On the list

I think I have officially "made it".

Earthakitsch.com has been listed on a "Weird and Cool Stuff" links page - right in between Knockers, the (adults only) Klown and Bloody Midget Wrestling !

And I hate to brag but I am only a few notches down from...that's right......everyone's favorite book-marked site - Cameltoe.com.

Ahh...and folks said I'd never amount to much.........

Everybody's workin' for the weekend

"....I topped off the night by barreling down the interstate in a rattling van, singing Merle Haggard with an albino bass player and a wife-beater clad outlaw singer and then woke up with stiff back on the hardwood floor of an East Nashville house with the heavily tattooed arm of a pompadoured singer across me, noticing that one of my breasts had been signed with black marker by a New York punkabilly musician named "Rocco". To my left, a pair of worn-out cowboy boots and a trucker's hat with a transfer showing a can marked ' Whoop Ass ' and ' Don't make me open this.' At first, I thought that something might be amiss but then remembered that this very same weekend had started on Friday night in a smoke filled heavy metal bar near the airport with me on stage throwing darts into the back of a smiling sideshow performer for the applause of a drunken, black t-shirted audience...."

And that was how I described my Friday and Saturday nights by e-mail as I sat on Sunday morning in front of my computer with hair that reeked of cigarette smoke, the backs of my hands stamped with ink and my left ear still ringing from shrieking guitars with a bowl of sensible grown-up cereal beside me. I was too tired to even think about the in-between parts and admittedly the weekend was so packed full of in-between parts that they sometimes come to me in little slide-show flashes. I didn't have a single drink the entire weekend, I think it is just the still-lingering exhaustion that is doling it out to me in bits and pieces so that I can fully appreciate it for what it was - organized chaos.

"Not much. How about you?"

And that was the way I answered the question, "What did you do this weekend" today at work.

But for this journal entry, I will start from the beginning.

Friday night, I went with a girlfriend to see my friend who is a sideshow performer do his thing at a heavy-metal, horror show fund raiser over by the airport. We ran late and drove past the place a couple of times before finding it. All we knew was that it used to be a bait shop and that it was now a heavy metal bar named quite aptly "The Runway". After the second drive past, I saw a bunch of guys dressed like zombies standing in a field next to a strip mall. They were playing air guitar and smoking cigarettes. We figured that either this was the place or we were about to get our brains consumed by some of Phillip Morris' most successful customers. Either/or...it was Friday night and we had driven all the way down to Murfreesboro Road to see what was what. With "They're coming to get you, Barbaaara " running through my head and Ratt on the stereo, we pulled into the parking lot and went to see what was behind the tinted windows and crudely painted sign. We paid our five dollars and went inside.

What followed was 4 hours of some of the loudest, muddiest heavy metal music that I have ever heard. The tight-jeaned crowd was appreciative and screamed for more, more, more. In between the bands, door prizes were given out ( I was crossing my fingers for the hundred dollar tattoo but lost to a kid that looked way too young to be in there) and clips from horror movies were shown on a pull-down screen that had been affixed in front of the bathroom doors. In the parking lot, people smoked pot and in the restrooms, women screamed to each other while fixing their bangs, "The next band is really good! My cousin's friend plays with them! He's the one the 666 tattoo!!"

I'm not sure if it was my delirious, pounding headache or just that the vibe was infectious, but before it was over with I too was agreeing that the films needed "more blood!" and found my weary feet tapping along with the rhythm of each head-banging drummer. I even got caught up in the crowd participation and sang along with the beers-raised-in-the-air chorus, " I want to eat your flesh...I want to eat your flesh..." Hey, it is Music City, after all. Got to support local musicians. I will drop a dollar in a guitar case on Broadway and will certainly sing about cannibalism if it helps the band feel loved.

After several bands, Bennie, the sideshow performer went on and shocked and awed everyone with feats that involved animal traps and heavy things hung from things that shouldn't be hung with heavy things and even chopped some vegetables on his chest with a meat cleaver. You should have seen that celery flying! The crowd watching with squeamish faces and squinted eyes as he dented a can by smashing it down on his fingers! The screwdriver up the nose! Good, clean fun. Then my friend and I got to go up on stage and have a little friendly competition that involved throwing darts at his back. I won the contest and both of us were relieved that we managed to not hit the "non-target areas" like his spine or head or an audience member. I didn't feel the least bit queasy until we were asked to pull them out of his back. Still, I have begged him to let me walk on him sometime while he lays face down on a bed of glass. I think I have become a sideshow groupie.

