let's just get this out of the way

I will be hard to write today because I'm driving 11 hours to New York with Jocardo.

next year I'm going as a sexy pumpkin

I've been a Halloween dropout for awhile and the last time I dressed up was in 2001 when a friend in Seattle talked me into going to a party at the Experience Music Project with her.

She said there'd be a light show or something marginally enticing. I tried to be a sport and went as Cyndi Lauper meaning I put on fishnet stockings, some fake pearls, and stood around awkwardly all night probably because I was actually dressed as Madonna and didn't know it. Oh, and there was time when I was bartending, also in Seattle, that I was a cat.

Still, not very inspired. A CAT? I wore black jeans, a black tank top (what I wear every third day or so anyway) and had the bouncer draw whiskers on my face. That is not an award-winning costume.

It wasn't until I started hanging around someone who loves Halloween like it's his job that I thought about truly sucking it up and trying to get into it. Last year I got a free pass because after working on the Rockettes rehearsals for five days with a grand total of 15 hours of sleep, I got sick and spent Halloween night on the couch cursing those long-legged beauties.

This year I was totally healthy and decided to be Coraline Jones from the Neil Gaiman book and Tim Burton movie. Others who played along:

Jocardo as "punk rocker", Dennis as guy in skeleton mask, trench coat and straw hat, and Angela.



I can't remember who/what Angela dressed up as but I do remember our conversation:

Angela: It's nice to meet you!
Me: Actually, we met in 1996 when I went to a party at your parents' house and I sat in their hot tub.
Angela: You were at the hot tub party?
Me: Yep.

Matthew as James Dean and Kevin as Bill Compton from True Blood:



DJ Empirical in a black spandex body suit who I'm taking to be a shadow and Sarah, whose costumed nose is defiantly askew.



Regrettably I didn't take photos of Alan and Peggy who weren't in costume but of course I can respect that and think that people who go out on Halloween as themselves deserve love too.

James Dean Festival 2009

One of the first things I did after I got home in September was go to the James Dean Festival in Fairmount, Indiana.



Apparently now is my time to notice dead men of iconic status to whom I never paid attention before.



This was the 34th year that Fairmount celebrated their hometown boy by way of parade, lookalike contest, dance off, 50s car show, cotton candy, ferris wheel and, of course, elephant ears. It is the fifth time Matthew has attended.

Now that I can actually pick James Dean out of a lineup, I have to say that what I most appreciate about him (besides HOT) after looking through letters and journals and photos and all the crazy amount of stuff in the Fairmount Historical Museum is that he seems like SUCH A NICE FELLOW. "What a sweetheart," I thought while reading his school essays. Don't even get me started on the flower he painted for his high school drama teacher, I'll get the sniffles.

Also of note:

A classic Indiana landscape and the turnoff to Fairmount. The smaller sign to the right says Homecoming Hog Roast. I regret not crashing the hog roast.



The Fairmount Historical Museum Shuttle is being pulled by a John Deere tractor. Hello Midwest.



James Dean's classmates from the class of 1949!



Aren't they cute?



Matthew became friends with this dude, Marlon, and spent the whole time I was shooting photos of the parade talking to him. Marlon has been driving in from Michigan for the festival since it began and introduced Matthew to James Dean's cousin.



This lady in black next to the replica of the car James crashed and died in was a straight mess. Her stockings were ripped and an ass cheek was threatening to emerge big time. She kept talking in a loud voice about how she lives in LA and just got back from Italy where she was being entertained by a "director friend". I later saw her hanging with a Japanese filmmaker who is doing a story on the festival and Brian, a so-called JD lookalike who flies in from Los Angeles to participate and repeatedly win the contest (he lost the title this year), so I don't necessarily doubt the veracity of her story, I'm just saying that more stocking and less name dropping would help.



An Elvis impersonator, apropos since I so recently figured out who that guy is too.



What parade is complete without a robot-controlled R2D2 posing with a kid whose shirt says REAL MEN LOVE JESUS? Tell me now.

a tale from the dental chair

Today I went to the dentist. Before I finally got health insurance this spring, I relied on my good health, put my feet up in the stirrups at Planned Parenthood yearly, and every once in a while remembered to have my plaquey-ass teeth cleaned. Because I never had a cavity until last year I figured that teeth were low on my super sketchy healthcare scale of importance.

