Running Amok

I went to a huge party the other night in Minneapolis. As I sidled up to the refreshment table and grabbed a handful of corn chips, I overheard some 20-somethings reminiscing about their teenaged years. They were engaged in a fierce competition about which one of them was most delinquent during their wild youth.

"I was so evil, my parents gave up on me and disowned me," a woman in a flowered sundress said.

"Well, I was kicked out of the corner grocery store...for life," said a man in a baseball cap.

"I dyed my hair green and climbed up on the roof of the neighbors' house. They had to call the fire department to get me down," said a woman in tortoise-shell glasses.

Much to my annoyance, the group totally ignored me and didn't ask what crazy things I did as a teenager. I racked my brain to think of something to top their tales. The problem was, I couldn't remember much from those murky and chaotic times. I decided it was best to stick to recent occurrences as I strove to prove to them I was the most outrageous miscreant of them all.

"Well, just last week my friend and I were kicked out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City," I said.

They all stopped talking and stared at me. I basked in the glow of their attention.

"Really?" the woman in the sundress said.

"Yes," I said, "Really."

"What happened?" the man in the baseball cap said.

 I paused for effect before I replied. "The museum was closing for the day. They kicked out everyone, not just us."

The group greeted my story with such stunned silence, I knew I'd won the competition.

Girls! Girls! Girls!...and You!

Twenty years ago I was angry with a famous male writer. I'm not going to say who it was because he's dead now, and it's not fair to diss dead people who can't fight back. Not that I think the famous writer would be reading my blog if he was alive, but you never know...my blog is on the Internet, and he might have typed the word "Nipples" into his search engine and found my June 10th blog post. (In case you were wondering, the "Nipples" blog post snared twice as many readers as usual.)

But I digress. Ten or twenty years ago I was angry because of something disgustingly OUTRAGEOUS and perverted and sick, sick, sick which the famous writer said in a magazine interview. He said, "...

The Simple Life

A couple of weeks ago I had dinner at a Greek restaurant with a writer friend of mine. After we'd gotten off to a good start with some calamari and  wine, we settled into the kind of breezy conversation which interfaces nicely with a warm summer night.

"What have you been up to lately?" I said.

"I'm teaching myself how to read ancient Sanskrit," he said. "I'm interested in how the language interfaces with contemporary forms of communication such as the emoticon."

"Cool," I said.

"What have you been up to?" he said.

"I'm trying to figure out what to pack for my trip to New York City," I said. "It's really stressing me out."

"Why?"

"Everyone in New York is so stylish, and all my clothes are stupid."

"That's not true," he said. "You have nice clothes."

"Like what?"

 "Like what you were wearing the other day."

I furrowed my brow.  "What was I wearing the other day?"

"That thing you wear all the time."

"What does it look like?"

"Low cut. Accentuates your cleavage."

"Is it blue?"

 "It might be blue."

"I can't pack it if you can't tell me what it is," I said. "Do I have any nice clothes you DO remember?"

"Yes. That bra you used to wear when we were going out." His eyes grew dreamy. "It made your breasts rise up and point forward like magical cones. That bra made your breasts look huge. I could never figure out how it did that."

"This is all very interesting," I said, "but it's not helping me figure out what to pack besides my magical bra."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," he said. "All you need to pack is that bra."

Double Trouble

I don't usually do matchmaking, but a recently-divorced woman friend of mine is so damned pretty, she needs to get married off immediately. In her current single state she's a liability to all other single women.

I also have a man friend who's single, smart, and employed. Fortunately I'm not attracted to him. I decided he was the perfect sacrificial victim for getting my pretty friend off the market.

To set up their first date, I began by talking to the man. He asked a lot of questions about my pretty friend, such as was she employed, did she go to college, did she drink beer and did she like sports? The answer to all those questions was yes. 

 "One more question," he said. "Has she ever been married?"

"Yes," I said. "Five times."

"Five times?" he said. "If she's been married five times, something is obviously wrong with her."

 "Nothing is wrong with her," I said. "She's so beautiful and smart, everyone wants to marry her. We'd all be married five times if we had the kind of love opportunities she's presented with."

"I dunno," he said. "She sounds like trouble."

"Think about it," I said. "Call me tomorrow."

Then I talked to the woman friend. She asked the same questions he asked, including the one about being married.

"He's never been married," I said.

"If he's never been married, something is obviously wrong with him," she said.

"Nothing is wrong with him," I said. "He was busy getting his career going before he made a commitment to marriage and children."

