...Miss Head, if You're Nasty

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Gross

My neighbor, the murder suspect, was either watching porn or having sex with a prostitute last night.

And I'm not just saying that because I had my ear up to the wall. With a glass, to amplify the sound.

Do Not Go Gently...

I went to school at Indiana University. I was there in the early 90's. The time of riots at Varsity Villas. The time of war protesters living in Dunn Meadow. The time of Trent Green. The time of Calbert Cheaney. And Damon Baily. And Brian Evans. And Coach Knight.

They were a couple of years off their last NCAA win when I arrived. Coach Knight ruled all. People conspired to get into classes he taught at the HPER building. There were allegedly two choices. The basketball coaching class was understandable. The fly fishing one? A bit less so, but no less magical a thought to contemplate.

Cream and crimson. Football was a different animal. That was a purely social occasion which provided us an excuse to walk to the party end of campus early in the day. No one went sober.

Basketball, on the other hand? No one went drunk. It was like going to church. Assembly Hall can be as silent as a pin, even with 17,000-plus people sitting inside. It frequently was. Before free throws. At the whistle. During tirades. No one ever waved their hands behind the basket in an effort to distract an opposing player when I was there. No one. It was. Not. Done.

Once, someone put flyers on all of the seats in Assemby Hall. Students, being by their nature rather rambunctious, began flying paper airplanes from the upper deck. It only took one bellow from the General to stop that practice dead in its tracks.

No one brought signs. No one jumped up and down like popcorn. No one talked very loud. We were being trained, all of us. Trained to watch. Trained to be sportsmanlike. Trained to be students of the game.

I was at IU when Coach Knight "pretended" to whip Calbert Cheaney with a towel. I was there when he kicked his son, Pat, off the team. I think he may have actually kicked Pat, too, during a game. He threw a lot of towels. He yelled a lot. A whole lot. And he won a lot, too.

We got to the Final Four one year while I was there. We lost to Duke. The team of Christian Laettner and, the devil incarnate, Bobby Hurley. I knew the apocolypse was not long in coming when they suited him up in an Indiana jersey for Blue Chips. It was a magical tournament for me, even though we didn't get to the final game, when Duke stuck it to the Fab Five, if I recall correctly.

When I was at IU, we, the students, were convinced Coach Knight controlled the universe. Any loss was actually planned by him, in order to instill character and resolve in his team. They needed those losses to season them, to make them better. He also controlled whatever number of points would eventually be scored. He controlled the calls of the refs. Hell, we probably thought he controlled the weather.

I was sad when he got fired, although it was a long time coming. For all that he demanded good manners and sportsmanship from others, he gave very little of that himself. No one can fault his coaching skills and now, when IU has managed to hire a coach with questionable recruiting tactics and various ethical violations trailing him, Coach Knight seems...not so bad.

He's cranky. He's surly. He once shot a guy.

But, then again, so did our Vice President.

He's also a great coach, a good teacher and a winner. There were no ethical violations with Coach Knight. He graduated students and he made them more together than they were individually. And I'm not just talking about his team.

Although I'm sure IU would never contemplate rehiring Coach Knight, it wouldn't be so wrong to look for someone with some of the same qualities.

Besides, Bloomington could use some good weather control.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Crescent City

I've fallen for Anthony Bourdain. I know, I know. He's too old. He's too famous. He's too married. I can't make up some fantasy where he's here in the midwest, driving around with his television crew from No Reservations, and he ends up with a flat tire and, when I pull over to help, he immediately notices my wit, charm and big boobs and sweeps me off my feet to a life of really, really good food and exotic travel.

The New Orleans episode of No Reservations was on this week. Like with Intervention, I've become addicted to this show. And that episode really drove the needle home.

I do love New Orleans. I love the idea of it. I love the history surrounding it. I love the fact that it has been inhabited and claimed by so many nations. And I love the fact that, despite those claims, it has really been owned by none of them. I love historical novels about the city. The tales of pirates and bayous and criminals and the quadroon balls and Storyville and the Garden District and vampires and the Irish and the Italian store owners who put out plates of snacks to feed their customers, even in the 1800's.

My parents took me there when I was around ten or eleven. We took my grandmother the week before Christmas and New Years. I don't remember the flight but I do remember the drive into the city from the airport. Mostly because I remember trying to catch glimpses of cemetaries. I was entranced by the thought that they had cemetaries above ground. Even at that age, before my demented and rather grotesque sense of curiosity had fully developed.

I remember wanting to go to the voodoo museum and my parents saying no. I remember that they'd never let me walk around alone. We stayed in the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, in a hotel called the Richeleau. I think it made it though Katrina. I hope so. It was my very first taste of luxury and I loved it. I loved the tiled hallways with the scrolled metalwork. I loved the beautiful wood lobby that led out into the small gardens that so many French Quarter homes have hidden away. I loved the smell of the city and the way the road crews would come in the morning to spray off the streets with huge water hoses, erasing signs of debauchery and decline.

My parents wanted to go to Pat O'Briens. If I remember, they went to New Orleans for their honeymoon, although it might have been Vegas. I do know they went there as a very young married couple. There is a picture of them in Pat O'Brien's, drinking from hurricane glasses, not yet so drunk as to be sliding out of their chairs but certainly a bit glassy-eyed.

