Monday, January 31, 2011
Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: No Strings Attached
If you took Love & Other Drugs and subtracted the degenerative disease and strangely superfluous pharmaceutical subplot you would get...a better movie. (Sorry, Jake.)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Running with Becky: The Week in Review
To the thrill of everyone who reads this blog (yours truly included), I will periodically be giving updates on my extreme athletic prowess, primarily for the purpose of making myself look good.
I recently began following the blog of fellow runner Anton, who gives a weekly update of his mileage, and he's all like, "Yeah, I went out and ran 14 miles this morning, and then I ate lunch and went back out and ran 20 more, and then I woke up the next day and ran 45 before breakfast and IT IS TOTALLY NORMAL FOR A PERSON TO RUN 200 MILES IN ONE WEEK."
In the spirit of Anton, here is my week:
Monday: If I hadn't stayed out so damned late over my birthday weekend, I would have done this run when I was supposed to: over the weekend. But here I am, plodding my way through 8 miles, by myself, dodging morning commuters. When I finish, I check my mileage and it turns out I only ran 7.25 miles. Son of a bitch.
Tuesday: Track workout, 3.5 miles. When I first starting showing up to weekly speed training a few months ago, my pal Mason would always give me pep talks by waving his arms emphatically and yelling, "There's no reason why you can't run faster!!" And now Mason's dropped off the face of the Earth and I'm showing up to do track workouts in the middle of freaking snowstorms (do you realize that most of my mascara was washed away by falling snowflakes tonight?!) and I still can't run faster than an 8:30 mile.
Wednesday: I guess you're supposed to do cross-training or a "core workout" or some shit. So...sit-ups and some arm curls. Good enough.
Thursday: 4 miles with the Breakaway group, which is always like maneuvering through a mine field on account of all the social incest. Five months ago, I was the absolute dead-last-slowest runner in this group, which drew unnecessary attention to both me and how much I sucked, but now I'm comfortably towards the end instead of at the end (10:27 pace tonight), and it is for this reason that showing up to run in the snow is good for something after all.
Friday: Rest. And more of the sit-ups and crap.
Saturday: 12 miles. Homo sapiens evolved as a distanced runner, biologically optimized to run antelope and other game animals to death. The ability to run was the difference between life and death. Telling myself this over and over for two hours did not make these 12 miles any easier.
Total weekly mileage: 26.75
Weeks until next half marathon: 4
How good that antelope meat is sounding about now: Pretty damn.
I recently began following the blog of fellow runner Anton, who gives a weekly update of his mileage, and he's all like, "Yeah, I went out and ran 14 miles this morning, and then I ate lunch and went back out and ran 20 more, and then I woke up the next day and ran 45 before breakfast and IT IS TOTALLY NORMAL FOR A PERSON TO RUN 200 MILES IN ONE WEEK."
In the spirit of Anton, here is my week:
Monday: If I hadn't stayed out so damned late over my birthday weekend, I would have done this run when I was supposed to: over the weekend. But here I am, plodding my way through 8 miles, by myself, dodging morning commuters. When I finish, I check my mileage and it turns out I only ran 7.25 miles. Son of a bitch.
Tuesday: Track workout, 3.5 miles. When I first starting showing up to weekly speed training a few months ago, my pal Mason would always give me pep talks by waving his arms emphatically and yelling, "There's no reason why you can't run faster!!" And now Mason's dropped off the face of the Earth and I'm showing up to do track workouts in the middle of freaking snowstorms (do you realize that most of my mascara was washed away by falling snowflakes tonight?!) and I still can't run faster than an 8:30 mile.
Wednesday: I guess you're supposed to do cross-training or a "core workout" or some shit. So...sit-ups and some arm curls. Good enough.
Thursday: 4 miles with the Breakaway group, which is always like maneuvering through a mine field on account of all the social incest. Five months ago, I was the absolute dead-last-slowest runner in this group, which drew unnecessary attention to both me and how much I sucked, but now I'm comfortably towards the end instead of at the end (10:27 pace tonight), and it is for this reason that showing up to run in the snow is good for something after all.
Friday: Rest. And more of the sit-ups and crap.
Saturday: 12 miles. Homo sapiens evolved as a distanced runner, biologically optimized to run antelope and other game animals to death. The ability to run was the difference between life and death. Telling myself this over and over for two hours did not make these 12 miles any easier.
