Today I did this
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The first time I ever gave a reading, I shook like hell. This was ten years ago, my junior year in college. There were twenty+ other writing students in the audience, a very safe and encouraging environment, and I had this great little story about a cocaine addict who worked in a pizza parlor and mixed up his coke with the flour and all his customers kept coming back every night (uhm … right.). SO. I got up there behind the podium with my two double-spaced pages and made it halfway through the first sentence before I started to shake. Hard. So hard the papers were rattling. I set them down and gripped both sides of the podium to steady myself, but I was still shaking so then the podium was shaking—this big heavy ancient job that’s all banging into the ground and I’m totally mortified because everyone’s watching the podium instead of listening to my genius cocaine story—but still, I kept going. I put both hands behind my back and grasped the elbow of the opposite arm. The shaking didn’t stop, but at least it wasn’t as noticeable, and I made it finally to the end and ran back to my seat. FYI: I have the kind of pale (transparent?) skin that gets blotchy when I’m embarrassed (or excited or drinking) so I was super-red and it was really obvious and horrible and, in retrospect, one of the greatest thing I’ve ever done. If I hadn’t of started there, I’d never have been able to pull off Monday night.
I was lucky enough (seriously, I wish I knew whatever I did to deserve this so I could do that thing again a thousand times) to read for the Chicago Poetry Center’s “No Love For Love” show at the Apollo Theater, featuring Ira Glass (!!!) (I met Ira Glass!!) and also kickass, ball-busting performances by Mary Fons, Jonathan Messinger, Joe Meno, Justin Hayford, Diana Slickman, Joel Chmara, Christopher Piatt, and Scott Woldman, all of whom rocked my world and made me want to rush home and write more stuff, better stuff, bigger stuff!
You can read about it here and here and here.
A note about the Apollo: No, it’s not the “James Brown Live at the Apollo” Apollo. THAT Apollo is in New York. THIS Apollo is in Chicago, on Lincoln, and it’s lucky I’d never been there before because if I had I’d of been very, very nervous ‘cause it seats five hundred people—five HUNDRED—and the night was TOTALLY SOLD OUT (!!!!!!!!) so, like, Oh My God! that’s a lot of people! and they were great. As in, if someone assigned me a fifteen hundred word essay titled, “My Ideal Audience Ever For My Work Would Be ___________ “ I would say, “Fifteen hundred words? Shit, I can do it in SIXTEEN! Check it: The Audience at the Chicago Poetry Center’s “No Love For Love” show at the Apollo Theater!” (yes, I just counted those words on my fingers) who were so supportive, and laughed like crazy, and there’s NOTHING as amazing and contagious as laughing with five hundred people and, NO, I didn’t have pizza on my face or an unzipped fly or anything, they were laughing maybe ‘cause of my story but also because the event was billed as an “Anti-Valentines Day Reading” and nothing is quite as funny as our past love-lives, right?
It’s funny that I’m doing an anti-Valentines Day reading NOW. A few years ago (we can say BC meaning Before Christopher) I filed Valentines Day into one of two categories: “I’m alone therefore Valentine’s Day sucks,” or “The person I am with on Valentine’s Day sucks therefore Valentine’s Day sucks.” BOTH those attitudes are IDEAL to pull off an anti-Valentines Day reading, but now, you know, I am president of the Valentines Day fan club. I have a T-shirt even. Here’s why: my iCalendar for yesterday, February 14th, said the following:
10:00-12:00—office hours
12:30-3:30—class
7:00—YOU ARE BUSY
Christopher wrote that last one. He does this sometimes: goes into my calendar from his computer via wireless connection, like sometimes I am writing in my calendar and things just appear there, like: DINNER WITH YOUR HUSBAND’S PARENTS. GENE SISKEL WITH MICHAEL AND DAVE. YOU ARE WORKING TOO MUCH, TODAY YOU WILL RELAX and, unexpectedly, YOU ARE BUSY TONIGHT or YOU HAVE PLANS THIS NIGHT. Those are my favorites, those little surprises slid into my day-to-day craziness that remind me to slow down, shake things up, remember that life is really so much more than a work schedule.