I didn't want to go. I was mortified. I lived in states where minors weren't allowed in bars. A trip to the liquor store was exotic enough. My parents were the bad parents that took their young daughter to a bar.

And it was great. The dueling pianos, an idea that has been exported to every town, to its detriment, were amazing. I remember writing song suggestions and putting them in the fishbowl on the stage. I'm reasonably certain they called a woman on stage to sing "The Unicorn" complete with hand motions. I drank a Shirley Temple out of a hurricane glass.

At dinner one night, we went to an old-style restaurant. I don't think it was one of the big ones: Antoine's, Commander's Palace. We did go to the Palace at one point, but for lunch, I think. This place was old-school and may have been Italian, now that I think of it. Professional waiters with crumb scrapers that they used between courses. The tiles on the floor were the alternating white and black that I now dream of for my kitchen. I cannot remember what I ate, but I do remember, at the end of the meal, the waiter brought me a snifter of liquor, with three coffee beans floating in it.

It was sambuca. I don't remember whether I drank it. I think not, since I still won't eat black coffee beans. But I do remember what the waiter said.

"The beans? They represent three things that we wish for you: health, wealth, and happiness."

I felt very grown up that night.

Now that New Orleans is gone. The television program showed vast empty fields where shotgun houses stood. The restaurants are empty, as are the streets. Crime is up and the population is draining away.

I still want to go back. It is an amazing place, filled with history and interesting people and could have a dynamic future as a shipping port, just as it used to, depending on the vagaries of the American economy.

Even more so, I wish the people there what the waiter once wished me: health, wealth and happiness.

Monday, February 04, 2008

The Great Wide Open

I have a service attached to this site, so I can go and see who is reading this piece of nonsense. I can see who visited, for how long, and how many page views they did. If they get here from a search, it'll tell me what the search term was.

Sometime last week, someone got here while searching for "pink tampon."

I don't recall ever using a tampon that was pink. Maybe pink wrappers, but not actual pink tampons. I don't think I'd want to insert anything garishly dyed in to my body.

You know, other than kleenex up my nose.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Chick Flick

In movies, or in that particular sub-catagory of movie known as the "chick flick," there are certain pre-established moments that must occur:

1. Girl is single/dating a loser/gets dumped/getting married when financee dies.

2. Girl goes through brief period of soul-searching.

3. Girl sees Guy across a crowded room (Guy is usually dark-haired, in order to show his serious and sensitive nature, unless Ryan Phillipe is available. Also, Guy is usually some kind of scamp/bad boy type, while girl is career-driven and goal-oriented).

4. Guy and Girl, although complete opposites, find themselves thrown together in order to get out a story/put together a work project/get one of their mutual friends out of trouble/travel across country/get through the fiancee's funeral.

5. During all the thrown-together time, Guy and Girl fall for each other, despite the fact that Guy is a love-em-and-leave-em type and Girl is fully aware of this.

6. Guy and Girl have amazing sex.

7. Guy and Girl are torn apart when he overhears her badmouthing him/her ex-boyfriend shows up/he leaves right after having sex without a word to her/they find out they've been lying to each other about the work project/his ex-girlfriend shows up/his wife shows up.

8. Girl takes job in another city/Guy leaves town.

At this point, we all know the formula. Guy or Girl must either apologize for their wrongdoing that led to the falling out or the other party has to overcome the betrayal. Whoever comes to the great ephiphany then has to chase after the other person, thereby leading to the great last scene, frequently filmed outside on a bridge or other large, impressive structure, where they kiss and make up and live happily ever after.

In real life, would this ever happen?

If I broke up with some dude because I came to his apartment one morning with breakfast and his ex opened the door in a negligee in one of those wacky, "oh, she was just sleeping on the couch" moments, would I be charmed when he chased me down the street with a bunch of balloons declaring his undying love for me? Would I be won over when he sat outside of my house all night in a snowstorm, freezing to death in his car?

And if a guy I liked found out I'd been lying to him about the reason I'd been hanging out with him, that I was only with him because I needed to get information on some investigative piece I was writing for the local paper, and left me high and dry just when I realized I loved him? If I started showing up at his gym with flowers, do you think that would change his mind. If I moved into his apartment building, across the hall, would that convince him that I loved him?

No. That would be stalking. And possibly against the law.

So what is there to do? When time and distance separates you from someone that you think, deep down inside, could be the one? Or a possible one, anyway.

Do you drive eight, ten, fourteen hours in order to sit on their fashionable brick front door stoop in an appropriately fashionable yet casual ensemble, with jeans that make your legs look thin and your ass small, until they come home to find you there with a bag of groceries and a bottle of wine?

Which really won't happen, because you'll end up with a flat tire on the way, which will lead to the ruin of your new sweater and the subsequent purchase of a twelve-pack of beer so that, by the time he gets home, you'll be passed out in the backseat with jerky wrappers and empty bottles scattered around your grease-stained body.

Or do you let the opportunity pass you by? Sit at home, thinking about what might have been? Watching yet another chick flick and thinking "Does that ever really work?"