Entries from August 2004 ↓

If you ingest the following items in the span of a few short hours you will wake up at 4:30 in the morning and puke your whole guts up until the veins in your face explode:

Jose Cuervo
Coors Light
Red Bull
Strawberry Vodka
Marlboro Lights
pigs in a blanket
Purple Pucker
merlot
chips and salsa

True story. Pictures to follow. PICTURES ARE HERE.

This happened a few weeks ago, but I kinda can’t get over it. So maybe it is a story worth telling.

We hired a new pantry cook where I work who on his first day of training informed his trainer that he was hungry and would need to eat before his shift. She hesitantly agreed, but told him that employees usually eat before the come to work. His asked for the “Eggplant Parmesian” thing, which they made him, at which time he went and grabbed a table and had his meal. I think everyone expected that he would eat quickly in the kitchen and get right back to work.

Whatever. They let him have his parmesian.

Once he was finished dining L., his trainer, read off the first item on their to-do list. Hummus. Our new pantry cook’s response was, “Neat, I’ve never worked with ethnic food before.” I don’t know about you, but a simple batch of hummus doesn’t quite call for the umbrella term of “ethnic food.” Fact is, we are an American bistro, so aside from slight ethnic influences the food is straight up American.

Forget the quip about ethnic food. Check this noise on out. We got a little slammed that night, so for a time the new pantry cook was sort of in the way. The chef suggested he step out back and look over the menu while they pulled themselves out of the weeds. New pantry cook guy then walked to the dessert cooler, took out a piece of peach cheesecake and walked out the back door with it.

L. looked at the chef and said, “Uh, new guy just jacked some cheesecake. He just went outside with it.” The chef asked if she was shitting him then marched out back. New pantry cook guy was sitting on the stairs with an empty cardboard box in front of him. The chef walked over and picked up the box to find a half-eaten piece of cheesecake underneath it. No fork.

The chef just said, “Go home.” Then turned around and went inside to catch up on all that ethnic food in the kitchen.

I never saw pantry cook guy clock out and go home. I would like to have asked him what sort of asshole blatantly steals food on his first day on the job. And if he has a tapeworm.

This morning I got up at 6:45 a.m. and drove 30 miles to Murfreesboro to get my hair did. I hadn’t had a haircut since Monday, June 16, 2003. It looked like this one year and two months ago:

(Click on any photo for the full-sized version.)

In the time since then my hair suffered some serious neglect. It got down to my lower back. The roots were 6″ long. Witness:

(Extra Special Bonus Points if you can tell me who is on my shirt.)*

The reason I let my hair get all hippie-ish is for one reason only. Too poor. Or rather, too picky. I guess both, really. Once I let Elizabeth from Tangerine cut and color my hair last year I was hooked. No one before her knew how to cut layers into curly hair that didn’t end up looking like shelving. She gave my hair highlights that were natural looking and deep and rich and almost perfect, actually. I wasn’t going to risk going to anyone else, even if that salon costs as much as rent.

Which is why I waited so long. Last time I went it cost me $150.

As you can tell in the picture above my hair got pretty gross. And heavy. I told Elizabeth to take it to just below my shoulders and to keep the magic layers she’s so good at. As far as the color went, she had free reign.

After a few minutes in the mixing room she came out with three different colors and began rapidly foiling my hair. She had to go back for more color twice. Which means it comes out of my pocket. Big, thick heavy hair requires more dye.

“You are going to see your hair turn dark purple, then almost black. But it won’t be that dark in the end, don’t worry. Well, almost that dark…” It was with that statement that I knew my hair would turn out very different than I expected. I could tell she was putting in red, which I like, it was the purple I was concerned about.

After my head was loaded with foil I received what the aesthetician called a hand “facial.” A blonde girl with big boobs and a soothing voice told me about the sea salts and cinnamon she was using to exfoliate my hands and she rubbed them. Then she wrapped my hands in hot towels and rubbed them some more. Then she rinsed my now baby ass-soft hands with a large silver pitcher of water and into a basin. She followed that by massaging sweet citrus lotion onto my newly sloughed mitts. By the end of my hand facial all worries about my hair faded.

