I have had approximately enough of the Palin family in all its fame-whoring capacity. I feel sorry for Todd Palin who has, smartly, stayed out of the limelight, for the most part. I feel badly for him that he married an idiot and produced more little idiots, all of whom seem to want to be as famous as their mommy by any means necessary and without actually having to work ever.
Sarah Palin had a job in public service and the quit to be a tv star. And now she’s thinking about running for president?? Pardon my proverbial French, but fuck that shit!! I know I’m not alone in feeling like she abandoned the public whom she was sworn to serve as a governor; so why is she a qualified, adequate candidate for the presidency?? People don’t become president so that they can have their own t-shirts, bitch. Get that through your pageant-queen thick head. I’d rather vote for Vinny from Jersey Shore. He has a college degree and is good-looking. Like, aren’t those the qualifications??
This bitch is so dense she unapologetically makes up words when at a loss for one that actually exists. Okay, so we all make typos, we have all been at a loss for words and said the wrong thing, but to repeatedly, that means “over and over, on more than one occasion,” use the word “refudiate,” which carries whatever definition she wants it to at the time, and when called on the fact that no such word exists compares herself to Shakespeare, stating gleefully that she’s adding to the living language. Actually, Rain Woman, that’s why we have linguists and Jay-Z. AND, as of 2 days ago, Sarah Palin’s new idiot word, “refudiate,” has been awarded Word of the Year for 2010 by the New Oxford English Dictionary. Please, please, please stop talking, Mrs. Palin. You’re ruining the language for everyone else. Has anyone checked on Noam Chomsky?? Made sure her now-infamous babbling nonsense hasn’t caused him to put a gun in his mouth??
I feel sorry for Todd Palin that his grandson has half of Levi Johnston’s chromosomes because his daughter is not only a boyfriend-stealing, back-stabbing uber-wench who should have gotten her ass handed to her by that former friend of hers who had him first, and that she was too fuckin’ stupid to a) use birth control or b) abstain, like her supposedly-staunch Republican family told her to do. Her mother, as then-governor and one-time really-embarrassing-vice-presidential-candidate had a reputation to uphold. Had Mrs. Palin ever been at home to ingrain that in her child’s fat head, then perhaps we wouldn’t have little Twat, or whatever ridiculous knuckle-dragging hick name Bristol and Levi selected for their son.
Oh, and Levi; poor, long-suffering Levi. His mother and sister make the Clampetts look like the Royal Tenenbaums. Good lord, that boy never had a chance. I’m not even going to go there except to say that Kathy Griffin was the best thing that ever happened to that fuckup. Now he wants to be the mayor of Wasilla?? My ass. On Foursquare, perhaps.
I’m going to take a little aside, here, and acknowledge that just because Bristol Palin is a teen mom does not make her a bad person, in-and-of itself. I got knocked up when I was seventeen and chose to be a teen mom. What chaps my ass about her is that she’s never had a real job, and most likely never will. She won’t experience what it’s like to go on an interview for a position she’s grossly overqualified for just to have money for groceries and gasoline. What are the chances she’ll one day be selling her old shit on eBay so she’ll have money to buy her kid Christmas presents?? She’s completely out of touch with what it’s like to be a teen mom, or any kind of mom, in the real world having been supported by her rich-ass family the entire time her child has been alive. That is, until recently when she began giving “do as I say, not as I do” abstinence advocacy speeches to young people for $30,000 a pop. That’s someone’s annual salary. I’m sure that’s difficult for Miss Palin to grasp, since she’s never been asked to live for an entire year on that amount, and probably doesn’t even know what an annual salary is since she’s hired goons to do all her math for her. A real teen parent has to struggle, even if he or she does have the support of a family. Most people get jobs and toil for years to get through college. Most of us didn’t have a rich, famous family name to ride upon the coattails of so we could sit back and smile for the covers of magazines and tell everyone what a blessing everything is.
Honestly, if I were one of the Teen Moms of MTV I would be pissed that The Candies Foundation even placed them in the same category for their “The Harsh Truth: Teen Moms Tell All” special. I’m flabbergasted that anyone had the unmitigated gall to think that what Bristol Palin goes through on a daily basis is anything compared to what Maci, Amber, Farrah and Catelynn go through. Anyone with the audacity to even compare them does not know what they’re talking about, and frankly it’s insulting to all the hard work that the Teen Moms do. Yes, they get paid for being stars on MTV, but they don’t have rich mommies and daddies or come from famous families. They’re tv stars to raise awareness that teen pregnancy can happen to normal girls (which Bristol is far from) and to keep themselves from having to stand in line for government cheese, like the rest of us had to do. They’re making an investment in their futures and their children’s futures, and their lives are being improved by the money they get from MTV. When has Bristol Palin ever been hurting for money?? I beg you.
I’ve asked a few of my Rethuglican friends what it is about Sarah Palin, and thus far no one has been able to give me an answer that made any dang-ola sense. “She’s just a breath of fresh air” is an ambiguous statement that tells me nothing of why a person would jump on her political bandwagon. One especially disturbing individual said “um, she’s hot.” Yes. That is a good reason to vote for someone who will be representing the public and / or the nation. Some people think Jenna Jameson’s hot; don’t see why this might make her a qualified presidential candidate. However, she did beauty pageants when she was younger, too, and she runs her own business, which Sarah Palin has not, to my knowledge, ever done. So it could be argued that Jenna Jameson, who eats out, sucks off, fucks and fondles people (as well as herself) for a living, is more intelligent than Sarah Palin. Yet, still, I have not received an answer regarding why Mrs. Palin is a qualified candidate to be the PTA president at her kids’ elementary school, let alone the President of the United States. What gives??
I do feel strongly, however, that the mumbling muttonhead who told me he’d vote for Sarah Palin because she’s hot is onto something, because no one would give a damn about her if she were an ugly woman. If she weren’t attractive, no one would want her as the face of anything. Hillary Rodham Clinton is far more qualified to run this country than Sarah Palin is, yet so much of what people say about her is being critical of her looks. Frankly, I think that says a lot about our nation and how shallow we are as a people. The vast majority of Americans would rather have someone pretty to look at to distract us from the fact that our country is being flushed and going swirling in the wake of the second Bush Administration.
Let’s move on, shall we?? Now that Sarah and Bristol are reality tv stars and they have all the fame their little hearts could desire, we have the opportunity to hear from Willow Palin, the high-school sister who has yet to become famous for getting pregnant, shooting animals, being pretty or dancing on tv. This week she emerged from her mother and sister’s large shadow with a string of insults lobbed at a classmate who denounced her mother’s new television show on his own Facebook status. Willow jumped all over him, calling him “fat” and a “faggot” on her own update, calling him out by name. This would, in every other school in America, be called cyber-bullying and the person responsible for the slanderous verbal abuse would be in trouble with their school, but I digress. While I don’t know what action, if any, Willow’s school is taking, Bristol soon got her licks in calling him a “douchebag” and a “shit-talker.” Most normal parents would be embarrassed if their children were caught launching a direct, public verbal attack on someone, especially over something so trivial. The Palins, however, have come to the young ladies’ assist, adamantly maintaining that their girls don’t normally talk like that. Of course their parents think that. They’re too busy being rich and famous to know how their kids talk when they’re not around, which appears to be often. Anyone who thinks their high school kid doesn’t swear has their head so far up their ass they could talk out of their bellybutton.
While Willow is very young, and young people make mistakes and say the wrong thing, she should be held accountable for the way she chose to respond to this boy’s criticism. Bristol, on the other hand, is a grown woman and a mom, and she has no problem smack-talking a high school boy for not liking her mother’s tv show?? All he said was call it a “fail” and the Palin girls unleashed the fury. Why should they be allowed to behave like that?? If any of the rest of us went around verbally assaulting others just for being critical, especially if one perpetrator is an adult and the target is a child, we’d all be on probation right now. Then again, our last names aren’t all Palin, so we don’t get to just do whatever we want.
“Sorry that all you guys are jealous of my families success and you guys aren’t goin to go anywhere with your lives,” Miss Willow issues by way of apology, as if that weren’t the most narcissistic thing she could have possibly said. Spelling and grammatical errors aside, this child is so spoiled, so indulged and so egotistical that she honestly thinks that all the people in the world who don’t like her or her family are jealous. Isn’t constantly thinking that others are jealous of you a symptom of Narcissistic Personality Disorder?? In this case it might just be a symptom of spoiled brat syndrome. Perhaps if the children heard the word “no” once or twice in their lives, or had been taught that other people are entitled to their opinions, too, then this kind of bitchy, inane childish outburst could have been avoided altogether. I do not understand why people who are in the public eye, who have chosen to be there (or in this case have had it chosen for them by a fame-mongering parent), get so upset when someone criticizes them at all. Here this gal is, getting upset over one person saying that her mom’s tv show was “a fail.” You’d think he called Mrs. Palin the devil’s personal harlot by the way she and Bristol reacted. You want to be famous, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to like you, and that when you choose to put yourself in the spotlight you open yourself up to appraisal by others and that not all of what people think will be positive. If you only want to hear how fabulous you and your ego are, stay home and talk into your mirrors, because it’s a big world out there and not everyone is going to like you, or your family, or what you have to say, and no one can change that because we all are free to think whatever we want and say whatever we want to say. That is until we start reaming some random kid a new asshole for not like our mommy’s show. Then we’re crossing a line. However, the children of entitlement wouldn’t know a line if they tripped and fell down the rabbit hole crossing it. And that’s just bad parenting. My kid may act like a mewling brat sometimes, and so might I, but I refuse to stand back and make her excuses for her, or for myself. If she were to choose to run her mouth in such a fashion online, for all and sundry, I think I would have her back and try to help her learn better ways of handling such a situation in the future, but rest assured she would be expected to face the consequences for her actions. Alas, this is not about what I would do. It’s about what the Palins aren’t going to do, which is discipline the children.
