"A man can be short, dumpy and getting bald, but if he has fire, women will like him."*

   This post is simple:

   Let's have a celebration of sexy, bald men, shall we?

   I was watching Live Free or Die Hard for the third or fourth time the other night when it struck me for the millionth time that Bruce Willis is a sexy beast. Here’s a man who acknowledged early on that he was balding and just went for it: he shaved that amazing skull and he looks wicked hot. I actually think he gets hotter with time. I think it's because he's been bald so long that we just focus on his amazing body and flawless skin. Just saying.

   On the other hand, you have those dudes that try to pretend they’re not balding by growing a ponytail with what little hair they have left on the back of their craniums. Gross. Or the Hollywood actors who like to believe we don’t know they’re sporting fake hair: David Spade, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage and Jeremy Piven immediately come to mind. Not only are their hair pieces unconvincing, they seem vain and petty for not accepting the inevitable. Dude: you’re bald!

   I don’t fully understand the trauma that a man goes through when his hair starts falling out. Is it anything like when women get PMS or cramps or wrinkles or stretch marks or bloating or cankles or pregnancy? Is it like wearing stockings to work, shaving your legs, armpits, mustache and vagina? Is it similar to having a period or having your boobs start sinking down to your waist? I want to know. Because I feel really bad for dudes. Seriously.

   Anywho, here’s a list of sexy, bald types. Men, pay attention! You don’t have to have hair on your head to be attractive (though a little less hair in the back/butt/ear regions would be nice. Just saying.).

1. Bruce Willis. Duh.++

2. Patrick Stewart (I feel like this man never ages because he’s been bald and beautiful in the public eye for over 30 years).

3. Mr. Clean. (He’s hot. Let’s not pretend otherwise.)

4. Yul Brynner (I kind of feel like Mr. Clean was based on him).

5. Riff Raff/Richard O’Brien

6. Stanley Tucci (who recently married Emily Blunt’s sister, thereby reinforcing my whole point).

7. Danny DeVito

8. Ben Kingsley

9. Sean Connery

10. Lex Luther

11. Mr. Potato Head

12. Rob Corddry

13. Taye Diggs

14. The Commish (okay, fine…Michael Chicklis)

15. Common

16. Mr. Peanut

17. Wallace Shawn (I find him sexy in his own, weird way.)

18. Ed Asner (so, so attractive as Mr. Grant).
19. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (they're all hot, but I'm especially drawn to Raphael).***

Watermelons are beautiful. So are Smiley Faces. And of course the Misters Potato Head and Peanut.**

   I think it would behoove the men of the world to let their hair do what it wants to do. It’s kind of like that same thing of how women want to straighten their hair or bleach it: usually you look best the way you were made. But I suppose it’s a kick to the old ego to have your hair fall out. But I’m guessing it’s not quite as bad as feeling compelled to get perkier boobs or a vaginal rejuvenation.  So, yeah, I still don’t feel sorry for men that are balding. 

*The quote is from Mae West. And I think it's pretty dang true.

**Emily said I should include Humpty-Dumpty in my list, but I said I didn't find him attractive. She said that it was kind of ridiculous that I find Mr. Potato Head attractive but not Humpty-Dumpty. According to her, Mr. Potato head doesn't even necessarily have to have arms or legs unless you want him to, and Humpty-Dumpty does. Fair point, but I'm still not including Humpty. 
***Also suggested by E. 
++Just saw that A Good Day to Die Hard is number one at the box office. Game. Set. Match. Also read this quote from Mr. Willis in the news US Weekly: "You don't get an Oscar for comedy. And you don't get it for shooting people.(On why he hasn't been nominated in his 33-year career)." It's a downright, dirty shame. Comedy and action should be rewarded.

"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consulatations. They're quite aware of what they're going through."*

              Ahoy, Mateys! My blog is under construction, as you may have guessed based on its ever-changing and yet still strange format. I have several brilliant minds on the project, however, so never ye fear. I promised something good would happen to my layout in the New Year, and several of my smartest colleagues are working on it. Don’t think about it, is what I recommend. And I try not to think about it, either.

            Tonight was sort of bittersweet, as Mike (whom you may remember from here and here) came in town for a “business trip” (I guess he’s a real grown-up now) and we sat out on what used to be our balcony when we were mere children right out of undergrad and reminisced a bit about “the past” and “yore” and “ye olden times.”

