Hunka hunka!

Oh shit, why the hell am I attracted to Thomas Paine??

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.

I am boycotting my usual morning radio show. I know this will impact the station greatly. Serves them right.

Today is Groundhog Day! I was beside myself waiting to hear what 106.1 radio host Chio had in store for this momentous of days! I really love Groundhog Day – it might have something to do with the Harold Ramis/Bill Murray movie, or that time I made a construction-paper gopher on a Popsicle stick in elementary school. Either way, I’m a fan!

I started the day off with a little musical Groundhog celebration. You see, prior to Chio actually talking on the air during his show that I start listening to at 5:30 a.m., the station merely plays very crappy music. Like, the same crappy songs ad nauseam mixed with pre-recorded announcements meant to trick us into thinking Chio is actually there at the mic and awake. I usually don’t mind this nonsense as I’m half-asleep, but today being the day of all days, such ear bullshit wouldn’t do. So, I made my own Groundhog Day playlist on Spotify consisting of “I Got You Babe.” On repeat. It was glorious.

But, at exactly 6:07 a.m., when Chio deigns to actually show up to his own radio show, I clicked off the computer speakers blaring my “playlist” in the bedroom and ran to the bathroom to click on the shower radio, half expecting to be serenaded once more by “I Got You Babe.” What will Chio do for this Groundhog Day?!?!

With bated breath, I waited for the shower radio to “warm up,” and instead of Sonny and Cher, some crappy 2016 pop song blared instead. But it was okay, I thought! Once Chio comes on, he will greet us loyal listeners with a big fat resounding “Happy Groundhog Day!” Or, if we’re lucky, even a “And don’t forget your booties ‘cause it’s cooooold out there today!” I mean, dude’s a DJ; isn’t that the only reason to get into the profession? Solely for the opportunity to reenact the tomfoolery of the radio DJs in the Groundhog Day movie every February 2nd?

Anyway, the song fades and Chio finally arrives on the mic….and welcomes me with a plain ole “Good morning! It’s February 2nd.” Huh? Well, maybe Producer Matt was delayed in queuing up The Pennsylvania Polka or something. So I waited, but – nadda. It was all just business as usual. I felt myself deflating.  

It took Nicole to break in and exclaim “Happy Groundhog Day!”, which proceeded to unleash Chio’s apparent ire toward this wonderful day.

“I don’t get it,” Chio lamely lamented. “Why is this the big story? Everyone in the office is talking about it - all the news stations have stories. What is Groundhog Day? Is it a gimmick?”

No, you curdled pustule, it’s an actual procedure for predicting the weather in the coming weeks.

I felt flames lapping the side of my temples; Did Chio have no sense of whimsy? No imagination? I hoped sorority-girl-voiced Nicole would set ole Chio straight being that she was the one to actually wish listeners a “Happy Groundhog’s Day” after Chio squandered the opportunity and then shat on everything.

But, to my dismay, Nicole dropped the ball too. On the plus side, she did try to encourage baldo Chio to stop being such a lame, unimaginative, square wet noodle and embrace tradition, but her explanation of the day was all wrong. Firstly she said it was a “Pennsylvania thing.” (It’s not.)

Secondly, she failed to mention that Groundhog Day is a mid-winter celebration that celebrates the returning of the light. Fool didn’t even mention that it came about by way of Imbolc, Candlemas and St. Brigid’s Day. Get your shit together, Nicole!

So, I’m done with 106.1. Can you now see why I have no choice other than to boycott them? You know what, Chiiiio? With my absence, I’ve got a winter prediction for you: “It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.”

A few other Groundhog notes:

1) Back in the day, getting up to see the groundhog extraction on TV (and then going to bed) was an incredibly early and sickening endeavor for me. Like, getting up “so early” at 7:00-ish  made me sick to my stomach. Haha! Fast-forward to new job, and here I am now, dressed and having been at work for an hour, waiting on damned Phil to make his entrance! Craziness!