Beats being a plaster caster, I guess. That's what I'll tell my dad.

We left after that and later learned that the next band played in their underwear and with furthermore heart ache, that somewhere across town a 70 year old black man was singing and laying down the funk in a Superman costume. I guess you can't win them all. Can't be everywhere at once.

(Insert a tiny fragment of sleep here and then fast forward to Saturday night.)

Saturday night found me and the same friend walking into what was supposed to be a Honky tonkin', rockabilly free-for-all. It was at a little dive club sandwiched in between an adult book store and a strip club. In the dark of night, these fine establishments looked beautiful with their competing purple neon lettered glow and I found myself transfixed by what looked like an adults only theme park. Until we noticed the crowd. Oh yes...the crowd.

The crowd was made up of 95% teen and pre-teen punk rock anarchists from Hell. Straight from Hell, I tell you. I felt immediately old as I eyed their baby skin pierced like knife fights and looked into their somewhere-else eyes ringed with dark eyeliner. I was immediately reminded of the zombies from the night before. Only these creatures of the night seemed more intense. They seemed so sad and so angry. I thought back to when I was younger and the grunge movement incited kids from well-to-do and middle class families to pretend that their worlds sucked so that they could be a part of the scene. I could tell that these kids were different. They looked poor and scraggly and I could tell that they had already seen and done much more than I ever would. We walked through the parking lot full of junker cars plastered with bumper stickers for bands that I had never heard of and slogans that defied authority. I turned to my friend and said, "Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore". She smiled and we pushed past crowds of kids towards the busted front door.

Before we could get inside, we noticed a small, bird-like girl lying on the ground between two cars. She was vomiting and crying. Other kids walked right past her as if she were a cigarette butt discarded. Our mothering instincts kicked in and we went over to her to see if she needed help. She raised up her head from the pavement and with a bloody nose and spittle lips, looked into our faces and said that she didn't feel well. We got her to sit up and then noticed that she had an asphalt scraped knot on her head and tears running down her face from blood-shot, yet bright blue eyes. Her cheap pleather purse decorated with buttons from bands lay there in a pool of vomit and her clothes were dirty and damp. She looked like she couldn't be anymore than 13. She was fragile looking and pale and honestly, quite beautiful with honey colored hair hanging in matted waves around her face. I wanted to scoop her up and take her home and fix it - whatever it was.

Instead, we did what we could and bought her some water as she sat on the curb clutching her head. She said that she had some friends inside that she had left because she was "tanked and wanted to sleep it off ". We went in and found her friends but were both pretty pissed off when they came out and laughed at her like the whole thing was some big practical joke. They pulled her up off of the ground and off they walked up the alley, holding her up between them. We didn't see her anymore during the night but both felt a little tortured wondering about her and how such a young girl ended up there on the pavement in mini skirt and boots too hot for July heat. In another world, she could have been a dewy faced teen fashion model or the homecoming queen at a squeaky clean school. But not here, and not in whatever and wherever had driven her to the edges of the purple neon glow on a sticky Saturday night with comrades who didn't care if she was dead or nearly-alive.

My friend and I went inside and sat on a grungy striped couch and talked about what we were doing "at her age". Nothing that we came up with was anything even remotely similar. After some down-time and guessing what color the couch used to be, we went into the concert room and stood between black painted walls and claustrophobic ceiling while we watched band after band, somewhere in between getting trampled by a teenage mosh pit of flying elbows and bouncing combat boots. The crowd was mostly pre-teenagers with rehashed wardrobes celebrating Black Flag and The Ramones. Mohawks, shaved heads and torn jeans done just like it was the first time. I noticed the still-baby-fatted arm of the kid next to me. He was wearing bracelets made from rusty handcuffs, safety pins in his ears and before it melted, what used to be "Anarchy" scrawled across his face in black grease paint. His body stood rigid like a tree, hands in pockets. It was only his head that bobbed along with the beat. Before long, my head fell into time with his. I asked him about his Dead Kennedys button and told him his look was cool. He said, "Thanks, ma'am."

Oh yes.

Mixed in with the stranger, grittier bands was a sweet, fresh-faced group of guys only a couple of years beyond high school. Their act was killer tight and their persona was a mixture of Brian Setzer and punkabilly . They had a good vibe and we kind of gravitated towards them and they towards us like ships in storm. None of us especially fit in there. My friend, being a little closer to their age waged a flirt war as I sat there and talked to them like I was their den mother, giving them directions to Jackson and watched (well mostly) as young girls came up and asked the guys to sign their breasts.