Soon there was the cutting. I watched long, frayed strands of hair pile up around Elizabeth’s ankles as my new colors dried. By the time she was finished snipping I was thrilled with the results. Dark, dark brown underneath with coppery red and warm blonde highlights at the crown.

I think the new colors better compliment my complexion and eye color.

And since it is very dark underneath, all the highlights disappear when I pull it back. It looks almost black for when I’m feeling good and gothy.

I’m telling you, Elizabeth is brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that she convinced me to buy three overpriced Aveda products before I left.

Here is where I drop the big bomb and express my guilt at such frivolous spending by revealing how much all this brilliance cost: $235. Including tip. And all-natural shampoo, conditioner and “Brilliant” balm.

So yeah, I got my hair did. And my webcam hooked back up again. Hence the new pictures. The live streaming webcam will be back up in a week or so.

*Extra Special bonus Points have no redeeming value.

Silverchair.

(I am planning a short series of posts about the various roommates I’ve had since moving out of my parents’ home, in succession, starting with my very first one. This is that.)

Michelle - My freshman year of college was spent at Austin Peay State University. Even though that school was just 30 miles from where I grew up, I desperately wanted to live in a dorm. Anything to get out of Ashland City. So I paid the extra 1,000 or so bucks to live on-campus even though I could have easily driven, so that I could experience college life as I knew it at 17 years old. I filled out my dorm application by marking big, overachieving checkmarks next to “Likes the Quiet” and “Studies Often.” I was thrilled to learn that I got a room in the semi-private wing of the Honor’s Hall, which was a bit bigger than everyone else’s because it was on the corner of the building. My roommate was Michelle, a junior who was transferring from Virginia.

She was a shy, overweight education major whom I took no interest in getting to know. Beyond the fact that I had a poster on our wall of an eye with a globe for the eyeball crying a tear, and the coincidence that she had a tattoo just like it, we had very little in common. Oh, she was always borrowing my Sarah McLachlan, and I was always stealing her Les Miserables soundtrack.

It was 1995 and I was participating in a community theatre production of Anything Goes! in Franklin over 60 minutes away. (My only line was, “Sure!”) When I wasn’t in class or sleeping, I was in Franklin rehearsing (I did do most of the singing and dancing). That is until the musical ended, at which time the lead of the play asked me to participate in his television sitcom produced at MTSU. Which was more than an hour and a half of driving time. Since I had a crush on the guy, and because I was a big fat, total dork, I agreed to take over a graduating actress’ role in the show. It was during the taping of this horribly unfunny, unoriginal, overacted piece of shit show that I met my next roommate. He played the role of the cranky old grandmother on the show. In drag. See? I told you it was a piece of shit show.

So I barely got to know Michelle, except that we both liked Olive Garden and would order overpriced take-out pasta from them all the time. And one time I stole a dollar from her for gas money, but only because she wasn’t around for me to ask. And one time she gathered her things and headed for the door without saying a word, so I asked where she was going. She turned and screamed, “LIKE IT MATTERS! DOES IT REALLY EVEN MATTER?!,” and turned and slammed the door. I remember crying, bawling, thinking I’d been annoyingly asking her whereabouts all this time—even though I didn’t think I had—and I was so hurt and so afraid of being a nuisance that I took off for a couple of days. Writing this now it’s apparent her outburst had nothing at all to do with me.

Right before the semester ended when finals were approaching and I had to be there, Michelle and I finally bonded. Drunk on too little sleep and an overload of information, our sanity buckled and we lost our damn minds up on the third floor of dorm. We threw open our windows and sang Les Miserables, screaming into the night, “And all I see is him and me forever and forever.” We danced around the room and laughed until our throats were raw. That night we played together like children; like we weren’t 18 and 21.

