I’m still working on my recap of our trip to Detroit, even though each day that passes makes it more irrelevant but whatever. It’s my blog, I’ll post what I want and you’ll read it and you’ll like it. In fact, next week I might post about Valentine’s Day and how wack it was. If you don’t read it, that just shows how uncommitted you are to this relationship.
In fact, this isn’t working out. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s what I’m going through. But let’s have angry and weepy break-up blog sex real quick before I help you find your Wii games. Jerk.
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Anyway, I have this vague sickness going on and it’s weird. It hasn’t knocked me out and only makes me feel really crappy every so often. My throat is sore but not killing me and I’m getting what can only be described as hot flashes. I must have that throatal menopause that I’ve heard absolutely nothing about.
Last night I went to bed pretty early and when the husband came up a little bit later, he found me drenched in sweat and panting. And I imagine he resembled Bill Murray in Ghostbusters when he said of would-be girlfriend Dana Barrett, “Okay…so…she’s a dog.”
He popped a thermometer in my mouth and I didn’t have a fever, so I don’t know what happened.
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I’m kind of not watching the Penguins game right now because I am HIGHLY concerned at this point and instead have been attempting to take a picture of the baby and the cat with whatever photographic devices in reach (ie, husband’s iPhone, my laptop). They fell asleep next to each other on the couch, but with the cat’s butt perilously close to the baby’s head and god damn if that ain’t one for the baby book shameless mommy blog.
“And here’s the time that the neutered cat teabagged you…”
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All of this is to say that I’m not totally “with it” right now, so bear with me. Oh ALSO I have to do a “field observation” for my class on Friday, so I’m going to watch the staff at Starbucks interact from 9:30 to 11 a.m. And you know what my sophomore classmates said when we decided on that time? They said, “Hmm…well, yeah…I guess I can get up that early.” ISN’T THAT THE MOST PRECIOUS THING YOU’VE EVER HEARD?
So, through a weird twist of events, I’m attending BlogHer in July and I figure since I’m going to a blogging conference, I should probably do some of that there blogging that I’ve heard so much about. (Aside: I’m obviously going through some pretty serious writer’s block and I’m trying not to freak out about it but…I’m freaking out about it.)
We were in Detroit over the long weekend for the DEMF (Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival for you squares). This was my sixth annual trip there and, as usual, there were many hijinks and good times and a few episodes of drama.
We drove there somewhat early on Thursday with our friends Adam and Carleton. We talked a lot about Pittsburgh and the state of music there currently (nutshell: fucking grim).
When we got to Detroit, our first stop was Archer Record Pressing. Adam had to pick up the latest release from Technoir and the husband was picking up the first release on the label that he recently started, Love What You Feel. The record is by a guy who goes by the name of Disco Nihilist and do you like how I don’t write here regularly for months and then I pop up with this entry about records and Technoirs and disco nihilists? You love me.
Anyway, Archer was a really REALLY neat place. We were too late in the day to see any actual records being pressed but the guy that owns/runs the place gave us a tour and a brief explanation of how records come to be.
That’s the husband checking out one of the records. It may not look like it, but I could tell that he was really excited to finally be holding it in his hands. He had worked really hard on it and it was something that’s he’s been wanting to do forever, so it was cool to capture this moment.
We stopped at this place, Simpson’s Records, which Carleton told us about. It’s been in business for over 40 years. Detroit has a TON of independent businesses. Because it’s so spread out and public transit isn’t very good, these businesses operate in markets/neighborhoods that consist of people of very limited means that need to attend to all of their shopping within walking distance (at least, this is what I could gather just from observing). So, these small businesses usually double or triple up their services. Simpson’s sells gospel records, candy and snacks, and you can get your taxes done there. We also passed a barbershop/barbecue restaurant, which sounds gross but I can assure you that the barbecue was outside, away from flying hair.
Carleton is from the Detroit area, so we drove him to his house before making our way to our motel. His mom is currently kicking cancer’s ass and she and I talked about my dad’s recent struggle. Then I made a cancer joke and I think, uh, it might have been too soon because she just kind of looked at me and I felt like the world’s largest jackass.
After we were settled in our room, we went in search of a place to watch the Penguin game. Weirdly enough, Hockeytown was closed. I don’t know what kind of managerial genius you have to be to decide to be closed during the Stanley Cup playoffs. But I had checked the PG’s list of Steeler bars and already had a back-up place that was likely to be Pittsburgh-friendly. I didn’t see any Steelers paraphernalia there and the bar itself was pretty butt, but they were showing the game and they were nice enough to turn off the Stevie Ray Vaughn garbage that they were blasting so that we could hear what was going on.