            You see: I’m leaving my apartment.

            I’ve been in this place for almost eight years and I feel like I’m getting divorced. Down have come all the (not-so-expertly) stained wine crates in which I so artfully ensconced my books and DVDs and random tchotchkes (yep, definitely had to look up the spelling on that one, and Word still isn’t having it…maybe Word is an anti-Semite?) and into the walls have gone little rolls of putty and lots of cursing and slabs of primer. I took all my beloved maps down from the walls. My precious book and play collection is in boxes. My series of bathroom action figures is packed away.  All that remains is….the other 90% of my shit. Clothes, shoes, bags, (blazers), kitchen stuff, tools, towels, board games (of which I have many), furniture, furniture, more furniture, all the light bulbs I hoarded before the government outlawed the old ones in favor of the new long-lasting (mercury-ridden) ones, crafts, artworks, bathroom stuff….oh fudruckers! I’m having a panic attack. I better stop while I’m (somewhat) ahead.

            Change is hard for me. But it usually happens in my life in giant leaps and bounds, rather than in gradual baby steps. If all I had to contend with right now was moving, I think I’d be in excellent shape. But this past month and the two months ahead have packed themselves (okay, I’m partially, perhaps totally, responsible) full of enormous troughs of change.

1.     I’m moving.

2.     I’m considering going back to school for a Master’s degree (in what? Who knows?! Maybe Animal Husbandry. I want to find husbands for all the unwed animals!). This involves re-learning math starting from what I’m going to guess, based on my practice tests, is the 4^th-grade level. (On a positive note, the math I do understand—which is precious little— is quite fun and entertaining.) Lesson: stay in school. Forever, if you can.

3.     I promised quite a few people that I would edit their manuscripts, plays, screenplays, etc…And it’s sad, because I truly enjoy editing. But why would I agree to these things when I can’t even remember the Pythagorean theorem? (Question: how did I get through the last 10-12 years without ever using math aside from leaving tips and figuring out how much something would cost on sale? But, along those same lines, my expertise in fractions and percentages remains undiminished!)

4.     Turning 30. I haven’t quite done it yet, but I’m staring down the barrel. My three best friends, Emily, Gabe and Regan, all turned 30 in the last few months (I doubt my girls would mind me saying so here). They’re all handling it like it’s no big whoop, but they’re also more elegant and together than I am (unsurprisingly—that’s why I want to be friends with them).  I feel like I’m supposed to have done something or that maybe I have only 6 more months to do something or I’m going to drop dead on my 30^th birthday from mis- or disuse. It’s not that 30 is old, it’s that it’s significant, somehow. And I really can’t wrap my head around it. Maybe if I could be 29 for one more year, I could get it together…

5.     Turning 30, when I think about it, seems to be more about figuring out a life plan (which I went into a bit here). To that end, I must say that I’m baffled. I’ve had lots of hopes and dreams, but most of them seem sort of ephemeral at this point in my life, and I don’t know how to redirect my ambitions. Does this even make sense? (Is this destined to be one of those things I write about and then I'll look back on it in 10 years and chuckle knowingly while rolling around naked on piles of money?)

6.     I’m pregnant. (Just kidding! You have to have sex to get pregnant! Right?) I only said that because it's listed as one of the most stressful of life's changes.

7.     The Hunger Games. I started reading it because my roommate, Ron, recommended it and then I was useless for three days because all I could do was read The Hunger Games, eat (The Hunger Games makes you feel famished, I kid you not), and go to the bathroom. I’ve missed out on lots of valuable time. I haven’t exercised in days or vacuumed or packed or planned my life. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. Unless you want to have your mind blown, that is. Seriously.

            It’s super late for me to be writing, but I worked all weekend, and this is the first time I’ve had alone, especially since Mike went to bed because he has a big important, grown-up, business meeting tomorrow. Because that’s what we are, or are supposed to be: grown-ups. And so, I guess I’ll find a new and different and maybe even better apartment (hopefully something anywhere near as nice as Mary Tyler Moore’s). But part of me will always think of this one as mine.

Emily took this picture from my balcony at sunset. Sigh.

            This is where I spent the first part of my “real” life—my post-college twenties. I learned how to pay bills and get to know my amazing neighbors and bitch at the landlord and order in delivery and grow a plant and (occasionally) have it live. It’s really hard, I’m not gonna lie. But I think it’s going to be a good year. Fingers crossed.