Total weekly mileage: 26.75
Weeks until next half marathon: 4
How good that antelope meat is sounding about now: Pretty damn.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Things I Love
GRAPE CANDY.
Artificial grape flavoring is one of God's finest creations...superior to so many things. Like licorice. And cockroaches.
Artificial grape flavoring is one of God's finest creations...superior to so many things. Like licorice. And cockroaches.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
NEW FEATURE: Hatin' on Zuck
As long as there has been Facebook, there has been me trash-talking Facebook.
"HAHA this piece of shit social networking site!" I would say, to myself, in the comfort of my youth, mid-decade. "Why would anyone ever want to be on a site that constantly changes its privacy policy and doesn't let you personalize anything and elevates the most mundane aspects of our lives to an undeserved height, cheapening our definition of social interaction as we fall prey to the lie that every dumb thing we do is worthy of being broadcast to every person we have ever been in contact with in our entire lives?"
Well, I WAS WRONG. There's being a little bit wrong, and then there's being the level of wrong I was about Facebook. I was so wrong. I was so motherfucking wrong that I don't even have the words to tell you how motherfucking wrong I was about Facebook. 'Cause look at it! It's motherfucking Facebook now!
And I'm still trash-talking that bitch, because I don't even care. Here, look at this picture my friend Melissa Photoshopped for me for my birthday:
This is a picture that is representative of my actual feelings about Mark Zuckerberg.
So today I introduce my newest segment, HATIN' ON ZUCK, in which I will either say something derogatory about the current state of Facebook, or I will post something hilariously old and dated that I wrote years ago about Facebook on MySpace. Today, I give you the latter (and bonus points to my youthful counterpart for working Aaron Carter in her rant).
From June 27, 2007...
I feel there is an issue that needs addressing, and that is the issue of Facebook. Facebook is lame, people. LAME. Do you know how many times I've heard/read people say, "MySpace is old news; Facebook is where it's at." Okay, in those exact words, I've probably never heard/read that, but the sentiment is everywhere! People can't stop talking about if Facebook is the new MySpace and all this and let me tell you the answer to that: NO. First of all Facebook has been around FOREVER. Since February of 2004, to be exact. MySpace started just a few months earlier in November of 2003 (according to Wikipedia, so no doubt both dates are completely wrong...but bear with me). So why are people just now hearing about Facebook? Because it is STUPID and was nothing more than a glorified e-mailing service until a couple months ago when you could start reviewing movies over there. And who has time for that when you could be making MySpace profiles for fake Presidential candidates?! Other reasons why Facebook sucks:
1. You cannot stalk people on Facebook who are not your friends or in your "network." The privacy settings are stupidly restrictive and you can't see much of anything unless you're logged in. It's pretty much the worst thing ever.
2. You can't really customize your profile. Everyone's page has the same androgynous, sterile look, with only the wittiness of your words to help you stand out. But no one's going to be cruising your profile anyway because of the privacy settings, so what's the point? As of very, very recently, you can add random add-ons (like the movie application) but there isn't a lot to choose from and 95% of the stuff is so worthless that you have to immediately uninstall it. You heard me, "uninstall." Because you can't touch any of the html code yourself.
3. Um, I think those two reasons are enough.
I have a Facebook profile and I use it a lot. However, I use it as it is intended: a nice middle ground between e-mail and MySpace. It's somewhat private and somewhat useless. No one ever says, "Man, check out my Facebook profile!" Or if they do, they are NERDS. Facebook is fine, but to say it's the next MySpace is like saying that Aaron Carter is the next Justin Timberlake - or possibly some other analogy that works better than that one. Don't embarrass yourself by making statements about the superiority of Facebook.
***
Facebook is fine, but to say it's the next MySpace is like saying that Aaron Carter is the next Justin Timberlake. There should probably be a list made at some point of all of the bombastically inaccurate things that I have written on the internet since 2006, and that sentence should go somewhere near the top...
Damn Facebook.
"HAHA this piece of shit social networking site!" I would say, to myself, in the comfort of my youth, mid-decade. "Why would anyone ever want to be on a site that constantly changes its privacy policy and doesn't let you personalize anything and elevates the most mundane aspects of our lives to an undeserved height, cheapening our definition of social interaction as we fall prey to the lie that every dumb thing we do is worthy of being broadcast to every person we have ever been in contact with in our entire lives?"
