Entries from February 2005 ↓

• Chris Connelly is interviewing Annette Bening and Warren Beatty. She looks so high. Chris says, "Good luck! There’s plenty of room on your mantle! Uh, although there’s already some stuff up there!" Nice save, Chris Connelly formerly of MTV, who must be like 75 now.
• Okay, what is with Mike Meyer’s face?! It looks like he put on my clarifying clear face mask and forgot to peel it off. For real, he looks waxy and not at all right.
• Chris Rock made me laugh a lot, but I expected more audience reactions. These twats’ heads are way too large, there needs to be more of the haha’s and less of the OH FUCK ME, WE ARE SO EXCLUSIVE AND BRILLIANT.
• Chris Rock need not be bagging on Pootie-Tang. Pootie-Tang is the pootie-tangiest, you know what I’m sayin’?
• "She’s got butts for cheeks like baby asses." -the boyfriend waxes eloquent on Renee Zellwegger
• I’m not so sure about this giving and accepting awards from in the aisle. If I had to accept my hard-earned Oscar in the aisleway instead of onstage I’d feel so gypped. You cannot call down "the stick man" like Julia Roberts did from the aisleway. Nor can you look out over the room in your moment of glory, unless you won a "major" category. That crap is weak.
• I could only ever dream of being as graceful and classy as Cate Blanchett.
• The Counting Crows need to die before I never, ever listen to August and Everything After ever again. And I do NOT want to have to do that. The fake dreads also need to die. With them on top of his head like sprouts he looks like a bloated, inebriated Cabbage Patch Kid.
• Sideways wins best adapted screenplay. Makes me wonder if this is its consolation prize. [I was right, sadly.]
• I can’t look at Al Pacino anymore without looking at his tell-tale hairline. His face lift makes him look perpetually stunned.
• "She looks like Billy Corgan in a wig" -the boyfriend, this time about Kirsten Dunst
• What, is Whitney too cracked out to perform again? Why does Beyonce get to go three times?! I seriously can’t listen to her live without cocking my head to one side in a vain attempt to draw her into pitch. She’s pretty, but so are lots of singers, so let’s share the motherfucking wealth already.
• Sean Penn is such a fucking tool. Such an egotistical, humorless tower of toolage. Too bad he’s really good at the acting stuff, ’cause he’s just going to keep showing up at these things.
• Funniest thing read online about Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz’s appearance together: "oh my god … i wanna get Selma and Penelope together for a taco eating contest"
• Holy shit, it’s ten thirty. There was no dancing. I call this broadcast a winner.

My mom and my sister and I went to the mall today, something we haven’t done in a long time. And we went to Rivergate Mall even, which is where we used to shop when I was a little kid. It was the place where my sister and I would swing on the clothing racks or hide in them. It would all end with my mother swearing she would NEVER take us shopping again, only all three of us knew that was impossible and not true. Well, we were back there today and shopping makes for the hungry so we headed to the food court. We split up once there–Chinese for Amy, Subway for me–and once I secured my sub I turned around to look for my family.

I found their faces almost immediately and made my way over. But on the short trip there I noticed a woman sitting at the table for four. I approached and waited for my sister to introduce the woman sitting next to her. But she didn’t. I looked at my mother who said nothing. The woman was wearing a department store name tag that I couldn’t quite read. I found my seat and opened my sandwich.

I mentioned the Lays Light potato chips that caught my eye from behind the register. Amy informed me they were just those WOW! Olestra chips only repackaged. "WOW!," I said, "I got had by a bag of chips." I’m not very funny.

All the while the woman said nothing. And we said nothing to her. We, well mostly me, made small talk awkwardly around her. A couple of times I tried to make eye contact with her to say hello or something, but she just sat there eyes down, quietly eating her chili cheese Frito plate and baked potato. She kept pushing her spork around in her wet pile of food like it was some kind of plastic, white sailboat.

