(Imagine me humming and making coffee)
La, la, la...oooo, I think I'll turn on KEXP.
Playlist for Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 8 am hour
DJ: John in the Morning
Show: The Evil Morning Show
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8:00 Guv'ner SHE'S EVIL The Hunt Merge
Oh, silly song. Hee, hee. Evil.
8:04 The Breeders HELLBOUND Pod 4AD
Hey, I love this song!
8:08 The Golden Palomino VICTIM DEAD INSIDE Restless
Hey, this song is kinda scary. Laurie Anderson, why are you scaring me?
8:13 Bauhaus BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD Crackle Beggars Banquet Records
Oh, right. Heh, heh. It's Halloween, you dumby.
Now Evil John is talking with scary cats.
(Dont' be afraid: it's just the radio.)
But you know what is scary? Car accidents. Tell Sjet, Safety Cowboy, and SarahRu that you hope they don't have a concussion, but if they do that their neckbrace makes them almost Frankenstein and they could probably get a big bag of trick-or-treat-ed candy.
An archive of days catalogued through a certain article of clothing...
And if you want to call Ian and sing him a birthday song, call me and I'll give you his phone number. Or you can email him.
Which is pretty much the sum of what middle schooler's can do with innuendo. Take, for example, this morning's assembly of Book-it's touring production of The Phantom Tollbooth:
(Oh, and you should know that this began at 8am.)
1. "Erected according to the directions."
2. Man playing dog wags behind.
Once we got to their classes we moved to Rumble Fish. I mean, they only fight with knives and go to a porno. That's fine. Shaking your tail feather? You might as well take off your top.
Dean, Dean the Spleen Machine!
(Also: who's going to be the one who gives me a Cheap Trick album featuring both I Want You to Want Me and Surrender, huh? Any number of Johnny Dowd albums would also be okay.)
I was driving home from rehearsal thinking "Y'know, I could really go for a piece of cake." And then I remembered that there was totally leftover Boston Cream Pie in the refrigerator.
That's right, Starchild, I can bend those bars with my mind.
I observed classes at a middle school today. Public school, usual public school dilemmas. It seemed a little calmer than some, though, and this was due to two things: 1) it was a lovely, sunny, fall day and 2) they wore uniforms.
The uniforms they wore are uniforms noveau, ie, you can wear what you want, but it's gotta be blue or black bottoms and a white shirt. Sweatshirts were in dark or grey solids. Shoes could be whatever.
Sometimes the students complain. One teacher's response? "You can wear what you want when you graduate from college."
Meaning, of course, if you want a job that doesn't have a uniform, you're going to have to go to college.
Now, in the adult world this isn't entirely true, but in the world of the middle school known for have having the lowest test scores in the district it sure is.
The atmosphere at this school is reallly nice. It's clear at the moment of cliched foot-set-in that care is given. Really. At schools where this is not true, the anger and angst wallop you in the face before you can sign in and slap on your visitor's badge.
Love and uniforms, baby, they can lead the way.
Okay, and a strong faculty.
And parents who give a rat's ass.
But still. I like the uniforms. Everything is tidy.
If we could just get smaller classes and maybe some single sex classes and do away with those testing standards...
Oh, in case you were wondering, I think the clear backpack mandate is a load of crap. (They don't have it at this particular school. This school still has lockers, even.)
THE CHICKEN PROJECT (Malmö)
January 15-19
This project focuses on living as a chicken.
The workshop will lead up to a public event at Dansstationen in Malmö.
No cost for the workshop.
For info and application contact: lars.eidevall@dansstationen.nu
And somehow I still get surprised when people say theatre is dumb.
(Oh, by-the-by, if you were even slightly tempted by the lure of Sweden and a free workshop, let me just point out that it's also a butoh workshop. Wah!)
So. I don't think I love the dentist anymore.
Not because he hurt me, because nope, he was nicer than the school pictures guy and more sincere and he gave me novocain...