This, dear reader, is why I believe that the Palin family are both dangerous and fucked up. They put on pretty smiles and pose for pictures, they talk a good game about love of family and God when, upon closer inspection they appear to have more love for fame and guns. They’re a pack of wild Alaskan hillbillies with the collective intelligence of a wolverine wearing lipstick, or whatever the idiotic allegory Sarah Palin made a few years ago was. It frightens me that people trust this family and believe that they are genuine, decent people. They scare the shit out of me, and not just because they have guns. If they were my neighbors, I’d move. It’s a popular maxim on reality tv shows for one person who doesn’t like another to call that person fake. Well, who’s more fake than the Palins?? And audiences eat it up with a spoon. Why are so many Americans too dense to see through the veneer of down-home appeal to see what they really are: silly, thoughtless, unintelligent fame-whores. Are we that stupid, or are we just too scared to think about how damaged our political system is that we’d rather watch pseudo-politicians do whatever it is Sarah Palin does and, their daughters dancing on tv??
* Alright, so I haven’t met every family in America, therefore it’s possible that there is a more fucked up and dangerous family out there somewhere. At least the ones who beat their babies to death for distracting them from FarmVille, or who kill and maim one another in fits of meth-induced rage are generally not famous and eventually caught and sent to jail where they belong. Meanwhile, the Palins are free to roam, to be abusive and tactless, to be dim and obtuse and have people applaud them for being a close family unit when they’re just as dysfunctional as Tonya Harding’s mother. If you’re not worried about them, then you’re not paying attention.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/levi-johnston-ex-lanesia_n_664897.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20101115/pl_yblog_theticket/almost-5-million-people-watched-sarah-palins-alaska
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/d2JPq3CEm89/Harsh+Truth+Teen+Moms+Tell+Sposored+Candie/TdoOiq2EejW
http://www.politicususa.com/en/willow-palins-facebook-propaganda?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politicus+USA+%29&utm_content=Twitter
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/sarah_palin/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2010/11/17/willow_palin_facebook_rant
http://www.comedycentral.com/tosh.0/2010/11/17/palin-daughters-defend-moms-show-on-facebook/
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Or Forever Hold My Peace?? No. My Review of Taylor Swift's "Speak Now"
Alright, y’all. So, I done the unthinkable. I sat and listened to all the samples of the new songs by Taylor Swift from her upcoming album on iTunes. Hey, I’m not an official music writer anymore. I take what I can get, mmmkay?? At any rate, I was hoping this time I would understand what the fuss is all about. Unfortunately for the rest of you, I don’t.
Manalive, is that thing getting some heavy-handed advertising!! I’m just going to go there and say this, because it’s unreal how viral this catalogue has become without even having been officially released: the girl may play a virgin, but she’s a media whore. The damn thing’s already so pervasive it’s taken over my entertainment magazines, my iTunes, my OnDemand. Sell, sell, sell.
I know I’ve said this before, and you know I’ll say it again, but I do not like Taylor Swift’s voice. I’m sure she’s a very nice girl, but for whatever reason, when she “sings” it hits a register that causes my muscles to lock and my brain stem to numb and turn cold in a way I’ve only experienced on rare occasions of unmitigated frustration that I shall choose not to expound upon at this time for personal reasons. It makes me want to skewer my own eardrums. Her voice scratches against my auditory palette like the time I accidentally sliced my knuckle on a cheese grater; it was painful, messy and the irritation stayed with me for days. You know that bit Dane Cook does about that sound that makes you want to punch a baby?? Well, for me it’s Taylor Swift’s voice.
But I digress.
I was hoping that her music had matured into something more than yet another opus about nothing but love and loss, boyfriends and break-ups, high-school pseudo-romance and all its unheavenly consequences. Well, some of them anyway. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Swift has stayed true to the formula that made her a household name and penned more love, love, love, love, love, peppered with some loss, some disenchantment and some slightly biting cattiness and pseudo-rebellion, which is hilarious coming from a child-woman who wouldn’t know rebellion if it stepped on the other side of her face. Though she makes reference to marriage this time around, she still hasn’t seemed to have received the memo that she’s no longer fifteen. I look forward to the day when her bland, boring, whiny genre of counterfeit country music no longer squats upon the Top 40 in the back of Rolling Stone for years at a time and makes its way to the bargain bin at the used CD store where it belongs. Just because her childlike innocence sells tunes does not mean that Swift is relevant or has talent for anything other than choosing a top-notch marketing team. The music industry should implicate a statute of limitations regarding how long an individual can play on girlhood dreams of romance and roses before they’re required to write a hit song about waiting in line at the bank, and their childhood career be euthanized.
Taylor Swift’s third album, as I’ve heard it so far, plays out like a junior in high school wishing she were older; nothing more, nothing less. It’s as sweet as a fried Twinkie, and just as bad for you.
Manalive, is that thing getting some heavy-handed advertising!! I’m just going to go there and say this, because it’s unreal how viral this catalogue has become without even having been officially released: the girl may play a virgin, but she’s a media whore. The damn thing’s already so pervasive it’s taken over my entertainment magazines, my iTunes, my OnDemand. Sell, sell, sell.
I know I’ve said this before, and you know I’ll say it again, but I do not like Taylor Swift’s voice. I’m sure she’s a very nice girl, but for whatever reason, when she “sings” it hits a register that causes my muscles to lock and my brain stem to numb and turn cold in a way I’ve only experienced on rare occasions of unmitigated frustration that I shall choose not to expound upon at this time for personal reasons. It makes me want to skewer my own eardrums. Her voice scratches against my auditory palette like the time I accidentally sliced my knuckle on a cheese grater; it was painful, messy and the irritation stayed with me for days. You know that bit Dane Cook does about that sound that makes you want to punch a baby?? Well, for me it’s Taylor Swift’s voice.
But I digress.
I was hoping that her music had matured into something more than yet another opus about nothing but love and loss, boyfriends and break-ups, high-school pseudo-romance and all its unheavenly consequences. Well, some of them anyway. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Swift has stayed true to the formula that made her a household name and penned more love, love, love, love, love, peppered with some loss, some disenchantment and some slightly biting cattiness and pseudo-rebellion, which is hilarious coming from a child-woman who wouldn’t know rebellion if it stepped on the other side of her face. Though she makes reference to marriage this time around, she still hasn’t seemed to have received the memo that she’s no longer fifteen. I look forward to the day when her bland, boring, whiny genre of counterfeit country music no longer squats upon the Top 40 in the back of Rolling Stone for years at a time and makes its way to the bargain bin at the used CD store where it belongs. Just because her childlike innocence sells tunes does not mean that Swift is relevant or has talent for anything other than choosing a top-notch marketing team. The music industry should implicate a statute of limitations regarding how long an individual can play on girlhood dreams of romance and roses before they’re required to write a hit song about waiting in line at the bank, and their childhood career be euthanized.
Taylor Swift’s third album, as I’ve heard it so far, plays out like a junior in high school wishing she were older; nothing more, nothing less. It’s as sweet as a fried Twinkie, and just as bad for you.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
Teen Mom; The Dirty Thirties Edition
MTV’s Teen Mom is everywhere these days. Frankly, I couldn’t be happier to see a show that chronicles what life is like for young mamas that don’t fit into some silly demarcated high-school stereotype of “slut” or “bad kid” or “rebel” or any other negative and derogatory idea society has concocted around young women who get pregnant. Even though, I admit, I’ve cried at more than one episode. Not exactly a gleeful response, I know, but an honest one. Until recently, I hadn’t understood “reality tv” having anything to do with actual reality. You know, the one in which many of us live. Not The Hills or Jersey Shore.
The issue of teen pregnancy and single parenthood have been around since before we had names for them, yet here we are, in the Age of Information, acting like it’s some sort of new phenomenon; a plague upon the civilized population. Young people’s bodies have been telling them to bring forth new life since time out of mind, and there’s really nothing wrong with it, in-and-of itself. Sex and sexuality and procreation are biological, even if you are a teenager. This is how the human species survives, after all. Ideas such as what age a person should be, how much money a person should make, or whether a person should be married before starting a family are all societal constructs. These are young women taking responsibility for their actions and their choices, and managing to do so under intense public scrutiny, and for that my hat is off. The grace under pressure that these women exhibit and the fact that they are willing to be so open and honest about the sometimes-lack of grace, displays a maturity far beyond that of many grown women.
So, it’s not that young women can’t be mature, it is perhaps more that most of the time they’re not expected to be and so they get away with being mindless bims most of the time?? If we mollycoddle our girls they’ll stay innocent and won’t have to be mature “before their time,” like who’s to say when their time is??
Their stories are not unlike my own, but thirteen years ago there was no Sixteen & Pregnant. There was no Juno. There was nothing out there that even vaguely resembled my life as a teen mom. In fact, it was so controversial, if not completely verboten, on most mainstream television networks to show a pregnant teenager, and if there were one or two who cropped up now and then they were usually asinine hood rats that even I wouldn’t have hung out with had they existed in real life.
And, just so we’re square, I don’t give a rip about Bristol Palin. I’m going to go there and then I’m going to drop it, because she will never be a true Teen Mom to me. To see Bristol being photographed with Maci Bookout and Farrah Abraham is a disgrace to the hard work these two women do every day, because they might have help from their families and from MTV and from other sources unknown, but they struggle for what they have. They don’t give $30,000 lectures on the virtues of abstinence, making a solid living off of a “do as I say, not as I do” platform. They might have come from comfortable homes which had comfortable incomes (with the possible exception of Catelynn Lowell, who is dang-ola a sight more put together than her mother), but they weren’t raised with the proverbial silver spoon of having what the Palins have. These women work regular jobs, where they don’t make someone’s annual salary in one day, and go to school, and deal with extended family issues and family court, without the help of a team of celebrity attorneys and a virtuous right-wing spin protecting their fragile, first-daughter reputations. So to me there’s no comparison. The moms of MTV are far more real, more genuine and set a much better precedent for what a teen mom can be than Princess Palin.
I said it. It needed to be said. Moving on . . .
I’ve addressed the topic of the movie Juno before, and how much I enjoyed the fact that there was a story about a smart, self-aware, non-"slutty" (for lack of a better description) girl who discovers that her reproductive organs work (surprise!!) and has to live out the consequences, good times and rough times. I know that without Diablo Cody’s opus we would not have a show like Teen Mom. It amazes me that someone like Diablo Cody, a person whose work I enjoy but listening to her when she opens her fat mouth I do not, could be the catalyst for young moms to come out of the closet, so to speak, as regular people with regular problems rather than as women ruined before the age of consent both surprises and delights me. This is how it really is, folks. I understand that it may come as a shock to many of you out there, but not all teen moms are crackwhores, or anything else even remotely sinister. And I am madly lovin’ the fact that we’re finally beginning to understand that as a society, al beit slowly. I never thought I’d say this, but thank you Diablo Cody and MTV!!