So, last night I was BUSY, and I was so excited! So OH MY GOSH WHAT’S HAPPENING?! Where will we go what will I wear what’s going ON?!! which, if we’re using me as a case study here, can bring us to the following conclusions about Valentine’s Day: if one is with someone wonderful, then Valentines Day is subsequently wonderful. If one is with someone sucky, ergo Valentines Day is sucky. If one is alone, that can possibly be sucky but not AS sucky as being WITH someone sucky (after doing a reading with so many great poets, I’m really noticing my lack of eloquence, here, people). My point is, I’ve never really had a THEORY about Valentines Day one way or the other: I just go with the flow. HOWEVER, when I started doing some press for this anti-Valentine’s reading, I realized I was supposed to have a theory! And, more importantly, I was supposed TO ARTICULATE THIS THEORY, like, some very intelligent point of view to frame my conceptualization of February 14th as a wider cultural phenomenon. To which I was like, uhm … wha???? Luckily, I got to do a couple of the interviews online which gave me lots of time to craft what I wanted to say (I must’ve rewritten this shit a hundred times):
Q: Why did you agree to be part of this show? Were you the kid who got the smallest pile of valentine cards in third grade? Or were you the kid who sent a card to everyone? Which kid are you now, and why?
A: My mom made sure I gave a Valentines Day card to everyone, which was fine by me. I didn’t get that Valentines Day was supposed to be about love (gross gross puke), I was just excited that the cards were Masters of the Universe—He-Man and Battle Cat and Castle Grayskull—which were totally supercool. When I was finally old enough to understand that Valentines Day was about this whole love thing, I remember asking why it only got one party a year. Shouldn’t there be parties for love all the time? I’ve definitely gone through my cynical stage over the years—love sucks, look at divorce rates, reality TV, blah blah—but then this really weird thing happened: I fell in love, and celebrating that is very much a part of my day-to-day. So now I’m right back to where I was as a kid: why is there only one party a year? What are you doing for the other 364—fantasizing for next year’s Feb 14th? I agreed to be a part of the show because I’m interested in the whole fantasy/reality thing, the difference between real relationships and the ones we make up in our heads. Plus it sounded like a hell of a lot of fun.
Q: Can you tell me a bit about what you’ll be doing for the program?
A: Last year, I broke up with Indiana Jones. We’d been together for a really long time and, as you’d probably expect, it was very awkward and horrible. Especially for my husband. So I’ll be telling that story.
(sidebar: I pulled off this story for one reason only, and his name is Miles Polaski. Miles Polaski is my hero. If you see Miles Polaski about town, you should give him a hug and buy him some beer. He’s a sound designer for 2nd Story and also a company member with Reverie and Collaboraction, and because of what he did I was able to actually have a conversation with Indiana Jones. He pulled dialogue off the DVD’s of all three films which allowed me to actually SPEAK to Indiana Jones! AND THE BEST PART is that Miles programmed all of Jones’ dialogue into a little electric piano so he could just press certain keys for certain lines, and—before the show, to calm me down when I was a little nervous—he played me whole SONGS using lines from Indiana Jones. On his piano. Which we’re calling the “Indiano”. Miles Polaski, people. Miles f’ing Polaski).
Q: Why do we need an anti-Valentine’s Day? Are people, despite Seinfeld, SNL, rap music and reality TV gone all soppy and sentimental?
A: I think it’s a lot more complicated. Everyone’s had their heartbreak, their anger, their bitterness just like hopefully, we’ve all had our lovey-dovey crazy joy. What I’m interested in is the stories behind all of it—the ones you tell your friends over drinks or whatever when you’re trying to get through something. You hear the stories and you go, “I KNOW! Me TOO! And it makes it easier somehow, like how a good love song can help. Like you’re not alone and you’re going to get through this. Plus, they’re funny as hell. Heartbreak stories are always funny once you’re over the heartbreak.
Q: Who are some of your favorite poets, authors writing in the anti-Valentine mode?
