There was a spirited conversation about the 9 mile an hour cuhshun police give you for speedin’ on a local radio station. I counted the times they said cushion and the number was eighteen. Like many northern-born know-nothings, I used to think a southern accent was undesirable but now, to my developed ears, it sounds deelish - like melting time, candied pecans, and porch swings.
My last post was a pimento premonition. Today I had lunch at Au Fond Farmtable with my darling friend Jaclyn and she ordered the pimento sandwich. She was already planning on it (and she doesn’t read this crappy blog or know anything about my fascination with southern people like herself eating pimento cheese) when the woman in line in front of us insisted she order it. She was about to go into graphic detail about mayo ratios when the couple in front of her started in with a breathless endorsement for the cinnamon rolls. They started humping each other (new restaurants make people happy) to the rhythmic sounds of “buttered organic flour” and me and J were left to order on our own.
And if I wasn’t already in enough of a reminiscing mood after the movie last night – I found out that Alex Chilton died today (Big Star also makes me think of my Detroit Glory Days/musical education – so does Black Label beer, smashed windows, and Newports). The night I moved to Memphis, me and B and a fella he was working on a project with – well now that I think about it the project was the Big Star box set – went to the Memphis Italian Festival and saw The Box Tops:
RIP Alex Chilton. I will miss being weirded out by your performances.
It’s late and I am thinking about how I have found myself next to lunching ladies splitting a pimento cheese plate or nibbling on pimento cheese sandwiches more often than I would have expected. Of course with Pimento Cheese, comes the unexpected.
Speaking of cheese, I was in Bookstar the other night and the whole place smelled like re-hardening mozzarella trapped in cardboard. The store was crawling with an unusual amount of employees, all recognizable by their hunter green and burgundy polo shirts, standing on sit stools, squatting near journal racks, and crawling on all fours holding laser guns and producing the most epilepsy inducing cacophony of barcode beep beeps. It was depressing, knowing that there was pizza waiting for everyone after they were done with inventory, knowing that adults are rewarded with pizza for giving up their lives, for crawling on floors, for becoming numb to the beep beep, for tucking in their polo shirts, and for wearing kahkis – yes, it’s heart wrenching. I’ve been to more than a few of those pizza parties and I’ve since moved up a caste to boxed-lunches.
Other things this week: an unexpected Dixie Chicks Landslide sing-along, initiated by a dental assistant and shown up by my dentist, while giving me a filling (you can hear a lot over a dentist drill), Walgreens Walgreens – trying to come up with a sport or art or sport-art project I can get Walgreens to sponsor me in, watching We Live in Public and being promptly creeped out, giving up clip-ons and getting my ears pierced, finding new place to live (complete with a mantle), seeing the White Stripes Rock Doc (featuring Canada) at the Studio on the Square and reminiscing about the Gold Dollar (just in case I am pressed for such information, I can use this site to reconstruct the good part of my twenties) and just trying to adjust to being a SXSW widow and training myself to function on less sleep and more pimento cheese. If I have everything in place as planned, my body will be 43% pimento by summer.
It’s been a busy week so until I can update I leave you only with the important information that The Calgary Waffle Shop is open for a few more weeks.
This piece made in my continuing education course, Enameling on Metal, is an accurate depiction of my life. I call it "Michigan Adrift".
Today I talked with at least a half dozen people about how ohmygoodnesscanyoubelieveits March already. And like all conversations about weather, those conversations about time whizzing by and March sneaking up and spring being so late and Mondays coming faster than Fridays never get old for me. I cherish them in these long dark destitute days of Tennessee winter.
Time really did get away from me and I forgot to post highlights of my past week here. To summarize a summary of what I need to catch up on: More Mississippi Love – particularly: Crenshaw Mississippi and Giant Dinosaurs in Marks Mississippi – happenings like: an unfunny workweek, an inappropriate student essay about swinging, and another attempt at winning a trazzler contest (well I have only tried once but I could really use a free plane ticket so favor/save my trip NOW) oh and, of course, the (late) personal discovery of Royce and Marilyn. Drunk, middle-to-old-aged women discussing fine music and elegance have long been my favorite source of entertainment and what I consider to be the aspirational version of my future self and pretty much the guiding factor of which I measure the progress of my life.