More sooner than later, the aspiring documentary photographer in me came out and I decided that I must document what was going on. I had to get in the fray and see what was going on. (Hey...Gloria Steinem masqueraded as a Playboy bunny for months, teetering on spiked heels, shaking her bunny tail and perfecting the backwards tray serve to get her point across...what's a little Sharpie ink to the chest?)

Here were these young girls who had never even seen this band before but were caught up in the "glamour" of them. At one point, one of the girls from the mosh pit asked me, "Are you and your friend from New York too?" as if we were rock starts by proxy. I told her that we were not but kept the conversation going by telling her that I was a photographer and was taking photos for the band website (the singer had asked my friend earlier in the night when they saw my camera). She asked me if I would mail her a copy of the photo of her getting her breast signed. I promised her that I would and wrote the name "Cassie" and her address next to a reminder "the breast girl" in my leather address book. When I asked Cassie if she wouldn't get in trouble for some stranger mailing photos of her getting her breast signed to her house, she replied, "Nah, don't nobody care what I do. " I thought of the broken girl in the parking lot earlier as I smelled beer on this girl's breath and eyed her dirty fingernails and the last two letters from the autograph peeking out from under her bra. She seemed surprised and startled all at once that someone would agree to do something nice for her. I was glad that my girlfriend had refrained from punching her earlier when she stomped on her toe in the mosh pit.

One of the guys asked me to email him a copy of Cassie's photo and I told him that I would.

But, I won't. Cassie wouldn't care...but I sure as hell do.

This story grows too long to tell with every word that I type. There was a good deal more to it but to sum it up - It was a rambunctious weekend that thankfully included things like two trips to the movie theater and a nice guy serenading me with both a saw and an accordion to soften the edges. But, I'm glad for all of it. The lack of sleep that I may never get caught up on and the strangers met and for the strangers that I only watched with overwhelmed curiosity. The phone numbers exchanged and scrawled on torn bits of paper still in my purse. The photos that people may or may not ever see. The fact that now the weekdays seem too mundane to easily bear. The moments where I wasn't told that I was "cute" but instead "beautiful" and "silent but deadly". Sitting with a strawberry shortcake TV tray full of pancakes on my lap at two in the morning watching Dill Scallion among people who knew all the best lines by heart. For those included in-between moments when I felt like I was flying by the seat of my skirt and teetering on the edge of dangerous moments and creeping down one-way streets with half-assed maps on the car seat beside me not knowing if I was headed North or South.

I can lie and say that I was in it for the stories but I have to admit, that this particular weekend - I was in it for the living.

Firecrackers are where you find them

"If every day had cake and firecrackers, how would we separate the special days from the ordinary ones?"

That was the question posed to me this evening before the rains came. Now, I am hunkered down in my foyer turned office waiting out the storms. The weather men and women pulled out their drama hats and along with their blinking orange storm maps and super high tech Doppler radars, told the folks in my neck of the woods to "seek shelter". So, here I am - Seeking shelter and thinking about the week that was the week since I have written here last. And thinking about the cake and firecrackers question. I do believe that my friend had a good point.

Thursday night, I went out with a friend and saw some bluegrass and had lots of fun catching up. We hadn't seen each other in a while and it was good to see his smile. It was a good evening that ended at 12:10. By the time I got home, I had a message on my machine from a firefighter saying that my friend had been in a car wreck. The automated voice on my machine recited a time stamp of 12:18. What followed were many tense minutes trying to find out where he was and if he was okay. I can't even remember driving back down that stretch of road or how I did it while trying to dial a nearly-dead cell phone over and over and over.

This is the second time this year that I have stared numb at a friend bruised and washed in florescent hospital lights and said prayers of thanks. The second time that a stick-on name tag from a hospital was plastered on my lapel with the scrawled last name of a good friend. And both times, I had been the last one to speak with each friend before their accidents. This time, within eight short minutes....and last time within mere seconds.

Earlier in the evening, he asked me about my saying that I tried to pray the spirits of a haunted chair away. He said that he didn't think that I believed in prayers and religious doings. I told him that I believe in forces that guide and protect us. There are times when you can't help but believe in protective forces - times like right now as the storm rages around this old farm house with the thunder rattling the window panes like a cranky child playing with toys - and times when you stand looking at a chunk of crumpled metal that the day before held both you and your friend, wondering how he walked away and is standing there beside you now in the exhaustive July sun worrying about his laptop and I-pod. And how, if events had been a little different - you too may have been there at the time of collision. I stared at the deflated airbags and wondered. I looked at him limping around the car and wondered some more and then I walked.

