When a Former Bully Sends You a Friend Request

Dig this: You have a weird, bad social experience as a child, grow to understand it, move on, but still occasionally have the perpetrator pop into your world, and all that comes to mind when you see them is, 'Go away! You're not allowed to be within two miles of me! Didn'tcha read the contract?'
And you're not angry or hurt, just...you enjoy pretending the bully fell off of our flat, flat Earth.

A Letter to the Late, Fantastic Joan Rivers

 Dear Iconic Working Woman Joan Rivers, 

I feel the need to write you a note not as an inappropriate ploy for page views (ick), but as an expression of my gratitude for the gifts you gave us. I've been a fan of yours for years because of your guts - that willingness to sometimes expose your compassion and culture and vulnerability, aside from the fact that you'd "go out and do a talk show and [she'd] come out like a machine gun", as Kathy Griffin put it to Anderson Cooper on CNN. 

What I Learned From Watching ‘Hart of Dixie'

 

-                 I already had a dumb stereotype-riddled bias against the idea of my living in a

 small town and this show perpetuated all of them. So thanks for that, Dr. Hart.

-       Many of the jokes are cliché and are inserted into dialogue in such a way that it makes the whole episode script into the softest game of softball imaginable. Part of comedy is surprising your audience a bit, striking the part of the brain that goes, ‘Oh! That was clever, how great!’ and triggers a laugh. If a writer makes humor a very low priority in favor of playing to the basic wants of teenage girls via shirtless guys confessing their feelings to the uninteresting fish-out-of-water protagonist, then the jokes, the characterization, and even the kisses become cotton balls and cosmetic sponges instead of moments fans can cheer about.

About This Dream I Had

As told to my mother:
"I had a sort of lucid dream this morning just before I woke up. I went to see Ellie* at her old place and pulled into the parking lot across the street...I looked over at a nearby car to see a raccoon sitting in it, leaning out of the open window on the passenger side. I looked away for a second, turned back, and I heard feet at my passenger door. Slowly - here's the window (I needlessly indicate with my hand) - the raccoon put its claws on my door and peered in at me. It looked so aggressive that I thought it must have rabies! I knew I could drive over to the police station that was just behind the lot, but instead I decided to flip the bird at the raccoon with both hands! It started attacking my car, trying to get in, which made me think, 'Don't wanna be bitten', and I wondered how scratched that door was getting, but I quickly responded to the attack by sliding into the closest seat and proceeding to sit up tall and make claws and growling sounds." 

Yup. Probably rabies.

Just before my mom leaves the house, I say, "Fine. Telling it to you shows me that it was all my fault."  -eye roll-

*Ellie = Lola J. Massagetherapistfriend

Advice From a Writer: Wendi Aarons

A few months ago, I discovered the writer Wendi Aarons. Her humor grabbed me first, with her website, relatable tweets and always-funny Twitter profile picture, but I also had to appreciate how she keeps things simple in each blog post, choosing a topic and following it through in the ‘short but sweet’ way that I still have to work on. She makes a living based on her work, serves as coauthor of the parody Twitter account @PaulRyanGosling and just seems all-around cool. One day she published something about writer’s block and strangers disliking her style that made me think, ‘I should really ask this woman for a little advice! I want some of the things she has and she’s been in this field a lot longer than I have, so why not take a chance and come up with some questions?' I soon did just that, and – check this out, you guys – she responded! My work life has been eventful lately because I needed to change environments, y' know? It's time for a new adventure, so it was kind of a relief to read Mrs. Aarons' Wendi's answers since they made it clear that yeah, I’m dealing with the industry that Writer's Digest has been talking about. I wanted the combo of hard work, struggles and opportunities, competition, persistence and community, and this world has all that. It’s not like I’m trying to get a job keeping nuclear missiles secure. Writing (especially fiction) is definitely my thing. 

Below are the e-mails exchanged between clever celebrity blogger Wendi Aarons and myself! This has been a good dose of inspiration/reality for me.

July 7

Dear Wendi,

'Scoring Wilder', A Review

Intelligent, relatively self-aware 19-year-old protagonist, check. Hot, talented love interest, check. A number of writing mistakes like "Her and Emily" and "the Coffee Shop", a big ol' check. Well-paced beach read that left me satisfied, check. 

It was refreshing that...