A: If “anti-Valentine day mode” means writers who are handling love stories in an honest, tender, painful way, I’d say Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His are great, desperate love stories with all their fury and joy. Jhumpa Lahiri’s story A Temporary Matter, too, and Joe Meno and Elizabeth Crane are certainly favorites. If “anti-Valentine” means anger, bitterness and fury, I’d say nothing is as good as Jagged Little Pill.
Q: What does it mean to be anti-Valentine’s Day? Does it make a person a cynic, or just bitter? Can one take an anti-Valentine’s Day stand without sounding like you’ve eaten sour grapes?
A: The simple answer, I think, is the whole cynical bitterness thing. But it’s more complicated than that: it’s creativity, as in expressing how you feel about something in a way that’s unique to your relationship instead of the whole roses and Hallmark thing. It’s hoping people recognize how lucky they are to have love every single day, instead of some obligatory celebration bullshit once a year. It’s not having to spend a ton of cash ‘cause some corporation says that’s what it takes.
Q: Just what is wrong with sappy romanticism? If there hadn’t been a Valentine’s Day in the first place, would we need to have invented one?
A: I’m TOTALLY a sappy romantic! I think that’s part of being anti-Valentine’s Day—it shouldn’t just happen in a day! It should happen all the time!
Q: Do you think this show is the beginning of a trend? What other kinds of anti-Valentine-alia would you like to see grow out of this? What would you like Hallmark to do about it?
A: I think this show should become a trend not so much of its subject matter, but because readings—active, performative, vibrant readings that are challenging and exciting and thought-provoking—are just as engaging (if not moreso!) as a play, a dance, live music, whatever. Among the multiple reasons why the Chicago Poetry Center is so great is because they recognize how much FUN readings are.
As for Hallmark, I'd like them to back off. There's tons of great little indie designers making anti-Valentine-alia (GREAT word, by the way) and I'd rather give them my attention and my money.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add about the varieties of love and hate and how they work in our lives? (Or is that your next book?)
A: I think it’s interesting that I spent nearly a decade writing about all my dating frustrations—the good, the bad and the stupid—and this Anti-Valentines Day reading happens right after I elope.
I hope you all had wonderful, kick-ass Valentine’s Days (and to anyone who might be wondering what my surprise was, I’ll say only this: there are some things that a girl’s gotta keep to herself).
On the cover of Newsweek is a photo of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton looking very drunk and trashy (shocking!). The accompanying article is called Girls Gone Bad and it poses some interesting questions about how these celebrities (?) are shaping our culture.
This is the thing: I’m fascinated by celebrity culture, and I'm not talking about the good stuff, in which so-and-so has their own charity and so-and-so won at Sundance. I'm talkin' the CRAP, the trash, the Who Passed Out at the Ivy. Christopher says, “You are part of the problem!” when I come home with US magazine and he’s right, he’s right, I KNOW he’s right, but I CANNOT STOP. I know who’s getting divorced and who’s screwing who and who’s knocked up (alledgedly, ‘cause you know half those stories aren’t true) and honestly, it really BOTHERS me that I know all that! Just saying it makes me want to launch into a whole discussion about Twentieth Century Western Literature so y’all will know I am halfway intelligent. I want to name-drop all the indie bands in my music library: Here’s the Dresdon Dolls, the Flaming Lips, Hot Chip and Imogen Heap and Sleater-Kinney and Radiohead! Here! Here! Here is my subscription to Venus, to Punk Planet! “You know what I did last night?” I want to tell you, “I went to a play it was in a theater I go to the theater a lot I’m cultured!” as if to counteract the horrible admission that, yes, I know A. who Nicole Ritchie is currently dating (Joel Madden) B. who he dated before Nicole Ritchie (Hillary Duff) and C. what Hillary Duff said about Nicole Ritchie (she’s a “skank”) (in my defense, I’m not sure who Joel Madden is. And I know Duff is one of the little blonde ones but I’m not sure what she does. And Nicole Ritchie really is a skank, but I mean that not in relation to her sexual prowess but because she got a million dollar book contract [uhm, why? Because Dancing on the Ceiling was a really good SONG?] and I hate it that the publishing industry is going that way [although, didja know that her publisher, Judith Reagan, was the same one who just went down in flames for the whole heinous OJ Simpson hypothetical murder confession book? The same Judith Reagan told to suck it in the acknowledgments section of Hairstyles of the Damned? I CHEERED when that woman hit rock bottom; I cracked a bottle of f’ing champagne!]). When I was still waiting tables, I did this thing to pass time where’d I’d ask all my customers one question a day, sort of an informal survey: “What’s your favorite Eighties song?” “How many times has your heart been broken?” And, “What’s your guilty pleasure?” While my favorite answer was, “Judge Judy,” the most popular answer by FAR was, “Celebrity Culture.” So, it’s not just me, right? Do you read those magazines? Do you sneak a peak at People.com? Are you affected by trash media? I’m interested in articles like Girls Gone Bad because they try to look at not only WHY we’re so affected, but also what EFFECT that affection might have on our culture.
