"I took my lucky break and I broke it"

Good God (no pun intended), run right out and rent The Devil & Daniel Johnston. The last documentary that knocked the wind out of me (Capturing the Friedmans) made me an instant pest/bully to everyone I know: "See it. See it now. Seriously. Now. Have you seen it yet?" Commencing pestering. This documentary is freaking unreal.

If you don't know much about him--and aside from his track on the Schoolhouse Rock Rocks tribute CD I didn't-- Johnston is a singer-songwriter-cum-cartoonist from New Cumberland, WV who's seriously manic depressive. Not in an "I'm an art school drop-out who needs some cache" way. This is an apparently sweet guy tangled in a real, violent, dark knot. The documentary tracks Johnston's weirdness and the wonder it inspires in everyone around him, from the runaway success of his handmade tapes in Austin, TX to being chased all over NYC by Sonic Youth to stays in state hospitals. It shows Johnston, with his tiny voice--the kiddie-ness of Adam Sandler with a little lispy alt-folk whine--doing everything from appearing on MTV to being strapped down by the State Police. SPIN magazine interviews him while he's on a break from wiping down McTables.

I can't describe, even, one of Johnston's breakdowns because it would rob you of all the hang jaw moments in this film. I can't even quote any of his better diatribes (Johnston captured his decline on audio cassettes and Super 8) because you might write it off as self-indulgent, manufactured crap. You have to hear this stuff from the horse's mouth to believe it. I don't know if Daniel Johnston is a real genius or just a nice guy with a horrible illness and some clever lyrics in his pocket. I just know that his life story makes for one Hell of a moving, funny, upsetting, important movie. We should all be so [un]lucky.

Love Lost

I love Lost. Never miss it (or, rather, my DVR never misses it). But, lately, my mind has been wandering. Something was missing in my favorite show and I couldn't quite pin it down. Then, last night, those cliffhanger-hawking geniuses at ABC answered my secret prayer and, finally, plugged in the missing piece of the show--and my heart--with three little words: Billy. Dee. Williams.

That's when you know you have a hugely successful hour of TV on your hands, when the Mayor of Cloud City can take even one minute away from his busy awesome-ing schedule to be on your show. Billy Dee appeared, as if a vision from God, only in the first two minutes of the show but I only stopped squealing about twenty minutes ago.

I don't know what it is about the Velvet Olivier (like that? spread it around) that affects me the way it does. Maybe it was the embarrassment of riches at my childhood home that first sold me on Billy Dee: Lando was the free action figure you got by mailing in Kenner proofs-of-purchase, so we had a gaggle of them. But those little figures of pose-able cool weren't free after all....they cost me my heart. I've just never gotten over that Lando stride, that Cloud City voice ("Why you slimy, double-crossing, no-good, swindler!")...the way he calls people "pirate" even though they dwell in the sky. *sigh*

But if it wasn't Lando that hooked me on Billy Dee it may have been a chance encounter on a remote island a few hours outside of Seattle. My sister and I were at this rustic little island hotel, killing time for a day or two until our cousin's wedding. The rain, the polite chit-chat with total strangers, and a little PMS drove us inside for half-days at a time. While holed-up, we discovered that the hotel TV got only two channels: 24-hour Bollywood and a channel that seemed to, inexplicably, show Mahogany on a constant loop. Guess which one we picked. The more I watched, the angrier I was that I didn't come up with the "all-Mahogany, all the time" idea myself. I mean, the marketing potential is infinite: "Do YOU know where you're going to? WBDW Portland 45!"

Whoa. I just realized. I was trapped on an island and there was Billy Dee Williams. The people on Lost are trapped on an island and there was Billy Dee Williams.

Dude. That's so eerie. (Ya pirates.)

Death Pants

So I have these two pairs of pants, one light gray with a nearly-invisible houndstooth and the other brown with a faint rust stripe. (Let me go ahead and say it for you: "Greeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Now she's blogging about her pants.") They look harmless enough and, every once in awhile, when I flip past them in my closet I think to myself: "I should wear those more often." This morning I bent to the guilt, broke out the gray pants and now, here I sit, trapped in my office when I should be walking to my 1:30 meeting.

For these are The Pants of Death: Volume One.

Both pairs of the pants in question are what I call my Hepburn pants: normal, wide-leg, hip-sitting pants with even wider cuffs. When I wear them I feel like I should be chasing some guy in a fedora with a "PRESS" card in the brim through a black and white comedy, talking a mile-a-minute, and saying things like "swell." What I usually end up doing in these pants is catching my heel in the cuff and falling over.

