He Has A Point...

me: good lord, i have issues. how do i make it through the day?

john: vodka?

me: no. hmm. maybe that's the problem.

john: obviously.

Fatal Flaw

John has yelled at me about this - and reprimanded me again recently for a comment I made - but I really have no other explanation. for all my frivolity and randomness and even my romanticism, I am a very practical person. highly logical, albeit in my own way. and yes, I realize it's impossible to make rigid statements when dealing with people because people are individual and changeable. but when every single guy I've ever had a relationship with reacts the exact same way, then something's gotta be up, right? (or attempted a relationship, because, let's be honest, I do bring a lot of harder-to-deal-with things to the table to begin with.) and these are all very different men and really good people. well, ok, one of them was kind of an asshat about things, but generally, awesome people who, after a certain amount of time with me, all do the exact same thing: walk away from me with no explanation, no reason, no good-bye. no excuses, even. just gone. out of my life completely, just like that. and it's not like these guys even had a history of walking out on people. (well, ok, maybe the same aforementioned asshat had some issues. ok, that one I take responsibility for - I should've known better.) anyway, the point is: if every single person reacts the exact same way, and these people are all different, then obviously the fault must lie in me. the evidence points to the apparent fact that something about me must trigger this response. the frustrating thing is I can't fix it because I don't know what it is. and I can't ask anyone, because they're all gone. (well, all but one, but that's a long complicated mess that is currently simple and surfacey and uncomplicated and I'd like to keep it that way.) and the next logical conclusion is that this will continue to happen any time I might try to be with someone. if someone can claim to love me and want to marry me and make a life with me and STILL walk away from me without a word, then... what's funny is that I never went into any relationship - or potential relationship - expecting them to walk away. which seems silly in retrospect, but I guess it didn't occur to me that the same thing would happen over and over.

which brings up another point, and the one that john yelled at me for: I can't keep doing this. I sure as hell can't survive what I went through after jon again. so how can I trust that the next man WON'T run away? clearly I now have abandonment issues; and I can't even consider being with someone until I can let go of that and not expect it. I fully believe that to be successful in a relationship you need to be able to be completely open and completely over what has happened in the past. I won't go into something if I'll be projecting past problems on the current person. it's totally unfair, and as I've been hurt by this in the past, I refuse to do this to anyone else. but how do i let go of what appears to be fact? an obviously repeting pattern that is out of my control? ugh. I hate being broken...

The Most Beautiful Shoes in the World

birthday shoes: they are a tradition for me. the shoes don't have to be expensive, but they SHOULD be festive and maybe a little flashy. last month, my bgbff informed me that my 40th birthday pressie would be laboutins - 40, partly because it's a milestone, and partly because it's clearly going to take 5 years to save up the ridiculous amount of money that they cost. bored one night, i decided to look up laboutin's current seasonal offerings, just to see what was what. and that's when i discovered these magical shoes, which were clearly thought of, designed, and made specifically for me:

aren't they magnificent? now, as you may or may not know, christian laboutin sells his shoes for roughly $3000 a pop. yep, 3 thousand. but then during an image search - so that i could find a better picture of these lovelies - i discovered this site, which claims to sell REAL laboutins for only $188. there are 2 possible logical conclusions here: either a) they are fake ("slaboutins", as amy calls them), or 2) some obscure russian mafia member had to kill off someone's grandma and smuggle these out of the factory. truth is, i'm not sure sure i care either way. i mean, DID YOU SEE THE SHOES??? they are magical and good, and NEED to be part of my wardrobe. (they will then be known as my "faux dragon" shoes, thanks to a convo with rob.) so if anyone out there wants to buy me some magical birthday shoes (HI, MOM!), you should go HERE. and since the site says they'll be delivered within 7 days, if you order tomorrow (size 39 or 39.5 EU, please), they should be here in time for me to wear to benihana's on the 20th.

just trying to be helpful...

Just In Case You Weren't Sure...

john called me last night and shared this story with me. it made me laugh quite a bit...