Friday was full of record shopping at Melodies and Memories and picking up various characters as they arrived in the city. Frank flew in from NYC, Kenny took the train from Ireland (not really), and another friend…we’ll call him Hot Mess, flew in from Atlanta. Incidentally, the husband had described Kenny to me as his Irish doppelganger and that turned out to be a creepily accurate description. Lookit:
Kenny, by the way, was rarely without a drink in his hand the whole weekend and never appeared to be the slightest bit intoxicated. He’s kind of my hero, especially considering my poor performance later on that evening, which we’ll get to in a bit.
We met up with other various members of the Pittsburgh/Pittsburgh-friendly crew for dinner at some touristy but semi-decent Tex-Mex place in Greektown and then started to prepare for our first night out on the town.
Since we had some time to kill we drove around Detroit for awhile, checking out various parts of the city that we’d never seen despite all of our trips there. You probably know that things in Detroit are not great. We saw a lot of heartbreaking poverty and so much evidence of the glittering Seventh City that Detroit used to be. The population is now around 800,000 which is roughly four times the size of Pittsburgh. So it still seems huge to me. But when you see all of the abandoned buildings, you realize that at some point not that long ago, all of those huge buildings were needed to house and employ all of the residents. And now they just sit there, neglected and unnecessary. It really hit me just how many people left, out of fear or necessity.
We also saw some of the most gorgeous mansions sitting on the most pristine lawns, just a few steps away from burned out houses, which are the playgrounds for children whose parents may or may not be watching over them.
Remnants of wealth and a healthy middle class represent the entire life cycle of capitalism in one city block. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful, because out of this, nothing is left but life and survival and tears and thoughts and joy. And as the festival always teaches us, wonderful music is born from that pain and joy.
Later, Hot Mess showed up at our room wearing a Corona tshirt and swimming trunks and bearing a bottle of cheap champagne. He was soon followed by Kent, our buddy who we hadn’t seen in two years!
The “official” kick-off parties weren’t really tickling our fancies but the husband had heard about a house music night at a club not terribly far from where we were staying. I was already kind of tired before we went out, so Kenny and I went to the party store two doors down where I procured some vodka and Red Bull. The elixir was effective…perhaps too effective. See, the vodka gets you drunk (read: rowdy), while the Red Bull wakes you up (read: hyper). Rowdy and hyper. Really not a good combination.
Since it’s getting late in the day and this post is shaping up to be rather epic, I’m going to slap a “To be continued…” here. But, here’s a preview:
Dudes! Double-yoo-tee-eff is up with still not being able to write here on the regular?
Spring semester is officially over and I’m happy to report that I did very well, grades-wise. However, I’m taking a summer class and that started Monday. It’s only six weeks long and it’s the last required course that I have for my MA (just one more elective in the fall!).
The class itself is fine. It’s an organizational behavior course through the business school that is mostly made up of undergrads. I am the sole humanities dork. The rest of those guys are in engineering and chemistry and computer science and iwillmakemoremoneythanyouism.
There are many hilarious bits in this whole thing. Like how someone actually snickered when I stated that I was a professional writing person. And today when we were talking about these principles of human resource management that touted such crazy notions as paying good wages, not treating them like shit, etc. The instructor asked what the overarching philosophy was of the principles and the undergrads were pulling out big words like…uh…”derivative” or something. And I raised my hand and said, “Uh, that employees are people and not batteries?” My classmates got that look of faint recognition on their faces. I hope I didn’t blow their minds too much.
There’s also a vague (so far) anti-union feel to the readings, which isn’t at all surprising. I’m just mostly amused by the language used. Like, “Such-and-such manager was successful because he was able to communicate with the labor people.” I get the impression that these young business students are, perhaps indirectly, taught that people in unions are all barbaric assholes who want nothing more than to harsh your capitalist mellow.
Me, my mom, and my dad, circa 1992
I am not union and, because of my line of work, probably never will be. But many of my family members and friends are and it’s a little troubling to think that their future managers are being brought up with this attitude. I’m not saying that all unions are perfect and I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of assholes in unions. Just…you know…remember that these are PEOPLE (there’s that word again) that we’re talking about.
ANYWAY, I was going to tell you all about this little confrontation that I had with the manager of this bar that the husband was playing records at on Saturday, but I’m almost over it. And, yes, I wrote angry and vulgar couplets about him and his mother and it made me feel better.