2) I always thought groundhogs didn’t really emerge from hibernation this time of year and that we just used ‘em for our mid-winter celebration because they’re abundant and cuter and safer than waking the prognosticating badger or bear of early European mid-winter festival fame. Groundhogs end hibernation in March. Turns out, however, that in this region, groundhogs do come out of hibernation for a short time this time of year. The dudes get up and check out the playing field for a lady during this time so that when hibernation is really over around March, they can get busy right away to produce offspring that will be fat enough to survive the upcoming winter. Isn’t that sweet? Lookin’ for love ‘round Valentine’s Day, aww!

3) Apparently, Imbolc and Candlemas festivities both featured weather-forecasting aspects. Imbolc celebrants would observe the aforementioned badger and bear’s activities to predict how the rest of winter would play out, while Candlemas celebrants relied on a poem that suggested if the weather was fair on Candlemas day, then winter would come back even harder to bite you in the ass in the upcoming weeks. See how we mixed both of these traditions into our Groundhog Day festivities?

3) Not Groundhog related, but I had to share: Mike brought home the best surprise - Scrabble Cheez-Its!! I tore open the box and grabbed a “B”, a “Z” and two “Os.” At first I thought they were sucky, stupid letters, but then I saw Booz! I guess that’s good – an “alternate spelling” to Booze. And, oh! Zobo! I guess that’s okay too – kinda like what Dani loved to talk about in Hocus Pocus. So, I busied myself being mildly pleased with my Scrabble-ing skills, and then Mike takes my crackers and – bam! Bozo. How the fudge did I miss that one?

On teaching, authority and overhead projectors.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my formative memories, school, and teachers lately. I’m on a journey to become a teacher myself, and I can’t help but think back to what set me on this annoying, impossible, frustrating, but right path.

This past Halloween, I was reminded of Mrs. Stoddart, a middle-school teacher who inadvertently played out one of my greatest fears.

But aside from memories of that nightmare, I’ve also been thinking of Mrs. Stoddart herself.

Mrs. Stoddart was a tiny old math teacher, but she surely packed an acerbic punch. Mrs. Stoddart was the type of teacher you simply didn’t mess with, despite her little old lady stature. She could silence a classroom with a mere look – a piercing gaze magnified by thick, outdated glasses and severe, angry eyebrows.

Mrs. Stoddart ruled over her 8^th grade pre-algebra class with an iron, yet arthritic, fist. A tightly coiled bun of grey hair atop her head served as her crown, her wooden teacher’s pointer with the rubber tip as her scepter. One might have mistaken Mrs. Stoddart for an evangelist at her pulpit as she proselytized about algebra perched atop the towering stool that eternally stood next to the overhead projector on its raised cart.

I can’t remember Mrs. Stoddart not sitting on that stool, effecting the fancy that the overhead projector had grown out the side of her torso. Man, Mrs. Stoddart loved that damned projector! But, the thing only served to add to the severity of her appearance. For starters, because of her reliance on it, Mrs. Stoddart’s hands were perpetually discolored by smears of wet-erase marker. She would inadvertently rub the side of her palm over the blues, greens and reds she used to ink out hieroglyphic math. Those colored inks would all melt together to form a seemingly permanent veneer of ugly brown, giving her hand the appearance of a deformed, leathery claw.

The projector also had an altering effect on Mrs. Stoddart’s countenance. Mrs. Stoddart was forever hunched over the flat glass of the projector on which she would scribble her tutelage. Through this pane, a bright light from within projected upward, through magnifying glass and mirror and onto a screen. This rising beam of light radiated onto her unfashionable glasses, with the upper frames of these glasses obstructing the beam’s progress. This resulted in a dark shadow permanently cast onto Mrs. Stoddart’s face on top of her eyebrows. A large “V” of shadow appeared, starting at the bridge of her nose, angling upward toward her temples and resembling cartoonishly dark, furious, owl-like eyebrows.   

All of these projector-related enhancements were simply too much for me to handle. I was in such a constant state of heightened fear of The Stoddart during those classes that I was unable to process or retain any knowledge regarding algebra. Perhaps this explains why I am useless at math to this day.  