I walked from car to car that day in between those barbed wire fences of the wrecker company. Each was smashed and broken. I walked slowly with the sun blistering my shoulders and the tops of my feet and looked inside the windows at what were now time capsules. Each car still had scattered belongings inside - photos of children, yellowed newspapers, crumpled road maps, crosses hanging from rearview mirrors, cigarette wrappers and melted cassette tapes. Beach towels decorated with the faces of pro-wrestlers and letters and utility bills never mailed. Mardi Gras beads and graduation tassels and dried-out pine tree air fresheners. In one - an oxygen mask and discarded paramedic's gloves. In the last one, a child's car seat with the seat-belt crudely cut away.

I wondered where the car's owners were going and how far they got. I wondered if they were around to be thankful or if they were now only missed. And if they had been spared and thankful, had the mundane circumstances of everyday life washed the thankful, relieved thoughts away now making each day average again?

Some days you just feel fortunate and though you might not easily recognize a day as a cake and firecracker day, it is. As we drove away from that place feeling limp and tired, I realized that we were lucky to be able to feel limp and tired. I wondered about the people who owned the other cars and knew that I would never know about them. Nor would they know about me.

So....here's to a week that not only is about cake and firecrackers, but about friends who make late night calls to protect us from kryptonite. Here's to even later nights of grilled cheese and sleepy eyed laughter and to meeting strangers who play saws. Here's to grandfathers who leave behind precise German cameras and photos that they took of Playboy bunnies. And to songs dedicated to sisters who won't take interstates and for black labs who lick us to sleep. To reading between the lines and for sometimes forgetting that there are lines at all. And for best friends who find elusive true love and even for road trips defeated. For the one lone bird who will come to Midi's feeder. For plane tickets to sand and surf-induced comatose sleep. And for singing Patsy Cline in a house made for acoustic genius. Here's to finding strength in the strangest places and arms to hold us up when we are weak. And for well-placed lectures and pep-talks and for sleeping on all sides of the bed. Here's to laughter and fiddles and moon pies and to seeking shelter.

And here's to finding it.

Doh

Yes. Yes. I should have known. At the time it seemed like a reasonably okay idea - mentioning the Ice Age at my office.

I've really got to learn to adapt to my surroundings..........

Thirty Four

Well, I am officially 34 years old. Gulp. No, actually....I do believe the old adage that "age is just a state of mind". And, within the past 24 hours, my state of mind has covered the water front.

My birthday began with quite the rocky start between midnight and two a.m. this morning as I spent a couple of hours being creeped out by and then subsequently disposing of a haunted chair that I brought home yesterday from the Salvation Army. At 2:30 this morning, that damned chair was on the curb and I was sleeping with my lights on. I won't go into the story here because I am well aware that lots of people deem this sort of stuff as mumbo-jumbo. But trust me, I have no doubt that the chair came with some creepy crawly connections that I didn't want in my bedroom or even on my block. By lunch time today, someone had snatched the chair off of the curb (see photo below, which I was happy to see, once developed did not reveal any floating orbs or messages written in blood).

I hope that their night is better than mine was last night. I thought of putting a note on it but wasn't sure what to say.... I do remember seeing an upholstered chair on the side of the road once with a sign that read, "Smells like cat pee. Do not pick up! "

I guess I could have tacked a note on that said, "This chair is steeped in evil. Do not pick up!"

A few people - my crazy brother and sister-in-law included - were miffed that I got rid of the chair. They said that they'd love to have had it. They also said I should have sold it on Ebay. But trust me, I didn't want that chair around another minute as evidenced by me in my gown on the side of the street this morning in the moonlight, walking away from a straight-backed chair while stopping every few seconds to look behind me to see if it was following me.

From now on - I buy strictly IKEA. Particle board, I understand has a composition that resists evil and that hoodoo that the spooks do.

The good news is that this new chair story will perhaps make the infamous "Eames Chair Incident" fade away into infamy as it should now. There's a new chair in town (somewhere...out there....trying to get back to me.....)

That chair was so sleek and modern too......