As I am going on holiday in Key West in a week, I went shopping for a new swim suit. I headed into my local homo clothing store and was browsing, when greeted by a friendly German middle aged salesman. He held up a pair of trunks and with heavy accent said “These are nice. The wee-wee goes here in the front, the bum goes in the back, and everyone is happy.” Thank you, Mr.German Shopkeep for explaining the mystifying logistics of the men’s swim suit. I mean really, I have worn pants before, and I think I can maneuver a square piece of fabric with two leg holes without further instruction.

I Am an EXCELLENT Influence!

my mom came to visit me this weekend (something that was very much appreciated given my current state of being), and we did a little bit of shopping. we headed to the outlets because mom was on a quest to find water-proof boots that she could use when slogging down the driveway and digging the car out and things. we went to a few places, checked out different types of shoes, and i opened her eyes to the simple irrefutable truth that cute shoes (and cute underwear too, actually) can make any icky day a little bit brighter. so mom went home with black and white houndstooth patterned rain boots, two very cute pairs of chucks, some sparkly sandals, and two pairs of fun flats. MAN, i'm good... spreading joy through fun footwear - that should be my new motto! hmmmmm...

addendum: since john is apparently "internetally challenged," he asked me to add his comments below:

A. You should never let driveway slogging dictate your choice of footwear.

B. Chucks?? Awesome. I love you both just a little bit more.

Happy Voodoo Day!

many, many years ago, john and i created a holiday. we named it "voodoo day," but please don't ask me why, because i haven't the foggiest. neither of us is big on christmas, and all the festivities surrounding it, and all the duties to friends and families during the time... they wear us out. they wear everyone out, really. you spend so much time prepping and planning and decorating and cooking and catering to everyone else that all you really want to do a few days after christmas is curl up in a ball and sleep the day away. that is the principle behind voodoo day. it's a day - smack dab in the middle of christmas and new year's - that is not about other people. it's about you. to properly celebrate voodoo day, you don't buy gifts for others; you buy something nice for you. you do something indulgent for yourself. go get a massage, find a fabulous pair of shoes, get a mani-pedi, listen to your favorite cd even though everyone else hates it. whatever. doesn't matter what you do, as long as you take a moment to enjoy something for yourself, not for anyone else. so happy voodoo day, all!! may you enjoy your self-indulgent moment, and get back a little bit of energy that the holidays have stolen.

On The First Day of Christmas, My Best Friend Gave To Me... A Trip to th'Emergency Rooooom

the day started with me taking john to the ER. a friend of his came over last night, dropped a glass coaster and broke it, and john managed to step on a sliver and cut himself fairly deeply. after bleeding everywhere - which i had to clean up, mind you, as the gay boys were all drunk and passing out - he went to bed instead of letting me take him to the hospital. in the morning, it still hurt and was still oozing blood a little, so i insisted on taking him in. the hospital in question - holy cross - was totally worth the trip. not only was it beautiful, with reflecting ponds and lovely mosaics, but very entertaining as well. outside was a HUGE nativity scene. since it was christmas day, we decided to join in with the fun.

after winding our way through the maze to the ER (john simply parked at the main entrance, not the ER entrance), we checked in and then waited to be called. our journey was helped by the adorable signs that let us know where to go.

after a short wait, john's name was called. since there was nothing else for me to do but sit around and be bored, i went with. the triage nurse went through all the standard questions and whatnot, but she was very fun - smartass-y and joking with us. she asked about medical history and as john explained, she jotted it down on his chart.

"now, do you smoke, drink, or do drugs?"

"um, i smoke and drink. i haven't done drugs in a long time, but i used to. wait, i cut my foot - is that relevant?"

