White people

Today I sent Jocardo a text about how I was watching people in the Ellen audience dance. Someone else watching who also happens to be white said simply, "White people..." and I started laughing.

Why are we so easy to make fun of?

Jocardo said it might, just maybe, be because our sense of entitlement gives us a false sense of being impervious to ridicule and that makes the stupid shit we do that much more funny and hilarious.

Yikes, I wrote back, we are a-holes, sorry about that.

But, Jocardo replied, some of the most adored and loved people in his life are white so he is truly cared for and loved by some amazing crackers. Unfortunately a lot of others aren't and that ruins it for the decent ones.

I presumptuously wrote back that I was glad to be one his amazing crackers. When he called me out I said, "Oh, you're saying I'm a substandard cracker?"

Then I mentioned I'd like to be a graham cracker or an animal cracker.

But when Jocardo said I'm a frosted honey graham animal cracker with rainbow sparkles I told him, "Ok, you don't have to kiss my ass."

laughing quietly to myself

About how I know someone who's practically related to Steve Ward and I called him a douche online. I had no idea.

Today I checked phone messages and one was from my former employer, Michael, who apparently is dating Steve's aunt:

"Hey, we haven't talked in a long time but that's no reason to go around calling my prospective in-law a douche!"

Michael was busy when I called back so I sent him an almost sort of apology by text:

"Tell Steve I actually do like his style..."

Mahdoula

Back in college I spent whatever free time that wasn't sucked up cavorting around bonfires and drum circles researching cultural studies and public health, women's health in particular. I loved the subject of women's health and anything related to the cultural interpretation and treatment of women's bodies. Wanna discuss menstruation? Awesome, I could go on for hours! Abortion? Birth? Party!

I volunteered at Safeplace, a women's shelter for ladies getting out of violent relationships, and was a legal advocate for those who filed protection orders. When I moved to Seattle a few years later, I wanted to help women be in control of whatever decision they made about whether to have babies or not and almost became a volunteer advocate at an abortion clinic. In the end, I trained to be a childbirth assistant, or doula.

I took a class at the Seattle Midwifery School on how to give emotional, physical, and informational support to laboring women and attended births until it became too hard to manage with the rest of my work schedule. Because fetuses don't tend to care if you're scheduled to bartend on the night they decide to make their big debut and the people you work with don't like to keep covering for you at the last minute. It was around this time that Sunny's then-boyfriend/now-husband was out in the Seattle area doing interviews for a freelance article and Sunny said he and I should hang out.

I hadn't yet decided whether Shane was a keeper or, as he put it, THE ONE. Shane came to the pub to drink and play pool during my shift and asked me if I thought he was THE ONE for Sunny. I froze and didn't say a word. Awkward! I have got to learn how to lie better. But, quite honestly, Shane had a lot more proving to do. If not to Sunny, then to me.

We recovered from that overly honest moment and bonded that night to the point that I started saying hi to him when I called their apartment in Chicago and didn't just ask for Sunny immediately. Shane also started to tease me about being a doula, or as he calls it, a mahdoula. Shane cracked mahdoula jokes at my expense for years but guess who's happy I'm a doula now since I'm attending the birth of their kid soon?

In my role as #1 mahdoula, I recently spent some time reading about childbirth and remembering what doulas actually do since it's been so long. Last weekend I took the bus to Chicago to talk to them about the good times ahead and I brought materials, comics that I'd made for the occasion.



Some were more useful than others.



Hopefully their baby comes out so easily that Sunny never gets to this point.



So excited.
xx

Hello, car. Goodbye, sense of humor.

I took a walk my first day back in LA. I went to a park in West Hollywood and sat on a concrete picnic table. I watched Latino kids play soccer and made some phone calls and realized that I was tired. Three hours time difference plus no sleep the night before tired. Make a pillow out of empty Cheetos bags and cigarette boxes and curl up under the concrete table tired. I walked back to the hotel.

Something funny happened on the way. I was so delirious I barely remember what but I think it was poodle-related. I just know that I saw something funny and I shared a high-beamed smile with some stranger who saw it too. I kept laughing so I giggled at other strangers as I passed them on the sidewalk. And I thought to myself that I was acting as I did in Berlin when I spent hours every day walking and laughing with people I would never know or see again.

The next day I got my rental car and I drove to rehearsals thinking THIS IS SWEET. Driving through Laurel Canyon, I noticed how pretty the trees and flowers were and how the Rav4 had nice pickup and took the curves in the road.

"I am a hypocrite," I thought, "Because I am digging this."