So far, in this pair (Volume One), I've fallen down courthouse stairs, rug-burned my palms in the hallway, and landed at the feet of some frightened looking exchange students trying to walk to the 2nd floor bathroom. And I always forget about their deadly ways (the pants, not the foreign exchange students) until it's too late. For instance, I was almost to my office door this morning before I went flying into the wall, with my foot still tangled in my fashion statement. And now I'm here on the fourth floor, terrified to walk down the stairs to my office.

As if the gods themselves are shaking their sensible pants at me, the elevators in my building are out of service this afternoon. I don't know when I'll see any of you again. I'm hungry, frightened, and seriously considering sawing my pants off at the knee and tossing the offending fabric out the window.

Honey, if you read this, come get me. And bring a change of clothes. Just don't succumb to the siren song of The Pants of Death: Volume of Two. A nice pair of pedal pushers would be just lovely.

A teeny-tiny observation about marriage

Marriage is a journey. Marriage is an adventure. Marriage can be a beautiful thing, challenging you and opening your eyes. As I'm fond of saying to my husband (or rather, shrieking to him over moody emo-rock when he turns up the radio after he says he's fine yet I continue to grill him) "marriage is share-age." My favorite part of marriage, though, are those moments when I find myself saying things that Wee Molly never envisioned saying to her life partner.

"Be careful...you don't want to get jelly all over your Greatest American Hero shirt."

Dinner & a Disease: ¿Qué le pasa a Helen?

Thursday night I grabbed dinner with one of my favorite people. In the interest of protecting the not-so-innocent, we'll call him "Dirk."

Per usual, our hot, platonic date had good times written all over it, much like a bathroom wall. Greek food and geek chat. Top Model vs. Idol, Steve Carrell: genius or no (he actually says "no," if you can believe it...NO?!?!), how to pronounce Chuck Palahniuk's last name, musical theater, horror movies, and our hair. After dinner we fell all over ourselves via e-mail, talking about what a great time we had and wondering aloud why we don't do it more often. We rattle off lists of slasher flicks to swap and books to trade, of restaurants to hit and soundtracks to rip. It is the sort of love-fest usually reserved for new friends but that you also break out when you only see someone a time or two a year. It's like the Thanksgiving china.

So I logged off that night after dinner, awash in New Friend Smell. I was cursing myself for not making more dinner dates with my dashing, darling, dear Dirk--Hell, every gal needs a gay boyfriend--when it hit me. I suddenly remembered why we only have dinner once a year.

Every time I meet up with Dirk, he gives me a disease.

There, I said it. He can no longer strut around, infecting anyone he pleases. Dirk, I can't take it. Please, please, please, stop putting that f@#!ing song in my head.

The first time we ever hung out Dirk and I chatted up a storm about the worst (READ: best) horror movies we'd ever seen. I mentioned my good fortune in having gotten a double-sided, bloat-a-rific Shelly Winters DVD from my then-boyfriend-now-husband featuring the (and I quote from the box) "musical-horror-melodrama-satire-love-story" What's the Matter with Helen? (Christmas is truly the most wonderful time of year.) Anyway, I was certain I was alone in having seen this movie, but as I paused to consider how to take the "in" out of "inexplicable" and explain the plot, Dirk's face lit up. Sending ripples across our cheap wine, he started to sing:

"Da-da-da-da-da-da-dada-dadada-da-da...GOODY, GOODY!"

There's no good way to explain this without forcing you to rent What's the Matter with Helen?* but I'll try to sum up: tap-dancing "Goody, Goody"-singing Debbie Reynolds + jealous creepy piano-playing Shelley Winters = a very strung-up & corpse-y Debbie Reynolds.

*International Readers May Wish to Refer to: ¿Qué le pasa a Helen?, Kauhun vangitsemat, Raptus segreti di Helen, I, Vad hände med Helen?, Obsessão Sinistra, Was ist denn bloß mit Helen los?

"Goody, Goody"--or rather, two or three bars of its refrain, are plunked out on the piano over-and-over-and-over-and-over during a few key scenes of this movie. See this film and you'll understand. Aside from a slightly unclean feeling, "da-da-da-da-da-da-dada-dadada-da-da...GOODY, GOODY!" and a keen appreciation for Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure is all you'll take away. (I'm serious: go to iTunes right now and sample this song. I did the legwork for you...you can look it up under Frankie Lymon. Listen. You'll get it. And then you'll really get it.)