"well, i like to ask. it gets very boring up here, and i like to make conversation. it's all strictly for the entertainment of the triage nurse, really."

we both burst out laughing. we were shown to room and hung out for a little while. i spent my time keeping john from accidentally destroying expensive medical equipment until we figured out how to work the tv and put on the travel channel. in the end, john didn't get stitches because he waited too long to come in - he should've come in the night before like i told him - but had an x-ray to make sure all the glass was out and a tetanus shot. it really didn't take long for an ER visit, and was quite entertaining, all in all.

then we had to find our way back to the car. after getting lost twice (once in the "ambulance only" area, where we definitely shouldn't have been), we asked the hot security guard how to get back to the main entrance. turns out, you can't get to the main entrance from the emergency wing without a security card which, luckily, the guard had. we retraced our steps and somehow ended up lost again. but we found a very pretty area outside the cafeteria, with bistro tables and a water feature. and absolutely NO smoking. this time, a nurse saw us looking around confusedly, took pity on us, and pointed us in the right direction. we (finally) made our way out to the car and back to john's to relax for a bit before heading out to dinner. so that was a fun-filled christmas afternoon. never a dull moment...

At Least It's Only Once a Year...

christmas sucks for me. always has, and i don't totally understand it. it always makes me sad and depressed. i figured that this year would be different since i would be with the man i planned on spending my life with. yeah, well... since that's not happening, it's turning into the worst holiday season ever. i'm ridiculously depressed, obviously, and there's just no getting out of it. and as much as i love my family - and i really do - there's just no way i'm going to be able to function around all the holiday crap and family stuff. i had a minor breakdown on thanksgiving, and that family didn't even belong to me. (sorry about that, c... but thanks for dealing with me!) so, i will be spending christmas with the bff. i'm flying down to ft. lauderdale on christmas eve (i know, i know, but it was $50-100 cheaper than any other day) and we will be enjoying christmas on miami beach. christmas dinner will be at benihana's. it will be our very non-christmas-y christmas. he can't be with his family as he has to work the day before and after, and christmas really isn't his thing either... plus, we've both had a seriously crappy year, so hopefully this will be good for both of us. we'll see. i totally expect to become a big blubbery mess at some point, but hopefully i'll manage to wait till i'm not in public. we'll see. all i know is that he's my bff for a reason, so hopefully we'll make each other feel better...

Quote of (Quite Probably) the Month

text from john last week:

"a lesson that only needs to be learned once: never make a hot pepper sandwich and then scratch your balls."

*don't worry - john and both his balls have fully recovered.

Just Let Me Have My Delusions, Please

actual text conversation between me and john mario last friday night:

me: this is a new experience - watching old people dance the electric slide to "mustang sally." at the american legion. that's right - i'm living up my friday night!

john: wow, not quite like teh friday nights we had 10 years ago, huh?

me: right? and i'm having fun. oi. please don't mention this to anyone. i don't want to sound as sad as i've apparently become... :)

john: dear, i'm off this weekend. right this moment i am removing bits of adhesive from my living room wall. party on.

me: excellent. we are sad together.

john: and apparently sad apart as well.

john: the only possible thing more sad than what i am doing right now is that an hour ago, at work, i was looking forward to it.

me: yeah... let's not share this with anyone... we have reps to uphold.

john: i hate to tell you this, dear, but these ARE our reps.

me: yeah... i just wanted to hold onto the illusion...

*sigh* it's so sad being old...

Just Can't Help Being All Shook Up In My Blue Suede Shoes By My Burning Love When You Love Me Tender In Las Vegas. Love, Your Teddy Bear

john and i are planning a trip to vegas for sometime this year. clearly, research needs to go into this. i mean, you can’t just show up to the Frivolity Capital of the World without a game plan. there are so many things to do, it would be easy to become overwhelmed. so we started info-gathering. it started with three categories: shows; activities, clubs, etc.; and shopping. (because of course there were charts and graphs that needed to be made…) i have since changed the categories to "legit stuff," "ridiculousness," and "clearly we need to do this." and yes, i realize that some items in the “ridiculousness” and “clearly we need to do this” groups will overlap, but whatever. i’ll get to these charts at a later blog, i’m sure, but really this is all just exposition for the point of this blog. after the obvious suggestions – cirque du soleil, roulette, elvis impersonators – john suddenly took in a big dramatic breath.

