RIP, Martha's

The world was shocked and saddened today by the loss of the world's greatest lesbian and redneck karaoke bar, where the UNCW MFA class of 2004 spent probably way too much of its time during its brief and tenuous tenure in Wilmington. Where the crazy black guy in the wicker hat will spend the remainder of his Prince-performing days is still unknown, but please take a moment to enjoy this photographic retrospective in honor of our fallen friend.

Remembrances of Things Past

I just thought I'd update you on Situation: Nothing-- the on-going travails of my suddenly totally uninteresting life. While I was once the kind of person who could constantly enthrall you with my tales of The Time the Nurse Told Me That I Should Be in an Internment Camp Because of my Ethnicity, or The Time I Shared a Cigarette With a Homeless Guy Who Was Carrying a Stolen Ladder, I am now the kind of person whose everyday routine is pretty much the same, and sans racist nurses and ladder-toting homeless guys.

This is vexing to me, because I have always prided myself as the kind of person to whom interesting things often happened. This may be because I am cosmically preordained to have such interactions, or simply because I am too naive to avoid situations in which I may be forced into contact with, say, a speed-popping neighbor that tricked me into driving him to an acquaintance's house in order to beat the crap out of him (I thought we were just going to cash his tax refund!).

But as of late, the only interesting character with whom I have come into contact is Mark, a nice-enough guy with a three-legged dog that often accompanies me on walks with Che. I really don't know anything about him except that he seems nice, and his dog has three legs. I like to think that he's really some kind of drug kingpin, and that Pitch, the three-legged dog, turns into a battle-armored warrior dog at night. But really, I imagine Mark and Pitch just spend their evenings watching reruns of Evening Shade.

I guess the sad truth is that as you get older, you're less likely to run into zany situations. A stolen ladder becomes a three-legged dog. A racially insensitive, chain-smoking nurse becomes a guy that's maybe just a bit too into said three-legged dog. And an inadvertent evening spent as an accessory to a petty crime becomes an evening spent with Burt Reynolds in the shade.

Tuffy love

I am not generally the kind of person who mopes about being "old"-- in fact, I find this behavior irksome in anyone under the age of 67, which is the age I have officially deemed as being the start of actual oldness. But I went to visit my college campus yesterday with my friends Denise and Melinda, and if anything can make you feel old, it's that.

Because it really still feels like I just left college. I still know all the words to the fight song and the alma mater and everything (which I realize is actually more of an old person thing to do, considering a young, cooler person than myself would have forgotten the words to those songs immediately, or, more likely, would never have learned them in the first place). I even remember the combination to my mailbox (so watch your back, box 678).

But I found myself, while checking out the campus, noting with disapproval all the changes that had been made. How dare they build a new gym? The old gym was perfectly fine, except for that one part over the pool that was caving in a little. And as Melinda pointed out, the new education building looks a little Hogwarts-y, which again, I do not condone.

At least my old building, the Arts and Humanities building, remains blockily stolid and antiseptic (the perfect setting for all creative writing workshops!). Of course, I didn't go inside, because my student ID is long gone, and something tells me they might not honor one that was issued in the previous millennium, so the whole building might be reconfigured in there, with rocket jet packs on the chairs and walls made of spun sugar candy.

All in all, even with the weird unsettled feeling of maybe not quite belonging as much as I once did, it was a highly satisfactory trip to good old Ashland University (up on the hill above the town/seen from miles around). And whenever I start to feel bad about my college days receding in the mirror behind me, I can at least console myself with the fact that I am way hotter now.

Dig my tiara and creepy Geisha-esque too-light foundation, yall!

I have been having a lot of trouble lately with the fact that I'm getting older. I don't mean, Oh, My Back Hurts older. Or even Old As My Parents older. Really, just Not a Kid or Even a Cool Youth Anymore older. Older like that one student teacher that always wanted to be hip to the young people.

Specifically, I started feeling older when I pulled out some old CDs I made in college (I was a very early adopter of the CD burner, one of the only things I can officially claim to have gotten in on near the ground floor) and the song "Good" by Better Than Ezra came on, and I realized that that song had been old when I put it on the CD, meaning it was even older now. Specifically, it is twelve years old. Meaning it would be in the seventh grade now, if it were a person. It would be learning pre-algebra.

One day, I will have kids who will listen to "Good" and tell me what a humongous spaz I was for ever liking that song (I'm assuming that by then, music will have deteriorated into the sounds of actual murders being committed while the trumpet riff from Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" is sampled in the background).