During Christmas vacation I learned I lost my scholarship due to simple ignorance. My university choir class met three times a week. When I signed up for courses with a councilor it was assumed that the choir class was considered three hours like the rest of the 3-day-a-week classes. We assumed wrong–it was worth just one hour of credit. I had actually only been going part-time and without any warning they jerked my scholarship. I had to move home.

I wrote Michelle a note after all my things were packed into the truck. She hadn’t made it back from Virginia yet, and I didn’t know how to get in touch with her. I explained everything in my letter to her and cried and cried and cried. My mom had to almost carry me to the car.

I only saw her a couple of times the next semester since I was not in class very much, but was instead all up in my boyfriend’s ass.

I bet Michelle is a badass teacher.

If you start your period as someone asks to pick up your shift, you will probably say yes, regardless of how poor you are.

My boyfriend’s sister was in town this weekend. She flew in from Art School, Iowa to spend time with her family in Chattanooga. Her last night in Tennessee was spent with us, here in Nashville. While in Chattanooga she saw The Day After Tomorrow with her aunt, and I think the consensus was that they thought it was dreadful. So, I suggested we maybe see a better movie while she was in town, and threw out Napoleon Dynamite. I’d heard it was very funny and got good reviews (even though the Nashville Scene’s Noel Murray opined, “Napoleon Dynamite is to indie films what Franz Ferdinand is to indie rock—a cozy lump of familiar feelings and easy hooks, devoid of real substance.”), and I wasn’t sure how much longer it would be in theatres. We passed up opening night of Godzilla at the Belcourt because we were afraid it was already sold out. Napoleon Dynamite was an easy second choice.

I had popcorn, a bit of a buzz on–I was ready to laugh. The film opens with the Napoleon, the lead character (played by John Heder), boarding a school bus filled with grade school children. He has a big, fuzzy red afro, tucks his t-shirts into sweat pants and is a mouth-breather with a slobber problem. And everything he says is monotone, completely deadpan. The first joke of the film is Napoleon’s response to a kid’s inquiry about what he would do that day. “Whatever I feel like I wanna do, ok?” is our protagonist’s drearily droll answer, but it’s less about what he says than how he says it. The whiny, weird way he slams himself into the seat of the school bus as he does. This got big laughs from the audience. I hoped there would be some variety in the script. I would be disappointed.

I can admit the guy looks funny. And sounds funny. And he’s very obviously trying to BE funny, but that is all the film offers up as comedy. A single, dorky character with a deadpan disposition. It’s like a pretty good Mad TV sketch stretched to it’s absolute end. The film doesn’t try to actually do or say anything, which isn’t nessecarily a requirement, but you’ve got to provide something else. A witty script, a sense of irony, any sort of devotion to the characters at all. Something like that.

Napoloeon Dynamite invests everything in their one-dimensional cast of characters plagued by irritating affectations. You either find that schtick funny or you don’t. I fall hesistantly into the “don’t” category.

I say hesitantly because I wanted to like it. I wanted to laugh. But I’ve seen Rushmore and Welcome to the Dollhouse before, and this looked like a dilluted and entirely lazy and clumsy homage to those. I know no more about Napoleon Dynamite than I did before I entered the theatre, not even how he got so incredibly nerdy.

I guess in the end it just seems half-assed. I bet I could have liked Napoleon, or learned what is so funny about him, or there could have been an interesting plot to accompany the endless empty eccentricity. Instead the filmmakers were so sure that their basket was big enough that they went ahead and put all the eggs in there.

[Big love to my sister for paying my TypePad bill while I wait for my new debit card from my new bank. And also big love to Anil for his help in keeping the page up and comments open. Treat yourself to a cookie or something nice. Then take out a piece of paper. Write on it, “Love, Brittney.” That is from me to you.]

It is 66 degrees at 10:30 am in Tennessee in AUGUST. It’s breezy, but there are no dying and falling leaves.