And still no one recognized that she was there. Eventually the situation was so absurd it took everything I had not laugh out loud. I kept grinning in between bites, smashing my smiles into my sandwich. Amy and I kept raising our eyebrows at each other as if to say, "We both see that there is a stranger woman sitting and eating with us, but we will not acknowledge it, we’ll just keep doing this eyebrow thing." I wanted to just bust a time out sign and ask point blank, "What the fuck is going on right now?" But I wanted to see how long we would sit there eating lunch with this random saleslady without any verbal recognition that it was happening.

I noticed Amy quickly finished her food and mom only ordered a diet Coke, so I felt rushed to finish my lunch. When I crumpled up the sandwich wrapper the three of us all stood up at once. The woman looked up from her pile of Frito pie and said, "Thanks for letting me sit with you."

Once to the trashcans I said, "Can we please now discuss what the hell just happened? Who was the woman and why did no one want to admit she was there?". Amy said when she was alone the woman asked if she could sit next to her. She didn’t want to eat by herself. I guess the lady didn’t expect my mom and I to join her.

Then it just made me sad. That someone would not want to sit alone at lunch so much that they’d rather sit silently next to a stranger. For whatever reason it tugs me. It also occured to me maybe she was trying to mack on the sister, but mom and I put a bit of a crimp in that plan. Either way it was a total Twin Peaks experience.

Did I mention my car broke down? Because it did. I was driving home from work one week ago today when it coasted to a stop only 3 or four blocks from my apartment. I called the boyfriend who drove down and took a peek under the hood with a big green flashlight. He could see nothing immediately wrong with anything he could see and prepared himself to push.

I steered while the boyfriend got behind my car and made it move uphill. I had my window and was yelling to him for inspiration, "You’re doing good, baby!" Someone on their porch asked the boyfriend if he needed help. I suppose they couldn’t hear my screams about how great he was doing. He declined their offer. Then in the last stretch when the hill became higher and my car had slowed considerably, an old man in a truck parked, jumped out and helped the boyfriend push my car into a legal spot. We exchanged thank yous and had a quick discussion about what could be the problem with my car. When people asked me how it happened I wanted to tell them it seemed my car just gave up the will to go.

I called my dad to see if he could recommend a mechanic and before I knew it he’d arranged to have it towed in a few hours to the repair shop of his friend, to be fixed and ready, if possible, on Monday morning. And it was.

And it only cost me $700. Turns out it wasn’t the timing belt like everyone suspected since I have a timing chain. The boyfriend kept telling me that, but I didn’t believe him for some reason, even though he is always right about everything. Perhaps it’s spite. Anyway, the problem was the distributor and it’s cap. Now, I don’t know if the distributor cap I got was Gucci or Prada, but I know it better make my distributor look skinny even on bloated days and transition well from day to evening for $700.

My grandmother’s house was small and white with a freshly cut lawn and a garden out back. When I think of it I remember fat, fresh tomatoes that oozed onto the picnic table on the side porch when we bit into them whole, like apples. We’d oversalt them with the tiny Mason jar salt shaker and dig at the gritty rind with our front teeth. Even our bare, dusty feet would be speckled with seeds.

Inside the the house smoke hung like wet velvet from meat frying on the stove and nearly constant cigarette smoking. The tiny house was always filled with people for supper on Sundays. Cousins, their cousins and friends of somebody’s uncle would all come down for fried pork chops and turnip greens, white beans and white bread. Granny would cook in her nightgown with her shoes off, hacking and smoking all the while. Every time we came to visit Granny asked if we’d "et yet." I think feeding her family was one of the only ways my grandmother knew how to tell us she loved us.

I’d eat dinner on the front porch or on the couch watching network television. I’d eat wherever my sister was. Sometimes I’d read the stack of National Enquirers that littered the dingy home or my grandfather’s football magazines. Once dinner was over the women would clean up and do the dishes while the men pulled up chairs and shuffled cards. Cigarette smoke would once again choke the air. Amy and I learned by experience that smoke rises–we spent a lot of time on the floor. We’d be lying face down, sometimes breathing right into the carpeting, to escape the thick layers of smoke. The brown carpet was aways full of crumbs and hair and lint.

