LaurieWrites

Liveblogging Halloween

10:20 a.m.

A portly Dorothy in a blue gingham dress crosses a street downtown, running after a very thin woman in a pumpkin suit.
Dorothy carries a purse I recognize from Target instead of a basket. I am not certain of Dorothy's gender.

I almost rear-end the car in front of me.

12:27 *hey, that's my birthday! p.m.

I heart my Great Pumpkin t-shirt. I only do Halloween chic, of course.

retro to 11:00 a.m. I bring several bags of candy to my students, because I am all about the bribery. Because I am also a big goof, I bring animal crackers, and say, "For those of you who are dieting or diabetic." Briefly wonder if this is offensive. Not certain that I care.

Noon or so...Update status to "Laurie is crazy."  Will not change for forseeable future.

1:32 p.m. Speak with big ass tool gentleman on the phone regarding the sale of two Van Halen tickets for tomorrow night's show. He asks if they are "on Eddie's side". I do not know, and spend ten minutes I don't have trying to get the seating chart to load. After this, asks if they are "hard tickets." No. He can't commit. I hang up on him.

1:35 p.m. Resubmit Craigslist ticket ad. Field calls all afternoon from men - and one lone woman - who all sound like boys I went to college with, grown up and working in software development. Feel extremely old. Call friend and talk about cute yet likely inappropriate 25-year-old. Reborn. Also, eat more Milky Way Midnight Minis.

2:12 p.m. Go to campus. Lug leftover candy in bookbag for seminar people. Walk by person unwisely dressed as ninja, who screams statement about death to "friend" in student union. Am unnerved by his mask. Ponder lack of wisdom therein in current climate. Sit in cafe and listen to girl complain about her cell phone, and then a loud woman interview three hopefuls for Teach for America in succession. Listen to them talk about teaching. Breathe relief at my unjaded reaction to idealistic view of education. 

4:01 p.m. Bail on writing class for another hour of law exam obsession. Wonder how got in this pickle? See first friends who descend upon candy. Friend emphatically bursts into "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" while perusing my music preferences on Facebook, where I have not listed Billy Joel. I dissolve into hysterics out of proportion to stimulus. Sure sign that issues are escalating.

4:30 p.m. Receive e-card from sister in California: "A day in the life of a screaming banshee." Funny, so do not focus on taking personally.

5:50 p.m. Pass by group of boys with bandanas on heads outside library gathering and discussing "strategic maneuver." Walk away quickly.

6:00 p.m. Discuss psychology of terrorism for two hours. Deliver impassioned speech in class about hatred of phrase "War on terror," beginning with pronouncement that "I don't like it because it's ridiculous." Amaze self at emotional reaction and ability to articulate response to the worst metaphor ever.

8:57 p.m. Arrive home to find group of approximately twenty young people on my lawn, dressed in costumes. Pass tiny devil in blinking shoes on the sidewalk. Candy operation is engineered by a woman standing on the porch who has apparently been living in my house for several days. I have never met her. Leave remains of candy on table. Roommate says, "Oh, you haven't met her? She's been staying here." She says, "Oh, you have good candy." Make innocuous, awkward comments. Go to room. Media law.

We are all connected.

A couple three years or so ago in a small town that would soon play host to some primo outlet shopping, a young boy picked up a trombone.

And then he put it down.

Wait, that's not the end.

Some years later, there would be guitars. And amplifiers. And thousands upon thousands of spinning discs, first big and black and then small and silver, that play music. And lo, so many, many, many other various and sundry musical things, many of them limited editions and beyond my repertoire at first, but I tell you, the things I've learned about that there music and how to consume it from my friend Mike Conrad, whose website I would link you to if he'd get it going already.

He's currently living in a city well known for many things historical and more recently, a bit fanatically, for all things baseball championship-related. Today, I hear he's putting on a little a show there. I told him I'd keep him in heart and mind and send him whatever good vibes I could (in an impressively random fit of niceness.) In doing so I realized that I'd not linked here - I don't think, at least I can't remember now - a project that he worked on last year that supports the women and children of Darfur.

I believe it is all Berklee College of Music students (and maybe some faculty too, don't know...) on the cd. So if you have...umm, looks like 13 bucks and you want to support music produced by people who aren't getting paid big bucks to do it, I suggest you throw your money behind We Are All Connected, and the work they were doing through music for some people who sorely need it. It's also not a bad record, at that. You can buy it at iTunes like the rest of the sheep, or at CDBaby, which is a little more fun.