So, is parenting in one’s teens easier than parenting in one’s twenties or thirties?? Are older young moms really any more savvy or mature than Maci, Farrah, Amber and Catelynn, or are we just older?? Frankly, I think we’re just older. Perhaps we have some tidbits of wisdom to pass on down, but a struggling parent is a struggling parent no matter what age, and unless you’re financially secure, married or not, chances are you’re experiencing struggles not unlike the ones seen on Teen Mom. Shoot, I haven’t been a teen since the 1990s, but I was a teen mom. There were times I was a great mom and there were times I was a shitty mom. There still are. I’m still broke, I’m still trying to finish college. I’m living with my mother on a part-time teacher’s salary. My life is no J.Lo movie. Perhaps if I’d married one of the losers who’ve asked things would be different, like I’d be on Xanax or in therapy or have had a nervous breakdown by now, but when it comes to parenting age ain’t nothing but a number. I gave up a great deal of my young adult life, which in some ways has made me mature and in others, immature. Now that my daughter can brew coffee, turn on the news, wash her own face and pack her own lunch, I don’t have to get up with her every morning and supervise. Some days I wish I had, but whatev. Some days I wish I hadn’t. In either case, I now have the option of staying in bed (on days when I don’t work) until she needs me to drive her to school. I have the option of being lazy from time to time, and I take it, and I’ve been called lazy and immature for it. And guess what?? I don’t care. You come on up in here and live my life, walk a mile in my silver spiked heels or my smelly Chuck Taylors and then perhaps we can talk. Until then, shut up.
I feel a sense of solidarity with these four young women I’ve never met. Our lives are different and yet so much the same. I’m confident that by the time they’re my age they’ll be much more established, more successful, more directed and more mature than I am, but for the time being I feel certain parts of their lives running parallel to how mine was back when I was a younger mom, and my compliments to their moxie.
In closing, I would like to throw out there that I often think that part of the reason young parents catch so much flack is not from the mistakes they make, or their age, or their income (or lack thereof), and more that so many parents who fall into the other end of the high-rick pregnancy spectrum, who have to go have in-vitro fertilization to conceive are pissed off that these young women don’t have to try; they have to try not to. I rarely like to drop the jealousy bomb, because I think it’s kind of a cop-out as far as reasons to be upset go. Any time one person doesn’t like another person, someone assumes it’s a jealousy issue. News flash: sometimes people just don’t like other people. That being said, I think there are a lot of moms age 36+ who are seething that these young women don’t even have to try to have the thing that they think they want most, and that chaps their asses so hard they can’t even see straight. Never-we-mind that perhaps their bodies are telling them that it’s time to slow down, and that if they wanted kids they should’ve done it back when their bodies were screaming for them to do it. But, no. These Baby Boomers and early Gen-X yuppies have to have it their way, and when someone else gets what they want they get upset and take it out on the person who has what they want.
Anyway, all that being said, I think I might not actually be done. The rest is going to have to wait, however.
Good night, y’all.
The issue of teen pregnancy and single parenthood have been around since before we had names for them, yet here we are, in the Age of Information, acting like it’s some sort of new phenomenon; a plague upon the civilized population. Young people’s bodies have been telling them to bring forth new life since time out of mind, and there’s really nothing wrong with it, in-and-of itself. Sex and sexuality and procreation are biological, even if you are a teenager. This is how the human species survives, after all. Ideas such as what age a person should be, how much money a person should make, or whether a person should be married before starting a family are all societal constructs. These are young women taking responsibility for their actions and their choices, and managing to do so under intense public scrutiny, and for that my hat is off. The grace under pressure that these women exhibit and the fact that they are willing to be so open and honest about the sometimes-lack of grace, displays a maturity far beyond that of many grown women.
So, it’s not that young women can’t be mature, it is perhaps more that most of the time they’re not expected to be and so they get away with being mindless bims most of the time?? If we mollycoddle our girls they’ll stay innocent and won’t have to be mature “before their time,” like who’s to say when their time is??
Their stories are not unlike my own, but thirteen years ago there was no Sixteen & Pregnant. There was no Juno. There was nothing out there that even vaguely resembled my life as a teen mom. In fact, it was so controversial, if not completely verboten, on most mainstream television networks to show a pregnant teenager, and if there were one or two who cropped up now and then they were usually asinine hood rats that even I wouldn’t have hung out with had they existed in real life.
And, just so we’re square, I don’t give a rip about Bristol Palin. I’m going to go there and then I’m going to drop it, because she will never be a true Teen Mom to me. To see Bristol being photographed with Maci Bookout and Farrah Abraham is a disgrace to the hard work these two women do every day, because they might have help from their families and from MTV and from other sources unknown, but they struggle for what they have. They don’t give $30,000 lectures on the virtues of abstinence, making a solid living off of a “do as I say, not as I do” platform. They might have come from comfortable homes which had comfortable incomes (with the possible exception of Catelynn Lowell, who is dang-ola a sight more put together than her mother), but they weren’t raised with the proverbial silver spoon of having what the Palins have. These women work regular jobs, where they don’t make someone’s annual salary in one day, and go to school, and deal with extended family issues and family court, without the help of a team of celebrity attorneys and a virtuous right-wing spin protecting their fragile, first-daughter reputations. So to me there’s no comparison. The moms of MTV are far more real, more genuine and set a much better precedent for what a teen mom can be than Princess Palin.
I said it. It needed to be said. Moving on . . .
I’ve addressed the topic of the movie Juno before, and how much I enjoyed the fact that there was a story about a smart, self-aware, non-"slutty" (for lack of a better description) girl who discovers that her reproductive organs work (surprise!!) and has to live out the consequences, good times and rough times. I know that without Diablo Cody’s opus we would not have a show like Teen Mom. It amazes me that someone like Diablo Cody, a person whose work I enjoy but listening to her when she opens her fat mouth I do not, could be the catalyst for young moms to come out of the closet, so to speak, as regular people with regular problems rather than as women ruined before the age of consent both surprises and delights me. This is how it really is, folks. I understand that it may come as a shock to many of you out there, but not all teen moms are crackwhores, or anything else even remotely sinister. And I am madly lovin’ the fact that we’re finally beginning to understand that as a society, al beit slowly. I never thought I’d say this, but thank you Diablo Cody and MTV!!
So, is parenting in one’s teens easier than parenting in one’s twenties or thirties?? Are older young moms really any more savvy or mature than Maci, Farrah, Amber and Catelynn, or are we just older?? Frankly, I think we’re just older. Perhaps we have some tidbits of wisdom to pass on down, but a struggling parent is a struggling parent no matter what age, and unless you’re financially secure, married or not, chances are you’re experiencing struggles not unlike the ones seen on Teen Mom. Shoot, I haven’t been a teen since the 1990s, but I was a teen mom. There were times I was a great mom and there were times I was a shitty mom. There still are. I’m still broke, I’m still trying to finish college. I’m living with my mother on a part-time teacher’s salary. My life is no J.Lo movie. Perhaps if I’d married one of the losers who’ve asked things would be different, like I’d be on Xanax or in therapy or have had a nervous breakdown by now, but when it comes to parenting age ain’t nothing but a number. I gave up a great deal of my young adult life, which in some ways has made me mature and in others, immature. Now that my daughter can brew coffee, turn on the news, wash her own face and pack her own lunch, I don’t have to get up with her every morning and supervise. Some days I wish I had, but whatev. Some days I wish I hadn’t. In either case, I now have the option of staying in bed (on days when I don’t work) until she needs me to drive her to school. I have the option of being lazy from time to time, and I take it, and I’ve been called lazy and immature for it. And guess what?? I don’t care. You come on up in here and live my life, walk a mile in my silver spiked heels or my smelly Chuck Taylors and then perhaps we can talk. Until then, shut up.
I feel a sense of solidarity with these four young women I’ve never met. Our lives are different and yet so much the same. I’m confident that by the time they’re my age they’ll be much more established, more successful, more directed and more mature than I am, but for the time being I feel certain parts of their lives running parallel to how mine was back when I was a younger mom, and my compliments to their moxie.
In closing, I would like to throw out there that I often think that part of the reason young parents catch so much flack is not from the mistakes they make, or their age, or their income (or lack thereof), and more that so many parents who fall into the other end of the high-rick pregnancy spectrum, who have to go have in-vitro fertilization to conceive are pissed off that these young women don’t have to try; they have to try not to. I rarely like to drop the jealousy bomb, because I think it’s kind of a cop-out as far as reasons to be upset go. Any time one person doesn’t like another person, someone assumes it’s a jealousy issue. News flash: sometimes people just don’t like other people. That being said, I think there are a lot of moms age 36+ who are seething that these young women don’t even have to try to have the thing that they think they want most, and that chaps their asses so hard they can’t even see straight. Never-we-mind that perhaps their bodies are telling them that it’s time to slow down, and that if they wanted kids they should’ve done it back when their bodies were screaming for them to do it. But, no. These Baby Boomers and early Gen-X yuppies have to have it their way, and when someone else gets what they want they get upset and take it out on the person who has what they want.
Anyway, all that being said, I think I might not actually be done. The rest is going to have to wait, however.
Good night, y’all.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Further Adventures with Super Glue
If you haven’t known me long, or don’t know me at all, then you might not understand the volatile history I have with Super Glue. I once missed a poli sci class because I Super Glued my finger to my thumb. I’d been trying to fix a painted pot my daughter had given me. How innocuous is that?? Next thing I know, the pot is in one piece again and I’ve temporarily lost nearly all dexterity in my left hand. I once spilled Super Glue on my jeans and had to sit very still holding my pants leg away from my skin in order to avoid making them a more or less permanent part of my personhood. If you’ve ever done this before, you know that Super Glue on fabric touching skin feels extraordinarily hot, as well. And let us not forget the time I glued the glue container to my hand rather than gluing the item I was attempting to repair. This took several hours, three family members and what little was left of my dignity at the time to detach without taking a pound of flesh with it.