Okay, Britney and Paris. And Lindsay and Nicole and the rest of you. Here we go.
My first thought: where are their parents? If I paraded around like these girls do my mother would’ve slapped me into boarding school so fast I wouldn’t have time to pack and my dad—My DAD! I SHUDDER to imagine my father waiting in line for groceries and seeing a such a photo of me on Newsweek!—would just lock me up on the island (if you’re new to this blog, my dad lives on a small island in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska, on which there is only one grocery store, but there are still trash magazines at the counter. Trash magazines, it seems, can travel anywhere. You can probably get US magazine in Darfur, no matter that they can’t even get medical supplies). I’m thinking of all the novels where the girls do something bad and their parents send them to the convent except maybe that’s not a great example ‘cause usually those girls came out of the nunnery wilder than when they went in. Here’s the thing, though: when I read those novels, I always feel a great sense of injustice that those girls are being locked up. I think the parents are very old fashioned and behind the times and cruel to not let their daughters live and love and express their independence. I think, thank GOD the world has changed—
Sidebar: this is where I say I feel very lucky to live in this country, where women’s rights HAVE changed because it certainly isn’t the case everywhere. I just finished Reading Lolita in Tehran and was amazed by the things I take for granted. For example, I teach at a University, and I can just WALK IN! TO MY OFFICE! Through the same door as my male colleagues and male students! Women in Iran (students AND faculty) have to walk through a little side door where they are “inspected” before being allowed to attend classes:
“’I would first be checked to see if I have the right clothes: the color of my coat, the length of my uniform, the thickness of my scarf, the form of my shoes, the objects in my bag, the visible traces of even the mildest make-up, the size of my rings and their level of attractiveness, all would be checked before I could enter the campus of the university, the same university in which men also study. And to them the main door, with its immense portals and emblems and flags, is generously open’” (Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, pg. 29).
Ladies, imagine: walking into the 623 S. Michigan Building of Columbia College and having to go through a different door than the guys, and having your person checked before you’re allowed to attend class? This is just one example, but it stuck with me ‘cause EVERY DAY I walk through that door.
I was talking with a friend about this and she said, “I had no IDEA! Why don’t they tell us things like this?”
“Who is ‘us’?” I asked her. “And who is ‘they’?” The Iranian government? Iranian women? American journalists? Is CNN going to report the little day-to-day goings on when there are bombs exploding all over the damn place? Here’s my theory: fiction should be the news and the news should be fiction. Seriously, I read a novel and learn about the world. I turn on the news, or look at the cover of Newsweek, and there’s A. Britney B. Anna Nicole Smith (drugs! Problems with her weight! Who’s the father of her child!) and C. (my favorite) MARRIED MOTHER-OF-THREE ASTRONAUT (Yes! Astronaut! One of NASA’s FINEST!) DRIVES CROSS-COUNTRY WEARING ADULT DIAPER (so she wouldn’t have to pull over to use the bathroom!) AND PEPPER-SPRAYS (!!!!) THE ROMANTIC INTEREST OF ANOTHER ASTRONAUT THAT SHE HAS A CRUSH ON!! Do you all realize that I could’ve written that story? That’s something that I would make up in my crazy brain and tell over cocktails ‘cause it’s just so goddamn hilarious!
