b l o g o s

too high to get over

"[B]ecause of his music, we danced, and we sang." -Roger Ebert [h/t to dj x 3]

 

The news, a three-word text message sent from my sister, chimed at me while I was crossing college ave, walking to my house with RG, who was in town to co-lead a workshop with me on the history of rhetoric.

It was appropriate for me to receive the news from my sister, because together she  and I played, and played, and played our album Thriller, smearing our fingerprints all over its vast cover, the one with the angelic image--the back-lit, white-suited, jheri-curled, side-lying Michael on the front. RG's phone went off not long after that.

All weekend, then, I have been talking with workshop participants about the challenges of doing historical work in rhetoric with the insistent, dramatic lyrics of "Billie Jean" rolling through my head. That's the song of his that took hold of me. Images of ancient archeological sites competed with vastly more kinetic memories of sock-footed, locker-room moonwalks, the secret to which was taking all the weight off your sliding foot for that split-moment. The thrill of getting to fill in during my sister's practice of a dance routine to "Thriller" when one of the other cheerleaders couldn't make it. The fourteenth co birthday with hs bf A, which we celebrated by giving each other the same present: Jacksons' Victory Tour (the cassette version). Had I known on Friday night that one of our houseguests was in bed watching muted videos of Jackson, which sounded perfectly ghastly to me, I no doubt would have joined her.

_moving bodies_ is out

a month early!

(clicking the image will take you to the amazon site)

hey mama rock me

My car turned over to 100,000 miles about 2 hours south of Rochester today. I was coming home from a quick trip to visit E! and to hear her band play at a local farmer's market there. They were great! Folky, bluesy music by the likes of Bob Dylan and Steve Earle (e.g.), with even a gospel song tossed in. Totally fun. I personally loved their version of "Wagon Wheel," which I decided was an adult version of a lullaby.

And it's also just as comforting as a lullaby to hang out with a long-time good good awesome friend and HOPS ("her own personal spouse"). We got to eat Ethiopian with their most delightful in-town friends. With E!'s visiting me a couple weeks ago and my visiting her this week, no one can accuse us of not taking advantage of the painfully short period of time during which we live within 4 hours of each other. But soon she and HOPS are off to a new house in SW VA for some fun new adventures. Luckily they'll live right on the way to my folks' house in Tennessee.

hills, riff raff, grass.

These are some things about our new town that please me/us greatly (my new old town, JM's new town).

Whenever we walk to the end of our street and look to the left, THERE IS A MOUNTAIN. One of us inevitably starts (as in jumps in surprise) at the sight of the mountain, and hits the other one on the arm. The other one, upon turning to look, starts too. Our neighbors say that in the winter when the leaves fall, we will be able to see said mountain from our deck, with a sunrise and everything. Cuckoo. Not that I'm looking forward to winter, but at least there will be something nice when it does come.

Relatedly, my calves are always sore. I am cooking up a new theory which is this: the ratio of availability of delicious bread (lots) to hills (none) in my previous home town was such that living here, where that ratio is the obverse (no bread and lots of hills), is worth negative 4-7 pounds on my frame. I have previous data to support this theory (the last time I lived here, and our year in Pittsburgh), but we shall see. I do miss that bread from Mirabelle, though. Mah gahd that is delicious.

Also, this town not only has a city leaf-removal service that will COME AND SUCK THE LEAVES RIGHT OFF YOUR CURB rather than forcing you to bag the leaves (Pittsburgh has the same thing; it was divine), but it also has a service called "borough riff raff pickup." The riff raff pickup is separate from garbage--ahem, refuse--it happens on a separate day, and by request only. This means you can put just about anything on the curb and have it taken away without paying anything extra. Plus, come on, riff raff? That's awesome.

And finally, every day around 11 in the morning if the sun is out, the whippets will ask to go outside. Then they stretch and flop on the grass in the front yard and just lie there watching the activity on the street through their pleased/relaxed half-open eyes. Grass in the front yard! That is a novelty for all of us.