Also (meaning bullet-point summary):
The vantage point from down low inspired another vista video – this one indoors:
Just in case you did read the last post – we were sitting very close:
Enjoying a glass of water near a pink carnation and
glancing out the window at:
And inside from our sick and twisted seats:
They (the seats, in case I didn’t mention) were so close I couldn’t keep up with everything including drinking so I just stayed sober and alert and kept my ears and eyes open so I could take in all the stuff you don’t get to see on tv or in scrub seats. For example – I saw Odom pull a stick of Wrigleys out of a plastic tupperware style box. I swear it was full of candy. I might be projecting.
It was promo night and I got a Grizzlies flag that will fit over my car antennae. It is too bad that mine retracts when I turn my car off because I do like that Mayo.
After we checked out J’s show, we walked through Chinatown:
On the weekends, the streets are barricaded off so there is enough room for people to walk and puddles to form. One thing I can verify about NYC: You have to carry cash.
Hey, I’ve got a dollar:
And then we tried to get in a tour of the Tenement Museum (and to see if Miss Kimberly was working) but we weren’t the only people with that bright idea and all the tours were sold out so we watched a projection of a History Channel documentary about immigrants in New York City. A lady behind us kept gasping when the video mentioned anything about how the tiny residencies didn’t have air conditioning or plumbing. We fell asleep because the room was dark and we had been walking all day but we were woken up by the announcement for the tour we didn’t have tickets for.
The next day on my flight home I scored an emergency exit row seat and the flight attendant stopped by to get the verbal confirmation that those of us sitting in an exit row seat were willing and able to perform the duties required (the other people looked fit enough to me so I felt safe saying yes). After he got the confirmation he told us to review the (comic strip) instructional brochure about the emergency procedures and that he would be stopping by again to quiz us on the first three steps. I’ve never been quizzed before by the exit row police so I memorized the steps – the first of which is to LOOK out the window. He never stopped back by. Flight attendants really have ‘tude these days.
I’m back from a quick visit to the far east. Lots to report but here’s a taster before I have to get to work:
Half my time was spent in Jersey because my friends live in Princeton.
Before we (E from Detroit, I from Memphis) came out, C (from Princeton) posted on her FB that she was excited for us to visit the Dirty Jerz and I posted this witty remark:
How dirty are we talking? Like bread bags on the feet dirty or hand sanitizer dirty?
And then just days later I find myself standing near a 85 ton memorial to a young man named Ray Tse:
And I look over to see:
Jersey Dress Shoes!
I haven’t been to NYC in a while. I was wondering what’s new in the fresh, uncynical minds of arty new yorkers and I found it on the streets:
The latest Vista Video was filmed without models on a rainy day in Mound Bayou Mississippi:
I was in Office Max yesterday and the clerk guy said that he liked my fragrance. I found this odd because before I came there I’d eaten a bunch of those crispy snacks made from vegetables and he did not look like a vegetarian. When you tell someone you like their fragrance it could be misconstrued so I would just go with “I like your perfume? What kind is it?” And then I could say “fried veggies.”
What about that Opening Ceremony? We went to a Chalet-themed party to view the procession of athletes. They had fondue!
I did not ask the models for permission to post this photo so I hope their modeling agents do not contact me with a cease and desist letter.
Anyway – Canadian Diversity was the theme of the opening ceremonies and what I got from all of it (including the beat poetry) was just that all the icy blue jackets and lights reminded me of a box of pills I had at home called Simply Sleep.
The fondue was memorable though. Go USA!
I had a meeting in Jackson, MS and I stopped at the Mississippi Museum of Art on my way out of town to check out the Jim Henson Exhibit (in case you didn’t know, he was from Mississippi so even though this was a Smithsonian traveling exhibit it means more in sweet Miss).
So you are not supposed to bring camera into the exhibit and I accidently had my flip video out when no one was around for just a few seconds I swear and just a few minutes after I put it away a security guard came out of a hidden door and said, “We don’t allow cameras…so…” and I just said, “ok” and acted like I was reading notes and sketches for The Dark Crystal and she left and then I felt like a total A and was convinced that I was going to get the shakedown when I tried to leave.