*The legendary David Bowie, "Changes."

"Bad grammar is a difficult thing up with which to put."*

            Let it never be said that I don’t love the English language. I’ve more or less made it my life’s work (ha ha! "Life's work." I'm priceless.). I annoy people all the time by correcting their grammar or pronunciation. In fact, I think (know) I really piss people off pretty badly when I bust out those kinds of shenanigans. But I was thinking that maybe there are some phrases and words that I should never say because they are so blatantly pretentious that only English professors (and I mean professors from England, not professors who teach English) can get away with uttering them. And, so we’re clear, I don’t think anyone else should say them either. Except, again, professors from England. Or John Cleese, in a humourous context (he would spell it with that extra “u.” Pretentious bastards, those English. Wish we’d thought of it first.). 

This man can say anything he wants. I will listen.

            These words/phrases include (but are not limited to):

1.     Loquacious. There are plenty of other ways to say this, the most obvious being “talkative.” So unless you’re writing your Master’s thesis or entertaining the Queen at dinner, keep it simple. If you’re using the word “loquacious,” you are probably guilty of being loquacious and you should consider letting someone else have a turn in the conversation.

2.     Niche, but pronounced like “quiche,” you know, the way the French say it. It’s a French word, sure, but we aren’t French now, are we? (If you are French, however, go for it.) I am super guilty of this, as I minored in French in college. My French minor has allowed me to do many amazing things with my life, like pretend to be fluent in French and pronounce things in a annoyingly highfalutin*** manner every chance I get. But I liken this to Madonna marrying Guy Ritchie, living in England for a couple of years and suddenly speaking with a British accent. Are you telling me that if they plopped you down in Jamaica for a couple of years, you’d come back sounding like Bob Marley? I don’t think so.

3.     Irregardless. First off, this isn’t a word. A person who says this probably means regardless, since, again, irregardless isn’t a word. And if you feel the need to say “irregardless,” you’re probably trying too hard to use big words you don’t understand. Don’t hurt yourself.

4.     Nauseous. Now this one has been “chapping my hide” (phrase “chapping my hide” courtesy of my friend, Emily, who may or may not have invented it). There’s some argument as to whether or not it means what we think it means, but the consensus seems to be that originally, this word meant “to inflict nausea.” As in, by saying, “I am nauseous,” a person implied that they caused others to be nauseated.  Check out this site. But now, through years of misuse, the word might finally mean what people have been wanting it to mean for years: sick to one’s stomach. But it’s still a hoity-toity way of saying, “Hey, guys, I feel like barfing.” But a very intelligent young lady I know recently told me that she prefers the word “nauseous” because it’s the only synonym for pukey (not a actual word, it seems) that doesn’t make her want to hurl upon saying it. So there’s a few ways of looking at this one. (Do you see how many ways I was able to mention vomiting, yaking, ralphing and up-chucking?)

5.     Jocularity. This word is great because it’s just funny to hear people say it, but so few can pull it off because it’s PRETENTIOUS.

6.     Defecate.  Come on. Just say “shit.” Or any of the million other words our classy society has invented for “poop.” (You know how the Eskimos have, like, a gajillion words for "snow"? That's because they see it all around them. What does that say about our words for "feces"?)

7.     Nonplussed. I actually like this word, but for all the wrong reasons.  I think it sounds like the opposite of what it means. I always thought it meant “unfazed.” But it means “surprised and confused.” Fine. It can mean that all it wants to, but I’ll never use it.

8.     Moribund. Sigh.

9.     Iconoclastic. I’m finding as this list goes on that I’m including more words that I’m confused about than words that are necessarily grandiloquent (another pretentious word meaning “pretentious.” Can you tell I’m working through the thesaurus today? I should also point out that I keep adding an extra “n” to my spelling of pretentious. It looks like this: prententious. Again, not a word.).

10. Germane. Hmmm...

11. Zeitgeist. Love how it sounds, don’t understand it. If you find yourself in my company, please refrain from using it. I will pretend to know what you mean, but I don’t and I’ll be secretly thinking that you’re “ostentatious.”

