Slice of Week Daze
Moonday, for many of us, means back to work, so here's a jobly clip for ya which you can see, along with another cool animation clip Kev found,
A series of X-Chromosome segments was called "Closet Cases." This one is about a Slice of Bread.
Here's Zack, who I'm guessing doesn't bother with the closet!
Towards the end you get to see his adorable, humorous upbeat flipbook animation he made with post-its.
Thanks for pointing out that fun clip Kevvy! That kid is awesome, and it will be fun to see what more fun things he posts on the Internets. Today I am having not very many memories of this time of year. I know that approximately 31 years ago, during the bicentennial year, people had parades every chance they got. And back then February was really cold, even in our hometown, which is in "the South." And those of us who were scouts had to celebrate Lincoln's birthday by staggering in formation up to his tomb from somehwere, (from Lincoln's home?, no it couldn't have been that far, it must have been from somewhere else in the cemetery, but it seemed far because it was so cold and we were) carrying flags. Maybe we didnt have to march but march we did. I think we had coats on but i know we didn't have pants on.
Frickin girl scout uniforms did not include girlscout parkas or girlscout snowpants. That might have been the time that we all stood there while a limo skidded through the cemetary road, allegedly with President Ford in it and all the scouts had to wave at the bicentennial limo window, in which we could only see ourselves waving. I have left a voicemail query for Laurie about that event, because she is the one who remembers everything. I do remember all the scouts were frozen solid, but since we were all smiling like happy little harbingers of historical hoopla, all the scout parents decided to just leave us outside, like giddy scoutly lawn ornaments, until spring, at which point we thawed, and went back to school for a few weeks before summer. Good Times!
Here's something kev and a couple of other readers might recall
There was (or is) a big festival each summer, downtown in our hometown, honoring Lincoln. Which most people called "Drinkinfest" because that's about all there was to do there. For those of you who read Kennelcough, Gina was the basis for the character that thinks to herself upon returning from Greewich Village to be in Springfield for the summer, that showing her work at Betty's store will expose her art to the hippest cross section of folks in that town. And at the Amnesty benefit one summer she got her boyfriend or ex, some guy who was performing, unsolicited by me, to make an announcement promoting the betty store. Great kids. And now, I'm sure, great adults.
Our friend Gina was one of the artists in the hometown. When she made the t-shirt, her and Jim went around trying to sell it at the festival. It was similar to, or lifted from one of our state tourism department's favorite images o'Lincoln, except gina added the horns and red eyes. They said lots of people were shocked and acted like the shirt was sacrilegious or something. When i wore mine to work, my one african-american coworker laughed and said her son used to set people straight when he worked at Lincoln's home and try to de-sanctify the guy's image. My poindexter white boss lady in the accounting department (who was from Madison but you'd never have guessed that from her personality) said, primly "don't you like Abraham Lincoln, Betty?" Now, normally I woulda got all defensive and tried to explain reality to the most unrealistic of people, like uh, no, i think it's a comment on the hype surrounding the guy, not the guy himself, but in that context, it was bettier to just go "sure I like him just fine." What with there being no reaction that mrs boss woulda really heard. I must have washed it in too warm of water, because the red silscreening stuff ran and it soon turned into a pink shirt but it was always fun to wear it. It didn't take much to shock people in that town.
But, Betty, isn't there also a time-travel cartoon?!
Of course we gots to have one of those too, grasshoppers.
The following story will probably, in a slightly different & much less-emotive telling, be part of a scene in the never-ending novel-primo, but here's a short glimpse
In February of 1999 I went home for a long lunch, because I had a flexible schedule. Things were still groovy at the reen, and it was unseasonably warm, or I didn't care that it was cold out, because i was having fun. Eventually in the late afternoon, I walked back out onto Atwood avenue to ride the bus into the sunset so that I could interview some more niceladies down at the reen that evening. A funny and, as folks euphemistically say, "special" lady, who i had seen saying quirky things at bus stops before, was there, and she was all happy and conversational, and every once in a while she would turn to her quiet shy boyfriend and be all like "hi there honey; i love you honey," and then turn back to me and resume her chipper chatter. As many local bus riders know, the lady I'm referring to is a lot of fun, and one of the more pleasant personalities one might meet when hanging out at busstops. Now I can't remember her name, but she always tells ya her name and asks your name. She always enthusiastically addresses me as "lady" until she gets "betty" back in her repertoire.