Another factor that is really not helping my feelings of oldness is the fact that I am actually looking older, I think. Sort of puffy and wrinkly and my hair is definitely turning white at an alarming rate. I mean, look at me here, circa 1995 (the same year that "Good" came out, not coincidentally), with my brown, brown hair and big full eyebrows. (In an unrelated by very interesting note, that cat that I'm holding was named Sly, and when he died in 1998 my parents had him cremated and the tin containing his ashes sits under our Christmas tree every year.)

All I know is, I only have a few more years before my youthful exuberance becomes "creepy 30-something woman behaving in an upsetting fashion" at parties and sporting events. So I'm going to make the most of them, and spackle every last wrinkle into oblivion (because caked-on makeup is so youthful).

PS: This picture was actually taken for a faux fashion catalog that my friends and I had to put together for French class. So, that should tell you how into fashion I was in 1995. Maybe getting older isn't so bad, after all...

My only good halloween costume

We finally got the scanner I got for Christmas working, and so, as a belated Christmas present to you all, I offer this picture of me as a Killer Bee, circa 1988. What made me a killer bee was that I had a machine gun, sadly not pictured here.

Considering I now have an insatiable urge to scan every flat thing in my house, you can expect to see many more images as compelling as this one in the days and weeks to come.

Lady Mix-a-Lot

Before I begin with today's request, let me just say: to Frisby, the images come from Google Images-- I highly recommend it, as it has never, NEVER failed me. And to Mendacious-- I am totally NOT avoiding your request. It just requires a bit of time to ferment...

And now, without further ado...

Two words for you-- mix tape.
--Croot

Songs That Sound Like They Came Out While I Was in Grad School, But Didn't:

1. You're Beautiful-- James Blunt
2. Bad Day-- Daniel Powter
3. Orange Sky-- Alexi Murdoch
4. I Don't Wanna Be-- Gavin DeGraw
5. Sugar, We're Going Down-- Fall Out Boy
6. Over My Head (Cable Car)-- The Fray
7. Black Horse and the Cherry Tree-- KT Tunstall
8. Bitches Ain't Shit-- Ben Folds
9. Beverly Hills-- Weezer
10. Somebody Told Me-- The Killers
11. Float On-- Modest Mouse
12. My Doorbell-- The White Stripes
13. Wake Me Up When September Ends-- Green Day
14. Kelly Clarkson-- Since U Been Gone
15. Wheels-- Cake
16. Take Your Mama-- The Scissor Sisters

Selected Liner Notes, in which I Cover My Ass, and also 'Splain Some Things:

Track 1-- I can definitely see myself, sitting on the porch swing in front of my house, vaguely crying and smoking cigarettes while watching the rain, imagining how this song really obviously was about me.

Track 3-- This song technically came out while we were in school, but no one heard of it before it was in Garden State, and also in the commercial for the really ugly SUV that looks like a milk truck.

Track 4-- Isn't this the theme to One Tree Hill? I don't think that's why I always think this song came out while I was in grad school. It just has a Wilmingtonian vibe to it.

Track 6-- We would all think this song was about us, all the time.

Track 8-- This song, not unlike "Gin and Juice" by The Gourds, would be very popular among everyone at first, but then, slowly, everyone but me would grow to hate it, while my love for it only flourished, to the point of horrifying everyone.

Tracks 10 and 11-- These songs also came out while we were in school, but so close to the end of school that they did not gain popularity until after I was already back in Ohio.

Track 16-- I would totally sing this on the way to get Hot and Fresh donuts at the Krispy Kreme.

The way we were

I don't know if it's because it's thunderstorming right now, or because it's after midnight and I'm still not tired, but I am very melancholy right now. And very homesick for Wilmington. Now don't get me wrong-- I love Ben more than anything in the whole world, and I love Ohio, and all my friends here. But I was laying in bed just now, just about to fall asleep, and this image of Market and South Fifth flashed into my mind, with the fountain and the apartment building. And then-- and this is really lame, but whatever-- it was followed by an image of the inside of Morton Hall, that area where the vending machines are, and we would all hang out before night class started, or during break. And it made me really sad.

Okay, so I never wanted to be one of those people who gets on their blog in the middle of the night and writes sad, maudlin things about the way we were or something. But I really miss you guys. I miss Cedar's, I miss Martha's, I miss the malevolent juggler on the river walk.

And then this sends me down a whole other sad road of missing people from college, and high school, and summer camp, and basically missing every single person I've ever known, except for Mr. Kenik, the gym teacher who made fun of the way I ran. So right now, I am pretty much freaking out with missing.

Point is: I miss you all. Now let us never speak of this embarrassing outburst again. Tomorrow I will return with more snarky commentary on everyday life.

PS: Does that outfit make me look fat? Why didn't anyone tell me? And why are my boobs at my stomach? Oh, the horror.