And yet, I find myself wondering today if I could hold such sway if I were ever granted my own (English) classroom.

Do I have the wits about me and presence to silence a room with one glance? Would the students know that Mrs. M.’s room was an empire in which you simply couldn’t act up? Would they be fearful or respectful of me, or would they rule the place?

Would students come to my class to learn, or merely to check off some minutes in the day? How much and what would the students learn? And can you actually teach English Language Arts? Aside from syntax, spelling and vocab, do I have what it takes to teach 30 or so kids at a time to become more critical thinkers? Effective communicators? Appreciative readers? Can my enthusiasm help instill a sense of life-long learning in students, or would I just come off as an excited nut? Can I lift some of the dread that accompanies the task of writing for many students? Could I make just one student actually enjoy writing?

I am full of doubts and fears. I have a plan though: In this age of whiteboards, “Smart”Boards and “Smart”Panels, the overhead projector remains a revenant of the past. But kids aren't intimidated by a stupid giant tablet, are they? A tablet that, by the way, won't even produce fearsome eyebrows for me or elevate me to royalty!  

I believe that old-school overhead projectors could still hold some sort of power or sway over today's students; an Ark of the Covenant needed for a well-behaved and engaged classroom. If you look at it too deeply, your face will melt, a la that Indiana Jones movie.  

So, I shall procure a wooden pointer, a tall metal stool and a coveted overhead projector*. I won’t climb down from that stool for anything. I shall “lord mightily over my little empire” and create, as best I can, interested and intelligent citizens!

"Give me your tired, your poor, your screen-addled minds!

Your huddled masses yearning to learn and blossom!

The wretched refuse of a technological youth.

Send these eye-rolling disinterested to me,

I lift my wet-erase marker beside the golden projector!"

Yes, in the age of ephemeral trinkets, authority shall be transferred to me through a teacher’s tools of old.  

* I was obsessed with overhead projectors back in school, and remain obsessed to this day. I even tried to make my own back projector when I was about 13 or so. 

Advice

Advice columns crack me up! And I’m addicted to them! Three thoughts:

1) I hate the term “happily married.” It comes off as smarmy, cutesy or fake, and I hate that we have to differentiate between married (trapped to someone I hate) or “happily married.” On the other hand, when people use this term I always suspect that they’re overcompensating for something, and perhaps they’re not that “happily” married at all. A big “ugh” to marriage in general and the fact that a lot of ‘em aren’t “happy.”  

2) I love when letter writers say they had an argument with a partner and “said something I/We shouldn’t have.” Perhaps you shouldn’t have said it, but you were certainly thinking it. Probably for a long time, which is why it escaped in the heat of the moment. I believe that if a thought or complaint is so deep seated, you should express it - in a diplomatic way, of course. Not saying it doesn’t make it not true, and if you think your partner is a waste of flesh or lazy or horrible, maybe that’s not such a great relationship you’re in and it’s time to make some changes or cut bait. Hmmmm – I bet the type of person to “say something he/she shouldn’t have” is also the type to insist that they’re “happily married.”

3) But. "But" is a small word, but it’s one of the most powerful when it comes to advice columns.  “I married the man of my dreams…. But, I just found out he’s a serial killer.” “I am married to the sweetest, smartest, most beautiful woman on earth….but, I find her cruel, stupid, lazy, ugly – and she abuses animals.” You see the power that “But” holds? It serves to negate the first thought. So, watch your “buts,” unless you truly don’t think your serial-killer husband is “the man of your dreams” after all.

Instead of linking to thoughts with “but,” I strive to separately state my thoughts. “I appreciate you trying to be more helpful around the house. Let’s think of a system to help delegate the chores and remind us both to chip in.” If I had said “I appreciate you being more helpful, but let’s think of a better way,” it implies that I don’t appreciate your trying or that you haven’t tried at all. 

Oh advice columns, I can't get enough of you! 

And why is the carpet all wet, Todd?

Life imitated art (well, a Chevy Chase Lampoon movie) last night, and I’m shittin rainbows over it!