Wait, that's it.
In the olden days, when I had dental insurance and went the recommended twice-a-year I was used to relaxing in a chair and having my mouth poked. To paraphrase the Performance King, I had a "busy mouth." All sorts of things were going in there: food, tongues, other people's tongues, um, other stuff, and every six months the tools of dentistry. Usually I just went in for a cleaning. Twice I had fillings without novocain. Once I had to get a chipped tooth smoothed (yes, it was chipped while kissing).
Six years later and my shoulders tense up as my mouth is prodded, even though I'm looking at charming pictures of bass fishing in frames made of, well, ceramic bass. And heck if I didn't feel like a wimpy little wimp girl because I couldn't sit there without wincing as tiny power tools were wielded in my mouth. Sure, I was wincing because there wasn't enough novocain, but why am I so weak?
And get this: I have to go back in two weeks so a rubber-based substance can be poured into the empty roots of tooth #30. And then I have to go to my regular dentist so I can get a crown. And....wait...
I'm excited. See, 'cause I got to wear special sunglasses so I didn't get too much light or chips of tooth in my eyes. And the endodontic assistant explained the procedure to me in my favorite style, 3-2-1 Contact!. And that chair was really comfy and the whole place smelled good (except for the burning tooth dust).
Oh, and they gave me a prescription for vicodin.
I only have one sister, but she is the best one.
So, I have to get a root canal. I was supposed to get said rooting this morning, but my current status as Swollen Lymph Node Mouth Breather prevented that. The next option was to be rooted on my birthday. (Hmmm, in a different context, that might be exactly what I'd desire in birthday wishes.) So now it's on Tuesday.
As mentioned previously, I love the dentist. I really do. I think it all stemmed from a bizzaro story I read around age five about a little boy who had to go to the dentist and ended up being just fine. I think the same story also taught me how to make inkstamps out of potatoes. I've only ever tried the potato thing with a beet, but the liking the dentist bit really stuck. It even stuck when I got all woozy from the maxillofacial surgeon's description of just how he'd get my wisdom teeth outta there. And a root canal? That's got 3-2-1 Contact! written all over it.
You know what else is cool in a no-it's-not! sort of way? Swollen lymph nodes. When I was fourteen I had to skip a biology class to have a biopsy on the lymph nodes in my neck. No one told me what might be wrong with me and I didn't figure that anything could be wrong with me, so it was pretty cool. I got to ask my doctor all those 3-2-1 Contact! questions (a doctor in Wenatchee, at that) and feel my neck being pulled against as if it were a rubber sheet being poked with the eraser end of a pencil. Except, of course, it was actually skin and a scalpel which resulted in the revelation of nodes the size and color of water chestnuts. I didn't get to see the actual surgery portion, but I was allowed to oggle at the nodes before they were taken to the lab.
Contact, it's the reason, it's the moment that everything happens!
Did the democratic "we" just get shifted to the royal?
I just took a handful of ibuprofen and flashed back to high school. No, not an actual drug-related flashback. No, not a Peggy Sue Got Married sort of thing. Just plain-ole memory recall induced by handfuls of ibuprofen.
See, a friend of mine and I managed to obtain two full-size lockers and two half-size lockers instead of the standard issue one of either. We knew we were indebted to a mighty benefactor; we used those lockers for purposes goodly and true. The full-size ones held traditional classroom fare accented by sardonic teenage decor. The half-size ones were a little homier: one held pilfered art & craft supplies for obscure hallway projects and birthday celebrations; the other held cereal, dishware, and more painkillers than you'd think two long blonde honor student band geeks could store in good conscience.