"I dunno," she said. "He sounds like trouble."

"Think about it," I said. "Call me tomorrow."

Neither one ever called me again.

I'm glad I got rid of them. They were both trouble.

Celebrities in Our Midst

A real, live  Hollywood movie star visited my studio during a recent art event. I'm not going to say who it was, since I didn't recognize the movie star and only found out later from a friend who witnessed the movie star strolling into my loft. Even if I'd recognized the movie star, I wouldn't have done anything about it. Movie stars appearing in the backdrop of my life are not a novelty; I used to live in Los Angeles, where movie stars mingle with peasants on a fairly regular basis.

More exciting to me is that a real, live cave man visited my studio the same day the Hollywood movie star stopped by.

I must make it clear at this point: the cave man was a GENUINE cave man, not a "cave-man type" . The cave man had somehow survived for two hundred million years and arrived intact in my studio on a  springtime afternoon.

At first I didn't recognize the cave man for what he was. I mistook the cave man for some other kind of man. His sartorial statement was elegantly muted, implying that he did important work in an office setting. His hair was nicely groomed, he was clean-shaven, and he wore a dark gray suit and tie.  His behavior was quiet and orderly.  He spoke in a language which is currently in vogue (Upper-Midwestern English). He didn't carry a club or flaunt recently-killed animal carcasses. He engaged in light conversation with the artists milling about my studio,  laughing at people's jokes and listening politely as they catalogued their existential dilemmas. There was no hint that he was a cave man until someone asked about a painting of mine, which is entitled "Reunion".

"Reunion" depicts me mingling with a gaggle of brachiosauruses, raptors and pachycephalosauruses. The painting is about the subject of aging. 

"I bought $75 worth of plastic dinosaurs to use as models for the painting," I told the crowd. "It was money I'd set aside for a new spring wardrobe, but I stopped by a hobby store on the way to the mall and ended up spending all my money on plastic dinosaurs."

 I asked other people if they'd ever done a dinosaur painting. Everyone said yes, including the cave man, but they were all quick to add that they hadn't done any dinosaur art since they were children. Then everyone told stories about doing dinosaur art as children. Some people said they too had used plastic dinosaurs as models. One person said she was so old, plastic dinosaurs hadn't been invented yet so she had to copy from pictures in archeology books. One woman said she she was so old there were no archeology books and she had to invent fantasy dinosaurs based on tales her ancestors told around campfires.

"Well, I'm so old, I used LIVE dinosaurs as my models," said the cave man.

Which is how I knew he was a cave man.

Nipples

Do total strangers ever give you advice you didn't ask for?  That happens to me all the time. Like  a couple of weeks ago, when I was lounging at a coffeehouse writing blog posts in a notebook.

When I say "notebook" I mean a spiral binder with lined paper. I was the only person in the coffeehouse who wasn't using a laptop computer. It isn't that I only write blog posts in longhand. Sometimes I write stuff at a keyboard. I like to mix things up a bit.

Eventually the woman sitting next to me stopped typing and peered at me. "What are you doing?" she said.

"Writing blog posts," I said. "I usually draft them up ahead of time so they can settle down a bit before I post them."

"Ah," the woman said, nodding.

"Except sometimes I type them directly into my computer and post them right away," I said.

 "What's the name of your blog?" she said.

"It doesn't really have a name," I said. "It's just a page on my website."

  "I'd like to take a look at it," she said. "What's your website address?"

 "It's not an important blog," I said " It doesn't have any ads or anything."

"I still want to read it," she said.

I told her my website address and pointed her in the direction of the blog section. While she read through my blog, I went back to writing in my notebook.

Ten minutes later she leaned back in her chair and looked at me. "Not bad," she said. "I almost laughed out loud a few times."

"Thanks," I said.

"How many readers do you have?"

"I don't know," I said.

"You need to find out," she said.

 "Okay," I said.

"And you need a  better name for your blog," she said. "Something which will  make you stand out from the crowd."

"I'll give it some thought," I said.

"You also need better titles for your blog posts," she said.

"My titles are fine," I said. "They match the blog posts."

"That's not a good approach to writing titles," she said. "You need rockin' titles."

"Like what?" I said.

"Like Nipples," she said.

"Nipples?"

"I guarantee that if you title your blog post Nipples, you'll get zillions of new readers," she said.

"But I don't want to write about nipples," I said.

"Fine then," she said. "Don't write about nipples. It's your blog post, not mine."

Which is why I'm not writing about nipples.