Well, I WAS WRONG. There's being a little bit wrong, and then there's being the level of wrong I was about Facebook. I was so wrong. I was so motherfucking wrong that I don't even have the words to tell you how motherfucking wrong I was about Facebook. 'Cause look at it! It's motherfucking Facebook now!
And I'm still trash-talking that bitch, because I don't even care. Here, look at this picture my friend Melissa Photoshopped for me for my birthday:
So today I introduce my newest segment, HATIN' ON ZUCK, in which I will either say something derogatory about the current state of Facebook, or I will post something hilariously old and dated that I wrote years ago about Facebook on MySpace. Today, I give you the latter (and bonus points to my youthful counterpart for working Aaron Carter in her rant).
From June 27, 2007...
I feel there is an issue that needs addressing, and that is the issue of Facebook. Facebook is lame, people. LAME. Do you know how many times I've heard/read people say, "MySpace is old news; Facebook is where it's at." Okay, in those exact words, I've probably never heard/read that, but the sentiment is everywhere! People can't stop talking about if Facebook is the new MySpace and all this and let me tell you the answer to that: NO. First of all Facebook has been around FOREVER. Since February of 2004, to be exact. MySpace started just a few months earlier in November of 2003 (according to Wikipedia, so no doubt both dates are completely wrong...but bear with me). So why are people just now hearing about Facebook? Because it is STUPID and was nothing more than a glorified e-mailing service until a couple months ago when you could start reviewing movies over there. And who has time for that when you could be making MySpace profiles for fake Presidential candidates?! Other reasons why Facebook sucks:
1. You cannot stalk people on Facebook who are not your friends or in your "network." The privacy settings are stupidly restrictive and you can't see much of anything unless you're logged in. It's pretty much the worst thing ever.
2. You can't really customize your profile. Everyone's page has the same androgynous, sterile look, with only the wittiness of your words to help you stand out. But no one's going to be cruising your profile anyway because of the privacy settings, so what's the point? As of very, very recently, you can add random add-ons (like the movie application) but there isn't a lot to choose from and 95% of the stuff is so worthless that you have to immediately uninstall it. You heard me, "uninstall." Because you can't touch any of the html code yourself.
3. Um, I think those two reasons are enough.
I have a Facebook profile and I use it a lot. However, I use it as it is intended: a nice middle ground between e-mail and MySpace. It's somewhat private and somewhat useless. No one ever says, "Man, check out my Facebook profile!" Or if they do, they are NERDS. Facebook is fine, but to say it's the next MySpace is like saying that Aaron Carter is the next Justin Timberlake - or possibly some other analogy that works better than that one. Don't embarrass yourself by making statements about the superiority of Facebook.
***
Facebook is fine, but to say it's the next MySpace is like saying that Aaron Carter is the next Justin Timberlake. There should probably be a list made at some point of all of the bombastically inaccurate things that I have written on the internet since 2006, and that sentence should go somewhere near the top...
Damn Facebook.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Country Strong
Seriously? THAT was the ending?
(I was sitting behind a group of girls who were taking pictures of Garrett Hedlund with their phones every time he came on screen and in front of a middle-aged woman who gasped repeatedly at non-gasp-worthy things throughout the film. The audience participation was as riveting - some might say "annoying" - as the movie itself.)
(Garrett Hedlund, where have you been my whole life?)
(OH MY GOD, HE WAS PATROCLUS IN TROY. He was a lot girlier then.)
(I was sitting behind a group of girls who were taking pictures of Garrett Hedlund with their phones every time he came on screen and in front of a middle-aged woman who gasped repeatedly at non-gasp-worthy things throughout the film. The audience participation was as riveting - some might say "annoying" - as the movie itself.)
(Garrett Hedlund, where have you been my whole life?)
(OH MY GOD, HE WAS PATROCLUS IN TROY. He was a lot girlier then.)
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
NEW FEATURE: Becky's Tips for Saving Money
Today's installment: Never Buy New Clothes
Most of my wardrobe was new between 2004 and 2006. Most of what's newer than that is running shirts from races.
I have been unemployed for a year but I AM RICH (in terms of having a trove of really old clothes, but also in having money for groceries).