She decided she should explain the days of the week to me. When i do this scene in the book i'll have to figure out some more days, because she had a title for each day of that week leading up to the accidental punchline about the following week's holiday, but here's what I can recall. Maybe some of the other day were personal holidays, like her and her boyfriend's birthdays or anniversary... She said
Tomorrow is Lincoln's birthday, then Sunday is Valentine's Day, and then
Monday is Resident's Day -- that means you don't get no mail.
She was such a happy-go-lucky sweetheart; she interpreted my delighted giggle as just me enjoying the explanation. Good, because i would never want to embarrass her or cause her to second-guess her friendly busstop talk. Really I don't think she woulda minded, why I was so tickled to hear what she said. I think her name is Cheryl. Should I change it for the book? Would it matter to anyone? I'm guessing not.
Then I got on the bus and went to the reen. Emogene must have been on the phone interviewing a respondent, because it would have been funner for one and all for me to just tell her the funny story, but instead when i went in to gather my papers from the office mailslots, I told the story to the champ, who was trying to act all gruff, but she couldn't help laughing when i got to the day when you don't get no mail. I don't know, maybe i interrupted an important email from someone challenging her gruffness, but i think she was just entering phone numbers or something else that wasn't really part of her gig, something that she angrily did anyway, because her narc of an assistant had to do everything the same every day and wouldn't take initiative.
May have been the beginning of other bad stuff in the champ's life or the sciencetwits kept making fun of our great rapport, or the saboteur being jealous that we didn't hate each other, but for whatever reason unbeknownst to me then, all silent-fury hell was about to break loose. I remember being intensely confused because as far as I could tell, nothing bad was happening, but she clearly felt so bad, or something, and it wasn't because i told a one minute story which didn't even stop her from entering whatever it was on the computer. It's a mystery veiled in enigma shrouded by ambiguity obscured by who-cares. I never was able to find out what happened that month, but it was big and it was very bad. But for a few years now that spring is just a perplexing memory and not so horrifying. That moment of that day wasn't horrifying at all, it was just a little blip of strangeness that foreshadowed what was about to happen in the early springtime. Anyway, enough water eventually flowed under that frozen bridge, and life is way good for the bettster now, and from what I last heard from the champ I gather that she is way happier now, and from seeing the pics of her newly-hatched son, I think he's way happy and healthy too. Brava. Everything always works out somehow, even if we don't know exactly what has happened to people.
Either that Saturday or the following Saturday, I spent much of the day emailing back and forth with kev about the eleventh anniversary of opening the bettystore, and how we shouldn't have felt so bad about how people in our hometown treated us. It helped a lot, to get that stuff out and I felt so much bettyer having discussed it. I was still trying hard to be more confident about meeting new people, and kev's encouragement that year helped me accelerate that process a lot! Same deal when discussing it with Lil' Tom a couple years later, and Scott F. when he moved here in 2001. People who have left our hometown have a different perspective than those who've stayed, and it kind of lets us off the hook to talk about (how we did the best we could while we were there and aren't necessarily idiots for not leaving sooner, and) how good it was to leave. Trying to discuss that last month, during a visit with julipuli, who is wonderful and doing great work with lucky kids who take art classes in the public schools, and is a blessing to everyone who knows her, well that was probably not the best approach, but i'll re-explain some other time, and she'll say she alretty understands... (whew).
After Scott's first novel was published and read by people who didn't live in our hometown, which many of us probably thought was a uniquely ganky experience, he said lots of people (in Chicago?) came up to him and said that the scene he described reminded them a lot of the music scene in their hometown during the late 80s/early 90s. Does it make it better that we were not alone in the gank? Dunno.
Click here if you're not offended yet.
Now, I'm sure Lincoln was probably an okay guy who drank only in moderation. And prolly Mary Todd was a nice lady todd. People make fun of their over-hyped images, and then almost everyone freaks out. Jonathan Ned Katz wrote about "friendships between men before the invention of homosexuality" and people thought he was saying Lincoln had a gay affair with Joshua Speed, in my homotown. Hometown. Sorry. Katz makes it clear they probably never did actually have sex but might have been closer to each other than to their respective wives, and that Mary Todd may have had a similar closeness to one of her female friends. (Both of which sound kinda straight to me.) Really I got bored early on with the supposedly controversial book, and I disagree that the concept of homosexuality hadn't been invented yet by then, although it was surely interpreted differently in the 1800s than it has been in our lifetimes. But maybe sometime i'll check it out again and learn more and make sense of it, if I don't get too bored. It has some pictures of old-timey fellers holding hands, which is nice. Here is a distant pipetti cousin who may or may not have been my brother, standing with someone who may or may not be his special friend, perhaps merely enjoying the props where their photo was tooken.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
For a bettier look at those times, check out Sara Vowell's audiobook Assassination Vacation, or if you're a complete poindexter check it out analog and just read the print version. You'll have so much fun you won't know you're learning American History!