“ooh! We should totally get married in vegas! by elvis, of course.”

it should be noted that honestly, i love this idea. it’s hilarious, tacky, ridiculous, and totally us. you just have to kind of ignore the fact that we both like boys and aren’t remotely attracted to each other. (well, we’re both attractive people, and we cannot take a bad picture together, but you know what i mean. and wow, did that sound conceited. ah, well – the picture thing is true, though. i'll put up the evidence in a later blog.) unfortunately, both of our mothers are staunch catholics and they would most probably disown us both if we did so. (john’s response: “hey, my parents might actually be excited that I’m marrying a girl.” but i can already hear my mother preparing a “marriage is a sacrament” speech, and john was forced to admit that we’d be yelled at by both sets of in-laws. it would be bad enough to be disowned by my own mother; but being renounced by both of them would certainly be traumatic.) but we are creative people, and naturally we found a way to get around this: we figured that none of these places is going to care if we don't have a marriage certificate as long as we let them know that WE know this. we can turn it into a “platonic soul mates” ceremony or something...

so we set about researching places to get married by elvis. because, really, if you’re going to get married in vegas, it really ought to be by the king, or by one of those drive-thru wedding chapels. otherwise, why even bother with vegas? (the one exception being people like my friend jen, who was actually from vegas, and had most of her family there.) this is my favorite site…. i was reading these out to john over the phone and i could barely speak because i was laughing so hard. there were at least two points in the conversation that i had to stop completely and just dissolve into giggles. this place is a gold mine of ridiculousness – it’s brilliant. the best parts:

1. can’t afford a hawaiian wedding? no problem – you can purchase the "blue hawaii" theme wedding. (hula dancer only an additional $140!)
2. no matter what package you choose, you get a copy of elvis and priscilla’s wedding certificate. perfect for framing next to yours, or for any of your scrapbooking needs.
3. elvis will escort the bride down the aisle. way swankier than be given away by your father, or anyone else that you might actually know in real life.
4. there are choices of themes for elvis. you can choose “gold lame," “black leather jumpsuit, “ or “aloha” for an additional fee. you know, just in case black leather doesn’t go with your bridal colors.
5. if you can’t decide, there’s always the “the famous dueling elvis package” – not one but TWO, that’s right, TWO elvises. you get a young elvis in gold lame, and (i would guess) an (older, fatter) elvis in his flashy sequined 70’s las vegas jumpsuit!
6. “flashy sequined 70’s las vegas jumpsuit” is actually a direct quote from the website. behold it’s awesome selling power!
7. you have the ability to have pictures like these in your wedding album:

8. you can be like these people! (actual website copy: “Las Vegas Weddings: Wedding in Las Vegas is one of the best wedding ideas- join the likes of Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Ray Cyrus!”) a few questions, people… do you really want to be just like billy ray cyrus?

i mean, look at that hair, people! you can't follow the example of someone who looks like this on purpose!

and i’m confused; is jon bon jovi marrying this guy?

oh, wait… this makes more sense…

and who exactly was richard simmons marrying? a woman? someone from this planet? richard, i’m pretty sure there’s a wedding day rule of not out-pompadour-ing your wedding officiant. it’s probably right after “don’t upstage the bride,” another rule which was probably broken…

awesomeness. i cannot make this stuff up!

Life Is a Mix Tape, Part 2: The Albums

"tonight, i feel like my whole body is made out of memories. i'm a mix tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape."