Live like me and you'll never go wrong.
Most of my wardrobe was new between 2004 and 2006. Most of what's newer than that is running shirts from races.
I have been unemployed for a year but I AM RICH (in terms of having a trove of really old clothes, but also in having money for groceries).
Live like me and you'll never go wrong.
Monday, January 24, 2011
ACTUAL AARON CARTER NEWS: That Bitch Be in Rehab, Bitches
Today is not just the day when I start this blog in earnest by posting overly-long and melodramatic entries about my birthday, it's also the day when we start our regular feature "ACTUAL AARON CARTER NEWS."
Luckily for me, after promising Aaron Carter updates, I learned that today there is ACTUAL AARON CARTER NEWS via MySpace's Facebook page (.). Aaron Carter is, of course, notable because he did one good thing in his entire life, and that was the song/video "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" back in 2000:
If you aren't familiar with Aaron, you a) suck and b) should study this analogy:
Aaron Carter : Justin Bieber :: Hilary Duff : Miley Cyrus
Got it? I hope so 'cause we're moving on to the news, which is that Aaron C is in rehab now FOR BEING LAME, i.e., for "emotional and spiritual reasons," and no, I don't got a goddamned clue what that fuckin' means but that motherfucker is old as shit now:
Looking at that picture makes me feel a hundred times older than anyone saying anything to me about being 29.
So obviously we'll be following his recovery. And THANK YOU, MYSPACE, for still being there for me with what's important in life.
Luckily for me, after promising Aaron Carter updates, I learned that today there is ACTUAL AARON CARTER NEWS via MySpace's Facebook page (.). Aaron Carter is, of course, notable because he did one good thing in his entire life, and that was the song/video "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" back in 2000:
If you aren't familiar with Aaron, you a) suck and b) should study this analogy:
Aaron Carter : Justin Bieber :: Hilary Duff : Miley Cyrus
Got it? I hope so 'cause we're moving on to the news, which is that Aaron C is in rehab now FOR BEING LAME, i.e., for "emotional and spiritual reasons," and no, I don't got a goddamned clue what that fuckin' means but that motherfucker is old as shit now:
So obviously we'll be following his recovery. And THANK YOU, MYSPACE, for still being there for me with what's important in life.
Happy Birthday to Meeeeee!
I look at my watch. Then at Alex. "I've been 29 for six minutes now."
He swings his head in my direction. "Happy birthday," he says. Says. Not slurs. This indicates to me that Alex is not nearly intoxicated enough for this to be of maximum entertainment for me. And I could use some entertainment. Somehow I got volunteered to be the designated driver.
Alex and Charles are puffing enormous cigars, the type that take them hours to smoke and leave my hair and clothes so saturated that I'll spend the next four days spraying down my apartment (and hair) with Febreze on a twice daily schedule. Joe is chain-smoking cigarettes.
"It's your birthday?" Joe asks. "What are you doing here?!"
"I don't know!" I yell back over the din of the band. And that, right there, seems to be my answer to everything these days...
Okay, let's back up; that's kind of a lie. I do know why I was at the Flying Saucer on Friday night with three drunken Rhodes graduates who were treating me like one of the guys. I was there to see Alex. Alex and I are marking our eleventh year as friends, but I hadn't seen him face-to-face (no, Skype doesn't count) since somewhere in the vicinity of 2006.
And Alex was staying the weekend with Charles. So when he told me to show up at Charles's house at 8:30 on Friday evening, I did.
The first words out of his mouth when I see him are: "I'm old."
"All of my hair is gray," I counter.
And then we hug. And it's all normal, like I saw him last week, and not four or five years ago, before failed books and long deployments. Before Kara died. Before either of us had half as much gray hair as we do now.
Charles pokes his head around the corner and I get an introduction to him and his wife and off we go, "we" being the guys and me. Joe's going to meet us there. And just checking to make sure I know where "there" is, I ask, "Are we going to the Saucer?"
Yes. We are going to the Saucer. And they follow me to my car without comment and pile in as if it had been planned in advance that I would be driving...