Aspirin, ibuprofen, Excedrin, Advil, Vicodin, Demerol, Robitussin for good measure...and I'm forgetting at least three more of the prescription variety. Oh, and some prescription allergy medicine that was later recalled. Nothing we'd get in trouble for and plenty of it!*
But the pain. I had headaches; Julie's hips ground bone-to-bone. Our doctors said to ignore the dosage directions. We did. We also followed a sort of pill crop rotation based on ads for Neutrogena shampoo. Julie's use habits caused her to regularly run into doorframes and resort to cleavage display in chemistry class. Mine created an elaborate and controlled relationship to pain. I never took too many too often; I'd attempt to build my pain tolerance by withholding caplet favor.
The result? I don't understand the 1-10 scale of pain at all. Seems to me that no matter how I feel, I could always feel worse. Sometimes the drugs themselves make me feel worse (the wisdom teeth incident was rather unfortunate). I prefer to have cavities filled without novocaine.
Or maybe I'm stretching the truth a bit under the haze of nostalgia. It's true that I categorize the worst pain I've felt as a 6 with future pain in mind, but it's certain that if I had health insurance I'd be waving my empty prescription bottle at the pharmacist at 3am.
*This was in the days of "as long as you have parental permission," not like now when even cough drops can get you suspended.
My 30th birthday was of great import. It wasn't because I had reached the age of responsibility; it seems to me that the decade at which one is supposed to be all settled keeps jumping at a rate which allows me to never be held American Dream accountable. It wasn't because my vodka-and-cake hangover from the night before's fabulous party was amazingly cured by hollandaise sauce as I brunched with my mother. These things were truly part of the wonders of being 30, but they were not the Reason Why.
The Reason was the Pants. The Pants of 30.
Skirts, dresses, tops, stockings, and shoes beg me to wear them. They want to snuggle close in curvy comfort. They want to trade fashion tips and suggest accessories. Pants could care less. They have a laissez-faire attitude. Other articles of clothing take a certain pride in consistency from hem to button, from seam-to-shining-seam. They have the ability to look good on more than one person or body type.
Not Pants.
I know I am not alone. I imagine Pants has so abused you. Finding that perfect pair, the pair that make your butt look cute and your legs look long is the result of such a struggled quest that I'm somewhat surprised that home-ownership surpassed perfect pants-ownership as the aforementioned American dream.
On my 30th birthday, I found a pair of perfect pants. I can wear them for work and play. They cherish my hips and ass. They go with everything. They are Renegades in the Pants kingdom. But after nearly a full year of wearing them nearly every day I'm becoming concerned. Though still intact, the Pants of 30 are wearing thin. They still make my butt look cute, but fall off my hips an hour into wearing them. There has been a foreshadowing of holes. They're not going to make it. I will have to begin my quest again.
Pants of 31, where are you?
Because my security access card is attached to my belt loops, every time I use it I get the feeling that we're playing a game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Except what happens is I show mine and then the door clicks open. The promise of "I'll show you mine" is still there, but all that happens is I fritter around wistfully and eventually find something to occupy my time, most often in the form of work.
It's the same when playing with boys.
I've had two differently distinct moments this week where I was required to exercise power within descriptions of duty and necessity. And both times it felt like I was abusing that power, that the mere utilization of it was Wrong. Calling attention to my authority (respect it!) through situation and language seemed to verge on inappropriate, that any hierarchical structure should exist as a theoretical parameter by which decisions are made, that its existence should be in the category of just in case, never necessary because all parties understand and make decisions accordingly.
Except that it was really pretty exciting. I maybe loved it a little. But not how I love ka pi duc or E.L. Konigsberg or baths or divine inspiration. I just love that it works. I'm tickled that there is a difference in behavior—a return to that which is expected—that can be achieved when necessary without being condescending or mean.
This has always been clear to me in standard situations based on experience and knowledge. Setting boundaries, clear expectations, that sort of thing. It's just so rare that I actually have to deal with the potentially negative side of power—negative to the person without the power—that I don't notice.
I think I'm amazed that no one just says "You're not the boss of me!"
Of course, if they did, I'd just have to respond with "Liar, liar, pants on fire! Am too!"