like celebrity guest week on Love Boat

John Travolta just hangin' out at our house. Dressed in the Pulp Fiction suit, but without the Grease hair - rather disturbing combination actually. Lounged back on the couch* wathing TV, he was awfuly full of unwanted advice however.

President Clinton helping out in the kitchen. Kind of nice actually, it was like on theose cooking shows when all the ingrediants were laid out in pre-measured glass bowls and Bill, Noland and I all had on matching aprons. And I don't recall any dishes when we were done!

Bob Marley opening up at Porky's - it was surpise appearance and no one was there - and no one believed us...I think the dead thing probalby had something to do with that part.

I can't wait to see who's next...

*sidebar: Our big purple couch arrives this weekend - whoo hoo - everyone is invited over to check it out!

Raise a pint - never too old...

Anita who used to be my “going to shows friend” back in KS where we'd smoke those weird super thin cigarettes, drink 3 pitchers of beer (she drank most of the 1st, we split the second and I finished up the third while she was passing out), and pick up on the "alternative boys" sent me a link to this website that has info on her, her husband and friends doing crazy things such as running marathons, competing in triathlons, doing long-distance mountain biking – all kinds of nutso stuff….

Talking with my mother over the weekend and her asking what we were up to this week, telling her about a multitude of shows coming up, karaoke last weekend and general going out with friends, she makes a comment that we never stay home, and I just tell her that my life just isn’t as boring as hers was at my age – I remember her at my age – she had three kids ages 4, 6 and 9….

Someone at work says that they’re going to the Ash Street tonight, I say “hey – so am I” but they’re not going to see the Woggles – they’re going after work and will be well under the covers by the time the show starts. Another guy mentions that he used to be into the local music scene and go to shows all the time – but could never do it now….

Noland and I have talked about the fact that we don’t even know what we would do if we were ever “too old” to go to shows. That thought just isn’t even possible. It would make us way to sad. Sure, there are some shows that we seem to be among the oldest in the crowd – but there are others where we most definitely aren’t even close. And hey – most of the bands that we’re going to see are as old or older then we are and they’re still rockin’ away on stage – the least we can do is the same!

btw...

at least three more episodes of CSI with children kiling.....

I think I'm gonna keep a running tally...

Why I love Portland

So one of my best friends forwarded me an email that she received, the note enclosed to me was kind of a “can you believe this?” message and a story about her making a joke about not being as straight as you’d think to the sales clerk selling her jeans at the GAP who didn’t find nearly as funny as she did… and how that’s her life in Midwest suburbia.

The email was one of those floating around the internet letters that someone (from Arkansas, surprise surprise) wrote to ABC in regards to their promoting the “homosexual agenda” because of an episode of The Practice that addressed the gay marriage debate and they felt that the show made the conservative person look bad for disagreeing. There was all the usual sputtering that they were going to make sure everyone knew how ABC was so evil and blah blah blah……

So she sends me this message, then follows it up with a second email saying “Please don’t forward that, it’s a small world and I still have to live in my neighborhood.” So we messaged back a forth bit, and that she has to deal with this sort of thing a lot, that people just assume because she’s a suburban mom in a very conservative state that she agrees with that sort of bullshit. She said that she even had a 5 year-old child tell her that their mom didn’t approve of her belly ring. Which of course my friend had the wonderful response, “well that’s ok, she doesn’t have to get one.”

I get a little bummed sometimes because while I have the best circle of friends here in Portland, my best friends live all across the country, and sometimes I miss those heart to heart girl talks, or singing along with the Indigo Girls in the car (Noland’s really not into that, although he will occasionally humor me.) But while I don’t have any of those close friends here, at least everyone in my circle of friends here holds the same basic set of principles and beliefs that I do. I can’t imagine anyone that I know sending something like that and thinking that I’d want to read it. We don’t of course agree on everything, and there are probably some people in that circle that think things that I would find surprising, and vice versa – but I do know that no one I call a friend would think that this sort of bigotry was something that I, or anyone I know, supports and especially promotes.

So my friends, both far and near, know that even if I don’t always say it or act like it…I do appreciate you being part of my world!

global tragedy and personal pettiness

I have no connection to the tragedy in the Gulf, I don’t know anyone who lives there, has lived there, was there, was directly affected – nothing – so I feel a bit like a local TV news station who has finally figured out a way to connect myself to the disaster no matter how thin the line.

And I’m not normally the type who gets all worked up over these things, I’m concerned of course, but I’m not one who cries over stories on TV or in the news about disasters, plane crashes, missing children, murdered wives or an of that other stuff. But for some reason this has really hit me, to the point that I was pretty unsuccessfully fighting back tears last weekend watching a slide show of images and trying to sing.

So my local news connection is that my younger brother is a forensic chemist for the KBI (that’s the Kansas Bureau of Investigation for us commoners), so basically he’s a CSI – just like on the TV show except for all the glamorous people, action packed hunting down of criminals, questioning of suspects and wrapping it all up in a matter of days. Pretty much it means he’s a geek in a lab coat who may on occasion be sent to a crime scene to collect some DNA or testify that “yes sir, that is 99.8% likely to be him,” but mostly he hangs out in a lab with blood and semen and grows pot in his office so he can track the various strains back to the right bad guys.

Well James was called down to Louisiana to help with the identification of bodies recovered from the city. He would go down and collect DNA samples from the bodies and help try to identify those that were unknown through the various scientific ways available.

My mother told me this, I barely had a moment to think that was pretty cool that he was going to be able to go down and help people, if not with something happy, at least something that might give people some closure. But she follows the sentences of “he was asked to….” with “but thank goodness he’s not going.” What she said was that he decided that it would be too tough leaving my sister-in-law and the kids at home alone for the two weeks they asked him to help out.

My brother and I are not extremely close, so I don’t know all the details of why that would be too hard, and it may have been a legitimate conclusion, but what disturbed me more was that my mother didn’t seem to hesitate in saying it was good he didn’t go. Her reasons why? It would be so hot. It would be so dirty and such tiring work. Yes, because we wouldn’t want to inconvenience ourselves just slightly for 14 days to help out people whose lives have been destroyed for who knows how long.

I then of course, had to pick a fight with my mother about politics, the weather, the best way to make toast…it’s how we work about 75% of the time, so instead of arguing with me she just keeps saying “ok” to everything that I say in that ever so condescending voice that only a mother can have. This of course just angers me even more so I make the next attack personal. I tell her that I’m sorry for trying to have an intelligent discussion, but that my friends and I don’t just discuss who was wearing what to church last week and the latest celebrity gossip but that we actually like to discuss what’s going on in the world around us.

Needless to say when she told me that they’re coming to visit in a few months… and that they’ll be staying at my house…