My daughter would probably be really mad if I told you about the time she Super Glued a tiny nutcracker arm to her finger when she was six. In any case, we probably shouldn’t even be allowed to have the stuff in the house. If a license were required to own and operate Super Glue, I’d have to buy mine on the black market.
In any case, my headphones needed a temporary fix. You know the words temporary fix, meaning “I’m too broke to buy new ones right now, so if I glue them perhaps they’ll stay in one piece long enough for me to find a full-time job and finance the purchase of new ones.”
So I Super Glue the rubbery-plastic-whatever-material-it-is that goes in your ear part and went along with my day, getting ready for my workout. I get to the track, pop my earphones in and have a nice time.
You can sense where I’m going with this, can’t you, dear reader??
Then, when I go to pull the left one out, it’s stuck. I mean, I pull on it and it comes out relatively easily and with no pain, but when I touch my ear it’s still sticky and there’s a layer of Super Glue around my very outer part of my inner ear. Nothing dangerous, mind you. No blockage, no damage. It didn’t even affect my tragus piercing. Although a little bit did get on it initially, it didn’t stay long.
Sometimes when things like this happen to me, I feel the need to share. Maybe it’s because I don’t know other people to whom shit like this happens?? I don’t know anyone else who got locked in their bedroom one night, behind a door that doesn’t even have a lock on it, and had to escape by jumping from a second-story window. I don’t know anyone who accidentally glues their earphone to their ear while working out. I don’t know these other people, but I know they’re out there somewhere. I’ve read Laurie Notaro. I know I’m not the only “Idiot Girl” in the world. So I publicize my idiocy in hopes that somewhere out there, another cluck like myself exists and maybe will read this and be able to relate.
Wherever you may be, please be exercise caution when using Super Glue.
Love,
Sasa
My daughter would probably be really mad if I told you about the time she Super Glued a tiny nutcracker arm to her finger when she was six. In any case, we probably shouldn’t even be allowed to have the stuff in the house. If a license were required to own and operate Super Glue, I’d have to buy mine on the black market.
In any case, my headphones needed a temporary fix. You know the words temporary fix, meaning “I’m too broke to buy new ones right now, so if I glue them perhaps they’ll stay in one piece long enough for me to find a full-time job and finance the purchase of new ones.”
So I Super Glue the rubbery-plastic-whatever-material-it-is that goes in your ear part and went along with my day, getting ready for my workout. I get to the track, pop my earphones in and have a nice time.
You can sense where I’m going with this, can’t you, dear reader??
Then, when I go to pull the left one out, it’s stuck. I mean, I pull on it and it comes out relatively easily and with no pain, but when I touch my ear it’s still sticky and there’s a layer of Super Glue around my very outer part of my inner ear. Nothing dangerous, mind you. No blockage, no damage. It didn’t even affect my tragus piercing. Although a little bit did get on it initially, it didn’t stay long.
Sometimes when things like this happen to me, I feel the need to share. Maybe it’s because I don’t know other people to whom shit like this happens?? I don’t know anyone else who got locked in their bedroom one night, behind a door that doesn’t even have a lock on it, and had to escape by jumping from a second-story window. I don’t know anyone who accidentally glues their earphone to their ear while working out. I don’t know these other people, but I know they’re out there somewhere. I’ve read Laurie Notaro. I know I’m not the only “Idiot Girl” in the world. So I publicize my idiocy in hopes that somewhere out there, another cluck like myself exists and maybe will read this and be able to relate.
Wherever you may be, please be exercise caution when using Super Glue.
Love,
Sasa
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Lady Gaga, in the Tacoma Dome, with the Discriminatory Event Staff.
Lady Gaga, in the Tacoma Dome, with the Discriminatory Event Staff.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
We’ve all heard by now what an amazing performer Lady Gaga is. I stand here today to tell you that she has earned every bit of that reputation; everyone else in the world was not lying. I’ve been to a lot of shows, and it’s rare to see such audacious, extravagant, unrestrained fervor on stage. It’s evident in every movement she makes, every silly-brilliant thing she says, every blow-your-mind-out performance she gives that she puts her heart, soul, mind, body, lungs, brain and several other organs out there for her audience, and that she loves what she does or there’s no way she could do it.
This is not, however, a review of another Lady Gaga show. This is the very true story about one of my dearest friends and how she had a shitty night being discriminated against by the event staff at the Tacoma Dome on Saturday, August 21, 2010.
Victoria has been a wonderful friend of mine for over twenty years. Our children call each other cousins. We’ve been up one side and down the other, fighting and making up and fighting again. After all this time, I will do whatever I have to do to take up for her right now, because I was so fucking offended by the way she was treated on Saturday that part of me wants to boycott the T.Dome altogether even though I know it’s not the fault of the facility for hiring bad employees.
Victoria is a woman of size. Call her voluptuous, call her heavy, call her a big girl. Call her a fat chick. Call her what you want. When I use the word “fat” to describe someone or something, I do my best not to use it as an insult but rather an adjective. Just as calling something “gay” when you mean “stupid,” calling someone “fat” when you’re angry at them and for no other reason is cruel and unnecessary. But whatev. Victoria’s fat, and she’s hotter than most thin chicks I know. So, there, bitches.
So, on Saturday we only left two hours before the show started and only found our seats less than two minutes before the show started. The last thing I saw before the lights went down was my good friend’s dejected face from 15 seats away, standing in the isle in between the bleachers saying “I can’t get there.” She turned and walked back down the stairs.
As soon as I had a chance (I was with other people, one of whom is a child who I could not conscionably leave alone in her seat until another adult came), I found Victoria standing at the railing by the entrance to our section. “Glitter and Grease” was, what, Gaga’s second song of the night and people were already coming up to Victoria and telling her she had to go to her seat. Ten minutes into what should have been a phenomenal show and Victoria and I are both pissed.
We stood at the railing for as long as we could before another individual came along telling us we had to move along. This was the first guy I spoke to, and he was nice. I said “my friend can’t get to her seat and I’m not leaving her here by herself.” I pointed to Victoria and he said we could stand there so long as we tried not to block the isle. So, we tried to have some fun and rocked the fuck out, because Gaga is worth the price of admission.
Yeah. Every five minutes or so someone came along with a flashlight telling us we had to move. I don’t know if the word “buzzkill” has made it into the dictionary yet, but these torch-wielding assholes on power trips are the absolute definition. They were rude, giving my friend and I both dirty looks (which we had no problem returning, btw), telling us to move to the right, to the left, behind the line. Here, there. The fat chick gets a body check for being fat. The thin chick gets a body check for being dressed like a transvestite from the meat-packing district on Sex and the City.
In short, I say FUCK YOU!!
As Lady Gaga speaks to her audience about not discriminating against gay youth, I stood powerless as my fat friend was discriminated against for not being thin enough to get to our seats. Sure, if we’d arrived sooner perhaps we could have swapped seats with someone in our row and been on the isle, but that’s not how things panned out. In any case, she did not deserve to get the looks she got from the staff, to get the attitude she got from the staff. As a paying customer, I was absolutely furious to see one of my best friends being treated the way she was being treated. Had she had a broken leg, everyone would have said “poor her.” Had she been in a wheelchair, had MS, anything. When I was a kid I got picked on for being short and skinny. She got picked on for being fat. Now, here we stand, on a night when we’re supposed to be celebrating our birthdays together and having a good time and people are telling me I look great and treating her badly because she can’t go to her seat.
FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!!
I fucking bought Victoria a ticket to see Lady Gaga with me so we could throw down and have some fun, and the only thing fun about the show was Lady Gaga, and that makes me so angry. I don’t have money to waste on having a shitty time at the expense of people who don’t understand the needs of people of size.
I went to sit with my family members for a bit, but I could not help but feel guilty when I lost sight of Victoria and went to stand with her again. She told me that they’d called staff member after staff member after staff member to tell her to take her seat. After a while she just started asking over and over and over again to send a supervisor she could talk to. As I joined her, and she was telling me this, a cross-looking woman with a flashlight approached me and demanded that I take my seat.
I said no. My friend was unable to take her seat, and I wasn’t leaving her to stand alone all damn night. Besides, we’d already been told we could stand as long as we refrained from blocking the isle, which was stained with more beer than I could have paid for with my last four paychecks. Were we really the biggest hazard present?? She called over a tall man to demand that I take my seat. I said no. My friend was unable to take her seat and I wasn’t leaving her to stand alone all damn night.
He didn’t seem happy. Guess what?? NEITHER THE FUCK WERE WE!!
They made everyone stand behind “the line”, where we could barely see the show. I started dancing on the line. Flashlight Chick, shortly thereafter dubbed the Sphincter Police (from Pretty Woman, get it??) grabbed my arm and told me to get back behind the line. I did my best “stomp the runway” Tyra Banks walk away from her, slapping fishnet-clad rear and screaming “KISS MY FAT ASS, BITCH!!” at the top of my lungs. I don’t know who heard it over Gaga, but I guess V said to the woman standing next to her with a smile on her face “that’s my friend.”
So, that was our Lady Gaga night. We danced, we sang, we shook our asses . . . when we weren’t being told to move or being given dirty looks or having a staff member roll their eyes and send over another staff member.
Hey, look. I understand that the employees in places like this make zero money and have to deal with assholes every night. Their job sucks. But when they do things like treat their customers badly because they’re unable to be in their designated space, they suck too. Especially when they’re unnecessarily mean about it. People laugh at fat people for being fat. I’m writing this to say that that is fucking cruel and hateful and needs to change with the same quickness that being cruel and hateful to gay people does. Fat people don’t need pity. Fat people don’t need diets. Fat people certainly don’t need people treating them badly because they’re not thin enough. As a “skinny bitch,” a label I was not comfortable with growing up, I got teased and picked on because of my lack of size. I will most likely never know what it’s like to live in a plus-size body, but I know what it feels like to be picked on because of my size, and I think it’s a bunch of bullshit. Standing back and watching my friend, who I think the world of, being picked on because of her weight, even as an adult, pissed me off more than you can even think about. I’m livid just writing this down. Whether you consider obesity to be a disability or not, if you’ve never experienced it then you shouldn’t make fun of it, or talk down to fat people or make them feel badly about themselves. I don’t care how cliché it is to say this, but until you’ve walked a mile in someone else’s fat-ass shoes, then FUCK OFF!!
Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination, and it sucks out loud.
What would Mother Monster say??
Saturday, August 21, 2010
We’ve all heard by now what an amazing performer Lady Gaga is. I stand here today to tell you that she has earned every bit of that reputation; everyone else in the world was not lying. I’ve been to a lot of shows, and it’s rare to see such audacious, extravagant, unrestrained fervor on stage. It’s evident in every movement she makes, every silly-brilliant thing she says, every blow-your-mind-out performance she gives that she puts her heart, soul, mind, body, lungs, brain and several other organs out there for her audience, and that she loves what she does or there’s no way she could do it.
This is not, however, a review of another Lady Gaga show. This is the very true story about one of my dearest friends and how she had a shitty night being discriminated against by the event staff at the Tacoma Dome on Saturday, August 21, 2010.
Victoria has been a wonderful friend of mine for over twenty years. Our children call each other cousins. We’ve been up one side and down the other, fighting and making up and fighting again. After all this time, I will do whatever I have to do to take up for her right now, because I was so fucking offended by the way she was treated on Saturday that part of me wants to boycott the T.Dome altogether even though I know it’s not the fault of the facility for hiring bad employees.
Victoria is a woman of size. Call her voluptuous, call her heavy, call her a big girl. Call her a fat chick. Call her what you want. When I use the word “fat” to describe someone or something, I do my best not to use it as an insult but rather an adjective. Just as calling something “gay” when you mean “stupid,” calling someone “fat” when you’re angry at them and for no other reason is cruel and unnecessary. But whatev. Victoria’s fat, and she’s hotter than most thin chicks I know. So, there, bitches.
So, on Saturday we only left two hours before the show started and only found our seats less than two minutes before the show started. The last thing I saw before the lights went down was my good friend’s dejected face from 15 seats away, standing in the isle in between the bleachers saying “I can’t get there.” She turned and walked back down the stairs.
As soon as I had a chance (I was with other people, one of whom is a child who I could not conscionably leave alone in her seat until another adult came), I found Victoria standing at the railing by the entrance to our section. “Glitter and Grease” was, what, Gaga’s second song of the night and people were already coming up to Victoria and telling her she had to go to her seat. Ten minutes into what should have been a phenomenal show and Victoria and I are both pissed.
We stood at the railing for as long as we could before another individual came along telling us we had to move along. This was the first guy I spoke to, and he was nice. I said “my friend can’t get to her seat and I’m not leaving her here by herself.” I pointed to Victoria and he said we could stand there so long as we tried not to block the isle. So, we tried to have some fun and rocked the fuck out, because Gaga is worth the price of admission.
Yeah. Every five minutes or so someone came along with a flashlight telling us we had to move. I don’t know if the word “buzzkill” has made it into the dictionary yet, but these torch-wielding assholes on power trips are the absolute definition. They were rude, giving my friend and I both dirty looks (which we had no problem returning, btw), telling us to move to the right, to the left, behind the line. Here, there. The fat chick gets a body check for being fat. The thin chick gets a body check for being dressed like a transvestite from the meat-packing district on Sex and the City.
In short, I say FUCK YOU!!
As Lady Gaga speaks to her audience about not discriminating against gay youth, I stood powerless as my fat friend was discriminated against for not being thin enough to get to our seats. Sure, if we’d arrived sooner perhaps we could have swapped seats with someone in our row and been on the isle, but that’s not how things panned out. In any case, she did not deserve to get the looks she got from the staff, to get the attitude she got from the staff. As a paying customer, I was absolutely furious to see one of my best friends being treated the way she was being treated. Had she had a broken leg, everyone would have said “poor her.” Had she been in a wheelchair, had MS, anything. When I was a kid I got picked on for being short and skinny. She got picked on for being fat. Now, here we stand, on a night when we’re supposed to be celebrating our birthdays together and having a good time and people are telling me I look great and treating her badly because she can’t go to her seat.
FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!!
I fucking bought Victoria a ticket to see Lady Gaga with me so we could throw down and have some fun, and the only thing fun about the show was Lady Gaga, and that makes me so angry. I don’t have money to waste on having a shitty time at the expense of people who don’t understand the needs of people of size.
I went to sit with my family members for a bit, but I could not help but feel guilty when I lost sight of Victoria and went to stand with her again. She told me that they’d called staff member after staff member after staff member to tell her to take her seat. After a while she just started asking over and over and over again to send a supervisor she could talk to. As I joined her, and she was telling me this, a cross-looking woman with a flashlight approached me and demanded that I take my seat.
I said no. My friend was unable to take her seat, and I wasn’t leaving her to stand alone all damn night. Besides, we’d already been told we could stand as long as we refrained from blocking the isle, which was stained with more beer than I could have paid for with my last four paychecks. Were we really the biggest hazard present?? She called over a tall man to demand that I take my seat. I said no. My friend was unable to take her seat and I wasn’t leaving her to stand alone all damn night.
He didn’t seem happy. Guess what?? NEITHER THE FUCK WERE WE!!
They made everyone stand behind “the line”, where we could barely see the show. I started dancing on the line. Flashlight Chick, shortly thereafter dubbed the Sphincter Police (from Pretty Woman, get it??) grabbed my arm and told me to get back behind the line. I did my best “stomp the runway” Tyra Banks walk away from her, slapping fishnet-clad rear and screaming “KISS MY FAT ASS, BITCH!!” at the top of my lungs. I don’t know who heard it over Gaga, but I guess V said to the woman standing next to her with a smile on her face “that’s my friend.”
So, that was our Lady Gaga night. We danced, we sang, we shook our asses . . . when we weren’t being told to move or being given dirty looks or having a staff member roll their eyes and send over another staff member.
Hey, look. I understand that the employees in places like this make zero money and have to deal with assholes every night. Their job sucks. But when they do things like treat their customers badly because they’re unable to be in their designated space, they suck too. Especially when they’re unnecessarily mean about it. People laugh at fat people for being fat. I’m writing this to say that that is fucking cruel and hateful and needs to change with the same quickness that being cruel and hateful to gay people does. Fat people don’t need pity. Fat people don’t need diets. Fat people certainly don’t need people treating them badly because they’re not thin enough. As a “skinny bitch,” a label I was not comfortable with growing up, I got teased and picked on because of my lack of size. I will most likely never know what it’s like to live in a plus-size body, but I know what it feels like to be picked on because of my size, and I think it’s a bunch of bullshit. Standing back and watching my friend, who I think the world of, being picked on because of her weight, even as an adult, pissed me off more than you can even think about. I’m livid just writing this down. Whether you consider obesity to be a disability or not, if you’ve never experienced it then you shouldn’t make fun of it, or talk down to fat people or make them feel badly about themselves. I don’t care how cliché it is to say this, but until you’ve walked a mile in someone else’s fat-ass shoes, then FUCK OFF!!
Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination, and it sucks out loud.
What would Mother Monster say??
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Warped Tour 2o1o and Why It Sucked
Warped Tour 2o1o and Why it Sucked.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Coral Rad Pants and I have been doing the Warped thing for a number of years, in a number of states of being, she in a number of locations and I with a number of other people. This year was hands down, flat out, beyond all reason the worst Warped ever, and that includes the year both Katy Perry and 3OH!3 assailed us with their respective presence. Maybe it’s because we’re too old to still be doing this to ourselves. Maybe it’s that hardly anyone in attendance has any class or taste and thinks that the second they roll up to the campsites near the Gorge they are no longer required to behave like they are older than nine. Maybe it’s because, as Coral put it, “no one who’s really punk rock would be caught dead at Warped Tour after the first or second year.” We usually have a good time anyway, just us two crazy old ladies and a whole new generation of mewling children who fancy themselves punk.
An aside here, for the kids: if you’re buying shoes at a punk rock festival, then you’re not really at a punk rock festival. It’s only called one because once upon a time maybe it was one, but not anymore. And really, children. Do your school shoe shopping at home, in the mall, like a normal person.
The first thing that happened as we pulled off the freeway in the middle of the desert was a bug flew into the window, hitting the passenger side mirror, slapping Coral across the face, hitting my seat directly behind me, leaving a spatter of viscera on my shoulder before landing in between the window and the weather stripping six inches from my face. This story is much better told in person, so if you get the chance to hear one of us tell it we’ll have you LOL-ing, if only because we are. I haphazardly made my way past the row of Washington State Patrol vehicles, all lying in wait to tag someone who was driving pretty much the way I was driving, only for a different reason. Other people show up under the influence. Coral and I were discovering that this bug had not yet died and appeared to be plotting some kind of revenge upon us as we watched its little hands, then antennae, then head peer from over the weather stripping at us. We can’t stop laughing. I can’t decide whether to roll the window down all the way; will he fly out, despite the fact that one of his wings landed in Coral’s lap, or will be just blow back into the car??
When we get to the Wild Horse Campground, which is only a few miles down a largely uninhabited road, first lined with desert brush and silica, then with corn and dry grass, we’re red-faced from giggling. One of the gentlemen from the campsite picks up the bug for us and we finally get a good look at its poor mangled bug body. This does not, however, stop the insect from stinging the man three times before he drops it on the ground, and I’m suddenly glad it stayed in its place as it surveyed us through its creepy, dying eyes.
We’re led to our spot, as always, by a cordial guy on an ATV. The campground is not as full as it’s been in past years, and in past years we’ve come up to camp the night before the show rather than the day of as we did this year. We begin to get ready; I pour myself a strong drink, we put on make-up and sunscreen, I accidentally break Coral’s bathing suit top and loan her one of the extras I’d packed that was fortunate enough to fit. We’re called over to sit with our neighbors, three guys from Kent, about 30 miles south of Seattle. Two are lit and one says nothing. He wears a wedding ring and appears to be the most sober, but perhaps this is due to the fact that he says nothing. The other two are gregarious and extremely inebriated. Only one offers his name. They want us to guess how old they are. One wears a striped shirt and cannot string together a coherent sentence. Coral and I decide it’s time to get on the bus and go to the show.
Let the irritating magic begin.