-rob sheffield

sometimes one song just isn’t enough; sometimes a whole album is tied to a memory. hearing any song from that album will bring me back, but it also works the other way, too. i may randomly think of something that happened and then really want to listen to the album that accompanies it. (the playlist at the bottom has selections from each of the albums.)
8 dark side of the moon – pink floyd: besides being an excellent album on its own, this cd is tied to my freshman year in college. we would often put this on at night, on repeat, to sleep to. funny side note: i recently re-bought this album because it had been lost or stolen long ago. i popped it into the cd player and about two songs in, i found myself getting sleepy. talk about your pavlovian responses.
8 sublime – sublime: college, theatre department parties, jono and greyton’s house. jono and greyton were roommates and theatre students a year ahead of me. they had the best house for parties – two stories, sprawling wrap-around porch, and neighbors who were either not very close to the house, or at every party anyway, so they didn’t mind the noise. it was also at the top of a hill (mountain, really) and though it sucked to get up there in the winter, it was a very zen-like area with woods on two sides of the house. every single party started the same way; once enough party-goers had arrived, the “circle of death” table was set up with a pitcher and a few decks of cards, a few joints were rolled, the keg tapped, and this album put on. usually there were a few discs in the changer that rotated around, but this album we listened to straight through, beginning to end, before switching the music. those were good times – i don’t have a single bad or even boring memories from those parties. (note to my mom, in case you’re reading this: i had nothing to do with the pot – that was all jono and greyton, i promise. i stuck to the drinking games and laughing at the fools that couldn't hold their liquor.)
8 when i woke – rusted root: senior year of high school and freshman year of college. rusted root is a folk-funk-hippie-accoustic-fusion band from pittsburgh. because morgantown was only a hour or so away, they used to play every thursday night at the nyabinghy dance hall. (memo to me: there needs to be an entire blog dedicated to the ‘binghy at some point…) because we knew a few of the bouncers – or, more accurately, because i knew a few people who knew a few bouncers – we were let in even though we were underage. we only ever came to see root, and we didn’t try to drink any alcohol while we were there, so mostly they let us get away with it. new year’s eve 1995 found john, dale, and i at the annual root show in pittsburgh, and then at a party at a friend of dale’s sister’s. it was a fun night, even though i spent large chunks of the party making sure the stoners weren’t feeding marijuana to the friend’s parents’ great dane.
8 discography – pet shop boys: i’m not sure why, but this album played non-stop throughout my sophomore year in college. it seemed like whenever john, dale, melinda, and i were in a car together, this album was playing. it didn’t matter whose car, because we all had a copy. it was the default bgm to our wanderings.
8 greatest hits – bob marley: i would like to preface this by saying i love bob marley – quite a lot, actually. however, since it was one of the very few cd’s we could agree on in adventure ocean (the kids' center) on the serenade, we listened to it a lot. incessantly. over and over and over. rob was the worst offender; he always put it on, and we always seemed to work together. it finally got to the point where i took it out of the cd changer and hid it for a couple of weeks.
8 fear – toad the wet sprocket: sophomore and junior year of college. ferruso and i listened to this all the time. it’s another cd that became default bgm. mostly, though, it reminds me of the puppeteers of america festival in ohio. this and an “awesome eighties” cd were in heavy rotation that weekend. we met famous artists and puppeteers, we got rave reviews for a performance we slapped together for a cabaret night, i sliced open my thumb with a stolen outback steak knife whilst carving a coconut out of a nerf ball, we got through some of the lamer performances by loading our travel mugs with zima and sour candy (we couldn’t find any jolly ranchers on short notice), and we met all kinds of fantastically random people just by playing uno in the downstairs lobby. excellent times.
8 play – moby: for a month and a half, while i worked at disney and lived in clermont, this cd was stuck in the player of my car. i couldn’t fish it out and i couldn’t afford to get it fixed. the player was stuck; i couldn’t turn it off, i couldn’t change the volume or the track, and i couldn’t switch it back to the radio. it’s a really, really good thing that this was the cd that got stuck. (and that it was at a decent volume, come to think of it.) it’s one of the (like 5) albums i have no trouble listening to straight through, and it’s a testament to the quality of this album that i never got sick of it and that it remains one of my all-time favorites.
8 elephunk - black eyed peas:splendour of the seas, the sob (that’s the staff and officer bar, thank you). there are many different types of people working on ships: people of different nationalities, from different walks of life, who speak many different languages. it’s no surprise, then, that there was some dispute over the music to be played in the sob at night. for whatever reason, this album was the one everyone agreed on, so it was played almost every night squished somewhere between the british punk rock, romanian trance, and morroccan pop music (most of which i quite liked, actually…).