            I feel bad saying all this, truly, because I do know people that are so articulate that these words come naturally to them and they aren’t using them to sound like asses, they’re just really smart. So if you’re one of those people, keep talking pretty! This isn’t about you. This is about the person who, like me when I’m feeling ass-holish, feels the need to constantly correct the grammar and pronunciation of everyone around them. Those (we) people really need to calm down and rock out some slang every now and then. The reason not everyone loves Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe is that their sentences tend to send the reader back to the dictionary every five words or so and it’s exhausting. I don’t endorse being lazy about language, but give the listener a break! 

I never got past the first page of Murders of the Rue Morgue because this man knew too many words.

           I’ll probably update this post as more words come to me. If you want to share your most-hated words, feel free! I welcome your comments, lovelies!

*This quote comes from an anecdote about Winston Churchill that my dad (one of those people who can use big words without sounding like an arrogant jerk) told me. Apparently Churchill was giving a speech of some kind and ended a sentence with a preposition and an audience member interrupted him to point it out. The quote above was his response.
**Update. Emily told me that one of her professors uses "quantify" in this manner: "This description will help quantify the process." She is often left wondering what the hell this guy is talking about. This description will help us measure the physical amount of the process? Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense!
***I learned the word "highfalutin" from Anne of Avonlea (Kevin Sullivan, 1987) and I thought it was a sort of back-country word. Turns out, it's quite real and Word doesn't disagree with me.

"Poor cat! Poor slob! Poor slob without a name! The way I see it I haven't got the right to give him one. We don't belong to each other. We just took up one day by the river. I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is but I know what it is like. It's like Tiffany's."*

    I spent the weekend in glorious, lesbian-friendly Minneapolis with my two best friends, Em and Gabe. It was really good and great and wonderful.

    Despite the fact that Gabe warned us repeatedly about the bike rack strapped to the back of her trunk, Emily and I each took a hit. Em took hers on Saturday. I didn’t get mine until I was tucking my suitcase into the trunk for the trip to the airport: always a weird event that puts me in a strange head space (at least, that’s what I’ll be blaming it on). So I smacked the bike rack down on my head, which then smashed my sunglasses onto my nose and cheeks.

    By the time we got to the airport, I had a sizeable, red circle/gash on my nose.  Yikes.

    Once I was in the airport, I’d forgotten all about it and couldn’t figure out why people kept staring at me. I thought maybe I was looking super beautiful. But my clumsiness escalated.

    Have you ever heard of that character, “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl?” It’s a stock character derived from the portrayal of Claire by Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown. Nathan Rabin, a film critic, came up with the term and describes it as this: “That bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” You know, like Kate Hudson in Almost Famous and Zooey Deschanel in almost anything. It’s that girl who’s always spilling stuff and running into men with her clumsy yet pilates-toned butt and encouraging would-be boyfriends to roll down a hill with her and live in the now and smell the roses and never go to the doctor or to the bank or to work.

She's so UNIQUE! (500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009). Photo.

    I’m so not that girl. But I really don’t think anyone is.

    I smacked into four or five people trying to get my carry-on to my seat and then had to take up two carry-on spots in the overhead bin because I was “doing it wrong” and the flight attendant told me to just stop worrying about it. My poor arms were tired and no one had offered to help me, and I just wanted to sit the fuck down. The flight attendant asked if my bag had been cleared for “carry-on status.” She actually asked if I’d gone shopping in Minneapolis (I hadn’t). I did not hit any handsome men with my hind end, and even if I had, I don’t think they would’ve been so enamored of my expert clumsiness that they would've asked to fall in love with me.

She's wicked QUIRKY! (Almost Famous. Cameron Crowe, 2000). Photo.

    Once I sat down, I immediately fell asleep and ended up with my head on the shoulder of the woman sitting next to me. She was really nice about it. But she didn't ask me out.

    I jerked awake and got a bag of crackers during the food service and tried to bend down to get my book while holding the crackers and spilled half of them on the floor. The really nice flight attendant gave me a cup for the floor crackers. Then I repeatedly bumped my head and elbow into the nice lady next to me while I was picking them up. No dreamy looking men happened upon me during this time, entranced by my inability to connect food from my hand to my mouth. Weird!

She wants a PIGGY BACK RIDE! (Elizabethtown. Cameron Crowe--strike two--2005). Photo.

    After I got off the plane, I got stuck in several doorways with my bag and left a bathroom stall door unlocked enough for it to swing open mid-pee. No men there to be swept off their feet, unfortunately.

