b l o g o s

Dear KM,

It's weird isn't it, traveling. Dropping into someone's place and life for several days, assuming their rhythms, catching up on things large and mundane, sharing real-time quandaries, shopping so much together that we start to shop for each other, eating in sync to the point that we both migrate to the same thing on the menu. And, wham, jetting off.

Our conversations, though, continue in my head. I know I could email them, but without a steaming bowl of pho or a plate of daal between us, or the path through kensington gardens beneath us, or the two shins albums on a loop like they were at that one place, it just doesn't seem right.

What do you think about this swine flu business? Should my friend fly to Austin this week? What's going on with X, Y, and Z (with X being a person, Y being a place, and Z being a thing)? Your brother gets more and more excited about moving to Pennsylvania every day. I wish I had a big bowl of Special (U)K, chased by one of those frothy hot chocolates from around the corner. I think soy milk tastes better over there. Both real estate transactions are now ready to close. I have worn my zip-up track jacket from fat face so much that it needs to be washed, but I can't seem to take it off to wash it. I hope you and your friend W have fun this weekend.

I didn't really get jet lag, but I'm definitely having KM-lag.

xox,
debbie

dear bloggy wogg,*

I have been neglecting you. Sometimes you are too public, and this past week has been so busy and topsy-turvy that I haven't felt terribly public. On the positive side of the balance sheet, we ended up getting a pretty great house in State College for a decent price. After we recover from closing costs--which in Pennsylvania (I remember this from Pittsburgh) are pretty effing outrageous--we will be very excited to live there, so that's good.

It's a little nutty that I'm fantasizing about an amish-built garage.

I will probably be pretty busy this coming week preparing for my trip to London, but my guess is that while I'm there I'll return to you, little bloggy wogg. Hang tight.

debbie

*if you think this is a subtle allusion to Russell Brand's new book, you're right.

Dear Tennessee women's basketball players,

I have been thinking about all of you a lot since I read about the loss to Ball State. It must be really strange to have the next two weeks sprawling in front of you, weeks you thought would be spent preparing for each round of the tournament, traveling, eating at steak houses, staying in shape (it is so easy to get out of shape during tournaments), studying up on your opponents, and taking the occasional hard-earned day off. Now you are faced with a gaping hole of days off, but they don't really count as days off with nothing else around them to mark them as such.

You probably have a constant sick feeling deep in your guts, nervousness about what the summer will hold mixed with resolute vows to work harder than ever before, mixed with uncertainty about when Pat will speak to you, and when she does, what she will say. You are probably by now a bit tired of hearing people greet you with the words "what happened?" even though they really do want to hear what you think about what did in fact happen, but the truth is, it's impossible to say. You run through answers--"everybody guns for Tennessee"; "they played out of their minds"; "we were complacent"; "it wasn't our night"; "we didn't show up"--and all of these are just a little bit true, but still the game itself collapses, for each of you, into that turnover, that missed box out, that lost step, the weighty, unshakable dread of physical memory.

As awful and endless as this gut pain might seem, I can tell you that it will get better, but it will take time. As odd as it will be to be in town in late March, you'll figure out what to do: buckle down in your classes, attend those meetings with coaching staff, hang out quietly with friends and teammates, and probably, let's face it, cry a little. But spring in Tennessee--the dogwoods, the warmth, the greening hills--will remind you that you will get another chance, that there's more to the big picture than one game (though this game, I'll not lie, will be seared into your gut for decades to come). October seems a long way away, and I know you wish it would hurry up. But you have a summer to heal, to help your coaches get past this, to win their trust again, to gain re-entry into that locker room.

And in the end, what Nietzsche says will hold: "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It's just that going through that which nearly kills you is probably going to suck pretty hard. I'm sorry you have to go through that.

yours,
debbie

dear penelope cruz,

Last night JM and I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which confirmed for me that you are not only the most adorable actress in Hollywood, but you are also among the most talented.

Sure, it helps that your character Maria-Elena was written rather brilliantly and seemed already fully sketched well before you appeared on screen. Indeed, the first part of the movie is spent waiting for you to appear, from the moment we learn from the other characters about how the tempestuous and mercurial Maria-Elena stabbed her ex husband and later tried to kill herself. Most actors would have a hard time stepping into such an overdetermined narrative, but not you. You filled it up. Made it a little funny, even.

sincerely,

debbie

p.s. congratulations on your oscar.

p.p.s. you make me want to start drinking diet coke again.