I hate getting caught as much as I hate my compulsion to take video of stuff just because. Really though, what is this big issue of not being able to videotape or take pictures of things? On the upside it may force us to just observe and enjoy what is in front of us in the moment, but at the same time the way we observe and enjoy things has changed as technology has changed. People need to catch up – Look at where we are headed – the human black box is coming.
Anyway – here are some unauthorized stills of some super muppet puppets:
I’d almost forgotten how spectacular the opening of The Muppet Show was until I saw Henson’s sketches.
While the Henson exhibit was worth the trip, the museum’s permanent collection from Mississippi artists was truly impressive. I loved the paintings of cotton fields in the delta and sleepy swampy trees along the Yazoo and Eudora Welty photos and the Theora Hamblett stuff and even the illustrations of Edgar Parker:
Most of all, I like the names of southerners Рlike Ethel Wright Mohamed and Dusti Bong̩. When I think about all the Kaitlyns and Madisons and Jaydens coming up in the world it helps to know that down here, everybody gets two first and two last names or just one lyrical eponym.
“Don’t ask me again” – I like that button on some of the windows that pop up on my computer. I’m going to put that option on the bottom of my emails and see what happens at work.
You know what happened at work the other day? I was going through the paper remains of the last person that worked in my position and found some personal notes about toddler dance classes, losing weight, taking a trip to Cabo San Lucas, and a blank copy of a Hurt Feelings Report.
I wonder if she used this if any toddlers complained during dance class.
What would be the reasons for filing this report?
*I don’t appreciate the typo in, “The weather is to cold”.
There really isn’t anything funnier than making fun of hurt feelings and if you want to really get under someone’s skins make sure you tell them they are not a hero. That’s a bar fight waiting to happen.
The ice has melted and the mud is here. The beginning of the week is really busy for me because in addition to the day job, (reminder: job is pronounced Johb like the Book of Job in the Old Testy) I teach in Forrest City in the evening and when you get out of class late only to find that you are out of windshield washer fluid and cannot possibly get on the highway (there’s a lot of weathery splashback on the I-40 that can render a windshield opaque with one passing of a Geo Metro) until you refill and you find after stopping at four different gas stations (taking up a total of 30 minutes) that everyone needs windshield washer fluid and the only place left to get it is WalMart in Forrest City and even though you are lucky enough to find windshield washer fluid at WalMart for an unbeatably low price, there are only two lanes open at WalMart in Forrest City and they are looooo-ooong long, and its getting later and later and so you pick the self-checkout line and get stuck behind two women self-checking-out specially reduced bags of oranges and three boxes of sugar cereal with crumpled up expired coupons and you can’t believe something could take so long but it does and it is and it makes you get home very very very late and not so thrilled when you have to go to work in the morning where everyone behaves like they are at a self-check-out with cases of reduced fruit and no-one behind them.
So tonight after aerial yoga class (where we spent sufficient time discussing the aerial yoga applications that Pink used in her Grammy performance), even though I was tired tired, I watched a documentary on origami because I knew it would be super and therapeutic. I hope I have elaborate folding dreams.
What I like about the weather here is that people take it seriously. If it snows even a millimeter classes get canceled, parties are postponed, and cars stay parked. Unlike in the northern states where you are fully expected to attend class or work as long as there is a semblance of a trail of tire marks in the snow. Being a Michigander, I speak from experience.
So the Winter Rapture Hail-Fire Storm of 2010 did come yesterday morning: rain, then ice, then snow, then sleet, then rain, then snow, then the most precious pebbly hail you’ve ever seen:
(the above video was taken with my new flip – and I used the ridiculous flip magic movie maker software to create a short movie out of random clips – those flower pots USED to have forget-me-nots in them)
My office was closed for the day and the bachelorette party I was looking forward to was cancelled. But that was the least of the damage around town. My friend Amy (the bachelorette) texted me: “According to the News Channel 5 weather ticker the following things are cancelled tomorrow: Debutante Workshop, Handicap Hoedown Fundraiser, Act Workshop Moolah Shrine, & The Public Health Clinics of WalMart.”
What do Debutantes do on their nights off? I know I filed my nails, read some papers, and watched “44 Inch Chest” with my drunken boyfriend.