Where was I?
Here: when I read novels about girls getting locked up by their parents, I feel a great sense of injustice. When I see Britney and Paris parading around, tossing around underwear and money and money and money and MONEY, clogging around the airways with shitty music (Dear Bloodshy and Avant, producers of Britney Spears’ song TOXIC: That is a really good song. You did well. It’s not your fault that she’s so sucky. You keep making good music but please find niftier people to perform it. Thank-you), I want somebody to ground them both for the next twenty years—no internet, no Blackberries, no boys. I don’t care where, just let there be decent supervision, positive role models and a limited line of credit, and if that means a nunnery, then fine, get thee to it.
This brings me to my second question: am I just getting old? ‘Cause I’m sure my mother said similar things about Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, both of whom, I feel, are great artists who made great musical contributions, and I’m sure my grandmother said similar things about Nina Simone with her song, “I want a little sugar in my bowl,” (which is a kickass number if you’ve never heard it).
ALSO: in the photo montage accompanying the Girls Gone Bad article, they compare Britney and Paris to other “Bad Girls” who have influenced pop culture. Some examples: MARY MAGDALENE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Catherine the Great (!!!!) Mae West (!!!!) Ingrid Bergman (!!!!) Betty Paige (!!!!) Marilyn Monroe (!!!) Eartha Kitt (!!!!) and I’m like, are you people SERIOUSLY comparing Paris f’ing Hilton to Catherine the GREAT! TO MARY MAGDALENE! Many of those women are attributed with individual and/or sexual liberation, women who, were I to see them in a bar, I’d be all, “Mary Magdalene, you paved the way for a lot of the freedoms I enjoy today. Can I buy you a Makers and water?” whereas if I were to see Paris in a bar, I’d probably roll my eyes and ask for the check (if I ran into Britney in a bar, I’d say: “Go home to your children, missy, and also put some clothes on! And also wash your face! And did I mention go home to your children? GO HOME TO YOUR CHILDREN!”) bringing me to my third question: is individual/sexual freedom now being pushed too far? Where is the line between pushing the envelope (Mae West doing nudey shows in a time when women weren’t allowed to acknowledge they were sexual beings) and abusing the privilege (Paris Hilton doing [what exactly does she do?] in a time when naked women wash cars in string bikinis in order to sell hamburgers [oh yes! THAT’S what she did!]).
I read an article a couple days ago called Why Should We Care About Anna Nicole (‘cause I wanted someone to explain to me why I do), which pointed out the American fascination with beauty and dysfunction. I can buy into that. I’m certainly fascinated with beauty and dysfunction, but there has GOT better ways to go about it. For example, Anna Karenenna--in my opinion, the greatest story EVER!--is as beautifully dysfunctional as they get, but also she’s waaaay more interesting than any of these celebrity bubble gum princesses, maybe because with Anna K. we get the whole dirty, complicated, wild, tragic story with all its honesty and intesnity and emotional layers and with Anna N.S. we’ll only ever get the surface: the drugs, boobs and Trimfast. Maybe the difference is how much we’re willing to commit to their stories: we think we know NS after seeing one photo, or a slurred awards appearance on YouTube, but to get to know Anna Karenenna you’ve got to get through some 400 pages of history which, in the end, is the only way to really know the truth: read the whole goddamn story. NOT a paragraph in some glossy mag, but the whole story. The little day-to-day things. What they have to go through to walk through a door.
In the Girls Gone Bad article they discuss the thousands of teenage girls who are influenced by Britney and Paris. Someday (in the very near future if not, like, tomorrow) those girls will be sitting in my classroom.
Question number four: what on Earth do I say to them?
I don’t have answers for any of these questions, except for the obvious: the only way Britney and Paris and all this bullshit will go away is if I stop reading about them. It’s my choice, and I’m choosing: starting now, I’m going on a one-month hiatus from celebrity culture. A test-run, if you will: no magazines, no internet, no Entertainment Tonight.
Maybe the real question is: is that even POSSIBLE?