Yesterday, I had to re-assemble my Department 56 Christmas village I mentioned in an earlier post. The strand of twinkle lights that I placed under the blanket of snow to emulate the sparkly magic of Christmas-time blew out. So I had to replace them. Happy f#*@ing Christmas, ya know? Normally, I would have been highly irritated about wasting my time re-doing something I already did, but M and I turned it into a festive occasion. M wrapped gifts, the cats were piled up on the couch, a festive “I only have one more day of work” mentality pervaded the atmosphere...and we played National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in the background.

For some reason, this year - of all the years I’ve watched this damned movie - I found the Griswold’s cameo-relegated neighbors to be butt-clenchingly hilarious. They’re only in three or so scenes, but they pried the show right from Chase's grubby hands. I lost my shize during the scene in which they discover the mess Clark’s antics left in their house. Earlier in the film, Clark was hanging exterior Christmas lights on his house and, as dictated must happen in nearly every one of Chase’s contracts, Clark falls off the ladder. Ah Chevy, you fall guy you, with the sexiest chin cleft that exists, past, present or future! Clark grabs onto the gutter, and in a very Chevy-Chase slapstick show, the block of ice that had formed in the gutter shoots out of it, breaks the neighbors’ window, and causes havoc in the currently vacant neighbors’ house.

When Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicholas Guests’ yuppie neighbor characters arrive home, they are aghast at the mess. They’re sizing up shards of glass and broken knickknacks when Dreyfus’ character discovers the melted ice on the carpet.

“And why is the carpet all wet, Todd,” Dreyfus asks incredulously, haughtily drawing out the name “Todd.”

“I don’t know, Margo,” replies the equally snooty and exasperated Todd.

A laugh escaped me. This is comedic gold!

I’ve chuckled at this line during previous viewings, but this year it struck me as particularly funny. So, during the rest of the movie, I continually exclaimed “And why is the carpet all wet, Todd?” and then would laugh to myself, because that’s how I roll.

Well – toward the end of the movie, I had to grab something from behind the couch. In my stockinged feet, I walked over to the couch, leaned behind it to grab a blanket, and felt a pit in my stomach form as my foot become cold and wet.

I looked down to discover I was standing in a puddle of amber-colored liquid with two paper towels meekly floating in it. I became enraged. What is this? What am I stepping in? What is this half-assed attempt to clean it up? (The two floating, soaked paper towels obviously did shit to help the situation.) Dammit, M! He had a habit of spilling things (mostly cans of Diet Coke, as in this case) or dropping ice cubes on the kitchen floor and letting them melt, and not cleaning it up. My socks, invariably, find these messes. “Wet Sock Syndrome” has become my nemesis during my long tenure with M.

“Why is the carpet all wet, Babers?” I asked incredulously, haughtily drawing out the name “Babers,” and OH MY GOD! I HAVE BECOME JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS!

Yippee-kai-yay....

It's a tradition in my household to set up my Department 56 Christmas Village with a friend of mine. Last night was the night, so we had a couple people over to deck the halls! When I asked what Christmas movie they wanted playing in the background while we decked, they voted on Die Hard, after I refused to submit to their argument that Star Wars was a Christmas movie too.

So we watched Die Hard, and damn if it isn't a Christmas movie - and a really good movie (I have only seen it once before)! 

In doing my post-"I'm really excited about something" research, I found the following wonderful article. It's an interview with Alan Rickman who, among other anecdotes, explains how he was offered the role of Hans Gruber - his first movie role - two days after he arrived in L.A. at the age 41!! And he almost turned down the role! 

Alan Rickman: 'I almost turned down the role of the villain in Die Hard'

Hot damn, do I love Alan Ricman, or what? Ho. Ho. Ho.

On Blogging: Part I

I revived my blog as of late!

But, that’s sort of self-evident, no? You’re reading about me reviving my blog on my revived blog, so you already knew it was revived, right?

Anyway – the revived blog. I love blogging!