I had my first enameling class last night. It was boss. The class was very small but not too small to not have a crazy middle-aged woman wearing a dog-haired covered sweatshirt and taped-together dollar store reading glasses. She answered her cell phone in class within five minutes, hung up and said, “That was my son – he is a glass maker – he would know how to do this stuff.” She got back on the phone with him later – but I suspect she was checking in with whatever nurse let her out of the funny farm for the night. She also asked the instructor all kinds of made-up technical questions like, “Is that gauge the C90P One Thousand?” and whenever the other students and I made a mildly witty comment she said, “That is FUNNY.”
Eventually she shut up when the blow torches came out and I was able to get down to business. The first lesson was all about making enamel samples and learning the basics. It is very fun to watch powder turn to molten glass. And this is how you do it (minus pics of the blow torch because at that point I had my hands full):
First you get your stuff:
Then you put some enamel powder on some metal:
Maybe scrape it up to funk it up:
Then cook it with a torch:
Wait a bit to let the color come out, scrub it up, and torch a clear coat over it and wah-lah!
I call this the Wesley Snipes sample because it reminds me of the movie “Rising Sun” that he was in.
All of the rest of my samples reminded me of the 70s. There is something about copper that says seventies, no?
I still have my ol SoCal area code cell phone number so from time to time I will get some Toked-Out H-wood Mover and Shaker leaving a voice mail for someone named Steve:
Rose, I don’t know who you are but you keep bad company and have a very regressive sense of humor.
Tomorrow is Wednesday and the week is already getting away from me. Quick update:
When the economy is bad and unemployment is high people cry “we need more jobs!” and as someone who recently scored a job I can testify that we most certainly do not need more jobs and those of you looking should just stop and try to make and sell hemp necklaces or soap or maybe read the collected works of Andre Dubus or watch Errol Morris’ “First Person” series. What we need is more money distribution from the teensy part of the population that makes a kabillion dollars off cheap labor and we need more Robin Hood action. Screw jobs for jobs sake.
Today at work I was in the middle of a passive aggressive eight-person email storm that was so ridiculous and succulent that I almost am willing to break any sort of communication and confidentiality agreement in my contract to post it all right here. Almost willing and completely willing are two different things though so you will just have to wait until I send it all to McSweeneys or turn it into a one woman show when I am fired for trying to radicalize the staff or I eventually quit.
Stiff bizznazz speak mixed with grammar mistakes and the occasional ALL CAPS is like, my new favorite genre of poetry. It is hard to mimic unless you have never seen Office Space, The Office, or any of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries or just generally lack a sense of irony. Humorless people are to blame for the economy.
I’m starting a Robin Hood club.
Thunderstorming at night here is the trend. Last night I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about my work event I had scheduled for today and how all the senior citizens driving from rural Arkansas were going to have to brave the terrible weather in their ill-equipped cars. Oh their poor brittle bones rattling over bench seats in hydroplaning Delta 88s!
So I did what any person having trouble sleeping at 4am, I re-upped on some Nyquil (the original Blue – I am not sick BTW). Sure it turned my eyelids into sandbags and by the time my alarm went off my name, date, and current president were erased from my memory, but I got some relief from my storm worries and was eventually able to make it to Clarksdale to eat a fried-green-tomato-bacon-and-cheese sandwich next alongside a crew of bused-in-wanna-be-bluesers from a music camp outta Columbia College in Chicago. I think the sandwich would make quite a pairing with the Nyquil. I’ll serve it at my road-side snack shop someday – maybe call it the hyp-and-henn of lunch choices because of the blue and green combo. Whatever I call it I will be sure to invite those camp graduates and see where their blues have taken them.
Usually I would have posted any items of this rad-i-tude on my other blog. But the comparative nature lends itself to the exploratory themes of KayeKillA of course. I couldn’t believe I found these pairs in separate sections of the store. They obviously should be sold as sets. Just look at the earnest craftsmanship:
Above: Version on the left is regular old paint. Version on the right is cross stitch.
Below: Version on left is photograph. Version on right is regular old paint.
The hands of Mississippians touch us all.
For the first part of the week, including Sunday, I dreamt about shoes. Not in the Carrie Bradshaw sense of shoes, but like losing regular shoes. Like searching inside giant bags of shoes looking for a lost gold sandal. Like the shoeshine service at the hotel in my dream turning violent. That kind of shoe thing.