So, there I was. I'd seen What's the Matter with Helen? a year earlier, I'd FINALLY gotten "Goody, Goody" out of my head. Now, my new so-called friend stirs it all back up. I soft-shoed around the house for days: ""da-da-da-da-da-da-dada-dadada-da-da..." I was like some sad, past-her-prime tap-dancer. I WAS Debbie Reynolds. (Oh, snap! Debbie Reynolds BURN!)

*References like this are why my husband says I'm the oldest 29-year-old he knows. I guess to up the hip quotient of the blog I should sub in Brit-Brit for Debbie Reynolds...something tells me she's tap-danced once or twice in her day.

And here we are, nearly a year later, and it all comes rushing out. I can't work, I can't sleep...I can only drink, hum, and shuffle-off-to-Buffalo.

Dirk, if you're out there: let's not wait another year to get together. Life and friendship are too precious. In fact, you might say I'm really, really jazzed to get together again. I might even say "GOODY, GOODY!"

Tag, Dirk. You're it.


EPILOGUE: Once again, a lukewarm review--blank stare--from my beloved hubby on this, my latest entry. Whatever happened to "love, honor, obey, and gush blindly about my navel-gazing?" Rattling on about stuff nobody cares about is harder than it looks.

Red Wiener

No, no one has an STD. (By the way: I think we should reinvigorate the term "a social disease." Who's with me???)

I now have further evidence that my wiggly, giggly, bright-eyed dachshund is harboring dark secrets. Making my umpteenth caffeine run to the fridge, I came across something shiny on the floor. After leaping a foot before concluding it wasn't a spider--not that that would bother me--I figured it was a button. But when I picked it up, my blood ran cold. It was an eye.

If you're a bean bag, plush, or otherwise innocent toy within a 100-mile radius of our house and you're missing an eye, chances are we have it. In fact, had I started a plastic eye jar when Wigglepuppy's reign of terror began, I'm confident I would have six times as many eyes as Wiggles has ever had toys. But here's the creepy icing on the creepy cake: the eyes never, ever have a mate.

When Wiggles gets a toy that toy is hemorrhaging poly-puff filling within a day. Two days if she wants it to suffer. She chews and digs and plucks, ignoring any squeaks for help. Then she spits one eye out for me to find/step on/get freaked out by and keeps the other in some dastardly dachshund lair. Maybe she's worried her own eyes will fail her and she'll need a spare. Maybe she's been sneaking my Thomas Harris paperbacks and fancies herself the Red Dragon. Or maybe, just maybe, she doesn't know what to do with second eyes...yet. And that gives me the heebiest-of-jeebies of all.

Just to be safe, I sleep in goggles. Maybe you should, too.

I can't drive 35

En route to work this morning, I passed a speed limit sign that had detached, halfway, from its post. Maybe my adrenaline was still pumping from being busted wailing along to "Surrender" just moments before*, I don't know. But the upside-down '35' blew my mind wide open.

*An Aside: I find that, when singing along to Cheap Trick, you have no choice but to contort and over-enunciate and, basically, look like someone in Scanners, pre-head-explosion.

Neo-Wiener: My Dog Has Unlocked The Matrix

I have a long-haired, dappled, mini-Dachshund named Wigglepuppy. She loves people, Doritos, and socks. Oh, and she may "lead the humans to overthrow the machines and reclaim the Earth."

I have reason to believe that my wiener dog is the key to The Matrix.

We have a fenced-in backyard and when Wiggles was wee she could pull a Grinch, flattening herself to the point where she could slither underneath the fence. If we turned our backs for a minute, there'd be a knock at the door and an amused-looking neighbor would hand over the wriggling fugitive. Before long, though, Wiggles grew up, eventually topping out at a gargantuan 9-1/2 pounds. A few nose-pokes through the slats and she concluded she was now too big to squeeze through. So she ditched the Houdini bit and life went on. We could even leave the patio door cracked so she could run around during the day. Ours was a relationship of trust and freedom.

Then one day, after pulling in to the driveway after work, I opened the car door and a furry little creature lept into my lap. After calming down--it wasn't a renegade, monstrous squirrel after all--I asked Wiggles how in the world she got out of the backyard. Looking two-parts Max from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and one part Odie, she simply tilted her head, licked my nose, and told me I wouldn't understand.

I, then, confronted her older sister, a reserved Ewok-alike Lhasa Apso named Chewie. I demanded answers, but Wiggles had obviously already gotten to her. No dice.

So I pointedly marched out to the backyard and blocked any area where the ground sloped even slightly under the fence. I filled in a few gaps with dirt and gave Wiggles a satisfied look. She wagged, tongue lolling with delight. And deceit. Because she escaped the very next day.