I’m treating this Blogger blog as I did my old LiveJournal back in the day. Man, oh man, I miss that sweet-ass LiveJournal (LJ). I wish the Russians didn’t get their vodka-soaked mitts on it. Things have changed since my LJ days, circa 2009, but pre-vodka-soaked mitts, LiveJournal was my ambrosia. LJ - and blogging - satisfied a desire I never knew I had: writing, with the possibility of somebody reading it.

I’ve always written. Prior to LJ, however, I never felt that anyone needed to or should read my shit. I write for only myself and had been content doing just that.

That all changed, though, when a friend wheedled me into creating an LJ account. I resisted, I really did! I was on my high-horse about blogging – a horse that was standing on a pedestal that was balanced on high-wire that was strung across two really tall skyscrapers. But, like many a-time that I’ve been on my high damned horse, I fell off spectacularly - down, down, down in the most ungraceful and comical manner. I eventually loved LJ, eventually became addicted. I embraced blogging and writing for public consumption and encouraged others to do so too.

It was fantastic! Back in those halcyon LJ days, we “bloggers” wrote. LJ was simply a text focused blog - a published word document, sans even Microsoft Word’s measly bells and whistles. LJ seemed to be full of if not writers, then creative types who enjoyed words at least. My kind of people, you know. Most posts scattered over LJ were long, journal-esque, autobiographical incident essays. I delighted in the reading of the mundane and the extraordinary of strangers’ lives. Sure, there was the occasional photo or picture that accompanied a post to illustrate or support an element, but LJ was first and foremost a writer’s community.

But then, I am ashamed to admit, I abandoned LJ. Once those aforementioned Russian mitts came along, the new LJ Overlord made site changes I didn’t like. Coupled with the alluring, meteoric rise of Facebook, LJ lost its shine for me and I stopped writing lengthy LJ posts. I incrementally migrated on over to Facebook — along with most of the world— and butchered my journal-esque writing down to status-length updates.

It was a dismal period in my life; a hole had formed in my spirit, and a tear had rent my heart. I was clueless and didn’t immediately attribute my discomfort to the lack of blogging. Now that I’m wiser, I realize that not blogging was wearing me down. Writing is cathartic for me. Writing provides a venue that offers one of the few times I ever feel heard… even if nobody reads my words. I get my thoughts out, uninterrupted and in an organized manner - a hard feat to accomplish with a human listener. The computer screen is a good listener – better than 90 percent of the people I know and talk to in real life. Blogging on LJ afforded me all this solace, but, like a turncoat, I abandoned my old friend for something fast, cheap and easy. (I do that sometimes. Don’t we all?)

Anyway, the blogging itch recently and thankfully resurfaced, and I weaseled my way back into the world of blogging by way of Blogger, as many LJ emigrants have. And so, I’ve recently drafted a few posts and experienced that glorious rush of pressing that “publish” button!

Blogger feels like home, but, I want more. I want to not only write and press “publish,” I want to recreate that wonderful fertile and inspiring LJ writer’s community I was a part of in the past. In hopes of recreating such a community, I searched for blogs to follow. As I started to poke around Blogger, however, I realized that bloggers don’t do what I do anymore; they don’t do what LJ-ers in the past have done. I realized that my way of blogging has become a dinosaur.

How is my writing Paleolithic? Well, I still write (demonstrably) long, (Footnote 4) autobiographical incident essays. (Footnote 1) My posts are essentially dramatized diary entries, and I simply adore this form of writing. Firstly, this type of blogging creates a record of my life – something to leave behind for others and to jog my memory when I get older. (Footnote 3) Such posts offer me the glorious a chance to turn my lil’ ole life into something cinematic or dare I say literary. I also hope, of course, that essay entries are entertaining to readers.

However, as I’m exploring this new LJ-free blogosphere and trying to find like-minded essayists, I’ve discovered you can’t go back home. Blogs today!? I shake my fist in your general direction! My biggest gripes are: 1) That a majority of today’s blog posts are pictorial posts 2) The proliferation of infernal “themes” and 3) Shameless content regurgitation. So much has changed in the modern blogosphere that I can only detect the faintest specter of my beloved LJ. 