Good luck, Earth. Goodbye, fossil fuels. So sorry, future generations. Didn't I say that when I get tired of cycling and public transport and walking, I'll get a veggie oil car or a hybrid or an electric or something that makes me feel like less of an ass? Because what I MEANT was that I'll get an SUV. Or a Hummer! Maybe a Hummer limousine like the one I just saw, the one that blocked the entire intersection when it took a left. I tried to count the wheels on the Hummer limo when it crept past me like a giant white monster centipede - I think I saw 12.

On the radio, 98.7 FM was giving away gas to listeners.

"Congratulations! You are winner of three months worth of gas!" Yelled the DJ.

"Oh my goodness! Wow!" The winner sounded overjoyed, "Thank you!"

"That's such a LA thing to give away," I thought disdainfully.

Again with the hypocrisy; I was getting my gas costs reimbursed by work and thus wasn't jealous of the radio winners. But my personal conflict - eco-ideals vs. apathy - was pretty much over by the time I got home that first day driving.

It took me two hours to drive 20 miles that day. I wasn't so much noting the bright purple flowers by the end of those two hours as much as the fact that I'd called three people assholes, one guy a fucking dick, asked some lady to get off my ass, and told one bitch to step on it. I'd also given two people the finger but in my special secret way which is to hold it low, down by my leg. I hold it there for awhile, for like ten seconds, and no one knows I'm doing it but for whatever reason it makes me feel really good.

So much for walking around, taking my time, giggling uncontrollably, smiling.

Drinking beer off my foot

Hm, there's something fishy about this photo. I wonder if it's related to the fact that I'm standing on a beer crate without one of my shoes and socks.

And maybe it's the guy sitting on a toilet and looking at my foot. With a beer bong on his head. Not that I know anything about beer bongs - this might not even be one.

The closest I got to a beer bong was the one fraternity party I went to my freshman year of college, the same party that, in conjunction with a homecoming parade outside my dorm, made me take a 19-hour Greyhound bus trip from Minneapolis to Cincinnati to sob on the couch to my parents about how I don't want to go to school anymore.








I'd already been called into the hash circle twice. Once for being new and once for POINTING WITH MY FINGER.


I'd forgotten the hash rule that you can only point with your elbow. I'm sure there's a fine reason for the elbow rule but, oddly enough, pointing with my elbow is not an intuitive move of mine.

During the run, my roommate asked me something and when I pointed like a normal human being, I got yelled at by the hasher with the bugle, Lame One.

"No pointing with your finger!" he bellowed.


I shrieked and yanked my elbow up. Not that it mattered since I forgot so immediately that I pointed with my right finger while my left elbow was still up.

Lame One repeated himself at the top of his lungs and then blew the bugle so loud that I almost dropped to the ground and went fetal.

"I'm in trouble," I said to my roommate under my breath, "I'm gonna get called into the circle."

Sure enough, I was. After I'd been in the circle twice I thought I was safe. I'd resumed my position on the outside and was nursing a Berliner Kindl and laughing at this guy. Yesterday was his last hash before he leaves for India so he got special treatment. They don't make people drink beer from a toilet any old day.

So when Lame One said to me, "You! Take off your shoe and sock! In the circle!" I was surprised.

I took off my shoe and sock and stood on the crate. The hasher in the yellow shirt, Stiff Nipples, looked at my foot.

"Your toes are black," he said, "Do you have mushrooms growing on them?" WHICH IS ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE TRANSLATIONS. I giggled for a week in Ecuador when someone got a yeast infection and the doctor diagnosed mushrooms. It just makes fungus sound so adorable.

"It's nail polish!" I told Stiff Nipples.









Stiffi touched my foot and I started screaming. People, I am ticklish. I get antsy when my feet get LOOKED AT. I've kicked people in the head when they thought they were being funny.

When I was little, my dad teased me by hovering his hands close to my feet. How amusing to watch me go into convulsions when all my nerves pricked up. So this little situation right here? Let's just say it didn't improve when Lame One started pouring beer down my calf and beer bong started drinking it off my foot. The reason it looks like I'm trying to escape is because I am.

But let's look at it from beer bong's perspective for a moment. He is sucking on the foot of someone who just went running in tube socks and basketball sneakers. Who may or may not have mushrooms.

it'll be funnier later

Is it mean to send a friend who just had back surgery a tube of tennis balls with the note - for playing, if you get better, for your walker, if you don't - ?

Yeah, we thought so, too.

And stuck to books and cookies.

Relatively fat friend

The other day I was eating lunch at the rehearsal studio with a boss, one of whom I have to thank for my position on the tour. In addition to feeling a ton of respect for her, I also think that she's funny as hell. And the more I get to know her and the more comfortable I get, the more I start acting like myself.