A Scene from My Nonexistent Movie Script

So picture this:

It's a movie - my movie, tentatively titled Drowsy Crown just because I like those words together, and in a kitchen scene, artists of different kinds are all going about their breakfast routines. Here's what I have figured out so far: There's a girl with long, wavy brown hair wearing blue skinny jeans and standing to the left, trying to get the guy in the middle of the room to remember that the white bins in the garage are meant for separating plastic and paper recyclables. She doesn’t have time to clean up after her roommates this week, because she has a test from Professor Lauren, her most challenging instructor. He's taking a break after working through the night on a play he's very cryptic about, what with his being a secret perfectionist, a "you can’t read it 'til it's finished" guy who’d be halfway through a burrito, find himself struck by an idea and forget to finish eating.
In the back right of the room (stage left) is a guy in a bathrobe, tube socks slouching around his ankles, a necklace hiding underneath the collar of his shirt. He has very short hair and is listening to the recyclables conversation, amused, tilting his chair back periodically, eating a bowl of cereal. He doesn't live in this house. His presence will be fleeting and carefully staged on the part of the director so that the audience can better see the shape of this artists' group. I'm afraid to call them a collective at this stage, but the friendships in this gaggle have to make sense. I don't want them to be ragtag. They don't need each other, they choose each other to lean on.

And I've decided that the bathrobe guy is Sam Pink. 

My Dream Hair

I do love my tresses, it’s true; the nearly-black natural color, the fact that I haven’t dyed my whole head of hair, that day in 2001 when I took a chance by having it cut from just-past-the-shoulders to a short almost-pixie inspired by Mandy Moore. That last decision liberated me from a useless obsession with the long, thick hair that I was actually overwhelmed by.

These days, it’s still short, but I’ve learned a few styling techniques and introduced myself to the fun of making it colorful. I’ve had red highlights, blue-green bangs, and at one point, a panel of red, orange and blonde.

When I inevitably get bored with my look, I don’t just think of what I want to do next, but I fantasize, too, about having 22 inches of purple, Joss Stone-style waves to toss over my shoulder and wear with a black dress.

I Thought I Was In Love and Felt Like a Crazy Person

 Could I skip to the stage of a relationship that would have been Liz Lemon's dream and just be done with this? 'Kay, thanks.

          I can't possibly be the only person who has thought to themselves, 'UGH. I am so SICK of this stage of love'. Mind you, I know I previously had limited experience with the emotion: I'm part of a warm, stable family and have some semblance of love with a few friends. But 
I stated in January that I am currently in romantic love for the very first time, and holy s--t - I have been thinking like an insane person for the past - mmm, seven months, I think - going through the scientifically proven stage of love that has me much more attentive to small children, dogs and babies, having more difficulty focusing on tasks, getting annoyed with myself.

 

This piece was first published on 3.29.14 and the title was changed on 11.28.20

Recovering From a Friendship Breakup REDUX: Recent Toxicity

Time to cut ties with the recent past and not write about it for a long, long time:

The hardest part of letting a longtime pal fall away has, for me, been the struggle to end my long obsession with the other person’s wrongdoings. If someone I really like and respect screws up badly enough, I’ll cut off all communication with them until I have thoroughly processed recent events, which can take months or even years.  The majority of the time, the person from whom I’m gaining distance is needy;

Gender Dysphoria

----AUTHOR'S NOTE JANUARY 29, 2023: I look forward to revisiting this topic in the future, so maybe this essay can be a resource or a time capsule item, but please know that it was specifically created by the person I was in 2014, and even she wasn't anywhere near award-winning levels of rifling through one's own mental Rolodex or researching for her writing. Thanks for your time!---- 

          I’ve been learning more about gender and sexuality in the last few years and I have to say that I’m fascinated by a lot of it. As you know, gender is a complicated thing, so I've made a conscious effort to seek out the information. It started in my teens with an article in some girly magazine (Girls' Life? er...), interviewing a couple of gender-transitioning individuals and their parents, of which I now only remember a photo of Samantha, a trans woman, and her dad’s statement that he was supportive, and just last year, I turned to an episode of Our America with Lisa Ling on the OWN Network. I love that show, and in that particular episode, two adults, one of them middle-aged, were undergoing transitions, and I got to see how, in the one case, there was a woman who had lived in a man’s body for over four decades, married, and raised two sons, each of whom were in their teens or twenties when one of their parents started to build an identity that she could truly be herself in.

I Want to Make My Own Major

 

            I've surpassed a need for an honesty warning, right? Right.  