8 the lion king soundtrack: this is pretty self-explanatory, unless you don’t know about my stint performing at disney. i did both lolk (legend of the lion king) and folk (festival of the…) from the summer of ‘98 till the summer of ’03. legend closed in 2002 (to make way for a 3-d movie – great planning, eisner; way to take away the most popular attraction in the park), but i continued doing shows at folk till i was (wrongly) fired in ’03. (i got my job back… eventually. that’ll have to be a blog at some point, too.) anyway, due to the fact that i heard the soundtrack on a daily basis (at least 9 shows a day at legend, 4 at festival) it is permanently ingrained in my head, along with all corresponding choreography. everytime i hear the songs, i see the choreography in my head; because i knew 5 tracks (roles) at legend, i participated in every scene at some point. i’m pretty sure, given a stage and the appropriate puppets, i could still do either show pretty well, including things i was never trained in. it’s also my curse; the lion king soundtrack follows me. wherever i go, it’ll pop up to annoy me. true stories: 1. we were in skagway, alaska, and headed into a shopping center to get lunch at one of the cafes. as we walked through, “can you feel the love tonight” by elton john came over the loud speakers. really? alaska? and 2. in vegas, rob and i walked into the first casino to “circle of life”. jeez, people, let me have a vacation! there are many more instances, but i’ve done my best to block them out.
8note: the quote at the beginning of this blog is from the book love is a mix tape by rob sheffield - a brilliant memoir of life and love by a contributing editor of rolling stone. it's lovely and sad and inspiring and funny and real, and i'm going to keep bugging you until you go read it.

new mix tape:

Life Is a Mix Tape, Part 1

"the times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. it does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. every mix tape tells a story. put them together, and they add up to the story of a life."

-rob sheffield

music is a huge part of my life and always has been. it’s no surprise, then, that many of my memories have music tied to them. i’ve decided to list some of these, and update as i think of others. also, if you happen to think of a song that reminds you of me or of something we did together, let me know! (p.s. if you’re not sure what a song sounds like, or you’re thinking, “hey! i love that song!” i’ve included a playlist at the bottom for your listening pleasure.)
8 “in your eyes” by peter gabriel: this is one of my favorite songs of all time. and it never fails to make me think – just for a second – about fedan and our obsession with the good morning vietnam soundtrack. i would go over to her house to hang out and we would listen to it nonstop and dance around like fools. and, yes, i realize this song is not actually on the soundtrack; but for whatever reason, our obsessions with peter gabriel and the gmv album are synonymous in my head.

8 “be my lover” by la bouche: we were in italy the first time we heard this song, in a discoteque. the other girls and i quickly found out that italian men come in two varieties – mediteranean god, and sleezy grease ball. we spent the evening dancing in a group, john and jim circling us at intervals to ward off said grease balls (because apparently the god-like men weren’t at our disco).

8 “everything i do (i do it for you)” by brian adams: my junior year in high school, the marching band performed music from the movie robin hood: prince of thieves. i loved the instrumental music, but we also did the popular “love theme”. this was the one piece of choreography that sucked for us in the color guard. our instructor (who is another story in and of himself) gave us difficult, dci-worthy routines, but this unfortunately didn’t continue on to the ballad, during which he decided we should do a dance sans apparatus. it was not particularly good, but what i remember most is my end position; i didn’t have an exact coordinate – i just needed to end up a few yards behind chris bouquot and off to his left. i can’t remember what i ate for lunch yesterday, but i remember a field position from 14 years ago…

8 “the hustle” and “there’s a kind of hush”: when i was little, i was encouraged to listen to any and all of my parents’ record albums. mom and dad didn’t restrict me to “kiddie music” nor did they expect themselves to live on a steady stream of trite educational songs. (also, i suspect that there wasn’t the market on kid songs that there is today.) one of the albums my mom would play fairly regularly was a “workout album.” on one side, there was a selection of six or seven songs with a perky voice calling out the dance/aerobic moves. on the other side were the same songs, sans instructions. both “the hustle” and “there’s a kind of hush” were on this album, so they make me think of dancing around in our awesome black-white-and-chrome living room in huntington with my mom.