That bizarre story told , I overslept this morning. Though the minute I woke up, my eyes darted across my room to see if the chair were still gone. It was - and I happily returned to my vanity bench made from a green Rubbermaid storage container. Happily.

So, I overslept and then went into the office where one of the owners gave me something to type. It turned out that she was putting out a form letter to all of her friends and family which they could sign and send to their politicians that bans gays and lesbians from having equal rights under the law. Well, I told them that I wasn't going to do it because I was paid to do real estate dealings and this sort of thing did not fall under those guidelines nor did I want to be a party to the whole thing. It isn't something that I believe in and I would have walked out of there before I would have typed it.

Sadly to say, another lady volunteered to type it and before the end of the day, the letters were circulating around the office and people were making uninformed comments about the whole issue and filling our outgoing mail box with lots of letters to their congressmen. Five O'clock couldn't have come soon enough for me. Not since we sent unsolicited mail to little Jimmy Dickens and Porter Waggoner have I felt so down-heartened by the mail lady coming to pick up our mail.

My office is one of the most bizarre places that I have ever worked (the adult video shop in Georgia included...another story for another journal entry...or I'll tell you when you are older - whichever comes first). Among the things that I've had to put up with since working there in the past five years include:

1. Looking the broker's head for ticks.

2. Being forced to advise callers wishing to view a certain house, "Keep your eye on the rooster. DO NOT take your eye off of the rooster!" (Though this one I enjoyed a little as I liked to pretend that I was a secret agent and I was talking in code.)

3. Being forced to remind one home owner every time I called him for a viewing, "Please remember to flush the toilet before you leave the house." (His wife was a control freak with a capital "C".)

4. Put up with many misdialed calls for some snack cracker comment hotline. I can not imagine having time to call a snack cracker comment hotline. Though, once I had a misdial for a canning jar hotline and the little old lady sure did get her criticisms in on those jars before I convinced her that she had the wrong number. A little old lady with an entire spoiled batch of pickles is not a good thing. She was hoppin' mad!

5. Having the religious zealot office manager call me aside and tell me that she had the feeling that she needed to talk to me because she felt like Satan was trying to reach up and pull me down to hell. She really said that. Just like she was telling me that we needed to order more paper clips. It was that simple for her. "Hey, Kelly. You know....you're going to hell. Can you order some post-it notes?"

6. Having to sit inside a closed office for over two weeks day in and day out while they painted it with oil-based paint. No ventilation. All the windows painted shut. Dead of winter. Doors closed. They bought scented candles for us and then became obviously absent until it was done. They later called me in for a discussion and wanted to know why my voice wasn't as peppy on the phone (I couldn't feel my own throat) and told me that I needed to "perk up" or find somewhere else to work.

But....hey. It's a paycheck. And, I don't have to rent stag movies to leering gross-outs for less than minimum wage. OR work at Olan Mill's Kids again. Or sell jelly to spoiled socialites. Or act like I care about beanie babies. God save the queen.

So, for pete's sake....where was I? Oh. the birthday!

At 5:00, I had decided that the legacy of my 34th year was obviously going to be that I had turned into a furniture fearing equal rights martyr. Thankfully, things got much better in the P.M. as I was sung a birthday song that said that I had a "mighty fine caboose" (hey now!) and then got to have Indian food (yum!) and Krispy Kreme (yum again!) with two good friends. I also now own several literary puppets including one of Virginia Woolf (I'm going to make her some little rocks to put in her pockets) and a new mix CD complete with hand-made cover art. Yay!

The evening was filled with great dinner conversation which seemed to round itself out nicely as we polled each other on what we know about venereal diseases. I am quite sure that the other diners in the restaurant wondered how many times we could use the word "discharge". If they'd been smart, they would have turned it into a mighty fine drinking game. You snooze, you lose...I suppose.

And, now it is once again midnight and my birthday is done for. Sad really...but it was one I'll remember for a while to come.

Mark your calendars

This year, my little town decided to have 4th of July on the 3rd of July. Why? Because the 4th of July came on a Sunday. Still, I decided not to join the yearly Franklin festivities. I've gone to three...count 'em....three events in this town and they are as follows:

1. The 4th of July festivities back in 2000.

At the time, I was new here and figured, "hey. why not?" The celebration that year took place in our town square which is actually not even a square but a circle where you can sometimes drive into but can't easily drive out of. Round and round you go around the statue of the civil war soldier and the cannons. Those who hate it call it " the squircle" but most of the townsfolk still call it "the square" thus maddeningly confusing every new visitor to our town when they try to give them directions. I think it is the chamber of commerce's attempt to trap travelers until they buy yards and yards of quilting fabric, a quart of Ben and Jerry's ice cream that costs more than my first car, and a couple hundred dollars worth of embroidered culottes at Chico's.