          So I'll unhappily admit that I am not an ideal student. For instance, I’m very intellectually curious but a terrible test-taker.I'll space out a lot during an exam and get very sleepy, which is entirely a psychological problem, but a reality all the same. I learn a lot and enjoy it and study only to end up with grades far below A, often around C; Just this past semester I got an 80% on my American History I midterm and requested high-fives from my parents. It's obvious that I'm one of those people who has to put in a hell of a lot of work to do well in most academic things. I'd need a study buddy, too. And the IED* my parents had set up for me years ago. But even with that obstacle, I've been trying to move forward as a passionate student of writing and the human experience.

How to Respectfully Follow That Writer Online

 

1.    Carefully, and with quiet, plodding steps…assuming that a person can plod quietly.

2.  Use a horrific impression of the Lone Ranger.

3.   You might draw a twelve-month calendar of seahorses by hand, at which that author you love might look back as he hurries away from you.

4.  Stuff your gullet with white chocolate baking chips.

5.   Read some Hemingway.

6.  Check out Rachel Cohn.

7.   Fall in love with the quality of a celebrity profile they once wrote and save their website to your browser’s favorites under the heading, “…got drunk and flirted with Chris Evans, a.k.a. My Heroine”

Kill, Marry, Bang: 'Copper' Edition

Flashback Friday!

Because I used to watch Copper, the BBC America show with a ton of potential that rushed through its first few episodes, and proved itself to be just okay, and because [I gave myself such a long breather from laughing at Maguire's Tombs hair] I didn't know until four months later that it had been cancelled in September 2013, I've decided that every once in a while, on a Friday, if I can't bring myself to keep it quiet, I'll post about something that happened a while ago. Maybe someday I'll write a piece like this about The Adventures of Pete and Pete and call it "Marry, Steal Lunch Money, Hold Hands With" or something. Who knows. Please bear with me!

Kill: Elizabeth Morehouse. I’d absolutely hate for her husband, socialite/aspiring philanthropist Robert Morehouse to lose the one person who really holds a place in his heart and possibly close himself off for life, but Copper is a very mediocre show that wasted some of its best story lines in a desperate season one in which I found Elizabeth a little annoying, and now that the second season is over, I’m like, ‘Your opium addiction is interesting, dear, but – meh – it’s too late for me to connect,’, so I wouldn’t really mind killing her. Drugs would not be a good idea creatively, but maybe snapping her neck falling out of a carriage during a street riot would do the job, or she could receive her second Confederate death threat, only for the Southerner to succeed…or an artery could be severed by a decorative hat. Okay, sure, that last idea was weird, but it’s good to have options.

About This Dream I Had

I periodically stop by CandyandPizza, which belongs to the talented writer Jeremy Glass, and I'm inspired by the variety of blog posts, but particularly by his "Before I Forget (Last Night's Dream)" bits. One of them is about how he once dreamt that the late, deservedly famous Notorious B.I.G. was his uncle. Fun stuff.

Disclaimer/Intro: Recently, my annoying neighbor, Mrs. A, got on my nerves at a party, and also, I've known for a few days now that I would have to work today at 1:30pm, so my imagination had to have been semi-conscious.


In this morning's dream, I was in a room at my doctor's office while she held her clipboard to her chest and stood ramrod straight before me, saying in a quiet, calm tone, "You're pregnant" (which, in reality, I could not possibly be). Seconds later, I was in my parents' home, talking with my mother, listening to a pair of small feet hurry up the basement stairs.

Recovering From a Friendship Breakup

The hardest part of letting a longtime pal fall away has, for me, been the struggle to end my long obsession with the other person’s wrongdoings. If someone I really like and respect screws up badly enough, I’ll cut off all communication with them until I have processed recent events and compared them to very similar memories, which can take months or even years. Young people still have so much to learn that some kind of reaction is to be expected.
 Usually, the person from whom I’m parting is needy; maybe they’re a narcissist or deeply ashamed of themselves to the point of unintentional secrecy, or maybe they were transformed by a hard childhood into someone who didn’t want to get to know me so much as to give themselves a personification of things they felt they’d been cheated out of. I have a lot of embarrassing history of trying to be buddies with people whose favorite hobbies are their emotional issues. 

6 Reasons Why I Love Tom Hardy

1.    Those lips. He’s so cute! I’d hold his face in my hands and look at those lips! I think life experience has made me develop a bias for a full mouth like that.

To My Mom: You’re not reading this, but I want to address your opinion of my choice of actor. You told me his looks are “weird” and I hear you – he’s not classically handsome - but he’s at the top of my list of celebrity sexceptions and I stand by that.