It must be said, though, that we really miss our friends in U.

here are some of the reasons why i LOVED "the hangover"

1.  It didn't have the predictable cast of dude comic actors (e.g., no Bill Hader, even though I think he's funny.)
2. I have never been to Vegas.
3. Zach Galifianakis.
4. it's summer, and my critical acumen seems to drop as the temperature rises, hence i am able to almost ignore the fact that there are, like, no women in this movie.
5. that ridiculous wedding band singing about nymphos.
6. the trunk scene.
7. the breakup scene.
8. Ed Helms's non-cosmetic toothlessness (thanks to E! for this tidbit)
9. "Carlos."
10. it combines hi-jinx with mystery, with a little narrative help from roofies.

netflix blogging: wendy and lucy

As JM was putting this movie into the dvd player, he turned to me and said "this is about a dog that gets lost." I looked at him suspiciously--he knows I couldn't watch that movie amores perros past the opening scene because of dog-on-dog violence or some such. so i said "does it get found?" I really, really wanted to watch a movie, and this was the only one we have on hand, so I asked hopefully, "does the dog have lots of adventures?"

So we started Wendy and Lucy with one whippet splayed over my stomach and the other hogging one side of the couch, both with their shiny green PA tags (yes, we registered our dogs before our car, so what?). I won't give anything away about what happens, but this is a very good movie. Sucks all the life out of the romance of living in one's car on a cross-country trip, but maybe I only have that romantic view because I've never done it. It's probably pretty hard to render loneliness cinematically, but the filmmakers and the actress (Michelle Williams) do a pretty smashing job.

where there's a dissertation there's a whippet (ongoing series)

not really.

Having spent several weeks away from cable internet, JM and I have started catching up on missed tv shows at hulu.com. Last night we caught the episode of the office called "casual friday," in which one of the subplots features Michael discovering what fun it is to fake fire people, wherein he gives the worker the bad news, watches her face fall. Then Michael's own face fills up with air, and he explodes with laughter. The worker is of course appreciative to find out that she still has a job, but only partly so. That shit is not funny (though watching it kind of is in an outrageous "The Office" sort of way).

Today, JM and I experienced our own little taste of a real life Michael Scott, and he works at the DMV. The DMV is outside of town in a little village called Peru. It's a nice drive that takes you past the (s)mall and Mt. Nittany, then past the prison and into Peru. When we first arrived there was miraculously no waiting, but of course we were told we didn't have nearly the proof of identities and addresses that we needed. We needed passports, social security cards, our Illinois licenses (the only things we actually had), and two proofs of our new address. So we drove all the way back home to get these items--past the prison, Mt. Nittany, the (s)mall, and back again, and presented them to the same guy. The DMV guy took one look at JM's passport and said "this won't do." My shoulders fell. I looked at JM, panicked. Then the DMV guy burst out laughing: "I'm kidding! It's great! Funny, huh?"

catching up on correspondence

Dear person whose phone number is really, really close to my new one:

I understand from some of my friends that you have been getting a number of calls for me. I thought of calling you to apologize for temporarily misremembering my number on a day when I gave it out to a bunch of people, but Z said I probably better not unless I want to get yelled at. So sorry. I have now memorized the right one. It ends in an 8, not a 2.

numerically yours,
debbie

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Dear person who rehabbed and then sold us our house:

You are very talented and for the most part did stellar work. I especially love the massive picture windows downstairs. But I have to ask, did you know that a dryer outlet is totally different from a range outlet? And if you did know that, did you install the wrong thing on purpose, or just because it's what you had lying around? Because it seems pretty stupid to me, and if I hadn't just given out the wrong phone number to a slew of friends and businesses, I would be even more indignant. 

debbie

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Dear closet guy:

You. totally. rock. I can't believe how much storage I have after the magic you worked in the room that the rehab guys didn't get around to making into a proper closet. I'm glad they didn't. I love it. Thank you.

debbie

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Dear State College,

Coming back to you is a little like meeting up with an old friend: I know you pretty well, and there's some new stuff to keep things interesting, but in all, things are instantly comfortable, none of that awkward reacquaintance time. Oh, and your surrounding mountains are still beautiful, only I appreciate them even more now.

cheers,

debbie

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Dear man who works at the PNC bank near campus:

You talk too much.

very sincerely yours,

debbie