Dear Courtney Love,

It has recently come to my attention that you claim to have originated the phrase "kookoo bananas." First off? you don't even spell it right--it's "cuckoo bananas"--and second? My bff E! has been using that phrase since at least the the fall of 2007, and I have cited her here before and could offer much earlier emails as proof if you like. JM even used it in his class this past spring, after I visited E! in the ROC in January and brought it on home with me, like a little catchy head cold, and one of his students wrote on an evaluation form that JM was not only a great professor, but that he used the student's new favorite phrase, "cuckoo bananas"!  We called E! at once to tell her about the phenonemon she had created. That student, Ms. Love, has probably never heard of you, having barely entered elementary school when your band Hole slipped back into the ether. (I still spin to "Awful," btw--it's a great little sprint song.)

What is more, your claim to have coined the phrase, or to own the phrase "kookoo bananas" reminds me of my off-and-on grad school boyfriend (or whatever) who swore he invented the phrase "fuckin-a taco" in college. He kind of liked Nirvana too, for what it's worth. Here's something: I never really believed that he invented that phrase; in fact, I have been known to tell people about his claim when I want to thumbnail his cocky mofo-ness. (grad school bf, if you're reading this, hi!) People don't exactly "invent" phrases like that, and when they do, they often don't take. I can think of two exceptions: 1) Metaspencer's "undergrounduate library", and 2) E!'s "cuckoo bananas." C.b. is a very handy phrase, because a lot of things these days are in fact c.b., like, just to take a random example, the fact that the nominee of a major political party can't even talk about googling, let alone do a google search without the help of half his staff.

sincerely,
debbie

dear chicago,

When I first moved to Illinois, I would visit you occasionally, pay lots and lots of dollars to park my car, catch a glimpse of your shimmery dark blue lake, shop on Michigan Avenue, eat dinner on Rush. We flirted from a distance, you and me. I pretended to know you. But I did not know you. You remained something of a puzzle to me, the insides of so many color-coded parking garages, the glimmery storefronts. Without the Sears Tower in my view I never knew which direction I was going.

But today while I was walking the not-very-scenic two miles down Chicago Ave from the Newberry to my salon, past the Tribune building (really, what westerly route doesn't take you past the Tribune building? That thing is a monster), across the terrifying draw bridge and then (later, on Ogden) the vertiginous interstate overpass, past a shrill and rather uninventive shouting match at a bus stop--"you a punkass bitch!" "no, YOU a punkass bitch!"--I began to realize that seven + years later, I know you so much better. And now, having eaten my way through the entire menu at the Chicago Diner, having gotten lost on foot and on bike in your north and midsections, and having learned the crucial lesson to avoid Michigan avenue altogether, I have finally pieced you together in all your complexity, and I can say with all sincerity that I love you.

yours,
debbie

dear last caller,

Yes you, the one who called into C-Span last night from Utah while the Wisconsin results were trickling in and who suggested that if Obama or Clinton takes the white house, their plan to roll back Bush's tax cuts will spell doom for a hypothetical couple working at starbucks pulling down 60K a year*, and then when the host tried to hang up insisted on making one more point which was that whites ought to "get credit" for helping make this country better for "those blacks," because now some of "them" are lawyers,**

You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.

most sincerely,
debbie

*!?
**i am not even making this up

dear virus,

I like to think of myself as a fairly good host. When someone visits I'll try to have their favorite drink on hand and make sure they have clean sheets and towels, and I try to prepare something yummy. But my guests are usually courteous and fun. You know, they offer something in return, like funny stories or financial advice. Good company. But you are the worst. You take everything and give nothing. I don't blame you for wanting to take those pancakes I ate last night, because they were fluffy and delicious. But then you decided to take EVERYTHING left in and around my digestive system, all at once, including the acid, the bile, the oxygen. Get out of here, you impatient, greedy fuck. And take this fever with you.

sincerely,

your host

dear animal collective,

Please play in Chicago again soon. Or Indianapolis. Or St. Louis. Or Madison.

Strawberry Jam is so deliciously noisy I can't stop listening to it.

dear person sitting behind me at the tea shop whose laptop keeps yelling "You've Got Mail!" in AOL's distinctively cheerful computer-man voice, circa 1997:

Are you fucking kidding me?

Sincerely yours,
the person in front of you