Well, yeah. They're okay but they apparently have french roast stained all over the backs and it won't come off. I know it won't come off because I gave that dental hygienist a serious P90x/Tony Horton-style workout trying to get it off. She finally gave up, left the room to towel off with her surgical mask, replenish some electrolytes, and then came back to polish.

Quick question: Why do people talk to you when you have a mouth full of sharp instruments, a hose, and their hands? Furthermore, don't ask questions! My answering is going to end badly. She was really nice, I liked her, and if we were in any position besides her shoving her hands into the back of my throat, I would have talked to her about her car. Instead I just raised my eyebrows.

Another thing I learned is that I need to brush my teeth gently for a couple of minutes every night, not attack them violently for thirty seconds. If you look at my and Matthew's toothbrush in the cup in the bathroom, his is the one that looks almost new even though he brushes religiously. Mine is the one whose bristles are flattened and bent at a ninety degree angle. And apparently if you take a good look at my gums, mine are receding because I am brushing them straight into oblivion. I'm so psyched.

Maybe, in light of that, it's not quite as bad that I'm also GRINDING MY TEETH AWAY. They are becoming flat, I am told. Perhaps I have adapted this habit to compensate for the gums situation. Do I really want to have tiny gums and long teeth when I'm an old lady? Hard to say. Either way, I signed up for a bite guard, an acrylic piece I'll wear in my mouth at night and hoo-boy is Matthew going to be pumped. My bite guard is sure to make for some hot make out sessions.

But really, what I really am regretting now is that I can't wear my Grillz tonight.

A few days ago, after much incessant quoting of Wayne's World and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, we rented the movies. Matthew had a migraine and I was sure, while standing in line at Blockbuster, that wearing Grillz would help his head.

We watched Ferris already and Wayne's World is queued up for tonight. I, however, cannot put a piece of candy on my teeth and let it dissolve there with a clear conscience. My teeth are so clean right now, I felt guilty earlier eating a piece of asparagus and had to brush immediately.

nowhere to run nowhere to hide

So my mom has decided to clean out the attic. What this means for me is that every time I go over to my parents' house to do laundry and eat their food, I get a box of my old stuff to go through. We'll decide what to throw out and what to keep and judging by the three boxes I sifted through last week, the choices pretty much make themselves.

Some of the things I threw away: torn up leather sandals from 1992, 19-year-old papaya-scented hairspray, a city No Parking sign that I hung in my bedroom in an attempt to feel like a bad ass, and photo solution only one or two decades past its expiration date.

Some of the things I found and kept! CISV village t-shirts circa 1986 from the other kids' countries at my camp in Newcastle, England. This week I've sported my old sweatshirt from Iceland and shirts from Korea and Norway. The fact that I can still wear a shirt I wore in 1986 says much more about how freakishly fast I grew as a kid and how flat-chested I have remained as an adult than anything else.

Also of great joy and fear in equal parts is the big, big box of letters that I received, and much more painfully, sent over the years. At some point after high school and before we lost touch, Andrea sent me all the letters I'd written her since ninth grade. I've read a couple and they make me want to put my head under a pillow and scream. And weep. And then scream some more.



I remember so well what it felt like to be me and it wasn't often comfortable. I was kind of awesome but I also sucked. I would never, for any price, go back to that time. I was mature in some ways and stunted in others, I meant well and had a big heart but oh, I was a shithead. I wanted to be bad, much worse than I ever was, I wanted to get in trouble, but I was too shy to make much happen.

And I wrote about it all A LOT. In the letters, my long drawn out explanations and insecurities are punctuated with unintentional hilarity but there is only so much I can take at once. Ever since the first night the box came home and I shuffled through the overflowing envelopes, howling and shrieking, I have glanced at it sideways and then quickly made myself busy. Example: my cuticles look GREAT today.