2.  2009’s The Take. A dark miniseries that aired in the UK (also available for free on hulu), The Take features greed, violence, addiction and messed up families all played by very talented actors. Even the kid playing Hardy’s oldest son does a good job.

This show is the first I’d ever truly binge-watched, and upon reaching the finale, I felt the loss of Tom Hardy’s character. Mind you, Freddy is fucking creepy with a charisma that makes me feel unclean; the very way he walks is repellent and foreboding. Every cocaine hub in Colombia could be powered for two years by the electricity comin’ off that man.

   3.   He seems appreciative of his loved ones. The mention of his family in an interview (specifically his actress then-fiancée, now-wife Charlotte Riley) could make him light up. That alone earns him points with me.

   4.  His voice. The man has a unique, raspy voice. I was compelled to check him out after watching The Dark Knight Rises, and I realized that his Bane monologue wasn’t very heavily influenced by tech magic, but that he is easily able to put an odd, interesting other layer onto his tone and pronunciation. That’s so cool! Dude has one more advantage.

   5.   He makes grumpy loners look sexy. In Lawless, he’s a tough small town moonshiner whose first language is mumbling, and I’m normally annoyed by the latter, but after a long day of selling booze, grumble, grumble, and putting grown men down for a nap with the brass knuckles he keeps in his jacket pocket, I’d be willing to hook up with him, which is a better reaction than what I gave to his presence in Wuthering Heights. He does everything right in being crotchety and spiteful, but I couldn’t just observe his vulnerability and struggles with heartbreak when faced with the way he cuddles a skeleton and dons ridiculous hair. You’ve got to be kiddin’ me with that thing. At times, it is so floppy and sad that it reminds me of a wig Jean-Claude Van Damme wore when he played a serial killer.

               If on YouTube, you find the video that’s made up entirely of Hardy’s Wuthering scenes, you’d be looking at the bio pic of an oddly styled wig and how it survived the great Bane-Charlotte Riley-Rick Grimes love triangle. 

               That said, I think Hardy didn’t bring it as Bill Sikes in 2007’s Oliver Twist, and I looked at the majority of his screen time as an interpretation of some other abusive twat with dirty teeth who happened to be good-looking. It’s like he’d already scored the top spot in a Sexiest Street Urchin contest in Victorian London Magazine and now thought he could just coast.

     6. Sergeant Slaughter, My Big Brother. This is a short film released in 2011. It's simple and poignant. Hardy plays the title character, pecked at by cliché, annoyingly judgmental parents, and he is, like, made of quirks, but he’s determined and interesting and knows how to look out for his younger brother. Oh, and if you need further incentive, in the opening scene, he’s naked. Since I went into the film clueless, I was, um, quite surprised. I think I laughed aloud.
      You can find the film on YouTube. I recommend it!

What Could Happen Now That We're Not Close

       You’re going to live in a city where you can start over, befriending new people at grad school with your literary know-it-all personality, meeting them for coffee at some hip, relaxed café, and you’ll be charming in a blue pea coat and red-orange scarf. Over time, as you work hard and meet people, some of them will be well-intentioned, romantically interested guys for whom you’ll set aside your negativity long enough to learn something new about dating and about yourself.

 School is going to kick your ass, but the people whose very presences make life harder by triggering your anger and jealousy will be thousands of miles away, including me.

Kill, Marry, Bang: 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' Edition

Marry: I would want to get hitched to Mac! Could I still do that? Imagine the weird, weird ceremony with Mac in a leather jacket, Charlie as a groomsman and Dennis secretly acting as best man, which would make for a bachelor party that would last for two or three days and be all kinds of illegal. Mac would show up at the venue for our wedding, brushing dust from his jeans, playing with a cowlick, saying, “Don’t ask…Do you have any food?”

A Conversation With My Late Childhood Dog

                        
 From the Vaults of My Old Blog:

      The room that Arthur has agreed to meet in is bordering on colonial opulence, as if it is the dream bedroom in a manic American Girl doll catalog. It is the only red and white themed room at the Potter Grace Bed and Breakfast, and it is the only room booked for a single occupant listed as Westley Familiaris. By the window in the corner, at the foot of an armchair, sits Arthur, dressed in white, breathing deeply, appearing so comfortable that it's almost zen-like. Outside, it's warm for a February afternoon in his part of the country, with fat blocks of yellow sunlight streaming through windows. Shannon is sitting on the bed at the other side of the room, running her fingers over stitches in the comforter.