Saturday, August 25, 2007

WTF Albertson's?

There's a display set up just inside the doors at Albertson's. There's a folding table with arrangements of roses, which makes sense. It's the cans of refried beans in a pyramid that I don't get. Nothing says "I love you" like roses and refried beans.

I have discovered that Blue Bell Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream is not the best Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream. I tried Breyer's and liked it better. I also tried Haagen Daz Extra Rich Light Mint Chocolate Chip, but even though it tasted ok, it had a weird texture, like it had melted and refrozen. I need to try it again to see if it was a fluke. But none of this is stopping me from eating the Blue Bell.

There has recently been an explosion of dark chocolate versions of your standard candy favorites. I lurve me some dark chocolate so I was delirious at the thought of a dark chocolate Snickers. Then I ate one. Eh. Not that big a deal, but the dark chocolate peanut M&M's are freakin' awesome, for your basic candy aisle dark chocolate. I prefer fancy dark chocolate, i.e., Godiva. In case you want to send me some.

Smokey Robinson rocks, btw. Tracks of my Tears. Awesome. That is going on my Songs for the Hungover soundtrack. Which will also feature Joey, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Blue Bayou, Tequila Sunrise, Don't Pass Me By, Do You Know The Way To San Jose? and many more!

I do not want to get on a bus with Kenny Wayne Shepherd. PBS pledge time has arrived again, and I have had enough of the blues. Last year it was folk music. That blues documentary was cool the first time I saw it and saw that guy Pinetop, who I actually saw in person in Austin at Antone's one time with Andy. That's a lot of A's. Anyway.

I have also seen all those other Austin guys who used to be in Double Trouble. I saw them play with BB King once in Bryan. I got in for free. My friend was dating this loser dude who kept talking about how he knew those guys and then they totally snubbed him. Funny. I told you he was a loser. I'm kind of glad my friend stole him right from (literally) under me. He was bad news in every way.

I've picked some winners, but I've never had one who was bat-shit crazy like that guy. I had the college boyfriend who was a sloppy drunk so I broke up with him on New Year's Eve after he got loaded in front of all my friends and embarrassed me. We were fighting in the bathroom and he raised his hand like he was going to hit me, but he didn't do it. I kind of wanted him to so I could kill him for it, then tell my Dad and my brothers so he could get killed again. He cried in my front yard. What a pussy.

I drank sangria with his friends one night after that and they told me what a mess he was and why he started dating me in the first place, and how he ended up falling in love me even though he only wanted to get some action and dump me. They weren't great friends, I guess, since they spilled the beans so easily. Anyway, he was a loser.

Let's make a list.

ReadBecca's List of Loser Exes

David from high school
David from Dallas
Evil Edward
Steven what's his name who was slightly less unmarried than he lead me to believe
Eric the sloppy drunk (it took me 10 minutes to remember his name)
Chris McCoy whose name I couldn't remember when we were dating so my friends called him Bob, but now I can't forget it
Internet boyfriend in Massachusetts who I think was named Mike and who I actually met f2f because I flew out there to meet him
Colin Farrell
Luis even though he was never technically my boyfriend, but it didn't stop us from making out, because he broke my heart
Ross, also never technically my boyfriend, unless it was after 1 am on a Saturday night
Larry
The other Larry who wouldn't sleep with me but who said I had the softest skin known to man and the world's most perfect bottom lip
The Marine with the "points of contact in Austin" Christmas card; dang, his name was David too, what's up with all the David's?

I'm bored with that list. I could make a list of things that bore me. I think I need to reinstate the I Hate You feature. That was always a hit. I'll try to work up some rage for you folks.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Auld Lang Syne

I just watched the tape of my 18th birthday party.

Matt the Miller Man was there, and Andy, who was directly responsible for Road Trip With ReadBecca: Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Edition. I don't remember the party so much as I remember the party from the night before. And when Luis called me at noon and sang Happy Birthday to me in the worst hangover voice I have heard to this day, and I listened to the whole thing, which took forever, before I said a word because I always knew when it was Lou on the phone. Then we had to go downtown and decorate the ballroom at one of the hotels for the Favorites Dance because Matt was class president and volunteered our asses. I think Luis and I worked for maybe 25 minutes before we took off and ate chicken friend steak at the hotel restaurant. I paid for him.

