where I've been

This is my precious nephew, Theo.


I want one! I want one!

Just kidding, Ben.

I need skills!

So I saw Joaquin and Reese on Oprah, and they said neither of them had ever sung a note before Walk the Line. Through voice lessons alone, they were able to emulate musical legends.

Yesssss!

My friend Stephanie and I have talked about the fantasy of shyly showing up onstage somewhere to wow the crowd, which usually includes ex-boyfriends and people who've made fun of us in the past, with our amazing guitar-strumming and singing skills. We'll also look much, much hotter than ever before.

Now, it seems it could really happen! At least the singing part. I just need to find the right voice teacher to believe in me, to turn what Ben calls "the sound of an old lady who's just woken up" into mellowed honey.

I love smiling; it's my favorite!

This week was fabulous in several ways. Yesterday was the last day of school, but we watched videos since Tuesday. Shh, I could get fired for that.

1. I have watched Elf and Napoleon Dynamite three times apiece. They've passed the litmus test for My Favorite Movies; the more I watch them, the funnier they become. Kids were turning around in their seats to look at me, astonished at how hard I chortled when Will Ferrell (or, as I like to call him, "Elf") does the splits on the escalator. At home, it's a kick to watch Ben seethe as I insist on saying, "Look at me! I'm being Elf!" instead of "Look! I'm being Buddy!" as he believes is proper. It's also nice to see the kiddos choosing the exact same lines of Napoleon's to mimic that I did.

2. My first period's Bob Marley Rasta Christmas door won first-place in the schoolwide door decorating contest. For two days, it was the talk of the school. Every few seconds during passing, I'd hear, "Ho, tight, da door!" and "Miss, your door is sick!" It's amazing how a giant image of Bob in a Santa hat can instill even the hooliganest of hooligans with the holiday spirit. Just kidding. I know they only like it because it helps them envision the ganja they're on their way to smoke.

3. I shamelessly bribed the kids and even more shamelessly drank in the sights and sounds of their gluttony as they smacked pizza, slurped soda, and, to a person, joked about my "hash brownies." As I savored the harmonious chorus of burps, I pretended they were feasting upon a bounty of knowledge only I could provide.

4.. This is the crown jewel. Two Hawaiian boys who hang out in my room at recess showed up wearing two-foot-tall Pope hats they'd made from construction paper, complete with crosses, in order to taunt their friend who doesn't believe in God. It was frickin' hysterical. They chased her around, giggling, "Repent! Repent!" I don't know why the fact that they're Hawaiian makes it funnier, but it does. Don't worry, everybody was laughing, including the heathen. Most days she's making fun of one of the popes for his dark skin. Just the fact that they took the time to plot and execute this was utterly delightful.

I guess my lesson learned today (and, indeed, this entire week, as I prayed no one would notice how I'd turned my room into a den of iniquity): it's so much more fun when I don't have to try to teach them anything.

Hello. I'm Missy Mussy.

I have self-diagnosed myself with Cinematic Over-Identifying Affective Disorder.

Does anyone else have this problem? Anyone over the age of 13? I didn't think so.

Last night Benoit and I saw Walk the Line. I loved it, but my love for it feels a little too preteen, a little too....much like my love for other films that have caused me to doubt my sense of self. Like Home Alone, when I totally thought I was the next Macaulay Culkin. As we walked to the car afterward, I felt a healthy identification with June Carter. I told Ben to disregard our recent “commitment” talks; I would be stringing him along for the next seven years in order to heighten the dramatic tension needed to turn our relationship from ordinary to legendary. No biggie. I'm sure tons of people make life decisions this way. It's got to be more reliable than horoscopes.

Here's what happened. I needed coffee to stay awake through the 10:00 movie, and I think they put ground-up speed in my iced mocha at the weird Japanese coffee shop.

A few hours after our return home, tossing, turning, twitching, and scratching at invisible bugs while Ben tried to sleep beside me, I felt dead certain that I WAS John R. Cash. I was right there with Johnny when he was going through his withdrawal from the black Mexican uppers. I know what he went through, man!

But I also wanted to be June, with her adorable, feminine outfits! Who can blame me for fancying myself a Southern Baptist divorcée who stands by her hard-living man? I've lived that life. Thus began an existential dilemma from which I am still recovering. How can I be satisfied being normal: Or, more truthfully, how can I be satisfied living a life that never gets made into a biopic? Or even a screenplay that has millions sunk into pre-production but never gets made, causing Kate Winslet to nurse a lifelong desire to play me, to the ruination of her career?