Which may or may not be a good idea.

One day she was carrying on a lively discourse about whether to have a cream puff for dessert. Normally I'd be like HIT THAT SHIT, but since she's trying to drop some pounds and hasn't been quiet about that AND had just shared with me and Lindsay an idea for a weight loss challenge in which we'd agree to a dare that we'd perform if we didn't meet our weight goals, like walking around stage in a bikini and heels during soundcheck, to which Lindsay and I both agreed that we'd gladly quit our jobs before we'd agree to that, that it would be infinitely preferable to be chubby and unemployed, I tried to be supportive.

I said something about how delicious the spinach salad was and suggested she quit staring at the cream puffs and interrogating the other people at our table about their creamy heavenlyness. I also pointed out that she's not a large person. She admitted that she's not large, she just not comfortable.

Which I totally get. I definitely have my own range that feels good and when I'm over-range, I'm irritated that I can't wear half of my pants. Sometimes I have to go to sale racks for new fat skirts because I donated my old fat skirts when I was either a) feeling cocky or was b) moving and didn't want to drag my fat clothes across the country when surely I'd be lithe forever, regardless of the historical fact that my weight changes as often as the seasons.

She said that it didn't help that most of her friends look like supermodels and that she can practically feel her metabolism slowing down around them and feels like the fat friend.

I listened and thought about how weight and body image is all relative and that we cannot and should not measure ourselves against other people's bodies, that it just doesn't help at all. I wanted to say something like this to her. But what came out was,

"You're actually just the relatively fat friend."

And then COULD NOT STOP laughing. It was the look on her face. So stunned. And how fucking insensitive I sounded, which wasn't what I was going for. I said I was sorry several times but I couldn't stop laughing so, you know, how genuine I seemed is debatable.

Just another example of how my habit of laughing at my fat mouth is so easily and unfortunately mistaken for laughing at others. I'm an idiot.

Pee on our feet

A year ago, on the last night of the dazzling fifth season of the American Idol tour, Matt drank an uncertain number of cocktails, hopped off the bus in his socks, and took a leak in a hotel fountain. When he lost his balance and stepped directly into a pool of his own urine, I worriedly scanned the door for hotel personnel but Jimmy wasted no time in laughing and pointing at him.

Two weeks ago, season six culminated with a group of us riding in the bus's front lounge to the airport hotel. Two of them happened to be Matt and Jimmy. Another was a chaperone whom I adore. She is kind and lovely and just thinking about her now makes me want to go have tea with her and rest my head on her shoulder. She's a grandma and she's religious and thoughtful and sweet.

She hung with us up front for a good while until she suddenly decided to go to the back lounge. I think it might have been not too long after someone started randomly shouting out both motherfucker and cunt and similar words at the top of his lungs. Mind you, he wasn't yelling them at her and or anyone in particular but it didn't matter. It made her uncomfortable.

Later she returned to the front to use the toilet. When she exited the bathroom she was delicately dabbing her feet with paper towels and murmuring about how she think she stepped in urine on the floor. I groaned because I always ride the boy bus and am familiar with the consequences of a lurching, braking bus + boys standing up to pee. It gets messy. Rule number one is to always wear shoes to the bathroom. The chaperone, however, was used to the girl bus where there are flowers and candles and everyone sits.

**

One week ago, I was at a birthday party for San Pancho, Sayulita's neighboring town in Mexico. The local towns all throw birthday parties for themselves and I had the good fortune to attend the last night of a TEN DAY PARTY. Oh yes, ten days. It gave me ideas if I ever have another birthday party. My party won't last ten days but someone should definitely be winging rocks at empty beer bottles when I turn 33. So simple and fun (and sharp and loud)!

You got three tries to smash a bottle and win a can of beer. It was like an elementary school carnival except that you get to drink and don't have to carry around a goldfish in a plastic bag that's going to die a week after you get it home.

Earlier Leila's friend Donny and I had been watching drummers until suddenly he pulled me away, "We have to get out of here, the tower of fireworks is gonna go off." He said that in the past he'd seen people with clothes singed, smoke rising from their shoulders from the fireworks but I figured he was just being expressive.

Then, from a distance, I heard the tower explode and turned to see light raining down, sure enough, on people. I watched as two firework-laced images of a giant cross and a giant margarita lit up and began swirling madly. My mouth dropped open. It was fantastic, a big boozy Mexican Exorcist. The girls around me began screaming.

"It's the toro!" Leila said.

Oh yeah, she'd mentioned the toro and I hadn't taken that seriously, either. I just didn't believe that a guy would make himself into a "bull" by strapping fireworks on his head and back and then run through the crowd, shooting them at people. That, however, is exactly what happens. I screamed and darted over to a tree where I grabbed the trunk and crouched.