He and Dave procured a bottle of vodka for Jimmy's Scamfest '89 party and we took shots out of the cap until I ended up laying on the deck without shoes or my letterman jacket, which had ended up being worn by Alison Chavez instead, and it was a rare cold night for South Texas, but then again my birthday is in February so 30 degree weather isn't that strange, but anyway, I was drunker than I probably ever had been up until that point and I believe Andy carried me into the house and put me on the pool table, which sounds like the beginning of a Jodie Foster movie, but it wasn't, and I spent the rest of the night on the bathroom floor and some guy I didn't even know held my hair and at midnight Lou and Dave and Matt et al slammed open the pocket door and sang happy birthday to me, which I watched with my head at their feet so they looked upside down to me, and I said, "Aw, I love you guys!" It was a good party.

And the next day was the Favorites Dance which happened also to be my 18th birthday, so everyone came to my house after the dance for breakfast, and most everyone was there before I was because Hayden Hauser and I went parking first. I wonder whatever happened to him. We met in Texas Driving School. His parents were very nice to me. I used to go over and hang out with them even if Hayden wasn't home. He took me to my prom too.

Luis and Dave sang "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'" to me and I am so glad I have it on tape. Lou called me his best girlfriend. It's so sad we're not friends anymore. But the tape makes me smile. Barbara Pruitt gives Dave Garner a classic fuck-off look. Dave being Dave was always weird. Andy got a great shot of what a hottie I was at 18. If I had only known the power I had at that age. Jimmy Zimmerman was there, and George and Erin and Risa and Frank Hernandez of "as you wish" fame and who sat next to me at graduation and carried me out of the auditorium in his arms like a movie, and told me he loved me. I bet he doesn't remember. I remember Holly and I running out the doors into blinding sunlight. It was a perfect moment.

My party is followed by an ancient episode of Geraldo. It's got neo-nazis. And then Donahue. It's a time capsule from 1989 and Barbara Bush gets a shout out at my party. I was wearing my James Avery silver ring with the teddy bear charm that I got as a little girl, so I used to wear it on my pinky in high school. I don't remember what happened to that ring, but I wish I still had it. I have big hair on the tape. Someone asks me who did my hair and I said that my mom and I did it. My mom did my hair for a Coronets dance once and I look like Priscilla Presley in the pictures. My mom graduated high school in 1967. I don't remember going to a salon for any dance except the prom. That hair-do took like a hundred hair pins to accomplish. Not bobby pins, actual old-fashioned hair pins like my grandma used. You have to stick them in and then bend one side to make them stay, but once they are in, those sumbitches ain't coming out.

My dress was red and I got it in eighth grade for my cousin's wedding, but I took it to the seamstress who made our Tex-Ann pep rally outfits and had her turn it into a bubble dress, which has recently come back into style simply to freak me out, and turning it into a bubble dress made it really short and I had dyed-to-match red satin pumps. I was not named Class Flirt.

Sigh.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

It's Just Not Normal To Have Eight Bodies In A Wooded Area, That's Just Not Normal.

And the person who said it wasn't even British.

If I were a book, I'd be "Ulysses" by James Joyce. The Internet told me:

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.

I have actually read "Ulysses." No, wait, it was the other one, all the short ones together. "Dubliners." And "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man." Those I read. I read "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" at the same time. The smallish conference room full of idiots who went to A&M, that bastion of liberal arts education, to get literature degrees thought that Paddy Clarke putting firecrakers in his little brother's mouth and lighting them was HILARIOUS. Our teacher was horrified by our desensitization to violence. We can't help it. We came up on the Three Stooges, pagan babies and learning to read with little black Sambo stories. It's a wonder we can tie our shoes.

The thing with not buying bottled water anymore is, I'm always freakin' thirsty. Tap water tastes like dirt. Dirt water or disappointing Al Gore. Torn between two lovers, feelin' like a fool.

Bernie Mac says stuff like "panty thong" and "Big Mama" which reminds me of Grandpa Tex for some reason. (He said "Mama Grace" and I don't even want to know if he said anything at all about thongs.) He would be horrified.