Mike's song is called "Side by Side", performed with Carol Souki. Simple lyric: "Sing with me, stand with me, so that we can create world peace." Maybe I should send a copy to the White House?

Here's another link or two where you can learn more about the Darfur conflict, and the Sudan in general. Most important reading isn't easy, and there's a reason this topic keeps coming up. It really does suck over there.

Here's another nice link I found from the Berklee Darfur page for a project called Art of the Song, just for kicks.

Anyway, there's a show today, and that's exciting. And since I'm talking him up at the moment, it's probably worth noting that he has an internet radio show as well that you may well find interesting. Seriously, this guy works harder at this stuff than you can imagine, you just have no idea. And if there was a person I could hand a dream on a platter to, he'd be one of my first choices.  What can you wish for someone that surpasses luck? Whatever that is, it's sent his way, every day, but today especially for sure. I'm sure it'll be fabulous.

Pumpkin Party

Dan: I have no reason to blog.
Me: Everyone has a reason to blog.
Lauren: I just don't know why anyone would care about what I have to say. Like maybe three people?
Me: That works for me.
Dan: Like what do you blog about? Starbucks?
Me: Why in the hell would I blog about Starbucks? Oh...wait, now the pumpkin spice latte, THAT I've blogged about.
Dan: See, blogging about Starbucks. I can't blog.

I'd actually been thinking that it was time to blog about Starbucks again, because I had the best such latte I've  ever had the other day. EVER. And while driving along and sucking it down like I do, I may have spontaneously said aloud "It's like a party in my mouth." Not that I'd ever tell him that.

Can't You Just Freeze Your Eggs? (and a few other things...)

AGH, writing this post depressed me.

Go read it and send me hugs. BLAH. GRRRR. I do not want to be this person. And what do you do when you're trying not to be who you are half the time?

Hi. I've been backsliding big-time, it's bad enough. Not processing disappointment very well, moving back into the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy. This is what I do when I'm stressed, and I'm so overloaded with work. My little monkey brain is gravitating to bad back alleyways.

My new blog for my class is cool. I won't link it but trust me, it's gonna be great.

I saw Over the Rhine last night and Rosie Thomas opened. What a great show. Why are some of the best shows $19.50 and the most overblown are like $60? I had never heard of Rosie before, and man, if you like a good song and a better singer, you need to go see her live. She recorded her last cd as a fairly homegrown project with Sufjan Stevens in NYC. There's a better bio on her MySpace.

This is what I've been feeling a little of lately:

“Whether you are a musician, painter, or whatever, there is a passion that sometimes gets lost because all of the sudden you have to clock-in or have deadlines. I sort of wanted to get back to that time when I played music for nothing,” Rosie says.

One of these days maybe I'll turn into the music promoter for real that I seem determined to be on a hobbyist level. At least I'd like some PROMOS for my troubles. Geez.

Rosie is just adorable though, in the most non-gross sense of that word. She has this high-pitched voice that sounds kind of jarring at first (think beyond Jane Wiedlin) and then she opens her mouth and it's honey and angels and maple syrup and billowy clouds of songs that make you wonder how that just happened? Totally worth the trip to see her alone.

One thing I kept thinking over and over was that she and Karin Bergquist both were just born to do this. This is what they're here to do - besides being beautiful and funny and bright, of course - to sing. I mean, you can't ever take away the love I have for singing in the car or randomly with my friends or while I'm knocking about my daily life. But I hear people like this and it's "Wow. That's a voice. That's a huge part of their purpose." How lucky to have that kind of beautiful gift, I swear. I know it comes with its own baggage, like everything does, but it's so great when people who actually do have a wonderful talent get to do something with it, and it honestly does help to heal some of what's broken, even if it's just for a little while. There are so many people pretending they know how to do it - it's just cool to see and hear the real thing. 

I had never seen Over the Rhine on their own - just with Cowboy Junkies, which was no shabby show, of course. They're such a good band. Read their story - it's better than most. 

Watch and listen. 

This song brought tears to my eyes last night, and I'm now the proud owner of a "Dettweiler/Bergquist 2008: If a Song Could Be President" bumper sticker.