My husband and I scoured the backyard. There was no way she was getting through or under any part of that fence. We concluded that gate must've blown open and shut. There was no other explanation.

Until the day Wigglepuppy tore a hole in the space-time continuum and busted out yet again. We were leaving the house one lazy Saturday and our sweet, elderly neighbors told us that Wiggles had escaped the day before. It had been balmy that afternoon and I was coming right back, so I'd left the patio door open. I mean, the yard is totally fenced in, after all.

Apparently, when our neighbors saw a wiener dog dart across their backyard, they tried to coax her back home. Wiggles' greatest pleasure in life is flattening herself--hiding in plain sight--waiting until you get *this* close to her and taking off like she's on fire. So, they chased her for awhile and she ran in tiny circles, laughing all the way. Then she was gone. When our neighbors went to our front door to let us know we had a dog on the run, they were greeted by a beaming, fuzzy face on the other side of the glass. Wigglepuppy was back in the living room, nary a hair out of place. No panting. No mercy.

I checked the backyard one last time. No open gates, no broken slats, no holes, no tunnels. My wiener dog can trot through wrinkles in time. My wiener dog is The One.

I can only hope that Chewie doesn't turn out to be a Highlander.

Journ-o-Lanterns

So, I'm singing my way through the half-hour commute this morning when it hits me: only two weeks until The Feeling. This isn't a countdown to any sort of tent revival, fertile moment, or theme party. In two weeks I'll see a live show from a band about whom I am more excited than I have been in a long, long time. The Feeling could count me as an über-fan from the first time I heard them on Virgin Radio UK. Part whiny Brit-pop, part Beatle-bred wonders...right up my alley. Plus, they sound dreamy *sigh*

In the past few years anytime I've fallen hard for a new musical love interest, it's been cursed from the word 'Go.' They either:
(a) break up the minute iTunes notifies them I'm on-board (The Libertines);
(b) tour as far away from Indy as possible, preferably across an ocean or two (Orson, Manic Street Preachers, Mika, Scissor Sisters);
(c) aren't huge enough to play a nice, roomy venue but are popular enough to sell out a theater before I can get tickets (John Legend).

This is another reason to be psyched about The Feeling: access. I can give Ticketmaster a few bucks, sway awkwardly for an hour or two, and then go home, confident that I had been part of something that legitimized me or the city where I live.

When I was growing up, my hometown screeched to a halt for one week every August and sponsored free, riverside concerts. If you sat in our front yard and held absolutely still, being careful to rustle your Teen Beat, you could almost rock out. And we almost did: to the Jets, Julian Lennon, the Beach Boys, and Taylor Dayne. We almost got rocked to our very core. And then we watched the top of some firework displays.

Access to [former] radio stars, backyard brushes with fame...I suddenly had an appetite for live music. To my kiddie mind, big names stopping through my West Virginia hometown legitimized our capital but not colossal city in. When the morning paper ran a palm-sized eagle (is that an eagle? has the rock landed?) trumpeting Journey's imminent arrival, I was jazzed. But I didn't ask my parents to take me. I didn't beg for 45s, a Journey Trapper Keeper, or a t-shirt. Frankly, I wasn't even that interested in Journey; I was pretty wee and am fairly sure I was still wearing out a hand-me-down vinyl copy of Free to Be, You and Me at the time. Still, I was so moved by the concert announcement--by the idea of big, bad Journey giving my hometown its stamp of approval--I set out to bring Steve Perry to life in tuber form.

When one aims to capture the lead Journeyman on a pumpkin canvas and one is not particularly artistically-inclined, one's options are few. So my Journ-o-Lantern started out pretty run-of-the-mill: triangle eyes, crescent moon eyebrows, first-grader gap-teeth. But then I added it's crowning glory. I fringed rows and rows of black construction paper and crowned the pumpkin. At the last minute I abandoned my original vision, courtesy of the "Separate Ways" video I kept seeing on Nick Rocks!, and added a yellow construction paper headband to tame any stray locks. Voila! Steve Perry.

So, what was I talking about? Oh, right. I sure like live music. I sure like The Feeling. But mostly, I think I just needed to get the Steve Perry thing off my chest.

Three reasons I don't wear fur

1. Because I'm not married to Fred Flintstone's boss.

2. I don't wear glasses that you have to hold up to your eyes to look through (you know...the kind mounted on a little gold stick attached to one side).