    I got caught in the elevator door in my building and then slammed my knee on my apartment door. Then I forgot that I had no towels in my bathroom and had to drip water all over the hallway after my shower.

    I’m not normally so clumsy. But I should’ve known things were going wrong earlier that morning when my shoe strap caught on Gabe’s porch table and yanked the whole table so hard that half of its contents fell on the floor.

    I’m pretty sure that if the Manic Pixie Dream Girl were a real person, she’d just be pissing people off all over the place. If I were on a first date with someone and they spilled coffee all over me, I’d think the date was going sort of poorly.  If someone showed up with a huge bruise over the bridge of her nose, I’d wonder if maybe she were a psychopath or the victim of domestic abuse, not assume that she was delightfully prone to running into doors and bike racks.

The original? Audrey Hepburn has Breakfast at Tiffany's,  (Blake Edwards, 1961). Photo.

    If these women were real, everyone would hate them, despite their "loveable" neuroses. We’d hate them for being late, for not having a real job, for not bothering to wear a bra or do laundry, for smelling bad and for generally being flaky and disrupting everyone else’s lives.

    I definitely got a sense of that when I repeatedly spilled on, knocked into, and upset other folks on the airplane. It’s not appealing, least of all to the person that’s right next to you. And I’m sure it would be slightly better if I looked like Kirsten Dunst or Audrey Hepburn or Kate Winslet. Because I’m sure that being exceedingly beautiful and charming or toothy and booby and having really clever, hippie-dippie things to say makes spilling hot coffee on someone’s crotch ALMOST tolerable. But I gotta tell you, it doesn’t feel plausible. It only makes sense if every word out of your mouth is scripted.

*From Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961). Holly Golightly might be the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I love Audrey Hepburn, but isn't it annoying how quirky and different she thinks she is? She's just an irresponsible bitch like the rest of them. Yeah, your freedom is super adorable and all, but you're really cramping everyone else's style, Holly. Just name the damn cat and shut up about it.

"Where is my mind? Way out in the water can you see it swimming?"*

    
 Coachella 2004 Part III


        Okay, so we were at the Morongo Casino in Cabezon (read previous installments here and here), my buddy Scott and I, and I’d just realized that my keys were inside of the car and we were outside of it.

        He asked me if I had Triple A and I nodded.

        “Well, I guess you better call them.” 

        I nodded again and began to turn away from him slowly, my hand digging in my purse for my wallet.

        “You okay?” Scott asked my back.

        “Uh-huh,” I squeaked, hoping he couldn’t tell that I’d started silently weeping as I grabbed hold of my wallet.

        “Well, let me know if you need anything,” he said. 

        I turned around.

        “Wait, where are you going?”

        “Back inside. No sense both of us waiting.”

        “Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. You’re right. You go on back inside…”

        This is the part where I started openly weeping. I didn’t care if he saw me. He was going to leave me in the parking lot of Morongo Casino so he could go lose some more money? Fine. Then he could take the memory of my tear-stained, helpless, exhausted face inside with him.

        To my disappointment (usually I find tears to be a great manipulator of men), he saw my tears and chose not to respond. He walked back on up the hill and into the nasty, horrible, ugly, stupid, buttface casino.

        So I cried harder. And as I cried, I rifled through the cards in my wallet. It was curious how many cards I had considering I had no credit score and could probably have disappeared into Tijuana without a record of my ever existing on this planet. I had a Ralph’s Club, a Von’s Club, an Albertson’s Club card; I had my hilarious student ID from high school (still do, as a matter of fact), my current student ID; there was a debit card, a couple different library cards, a few punch cards from the classy restaurants I like to frequent (Subway), a Blockbuster card (remember Blockbuster?), my blood donor card and about 47 business cards. (I’ll take anything a stranger hands me in a Trader Joe’s parking lot). And, thank all that is holy, the AAA card my Dad had insisted I get when I started driving (and, incidentally, he was still footing the tab for said card). 

Emily added the "Fucking Hot" to my high school ID. I know I am, but I'd never write it myself.

        Sorry I wrote the word “card” so many times.

        So I called the three A’s and the nice lady on the phone said they’d send a truck to Cabezon (location: Nowhere, CA). And I sat there, leaning against my car for a few minutes thinking about how I was going to punish Scott for making me go to the casino and then abandoning me in a parking lot in my hour of need. 

