Almost the last nail in the coffin

In a month my mom will have been dead for a year. And I’m beginning to seriously wonder if all the changes I’ve experienced this year are temporary (as I assumed a lot of them would be) or are going to be permanent.

At the moment, I am wondering if I’m ever going to get excited about any holiday ever again.

Holidays have always been my thing. I decorate. The outside of the house (our neighbors used to drive by our cottage every holiday to see what I’d done to it… it was just one more fun quirky Petaluma thing) AND the inside. I have boxes, large boxes, for each holiday. Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Two Halloween boxes, Thanksgiving and of course well over a dozen Christmas boxes if you count the Dickens Houses. So far this year I haven’t opened any of them. Nor have I sent cards marking the occasions which usually, if you are at all on my list of people who love me/are used to my eccentricities, you got a card. Decorated with matching themed stickers.

Of course the first three (Valentines, Saint Patrick’s and Easter) happened when I was still pretty deep in my grieving fugue and my total lack of desire to spread hearts or green teddy bears or bunnies around didn’t surprise me. And I only have a 4th of July box because we held family BBQ’s at our house a few times. But this summer if someone had brought it up I would have bet money that I’d be pulling the Halloween box out right on schedule (next to Christmas Halloween is my favorite). It contains several beloved stuffed animals and a truly COOL little Dickens scene my parents bought for John. It is now October 17th and the box is still in the garage. And I am pretty sure it is staying there.

Heck, I have no idea what I am going to BE for Halloween this year and that is something I’ve been known to start planning IN JULY. No exaggeration. But this year I had no inspirational ideas. Hell, if John’s band wasn’t playing a Halloween gig on Halloween I probably wouldn’t dress up at all. Those shirts with all the costumes where you just check a box that says like MUMMY or BLACK CAT? I am so feeling that right now.

What I am not feeling is the excitement that usually has built up fairly well by now.

So the question is: how much of this is because at least a 3rd of all the stuff in each holiday box came from my mother? She loved decorating for holidays too (Easter was her favorite because it was all pastels. Jesus had nothing to do with it but man did she love a really good Easter bunny). I totally inherited that from her and then, being my silly extravagant self, took it to the next level. Every year we sent each other the best Easter bunny we could find.

And then there’s the fact that for her all holiday decorating came to an abrupt end right before Easter the year she died. She was admitted into the hospital the day before my yearly Easter package arrived and when I visited in June I noticed it was still sitting unopened in a corner. I had my dad open it and tried to get him to throw out the chocolate but he insisted on putting them in the fridge so mom could have it when she got better. She never got better and she never came home. After she died I finally convinced him to throw it away. The little ducky and bunny I sent with the chocolate are still sitting, now covered with dust, on the corner of the end table.

I do know that I still have residual “my mom’s funeral was on my birthday” issues. I have no more desire to celebrate it this year than I did last year. People really tried to “just do something later” to make up for it but I had zero interest. I think I’ll just turn 37 again again. I don’t even want gifts or really to even acknowledge it. I wonder how many years that will take to wear off? Luckily I think I can pull off being 37 for several more years if I need to. Thank god for years of faithful sunscreen wearing.

And lastly, I can just see Christmas peeking over the horizon. The only reason our house got decorated for Christmas last year was that we put everything up the weekend before my mom died.

If it was just me I think I could get into the spirit of it for John’s sake, but now there’s John’s mom to factor into the equation. After cruising along pretty well for so long that we maybe got a bit too used to it, the cancer seems to finally really sinking its teeth into her. It is possible she won’t see Christmas. Just that thought doesn’t really inspire holiday cheer. I have no idea how John will react. To say we’re wired differently is a drastic understatement. I have no idea if he’ll want all the colorful decorations up anyway to try and keep normality and cheer us up or if he’ll join me in the “aw fuck it…” corner. It would be truly weird not to decorate for Christmas. We’re actually going down to visit her next weekend so I guess I’ll have a better idea of where things stand soon enough.

I do know one thing… if I do decide I just want to get rid of all my holiday crap it is going to make for one seriously weird yard sale.

In the future there will be flying cars AND drive-thru liposuction

So, after 20 solid years of looking forward to NOT attending my 20-year high school reunion, it turns out I’m going.

Damn it

Before I even graduated from high school I was already looking forward to not attending any future reunions. I can remember lying on my bed, Walkman on, Depeche Mode playing, and thinking with great pleasure about never attending another official event with my schoolmates. I was confident that I wouldn’t care one teeny bit more about my graduating class in 1998 than I had when I graduated. And I was right.
I actually enjoyed blowing off the calls about my 10-year reunion from The Susans (the people I’d always assumed would end up organizing our reunions? Were spot on the actual people who ended up organizing both our 10th and 20th reunions. No lie.). Politely thanking them for calling me but no thanks, I would not be attending. Around 2003 I did pay to join Classmates.com for a year so I could get the e-mail addresses of the three people I really cared about that I’d lost contact with. And then I let my membership lapse.

And then I really didn’t think about it again. Other than how fabulous my ass used to be, and how it fun it was to run around kissing all the boys, I’m just not that nostalgic about high school. Then this spring My Favorite Twin started talking about wanting to fly out from Alabama and go to our 20th reunion. He really wanted to go. Having been popular and voted “Best Dressed” our senior year there are, quite understandably, people he wants to see again. So while I told him that I was not going to the actual reunion, I would drive down to Bakersfield to see HIM. Totally worth it and much easier than flying all the way to ALABAMA. So over the summer we’d been planning that. While a trip to Bakersfield is never something I look forward to I was really excited about getting to spend time with My Favorite Twin.

And then a totally unforeseen and unrelated event occurred a couple of weeks ago. It turns out that My Compatriot In Silliness, someone I’d thought had been one of my friends for over 20 years… uh… wasn’t. Apparently she had been pretending to have fun with me, pretending to like the gifts I sent and all around faking most of what I thought our friendship was, all out of fear that if she didn’t there would be horrible repercussions. Her words: “horrible repercussions”. She then included a long list of what had been, for me, fond memories and broke down how each time I thought we were enjoying ourselves and each other (many times while doing something silly) she was actually faking it as hard as she could in order to meet my endless sucking unreasonable need for my friends to enjoy my company. She seemed to think that by telling me all this it would strengthen our friendship in the future. No really. In short she totally yanked the rug of friendship out from under my clueless and not entirely steady feet and I landed on my emotional ASS going, “OW… that really HURT…what the FUCK just happened?”

(Yeah I know, not my best metaphor, roll with me)

So, since she’d pulled this little trick via e-mail I broke my own rule about NEVER forwarding other people’s e-mail and sent it to the three people in my world who have known both of us for a long time. I didn’t do it out of spite. I did it because I couldn’t stop crying and I needed to know if I really was a horrible demanding inflexible monster whose punishments for the slightest infractions really were that terrifying.

Luckily for me the vote was unanimously “She’s nuts, you are so NOT the devil, what the fuck?”

So I wrote back to her essentially saying “Hope you feel better now that you’ve gotten that off your chest because we are SO not friends anymore. Because that? Is so not what friendship is. Maybe you should get some therapy. PS Thanks for doing this less than a year after my mother died, bitch.” Okay, I didn’t include that last sentence but I really wanted to.

I’m sure you’re all wondering how this has anything to do with my reunion. I’m getting there.

Like a lot of people who have never really had the love and support of their officially designated nuclear family I’ve built a family out of my friends. I started doing this in high school.  I don’t make friends easily. I’m weird and I don’t really like people which can be a bit limiting. The friends I do make, I tend to hold onto. For decades. And as time passes and people change and grow and I change and grow I work very hard to make sure the friendship evolves to accommodate these changes. And I am usually pretty good at it. And tenacious. I’ve had friendships that have had rocky YEARS and still managed to survive. But My (former) Compatriot In Silliness literally burned our friendship to the ground leaving nothing, metaphorically speaking, but ashes. You know on the internet there will be pictures after a major fire where a house was burned to the ground but the only reason you know that is from the caption because looking at the photo all you can see is charred black lumps? That’s pretty much how I felt.

Pretty much what my heart felt like.

So a couple of days after all of this happened I was talking to a friend of mine and I can’t remember what I said to prompt his comment but he said, “Just because she sucks doesn’t make the rest of us BETTER friends.”
And I said “Oh no, in my head, it totally DOES make you better friends”

And for me, it really does. Picture my heart as a sort of pie chart that is made out of nine different-sized slices. A few of them are really big, some are thinner slivers. Now remove one of the largest slices. Now divide the percentage of that slice by 8 and evenly distribute that amount to each remaining slice. See how they all got fatter? Everyone who hadn’t been pretending to like me and lying to my face for years automatically became a BETTER friend as far as my heart was concerned. And for a few days I really did feel this conscious increased affection for all the people in my life who had not just ripped my heart out.

So My Favorite Twin, who I was already feeling pretty mushy towards because he was one of the people to read the letter of destruction and say “Dude, I always thought she was a kind of crazy but that was just NUTS” picked that moment to ask me to attend the reunion with him. He didn’t beg, because he has a rule about no longer begging me for things, but he came VERRRY close.

Here’s a short transcript of my capitulation, “fuck, FUCK, I don’t want to… but… FUCK… I really don’t want to go… I SO don’t want to go… fuck… crap…DAMMIT! Okay. Okay I will go because I love you SLIGHTLY more than I don’t want to go, but only a very tiny amount. Fuck.”

So I pinged The Susans to get confirmation that no, my kidnapping date-rapist ex-boyfriend wouldn’t be attending (I just really don’t want to be in a room with him, you know, ever) and then I RSVP’d.

So there you have it. If My Favorite Twin hadn’t gotten that extra push of goodwill from his newly increased slice of my heart I probably would have been able to hold out. But I couldn’t. Because all of the sudden something that I used to take for granted -- my friends really like me –now means more to me.

So to my reunion I shall go. If I’d known I was going to have to go I would have stopped eating carbs in like, February, but oh well. The 37-year-old woman I am totally doesn’t care. The 17-year-old girl the popular people tormented REALLY doesn’t want to give them the pleasure of seeing I’m no longer a size five. I was tempted to just stop eating completely between now and THE EVENT (Oct 11th) but I’d probably just get dizzy and fall down and hurt myself.

So instead I’ll just accomplish whatever is “reasonable” with my trainer, buy a fabulous dress and shoes or boots for the event and go. I rented a suite for My Favorite Twin and I and a town car (NOT a limo) and driver for us as well. While the only good thing I can say about the accursed event is at least they have the sense to hold it somewhere that sells alcohol I will be damned if I get arrested for drunk driving in my home town after my reunion. Because this is SO not the call I want to make, “Hey Dad… yeah, it’s me… uh yeah I’m actually in town… um… for my high school reunion… I was going to call you but things got so busy and um… I need a favor? Is there anyway you can come down to the courthouse and bail me out?”

Just No.  I will take a big ole pass on that and since My Favorite Twin felt that he himself might need a drink or two to cope, and his wife would have a bitch of a time bailing his ass out from Alabama, we’re getting a driver.

Next Up: THE CRUEL UNDERWEAR. Because as much as I work out and don’t eat between now and then it will never be ENOUGH so I am doomed to slinking into Nordstrom and buying some horribly constricting device to make me look another five pounds thinner. I’m sure just trying those things ON will warrant another entry.

- Related Link: http://highlandhigh1988.com/

Not with a bang but with an “okay” – The End of the Eyelash Saga

So after several days of stalling I finally went back to the salon on Wednesday to let the owner/manager/eyelash mangler know that my eyelashes didn’t turn out quite like I was hoping. 
I had decided to just incorporate it into my errands and stop there on the way to Safeway. I didn’t bother calling to make sure he would be there because he is ALWAYS there. I have been there every day of the week, in the mornings, in the afternoons and he has NEVER not been there. He may not be an eyelash perming wizard but his work ethic kicks ass.

So I walked in and he rushed right up to me (“Hi, honey!”) and asked me how I was and I said, “Fine but…(taking off my sunglasses)…my eyelashes didn’t really turn out so well.” So he came closer to get a good look and I slowly blinked my eyes a few times and turned my head to give him the full effect. He looked me over for a while and then said “they curled up but…” and he trailed off and I picked up the dropped sentence with “…but they turned out kind of crooked and clumpy” and he nodded and explained how hard it was to get them to all lay exactly in the right position in the glue (which I had already figured out). He suggested I could use conditioner to loosen up the perm.

I nodded and rattled of my list from the last post of all the things I’d tried (conditioner included) to dejackify them and that they’d actually looked worse last week and he said, “S’okay, honey, next time they’ll look better, right, next time?” and I said, “Oh please like I would ever let you touch my eyes again you freak.” Okay, I only said that in my HEAD. Actually I said, “Okay” because, well, it isn’t like I already had another appointment to let him try again, I just won’t ever mention it again and if he asks me about it I’ll claim I don’t have time but “maybe next time” and hopefully he will leave it at that.

I really hope so, because I like going there and jacked eyelashes are SO not worth doing or saying anything that would impede my ability to walk in whenever I want and get a mani-pedi and brow wax. Especially since finding someone who you trust to DO your brows isn’t easy (let’s just say I’m lucky, as I’m one of the women whose hair always grows back and leave it at that), and I keep losing my brow girls!

I made the mistake of fixing up my first regular brow girl (excuse me, “aesthetician”) with a friend and when it turned out she was an insane drunken bitch it kind of ruined both their romantic relationship and our professional one (having someone yanking hair out of your face while they rant about how pissed off they are is not an experience for the faint of heart). My second brow girl (who was like a brow ARTIST) moved away to Oregon. And my last one I lost when I threw an actual HUGE SALON HISSY FIT at the owner of the salon she worked at.

Jacked-up eyelashes? No biggie. Only the women I showed could even tell anything was wrong with them. Both Joel and John just looked at them after I told the story and were like “We’re boys. We have no idea what your eyelashes looked like before this.”

HOWEVER, hacking off my beautiful bra-strap length hair into two horrible poofy layers (one at my shoulders, one at my ears -- see above photo) because you were so busy staring at your boyfriend’s ASS as he shampooed people that you forgot what you were doing? That WAS worth of a full scale public meltdown. So there were tears, recriminations, defensive retorts, angry e-mails exchanged and, well, whenever I walk by there (which I have to do on a fairly regular basis because he’s on the same block as my dry cleaner and my post office) I subtly flip the place off because it took the better part of a YEAR to grow that shit out.  So obviously I couldn’t really keep going back and getting my brows done in his salon*. My brow girl was actually there the day of the great hair meltdown of 2006 and her saying, “No really, it looks cute… you know…different and perky” didn’t endear her to me either. Not that she had a choice since it was her BOSS who had hacked all my hair off and he was standing right next to her.

So anyway, after I got done lying to the salon manager this afternoon that, yes, my lashes would look better the next time he did them I said, “oh, and I also need a polish change” and he said “Okay, honey, I give you discount today because”. Apparently there was no need to elaborate, or even speak of it again.

So they removed the black nail polish I’d applied myself last weekend while getting ready to go out with Joel (shut up, it cost a dollar at Claire’s and yes I know I am too old for Claire’s and black nail polish, but it was fun and looked great with my combat boots and heavy black eyeliner) and applied my “Meringue” polish (a subtle metallic gold I’m wearing a lot this summer) and I paid them $10 instead of $20 and went on my merry way to Safeway. Where there were men working the refrigerated glass doors where the MILK usually is. But that’s a different story.

*while I fled back to my old hairdresser in Sacramento who is a genius and a bargain (three color process and cut: $75) John, who dislikes change, has continued to get his hair cut by that guy. John makes the appointments himself, no one mentions my name, he gets his hair cut, pays and leaves. It seems to work – he hasn’t come back with his hair butchered yet.

So I Think You Should Watch So You Think You Can Dance

THE STORY OF MY SECRET LOVE AFFAIR WITH REALITY TV: PART 2 OF 2

I vaguely remember seeing commercials for So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) last summer (the intro verse/name of show and accompanying beats were obviously designed by someone who had studied earworms) and I remember Cat Deely hosting a New Year Countdown on some station and John asking me who the hell she was and being like, "I think she hosts some dumb dancing show" And that was all I knew. Until a few weeks ago...

....when my compadre in Crime TV crime Evelyn and I were bemoaning the season end of all of our favorite shows. The conversation then led to the few things we were looking forward to this summer: new episodes of Law & Order CI, I was excited Burn Notice was coming back, she was excited about The Closer. And then she said "Oh and So You Think You Can Dance is starting up again!" and she sounded really excited about it. I was openly skeptical and a bit derisive and she was proudly defiant that it was a great show, that the people on it were really talented, that it was no way like American Idol and that really REALLY since nothing else was on (it was a month before any of the summer crime dramas were even going to start up) I should try watching it.

And since Evelyn is a very smart woman with TWO Masters Degrees who also knows me REALLY well (and whose taste in television mirrors mine quite closely) I decided to give it a go. I was dreading the episodes where people audition because American Idol has turned those episodes of their show into an opportunity to humiliate dozens of people for the viewing nation's enjoyment. The fact that a lot of these people show up with just that goal doesn't make it any better. Happily the SYTYCD tryouts were handled quite differently. There were varying levels of talent, from amazing to pitiful, but the judges did their best, even when someone sucked, to try to be constructive in their criticism. The only times they actually were mean were when the dancers were either obviously not taking it seriously or if they were rude to the judges first.

The episode in Vegas, where they whittle down the many talented hopefuls to the top 20 that will be contestants proper, was amazing because these dancers had to do SO much – they'd be given an hour to learn an entire routine, have to perform it for the judges with some random partner, then people would be cut and then the remaining people would have to learn a another routine in a different style and perform THAT with a different partner, and then there would be more cuts. At the end of an exhausting day, when they thought they were finally going to be allowed to go back to their rooms and pass out, they were given a CD, broken into groups of five and told they had until morning to choreograph a dance to the song to perform for the judges. Brutal.

It was a grueling process because you might have come in a great Salsa dancer or an amazing Hip-hop dancer but you then had to prove you could also do the Tango or Waltz or Krump.
And that is where SYTYCD really differs from American Idol. Singing just isn't that hard. I sang in the choir in high school. I was a pretty decent soprano. Learning a song isn't that difficult. And even though thousands and thousands of people try out, every year it seems like half of the finalists can't even sing that well. I could get up and sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow in front of a crowd if I had to. It wouldn't be great but I could do it and it would be ... Never in a MILLION years could I learn the TANGO, much less learn it in an hour. Not even with a gun pointed at my head. People who CAN do that? They impress me.

I already had people I was rooting for in Vegas when they narrowed it down to the top 20. I don't whooo at my TV very often and when Twitch made it, I seriously went "WHOOO!"

And it has only gotten better from there. The top SYTYCD 20 was made of ten guys and ten girls who were then paired up. And then each week they picked a style out of a hat (or once they got down to the top 14 dancers, TWO styles) and learned a routine in that style from a choreographer and performed it on TV. And most of the time they pulled it off! And they looked like they're having fun. And most of them even had chemistry! The worst I have seen is that something isn't danced passionately or with perfect technique. Every week everyone managed to have all the steps down and pretty much be in sync with their partner. Two of my favorite dancers both came in as Hip-hop dancers but so far I have seen them perform a Viennese Waltz, a Broadway routine, the Samba, the Pasa Doble, the Tango, The West Coast Swing and a couple Contemporary routines. And not just go through the motions but actually DANCE them! They've also gotten to perform in their own style but that meant their dancer partners were out of their home territory. It actually seems to be easier to step OUT of the Hip-hop box than to step into it. Krumping? Is freaking hard. Seriously, check out some of the videos of Twitch and Kherington on YouTube.