Much easier on my self-image are the letters from others, my favorites so far being from my cousins Mary Beth and Lauren. Holy. Crap. From when I was 12-17 years old and they were respectively 9-14 and 7-12, we wrote letters that have PROJECT written all over them. I don't know what art I'm going to make out of these but something must be done. I must atone for losing the VHS movies we shot, the dramas and thrillers and talk shows.

just a few things that keep me staring at the wall

It is possible that this NaBloPoMO adjustment will be harder than anticipated.

I have in my notebook lists of potential writing subjects, lists I started weeks ago, but instead of mining my lists for stimulus, I am staring at the brick wall wondering if I should cook fish tomorrow night with pecan- or walnut-crusted breadcrumbs.

I was about to write AND I DON'T EVEN LIKE COOKING except that is not true; since I recently stole the Cooking Light magazine from the dentist office, I've been steadily working my way through its pages making every single recipe that doesn't a) look totally gross b) contain goat cheese or c) seem just plain silly.

Silly recipes are those based on sandwiches. I mean, JEEZ. Even I, who can enjoy the whole cooking process until right at the end when everything is supposed to be hot and ready to eat at once and then I have a mini meltdown that requires an extra glass of wine, understand how to make a sandwich. Don't insult me, Cooking Light.

Other things I'm thinking about:

* Having a car is bringing out the jerk in me. It's possible that as a car owner I'm a nicer person to be in a relationship with because I feel less stuck and more independent, much like a 16-year-old who finally gets her license and doesn't have to be dropped off by her mom AT LEAST a block away from Bogart's every time she wants to see a concert, and therefore in a better mood.

The flip side is that I become impatient while driving. The other day someone took FOREVER to turn right and I had to tell them to "Step on it, you fucking asshole," right before noticing their Obama (whom I voted for) and Sands Montessori (where I went to elementary school) bumper stickers, which meant higher than average odds that I would actually like the driver. Who still should learn how to complete a turn before the dawn of the new millennium.

* 2009 will go down as the year I learned to sleep. I have never been good at sleeping in and the only two places where I remember being able to sleep in the morning are at Andrea Harrison's family's vacation house in northern Michigan and by the ocean in Ecuador where there wasn't shit going on.

In extreme situations, like when I was a Trek America trip leader with my campers partying around the fire and I had to drive 600 miles the next day, I have fallen asleep on top of a 15-passenger van while bottles broke and people sang in rounds five feet away. Still, I woke at dawn.

Now, thanks to Tempurpedic mattresses and whoever the genius is behind memory foam technology, I SLEEP. The black curtains I hung on the windows also help. I now wake between 8 and 10 am and after rough nights as late as 11:30. Revolutionary! This is the first extended stretch of non-sleep-deprived time I've experienced in, if not my entire life, the last two decades. If my apartment is Chiapas, I am Subcomandante Marcos, substituting the black balaclava and bullet chain for a tempurpedic pillow and knee socks.

* Why can't I forget about David Hasselhoff? Why can't I look the other way? Why did Neil Rinden have to send me a piano key scarf identical to the one David Hasselfhoff wore on the Berlin wall when he sang Looking for Freedom on December 31, 1989?

NaBloPoMo

I'm going to do this thing, NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month.

I'm going to write a blog post every day during the month of November. I'd heard of NaBloPoMo before as a kind of spin-off inspiration from NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which I did in Seattle back in maybe 2001. In Seattle, I wrote 2,000 words daily by riding my bike to coffeeshops, putting on my headphones to listen to PJ Harvey on repeat, and meeting once a week at a bar downtown with other NaNoWriMers to commiserate over vodka sodas and secretly wonder if anyone would get a book deal for their efforts.

I did not get a book deal; I got a stack of precious, barely readable, cringe-inducing memories of the time I spent in Ecuador as a young, stupid college student who, in retrospect, I'd like to smack upside the head. I still have my "novel" and it still makes my stomach hurt when I try to read it. When I found out about NaBloPoMo last year, I didn't join because I didn't want to write everyday just for the sake of writing -- I thought I'd compromise quality of writing for quantity. Oh, ego.

Now I'd rather write SOMETHING than nothing because I'm out of sorts with writing, out of practice, and so far away from my old itchy fingers. I miss it. And if the point is to get the pen on the paper/fingers on the keyboard, then I'm in. I need NaBloPoMo much more than it needs me. See you tomorrow. xx