First thing, tickets are $5 more at the gates than advertised online. *sigh* Oh, well, right?? What the hell can you do??
Once we get in the gates, nothing is where it’s been in the past, ever. Somehow it made some kind of sense that the big, inflatable schedule was nearest the entrance; logistically this would make it the first thing you see when you walk in. This year it takes at least 20 minutes, if not more (I’d downed 2/3 of a bottle of Jager by then), to find a staff member whose head wasn’t jammed so firmly up their ass that they knew a few things. First, the stage you see in the pictures of the Gorge, with the sweeping, beautiful background, was not the Main Stage, as it usually is. Where was the Main Stage?? They didn’t know. Second, this year you can buy programs that come with schedules for $2. Where?? They didn’t know. So we glanced at one that someone standing nearby had and learned that while we were wandering around trying to find the schedule we’d missed Andrew W.K. entirely and were about to miss Alkaline Trio. Over my dead, rotting carcass by the side of the road do we miss Trio, so off we went into the abyss of smelly teenagers to find the well-hidden Main Stage.
First we find the Alkaline Trio tent which says that they’re not, in fact, playing in ten minutes; they started playing ten minutes ago. But I hear them. So I haul off in the direction of “The American Scream,” and there they are. Happy me!! So, we only missed half their set. They rocked anyway, as usual. When it’s over, which is all too quickly, we wander to the back of the Main Stage area and find the giant inflatable schedule. As I glace over the shoulder of the girls standing next to me, who were either foolish or smart enough to purchase a schedule of their own, I notice that none of the times for the bands Coral and I want to see match the ones of the inflate-a-schedule. So, we decide to wander around and actually find the stages, only one of which is where it’s been in the past.
I buy the last Trio hoodie in my size for $20. Can we say “score??” We smoke a cigarette, drink some water, talk about bands we used to know, like, see live at Warped Tour, people we know. This, Trio, and making it back to the jacked up Main Stage just in time for Dropkick Murphys, will be the highlight of our day. That and laughing hysterically over a dying insect with seemingly-malicious intentions, but I digress.
While we continue wandering, looking for the rest of the stages, I decide to grab a beer and inquire about where to find an ATM. The gal checks my ID but does not notice that I’m not wearing one of those silly bracelets that indicates to the general population that I’m over 21, thereby old enough to be walking around with a beer in my hand. Folks, I’ve been told I don’t look my age, but I don’t look that young. In any case, Coral points out to this woman that I’m not wearing a bracelet. She takes back my beer and asks me kindly to go get one, adding that she could have just lost her job. Apparently I could have gotten in some kind of trouble as well for not having the proper identification that no one bothered to ask me for, but I suppose that’s beside the point. In any case, the woman and I were both glad Coral said something. I got my bracelet and my beer and she pointed us in the exact opposite direction of the ATM 40 feet away and off we went, like chickens with our damn heads cut off.
By the time I find the ATM that the chicken-headed girl didn’t know was within her field of vision and Coral and I took a complete tour of the grounds, I’d forgotten what it was I’d wanted to buy in the first place, but felt like I had to take out some cash since we’d been looking for so g.d. long.
Somehow during all this irritating nonsense, we stumble upon Green Jello. I had no idea they were still relevant, or were ever relevant, or even still around for that matter. They have the crowd chant “Green Jello sucks” and I tweet “I could have told you guys that in 1993.” This prevents me from saying it out loud and potentially getting my ass handed to me.
As Green Jello leaves the stage after assailing my ears for an agonizing ten minutes, an unfortunate band of ragamuffin mallrats called We Are The In Crowd takes to the stage next to them, fronted by an adorable Hayley Williams wannabe who should have stayed home and sang into her hairbrush in front of her mirror like a good little girl. I expect the next time I see these cute little cupcakes it will be on the Disney Channel. I’m sure my 12-year-old daughter would have liked them a few years ago.
Just out of curiosity, what’s with the dudes who think they can get a woman’s attention by spraying her with water and beckoning her over to his merch tent?? At one point I swore to myself that the next assbag to spray me with water and smile was going to get his teeth knocked down his throat. Fortunately, it didn’t happen again or I’d probably be writing this from jail.
So we left, with nowhere to go in mind. Coral and I both wanted to see the Casualties, but neither one of us was at all clear on where or when they were actually playing. So, like the boring old farts we are, I got another beer and we sat in the shade again, listening from a distance to whomever was playing what used to be the Main Stage back when Warped Tour was fun.
We wander some more. I’m tired after two hours of sleep the night before and three hours of driving that morning, so I find a shady spot next to a group of people (and a cute guy) and fall asleep on the ground to Reel Big Fish. The cute guy next to me rolls over and we bonk heads. I barely notice, but he says “Oh, I didn’t know there was someone there.” As usual, wherever they are hot guys, I am invisible. I am in an M. Night Shyamalan movie. At one point I hear Coral’s voice telling someone “she only slept for, like, an hour last night. She had so much homework.”
I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep, but I wake up to a radiant, gorgeous man, rockin’ pink spiky hair and a Dillinger Escape Plan shirt. He’s leaning gently over me and innocently touching my bare knees with a cold can of iced tea. When I open my eyes he smiles and says “here,” and I fall completely in love with him for no reason. I sit up and realize that all the other people with whom I was sharing my shady knoll are now gone and I’ve been sleeping in the middle of the isle where people have been walking. He goes back to the booth he’s working at and we wave at each other, and this is the end of our brief affair. His shirt makes me sad that I slept through Dillinger Escape Plan, too.
As Coral and I decide to finally continue our trek, she trips over a pen and begins bleeding profusely. A large, presumably threatening staff member asks me if she’s alright. I tell him I think so, but he’d have to ask her. I’m about to ask if he knows where we could get some band-aids when he cops a total cockasaurus attitude and says “Well, you’re the one who answered,” and stomps off in a huff like he’s in second grade and I just called him a doody head. In my mind I’m yelling after him something clever, like “Hey, you dick!! Don’t you work here?? Do your goddam job and get my friend a Band-Aid. She’s bleeding like Courtney Love’s liver, for fuck’s sake.” I look up and he’s gone. Tents are starting to pack up, even though the sun is still high and hot, but a gentleman nearby has some bandages and someone at another tent had a clean cloth. We fix Coral right up, hope she doesn’t get the gangrene and lose a toe before we get back to Seattle, and wander aimlessly some more until it’s time for Dropkick Murphys.
This day has not gone according to plan.
Dropkick makes things all better, though. Or mostly better, at least. Coral and I are both distracted by the rockabilly guy in front of us with the bleached-blond hair and the severed-head-in-a-bottle tattoo, and at one point we comment on how no matter where we stand people are always telling us to move. I wish there were more to remember about the Dropkick Murphys show than that. The sunset was behind us, whereas it would have been in front of us if the Main Stage had been in the correct place.
The crowd disburses quickly after Dropkick, because frankly there’s nothing left to see. Coral and I sat down to listen to a ridiculously white reggae band. Not ska, straight up reggae. Coral looks at me in dismay. “You mean no one’s told them they’re not Jamaican??” We both have the ganja song in our heads for the rest of the night.
“There’s your boyfriend,” Coral points out the lovely fellow who brought me the iced tea that’s still unopened in my hands. “You should go talk to him.” Of course I’m too scared to go talk to him. No guy I want to talk to ever wants to talk to me; it’s usually the guys I wish would go away who want to talk to me. Besides, he’s working there and I considered it bad form try and chat up someone while they’re supposed to be working. Meaning I hate it when people do it to me, so I don’t do it to others. “It takes a real man to rock pink hair,” Coral teases me. I smile at him, he doesn’t notice, and we leave.
Back at camp, Coral decides to take a shower and I made up our beds in the back of my truck. What’s about to transpire is exactly what I’m talking about when I say it’s the guys I don’t want to talk to.
One of the stumbling drunkards from nearby comes to help me set up our blankets. I thank him kindly but make a point of saying I can do it myself. I’m reasonably certain he’s not trying to be a gentleman. Guess what?? I was right. The second all the blankets are laid out and the makeshift beds are made, he pulls me down next to him and tries to climb on top of me and kiss me. I pull back.
“Am I being inappropriate??” he asks.
“Yeah, a little.”
We both sit up on the tailgate, and I thank my lucking fucking stars that it’s still a little bit light out and there are so many people around. He asks me if his feet are touching the ground, and I really want him to go away now.
I laugh at his expense. “You really need to have this explained to you??”
That’s right. When in doubt, say something rude.
Once his feet find the ground, he goes away. Mad, of course. The last thing he says to me is “I like your tits, lady.” He’s scowling and pointing at me when he says this, loud and clear for all and sundry. I later see him pointing toward my truck and referring to us as “these uppity bitches over here,” like I owed him public sex for helping me spread a blanket in the back of my truck.
Douchepacker.
Guys like this honestly wonder why they’re single. I wait for Coral to come back, a little too nervous to lie down until there’s someone I trust nearby. When she’s back I change my clothes and fall asleep. I wake up long enough to have a few garlic fries with Coral, and I realize this is the first thing I’ve eaten all day. I go back to sleep.
I’d brought some alcohol and initially thought I’d want to join the revelers after the show. I didn’t. Coral was sunburned and bleeding from the foot. I was operating on two hours of sleep and a nap on the lawn, and after having been nearly molested by a guy who thought I was an “uppity bitch” named Ashley, I was in no mood to party with anyone I didn’t know.
Sometime after midnight I wake up to the sound of goats. Or rather, one goat. As it turns out, it’s the girl from a campsite nearby laughing. She’s loud and she sounds exactly like a goat. Every time she laughs, Coral makes a goat sound that’s exactly like the girl’s laughter and I erupt into a fit of giggles. A guy from the same group starts dancing around like a maniac to Sublime, and in the light of their tiki torches he looks like a bear dancing in pajamas.
At one point I get up to use the toilet. On my way out of the jane, a young kid stumbles into me with his cock in his hand and announces “I’m totally pissing right now!!” I step away from him and stagger blindly into his friend who decides he needs a hug, from me, right now, and grabs me. I spin out of his skinny, inebriated seventeen-year-old grasp as the one reasonable individual in this band of three merry idiots pulls him off me.
I want to go home.