We’re going to Detroit this weekend for the music festival and I kind of agreed to take one of the quizzes online at 10:30 on Friday morning, when I will most likely be hungover from our first night in Detroit and post-Penguins festivities, so that should be cute.
Friday night, I went out (whoa!) to see Stewart Walker and a few of our friends play some records. I almost didn’t make it, as I felt like total crap due to the whole female experience playing some ridiculous joke on me. However, I rallied, but insisted on grabbing some libations on our way to the event.
It was packed, so I didn’t have anywhere to stash my beers. So I just plopped the bag in between my feet and danced in place over it. I didn’t want to stay in this position for long, though, since having glass so close in a room full of people seems stupid, so I just drank four of the beers rather quickly and gave two away. Success!
Of course, due to the humidity of the crowded room and my guzzling, I walked out of there looking somewhat insane, what with my frizzy hair reaching startlingly new poofy heights and hiccuping. On the upside, I couldn’t feel my cramps anymore.
Saturday, I woke up late and got right to work on one of my final papers. Our house was feeling a little stale but it was too chilly to open windows, so I decided to light some incense.
If I had written out an itinerary for yesterday, it would look something like this:
8:30ish – 9:30 a.m.: Wake up, swear a little for not getting up a little earlier since the baby has Little League parade in an hour. Rush through breakfast and dressing and whatnot.
9:30 – 10:30 a.m.: Parade through neighborhood with the baby and 200 other cuties in knee socks and cleats. Forget to put sunscreen on. Face, chest, and arms burn quite nicely.
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Loiter around ball field for awhile, waiting for LL season opener to begin. My parents, my grandmother, my husband’s parents, and his grandmother all show up for the big day. I am relieved to see my dad looking and acting pretty healthy, despite being in the midst of chemo. Everyone gets along, which is amazing, and I choose to chuckle at my grandmother’s paranoid insistence that my son stand absolutely still to minimize his chances of getting horrifically hurt by running down the hill and climbing the bleachers. Local politicians are politicking, shaking hands, and helping to hand out hot dogs and Little Hugs, including the mayor. I notice that after a certain amount of time spent amongst “my people,” I start to sound like Gina from Greg & Donny.
12:00 – 2:30 p.m.: Play ball! Baby does well in his first real game. Even takes the opportunity to slide into home. Teammate hits a grand slam (the Pirates should consider hiring him) and their team wins. Sweet! Somewhere in this time period, my cat comes across a half-drunk cup of chocolate milk that the baby left sitting in the living room and knocks it onto the floor, leaving a nice brown splash pattern on the rug that will dry and set very nicely while we’re gone.
2:30 – 3:00 p.m.: Run home, shower my dusty kid and send him off with husband’s dad to go bike-riding so I can work on homework.
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.: Half-heartedly work on final project for school. Try not to freak out over how much crap I have to do in the next two weeks.
5:00 – 5:30 p.m.: Cat curls up on my notebooks, gives me a look and purrs. My eyelids start to droop.
5:30 – 6:00 p.m.: I give in to the cat’s hypnotic powers and take a much needed nap.
6:00 – 7:00 p.m.: Get up and shower since the husband will be home soon and we’re going on a date to the drive in to see Adventureland. Husband arrives home and cleans the car, specifically the windshield so we can see the movie, while I’m fighting with a pair of shorts that totally fit me last year but are now throwing up a lot of resistance. My waist, much like the universe, is ever-expanding.
7:00 p.m.: Husband and I set off toward the movie. I’m excited since I’ve never been to the drive in.
7:30 – 8:15 p.m.: Hit horrendous traffic due to a poorly-planned detour taking motorists away from construction happening en route to the airport. We go back and forth on whether or not we can actually make the movie, which starts at 8:10. We finally decide to just drive out there and if we miss it we’ll go to a later showing at a regular theater near our house.
8:15 p.m.: Hear hideous squealing of brakes behind us and then suddenly realize that my head has tried to go from upright to 90 degree angle with my body, somehow without taking any path between the two positions. I say things like, “Oooohhhh,” and “Auuuughhhh,” as I realize that we were harshly rear-ended.