3. Mad Max.

Bring me the hedgehog of John the Baptist

Like most people who wish for talent and inspiration but avoid the "heavy-lifting," I scribble down ideas while driving home, in the middle of the night, on napkins, etc. Shockingly, these gems tend to live and die on pink Post-Its. Inevitably I find myself walking the aisles, listening to NPR, or flipping through book reviews and thinking "Curses! I should've thought of that/was going to write that!" Then I worry that I've been stricken by that Helen Keller disease where I don't realize that I'm stealing other people's ideas. And, no: I'm not being glib ("Of course, she didn't know she was plagiarizing...she couldn't see it/hear it/etc."...I'm talking about The Frost King, people.

(Wow. No wonder I'm not famous: that last sentence struck the perfect, rare balance between being boring and pretentious.)

So, I jot down ideas in the hopes of coming up with an essay or article for some beloved editors who have been kind enough to run some of my work in the past. Lately, though, my random scribbles dead-end. And, since said beloved editors have ceased to send me assignments or buy my pitches, I'm treading creative water. Anyway: in keeping with the themes of self-involvement/pity and lack of ambition, here are some of the more random notes-to-self. RIP, mediocre ideas.


1. "Bring me the hedgehog of John the Baptist." I stumbled on this note while I was cleaning out my desk last Fall. At first, I thought I was having a religious experience. Then I remembered my mini-Dachshund waking me up in the middle of the night with her stuffed, squeaky hedgehog in tow, beady little eyes all fierce and furious. Believe it or not, I actually climbed out of bed to write this one down. Several reliable sources have confirmed that this line is, neither, funny nor interesting.

(I maintain, though: Salome sounds like salami. Wiener dogs are salami-shaped. I think there's life in this idea yet.)


2. "My night at the sports bar on the least important night in the history of sports." To jog my memory as to the details behind this note I actually had to Google "ice skating cut partner face blade." This phrase is now up for grabs if anyone needs a name for their Emo-ska band.

One night my old man--is that your husband or your dad...because I'm going for "husband" here--and I went out for beer and wings one night and found every big screen tuned in to the free skate at the Four Continents Figure-Skating Championships. Now, this is Indiana. For every skewed understanding of Hoosier country, if you think sports bar patrons watching figure-skating signals despair, you're spot-on. But after the Colts Super Bowl win and before March Madness? A bit of a No-Man's Land. Anyway, during the free skate in question, a Canadian skater clocked his partner across the cheek with his skate blade. It was horrifying. And replayed ad nauseam. And what did the crowded bar do, sports fans? Cheered. Sweated schadenfreude. Trash-talked our Canadian brethren. Inexplicably chanted a few smart-alecky rounds of "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

And then the network cut to talk of Nascar pensions and golf highlights. Further hilarity from the peanut gallery ensued.

A funny enough story, for sure. But I gave up fleshing out the idea when I realized that, outside of baseball, my relevant sports know-how is limited to my eighth-grade obsession with figure-skating and a battered VHS tape of the "Battle of the Brians" at the '88 Calgary Olympics. Yes, we taped it. Over HBO's midnight showing of Dr. Zhivago. So there.

Besides, my husband assures me that the guys in the bar were a funnier. Love means never lying about your spouse's comic prowess.


3. "Whatever happened to that one, blond, villainous guy from every '80's movie?" His name is William Zabka. You might remember him as overbearing bully boyfriend/martial arts master Johnny from The Karate Kid, overbearing bully boyfriend/champion diver Chas from Back to School, overbearing bully boyfriend/dancing machine Greg from Just One of the Guys. Oh and fun fact: he was nominated for an Oscar in 2003 for the short film Most. But, anyway, Entertainment Weekly beat me to the punch. And the free gift-with-subscription--a three-cassette set of super '70's sounds--they sent me in 1989 does nothing to ease the pain.

"220, 221...whatever it takes."

I can't come with a truly compelling reason to start blogging. Folks with my politics, my hobbies, and more honorable, interesting pursuits already do it...and they do it better than I could. Furthermore, as much as I enjoy reading other people's random thoughts, I can't imagine anyone would be particularly interested in mine. Frankly, when I'm done having said thoughts, I'M not even particularly interested. However, months--no, years--of writer's block have motivated me to try to shake something loose. If nothing else, maybe I'll just post the contents of every legal pad and Post-It I've scribbled in the past year and then sue anyone who has the talent and drive to finish what I couldn't.

So, all I'm really doing is cleaning out the corners of my, frankly, average brain. Then I'll cross my fingers that I can call in enough favors--or trap a lonely insomniac who accidentally happens by--to get a hit or two. Maybe I'll publish it all one day as A Salute to the Run-On Sentence: One Woman, Countless Ellipses.

Thanks for reading!