What my baby, Phillip, looked like. Sigh.

        But then I got bored, so I went back into the casino and played a few more hands of black jack. And I didn’t win. And Scott didn’t win. And I was panicking because my phone battery was at half-mast and I didn’t want to miss the triple A’s. So Scott gently suggested that I go back to the car and wait, and he promised to check in every 10 minutes or so.

        So I waited and shivered and Scott came outside, as promised, every so often, to check in on me. The first time he said, “Hey, how’s it going?” and the second time he said, “Hey, how’s it going?” and the third time he asked for a favor.

        “So, I’m out of money. And since you won tonight and we’re still here…because of you…I was thinking maybe you could spot me a twenty.”

        I was tired. I was cold. I was grateful for the momentary company (to this day I keep a book in my purse for situations like that). But mostly I was feeling really sorry for myself and didn’t really care about anything anymore (I’ve been known to be somewhat dramatic on occasion). So I gave him some money and watched him as he sprinted back into the casino.

        And then, an hour and fifteen minutes after I’d called, I saw the triple A’s truck lumber into the parking lot.

        I jumped up and ran after it, screaming and waving my hands. “I’m over here! Honda Civic! Hooray! This way! Over here!”

        He parked near my car and I stood waiting at the foot of the massive semi. Not one of these inner-city AAA trucks, but a truck so big it could tow my car all the way home. A truck full of tools. A truck that could change my oil and give me a new paint job if it wanted to, or replace the sparks in the rotor-nut or whatever parts needed help…I gotta stop talking about car parts.

It was like this size AAA truck--but without the front part open.

        A pleasant fellow wearing a white t-shirt and a spare tire (pun totally intended) stepped out.

        “So, keys locked in the car, eh? What’s the year?”

        “2001.”

        “Ooooohhhhhhh.”

        I shit you not. That’s what he said.

        Scott took this moment to pop down and “check in on me.”

        “What’s going on?” he asked.

        “Here, don’t worry about it,” I said and thrust a $20 into his face. I was mad at him, for real now.

        Scott ran back up the hill, shouting over his shoulder, “Call me if you need anything!”

        “So,” said Mr. AAA, “I’m going to try to get in through the passenger door, but here’s the problem: a few years back, Honda started making their locks a little harder to jimmy. You know, so people wouldn’t break in. So…it’ll be tough.”

        And so I watched as he pulled one tool after another out of the amazing AAA truck and tried them on my super safe little car. Nothing worked in the slightest. The desert was freezing, but Mr. AAA was starting to sweat when he finally admitted defeat.

        He explained again about Honda’s fancy new locks. I said I understood, and mentioned how lucky I was to have a car that was so difficult to break into. (I may have started silently weeping again by this point.)

        He smiled and got back in his truck. He apologized once more and drove away. And then I sat down on the concrete, leaning against the driver’s side door and started to sob for real.

        This story is kind of long, right? Sorry.

 *The Pixies' "Where is My Mind?"

The fourth and fifth parts of this story can be found (respectively) here and here.

"Before you can read me you've got to learn how to see me. I said, Free your mind and the rest will follow. Be color blind. Don't be so shallow."*

   En Vogue’s epic R&B tune “Free Your Mind” found its way onto my iPhone the other morning and I was so excited. I hadn’t heard the song in years and it’s always brought back memories of my childhood. I was especially excited to hear the opening lyrics: “Prejudice. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Hear it go.”

   When I was 10, my best friend and next-door neighbor, Rachel, choreographed a dance routine to this song. She taught it to me in her dad Mike's pristine garage (I know it was pristine because I often had to help clean it...and pick up twigs from his lawn and sing lullabies to his rose bushes). Once I had the moves down (which probably took a really long time, because I’m bad with moves), we taught it to our two younger sisters—Ouisa and Emily. I remember it involved a lot of cartwheels and the classic move of running our hands from our ankles to our thighs—like we were putting on invisible thigh-high stockings. (I just tried to spell that “stalkings.” Weird. And surely somehow Freudian?)

   A week of hard-core rehearsals later, I was very excited to perform the dance for our parents. Rachel had the boom box all plugged in to the side of the Kelleys’ house, and we lined up lawn chairs for our parents to sit on while we danced. The littler Kelley kids sat on the grass in front of us, and Hannah Kelley and Penelope were just babies, so most likely parents held them on their laps. To the outside world, it probably looked gloriously middle-class American and family-oriented.

