Bright Lights, River City

 

Video stills from an upcoming swimming movie.

Enjuice Yourself, It’s Spring

I don’t know if it was the baseball magazine the fella was reading next to me on my first flight, or the buzz about opening day, or what  --but the grass-lined runway at the Cincinnati airport had me hallucinating baseball diamonds. No really, so much that I mentioned it to the middle-aged woman sitting beside me and she just said, “I fly a lot so I don’t really notice these things” and then she started plowing into her bag of Queen City Popcorn with her face. Well well well look who knows everything I said and then I said well I’ve traveled a time or two and you know what? The last time I was in an exit row there was a QUIZ so you better study up sister because obviously you wouldn't know the heat of spring fever or a metaphorical baseball diamond even if it was edible and I would hate for the safety of all the people on this flight to rest on whether or not you have finished your popcorn before we crash land.

The trip to Michigan was great because I got to see my family and do a whirlwind baby tour of my friends’ most recent offspring. Lots of cuteness and screaming. I like when people put sunglasses on dogs and hats or bunny ears on babies. It is hilarious. Midwestern people are still able to do this without much irony so it is especially entertaining.

Also entertaining; the tv show “How the States Got Their Shapes”, pastel colored mens suits on Easter Sunday in Detroit, Easter brunch with mimosas, and of course, those refillable coffee cups that look like paper ones.

Easter Colors

Marching Out Like A Little Royal Lamb

What have I been doing? Why have I not updated in a whole week? I have been filling out my census. I really overanalyze standardized tests (or forms in this case, I guess). I wouldn't take the census so seriously if I hadn’t caught a couple episodes of Who do You Think You Are. I am convinced the census people are sponsoring those heredity shows so that you will equate filling out the census with having eternal life, your name marked in time for all of your future ancestors to track back and wonder at the glory of our interconnectedness and the diverse path of the adventure we call human life.  At the very least it could be a valuable target marketing tool, this knowing who-lives-where-and-by-what-relation business.

What else have I been doing? Check out this list – presented in list form because I’m in a terrible hurry to pack and get to sweet, sunny Michigan:

…watching PBS monkey specials, Hot Tub Time Machine, buying powerball lottery tickets (true sign of a person accepting the fate of working in an office), traveling to Oxford, amassing brain damage from multiple migraine attacks, organizing receipts in size then date then font or upcoming tax audit, watching the original Clash of the Titians, wishing for Medusa’s powers, reviewing emails from Nixon Library email list, and getting a speeding ticket.

Oh, and – venturing on the road behind the AmVets on Elvis Presley because my friends told me there was a real castle amongst the trailer park homes.

It looked like this when they went:

and I guess ever since the moat dried up, the crocodiles got out and the dragons got in, and they started serving pizza:

It’s the Warren Mart now kids. Meet me there for pizza next week when I get back and I will fill you in on all the stuff I forgot to put to web this week!

May your Easter basket be full and your castle moat stay moist, Happy Holiday to all!

Farmers Almanac

Drove highway 61 again today, along with a bit of Highway 3 and some of the 4. Went through Tunica, Little Texas, Askew, Sledge, Crenshaw, Sarah, and I think Hollywood (not in that order) Mississippi.

The ladies I lunched with were born and raised in Marvel, AR and Lambert, MS. When I say raised I mean they weathered some good seventy three plus years of living including kids, grandkids, foster kids, and great grandkids. One of them told me that when her son was not even a year old, a lady ‘cross the street told her how to get him off the bottle by waiting until the moon was working. You know, when its on its way to getting bigger until it’s full. “I waited until the moon was there – jus right and took the bottle out of his mouth and he never want one since. Even spit a pacifier out the next day.”

It’s all in the farmers almanac, including the best time to get your teeth pulled.

(from the Tunica Museum)

Good day for a drive through the Delta

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 Magic Words

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.

What’s With the Pimento Cheese?

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.

Waffle Shop Yum

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.

Back from Bucksnort (and Nashville)

Michigan Adrift

This piece made in my continuing education course, Enameling on Metal, is an accurate depiction of my life. I call it "Michigan Adrift".

Monday and March in the Same Day?

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):

• I love getting name tags and email addresses at the places I work. I like the emails that end in .edu - .org does not interest me, but anyway – thanks for the email addy.
• Driving into West Memphis from I-40 West reminds me of a stretch of the I-10 near Pomona, CA.
• I am going to keep my new phone even though TMobile had no reception in Williamsburg (Tmobile tower strength cannot penetrate irony) during my trip. I don’t think it will be a problem here and now that my coworker told me “you can’t return your phone! Ya got yourself a cute lil phone cover” I realize I have no argument. So call me.
• I enjoy realityshowreviews/fanfiction (thanks BB).

FedEx Forum Vista Video

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:

Just Another Tuesday in the Bluff City

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.

In The City

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.

On The East

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!

Everyone Else is Doing it

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:

We All Sleep Under The Same Google Sky

Good night.

Meat Box

Delta Rib Blow-Out Sale.

Certified Notes

• If I could captivate an audience as long as I waited in line at the Post Office today I would be too busy booking my post-Pulitzer book tour to keep up with this blog. 
• It is possible to extend an errand into an epic. Just get behind a woman who wants to write a check for her two return receipt letters totaling $6.84 and make sure the clerk checking her out doesn’t have 1)an updated prescription for his bifocals and 2) any paper in his register to give her a receipt.
• I got a new fancy Android phone. It has a touch screen and syncs all of my contacts with my gmail account and even my facebook friends so I have been accidently texting, calling, and messaging people I only know through having been on a group email at one point.
• While I was purchasing this fancy phone the friendly Tmobile communications specialist was juggling another customer - a faded red-head holding the hand of a young boy.  She said to him, “I just want you to get the text messaging off this phone. I .. I don’t need it. I’m not a teenage girl.”     Oooh ma’amm..sounds like you wish you were.
• During lunch today I saw a man walking down a busy industrial road holding a can of beer, wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt and a hammer hanging from his belt loop. He looked as much like a carpenter as Memphis looks like St. Lucia.

Jewel of the Delta

The latest Vista Video was filmed without models on a rainy day in Mound Bayou Mississippi:

Happy V-Day

Your Fragrance

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!

Memphis Cotton or Memphis Snow?

Nervous Observing

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 – like Ethel Wright Mohamed and Dusti Bongé. 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.

Emotional Report

“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.

Thawed, and Now Paper

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.

THIS is cool. So is THIS.