After the tryouts, when I realized how good the dancers were and what a variety of dance and musical styles there was going to be, I pitched the idea to John that he give it a shot and watch it with me. There aren't a lot of shows we both enjoy, but he likes it too. Not sure if he'd admit it at work or anything but we both have gotten involved to the point where we have favorites as well as people we want to go home. And there have been a few routines that literally have taken my breath away. Last night when one of my favorite couples was in jeopardy of going home (my guess is that they were victims of being such fan favorites that everyone made the mistake of assuming everyone ELSE would be voting for them) I actually got all worked up and tense. And then, thankfully, I got to be very relieved.

Next week they start switching up partners and instead of voting for couples people will be voting for individuals. I haven't watched anything on primetime TV live since we got our DVR but it is possible, as this goes on, that I might not only be willing to suffer through commercials but I might actually pick up a phone and vote.

THE MARY MURPHY DISCLAIMER: Every week there is a guest judge and then the two regular judges – Nigel Lythgoe, the Producer who is also responsible for Pop Idol and American Idol (and has danced with Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly), and Mary Murphy the resident "Ballroom Expert". Mary shrieks. She screeches. Usually when she's happy and doling out praise. Apparently as the seasons have passed she's decided that's her trademark (example: "Well, I hate to be a party pooper SO I WON'T BE!!! WHHOOOOOEEEE!!"). Whenever it comes to her time to speak John (and sometimes the other judges if you watch carefully) plugs his ears unless it's really obvious she didn't like a performance. Consider yourself warned.

So, in summary, if you like dancing at all you should be watching this show. YOU SHOULD TOTALLY WATCH SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE! It isn't too late! DO IT! The Top Ten perform this Wednesday at Eight! On Fox! In HD! You don't have to tell anyone, but you really should try it.

- Related Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VB2LrNBYa20

This never would have happened if I watched Oprah

Okay, this is really embarrassing, coming as it does so quickly on the heels of my reality TV confessions last week because NOT ONLY is it a story of my embarking upon a rash and poorly conceived adventure, there also never would have been a tale to tell if I hadn’t watched a particular episode of the Tyra show.

I can’t decide which is worse… If I were to say, “I saw a poster in a window of a salon and impulsively opted for a new beauty treatment I’d never even heard of before” or “As I was heading into the salon I saw a poster for a new beauty treatment I’d seen on the Tyra show and decided to try it myself.”

Both bad, right?

So I might as well go with the truth then.

Tuesday I was heading into my regular salon (in the Castro – I like getting my nails done while Amy Winehouse blares and gay men chatter around me) which is run by a tiny Vietnamese man whose entire extended family works there. I had, until yesterday, assumed he was a gay Vietnamese man due to the location of the salon, his attire and the fact he always calls me “honey”. But there was a little girl in there whose mommy was doing my toes and she kept running after him yelling “daddy” so maybe he just understands marketing really well. Oh LORD I am already off topic.

Anyway, as I was entering the salon I saw a new poster that said NOW OFFERING EYELASH PERMS which, sadly, instead of just being something that made me go, “what the hell is that?” Made me go, “Oooh” because, well, I sometimes watch the Tyra show. I’m a trophy wife, but since I’m not a very good one, instead of watching Oprah I watch Tyra. I like Tyra, she mixes her hard-hitting exposés (she won an Emmy for like Best Informational Talk Show or something to that effect) on things like transvestites, overweight people who have porn websites, anorexics, growing up gay in the hood, etc., with Fashion and Beauty shows. Yes, I know this from experience. Shut up.

Also, and I’m sure this, more than talk of buying a gun, is likely to generate hate mail but I really don’t like Oprah. I’m sorry. She scares me. She has always scared me. Her fake eyelashes scare me. I’ve never been particularly good with mother figures and she is like the ULTIMATE mother figure. It seems like her shows are mostly about telling you what you’re doing wrong with your diet or your love life with some doctor (remember: Dr Phil is TOTALLY her fault) telling you why your poo is the wrong color. And the rest of the time she has guests on like Barbara Striesand which: no thanks. Her omnipresence (it that even a word) kinda freaks me out too. And does she have to BE on the cover of her own magazine every single freaking month? I mean, her NAME is already on there, do we NEED a photo as well? And can I blame Oprah for Rachel Ray too? Because although I only had a few minutes of her perkiness inflicted on me by my parents (who had her on when I walked in the house and it took me a little while to unearth the remote and hit the OFF button) Every time I see her GRINNING face on the cover of her magazine I want to hit her. The holiday issue last year where she was wearing the fur hat? Literally made me want to commit random acts of violence every time I saw it. Oh look, I’m off topic again… Okay, enough stalling.

So anyway, one of Tyra’s shows was about women with beauty complaints and how, on the show, she was going to solve them. And one of them was some woman complaining that she has “flat” lashes. And I felt her a little. I know that having dark lashes is at least somewhat of a blessing but MINE just sit there and attempts to curl and mascara them always result, without exception, with me, cranky and raccoon-eyed, tossing yet another tube of mascara into the trash.

So Tyra announced they were going to give this girl the newest thing in salon treatments – an EYELASH PERM! And of course HERS looked amazing. The process looked simple and the end result really did make her eyes look so much better.

So cut back toTuesday. So I walked into the salon to request a brow wax and mani-pedi (my usual) and as the woman was waxing my brows I tried to casually ask her some questions about eyelash perming. Unfortunately, there was something lost in translation and she RAN out of the room and came back with the owner and he started excitedly explaining to me how it would work and that he would give me a discount because I am such a good customer and as soon as my brows were done they would start. I now realize what he was saying over me in Vietnamese was “this is so great, I’ve been wanting to try one of these ever since the supplies came in last week!”

So there was much digging around for supplies under the table I was laying on and I realized that the owner himself would be performing the procedure.  He cleaned my eyes and then said “Okay, honey, now I put the glue on your eyes okay? Hold still.” And I was thinking, “glue? I thought they just had these pads with adhesive on both sides.  I’m pretty sure that’s what they used on the Tyra show” and he started painting CRAZY GLUE or something on my eyelids. Then he glued down a pad, then MORE glue was applied and then he used a little stick to force my eyelashes back and onto the glue covered pad (and, of course, to repeatedly poke me in the eye). This went on for a while, glue, stick, gouge, me trying to somehow pull my eyeballs further back into my head so they wouldn’t get glued shut. And the whole time they were talking over me which I am sure was like “should the lashes be all clumped up like that?” and “It will be fine”, and then he put perm solution on them which, aside from the smell causing flashbacks to the 80s, was also just weird. And then they left me laying there in the dark for 15 minutes to “process”.  This gave me a chance, after getting tired of saying “I am so retarded I am so retarded I am so retarded“ about 50 times, to put my expectations in order from most to least likely.