I’d lie in the floor and listen to the sound of coins smacking the table and how dueces were wild and this was seven-card draw. I barely knew what "ante up" meant, because they never let me play. I wasn’t any good at it since I was seven or four and ten. Poker slang was the soundtrack to the boring, eye-stinging visits to grandmother’s house.

She died from complications from emphesema. She passed away and pretty much all I know about her is that she worked at a mat factory, was addicted to gambling and never talked to me much about anything. And that she could raise some pretty amazing things, especially tomatoes.

Europe’s "Carrie"
Garth Brooks’ "The River"
Def Leppard’s "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
Jon Bon Jovi’s Skid Row’s "18 and Life"
The Queens of Comedy (often)
WWE wrestling
John Michael Montgomery’s "I Swear"
"Garfield"
"Who’s the Boss?"
"The Maury Povich Show"
Extreme’s "More than Words"

There was a kid in the front seat. He was 3, maybe 4, with confused blonde hair and pajamas on. He rode buckled in the passenger side, but not in the required child safety seat that belongs in the back. His father pulled up fast to the curb. Immediately, the valet made his way to open the driver’s door. Instead the driver got out and walked past the red-coated guy with all the keys and raged in the front door. Through squinted eyes he surveyed the small, brick bistro. Then at the same speed he entered, he left to pulled his sleepy boy from the car.

When his father jerked him out of the car abruptly, the child began to cry. Tired, quiet, pleading cries that echoed once his dad took him inside the restaurant. Against the wall sat a young couple, she taller than he, smiling and sharing risotto. She jumped in her seat when the man carrying the boy stood him hard on the ground in front of her. Her  gasp seemed to empty the room of all it’s air.

"You won’t be fucking tonight!," he screamed at her and turned to leave. The child’s sobs grew louder and he grabbed at his father as he stomped out the door. The child only managed two fistfuls of coat before his father tore off. He drove away too soon, since the valet was calling to have the vehicle towed.

The young couple at the table swooped up the boy in their arms and took him outside for fresh air and calm. Within minutes they were back at their table, happily playing a card game, but they left soon after. As they exited I heard them fretting about not having a car seat for the ride home.

I’ve been hosting again, one night a week, because [the place where i work] is running short on door staff. It’s fine because it just means I don’t have to run food once a week, which is a sweaty, crappy job that makes me even less money than playing hostess. Not that one is more difficult than the other, but one if definitely more physical. Sometimes when I run food on Sunday for brunch I count how many large trays that require jacks I carry. And it’s like 40.

But you can hide from the hideous customers in the kitchen when you are running food. You only have to deal with the heat and attitude from behind the line. I find if you bring them ice water before the shift begins they ease up a little. At least until it gets busy.

But the customers who have to wait for a table can be brutal. What happens to people when they get hungry? I do it to. My blood sugar drops and I wait until the last minute to eat and decide a restaurant in fastest only to find a wait to sit down. It’s maddening. However, wholely not my fault. This is where people seem to get confused. And you should hear the reasons why they think they should get to sit down right away. Like, "I own a business, I know how this works. And I think there has to be something you can do." Or, "We’re parked illegally and need to get in and out quickly."

My host shifts are always on the busiest nights when they most need people at the front door, but I’m always the relief. At 6 p.m., after it’s been dark for two hours, I go in and it’s like walking into a buzzsaw. The place is crazy. Every night is so nuts that I forget to tell the boyfriend stories like the one I’m about to tell for days. Just another day on the job.

Friday night at our peak hour I was talking to my manager when the bartender, Sweetie Sweaty K., yelled out "J., go up there a man has collapsed in the floor!" J. didn’t hear him but I did, so I repeated what K. said. My manager took a deep breath then made his way into the fray. I told the lead host what was going on after she finished taking down five more new parties. "What the fuck?!," she said, still writing, not looking up at me. "Go check it out and come right back."

So I circled through the bar and climbed the steps to see an old man, now in his chair, but barely, surrounded by people, two of whom seemed to be holding him up. It looked like he was mildly convulsing. My manager tells me to tell the head host to call 911.