First of all, it seems the writing aspect of blogging is gone, lost, disappeared, dead. Blogging has, heartbreakingly enough, morphed from writing into photo sharing. If I wanted to look at an online photo set of an obviously staged morning starring you and your spawn making and eating waffles, I’d do just that. But I really don’t want to do that. If you must stage a waffle-eating tableaux with your spawn, I’d rather read about your morning instead. I’d like to experience it through the magic of your words and discover what was going on in that pneumatic head of yours. I’d delight in a post explaining how you got irritated because Little Andrew is simply trash at timing those waffles. His waffles are burnt and misshapen; they came out like shit, and you have to force a blog-worthy smile as you shove these shards of burnt dough ino your pie-hole. To add to the crap morning, friggen Tommy then spilled the entire bottle of real Vermont Maple syrup all over the cat. Poor Willow spent the day licking off the sticky goo from her fur and directing the dirtiest look a kitten can muster at asshole Andrew. See - that there’s golden fodder for an essay! But, instead, all I see are endless, staged, over-wrought close-up pictures of Andrew holding miraculously non-burnt (ie: your) waffles, perfectly posed in your overpriced kitchen. Le sigh.  

I must add that I, of course, appreciate photography, and especially creative and evocative photographs captured through a photographer’s keen eye. I even appreciate when a blog features one or two photos to supplement a written blog post. However, a post composed merely of interminable pictures of the same crap is not worth my time. Blogs are stuffed with endless pictures of crafts or food or your kids blowing bubbles or freaking fashion selfies. Modern bloggers can’t even post a recipe without photographing the damned eggs and bottle of vanilla they used to make their damned cookies. Isn’t that type of photo-vomit what Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook exists for? As a venue to post your endless, crappily edited and curated (Footnote 2) photos?

In conclusion, Blogging used to be a writer’s medium - for sharing thoughts, words and stories. And I loved it. But, the essence of Blogging has changed since the early to mid-aughts, and I mourn the death of what once was. When cruising the disappointing Blogger, I long to be enveloped by words. MOAR WORDS. Essays! Life. Words.

Apparently my thoughts on this matter are, um, prolific. I’m going to break up this post into two, maybe three, parts because, hot damn, do I still have a lot more to say. Stay tuned for Part II shortly.

Footnotes:

(1) Screw writing fiction, you know? That shit’s hard. How the hell does one make dialogue sound convincing and not corny? Impossible! I’ll stick to IRL-based writing, thanks.

(2) Please people - be kind to your audience. Curate your muther-trucking photos!! Don’t post every snapshot you took of Tommy wearing your mom’s brazier. Repetition diminishes effectiveness.

(3) Sweet Baby Louise, have you seen Iris starring Judi Dench? It’s a beautiful film about the cutest old writer couple, who may have existed in real life. Dench plays Iris. Iris is worldly and vivacious and creative and intelligent and has had the most beautiful, long, yet complicated, relationship with her devoted husband. They live in a writer’s house and live the writer’s life. And then Iris develops Alzheimer’s and I can’t. Iris can’t remember words or the novels she’s written or where she lives or her husband. It’s gut-wrenching – probably the saddest move I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And of course, Iris gave me a phobia, and I’m now petrified about losing my memories whether it be through Alzheimer’s, or a car accident, or whatever. If you don’t have your memories, you don’t have your life. Poof – it’s gone. You’re gone. You have nothing and you cease to exist. So, Iris is the reason I must document everything and may or may not attach ridiculous sentiments and meaning to physical objects, ticket stubs, programs, brochures, wrappers, photos, gifts, etc. 

(4) Hey guess what, I know my posts are wayyy to long, and I. Do. Not. Care. I don't! This venue allows me to get out every thought, every angle of every thought, I've ever had about a topic and I revel in that opportunity. Like I said, I feel heard here, and I don't care if my writing isn't commercial; it's too damn long-winded, but I accept that. If I were writing commercially, you can be damned sure I'd never write such lengthy posts, but this ain't no media company - thank heavens.