A bit later, after more excitement and more beer, Leila and I needed to empty our bladders. We found the official ladies bathroom which boasted not only the requisite line but also a face-curdling stench of rotten urine and hepatitis B. Oh, hell no. We headed to the street.

On a dark corner, amidst bushes and palms and fronds, I crouched at the edge of someone's yard. As extra measure, Donny played sentinel and planted himself on the sidewalk, ready to redirect passersby. Things were going fine, too; I had the angle and the splay just right. There was just so much beer up there and it was taking forever. Mid-stream, I glanced to the right and saw two figures approaching Donny. I whipped my head back and pushed with my pelvis. I HAVE TO GET THIS OVER WITH. And sprayed all over my feet.

more hanging out with stuntwomen, less eating chips

I did web research on Zoe Bell and the next day we rented the documentary Double Dare.

Between the video store and home, we stopped at the supermarket for movie snacks. After we both made fun of the vitamin-fortified tortilla chips, Frank heckled me for stopping in front of the bags of Veggie Booty.

"I know you," he said, "You had to stop as soon as you saw with spinach and kale."

"Shut up," I said, "I did not."

Frank does an impression of me staring at the Veggie Booty, mouth hanging open.

We were suckered into a three for $5 deal and got Veggie Booty AND Pirate's Booty and Pirate's Cannon Balls. Hell yes. And tortilla chips and salsa. And two bottles of Lambic.

"Do you want me to take any of those?" I asked Frank, who was carrying all four bags. He shook his head and I said, "YOU DON'T MIND BEING SO FAT?"

"Damn," he said, looking at me strangely.

And I did what sometimes happens when what I say comes out wrong: laugh uncontrollably without explaining. This is sad because the other person, understandably, doesn't know that I'm laughing at myself, not at them. It's a total jerk move and I inadvertently do it on a semi-regular basis.

At checkout, the cashier sees that Frank's bag/arm ratio is high and invites him to put the snacks on the counter. I decide to make another joke because theoretically it would be funny since it would be so obviously on purpose and not a mistake. I go to whisper, "Tell him your fat arms are getting tired," but what came out was, "Tell him your fat ti...ARMS are getting tired."

Frank: "You almost just said that my FAT TIRE IS GETTING TIRED."

Which, fuck, was true. And we decided then that it was ironic to get all psyched over a film about ladies who are cool because they seem so fun and active and alive while we have a hard time just carrying all of our chips to the couch.

Double Dare involves Zoe doing crazy shit like being lit on fire while spiraling through the air as Xena the Warrior Princess's double in New Zealand, then visiting LA and wearing a PVC dress to the World Stunt Awards where she fell into the bushes.

It's about her moving to California and staying with Jeannie Epper, Lynda Carter's stunt double from Wonder Woman, and flipping off a 35-foot tower onto a air mattress and auditioning for Quentin Tarantino to be Uma Thurman's double in Kill Bill.

It's about the Hollywood stunt world and Zoe and Jeannie's friendship and it made me, just like after seeing Death Proof, want to drink beer and crack jokes with Zoe or maybe go on joy rides in other people's cars, hit punching bags, learn how to walk in plastic dresses, get things pierced, and do stunt training, though I'd probably just bounce mildly on the trampoline or read while she hurled herself off a building or something.

Sorry about your erythema migrans

Sara, I'm sorry. When I was at your house and kept cracking jokes about you having Lyme Disease - "Is your Lyme Disease acting up?" and "Get off the couch, it's not like you have Lyme Disease!" - I NEVER thought you REALLY had Lyme Disease.

I thought that the rash on your leg was something other than the characteristic skin rash erythema migrans, transmitted to you by a blacklegged tick infected with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. I never imagined that the headache and fatigue you felt was related to a condition that, if left untreated, could have spread to your joints, heart, and nervous system.

I just thought you were tired because you're a mother and four months pregnant and I hear that that's really tiring and a fairly good reason to lie on the couch in the middle of the day and fall asleep for hours. And I'm sorry that when we went to the basement to tear down cabinets and you asked for my help in working on the house you're remodeling, all I did was take photos and make MORE jokes about you having Lyme Disease and getting tetanus and then wandered in the other room to take photos of my feet.

I'm so glad that you went to another doctor to get a second opinion and caught the Lyme Disease before it caused any palsy or cognitive disorders and I want you to know that if I weren't with Idol right now, I'd be in your living room smoothing the covers over your shoulders and putting honey in your tea and buying do it yourself home improvement books.