I figured I must be concerned about my mobility and possibly that the visual manifestation (shoes) in my subconscious was inspired by my decision to take a teaching gig at the nearby (well, relatively nearby) Federal Penitentiary.
“Take off your shoes.”
“What’s that?”
“Your shoes have to go through the metal detector as well.”
It’s just like an airport, I thought. Except of course, nobody is going anywhere. I had been there waiting to go through my Federal Correctional Contractor orientation for two minutes and they already wanted to see my socks.
“Do you have an underwire bra on? It’s setting off the machine. It’s very sensitive.”
People told me that I would feel it, the kind of unease specific to being around a lock-up, as soon as I pulled into the parking lot and saw the menacing look of the expansive compound and the razor wire and observation towers (hello Foucalt) but that didn’t do it for me. My curiosity is stronger than my fear of authority, but my imagination is stronger than my curiosity so I eventually succeeded in freaking myself out. But it took the whole of all the parts of that morning; the urine analysis, the fingerprinting, the security procedure (including what to do in the event of fights, riots, tornados, and tobacco use) overview, and so on to make me feel it. And feel it, for me, was the sensation that I was going to be held there indefinitely on some underwire bra technicality. I really didn’t know how much I was affected until I was snoozing over shoe dreams later that night.
“It’s ok if the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when the doors close behind you, it’s not really normal to be in this situation, inside these walls.”
The above statement was said to me by:
a) Carpenter who just installed a 12X17 foot walk-in closet for my shoes
b) Federal Correctional Facility Orientation Director
c) Father Paul at St. Agnes Church
So the next couple months will be dedicated to unnormal, as opposed to unusual, situations. How much of these unnormal things I will have clearance or clear conscious to write about I don’t know, but maybe I can establish my codeword -- my metaphor now: shoes. Run SK! Run!
Featured in not one, but two different, Vistavision Videos:
And another with the featured tourist showcase models:
We were on a guided tour when we visited Taliesin West and you have to be with a guide to take photos and video so there weren’t many opportunities to grab the exact Vista Video that I wanted. There were however, endless opportunities to hear the asinine remarks from the dustbillies and retires and dustbilly retires in our tour group.
A very vocal old fella actually stopped the tour guide on several occasions just to interject knowledge nuggets like, “These buildings are very angular, like geometric,” and “I don’t know if they thought of this but the sun rises in the east so having the building facing this way was actually a really good idea.. for heating and sunlight.. ya know.”
To which the tour guide would say, “Yes, Frank Lloyd Wright had good ideas like that. That is why you just paid thirty-eight dollars to tour his compound of architectural genius.”
She didn’t really say that but I bet she wanted to.
My recent trip to Arizona presented a few opportunities for good Vista Video-ing – The Casa Grande Ruins video footage was grande enough for two versions.
First, with a lady in the shot:
And then, regular Vista Video style:
Why aren’t you contributing your own videos to the VV program?
Snail mail has been so good to me. Look at what Emma sent me in the mail this week:
The Daily Planner Boxed Set. Better than a pack of Mr. Sketch markers. My birthday month is turquoise.
Is there anything (aside from being a POW like the one I saw on “This Emotional Life” last night) more annoying in life than having to deal with a person that sucks it so much and who will never know it?
I can 90% guarantee that when you think back to the most major points of frustration in your life, it was because you were dealing with someone who refused to acknowledge their role as a human being who sucks.
The never know it part is key. I mean – we all suck once in a while but time, tears, guilt, or court orders usually make us come to terms with our wrong doings. We are sharing far too much air with people that, for one repressed reason or another, will never accept that they are widely hated for good cause (and they should be suffocated).
Like say, as a completely random example, I have this friend who has a boss that is an insanely ineffectual micro-managing deceptacon with the emotional intelligence of a five layer burrito. The kind that spends the day hosting last-minute mandatory meetings about ridiculous shit like tornado policies, re-forwarding company emails with the note “did you see this” to his/her employees, and then incessantly talking about the long hours he/she works. The kind of boss that so visibly resents that his/her employees not only get a lunch break and have things to talk to each other about, but also get paid for their work, that they actually start to look like an imploding chicken soft taco by quitting time.
Trying to communicate with people like that is like talking about dinosaurs with people that believe their bones were placed on earth by Satan. You aren’t even at the same starting point (which in both cases would be somewhere along the lines of earth/reality/common decency/mutual desire for joyful living) so it is pointless. The only thing you can do is bore your friends with details until they stop calling one-by-one and you are left filling your nights downloading Jersey Shore extras off the MTV website.