8:16 – 8:30 p.m.: Of course, our new insurance cards are not in the car but we get the other guy’s information. I eventually stop shaking. This is the second car accident I’ve been in. The first was when I was 16 and riding with a newly-licensed friend. That accident was so minor that I didn’t even realize what had happened until my friend tearfully filled me in. This one, while still very minor, was much more frightening and painful and gives me new perspective on how much serious car accidents suck. I burned my foot a few years ago by spilling boiling water on it. It was a small area but was tremendously painful and took months to heal and gave me new perspective on how much it sucks to be a serious burn victim. So, burns and car accidents are officially off of my bucket list because fuck that ish.
8:30 – 9:00 p.m.: We’re definitely way too late for the drive in movie, so we make our way to a theater a few miles away. We have some time to kill, so we go to Sonic and I note that at least we’re getting some drive in experience tonight.
9:00 – 9:15 p.m.: We get ready to make our way across the shopping center to the movie theater and discover that the car won’t start. AWESOME. Husband says, “Fuck it. We’re going to the movie. I don’t care,” and enlists a fellow Sonic patron to help him push the car into the parking lot across the way.
9:15 – 9:30 p.m.: Husband and I walk to the movie theater and get into a quick argument because he says something that I don’t hear, gets mad at me for not hearing, and WON’T JUST REPEAT WHAT HE SAID. GAAAHHHH.
9:30 – 9:45 p.m.: Wait in line for tickets because the theater made the brilliant managerial decision to have one ticketing booth open on a Saturday night. Husband goes in to grab seats while I go to the concession stand, which also has only one register open. I come very close to starring in my own episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm while the young girls in front of me order 60 overpriced items and then have to rethink their entire order when they hear that the Icee machine is broken. A teenager with a pitiable case of acne and a large crystal around his neck opens another register. The people in front of me go to him, while the rest of us stay in one line, wordlessly agreeing to alternate registers as they become available. Except for the guy behind me who goes to the new register, essentially cutting in front of me. I hate humanity.
9:46 p.m.: I angrily shuffle into the theater to find that I’ve missed the first five minutes of the movie. Fucking whatever, man.
9:46 – 11:30 p.m.: The movie is good and very, very sweet and makes Kennywood look even more magical and awesome. I love Pittsburgh.
11:30 – 12:00 p.m.: We wait by our car for the father-in-law to arrive with jumper cables. We study the damage to the rear bumper and the husband says, “I wonder if that will make it hard to close the trunk.” As he says this, he opens the trunk, which makes an alarming THWONK noise. The husband grins at me, because we both know that the trunk will no longer be closing. He tries to get me to stand on the bumper while he jumps on the trunk lid. I fear for my toes and the few people still at the shopping center wonder what the hell we’re doing. The husband and I have to chuckle at the day’s series of events and I give him some kisses because we went on a date, dammit, in spite of everything.
12:00 – 12:30 p.m.: The father-in-law arrives with jumper cables and we’re able to drive home. When we finally arrive at our house, five hours after we left to go see a two-hour movie, I realize that I wasn’t wearing my seat belt, despite being in a car accident just a few hours prior.
Sunday: Hoping absolutely nothing happens today. Edit: Nevermind. The baby is having breathing trouble and is now passed out in bed. Highly unusual. AWESOME.
I feel the need to warn you that this post is kind of potty-humor-centric. Sort of a Farrelly Brothers/Judd Apatow movie wrapped in bacon and deep fried. It’s just a collection of weird/gross/immature things that have happened in the past few days.
Under the category of Boogers
The baby likes to help me cook, which is usually a good activity for us to do together (though the oppressively small kitchen and its tendency to drive me to drink sometimes make this impossible because my dear son if you don’t GET OUT OF MY WAY RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD!). The other night I was making pizza cobbler and the baby was helping me to put the dough on top.
I’ve had a tough time getting him to remember to cover his mouth when he sneezes and when he does I like to point out that that was a good thing. You can already see where this is heading, right? So, he sneezed and covered his mouth…with the hand that was holding a piece of dough.
“Um, it’s good that you covered your mouth but try to do that with the hand that’s NOT holding our dinner. kthxbi.”
Under the category of Crotches
The baby was goofing off the other night while I was nagging him to do something…probably going to bed or getting a shower or something.
And he just wound up and punched me in the crotch.
Like…
It wasn’t a hard punch, so it didn’t hurt. It was more dramatic sparring with a slightly slowed-down, kung fu, “HHHWWWWAAAAHHHH!” flare. But still. Demoralizing.
But I paid it forward. The husband and I have a tendency to act like brothers; lots of pinching and noogies and wedgies and trash-talking. This recently prompted the baby to ask us why we married each other if we hate each other so much. (Spite.)
This afternoon, as we were heading into the baby’s school to pick him up, we were engaged in an epic battle of Stop-Touching-Me-I’m-Not-Touching-You-See-I’m-Not-Touching-You, when I ended things by punching him in the crotch. PWNED.
Under the category of Pubes
I really dislike stray pubes. They’re certainly my least favorite aspect of cleaning the bathroom and I get really skeeved if I come into contact with them. I just hate how they’re so unapologetically coarse and all, “Nyah, I was on a crotch and now I’m on your towel!”
I was in the shower earlier and as I was rinsing off my washrag I noticed a pube on my hand. Ick. So I stuck my hand under the water to rinse it off…and the spray shot it off my hand and right into my eye. I had to dig a pube out of my eyeball. Like, who has that happen to them? Only me. I’m still so irritated about it.
Back when a dude broke into our house, and after the initial shock wore off, the husband and I had some questions. Like, why would the guy take the cumbersome and not very valuable DVDs and not the lightweight and higher-street-value Wii? (By the way, ne’er-do-wells who may be reading, that is NOT an invitation to finish what that jackass started.) The cop chuckled and shook his head at our naivete.
“You would steal that because you have common sense. Criminals like this guy do NOT have common sense,” he explained.
A lack of common sense is probably responsible for the events that transpired earlier this evening.
The baby’s baseball practices started tonight. The husband and I were chilling on the bleachers, giggling at our scrawny kid rounding the bases. A mom behind me yelled at someone: “GO FIGHT SOMEWHERE ELSE! THERE’S KIDS HERE!” I jerked around and saw two young men, one no longer wearing a shirt, walking toward their cars and continuing to argue. The husband and I shook our heads at their stupidity and went back to watching the practice.
I turned around again to see if they were still arguing and noticed that one of the guys was pointing something at the other guy. Something silver. And shiny.
“Hey,” I said to the husband. “Does that guy have a gun?”
In retrospect, my reaction to this new information was really puzzling. I turned back around and went back to watching the practice, not really concerned that someone was brandishing a firearm just a few yards from where my son was. Luckily, the other parents had their BAD THING thinking caps on and yelled at the coaches to get the kids out of the immediate area and started calling 911.
I turned back around and watched the rest of the events unfold. From what I could gather, the two guys were fighting over a woman and there may have been some custody issues. Other parents went over to yell at the guy, but I tend to stay away from people with guns. Yosemite Sam’s girlfriend became irritated with the confrontational parents and whined, “He put the gun away! Gawd! What’s your problem?”
No common sense. I don’t know who shows up at a kids’ baseball practice to start some shit. I don’t know who brings a gun to a kids’ baseball practice. I don’t know who draws a gun at a kids’ baseball practice. And I really don’t know who asks such a dumb fucking question as, “What’s your problem?” when a gun is pulled with 50 kids, including presumably one of their own, nearby.
Thanks to Facebook, I’m pretty close to collecting every person I’ve ever met in my entire life. The connections that I have to people that add me now are getting more and more fuzzy, like, “Oh, yes, we did have World History together in 9th grade. What have you been up to since that day that we learned about the Battle of Hastings? Harold FTW, right?”
I kind of like it, though. I mean, I imagine I should be lamenting the time just a year or so ago when, if I reflected on so-and-so, all I could do is wonder what they were up to. At best, I could Google them but those almost always led me to pointless genealogy sites. Now I can quickly find out who they married, how many kids they have and, usually, what they’re doing at any given moment.
But I think it’s kind of nice, at least for a social phobe like me, to have that bare minimum of contact at all times. I get to avoid that awkward conversation if I happen to bump into someone on the street: “Oh, hi! Great to see you. How’ve you been? Okay, I’ve got to get going/do something other than this.”
Anyway, my favorite thing to do now is if someone from high school adds me on Facebook and they’ve turned out to be hardcore Republicans, I read their wall back to November 4 to see if they got all pissy.
What? I’ve never made any claims to being sane or mature.
Also, my kid startled me by knocking over a chair in the dining room. I replied, “Yo, what the FUCK?” I’m just going to start apologizing now for how he turns out. He never stood a chance.
Both my husband and I unintentionally participated in a moronic American St. Patrick’s Day tradition: green or “Irish-themed” garments. He wore a Guinness tshirt and I wore a green sweater. I didn’t think of the significance until someone at work pointed it out, all like, “Oh, of course you’re wearing green because it’s St. Patrick’s Day and you’re Irish!” Grumble.