1. I would be blind
2. I would be partially blind
3. My eyelids would end up glued shut
4. My eyelashes would all fall out
5. My eyelashes would look all jacked up for the next month until it wore off
6. It would actually look really nice

So I laid there wondering how I was going to explain to John that I had blinded myself with STUPIDITY (not that he’d be surprised or anything) while I “processesd”.

Eventually he came back, rinsed the lashes, sort of, put the, oh, whatever you call that other part of the perm that tells your hair that yes, you meant it, and left for the length of a nicely remixed Stevie Nicks song whose title still escapes me. It wasn’t “Gypsy”.

So then he returned and there was lots more rubbing, careful removal of the pads and finally he washed my eyes out with saline solution. When he was done I was relieved that apparently my vision had survived. So they pulled out a mirror and aside from the fact that I was totally without makeup due to all the rinsing that had gone on, it looked pretty good. So I asked if I could use the bathroom, partly because I really needed to GO and partly because I wanted a better look at my eyes. So I got up close to the mirror in the bathroom and they really did look pretty good. So I sent up a prayer that I had escaped punishment for my impulsive act and went back out to get my mani-pedi. The only problem at that point was that every time I would fully open my eyes I would FEEL my lashes hit the back of my eyelids. It was really distracting.

An hour later, pulling into the Safeway parking lot to get groceries I decided to take another look at my lashes so I pulled down the visor mirror and made a sound like, “yearrghulufuck” because: the shit was all fucked up. The left eye had divided into clumps and the right eye was… well, it looked like a BAD perm, curled, going different directions AND clumpy. SO not attractive.  So I took a deep breath and made my way into the store, sunglasses ON, and did a totally ineffective and distracted job of shopping and then drove home where I threw things into the fridge and ran into my bathroom.

I spent the next hour doing the following things:

• Trying to brush them out
• Washing my face
• Trying to brush them out again
• Trying to separate my lashes with my fingers
• Trying to reshape them with an eyelash curler
• Putting on mascara
• Removing mascara
• Washing my face again

After poking around all my lashes I realized that while most of them now felt hard and crunchy the ones on the edges still felt like, well, lashes. I came to the conclusion that somehow the glue he had LIBERALLY applied to my lashes was still on them. So then I painted them with my Cover Girl makeup remover (the only thing on the planet that will remove their glue lipstick) and let that sit for a while and then washed my face again. At that point I realized if I didn’t stop messing around with them it was going to MY fault when they all fell out so I gave up and called John to tell him I was retarded.  I was verbally reprimanded for both the lash perm and the Tyra viewing.

Me: “Can you still love me knowing that I am this lame?"
John: “I’ve loved you for 14 years, why would I stop now?”
Me: “You didn’t KNOW I was lame when we started dating!”
John: “No, I thought you were cool but really you were lame.”
Me: “whimper”
John: “I love my lame babe!”

So I decided to be grateful that it was a subtle lame thing that at worst looked like I really didn’t know how to apply mascara and just wait the 3 – 4 weeks for it to wear off. And of course to keep hoping that my lashes didn’t fall out later in some kind of delayed reaction.

John got home, announced that he really couldn’t see much difference and that he still loved me even though I was lame.

So we had dinner, and WINE, which I really needed by that point. When I went back into my bathroom to get ready for bed I noticed that my eyelids were red and swollen all along where the glue had been. I realized I had totally left “My eyes will swell shut due to a chemical reaction” off my list. So I rubbed A&D ointment all over the area (very attractive), hoped to GOD I would be able to open my eyes in the morning and went to bed.

The next morning they looked clumpy but not any worse and the swelling, thankfully, had almost completely gone down. In the shower that morning I spent quite a bit of time letting the warm water run over my face and extra time washing it and seemed a little less stiff. So I was still hopeful that, while they will probably remain crooked as long as the “perm” lasts that the stiffness will diminish as the glue slowly is cleaned out of my lashes. They still looked like a clumpy jacked-up mess however. This is one of the very few times in my life I’ve been glad I wear glasses.

It is now Friday and my eyelashes still pretty much look like I ineptly curled my lashes and then clumped mascara on them. On the bright side, they haven’t fallen out yet. I was going to go to the Salon today and just sort of give them a heads up that maybe they should take the poster DOWN until they get a little better at it but I can’t think of the right way to phrase it so I’m going to use the excuse that I have John’s car today (which is much harder to park in the city) to NOT go in there. Maybe I’ll go Monday if they still look this bad then.

THE MOST SHAMEFUL PART:

That night John said, “So, do you promise NEVER to do this again?” in a voice that totally assumed the answer would be a repentant yes and I kind of just looked at him and he was like “Seriously?” and I said,“I can promise never to go have THOSE people do it again but if it becomes really popular and there’s a salon where there’s someone who is an expert at it and I have a special occasion coming up… I might try it again.”

He just shook his head and sighed.

I think Flavor of Love was Tasty and Rock of Love Rocked

(Well to be accurate it was Flavor of Love 3 and Rock of Love 2, but the numbers totally ruin the flow of the title)
 
THE STORY OF MY SECRET LOVE AFFAIR WITH REALITY TV: PART 1 OF 2

The original plan was just to add this to my bio – a little blurb about how I’ve become totally addicted to something that I was only barely aware of (and disdainful of what little I knew) a few weeks ago. But while trying to word it in my head last night, I realized it was going to be a really LONG blurb and decided that maybe it would make a fun blog topic. And since I haven’t written a fun blog in a while, I decided to go for it, even if it meant exposing the true reality TV skeletons in my closet.
After I got done writing I realized not only was it WAY too long for a blurb, it was actually kind of long even for a blog entry.  Six pages is a LOT to expect anyone to read, especially when it is just me nattering on, albeit (hopefully) wittily, about things like Bret Michaels’s weaves. So I decided to break it into TWO blog entries. One about my sometimes shameful relationship with reality TV shows and one about my newly discovered lurve for SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE about which I have had an almost evangelical reaction. This, obviously, is the first entry. If you’re not interested in my history with reality TV shows but are curious about why a show you probably, in passing, think of as “more crap on Fox” is so darn exciting to me please feel free to skip this post and move onto the next one although: SPOILER ALERT: I do see one of the people mentioned in this post IN THE FLESH.

Okay!

