Archives for June 2008

A few hours ago, Dan and I biked around Central Park.  Twice.   I’ve managed to slip that little nugget of sports trivia into every conversation I’ve had since.  I’m not one to go biking where there are people who I could potentially run over.  I once skied into a group of children and have been scared of sporty crowds ever since. But today worked out beautifully.  So beautifully in fact, that as I was riding along, I turned to Dan and said, “You know, I was just thinking.  If we just had these bikes, and nothing else, we could go anywhere.  We could just. . .   go.“

 “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along,” he said.

“I guess I wasn’t listening,” I said.

“We really don’t need all that other stuff,” he said.

“I know!” I said.  “Like our house, right?”
“Or anything else.  Just a bike and a change of clothes.  And maybe a toothbrush.”
“And a lip gloss or two.”
“Exactly.”
We rode a little longer. . .

“And a credit card.”
“And some sunscreen.”
“That  would pretty much do it.”
“Yes siree. . .So basically we’d be like homeless,” I said.
“We’d always find a place to sleep.”
“Where though?  Like a hotel?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about the other times?”
“We’d have to play it by ear.”

 

We sat quietly under a tree in Sheep’s Meadow and I took off my shoes wondering if I didn’t need them anymore either. We sat there for quite a while.  Long enough for me to start  picturing Dan with a long beard and no shirt, tanned, and with one eye missing.  A tattoo on his bald head.  He’s riding his bike in front of me making the peace sign.  I’m sticking my tongue through the area where my teeth used to be and swatting away the flies hovering over my dreads as I carefully follow him over state lines.  I look down at my other hand to see if I need a manicure and notice that I appear to have rickets.   

“We were just playing make believe back there when we were giving up all our stuff, right?”

“We were just talking, if that’s what you mean,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” I said, slipping my sneakers back on.

So last night I dreamt or dreamed, whatever, that I went to visit Kim at Barnard and told her to meet me in the library.  When she finally arrived, I was taking off my pants and underpants. 

I swear to God.

There was this tall, skinny black guy sitting next to me and he said, “You really shouldn’t be doing that here,” and I said, “I know, I’m really sorry.”

After I exposed myself to a room full of students, I started putting my shorts on, but I was doing it in slow motion because my hands were too weak to actually get the shorts up.  It looked like I was doing it on purpose, so I just kept saying, “I know this is taking too long.”

I’ve certainly had the  showing up at school naked dream before. And, on some level, I feel as though this reoccuring dream is a fairly accurate representation of how I often present myself in public, so it’s not like I was totally surprised by it. It’s just that, in the past, it’s always been about me showing up to my own school naked, either while riding a tricycle or wearing a very strange bra.  I had no idea I’d pop up unclothed in my children’s schools as well.  It now seems quite possible that I’ll be going to school partially naked for the rest of everyone’s lives.

I hope you can all forgive me in advance.

 

Either I just read The New York Times News Alert wrong or the Supreme Court just ruled that anybody can have a gun. And not just crazy people.  Anybody. And I believe they’re referring to real guns.  How come they can decide stuff like that without asking people like me who are afraid of people who like to have guns? Don’t I matter at all.  Just the word “Gun” gives me the chills.  If I were in charge of making these sorts of decisions, I would rule that no, nobody can have a gun.  Children can’t play with guns and therefore neither can adults.  Guns are dangerous, I would say.  What good could possibly come out of a person having a gun?  What if, say, there were bullets in that gun?  You see what I’m saying? 

So much for that whole girls against the boys thing.  Hillary finally said, “uncle.”  If only she’d have said it with a tad more feeling, we wouldn’t have looked like such a pitiful bunch of sore losers.  Granted, only pageant losers can actually pull off looking like they’re  happy for the winner, but most of us can at least fake it a little, especially if we know millions of people are watching.  But not Hillary. It was impossible for her. She felt tortured on a whole other level. For her it was like saying, “After all those years of not being pretty or sexy or even a little slutty, while everyone was out partying and I was home studying and practicing my President of the United States speech, I was this close to finally saying, ‘HA!’   But instead all I get to say is ‘Oh great for you Barack.’”

 I wanted her to win so badly I didn’t care that she was irritating me the whole time. I couldn’t admit to myself that she was not coming across as the woman I wanted so desperately to love and admire.  I just kept imagining all this cool stuff I could say to Kim if she won, stuff about following her dreams and how miraculously far this country has come, despite the whole Bush setting us back 100 years debacle.  But instead I told her, “See that?  That’s what happens when we try.  Don’t get your hopes up about anything.”

“Thanks, but I hardly feel the need to run for President,” she said, to cheer me up.

“Good, because I wouldn’t want you to embarrass the whole family,” I said, to make sure she didn’t change her mind.

And then it occurred to me that although it didn’t seem so at first, Vice President of the United States of America is a pretty good job too. 

 And then it really hit me.  Hillary can still win. She just needs a show. 