I did, however, do one corny Irish thing. I made Irish Car Bomb cupcakes, which admittedly have a rather offensive name but are so SO good. I brought some into work yesterday and three people bit into them around the same time and all collectively groaned in delight. I tried one last night but it had been in the fridge and I hadn’t let it warm up enough. The now solid ganache filling fell out and the icing fell off and rolled around on the floor. I had to go searching for it under the couch and that was a proud moment in my life, let me tell ya. “Honey, lift up the couch, my cleavage didn’t catch that mouthful, dammit.”
Anyway, this post is titled “irish kelly” for a reason. Years ago, I was a rather active participant in the “rave scene” (ugh that phrase makes me barf) in Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas. You may be surprised to know that back in the late 90s and early 00s, Pittsburgh had a thriving dance scene, with multiple large events every weekend and plenty of smaller things during the week. I think between 1999 and 2000, I got a total of 15 hours of sleep.
Now, I’m sure I’ve conjured up plenty of frightening images for you. And while I did partake of the “party favors” for a short period, I was not 20/20 special report fodder. I did not wear pounds of plastic kiddie jewelry, my pants did not double as parachutes, and I did not regularly collapse into a puddle with a chattering jaw and dilated pupils to work on catching mono from a guy named Smurf. I mostly just had a blast being young and taking advantage of my total lack of responsibilities and my now non-existent ability to stay up for as long as I like by going to parties and dancing my butt off.
I did, however, have a “rave name.” Rave names, of course, were the nicknames that people gave to each other to enforce this identity that we were part of “the other,” the alternative, the underground, the secretive, none of which was really true by the late 90s when raving was firmly above ground, peppered with the odd renegade party under a bridge or in a cellar somewhere.
Raving’s inextricable relationship with the nascent internet probably aided the creation of rave names. Party information was passed along via email and message boards and I was on an email list called pb-cle-raves (Pittsburgh-Cleveland Raves) for many years. As nearly everyone with an online identity goes by something other than the name that they were born with, these identities bled into raving.
Many people had nauseatingly sweet and sunny rave names like Sunshine and Bumblebee and Rainbow. Others came into raving in the age of Hackers and cyberpunk (see also: my buddy count zer0), and then there were guys like my husband’s crew of friends, who had rave names like “Hector.”
Mine was Irish Kelly. At the time that I subscribed to pb-cle, my email address was CCeallaigh at AOL (ha!). Ceallaigh is Kelly in Gaelic (so I’m told), but of course someone else on AOL already had that handle, so I added an extra C. Nobody, least of all me, could pronounce that name. To add to the confusion, there was another Kelly who was one of the biggest rave promoters in the city. To differentiate between us, she was Kelly Downlow (her promotion company’s name) and I became Irish Kelly, owing to my Irish-themed n00b email address.
I noticed a little bit ago that I have a gigantic grease stain on my pants that I’ve had a total of three months. I now remember that I got the stain because of my poorly handled treatment after an unfortunate egg roll incident about a week ago. I put very little effort into my appearance as it is, and if I continue along this path, I will be in sweatpants and Tweetie Bird tshirts by summer.
…
I’m taking the bus into work this week, which takes me into downtown. I haven’t been downtown in the mornings in quite some time and had forgotten how wild it can be. Yesterday, I was hit on by a very forward but nice construction worker who told me that, were he and I to have a baby, we could name it Butterscotch. I then found myself in the midst of a fight between two women and man, all of whom seemed to be in the depths of some kind of substance dependency. Woman 1 had insisted to Woman 2 that cigarettes cost $5.50, but Woman 2 soon found out that cigarettes actually cost $5.57 and when the fuck was Woman 1 going to pay her back that 7 cents? And, you know, money’s money. My only beef was that they were SO LOUD at 8:30 in the morning. And finally, a man rode by on a motorcycle blasting some song about Jesus.
This all happened within about 10 minutes.
…
The husband and I went to see Margaret Cho last Saturday. She was awesome, of course, though she’s started to incorporate some songs into her act that I’m kind of “meh” about. I’ve never really gotten into my body issue stuff on here because, frankly, I get sick of thinking about it since it’s been a constant neurosis of mine since I was about six years old. But whether or not I have ever fit into any traditional molds of beauty (and honestly fuck those) her words on the matter echo through my head all the time:
“I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.”
Also, after the show I finally got a goddamned Shamrock Shake and it was sooooo good.