Side note:

I feel that I can't even dabble in the subject of downtown Franklin without telling you about the great bubble machine controversy or as it is known here "The Bubble Wars". One of the merchants ( a soap maker) has had a bubble machine out front for years and years. The townsfolk love it. Our town is squeaky clean and what, my friends is cleaner than bubbles? For years, they wafted through the air making the passersby smile. I can't lie. I liked the bubbles too. They were cute.

So, a new merchant moves in next door and immediately takes offense at the bubbles. She said that the bubbles are " a nuisance" and that she was constantly having to clean her windows because little kids chase the bubbles and slam up against her front glass. I found this highly funny because I can't imagine thinking that this is anything less than entertainment watching little jumpered children smack against my storefront like bugs against windshield. But, hey....that's what she said. So, she takes her complaint to the council and they shut down the bubble machine.

The townsfolk went wild! The papers printed article after article about the controversy. No bubble machine?! How can this be?? Before you know it - the bubble machine was back! I have no idea who had to sleep with whom to get the bubbles back, but I promise you it wasn't me. ( But, you can thank me for the ground-breaking of our new Krispy Kreme....)

Now, once again, the new merchant complains. This time she says that the bubble machine is a safety threat because little kids not only chase the bubbles into her window, but they also run out into traffic after the bubbles. Now, are you thinking what I am thinking? Could it possibly be that it's not the bubbles that are to be blamed and outlawed here...... but the children?

I'm drawing up a proposal to present to the council. I'll let you know how it goes.

End of side note.

Okay....to make a long story even longer - the 4th of July, 2000. I stumbled upon the celebration in time to see a stage full of elderly women dancing. They were dressed in red, white and blue sequined shorts and halter tops. These golden girls wore sparkly tap shoes on their feet and top hats decorated with American flags and danced around while singing patriotic songs. At the end, they jumped out into the crowd waving flags and kissing babies and then jumped back on stage and ended by yelling in unison, "Happy Birthday America!" This must have been a tradition as the crowd yelled back, "Happy Birthday America!" My friend and I immediately launched into a debate with each other as to how this wasn't actually the birthday of America. Fireworks were shot off behind the stage for what must have been a total of two minutes. Then the crowd dispersed. Happy Birthday America.

#2 - Christmas Parade - 2000

There are two reasons that I am glad that I went to this Christmas Parade. The first is that there was a float representing a support group for diabetic children. What makes this float special is that it was a float full of diabetic children who were throwing out candy. Seriously. Candy.

The second is the float for the Jehovah's Witnesses.. I am not sure how this float got approved for this particular parade but it rocked. It was decked in gray paper with black streamers with an enormous papier mache' bomb on the back with a fuse shooting sparks. Little waving children rode the float decorated with messages telling us that the end of time was coming and that we were all probably going to die. I wish that I were kidding. No, actually I don't. These were two of the coolest floats I have ever seen. Santa Claus rounded it all out as he should have. Happy holidays.

#3 - Bluegrass Festival - 2001

It was your usual bluegrass festival. Lots of great music. Corn on a stick. Buck-dancing.

Oh yes. Buck-dancing. For those of you who have never seen buck-dancing, you must. I guarantee you that you have never seen legs move like legs move during buck-dancing.

So, they had a competition. Actually, they had competitions all day long -in the boiling July heat, not under shade trees but in a parking lot with the heat from the asphalt rising up like the heat of a thousand suns. I had long since become trapped there as my cotton skirt had sweated itself up to my lower back and had firmly attached itself there as I sank down in the metal folding chair. If I got up from my front row seat , every row behind me was going to see London and France and my underpants - and at eye level. I sat on the folding chair and wished for the end of the competitions. Or if nothing else - nightfall or a sudden rain storm. The heat from the metal chair seared my thighs like prime ribs as I waited for an act of god.

Buck-dancers young and old danced in competition after competition. I was about to pass out and had to pee so bad that I thought I was going to die. My friend drank ice cold sodas and dined on buttery popcorn and openly enjoyed my predicament. The dancing continued. I wondered if this was what hell was like. I reasoned that it was probably a lot like this but probably a bit cooler and with more kids playing fiddles.