Boom box with 90's style effects.

   And so we danced. And it was spectacular.

   But when I was in my car on the Hollywood Freeway listening to “Free Your Mind” at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, the whole event suddenly took on a different shade. For one thing, the opening lyrics after the intro I wrote above are:

“I wear tight clothing/

High-heeled shoes/

That doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute.

I like rap music/

Wear hip-hop clothes/

That doesn’t mean that I’m out selling dope.”

   Um…how the hell did our parents sit through this performance without laughing their asses off or dragging us off to our bedrooms?

   I still love the song, and the message is on point: just because I’m a sexy black woman who dates other races and wears scandalous duds, it doesn’t mean I’m a slut or a traitor to black people: “Be colorblind. Don’t be so shallow.”

   HOWEVER: what were a bunch of little, Catholic, white girls doing with this dance routine, which, in the clear light of 20 years of retrospect, seems ever-so-slightly…I don’t know…inappropriate?

   Our parents must have been frozen in shock and maybe mild-to-moderate nausea. I’m sure they wondered if we knew what the terms “prostitute” and “dope” meant, and I’m guessing they figured we did, since besides the repeated cart-wheeling, we kept acting like we were putting on our thigh-highs for a night of street walking. 

Really patient parents at an outdoor concert circa 1992.

   I’d like to think that they were trying really hard not to laugh at us. I’m sure Mike Kelley was probably smirking. Joan Kelley was probably rolling her eyes. But my parents were pretty straightedge at the time, and I’m sure that The Beatles-Beethoven-and Ravi Shankar-loving pair of them were wondering when and how this decidedly urban music had entered their 10-and-7-year-old daughters' worlds. 

   But they were kind and wise enough to applaud the performance and leave it alone. We were never admonished for play-acting at being hookers, and it seems to me that they played it just right in that moment. To draw attention to the lyrics would have only invited weeks or months of uncomfortable questions from us to which they would have to find clever answers (i.e. lies).

   Many years later, when I was in high school, my favorite pair of jeans went missing. They were wide-legged and made of thin denim and they’d split up the outer thighs (through no fault of my own). I’d proceeded to pin them at intervals with safety pins and I thought they were epically bad ass and I wore them everywhere with my black combat boots and long, cheetah-print coat. And one day during my junior year of high school they mysteriously disappeared. Mom never admitted to it, but I’m pretty sure they went into the garage garbage can sometime in the dead of night. Mom couldn’t take any chances that I’d turn into the dope-selling prostitute my childhood hinted at. Though, to reiterate, the song specifically stated, “That DOESN’T mean that I’m a Prostitute.”

*"Free Your Mind" by the incredible (though not very enduring) all-girl 90's group En Vogue. 

"Not all those who wander are lost."*

    You know how when you tell people you like a particular thing they start getting you versions of that particular thing? Like, you mention in passing how you’re keen on Precious Moments and the next thing you know you have a whole breakfront entirely devoted to Precious Moments and you have to open that goddamn cabinet and dust the Precious Moments every week and you start to wonder why you ever mentioned it in the first place and how you became such a hoarder? It gets embarrassing and worse, every Christmas or Hanukkah or birthday you stop guessing what’s in the gift box because your almost 98% positive it’s going to be another Precious Moment. (Maybe it’ll be the First Communion Precious Moment! Or the Baby’s First Christmas Precious Moment!)

Wedding Precious Moment!

   And the next thing you know, you’re a cat-obsessed accordion teacher that’s 45 lbs overweight and can’t explain why you love re-runs of The Golden Girls.** You used to be normal! How did this happen?

   Maybe that's an extreme scenario.

   I’ve gone through several incarnations of “likes” that became collections. It started with my affinity for pigs in junior high. I think I made some sort of stink about wanting a Miss Piggy Doll. Or I admired the movie Babe. I don't know what I did, exactly. But soon I had pigs all over my bedroom—a poster, a mirror, a stuffed animal, a statue, etc. Then it was The Beatles, and I had posters and books and albums (I’m actually still okay with this one). Many people of my generation went through a Beanie Baby phase—we thought they’d be collectible! Sadly, they aren’t. And...they're stupid.

    I think a lot of it has to do with figuring out who you are and what you like. Sometimes that takes a while (it probably should: if you like the same things now that you liked as a 12-year-old, you’re probably a few tacos short of a combo platter).