Three and a half hours later, it's midnight, I'm officially "old," I'm falling asleep on the couch I'm sharing with the guys, and Charles has stopped making wink-wink-nudge-nudge comments about Alex and me and is instead indulging Alex's discussion of our waitress who, like all Saucer waitresses, is wearing the type of skirt that I used to wear when I was in college and wanted some attention. Those skirts never really got me anywhere...but from the conversation going on on either side of me, I'm pretty sure the skirt is going to get the Saucer girl a good tip.
Speaking of college, that's where the Flying Saucer tradition began, and then continued after I graduated and Alex - two years behind after joining the Marine Corps - was still in school. We went twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, like clockwork. Once, I went on a Friday night with Megan, and as I walked to the bathroom, a man way too old and way too drunk to think he had a chance with me slipped me his number.
"Call me when you're single!" he rasped. Apparently he'd asked the bartender about me and the bartender told him that I was a regular, and that I came in all the time with my boyfriend.
But Alex was not my boyfriend. He's never been my boyfriend. Ours is a strange, beer-tinged friendship, but it is a definite friendship nonetheless.
A friendship that, I'm now remembering whilst sitting on the couch, trying to keep my eyes open, includes a lot of discussion on his part about the Saucer girls and their barely-there outfits.
The things I'll put up with to have someone to drink with...
Not that I'm drinking right now, of course, because I'm the designated driver. Alex just got promoted to captain, so he's buying. Free alcohol, it's my birthday, and I'm the goddamned designated driver...
***
The plan was to wake up early on Saturday morning and run 12 miles, but instead I roll out of bed at 10:00, still half-sick from cigar smoke, and stumble to the shower to wash the Febreze out of my hair. I'd gotten in around 3:00, and while that might normally be a badge of honor for a Friday night, for me it was merely a side effect of my inability to get anyone to leave the bar until they kicked us out to close for the night.
Somewhere before 1:00, about the time we were told to move from the couches into the main room, I'd checked my phone to see if anyone from the outside world had contacted me. My surroundings and company put me squarely in Rhodes Space, which was somewhat surreal 6 1/2 years after graduating. My phone came through for me, though; I had a text message from Eric, who is part of The Running World. For about half a second, I contemplated the ramifications of these two spheres of my existence colliding...and then I invited him to join us.
But his non-answer was answer enough. Too awkward, then... So it was back to Rhodes, where Charles and Joe were swapping cell phone videos of their children and ordering more beers (more beers?!) and discussing the dark underside of children's literature. I'd eyed Alex across the table and he knows me well enough to have gotten my message: that I wanted to go home, that I hadn't signed on for this, that if he thought about it, he might recall a time when I freaked out over being responsible for a damned cat so God help me around videos of babies...much less babies I don't even know. But he didn't say anything. And I didn't say anything. So I got home at 3:00.
Which is why I'm showering at a time when I'm usually already long up, even on a Saturday. And I don't run.
I'm meeting Marissa for lunch and she, too, is part of the Rhodes World. Like Alex, she doesn't live here anymore, but also like Alex, she happens to be in town for the weekend. She and her finace, Jack, buy me lunch, a meal which includes a margarita and a free tequila shot, courtesy of our waiter on account of my it being my birthday. I don't know what kind of tequila it is, but it goes down a hell of a lot smoother than the $15-a-bottle crap I buy at Buster's whenever the margarita mix goes on sale at the grocery store. We get caught up and I fill them in on running and life and my night out with Alex and in a way I feel like I'm being selfish and talking too much about myself. And in a way I don't care, because a margarita at Molly's and a free tequila shot will do that to me.
And yes, I am good after that shot and it doesn't take anything to convince me to come with them to the Stax Museum after we're done eating. Marissa even buys my ticket, and I muse out loud how I'm having a Memphis-themed birthday since my parents had taken me to Graceland on Wednesday as an early present. Graceland was fantastic. So is Stax. So is my whole afternoon with Marissa and Jack.
I come home and wonder what other adventures I'll have that day...
But the tequila's leaving my system now and if I'm going to be honest with myself (which I always am, damn me anyway), no one is going to call me with plans. I contemplate texting Virginia - Virginia's always up for trouble - even if she thinks I'm a liar because during every one of the handful of times we've hung out, I've at some point uttered the words, "I don't have any friends!" I don't mean it; I have some of the best friends a person could ever ask for. It's just that none of them are here, and so on my birthday, there isn't a single person in the city of Memphis anymore who would call me up and say, "Hey, let's go celebrate."