So my declaration for the day is that much like the essential paths in fictional narrative, the narratives of human personality are just two: either someone has self-awareness or they don’t. And you can’t do much about the latter. You can’t even be sure you are part of the former. You can, however, use my free or low-fee services and I will let you know where you are in the big picture of a-holedom.
What I can guarantee you with 100% certainty is that if you get two or more ladies in an office setting on a regular basis, with a regular schedule, the amount of time discussing where they will eat lunch and what they will eat for lunch will, over time, slowly progress into a daily full-fledged seven and a half hour discussion. They should just ask in job interviews, “What should we have for lunch?” to really see how people fit into the office culture.
God. I feel so bad for my friend.
The 2010 Reading List Includes:
I’ll probably finish all of that by next week so send me more books.
Anyone else watching This Emotional Life?
I didn’t post yesterday because I was out celebrating Palindrome day – yep, just doing things that involved activities you can do backward and forward (roller skating was not included because I could never do that backward) like eating sandwiches, reading “Go Hang a Salami I’m A Lasagna Hog,” and wearing a full body unitard from American Apparel.
This New Years Eve celebration was grand. We had Thai food, champagne, second-hand smoke, good conversation, high-fives, hugs, the blues (musical), bourbon, beer, and I met a well-groomed preacher from Arkansas. In a rare goof, I left my SD card out of my camera (so I had to fight off low-grade anxiety from my obsession with documentation most of the night) and only have a low-light cell phone photo of the Hi Tone (we finished the evening there):
On New Years Day B and I went over to our friends place for a low-key family-ish celebration. A Bloody Mary and Buffalo Chicken kind of party. Children were invited.
I was headachey a a little tired from (the bourbon) the stress of not having my camera the night before, but still observant enough to make notes for the following short piece titled,
The 60 minute life cycle of a table of snacks at a party with small children:
The Set-Up:
The table, a “coffee table” in the middle of the tv/family room, starts with one bowl of corn chips with dip, one bowl of caramel corn, and one cracker platter with a variety of crackers. As the party progressed a glorious platter of mini (cheese)burgers fresh off the grill was brought out, as was a decorative bowl of chips and black-eyed pea dip complete with two small spreading knives with handles shaped like a snowman and a penguin, respectively.
The fate of the snacks 59 minutes later:
Bowl of Corn Chips – stable. Apparently uninteresting to small children.
Caramel Corn – Half-empty, half-chewed, and generally physically violated after repeated grabbing and regurgitation by four different toddlers.
Cracker Platter – 3/4 full with original inventory, of which 100% was smashed to tiny cracker shards by especially aggressive four year old.
Chips and Black-eyed Pea Dip – Chips – fine, if you don’t mind knowing that the chips had been fondled by a munchkin that was just in the bathroom for a half an hour without the supervision of his parents. The bean dip was found in small droplets on the area rug and the decorative spreading knives recovered from the onesie of a 19-month old girl with the most beautiful blue eyes.
So far most of the damage was visible, but perhaps the saddest fate belongs to the cheeseburgers, for it is not the damage we see that hurts us the most, but the damage we ignore:
While his parents watched the Rose Bowl directly across from him, a young boy just barely of coffee table height, ate the buns off two of the mini-cheeseburgers and probably being too full to eat a third, lifted the bun off another burger and proceeded to lick, lick the cheese on the sandwich before placing the bun top back on, giving it a precious pat with his small trouble-making fingers, and leaving the room as steely as a seasoned hitman.
I like to imagine that had their parents not been there, all of the children would have sat and watched the football game quietly munching on Cheerios or something. That will be another study (one that I probably won’t get to any time soon because I like clean snacks more than I like sociological studies).
In case you were wondering, I’d already had my snacks before the assault.
I love a good inspirational slogan. Someday I will host seminars on the power of the personal slogan and Tony Robbins and The Situation from The Jersey Shore will show up.
A new year brings a lot of opportunity for fresh life-guiding rhymes, especially as we move into the tens. Here a few themes I worked up that you can use to shape your new year:
And then there are more abstract themes that come in the form of questions:
