"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.