If a song could be president

We'd hum on Election Day
The gospel choir would start to sway
And we'd all have a part to play

The first lady would free her hips
Pull a microphone to her lips
Break our hearts with Rhythm and Blues
Steve Earle would anchor the news

We'd vote for a melody
Pass it around on an MP3
All our best foreign policy
Would be built on harmony

If a song could be president
We'd fly a jukebox to the moon
All our founding fathers' 45's
Lightnin' Hopkins and Patsy Cline
If a song could be president

If a song could be president
We could all add another verse
Life would teach us to rehearse
Til we found a key change

Break out of this minor key
Half-truths and hypocrisy
We wouldn't need an underachiever-in-chief
If a song could be president

We'd make Neil Young a Senator
Even though he came from Canada
Emmylou would be Ambassador
World leaders would listen to her

They would show us where our country went wrong
Strum their guitars on the White House lawn
John Prine would run the FBI
All the criminals would laugh and cry
If a song could be president

Wait: Here's a link to the song. Listen responsibly.

My best friend from college may even come up this week to go to the Van Halen show with me, which promises to be a totally different experience from last night in every way. Wish me luck that that happens. I could really use it. I miss my old girls.   

And now, back to Monday.

STOPS #1

I have a new category: Stupid Things Other People Say. STOPS. This is my inaugural entry.

Filing out of the Sinead O'Connor concert the other night, I was behind two men who were obviously attending the show together. Man #1 in the dreadful tweed jacket said, "Yeah, she was fine. Ben Harper kicked her ass, though.

Kicked her ass. Ben Harper kicked Sinead O'Connor's ass. First of all, this is ridiculous from a musical standpoint, because apples and oranges would be the cliched comparison here.

But beyond that? Sinead O'Connor and Ben Harper in physical combat? Right. She could stand there, all 5 foot nothing, singing her new beautiful songs from scripture, and maybe looking at Ben a little funny. And he could be, just, really high. And maybe mumbling something threatening to her like "If you don't like my fi-yah, then don't come a-round. Cause I'm GONNA BURN ONE DOWN!"

I don't even think she rips pictures of religious figureheads up on stage anymore, given as she is to singing songs that are comprised either partially or entirely of scripture (lovely! Check it out!.) And as stated, he's very chill. So if folks are waiting around for the ass-kicking to commence...I'd say get a new hobby.

She kicked my ass, musically. She really did. I don't know about Ben's, though. If that happens I really hope it pops up on YouTube.

Come on you little fighter

It's pretty much just the rain around here, people. It's all I - we - got. Rain. Walking through DC without an umbrella in the rain.  Interviewing people while sitting in my car in the rain. That rainy day feeling again. Here comes the rain again. (that falling on your head like a memory part? Lies, all lies.) It's raining again. Psyching myself up to drive in the rain. And trying not to let people who are totally freaked out by rain HIT me when I drive in the rain.

When it rains it apparently really pours.

PS The drought thanks you, rain and whatever is responsible for your services. I'm glad you're here...just so MUCH of you. ALL at once! And my hair, my hair!

Just had to get that out.

Call me PJ - which is really no better.

Gretchen Mol, who has been in movies I cannot remember with other people I cannot remember, had a child in the past couple of days and named him Ptolemy John.

I wish he was large enough and cognizant enough to kick her ass to Athens and back.

Fire Sister

It could be the stress of being caught in a fire zone, but I believe my sister just said, "Get your ticket, bitch," when I spoke to her to let her know that our mother might indeed miss her plane due to searching for a beer during her very brief layover in the Atlanta airport.

Apples. Trees. It's the fall, what can I say?

"I told her to drink on the plane," she said.

Katie's at trivia night in her funky little beach neighborhood, awaiting Mom, I suppose. The ticket comment is related to my failure to secure a Thanksgiving week plane ticket that doesn't take selling an organ to afford, but I guess I'd better get on it. (And why the hell is everyone cursing and yelling at me today? I'm an abuse magnet, I swear.)

"Are you at trivia night?"

"YEAH! WOOHOO! Because I don't have class tomorrow!"

"I wish I was there."

"Yes, it's a good place to be, everyone here's yelling, FIRE! It's kind of crazy." she said.

Stress release, I'm sure. They're surrounded by Mission Bay, the San Diego River, and the Pacific Ocean so they're not so much in harm's way.

I went to a seminar tonight where the speaker indicated that some of the religious zealot groups who oppose climate change reform feel that environmental degradation is a GOOD thing, because it's getting them closer to the Armageddon they're waiting so impatiently for.

How about no?

Wildfires

Surely this is the most frightening aspect of the California wildfires.

I mean, my sister lives in San Diego, and my mother is flying out there on a long-planned trip to see her youngest child in the flesh with her own eyes, to make sure she hasn't become one of those Cal-i-for-neye-ay TAHPS, as we say it around here, south as we are of the Mason-Dixon line.