Sports have never been my thing (not since 1984 when the Tigers were in the World Series. I was nine and knew that Alan Trammel and Lou Whitaker were the longest running double-play combo in baseball history. I would sit on my dad’s shoulders and chant, “LOU LOU LOU!” with the rest of the crowd, and one time I dumped my ice cream cone onto the top of his head—so the story goes). I point this out because I just watched the Superbowl, and now I’m going to talk about it, and I’m sure I’ll do so poorly the same way I would if I tried talking about nuclear testing or sheep farming or any other fairly complex activity that I’ve never paid attention to because I’ve been too busy paying attention to the things I’ve been paying attention to. Hi! When one watches the Superbowl, one drinks beer!
My reasoning was as follows:
1. I’m a Chicagoan.
2.I run writing workshops for the 2nd Story storytelling series and this guy, Nick, has been working on a piece about football. About how it bring people together. About how whole communities are created in the joy or sorrow of a win or a loss and that all of us can share in the energy of such a moment. I like that idea: all sorts of different people connecting on this common ground.
3.Christopher showed me how much money we have on this game. WE being, of course, HE, but really WE, because it’s OUR money, and while I don’t understand gambling, I do understand logic which dictates that my husband can do whatever HE wants with OUR money because in the very near future WE are going to spend a fuckton at Neiman’s. For US.
Let’s recap: yaaaaay Chicago, community and Neiman Marcus!! GO BEARS!
Okay, so thirteen seconds into the game—while I am marveling at the blinding light caused by fifty thousand cameras going off at exactly the same time—something happens to make Christopher yell, “NO FUCKING WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED!” and start jumping up and down so then the dog goes nuts ‘cause he thinks it’s a game and then the phone rings ‘cause our friend Jeremy is on the road coming back from Michigan and, apparently, can’t get the game on his radio ‘cause there’s a snow storm but he was at the drive-through window at Taco Bell and everybody who works there was screaming and yelling ‘cause of whatever just happened in the first thirteen seconds so Christopher gives Jeremy a play-by-play during which he gets all excited all over again, so now he’s yelling and Jeremy is yelling and Taco Bell is yelling and the dog is barking and the TV commentators are saying, “WHOAH, JOHN, LOOK AT THAT!” and in the background everybody’s cheering and hugging and loving their neighbor and then, so far as I could tell, it was all downhill from there.
I’m guessing this has something to do with the fact that it was POURING RAIN in Miami and every time somebody got their hands on the football it slipped away (like those cartoons where the bar of soap jumps out of the guy’s fingers and he has to chase it down the stairs, except in this scenario he chases it across an bright green field and is then attacked from all sides by twenty big, sweaty men in white pants. WET white pants. Twenty big men in wet white pants rolling around in the grass trying to grasp a bar of soap, and we call it a wholesome American tradition. Twenty WOMEN in exactly the same situation and we call it pay-per-view). “THE BALL IS TOO WET!” Christopher yelled. “THEY CAN’T HOLD ONTO IT!” He was VERY worked up. He was camped out in front of the TV with beer, brats, nachos, all these sheets of paper telling him which scores he bet on and also what everybody in his entire office bet on, and— because he is THIS much of a geek—his laptop was open following three different chat room threads: one discussing the game, one discussing the halftime show and one membership-only design site discussing the quality of the commercials.
“How is the quality of the commercials?” I asked him. “What do all those designers say?”
“They say the commercials suck,” he said, studying his monitor.
“Don’t commercials always suck?” I asked.
“MEGAN,” he said, very exasperated (which was funny because all night I’d been saying very stupid stereotypical dumb-blonde things because I’ve never watched football before and I just don’t GET it yet, and he’d been very patient, explaining the littlest things over and over, but when it comes to good or bad design I’m supposed to just, you know, KNOW BETTER). “This is the SUPERBOWL. It costs 2.6 million dollars per thirty seconds of Superbowl commercial time! Years of design go into these commercials! There are whole websites devoted to their creation!”