And sure enough, no one does. So I text Virginia (she's Running World, by the way). And when she calls me back, she says she's hanging out with a friend that night but they're going to be partying later. She'll let me know when there's a destination for me to meet them.
But she doesn't let me know before I go to bed.
And that was the twenty-four hours of my birthday.
Strange, huh? Not definitively up or down and lacking a easily-identified point. And that's actually a pretty damned good description of where my life is at 29.
(P.S. This entry has absolutely nothing to do with the general tone of this blog or length of its entries. EFFWHYEYE.)
He swings his head in my direction. "Happy birthday," he says. Says. Not slurs. This indicates to me that Alex is not nearly intoxicated enough for this to be of maximum entertainment for me. And I could use some entertainment. Somehow I got volunteered to be the designated driver.
Alex and Charles are puffing enormous cigars, the type that take them hours to smoke and leave my hair and clothes so saturated that I'll spend the next four days spraying down my apartment (and hair) with Febreze on a twice daily schedule. Joe is chain-smoking cigarettes.
"It's your birthday?" Joe asks. "What are you doing here?!"
"I don't know!" I yell back over the din of the band. And that, right there, seems to be my answer to everything these days...
Okay, let's back up; that's kind of a lie. I do know why I was at the Flying Saucer on Friday night with three drunken Rhodes graduates who were treating me like one of the guys. I was there to see Alex. Alex and I are marking our eleventh year as friends, but I hadn't seen him face-to-face (no, Skype doesn't count) since somewhere in the vicinity of 2006.
And Alex was staying the weekend with Charles. So when he told me to show up at Charles's house at 8:30 on Friday evening, I did.
The first words out of his mouth when I see him are: "I'm old."
"All of my hair is gray," I counter.
And then we hug. And it's all normal, like I saw him last week, and not four or five years ago, before failed books and long deployments. Before Kara died. Before either of us had half as much gray hair as we do now.
Charles pokes his head around the corner and I get an introduction to him and his wife and off we go, "we" being the guys and me. Joe's going to meet us there. And just checking to make sure I know where "there" is, I ask, "Are we going to the Saucer?"
Yes. We are going to the Saucer. And they follow me to my car without comment and pile in as if it had been planned in advance that I would be driving...
Three and a half hours later, it's midnight, I'm officially "old," I'm falling asleep on the couch I'm sharing with the guys, and Charles has stopped making wink-wink-nudge-nudge comments about Alex and me and is instead indulging Alex's discussion of our waitress who, like all Saucer waitresses, is wearing the type of skirt that I used to wear when I was in college and wanted some attention. Those skirts never really got me anywhere...but from the conversation going on on either side of me, I'm pretty sure the skirt is going to get the Saucer girl a good tip.
Speaking of college, that's where the Flying Saucer tradition began, and then continued after I graduated and Alex - two years behind after joining the Marine Corps - was still in school. We went twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, like clockwork. Once, I went on a Friday night with Megan, and as I walked to the bathroom, a man way too old and way too drunk to think he had a chance with me slipped me his number.
"Call me when you're single!" he rasped. Apparently he'd asked the bartender about me and the bartender told him that I was a regular, and that I came in all the time with my boyfriend.
But Alex was not my boyfriend. He's never been my boyfriend. Ours is a strange, beer-tinged friendship, but it is a definite friendship nonetheless.
A friendship that, I'm now remembering whilst sitting on the couch, trying to keep my eyes open, includes a lot of discussion on his part about the Saucer girls and their barely-there outfits.
The things I'll put up with to have someone to drink with...
Not that I'm drinking right now, of course, because I'm the designated driver. Alex just got promoted to captain, so he's buying. Free alcohol, it's my birthday, and I'm the goddamned designated driver...
***
The plan was to wake up early on Saturday morning and run 12 miles, but instead I roll out of bed at 10:00, still half-sick from cigar smoke, and stumble to the shower to wash the Febreze out of my hair. I'd gotten in around 3:00, and while that might normally be a badge of honor for a Friday night, for me it was merely a side effect of my inability to get anyone to leave the bar until they kicked us out to close for the night.