Yet, the safety of Tori and Dean's bed and breakfast is somehow still really important.

Again, I say, what war?

Seriously - craziness.

I have two other good friends in the area (I don't know how that happened, because I met both of them in wildly divergent places and phases of my life, so weird to end up with three important people in San Diego, especially when you've never even been there) and both of them have had family members evacuated already. My sister tells me she's safe, although both universities, the one she attends and the one her fiance works at, have been closed. And I know this because I may or may not have made some big sisterly inquiries as to WHETHER OR NOT SHE SHOULD GET THE HELL OUT, ALREADY? And maybe while thinking how over here on the right coast, with our crime and our drought and our mayors for life and our insistence on frying everything before we eat it, we may not just seem so bad now, huh? HUH? Think of your FAMILY! What this is doing to your FAMILY????!!!!!????

No, I didn't really think that, not exactly, but like how the ability to assemble a chef's salad of guilt with a side of insinuation and passive-aggression while someone is living in a natural disaster zone doesn't fall far from MY kitchen? Awesome. It's really so, so easy.

Here's a bit from an e-mail I got last night from one of my friends:

"The smoke, however.... The air quality downtown isn't too bad yet, but officials are expecting it to be as bad or worse than the 2003 Firestorm.  The ash fall is beginning in the outer 'burbs, and will get worse as the fires close in.  Eventually, we'll all be wearing masks of one sort or another. 

My office is closing at noon, and may not reopen tomorrow because of air quality.  I don't have Internet access at home right now, but my home phone still works.  The officials are encouraging us to stay off the streets and off our cell phones to allow emergency vehicles and communications to have ease of access. The skies are bizarre; sunshine and blue so bright it's unreal on one half (ocean-ward) and sulfurous clouds and a heinous red glow to the East and the firelines (Mordor). We're receiving assistance from fire departments in other parts of the state, and from out of state.  It's impressive to watch 30 to 50 fire trucks come roaring into an area and deploy.  It won't be enough, but it looks cool.  The fireline is at least 100 miles long as it sweeps west.   

 

What can help is good thoughts, prayers, well wishes, etc.  Think "NO WIND", and "Let them catch a break!"  It might be too much to ask for a rainstorm that would soak enough to put the fires out, because then the mudslides start without roots to hold the soil in place.   

Just keep Southern California and our waterways in your thoughts, and bless all the firefighters, dispatchers, law officers, public safety officials, smoke jumpers, pilots, and those plain folks too stubborn to let their homes go without a fight."   

Here are some places to donate, through the Red Cross and other organizations:
American Red Cross, San Diego chapter. 

News 8 list of homes that are destroyed, evacuation areas, and things that are needed.

City of San Diego, official site.

More specifics about where and how to donate or volunteer are here. 

Volunteer San Diego - lots of information here.

San Diego Tribune's Fire blog has frequent updates.  

I'm keeping a close eye on this one. In truth it's scaring me a little.

Dreams suck.

It was a good weekend, but I am so tired. Really. I am so, so tired. I have so much to do that I really can't afford to be, but what can you do about truth?

I woke up this morning in fits and starts. I so desperately wanted to sleep more but I couldn't, and was woken up by the most HORRIBLE dream. It was a bad, terrible, ugly early-morning dream that involved my ex-boyfriend (get OUT of my freaking SUBCONSCIOUS MIND already, would you? For God's SAKE!!!!) and a personal ad that he'd posted somewhere all Myspace-style. I'll be 37 years old in two months, and I"m dreaming about my ex and Myspace bulletins. This is disturbing enough.

I'm comforted by the fact that his apparent plea for female companionship in this dream was super tacky, although nothing that he would ever in a millions years post, or at least I really hope not, so the joke sort of ends there. He just wouldn't write like that, ever, at least not seriously. I don't think So the first hour of my day was all weird, and fraught with sudden mental flashes like, "Maybe he would? Maybe he's like that now?" And then I'd mentally respond, "No way, it was just some wacked out figment of YOUR subconscious, not HIS. You're the one with the problem. Calm yourself."

I can't really explain how upsetting it was, because first of all I can't show you what I saw in my head. And also dreams are personal to individual brains and whatever they're trying to work out. I may have mentioned here before that dreams wig me out in the first place. So to see some really distinctive visual of a person you love trolling for chicks in a way you find abhorrent is less than the optimal way to greet the day.

Please God may that not happen again.