8 “my perogative” by bobby brown: we danced to this in a jazz class… there are specific dance moves that go with “i see nothing wrong/ with spreading myself around” and “ev’rybody’s talkin / all this stuff about me”. i feel compelled to do them to this day. maybe if you’re good, i’ll record the moves and upload them…

8 “super trouper” by abba: this was my favorite abba song as a kid. we had a van for long trips, and my dad wisely installed an 8-track player with headphones next to my seat in the back. (that’s right, i said 8-track.) this way both my parents and i could listen to what we wanted. when i was four, my favorite 8-tracks were abba’s the album, a sesame street album, the beach boys’ greatest hits, and hooked on classics. my freshman year in college, i found myself in the cac’s concert theatre during a scenic design class. victor pointed to the back of the house to show us the large professional spotlights. “those are called super troupers,” he told us. “OH!” i exclaimed half a minute later. “THAT’S what they meant in the abba song!” i had always assumed (hey, i was four when i memorized the words) that it meant trouper as in someone who put up with something, like being lonely while on tour – being a trouper. victor glanced over at me, rolled his eyes, and said, “seriously? stop talking, gibson.” this would not be the first OR the last time he said this exact phrase...

8 “don’t stand so close to me” by the police, and “private eyes” by hall and oats: I had a small record player when i was young that played 45’s. these were my first two 45’s ever, and i played them over and over.

8 “satellite” by dmb: i already owned the album, so i’m not entirely sure why this reminds me of sitting around a pool table at a bar in college. i’m not even sure which bar – though i think it was probably the barn, as it was owned by a friend’s brother and we always got in for free. for whatever reason, i remember sitting with john and commenting, “oh, i like this song” as it came on. then we – and the other assorted people with us – starting discussing jam bands. unimportant, really, but i think of it every time.

8 “tootsie roll”: luckily i don’t hear this song very often, as it is a stupid, stupid song. however, it’s burned in my memory because of kenny and jason, two fellow theatre students. i don’t remember why the three of us always traveled together from the evansdale campus to downtown; i lived above the student union (stupid honors program) instead of in evansdale like every other creative arts student, but i can’t remember if jason and kenny did too, or if we had a class together. either way, the three of us often scaled the nine bajillion stairs from the bottom of the mountain, where the prt station was, to the top, where everything else lived. (and i’m not kidding about the stairs. we counted them once, and it came out to three hundred and something. and that was just to the mountainlair – there were several more flights to get up to my dorm. remind me to tell the “alice in wondershit” story at a later date.) one day, for no apparent reason, one of them burst out with the song, the other joined in, and they danced their way up the stairs as they sang about the moves. once they realized how obnoxious this was, they repeated the performance frequently. made me laugh (almost) every time.

8 “the end of the world (as we know it)” by r.e.m.: john and i are singers. we sing along with every song on the radio if we know all the words or even (or sometimes especially) if we don’t. dale, however never joins it. he enjoys the music and will bop along, but he leaves the singing to the rest of us – except on one occasion. we were driving around pittsburgh when this song came on the radio. dale then proceeded to sing every lyric of the song correctly. if you’ve heard the song, you know it contains a lot of random words and phrases sung quickly through the verses. john and i stared at dale for a verse or so and then burst out laughing; it was so out of character for him that it became hysterical. dale looked around at us and kept asking, “what? what’s so funny?”

as i think of others, i'll post them - in the meantime i leave you with an interesting mish-mash of music...

8 note: the quote at the beginning of this blog is from the book love is a mix tape by rob sheffield - a brilliant memoir of life and love by a contributing editor of rolling stone. it's lovely and sad and inspiring and funny and real, and you should go read it.