I feel like I’m on another planet. One I like much better.

To be perfectly honest, I feel like I am boring the shit out of you people.

When I open up this weblog I am often surprised out how long it has been since I last posted. And what unimaginative, uninspired pieces of turds those posts are. I’ve lost my camera so there are no new pictures to share. Work is not at all fulfilling, but is entirely easy and fun and sometimes I can’t believe my good fortune that most people are really nice and generous. The summer months have been really slow, but even still I make good money for the amount of time I am actually there. When the Vandy kids and their professors and maids and shit are back in session I may actually be scheduled full-time.

And so, since the people I wait on now are totally civilized for the most part and don’t bother me too much and are loose with their excessive dough I have very little to complain about in that arena. No hilarious tales of homophobic hillbillies and their penchant for mass quantities of sweet tea. No juicy gossip to share since I now work with a bunch of mid-20s aged girls who do not sleep with each other and get wasted every night. Okay, they get wasted, but they choose scotch over Jagerbombs. Everyone is kind to each other where I work, save for the occasional grumpy comment about someone slacking. There is remarkably little cattiness and rivalry; instead we all share clothes and color each others’ hair and help pay for a certain waitress’ very large vet bill after her puppy accidentally ate rat poison. It’s all so NICE. AND TOTALLY BORING.

I’m completely, 100,000% in love with my boyfriend whom I actually feel blessed to have every day. And, I hate the word “blessed.” Finally after mindlessly drifting from wrong guy to wronger guy, this perfect specimen of a human being fell into my lap out of nowhere. I’ve never felt more safe. Or calm. Or totally adored and respected by anyone. There are snags and fights and tears, but our most noble effort is our drive to understand each other. Every mean word or silent treatment is resolved at break-neck speed, because we both desperately want to make this work. And last. It’s been hard, but it’s also been really easy. I wonder if you know what I mean.

Anyway, all of that: BORING. I don’t feel compelled to blog what, to me, is the world’s greatest romance, because it’s sort of private. And I don’t want to be Sappy, Rubbing-It-In-Girl. Ya know, “nyah-nyah, look at me, how BLISSFUL I am.”

Socially, I feel really isolated. I am still allowing my fear of people (I get really wigged out at parties, social gatherings and at bars. Unless I’m with people I am very close with.) to stand in the way of creating real friendships. Besides my sister, I have just one or two close friends, those of whom I have withdrawn from. I’m scared of getting close to people–I’ve untapped a serious trust issue within me–but I’m finding I desperately long for those substantial connections I’m lacking. Despite what my gut keeps telling me. This admission is a sort of apology to the people who’ve written or called whom I’ve completely ignored. It’s not that I don’t like you; I’m just scared of you.

Anyway, I wanted you to know that I know that my blog has been sucking lately. I promise to try to go out and do things and be around people, so that I can actually have experiences instead of imagining them from my couch.

I’ve decided to try the dangerous feat of applying a self-tanner. I researched some options and chose the best one I could afford–a foam kind that immediately produces a color for a more even application. I also bought a sponge paintbrush (a tip I like for hands-free application) and have enlisted the help of a wary boyfriend for my backside. It’s a lot of terrain, but I’ve got faith in his endurance.

I know to shave, and exfoliate like a mad person beforehand, and to apply lotion at joints to avoid orange elbows and knees, and to not be drunk.

Fishing for advice I told a couple of girls I know I plan to take the self-tanner plunge. They all drew back their lips to reveal a pained expression. Then they each told me horror stories of permanent Cheeto hands, and streaks on faces, and how one girl used bleach on her skin to mask the effects of her failed attempt at self-tanning.

So, I guess this is a last minute solicitation for advice from those who have done it, caveats and war stories. Don’t hesitate to give it to me straight. Help me not fuck this up! (You shouldn’t try to convince me not to. I know it can look great, and I am a perfect candidate for some color on my skin. I’m beyond pasty white; I’m sort of clear.)