Someone famous said a life unexamined is not worth living; some things make me feel like it should be amended to the unfilmed life is not. I blame the E! Network, Oprah and Paris Hilton. Just not myself.

I've always known this was a problem, but thought I had it under control. My worst bout was in 1994, after seeing Legends of the Fall, when I pined away the year believing my life would be worthless if I never drove a man (preferably named Tristan) so wild with longing (by marrying his brother) that he had no choice but to circle the globe on pirate ships, smoke opium, and name his daughter after me when he settled for someone else.

That was embarrassing, but I got over it.

Then there was the “Frida” Minesweeper debacle. If I could think of a way to describe it without appearing completely insane, I would. Equating carpal-tunnel syndrome with a full-body cast is pure hubris, but quite fertile for the old imagination.

Good thing I've stopped short of appearing completely insane.

I luv F.O.L.K.!

(Friends of the Library Kona). I got about 20 pounds of books, plus 3 videos (I still luv VHS) for $6, and that includes a generous $2 donation. Good thing we got there early, though. The clearance sale was set to start at 9:00; we arrived at 9:15; by 9:20, all the good books were gone. Because of me. I am a book-selecting MACHINE. Three non-consecutive years under an oppressive bookstore regime were not for naught.The wheat flew from the chaff with such alacrity, none of the other patrons looked up from browsing the self-help table.

Here's a sampling of my bounty:
-hardcover of The Corrections
-something on race by bell hooks (hmm! go figure!)
-a Baby-Sitters' Club or two
-assorted critically-approved teen novels, with either hot pink (for girls) or macabre black-gray-death-themed (for boys) covers

That last is for my one stude who reads a book a week, and recently asked if she could borow some of my books. Since "my books" were pest-eaten, mildewed 80s novels that my dad's teacher friend threw out when she retired, I felt kinda bad. I will casually position these next to Then Again, Maybe I Won't, and see if she takes the bait. Then I'll become her best friend and a heart-warming movie will be made about me that will be shown on airplanes across the country.

Who knows if I'll ever read any of the others (except for the BSCs, obviously), but with our library's draconian 50-cent-a-day overdue fees, which accrue even on days the library is closed for holidays no one else gets, this is the smarter approach to reading.

Twas a good day.

comment to your heart's content

How very arrogant of me. But just in case, I have made it possible to comment without being a member, having a profile, or whatever. We'll see how many offers I get for vinyl siding and low-cost editing.

I give up

Sorry about that last esoteric contest-gone-awry. I had a few specific people in mind, and they let me down. (Stephanie, are you still reading?)

The answer is Jem and the Holograms, of course. But then, I do have the advantage of being probably the first person ever to get Jem from Netflix and watch my favorite episode several times, the one where Jerica and the girls arrange a benefit video, and it's all on ice, and someone nearly dies. The orphan is an indeterminately Asian girl named Bah-nee.

Thus ends my sojourn into late-80s cartoon territory. I've realized that among the non-OCD, nostalgia for it is limited to the fuzzy images and not the intricate plot twists and character development. You know that Rio Pacheco had purple hair, but the fact that Danse was a fragile orphan who filled her need for attention with a love of performance? Probably forgot about that.

Tomorrow, I promise, I shall return to normal. Navel-gazing of my own navel, not that of defunct fictional characters.

Ooh, unless I can dredge up a memory of a choice tidbit from The Get-Along Gang. The Portia-Montgomery dynamic could be very resonant with today's political landscape!
After I get back from the Friends of the Libraries discarded book sale! Yee-haw!

p.s. The contest-within-a-contest is from Speed. Another area of ignorance no one should ever try to correct.

name it! NAME IT.

A girl is going blind. Her only hope? Some sort of operation, of course. But how will she pay for it, this ward of the state, for whom no one cares?

With a benefit music video, duh. And who better to star in that video but Danse, the aptly-named, rainbow-haired lithe dancetrix who looks suspiciously like our established heroine. Could they be grooming her for a takeover of the lead role? Or is she just a decoy, created for a few episodes, only to be sacrificed for the thrill of seeing a cartoon teen crushed by some misfit's crude sabotage?

This is a contest, FYI and BTW. What the hell am I talking about? What do you do? What do you do? (Contest within a contest: what mid-90s film does that last sentence reference?)

Prize: VIP seating at the premiere of Mercedes Benz, PISW, should the video ever resurface. Failing that, Ben and MM will sing a duet of your choosing at the bowling alley karoke bar, when you come visit us.