Somewhere before 1:00, about the time we were told to move from the couches into the main room, I'd checked my phone to see if anyone from the outside world had contacted me. My surroundings and company put me squarely in Rhodes Space, which was somewhat surreal 6 1/2 years after graduating. My phone came through for me, though; I had a text message from Eric, who is part of The Running World. For about half a second, I contemplated the ramifications of these two spheres of my existence colliding...and then I invited him to join us.
But his non-answer was answer enough. Too awkward, then... So it was back to Rhodes, where Charles and Joe were swapping cell phone videos of their children and ordering more beers (more beers?!) and discussing the dark underside of children's literature. I'd eyed Alex across the table and he knows me well enough to have gotten my message: that I wanted to go home, that I hadn't signed on for this, that if he thought about it, he might recall a time when I freaked out over being responsible for a damned cat so God help me around videos of babies...much less babies I don't even know. But he didn't say anything. And I didn't say anything. So I got home at 3:00.
Which is why I'm showering at a time when I'm usually already long up, even on a Saturday. And I don't run.
I'm meeting Marissa for lunch and she, too, is part of the Rhodes World. Like Alex, she doesn't live here anymore, but also like Alex, she happens to be in town for the weekend. She and her finace, Jack, buy me lunch, a meal which includes a margarita and a free tequila shot, courtesy of our waiter on account of my it being my birthday. I don't know what kind of tequila it is, but it goes down a hell of a lot smoother than the $15-a-bottle crap I buy at Buster's whenever the margarita mix goes on sale at the grocery store. We get caught up and I fill them in on running and life and my night out with Alex and in a way I feel like I'm being selfish and talking too much about myself. And in a way I don't care, because a margarita at Molly's and a free tequila shot will do that to me.
And yes, I am good after that shot and it doesn't take anything to convince me to come with them to the Stax Museum after we're done eating. Marissa even buys my ticket, and I muse out loud how I'm having a Memphis-themed birthday since my parents had taken me to Graceland on Wednesday as an early present. Graceland was fantastic. So is Stax. So is my whole afternoon with Marissa and Jack.
I come home and wonder what other adventures I'll have that day...
But the tequila's leaving my system now and if I'm going to be honest with myself (which I always am, damn me anyway), no one is going to call me with plans. I contemplate texting Virginia - Virginia's always up for trouble - even if she thinks I'm a liar because during every one of the handful of times we've hung out, I've at some point uttered the words, "I don't have any friends!" I don't mean it; I have some of the best friends a person could ever ask for. It's just that none of them are here, and so on my birthday, there isn't a single person in the city of Memphis anymore who would call me up and say, "Hey, let's go celebrate."
And sure enough, no one does. So I text Virginia (she's Running World, by the way). And when she calls me back, she says she's hanging out with a friend that night but they're going to be partying later. She'll let me know when there's a destination for me to meet them.
But she doesn't let me know before I go to bed.
And that was the twenty-four hours of my birthday.
Strange, huh? Not definitively up or down and lacking a easily-identified point. And that's actually a pretty damned good description of where my life is at 29.
(P.S. This entry has absolutely nothing to do with the general tone of this blog or length of its entries. EFFWHYEYE.)
Friday, January 21, 2011
It was twenty years ago today!
No, it wasn't. It was five years ago today.
Five years ago today I wrote my first blog entry on MySpace, an emo diatribe against people who didn't give Brokeback Mountain (what I thought was) the proper respect in the theater.
We've come a long way since then, baby. (And not all of it's been good.)
Book reviews, running reports, Facebook complaints, a Cheap Beer of the Month Club, movies, music, Things I Love, Things I Will Not - Under Any Circumstances - Tolerate, Aaron Carter updates, Today in Beatles History, old MySpace blogs, the occasional overpopulation post...all of the things I haven't been writing about but should have been. That will be here.
And it will be good.
Five years ago today I wrote my first blog entry on MySpace, an emo diatribe against people who didn't give Brokeback Mountain (what I thought was) the proper respect in the theater.
We've come a long way since then, baby. (And not all of it's been good.)
Book reviews, running reports, Facebook complaints, a Cheap Beer of the Month Club, movies, music, Things I Love, Things I Will Not - Under Any Circumstances - Tolerate, Aaron Carter updates, Today in Beatles History, old MySpace blogs, the occasional overpopulation post...all of the things I haven't been writing about but should have been. That will be here.
And it will be good.
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