After what seemed like an eternity, the final competition came around and I sat with blistered skin and parched lips, with the posture of a dish rag, watching and waiting to go home. The finalists were a man named Thomas who bore an uncanny resemblance to Jerry Reed and a little man with the longest, most glorious mullet I had ever seen. His name was Mitchell. (There was another competitor as well but he must have so paled in comparison to mini-mullet and Jerry Reed that his face has been erased from my memory.)

So, off they danced! Their legs were flying! Their arms were tight at their sides! The competition was cut-throat! You could feel the tension in the air. The pickers played faster. The dancers danced faster. The judges stared at the stage with baited eyes. The crowd leaned forward in their chairs (well, everyone except for me) and waited to see who claimed the title.

All of a sudden and in mid-step, Mini-mullet passed out and plummeted off the stage, his long train of hair flapping in the breeze like an unopened parachute as he went down. He had worked up quite a bit of inertia as the little lord of the dance and barely missed the huge factory fan at the base of the stage. A foot or so further, and the little hoofer could have been scalped right there! Mitchell lay there in a heap in front of us with his little legs twitching and his hair fanned out behind him like a felled animal. The crowd gasped. Paramedics rushed to his side and began to check his vitals. My friend sang a whispered, sadistic song in my ear, "Another one bites the dust..."

The emcee of the event grabbed the mike and asked the paramedics if he was okay. They yelled up that he had just passed out from the heat and that he would be fine. The emcee motioned and the pickers resumed picking. The remaining two dancers continued to dance like whirling dervishes while Mitchell lay there on the asphalt with his sweaty, western shirt undone down to his belly at the front of the stage. The show went on. Thomas won the competition and later on, they brought an embarrassed Mitchell on stage for a round of applause and they gave him a ribbon for his troubles. He accepted the ribbon graciously and thanked the town of Franklin for having him.

Treason and Pocky

Ah, chickadees....It's midnight and I have to admit that this is one of the times that I love best. Friday night at midnight - I can stay up as late as I want (sunrise!) , listen to as much music as I want (Dinah Shore ! ) and type the prints right off of my fingers (ten total ! ) . Keep your hands and feet inside the car, folks.....

I've been trying to collate some sort of journal entry out of bits and pieces of my week and I really don't know how they fit together. I think I will just check them off like a grocery list. I need to get my head cleared for the weekend because I get this feeling that it is going to be a good one.

I have learned that there is an Indian version of the macarena (why did I doubt that there would be?). and I now own a copy of it. It's called Dooba Dooba Teri Ankhon Mein for those of you in that Columbia House Record Club. If you thought our top 40 version was hard to get out of your head, you should try this one. It gets right in there between the wrinkles in your brain and latches on, then pops into your conscience at inopportune moments like when you are trying to remember someone's phone number or sleep at night. Dooba...dooba..dooba..dooba....dooba..dooba...dooba...aggh!

Speaking of sleeping at night, for two mornings in a row, I woke up with Adam Ant's "Strip" in my head. Does anyone know what that means? And does this line really work? : " I'll strip for you if you strip for me"....

I think I'd come closer to scoring with, "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me... If I said you were an angel, would you treat me like the devil tonight?"

That's old school seduction.

I sat in the Station Inn (ooh...ahh) on Wednesday night with the magical sounds of The Hot Club of Nashville swirling all around me. God, are they great...and the crowd was much more appreciative than you see most times around town. The vibe was perfect. Andy-not-my-brother brought along some Harry Potter themed jelly beans with flavors like vomit, ear wax, dirt, soap, grass, sardines and earthworms. To keep things interesting, the candy maker also included less revolting flavors like spaghetti, buttered popcorn and grape jelly. It seemed that every time I tried, I ended up with a vomit flavored one (let me tell you........it was dead on) or one that tasted just like sardines. Oh, double ick. Not the kind of entertainment that I'd recommend for a first date situation but still it was entertaining. And, I'd highly recommend keeping some of those vomit ones in your drawer at the office for those days when it is just too pretty to work and you need a good excuse to run free like the child-like and unemployed.

One of my friends rounded out the week by standing in a parking lot kissing his waitress that he just met at dinner. He reports that she had a tongue ring and that the kiss was quite good. I've never had that happen to me and am lucky if my waitresses even acknowledge my existence or better yet, bring me ketchup before I ask for it the third time.