Big ups to Coral Rad Pants for telling me to quit whining and start having fun, and making an otherwise shitty situation tolerable with her mere presence.
Thanks, as always, to the folks at The Wild Horse Campground. It’s always a pleasure.
Thank you to the bands at Warped Tour, the ones we got to see and the ones we didn’t get to. You’re the reason we put up with all this bullshit.
To the organizers of Warped Tour, get it right next time, because this year sucked!!
And last but certainly not least, to the staff of The Gorge Amphitheater, thanks for fuckin’ nothing. You can all go jump off the nearest cliff.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Coral Rad Pants and I have been doing the Warped thing for a number of years, in a number of states of being, she in a number of locations and I with a number of other people. This year was hands down, flat out, beyond all reason the worst Warped ever, and that includes the year both Katy Perry and 3OH!3 assailed us with their respective presence. Maybe it’s because we’re too old to still be doing this to ourselves. Maybe it’s that hardly anyone in attendance has any class or taste and thinks that the second they roll up to the campsites near the Gorge they are no longer required to behave like they are older than nine. Maybe it’s because, as Coral put it, “no one who’s really punk rock would be caught dead at Warped Tour after the first or second year.” We usually have a good time anyway, just us two crazy old ladies and a whole new generation of mewling children who fancy themselves punk.
An aside here, for the kids: if you’re buying shoes at a punk rock festival, then you’re not really at a punk rock festival. It’s only called one because once upon a time maybe it was one, but not anymore. And really, children. Do your school shoe shopping at home, in the mall, like a normal person.
The first thing that happened as we pulled off the freeway in the middle of the desert was a bug flew into the window, hitting the passenger side mirror, slapping Coral across the face, hitting my seat directly behind me, leaving a spatter of viscera on my shoulder before landing in between the window and the weather stripping six inches from my face. This story is much better told in person, so if you get the chance to hear one of us tell it we’ll have you LOL-ing, if only because we are. I haphazardly made my way past the row of Washington State Patrol vehicles, all lying in wait to tag someone who was driving pretty much the way I was driving, only for a different reason. Other people show up under the influence. Coral and I were discovering that this bug had not yet died and appeared to be plotting some kind of revenge upon us as we watched its little hands, then antennae, then head peer from over the weather stripping at us. We can’t stop laughing. I can’t decide whether to roll the window down all the way; will he fly out, despite the fact that one of his wings landed in Coral’s lap, or will be just blow back into the car??
When we get to the Wild Horse Campground, which is only a few miles down a largely uninhabited road, first lined with desert brush and silica, then with corn and dry grass, we’re red-faced from giggling. One of the gentlemen from the campsite picks up the bug for us and we finally get a good look at its poor mangled bug body. This does not, however, stop the insect from stinging the man three times before he drops it on the ground, and I’m suddenly glad it stayed in its place as it surveyed us through its creepy, dying eyes.
We’re led to our spot, as always, by a cordial guy on an ATV. The campground is not as full as it’s been in past years, and in past years we’ve come up to camp the night before the show rather than the day of as we did this year. We begin to get ready; I pour myself a strong drink, we put on make-up and sunscreen, I accidentally break Coral’s bathing suit top and loan her one of the extras I’d packed that was fortunate enough to fit. We’re called over to sit with our neighbors, three guys from Kent, about 30 miles south of Seattle. Two are lit and one says nothing. He wears a wedding ring and appears to be the most sober, but perhaps this is due to the fact that he says nothing. The other two are gregarious and extremely inebriated. Only one offers his name. They want us to guess how old they are. One wears a striped shirt and cannot string together a coherent sentence. Coral and I decide it’s time to get on the bus and go to the show.
Let the irritating magic begin.
First thing, tickets are $5 more at the gates than advertised online. *sigh* Oh, well, right?? What the hell can you do??
Once we get in the gates, nothing is where it’s been in the past, ever. Somehow it made some kind of sense that the big, inflatable schedule was nearest the entrance; logistically this would make it the first thing you see when you walk in. This year it takes at least 20 minutes, if not more (I’d downed 2/3 of a bottle of Jager by then), to find a staff member whose head wasn’t jammed so firmly up their ass that they knew a few things. First, the stage you see in the pictures of the Gorge, with the sweeping, beautiful background, was not the Main Stage, as it usually is. Where was the Main Stage?? They didn’t know. Second, this year you can buy programs that come with schedules for $2. Where?? They didn’t know. So we glanced at one that someone standing nearby had and learned that while we were wandering around trying to find the schedule we’d missed Andrew W.K. entirely and were about to miss Alkaline Trio. Over my dead, rotting carcass by the side of the road do we miss Trio, so off we went into the abyss of smelly teenagers to find the well-hidden Main Stage.
First we find the Alkaline Trio tent which says that they’re not, in fact, playing in ten minutes; they started playing ten minutes ago. But I hear them. So I haul off in the direction of “The American Scream,” and there they are. Happy me!! So, we only missed half their set. They rocked anyway, as usual. When it’s over, which is all too quickly, we wander to the back of the Main Stage area and find the giant inflatable schedule. As I glace over the shoulder of the girls standing next to me, who were either foolish or smart enough to purchase a schedule of their own, I notice that none of the times for the bands Coral and I want to see match the ones of the inflate-a-schedule. So, we decide to wander around and actually find the stages, only one of which is where it’s been in the past.
I buy the last Trio hoodie in my size for $20. Can we say “score??” We smoke a cigarette, drink some water, talk about bands we used to know, like, see live at Warped Tour, people we know. This, Trio, and making it back to the jacked up Main Stage just in time for Dropkick Murphys, will be the highlight of our day. That and laughing hysterically over a dying insect with seemingly-malicious intentions, but I digress.
While we continue wandering, looking for the rest of the stages, I decide to grab a beer and inquire about where to find an ATM. The gal checks my ID but does not notice that I’m not wearing one of those silly bracelets that indicates to the general population that I’m over 21, thereby old enough to be walking around with a beer in my hand. Folks, I’ve been told I don’t look my age, but I don’t look that young. In any case, Coral points out to this woman that I’m not wearing a bracelet. She takes back my beer and asks me kindly to go get one, adding that she could have just lost her job. Apparently I could have gotten in some kind of trouble as well for not having the proper identification that no one bothered to ask me for, but I suppose that’s beside the point. In any case, the woman and I were both glad Coral said something. I got my bracelet and my beer and she pointed us in the exact opposite direction of the ATM 40 feet away and off we went, like chickens with our damn heads cut off.
By the time I find the ATM that the chicken-headed girl didn’t know was within her field of vision and Coral and I took a complete tour of the grounds, I’d forgotten what it was I’d wanted to buy in the first place, but felt like I had to take out some cash since we’d been looking for so g.d. long.
Somehow during all this irritating nonsense, we stumble upon Green Jello. I had no idea they were still relevant, or were ever relevant, or even still around for that matter. They have the crowd chant “Green Jello sucks” and I tweet “I could have told you guys that in 1993.” This prevents me from saying it out loud and potentially getting my ass handed to me.
As Green Jello leaves the stage after assailing my ears for an agonizing ten minutes, an unfortunate band of ragamuffin mallrats called We Are The In Crowd takes to the stage next to them, fronted by an adorable Hayley Williams wannabe who should have stayed home and sang into her hairbrush in front of her mirror like a good little girl. I expect the next time I see these cute little cupcakes it will be on the Disney Channel. I’m sure my 12-year-old daughter would have liked them a few years ago.
Just out of curiosity, what’s with the dudes who think they can get a woman’s attention by spraying her with water and beckoning her over to his merch tent?? At one point I swore to myself that the next assbag to spray me with water and smile was going to get his teeth knocked down his throat. Fortunately, it didn’t happen again or I’d probably be writing this from jail.
So we left, with nowhere to go in mind. Coral and I both wanted to see the Casualties, but neither one of us was at all clear on where or when they were actually playing. So, like the boring old farts we are, I got another beer and we sat in the shade again, listening from a distance to whomever was playing what used to be the Main Stage back when Warped Tour was fun.
We wander some more. I’m tired after two hours of sleep the night before and three hours of driving that morning, so I find a shady spot next to a group of people (and a cute guy) and fall asleep on the ground to Reel Big Fish. The cute guy next to me rolls over and we bonk heads. I barely notice, but he says “Oh, I didn’t know there was someone there.” As usual, wherever they are hot guys, I am invisible. I am in an M. Night Shyamalan movie. At one point I hear Coral’s voice telling someone “she only slept for, like, an hour last night. She had so much homework.”
I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep, but I wake up to a radiant, gorgeous man, rockin’ pink spiky hair and a Dillinger Escape Plan shirt. He’s leaning gently over me and innocently touching my bare knees with a cold can of iced tea. When I open my eyes he smiles and says “here,” and I fall completely in love with him for no reason. I sit up and realize that all the other people with whom I was sharing my shady knoll are now gone and I’ve been sleeping in the middle of the isle where people have been walking. He goes back to the booth he’s working at and we wave at each other, and this is the end of our brief affair. His shirt makes me sad that I slept through Dillinger Escape Plan, too.
As Coral and I decide to finally continue our trek, she trips over a pen and begins bleeding profusely. A large, presumably threatening staff member asks me if she’s alright. I tell him I think so, but he’d have to ask her. I’m about to ask if he knows where we could get some band-aids when he cops a total cockasaurus attitude and says “Well, you’re the one who answered,” and stomps off in a huff like he’s in second grade and I just called him a doody head. In my mind I’m yelling after him something clever, like “Hey, you dick!! Don’t you work here?? Do your goddam job and get my friend a Band-Aid. She’s bleeding like Courtney Love’s liver, for fuck’s sake.” I look up and he’s gone. Tents are starting to pack up, even though the sun is still high and hot, but a gentleman nearby has some bandages and someone at another tent had a clean cloth. We fix Coral right up, hope she doesn’t get the gangrene and lose a toe before we get back to Seattle, and wander aimlessly some more until it’s time for Dropkick Murphys.
This day has not gone according to plan.