I want to say I dislike reality TV... and most of it I do. I’d LOVE to be able to say in a lofty and superior way, “Oh I loathe television; we don’t even OWN one.” But that would be a big fat lie. While reading is still probably my favorite pastime, I have come to terms with the fact that I rather like some television shows. For example: crime dramas. Other than the original CSI (which just, enough already) I watch ALL of them. Except Cold Case which is just too freaking depressing. Give me guns and explosions and twisted crimes and demented criminals and the conflicted therapy-needing people who try to solve them and I am a very happy girl. When they all dwindled to a stop in May (way too soon after the drought caused by the writer’s strike) I was an unhappy girl, which is how this got started. But before I get all evangelical I think some background is in order.

These are the reality shows I have never watched and merely seen commercials for but that seem like proof our civilization is nearing collapse:

• Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader – Surely one of the signs of the apocalypse
• America’s Got Talent – The only thing that will be on TV after the apocalypse
• My Super Sweet Sixteen – This is what happens when parents don’t spank!
• The Moment of Truth – I don’t understand anyone willing to ruin their life ON TV for money

There are several shows that seem to be based on random guesses and suitcases full of money but I’m going to file those under game shows and declare them not relevant to this discussion.

There are the reality shows that I have watched at one time or another:

• Survivor – I watched the first season when it was a novel idea and it seemed like they really were going to let those people starve and they weren’t casting purely for personality conflicts and assholability.
• The Real World – Again a novel idea at the time. Haven’t they actually run out of cities at this point?
• American Idol – I actually enjoyed the first season of this. I loved Kelly Clarkson from the start, rooted for her to win and was really excited when she did. I even voted for her in the finale. And it turns out she really was the reason I was watching because none of the other seasons or singers have ever reeled me in. Other than Clay Aiken slowly morphing into a scary soccer mom nothing of interest to me has come out of American Idol since then.
• The Bachelor/Bachelorette – Again the novelty was interesting and, like way too many other people, I watched Trista fall in love with Ryan instead of edible perfect Charlie, not realizing that she was Never. Going. To. Go. Away.

Then there are the reality shows I attempted to watch but was unable to stomach:

• Joe Millionaire – I liked the idea of tricking a bunch of gold-diggers into falling in love with a construction worker but the actual execution of it was just too awkward and painful to watch. Until I watched that show I thought “Dumb as a block of wood” really WAS just an expression.
• Temptation Island – Once I got to the episode where it was brought to light that one of the couples attempting to strengthen their relationship by having oral sex with people they had just met had a KID I had to stop watching. You know that by now that poor kid’s friends found that shit on YouTube and showed it to him.
• Rockstar: Supernova: While some of the contestants were colorful to an almost deranged degree, Dave Navarro and his waxed chest gives me a headache. And seeing Jason Newstead sitting back there just made me sad. Fucking Metallica.
• The Surreal World – it may have been where Flavor Flav and Brigitte Neilson found love but 20 minutes into the first episode I was so depressed at what desperate people would do to get BACK on television I was ready to start doing vodka shots.

Then there is The Hills, which I have never seen even so much as a commercial for since I think it is on MTV or something but, since I accidentally signed up for a free subscription to US Weekly while purchasing something at Best Buy, I know that Heidi Montag is a bigger fame whore than Paris Hilton which is kind of impressive. I mean, she isn’t even wicked rich. She’s some girl from some reality show who turned a fight with the main boring girl on the show into her own media empire. And whenever there is a really slow gossip week (you know, like when they started locking Britney Spears in the house), she gets to be on the cover of US Weekly. Oh, and she got boobs. And her boyfriend is a douche who might be Satan.

Then there are the “TOP” shows where people compete to be the best chef, interior designer, house builder, house flipper, weight loser, clothes designer, photographer, hairdresser, etc. These don’t interest me with the exception of Shear Genius because those people are competing on ACTUAL PEOPLE’S HAIR and that’s kind of exciting and horrifying at the same time. Getting a horrible dress or ugly room is one thing, ending up with cherry red asymmetrical hair that makes you cry on television is quite another. So I watched the first season of that and am, in a hit or miss way, watching the second right now.

Okay, if I was less than honest I would totally leave out this next bit. But aside from the main reason for this post there is one other form of reality show I totally love: Trashy Finding Love Shows (as opposed to supposedly “classy” finding love shows like The Bachelor).

It started out so innocently. I was laying on the couch, sick as a DOG with a fever and I was flipping around because nothing is ON at 11 in the morning and came across a marathon of Flavor of Love 2 (at that time I wasn’t even aware there had BEEN a Flavor of Love 1) and in my altered, medicated and delirious state I was transfixed and fascinated. Where did they find all these trashy women? Why did they all have freaky nicknames that were spelled wrong? When Chuck D found out about this did he tell Flav, “You are DEAD to me!”  Wasn’t Flav dating Brigitte Nielson anyway? Don’t those clocks get heavy? Does he take them off when he has sex? I lay on the couch for hours, sipping Gatorade, watching probably ¾ of the entire season. It turned out the reason they were running the entire season back to back was because the finale was going to be that Sunday. So I admit it. I set the DVR and recorded it. I needed to KNOW if the truly heinous New York (who got her own show AND boobs) would “get her man” or not. And I really enjoyed the part where she did not (at that point blissfully ignorant of the plans underway for I Love New York). And mooning someone who just dumped you? Had NEVER occurred to me. Who says you can’t learn from TV?

So Flavor of Love totally turned out to be a gateway drug because during the marathon VH1 was running commercials for Rock of Love 2, with Poison front man Bret Michaels. And I was like “oh GOD I bet it has strippers in it!” So I happily, if shamedly, set a series recording for that. And there WERE strippers. And crazy girls. And, like you would expect from any good Venn diagram example, crazy strippers. The surprising part was the Bret Michaels was actually pretty funny and likeable. Really. Since during the height of his popularity I was off in a dark room listening to Depeche Mode, this was my first real exposure to him and I was surprised to find myself liking him. Not his music, of course, but he had pretty decent comedic timing and didn’t in any way try to pretend that he was NOT a huge horndog or that he wasn’t sleeping with these girls during the show. While trying to decide who to cut during elimination (“Your tour ends here…”) he literally would be like, “she’s crazy, and I think she might kill me, but she does have an awesome rack so I think I’ll keep her.” Add that to the impressive collection of bandanas with weaves attached to them he sported during the season and you’ve got some entertaining TV!

Watching scantily clad strippers try to play football in the rain in order to win a date with the 45-year-old lead singer of Poison -- that’s some fun right there. And watching really dumb girls try to scheme and connive against each other while hurling the ultimate insult, “You’re not here for BRET!” well, that goes really well with a pomegranate martini I have to tell you.