You know how Barack is black and cool and everything, and how Hillary's white and not? Think about it.  Wouldn’t that make a cute sitcom?  Hillary (a.k.a Vice President Lucy or V.P. Lucy) would play a loud mouthed, motherly, kind of bossy Florence Hendersony looking character in a pantsuit and shoes, and someone who looks like Barack, maybe Will Smith or someone, would play the cool, slick, handsome black President who’s always telling her to relax and take it easy, while she gets herself into all sorts of calamities because she’s always overreacting and putting her foot in her mouth.  Kind of like Lucy and Ricky, if Ricky had been a gazillion times smarter and not as loud a singer.  In the last scene of every show, Barack always gets V.P. Lucy out of another one of her pickles.  Except, and here’s the clincher, it’s all an act.  The whole time she’s pretending to get carried away with her crazy, mixed-up, mischievous schemes, she’s actually been getting things accomplished in Washington.

Get it?
 

In every episode, Barack thinks he’s rescuing Lucy, but she always ends up winking at the camera at the end.  Like for example in one episode Lucy wants healthcare for say, every American.  But, she goes about it all wrong and ends up burning down a hospital or something while singing, “God Bless America!!!” to prove her point.  And then Barack comes along and has to tell her to go to her room while he puts out the fire, builds a new hospital and makes friends with all the patients by smiling at them with his gigantic teeth.  But then, at the end, you realize that even though Lucy’s been in a time-out, her health plan passed! And all because of an insane arson stunt.

Who wouldn’t love to tune in to see a cool black kid boss around a wise and tricky old white lady?  The whole nation would be subliminally convinced that the real Hillary Clinton was actually the only one really getting anything done.  The next thing you know, four years have gone by and the show’s been a hit for all four years and Hillary runs for President.    It would be like if Rachel Green ran for something.  Who wouldn’t vote for her?

So, there you go.  It’s not over people.  Not until Hillary sings.   

I’d just like to say that I bought a pair of pants for one penny today.  It was quite a significant markdown from $185.

 When the salesperson told me, “That will be one penny,” I said, “One penny what?”  And she said, “One penny, as in one cent.”

“One penny as in one cent. . . how?” I asked, turning the pants over to search for a price.

“The pants are one penny.  They’re on sale.” 

And I said, “Why do you keep saying one penny? And what exactly does ‘on sale’ mean?”

“That’s how much they are.  I’m not kidding.”

“Well obviously there must be some mistake.  Did someone pee in them or something?”

 Finally she explained.

“They were supposed to be returned to the vendor (VINCE) but they were left on the rack by accident. In order to account for them, they’re listed as one penny. It happens sometimes.  The woman right in front of you got a pair of shorts for a penny.”

Can you believe that? One penny!!  The zipper costs more than a penny.  Forget that, one tooth of the zipper costs more than a penny.  This is the single greatest achievement of my life!

ONE HOUR LATER
I’m walking around the house asking everyone to guess how much my pants cost.  So far no one has guessed a penny! 

A FEW HOURS LATER:

I don’t actually like the pants anymore.  I’m so used to getting ripped off, I feel as though I’ve done something wrong.  I don’t deserve my penny pants.

THE NEXT DAY:

I couldn’t sleep.   I think God knows about the pants.  I might return them. 

This is a movie about all sorts of outfits that shouldn't really go together, and yet, miraculously, they do.

 That’s actually the theme. I wasn’t just saying that.

Naturally, the sub theme is odd accessories. One in particluar stands out in my mind because it involves a large, blue bird. You don't often see birds in people's heads, but here you do.   As a rule, I make fun of feathers whenever possible, but this caught me so off guard, I was speechless.  Besides, I was still recovering from Charlotte's double daisy diamond earrings.  I’m planning to dream about those for several nights in a row. Perhaps a full week, if nothing better comes along.

Above all is THE wedding dress, which I predict will win an academy award.  The dress is so beautiful that everyone in the audience said, “Oh my God,” when it first appeared.  But then, and I hate to say this, when Carrie put it on, it didn’t really fit her in the chestie area.  It would have fit me much better, but whatever.

Mr. Big was wearing lipstick, I'm pretty sure, and Samantha put on fifteen pounds for this film. I thought that was sort of short sighted on her part. There is also a penis that shows up toward the end, and two or three revolting sex scenes.  One of them wasn’t as gross as the others, but still.  Who wants to see people having sex when you’re trying to concentrate on whether or not Patricia Field is a genius or a person who desperately wants to be a clown?

I admit I will most likely see this movie again because of the daisy earrings, but, to be honest, it was a little too long and I cringed every time the girls screamed, which was every time they saw each other.  The audience was laughing the whole time though, and I laughed once really loudly too, even though it wasn’t funny.  I just felt like laughing.

Would I go so far as to recommend this glittering girlaliciousness to a person like you?  Obviously.  Imagine eating a gigantic piece of candy for like a million hours.  Even when you’re sick of it, it’s still better than not eating it.  Also, I’d just like to say that Charlotte is like a sister to me now.  We both feel it.