Dropkick makes things all better, though. Or mostly better, at least. Coral and I are both distracted by the rockabilly guy in front of us with the bleached-blond hair and the severed-head-in-a-bottle tattoo, and at one point we comment on how no matter where we stand people are always telling us to move. I wish there were more to remember about the Dropkick Murphys show than that. The sunset was behind us, whereas it would have been in front of us if the Main Stage had been in the correct place.
The crowd disburses quickly after Dropkick, because frankly there’s nothing left to see. Coral and I sat down to listen to a ridiculously white reggae band. Not ska, straight up reggae. Coral looks at me in dismay. “You mean no one’s told them they’re not Jamaican??” We both have the ganja song in our heads for the rest of the night.
“There’s your boyfriend,” Coral points out the lovely fellow who brought me the iced tea that’s still unopened in my hands. “You should go talk to him.” Of course I’m too scared to go talk to him. No guy I want to talk to ever wants to talk to me; it’s usually the guys I wish would go away who want to talk to me. Besides, he’s working there and I considered it bad form try and chat up someone while they’re supposed to be working. Meaning I hate it when people do it to me, so I don’t do it to others. “It takes a real man to rock pink hair,” Coral teases me. I smile at him, he doesn’t notice, and we leave.
Back at camp, Coral decides to take a shower and I made up our beds in the back of my truck. What’s about to transpire is exactly what I’m talking about when I say it’s the guys I don’t want to talk to.
One of the stumbling drunkards from nearby comes to help me set up our blankets. I thank him kindly but make a point of saying I can do it myself. I’m reasonably certain he’s not trying to be a gentleman. Guess what?? I was right. The second all the blankets are laid out and the makeshift beds are made, he pulls me down next to him and tries to climb on top of me and kiss me. I pull back.
“Am I being inappropriate??” he asks.
“Yeah, a little.”
We both sit up on the tailgate, and I thank my lucking fucking stars that it’s still a little bit light out and there are so many people around. He asks me if his feet are touching the ground, and I really want him to go away now.
I laugh at his expense. “You really need to have this explained to you??”
That’s right. When in doubt, say something rude.
Once his feet find the ground, he goes away. Mad, of course. The last thing he says to me is “I like your tits, lady.” He’s scowling and pointing at me when he says this, loud and clear for all and sundry. I later see him pointing toward my truck and referring to us as “these uppity bitches over here,” like I owed him public sex for helping me spread a blanket in the back of my truck.
Douchepacker.
Guys like this honestly wonder why they’re single. I wait for Coral to come back, a little too nervous to lie down until there’s someone I trust nearby. When she’s back I change my clothes and fall asleep. I wake up long enough to have a few garlic fries with Coral, and I realize this is the first thing I’ve eaten all day. I go back to sleep.
I’d brought some alcohol and initially thought I’d want to join the revelers after the show. I didn’t. Coral was sunburned and bleeding from the foot. I was operating on two hours of sleep and a nap on the lawn, and after having been nearly molested by a guy who thought I was an “uppity bitch” named Ashley, I was in no mood to party with anyone I didn’t know.
Sometime after midnight I wake up to the sound of goats. Or rather, one goat. As it turns out, it’s the girl from a campsite nearby laughing. She’s loud and she sounds exactly like a goat. Every time she laughs, Coral makes a goat sound that’s exactly like the girl’s laughter and I erupt into a fit of giggles. A guy from the same group starts dancing around like a maniac to Sublime, and in the light of their tiki torches he looks like a bear dancing in pajamas.
At one point I get up to use the toilet. On my way out of the jane, a young kid stumbles into me with his cock in his hand and announces “I’m totally pissing right now!!” I step away from him and stagger blindly into his friend who decides he needs a hug, from me, right now, and grabs me. I spin out of his skinny, inebriated seventeen-year-old grasp as the one reasonable individual in this band of three merry idiots pulls him off me.
I want to go home.
Big ups to Coral Rad Pants for telling me to quit whining and start having fun, and making an otherwise shitty situation tolerable with her mere presence.
Thanks, as always, to the folks at The Wild Horse Campground. It’s always a pleasure.
Thank you to the bands at Warped Tour, the ones we got to see and the ones we didn’t get to. You’re the reason we put up with all this bullshit.
To the organizers of Warped Tour, get it right next time, because this year sucked!!
And last but certainly not least, to the staff of The Gorge Amphitheater, thanks for fuckin’ nothing. You can all go jump off the nearest cliff.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Leadershit??
Reading my instructor's feedback from this past week, he called me a "class leader in discussions". I've never been called a leader of anything academically, that I can recall, except perhaps laziness, napping and / or insubordination of some variety.
Who fuckin' knew??
Who fuckin' knew??
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Window Exit.
Saturday, July 17, 2o1o
Midnight
I’ve finished my homework for the evening and the kids are asleep in front of the tv, so I begin to draw myself a bath, go into my room to get undressed and close the door behind me. When I go to open it a few moments later, it’s stuck. The knob will turn, but apparently not the mechanism inside it. This door has no lock, so it can’t be locked, and it opens in toward me so kicking it will do me no good. Thus begins my late-night argument with an inanimate object that appears to hate me.
There’s a butter knife stashed in a candle holder with a bunch of my pens. (Don’t ask, because I don’t know.) I begin slashing, hacking, poking, prodding, cleaving, slicing and stabbing the knob and the door around it, all to no avail. I curse this old house. I curse myself for thinking I could install a doorknob myself and think it would function properly. All the while, the bath water is still running.
Fortunately for me, the elder child hears me accosting my bedroom door and comes to investigate the commotion. She asks me if I’d like her to call anyone, since I left my phone charging in the living room. I could not think of a single soul to call for help at midnight on a weekend, so I asked her just to turn off the bath water and go back to bed. I would figure it out.
What I figured out was this: the door was stuck. Very stuck. A new kind of stuck that is so persistent that if I could patent this special kind of stuck I would be a very rich woman. I don’t want to do this, but it looks like I’m going to have to.
I move all items from my windowsill and the bookcase directly below it, throw open the window as far as it will go, push the screen out, climb up onto the sill and jump two stories, through a holly tree, out the window into the darkness. The only thing I can make out in the shadows is the screen, which I think I landed on. Fortunately for me, the neighbor left her axe at my place on Fourth of July. I grab it and go knock on my own back door. The elder child lets me in, sees the axe, looks at me with an expression of horror and backs away.
Do I really have to explain to this child that I’m not here to dismember her??
Nevermind.
I take the axe to my doorknob, missing the first time and making my bedroom door even more unsightly than it was to begin with. Have you ever tried swinging an axe in a very small, confined space?? It’s not an easy feat to accomplish and hit your target. Sure, I’d had drinks, but not enough to sully my freefall into darkness, or any other part of this disaster for that matter. Attempt number two connects and the plastic knob is sent to the floor. Two more hits and the base of the knob is loose enough to unscrew using a screwdriver.
One. Two. Three. Ding ding ding.
I win.
Even after completely uninstalling the rest of the knob by any means necessary, the piece that fits into the hole in the doorframe (like I know what that’s called) still hasn’t budged. See?? Really stuck. Crazy stuck. At last, I pistol-whip the piece with the handle of the screwdriver and the little stuck thing is liberated at last. And since this is the house where old shit goes to die, and once something is no longer functional it sits for many years to come, I no longer have a doorknob and am no longer willing to put one in anywhere, anytime ever again.
So, at around 12:3o this morning, after an unexpectedly dramatic and harrowing exit from my own bedroom, my new doorknob is a rag tied to a bandana.
And my hands hurt.
The end.
Midnight
I’ve finished my homework for the evening and the kids are asleep in front of the tv, so I begin to draw myself a bath, go into my room to get undressed and close the door behind me. When I go to open it a few moments later, it’s stuck. The knob will turn, but apparently not the mechanism inside it. This door has no lock, so it can’t be locked, and it opens in toward me so kicking it will do me no good. Thus begins my late-night argument with an inanimate object that appears to hate me.
There’s a butter knife stashed in a candle holder with a bunch of my pens. (Don’t ask, because I don’t know.) I begin slashing, hacking, poking, prodding, cleaving, slicing and stabbing the knob and the door around it, all to no avail. I curse this old house. I curse myself for thinking I could install a doorknob myself and think it would function properly. All the while, the bath water is still running.
Fortunately for me, the elder child hears me accosting my bedroom door and comes to investigate the commotion. She asks me if I’d like her to call anyone, since I left my phone charging in the living room. I could not think of a single soul to call for help at midnight on a weekend, so I asked her just to turn off the bath water and go back to bed. I would figure it out.
What I figured out was this: the door was stuck. Very stuck. A new kind of stuck that is so persistent that if I could patent this special kind of stuck I would be a very rich woman. I don’t want to do this, but it looks like I’m going to have to.
I move all items from my windowsill and the bookcase directly below it, throw open the window as far as it will go, push the screen out, climb up onto the sill and jump two stories, through a holly tree, out the window into the darkness. The only thing I can make out in the shadows is the screen, which I think I landed on. Fortunately for me, the neighbor left her axe at my place on Fourth of July. I grab it and go knock on my own back door. The elder child lets me in, sees the axe, looks at me with an expression of horror and backs away.
Do I really have to explain to this child that I’m not here to dismember her??
Nevermind.
I take the axe to my doorknob, missing the first time and making my bedroom door even more unsightly than it was to begin with. Have you ever tried swinging an axe in a very small, confined space?? It’s not an easy feat to accomplish and hit your target. Sure, I’d had drinks, but not enough to sully my freefall into darkness, or any other part of this disaster for that matter. Attempt number two connects and the plastic knob is sent to the floor. Two more hits and the base of the knob is loose enough to unscrew using a screwdriver.
One. Two. Three. Ding ding ding.
I win.
Even after completely uninstalling the rest of the knob by any means necessary, the piece that fits into the hole in the doorframe (like I know what that’s called) still hasn’t budged. See?? Really stuck. Crazy stuck. At last, I pistol-whip the piece with the handle of the screwdriver and the little stuck thing is liberated at last. And since this is the house where old shit goes to die, and once something is no longer functional it sits for many years to come, I no longer have a doorknob and am no longer willing to put one in anywhere, anytime ever again.
So, at around 12:3o this morning, after an unexpectedly dramatic and harrowing exit from my own bedroom, my new doorknob is a rag tied to a bandana.
And my hands hurt.
The end.
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