This week on 91.1, the D.J. was playing old Lawrence Welk shows. My favorite was the one from 1971 with Karen Carpenter performing "We've Only Just Begun" which was followed immediately with a rousing clarinet solo of " Just a Closer Walk With Thee". The mood was kinetic yet confusing.

On a related note, I still happen to believe that the Carpenters' "Close to You" is one of the coolest songs of all times. Try to debate that with me. I guarantee you that I'll have you singing the harmonies before it is over and apologizing for ever questioning me.

I have never really respected the show, Fear Factor. Don't get me wrong, anyone who has seen me try to choke down a meat entree knows that I'm a girl who can highly respect people who will eat anything for money. The physical stunts are impressive and adrenaline-pumping. The host is firm yet friendly. It's just that the contestants are always so buff and tan and perfect. Then there's the fact that they always try to include a stunt that contains water so that they can show the contestants in their swimsuits which brings on the inevitable slow-mo shots of them removing their shirts and shorts. But, anyway..... I never really respected the show until this week.

This week it was Family Fear Factor. Oh yeah. Bring it on. Of course, the parents still were buff and tan and perfect and the women looked like they could have never delivered a child but perhaps bought them off of the internet. There were the slow-mo shots. Still the firm and friendly host. What was fresh in the mix was the children. They were around 8-10 years old, I'm guessing. Oh, god love 'em. They were the most smack-talking, smarty pants bunch of kids I had ever seen. They sneered and jeered and told the other kids and parents how they were "going down". It was a little over the top. I think the Producers gave them Red Bull and pixie sticks before filming. These kids were more competitive than a 5th grade dodge ball tournament. They were out for blood and money.

But, then it got really, really good. It was time for the offensive food related stunt. They put the children in plexiglass boxes and padlocked them in with only their heads and arms sticking out. Then...get this....they filled the box all the way up to the kids' necks with Madagascar hissing cockroaches. But, it gets better. The object of the stunt was for the parents to compete by running to their child's box and removing the cockroaches with their mouths until they got enough on a scale across the room, thus releasing a key for the padlock. So, back and forth the parents ran with mouths full of giant cockroaches, the children screaming and shrieking for their parents to hurry -all the while with cockroaches covering their smack-talkin' little heads. When the parents got the keys, they then had to hand them to the child who had to try several keys to find the correct one to open the padlocks. It was insane. And, mighty good television, I might add.

I've decided that I miss S&H green stamps. Does anyone remember those except me? The grocery stores used to give them to you with purchases. You would then collect them and paste them in books (by licking each and every one....and buddy, they did not taste good) so that you could redeem them for prizes like flying discs and Singer sewing machines and kayaks. It rocked. I'm wondering what happened to freebies like these green stamps and hey, while we're at it....at what point did they stop putting toys in cereal boxes?

I miss being armpit deep in Captain Crunch with finely ground cereal dust under my finger nails, cereal pouring out over the kitchen floor while trying to get the valuable prize before my brother did. And even more while we're at it, when did Cracker Jacks replace the cool dinky prizes like fake tattoos and metal puzzles with lame dinky prizes like stickers or playing cards no bigger than a finger nail ? And once more, what ever happened to Circus of the Stars and those lovely yet delicate 5.25 inch floppy disks? Who do we talk to about this? I'm not too concise on the whole time-line yet but I think it involves the Republicans.

I went over to my friend's house for a T.V. viewing party this week and met lots of really nice people. He is a sideshow artist and was featured on a Discovery Channel documentary about sword swallowing. The film makers did a great job and added some great camera angles and odd touches here and there. It was a fun watch and he came off looking just as cool as he is in real life. Though, it turns out that they couldn't show a lot of his stunts because they involved his nipples. Yes, friends....you may have guessed it - because of Janet Jackson and all of that stupid breast baring hoopla. Thanks to her, we may never see nipples on TV again. Which reminds me, do they still show topless villager women on National Geographic specials? If not - I think we all know who to blame.

Yes. That's right. Janet Jackson and the Republicans.

Simultaneously, I told my parents to watch the show and now my mom worries that I am going to become a bearded lady (how does one do this?) or get my body tattooed all over (I think I might tell her of my dream to have the drawings from the game, Operation inked all over me. I think I'll get "water on the knee" to start the ball rolling. Remember that bucket? That slays me. ) Of course, my folks also worry that I will be drawn into the exciting and glamorous world of sword-swallowing. I mean...seriously, I'm pretty weak under peer pressure but this one might take a long study first.

Though, if someone tempts me with a reward of pocky - all bets are off.