“Why can I be so emotionless?”

“Where do I get my knack for building things?”

“Has our family always driven so fast?”

And so this is my future. The future of an Archiver. Maybe one day I’ll take a trip and visit that small Swedish settlement in which my ancestor was born in 1744. I suppose that’s one benefit to this task.

That, and it gives people with no hometown a sense of belonging.