I think my favorite moment was probably when one of the girls was trying to memorize the preamble to the Constitution to perform at a USO show (while hula hooping in a bikini, you know, like you do) and she said something to the effect of, “I’m having a hard time learning the preamble because I had never heard of the words before, so I wasn’t just learning the preamble, I was learning new words.” How awesome is that? That was, by the way, the same girl that Bret thought might be a potential serial killer but kept because of her fabulous boobies!

John came home in the middle of an episode one night and ended up sitting and watching it with me. And he too was like, “He’s kinda funny.” And from that point on we watched it together. We rooted for comparatively-not-particularly-slutty Ambre, and we were bewildered by entirely-artificial Daisy’s supposed sex appeal. We even (oh the shame) are Netflixing season one now because we missed it.

I do have standards though. Even I draw the line at watching Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.

So that’s my history with reality TV. Most of it I think is boring and some of it is fairly entertaining in a junk food sort of way. NONE of it has ever been what I would consider “AMAZING.” So how did I end up an evangelist of SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? Read the next post to find out!

Epilogue:

This is tangential but simply has to be included. A month or two after Flavor of Love 2 ended I was in the Bloomingdale’s Mall with Joel and there was well, a ruckus, and all of the sudden people were leaning over the balconies in droves and they ALL had their cell phones out taking pictures. So Joel and I were like, “oh crap, famous person, let’s try to get out of here” so we tried to make our way through the throng and all of the sudden about 25 feet away I see this TINY little black man in a do-rag wearing a huge clock being hugged by a grandmother while people wildly took what I’m sure were blurry pictures and I muttered, “oh fuck, it’s Flav” to which Joel who was like, “Who?”

So as I explained to Joel who Flavor Flav was (Joel not being a huge Public Enemy fan, I know, shocking) and why people were losing their minds (which was sadly, NOT because they were seeing the hype man from what I consider the seminal rap group but because they were seeing that guy from Flavor of Love) we slowly made our way upstream (I totally admit I elbowed some shrieking phone-waving tourists) to the elevator by which we hoped to escape to the food court. By then I had put it together that Flav, who was in San Francisco to do make an appearance at the Halloween Exotic/Erotic Ball (which is just nasty, by the way) had come to the mall just TO get mobbed. There’s no Giant Clock store in that mall. He, like Sally Field in Soapdish, had come to the mall to get recognized. Purely for the attention. Because if he hadn’t been wearing the clock, he would have just been some little guy at the mall. But what do you expect from someone who has been on FIVE different reality shows?

So we stood by the elevator waiting and waiting and then a bunch of big security guys came over and put screens up between the elevator area and the main mall. So we started to leave and one of them barked “you guys are fine” so we just stood there and a few minutes later Flav and his posse were escorted to the elevators and he was maybe eight feet from me. And I could not believe how TINY he was. Like, he was maybe 5’2” and 100 pounds soaking wet. My first thought was “I could snap him like a twig”. And I realized they must shoot that show in some sort of magical TomCruise-O-Vision because the skanks on that show are totally normal sized hos and he never looks like a midget on TV.

So the elevator FINALLY arrives and Flav and his posse get on and then motioned to us like “it’s cool, there’s room” and I start to move forward (I had so many questions, the first of which was “So, does Chuck D still speak to you?). When Joel CLAMPED down on my arm, pulled me back and waved them on. I shot him this bewildered look and he said, “I am NOT going have to explain to John that the last time I ever saw you you were getting on an elevator with Flavor Flav!” And I was like “Yeah, I do have a pretty big booty, he might have liked me.”

- Related Link: http://www.vh1.com/shows/dyn/rock_of_love/series.jhtml?extcmp=SEO_SSP_Y

Guns don't kill people, fruit flavored iced tea does!

I’m trying to figure out where it all started…

And I’m a bit rusty here… this is he first new post I’ve actually written in a while… usually I like to take mundane things in my life, like, say, riding the bus, and try to turn the story into something funny to read. With the whole my mom getting sick and then dying thing nothing much seemed funny and I couldn’t craft a witty sentence for crap so most of my writing ended up being depressing therapeutic stuff that *I* didn’t even want to read once I was done writing it. I am many things but emo is SO not one of them.

But I haven’t felt like that for a while now… and I’ve actually written a few funny things although they’ve pretty much just been e-mails to people.

But… well… there’s some STUFF… I thought it was going to start with the gun but things usually END with a gun so I’ll start with Saturday.

Saturday we drove from Elk Grove to Bakersfield. Which meant driving down Hwy 99, through the valley.  Coming from the bay area we always take I-5 when we make the trek to Bakersfield so I hadn’t been down 99 since probably the early 90’s when I was in college.

It has changed a bit. There’s more STUFF there and they’ve raised the speed limit to 65. But the thing that REALLY caught my attention was the oh, 12 or so billboards spread over 100 or so miles, all identical, that read,“I DIED FOR YOUR SINS – JESUS” against a purple background with, below that, some website that was too small to make out. Probably www.youaresogoingtohell.com or something.


And it just rubbed me the wrong way. And here’s the thing. If the billboards had read, “JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS” it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. I mean, I grew UP in Bakersfield and I am used to having religion and politics aimed at me via signs along the highway. For years it was “ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART” with a tasteful graphic. But this was like Jesus was down here on vacation and had some free time and some paint and was like, “you know what, those bastards are breaking the speed limit and taking my name in vain while listening to songs about fornicating! Something must be done!” and pasted these things up himself. And it reminded me of Sam Kinison’s bit about Jesus flipping through the bible going, “where the hell did I say build a waterslide?”

Being raised Christian for 18 years I am fairly familiar with the bible and I never got the feeling what Jesus was really going for was an IN YOUR FACE type of message. But Christianity and Church seem to have changed a lot in the last 20 years too. I never had a Purity ring, they didn't exist. Nor did WWJD merchandise. Jesus hadn't actually signed his big merchandising contract back then. And the first time homosexuality was mentioned in my church at home I was 25… and I was shocked to hear it then because NO sex of any kind, not even admonishments not to HAVE it, had ever been mentioned. We got taught the gospels and the sex lectures AND politics were left to our parents. Not anymore. I still don't think my church is throwing Father Daughter Purity Parties or anything (and I have to say if they had been having those when I was a teenager I think my dad would have been more mortified than I would have been) but sex and politics have definitely made their way onto the agenda and into the sermons.

Which is fine because it isn’t MY church. I don’t go to church anymore except when I go home to Bakersfield to visit my dad because it makes him happy. But it does serve as a kind of reminder of how much things have changed since I was a kid there.