I looked back at the TV: a godaddy commercial was on, the one where the exec walks into the marketing department and many near-naked women are being sprayed with seltzer and laughing. By my count, that same commercial was shown three times during the Superbowl—three times! 7.8 million dollars! You’d think if you’re gonna spend THAT much cash, you’d at least make sure your commercial was a good one, but they were all really bad which personally I find upsetting ‘cause advertising seems like one of those last frontiers where an artist can actually make a decent buck, and also spending 2.6 million to show Jessica Simpson eating a pizza in the back of a limo makes me want to puke in my mouth.
(insert long paragraph on ways that money could be better spent: Rebuilding in Florida, Darfur, Africa, the Gulf Coast, education. I just read an article in Vogue about dressing for the Oscars which gave me the same feeling, but then they talked about the time Sharon Stone wore a Gap T-Shirt to the Oscars and on the way, from the back of her limo, she called the CEO of Gap [‘cause I guess if you’re Sharon Stone you just have the CEO of Gap on speed dial?] and told him what she was doing and in gratitude he gave this OBSCENE amount of money to the charity of her choice, and the next day all the magazines were all SHARON STONE WEARS GAP TO THE OSCARS and sales just sky rocketed, and I thought that was so totally brilliant so I yelled, “GO SHARON STONE!” and Christopher from the next room yelled back, ‘You HATE Sharon Stone!” and I yelled back, “SHARON STONE KICKED SOME SERIOUS ASS DRESSING FOR THE OSCARS IN 1996!” and he yelled back, “DID YOU JUST SPEAK ENGLISH?”—in case you’re wondering why we’re screaming at each other, let me explain: our new place is next door to the Aragon Ballroom [which is a rock music venue, if you’ve never been, but you should call it the Aragon BRAWLROOM if you want to sound very hip and in-the-know (‘cause apparently back in the day there were all sorts of fights there. Now, as I watch from the balcony, there’s limousines dropping off groups of fourteen year old girls to go see bands featured on 109.1 the Mix)] so the developers of our building hired “acoustic engineers” to make sure that sound wasn’t a problem. They did their job so well that Christopher and I can’t hear each other from opposite ends of the place without yelling—where were we? Oh yes: Sharon Stone doing good things with crazy amounts of money. I LIKE people who do good things with crazy amounts of money. And by that, I mean GIVE IT AWAY TO PEOPLE WHO REALLY NEED IT, NOT siphon 450,000 pounds of petroleum jelly on board a Japanese whaling boat and film the whole thing solidifying and/or melting while Bjork wears weird costumes and an old man pours tea? (Christopher and I watched the making of Drawing Restraint 9 over the weekend and it ticked me off just as much as 7.8 million dollars for bad commercials or 1500 hundred dollars for football tickets or 100,000 thousand for Oscar dresses) but then, of course, who am I to judge?
What was I talking about?
Oh yes: PRINCE.
That performance just rocked my world. I mean, it was POURING—we have HDTV and I could see every individual DROP!—and he’s out there singing Let’s Go Crazy on a PURPLE STAGE OF FIRE with smoke machines and back-up dancers and exploding microphones and they let all these people come out onto the field with little flashlights or whatever and then the marching bands came out and they had electric uniforms and he did Purple Rain and everybody sang aloud and that, that, that was community.
To sum up the rest of the game (from the point of view of someone who has no idea what was happening but still, for some reason unbeknownst to her, cared):
1.Christopher said, “Shit,” much more often than “Yay!”
2.More rain.
3.More poorly designed commercials (although Christopher liked the ones from careerbuilder, and the one with a hitchhiker and a chainsaw and Bud Light, and also one featuring Robert Goulet (?) where he taped people to chairs and, “caused much mayhem and havoc and then climbed the ceiling searching for nuts.”)
4.The Bears lost.
5.God was thanked profusely.
6. Every single Bears fan interviewed said it didn’t matter that they lost because they would take it next year. Which I thought was pretty cool: one second they were losers and ten minutes later we’re all back to hope. Made me proud to be Chicagoan—proud that my city takes care of its own and hopes for the best and doesn’t waste time wallowing in misery.
(Although later, when we were getting ready for bed, Christopher said, “Mojo, you’re so lucky you’re a dog and not a human because you can’t experience crushing defeat.”)