People are streaming in and tables are getting up and people are looking very disturbed and anxious. There is a traffic jam at the door because the head host is consumed with talking to the people from the 911 call center. She couldn’t tell them much about his condition because she couldn’t leave her spot. "Conscious but very unwell" was what she told them and within five minutes a fire engine and ambulance arrived. The scene ended almost as soon as it began. The next two-top I sat asked me if they were going to be seated where the man collapsed. "No," I smiled. Then I thought to myself, "Just beside there."

I also never told you about the day a homeless guy came in just before dusk and toko a piss just in front of the bar. Then didn’t say anything and walked right out.

My co-worker L. is taking her boyfriend horseback riding for his birthday. She asked me if I’d ever gone and if an hour and a half sounded about right. I started laughing almost immediately as I remembered, for the first time in a long time, about my experience riding a horse.

My girl’s youth group at church when I was about 11 or 12 took a trip horseback riding. When we arrived we puddled up front to hear the instructions and safety guidelines for the horses and the trail. We were asked if we had experience riding horses and for some reason I raised my hand.

I don’t know why. I just used to lie all the time. Just make shit up. I did it to look cool, I’m sure, and besides, I likely thought, my stepmother owned a horse once. And I was around her some. I fed her apples on occasion and even saddled up and trotted around on her once. Then she was gone. For some reason I remember the explanation was that a gate was left open and when my parents were driving down the road their mare galloped up beside them and off, never to be seen again. But that can’t be true. Like I said, I just made stuff up. When you do that enough you eventually believe yourself and your memory in turn becomes a bit hazy.

Anyway, I lied and said I was experienced with horses so they gave me a spirited one who really liked to run. At first the horses were just slowly meandering down the trails face to ass, but toward the end of the trail there was an open field about 500 yards back to the stables. Now, I’m not sure if my hyped up horse was just thirsty or wound up or what but as soon as that trail ended that horse began to pick up speed until he was sprinting. And I didn’t know what to do. I had never ridden a horse for more than 45 minutes and now I was on one that was hauling SO MUCH ASS. I tried pulling the reins but I was more concerned about staying upright on that thing. So, I just lowered boney 11-year-old body into the saddle and held on and prayed.

Then I started crying. I was on a getaway horse with no idea how to stop it, bouncing and lurching with every gallop. I thought I was going to die beneath the thundering hooves of the murderhorse I’d lied my way into. I think I was hyperventilating by the time that horse slid into the water trough like he was stealing a base.

I haven’t been on a horse since, nor have I made any plans to do so. Also, I’ve tried to quit with the lying since it can obviously kill you.

I’m on a mini-hiatus while I finish my application for this paid internship at Northwestern. After that, it’s right back to the bullshittin’ and the cursin’ and carryin’ on.

I’ll be coming back Thursday and I’ll be coming correct.

UPDATE: My application is in the mail. But only after I realized I’d left out my very generous letter of recommendation from the managing editor at the Nashville Scene causing me to FREAK OUT AND SCREAM "YOU ARE A STUPID BITCH!" AT MYSELF. Luckily, the package hadn’t boarded the airplane yet and the nice FedEx people repackaged and sent it on its way.

Things I learned today:

• What anisette is.
• That I have a retroverted cervix.*
• That I am "a stupid bitch! LOL!"
• Ben Folds and other local artists are having a Concert for Asia on Valentine’s Day.
• I still really hate sweet potatoes.
• That the girl waiting with me at the doctor likes a boy who "works at Wendy’s and wears Abercrombie and American Eagle, because his Dad can afford it, he’s a lawyer."
• That Bart Durham likes very young girls who take ten whole minutes to order. (I gave him the check because HE…DEMANDS IT!**)

*My gynocologist asked me how I was doing and I told her I was really nervous–I hate pap smears. She assured me today’s would be the easiest one I ever had. Then she got down there and was all, "Uh, forget what I said. There is a reason you hate these. Your cervix likes to hide. It’s tilted toward your back."

**Only funny if you live in or around Nashville and own a television.