Exotic (Italy-from Emily)

    I started my most recent collection in college. Postcards. Couldn’t get enough of them, and still can’t. Whenever my friends travel, I request a postcard, and my collection has grown into the hundreds. I have postcards from all kinds of different countries and cities and continents. Turkey, Australia, Poland, Japan, France, The Czech Republic, Mexico, Ireland, India, Guatemala and Canada to name just a few. I’ve got postcards from almost all of the 50 states. I’m very proud of them. This particular hobby/collection never gets old or tiresome because postcards take up very little space and remain a cherished portrait of somewhere I’d like to go but haven’t been able to afford. Sad, isn’t it?  But it’s also inspiring.

More Exotic. (India--from Gabe.)

    I have always loved to travel, and in large part I owe this instinct for exploration to my Grandpa Charlie. He spent the vast majority of his retirement learning Spanish (and never quite succeeding) and traveling the world...by himself. He had a special affinity for Central America and would go on trips to Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. He’d later show us the pictures he’d developed: Grandpa solo in front of a burro; Grandpa with an entire Mexican family in what appears to be a slum in the middle of nowhere; Grandpa on a bus through Belize with a real-life Mayan (he was really excited about that one). My mom used to joke that he probably had a second family in the middle of Costa Rica that we knew nothing about.

Super Exotic (Istanbul--from the kiddos)

    He always had a sense of adventure and was a great traveler early on in his life. He was a WWII vet, serving in the Army Air Corps in Europe. He cheated on his eye exam (more proof I'm his grandchild) so he could pilot his plane back to America after they declared victory in Europe. He couldn’t have been more than 25-years-old.

    After the war he worked for the B&O railroad as a brakeman, a switchman and a conductor. He was later recruited by the Federal Railroad Administration as a Railroad Safety Inspector (safety and compliance investigator). Again, movement, traveling, and exploration were his day-to-day. 

Not very exotic at all (Idaho-I actually went there).

    When we’d say good-bye to each other, whether after a phone conversation or after an egg breakfast (he made the best fried eggs in the entire universe) he’d say, “See you in my dreams!”

    I’d respond, “I’ll see you in my dreams.”

    He’d say, “Just don’t have me falling off a cliff or getting chased by wild horses.”

    But I think he would’ve preferred if the dreams had ended that way. He liked to be moving. In many ways his life was like the most responsible version possible of a hero in a classic movie Western. Like John Wayne.*** Or maybe a Civil War-era drama. Like Clark Gable. He liked history in general and American history and the Civil War in particular.

    Anyways, a few years after I started collecting postcards, my Grandpa died. And when my Aunt Kris and I were going through his things, she said I should pick out anything I wanted to keep. One of the first things I found was his bridgework, but that seemed weird and somehow creepy. ("Hey, look, Grandpa, I've got your teeth!") They weren't something I (or my grandma) wanted to keep.

   Then I was lucky enough to stumble upon a railroad map of Nebraska from 1963. It was special for many reasons—it was a railroad map, it was of my home state, and it had been my Grandpa’s.

    After that I started collecting maps and my apartment started to look like the headquarters of the C.I.A. or the residence of a stalker/serial killer. But it also started to define me, just the way I’d wanted the pigs or The Beatles to do years earlier. It started to represent what I wanted out of life: exploration, travel, experience, adventure. And of course, I’d always wanted to be like my Grandpa, so that was there, too.

We look a little trashy and sweaty here, but that's okay. Louisiana, circa 1984.

    I’m writing about this because a few days ago marked the 7th anniversary of his passing and yesterday marked Father’s Day, and he really was a remarkable father and grandfather. But he was also a fearless explorer, and someone who tried to experience as much as he possibly could in the time he was given on this plane.

    I may also be writing about this in the hopes that someone reads it, feels sorry for me, and decides to send me a butt-load of money to use on travel. Eh, it never hurts to put it out there. (Also still open to the idea of marrying for money...)

*From "All that is gold does not glitter," a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring.

**It's totally reasonable to like re-runs of The Golden Girls.

***Maybe more like a character John Wayne played, as John Wayne was (sadly) an infamous draft dodger during WWII. Bummer.

****Shame(ful/less) plug: if you like what you read here, will you follow me? It will make me feel like I'm living the dream!