Happily for me irony is never far away. The Jesus Guilt billboards gave way, as we entered Bakersfield to 302-Dave billboards. Dave is a realtor who happens to have been Tommy's first boyfriend and he is a huge fag. Like the kind of guy that even gay people CALL a fag. While in the closet professionally, he's totally "out" in Bakersfield's generally underground gay community (how else would he ever find the tasty teenage boys he loves to munch?) but in day to day life he has highlighted hair and a great smile full of perfectly capped teeth and the old ladies love him. So it went from "I died for your Sins – Jesus" to "I can sell your house while tea-bagging your husband – Dave". Which cheered me no end. Jesus died so Dave could teabag with impunity! Everyone wins!

Oh and of course the front page of the paper while I was IN Bakersfield was covered with the story of the county clerk’s heroic effort to keep the gays from getting married by proclaiming that the office could no longer afford to marry ANYONE. If you wanted to get married at the Bakersfield courthouse you better have done it by last Friday because as of right now you are out of luck.  The paper included a copy of the threatening letter one of the county supervisors sent to all the other county employees backing her up, saying everyone ELSE had better back her up and that if they didn’t he wouldn’t rest until he got their asses fired. And then he stated that gay marriage was THE most important issue facing our country today. I had to read it three times. I was like,“Really? Not the economy or terrorism or crime?” Nope, the scariest thing in the world is gays getting married.

I don't really think I need to write a lengthy paragraph about how I don't understand how gay people getting married affects anyone negatively, much less how anyone can find it scarier than 9/11. I have a button that says "if you're against gay marriage don't marry one" and to me that pretty much covers it. There are reasons I no longer live in Bakersfield. The heat is only one of them.


Anyway onto the GUNS and stuff.

So the atmosphere at my dad's church was just one more factor that added in to my general feelings of unease. And I have a lot of them. I've never fully recovered from the last few elections with that graphic of the US broken into Blue and Red States. Blue on the edges, Red in the middle. Us. Them.

And it has only gotten worse.

But one area in which I think THEM is much smarter then us? They’re armed. Them have Guns. (Yes, we’ve finally arrived at guns). If the election destroyed my belief that we were one country, indivisible, then Hurricane Katrina annihilated any belief I had left that if I ever needed help the government would be there. People were dying and Condoleeza Rice was shopping for Prada shoes and political bickering kept any aid from getting there until it was much much too late.

Actual fear set in when I found out I wasn’t even really seeing the “news” on the news. I was under the impression that, after a rocky start, things were under control in New Orleans until I went over to the house of a friend who had Satellite and spent a chilling few hours watching the BBC and finding out just how bad and NOT under control it was. According to the news everyone was having a sing along in the astrodome when really people were still DYING.

(Side note -- if you haven't seen "When the Levees Broke" by Spike Lee you should rent it. It isn't fun to watch but it answered a lot of my questions about what the fuck happened down there)


So you’ve got the government letting people die AND somehow keeping that a secret, at least for a while, from the public. SCARY FUCKING SHIT. When I moved to San Francisco two years ago it was with the absolute belief that if my house falls down on me during an earthquake I will lay here until I bleed out or run out of supplies. I absolutely believe that if something catasrophc happens I am on my own. There are theories that since there are a lot of RICH people here, unlike New Orleans, that we wouldn’t just be left to rot but I don’t believe it. I think if things get bad enough money won’t even matter. Not to mention the fact that genius San Franciscans have been so incredibly vocal about how ANTI-MILITARY they are that the military probably won’t feel particularly motivated too come in and save our spoiled white ignorant asses anyway.

And of course the religious folk won’t be rushing in to help us either since it will be our fault it happened in the first place. It will be God punishing us for celebrating gay marriage and having all the best hairdressers and decorators.

So I carry that fear with me everywhere. Most of the time it is crouched quietly in the back of my mind and I’m not even consciously aware of it. But has been cautiously watching the prices of everything rise. And rise s’more. And then rise even higher. And wonder where the breaking point is. And wonder if it the breaking point is one of those things where you can’t see it until it is too late.

The tiny part of me not calcified into pure cynicism really hopes that Obama can win the election (and yes, I checked where he stands on guns and rumor is his wife owns two of them) and that he somehow is able to turn things around, make them better. But I'm not banking on it. I have this bad feeling, way down in my stomach, that there are a lot of old white men out there in those red states who maybe haven't voted in 30 years but they'll be damned if they'll let a black man be president. And when they talk about it they won't be using the term "black man" either. There are people out there wearing "If Obama is elected to we still call it the White House?" buttons. And there are a lot MORE people out there who think those buttons are funny.  I understand racism even less than I understand homophobia but I have an idea how prevalent it still really is. I have a friend inAlabama. I hear things.

What I am determined about is that if there is some major disaster and something horrible does happen to John and I it won't be because I was ignorant and naïve. It won't be because I didn't stock up on a few weeks worth of food and water. And it won't be because some asshole who didn't stock up on food breaks in, kills my ass and takes mine. And even though I am a democrat (although much less of a liberal than I was before I moved here -- getting hassled very day by homeless people really tends to eat away at your sympathy for them) I grew up in Bakersfield and my daddy is from Texas! Which means that my DNA is pro-NRA. Which means that my DNA is pro-NRA. And I like Texas. Men open doors for you and call you ma'am, the food is awesome (assuming you're a carnivore) and they NEVER put fruity crap in the iced tea.

Which is why I'm getting a gun.  (No, not because everyone keeps trying to feed me raspberry iced tea, although that does REALLY piss me off) And since this is San Francisco, I probably won’t even have to shoot anyone. I’m sure most of my anti-military neighbors are also anti-gun and are probably unarmed. A cocked gun and a helpful suggestion of “try the people down the street, perhaps?” might just be enough. And if it isn’t well, I’m going to take all the classes too so if I really DO have to shoot someone I won’t falter and I won’t miss. They say you should never own a gun unless you could really use it. I could. I don’t want to shoot anyone. I think it would be horribly traumatic. And messy. But could I? If someone was trying to hurt John or myself? Absolutely without hesitation.

Which leaves me with the question: Do you think if I put a NRA card next to the PFLAG card in my wallet the whole thing will catch fire? What if I put my ACLU card between them? Will my purse explode?


And when I do buy a gun does that mean I’m one of them instead of one of us? Because I also understand, for the first time in 37 years why the 2nd amendment is there. I’ve heard arguments against gun ownership that go something like “the founding fathers never meant for us to own guns for self-defense… it was so we could form militias and protect ourselves against our government and that doesn’t apply anymore.”

Really? I’m not so sure about that.

UPDATE: I meant to post this last week and then things got a bit crazy but then this happened:

June 26, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Americans have a right to keep a gun at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled today in striking down part of a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.

By a 5-4 vote, the court concluded that the 2nd Amendment and its famous right "to keep and bear arms" protects the gun rights of individuals, rather than just a state's right to maintain a militia.

BOOYA.