Damn, I forgot to go to the store for cokes and milk. Coffee is going to be compromised in the morning, just like it was today. Godiva coffee drinks that taste like really good chocolate milk aren't going to cut it two days in a row. Damn my tendency to stay at rest when at rest. I've been lounging around in my panty thong (not really) all afternoon, watching Dr. Phil yell at 24-year-olds with four children, no job and who sleep until 4:30 pm with a camera crew in the living room, who can't get along with their "meddling parents." Hey shut up about me living with my dad. I wasn't all up in the living room sleeping on the floor, taking booze out of the liquor cabinet to take to parties at three in the morning. I hate sleeping on the floor. I would never do that. I hate stealing Crown Royal. I would always do that.

Speaking of dad, he is pushing for me to be a teacher again, which sounds like slow suicide to me. I wonder what he'd say if I told him I was going to be a teacher, but in New Orleans. Seriously, when I say "teaching" out loud, I reflexively follow it with, "gaaalhoucgh." Which is Irish for "Shit no! Christ!" That teacher who was horrified by our Paddy Clarke reaction taught us to say "Irish" not "Gaelic" because it was a racist term. I've never once had someone tell me a Gaelic joke. That's totally an invitation, folks.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Who Are You Calling A Cootie Queen, You Lint Licker!

What the French, toast?

I may have to clean up the language soon. I have a line on a gig at a conservative Christian pyramid scheme to be named later. I know. I know. I'm not sure if it's a sign of the apocalypse either. I can't imagine a working day in which I didn't call at least one person a fucking idiot. It's why I don't teach preschool. This will be interesting.

I wish I was friends with Bernie Mac. I think he's been underused as an asset in the Ocean's franchise. Take a letter, Clooney, re: 14, Mac featured more prominently, less Pitt cheekbone.

Hey guess what? Someone in my Anatomy and Physiology class got the epididymis and the clitoris mixed up on an anatomically correct set of models. Google them if it's been a while since sex ed.

I was thinking back on Catholic school when they separated the fifth grade boys from the fifth grade girls and told us "the facts." We had to have a permission slip from our parents to hear it. And nary a word was mentioned again until I was 15.

Anyway, there was a lack of giggling and whispering and no one put an embarrassing question in the hat anonymously and I don't think masturbation was mentioned at all, and if it was, it was for sure not called "self-abuse" this time around and now we're all grown ups and shit when suddenly our teacher puts up a transparency of the penis showing the coronal plane, which if you don't know what that is, imagine what was left after Lorena Bobbitt's work was done. Anyway, so the various ducts and such kind of look like a face from that view and the teacher drew whiskers and ears on it to look like a kitty.

It was the black beret on the kitty that did it for me.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

You Can Go Off The Eagles, But You Can't Go Off John Denver. The Man Was Freakin' Friends With The Muppets.

Welcome to Saturday night.

An architect sat next to us and drew cartoons while eavesdropping on all our stories about making out with people. I bet we made his blog.

I have consented to Classic Country Saturday Night, but I insisted on taking off my pants.

"I'd be happy just to date someone who told me his real name." That is my actual quote of the night. Stef''s is the headline. I owed her.

We tried to go to the movies instead of The Dubliner, but it's like the Bermuda Triangle. It just sucks you in, never to be heard from again. Except for that we didn't die and you will hear from us again and it's no where near Bermuda or has anything remotely triangular about it, otherwise it's exactly like the Bermuda Triangle.

It is totally not our fault that everyone in the North Dallas vicinity also wanted to see Jason Bourne fight people and do stuff like call people from the roof of the building across the street. Yeah, we totally watched parts one and two today to prepare for the big opening weekend show. We don't care if you think we're weird, you stood in line for The Phantom Menace, you stupid fanboy loser, so fuck off and get a haircut while you're at it.

Anyway, so it was sold out. We had drinks instead and now I'm on location and will be sleeping in The Pleasant Room so we can complete the triumvirate tomorrow at 10:30 am. There is a Starbucks behind the escalators.

My 20th high school reunion is in two years. I am uncomfortable with that knowledge. Let's move on.

I'm getting very sleepy. I think I should play some free cell to anesthetize myself even further for sleeping purposes. It's not like I carry my nightly dose or extra panties in my purse. Anymore.

I don't know what that means.