Ham!

for a few years in college, my friends dale and annie lived in a house on willie st. this was our central headquarters and crash pad. it was the closest place to walk to after a night downtown, a convenient “rest stop” between classes (when walking all the way back to my house in south park was out of the question), and just generally where we’d gravitate when we couldn’t think of anything else to do. neither john nor i had a key to the place – which, in retrospect was very odd, considering the alternative – so we became adept at breaking in through the window in the spare room. lest you think this illegal or shady, please understand that annie is the one who figured out the best method for breaking in and had us all do “trial runs” to make sure we could do it safely and effectively. (of course, the definitions of “safe” and “effective” varied in direct proportion to how much alcohol we had consumed, but that’s beside the point.)

just behind this house was a street that would occasionally shut down for a block party. this was extremely convenient, and we took advantage of it when we could. the first “official” block party (read: legal) happened sophomore year. several bands were scheduled to play throughout the evening, including kind insight, made up of fellow theatre students. while there was definitely plenty of mind-altering substances about, i only indulged in the alcoholic kind. however, because there was quite a lot of “alternative smoking” going on, i ended up with quite the contact buzz without so much as touching the stuff. so did everyone in a three block radius, probably. it didn’t take long for the munchies to set in, so john, ferruso, tony, and i set off for the dairy mart just down the hill.

okay, two bits of background info: one, wvu is built on the side of a mountain – when i say “down the hill” i’m not talking about a gentle slope on a straight road. i’m talking a winding, mountain road complete with blind turns and a steep grade. the store we were headed to was no more than a block away, but there were a few sharp twists in the road along the way. (trust me, this is imperative to the story, so just do your best to imagine it.) and two, “dairy mart” is a chain of convenience stores in the area, and they sell (or sold, anyway) fresh, warm calzones that were the best drunk food ever. the most popular calzones were the ham and cheese, and the pepperoni. they made three cheese ones too, but not as many as the others; by the end of the day, cheese calzones were hard to find.

the trip down was fairly uneventful. once there, we ordered our calzones and wandered back up to the party. there were no cheese calzones left, so john, being vegetarian, had opted for something else - probably something equally healthy like zingers and more cigarettes. i didn’t eat either ham or pepperoni at the time, so i opted for the ham and cheese; the ham was in four or five large slices and were therefore easy to take out and discard. i began the discard process as we headed back up the hill. now, remember, i’m a little tipsy with a good contact buzz going on. to entertain my friends – and myself – i took out one piece of ham at a time, yelled, “ham!” as a warning, and then tossed the ham into the street. “wouldn’t it be funny if you hit a car with that?” john asked as he laughed at me. and then on cue, as i yelled “ham!” and tossed the pork product street-ward, a small convertible emerged from behind the curve. the ham slice smacked the windshield, dead center. the convertible braked and we heard a “what the hell?” in the near distance. at this point, we were so hysterical with laughter that we had to sit down on someone’s front steps before we fell over. i couldn't hear the car coming over the sounds of mellow music and shouts and catcalls. the sun was only starting to set, so the car didn't have it's lights on for me to see. the timing was just that good. just as we started to be able to breathe again, we heard, “is that HAM? did someone throw HAM at us?” from the guys in the car. fresh laughter broke out and it took us a while to start back up the hill. it took us a lot longer to stop randomly yelling out “ham!” and bursting into giggles…

Welcome to the Heart of Gold

i am in ft. lauderdale visting john for the week. i flew because i found a $23 roundtrip flight on spirit (how do they keep running these specials? i'm sure they should be bankrupt by now...) and that's a lot cheaper than the 100 or so dollars i would spend on gas and tolls to drive here. last night, i got off the plane, made my way downstairs, and out to passenger pick-up. there is a small vestibule area there; you pass though one set of automatic sliding doors, walk through a short hallway, and then through another set of doors that lead outside. i decided to forgo the exit that everyone else was using (and therefore jamming up) and move on to the empty one on the left. as i activated the first set of doors and walked through them, chimes sounded - dum da da dum DUM! - and masculine, computerized voice said, "you are beautiful."

i'm sorry, did i take a wrong turn and end up on a stolen state-of-the-art spaceship? did i just pass through sirius cybernetics' latest product? because it's really the only explaination for complementary sliding doors in an airport. if so, where's marvin to cynically complain about them, and what about ford and arthur? and where's my tea? and if it's not the case, is there someone sitting in some booth saying these things and watching for reactions? because i didn't hear any of other passageways making comments as i passed....