I'll just say in case any of you know the name of that cartoon (on cartoon network?) a few years ago where they time traveled to correct famous historical errors or something, that I can't remember if Lincoln was in it or not because i can't seem to find it on YouTube. Maybe i'm not using proper search terms. If you don't use enough terms you get 9000 hits and if you use too many you get 0000 hits. Such a pickle.
A series of X-Chromosome segments was called "Closet Cases." This one is about a Slice of Bread.
Click to viewHere's Zack, who I'm guessing doesn't bother with the closet!
Towards the end you get to see his adorable, humorous upbeat flipbook animation he made with post-its.
Thanks for pointing out that fun clip Kevvy! That kid is awesome, and it will be fun to see what more fun things he posts on the Internets. Today I am having not very many memories of this time of year. I know that approximately 31 years ago, during the bicentennial year, people had parades every chance they got. And back then February was really cold, even in our hometown, which is in "the South." And those of us who were scouts had to celebrate Lincoln's birthday by staggering in formation up to his tomb from somehwere, (from Lincoln's home?, no it couldn't have been that far, it must have been from somewhere else in the cemetery, but it seemed far because it was so cold and we were) carrying flags. Maybe we didnt have to march but march we did. I think we had coats on but i know we didn't have pants on.
Frickin girl scout uniforms did not include girlscout parkas or girlscout snowpants. That might have been the time that we all stood there while a limo skidded through the cemetary road, allegedly with President Ford in it and all the scouts had to wave at the bicentennial limo window, in which we could only see ourselves waving. I have left a voicemail query for Laurie about that event, because she is the one who remembers everything. I do remember all the scouts were frozen solid, but since we were all smiling like happy little harbingers of historical hoopla, all the scout parents decided to just leave us outside, like giddy scoutly lawn ornaments, until spring, at which point we thawed, and went back to school for a few weeks before summer. Good Times!
Here's something kev and a couple of other readers might recall
There was (or is) a big festival each summer, downtown in our hometown, honoring Lincoln. Which most people called "Drinkinfest" because that's about all there was to do there. For those of you who read Kennelcough, Gina was the basis for the character that thinks to herself upon returning from Greewich Village to be in Springfield for the summer, that showing her work at Betty's store will expose her art to the hippest cross section of folks in that town. And at the Amnesty benefit one summer she got her boyfriend or ex, some guy who was performing, unsolicited by me, to make an announcement promoting the betty store. Great kids. And now, I'm sure, great adults.
Our friend Gina was one of the artists in the hometown. When she made the t-shirt, her and Jim went around trying to sell it at the festival. It was similar to, or lifted from one of our state tourism department's favorite images o'Lincoln, except gina added the horns and red eyes. They said lots of people were shocked and acted like the shirt was sacrilegious or something. When i wore mine to work, my one african-american coworker laughed and said her son used to set people straight when he worked at Lincoln's home and try to de-sanctify the guy's image. My poindexter white boss lady in the accounting department (who was from Madison but you'd never have guessed that from her personality) said, primly "don't you like Abraham Lincoln, Betty?" Now, normally I woulda got all defensive and tried to explain reality to the most unrealistic of people, like uh, no, i think it's a comment on the hype surrounding the guy, not the guy himself, but in that context, it was bettier to just go "sure I like him just fine." What with there being no reaction that mrs boss woulda really heard. I must have washed it in too warm of water, because the red silscreening stuff ran and it soon turned into a pink shirt but it was always fun to wear it. It didn't take much to shock people in that town.
But, Betty, isn't there also a time-travel cartoon?!
Of course we gots to have one of those too, grasshoppers.
The following story will probably, in a slightly different & much less-emotive telling, be part of a scene in the never-ending novel-primo, but here's a short glimpse
In February of 1999 I went home for a long lunch, because I had a flexible schedule. Things were still groovy at the reen, and it was unseasonably warm, or I didn't care that it was cold out, because i was having fun. Eventually in the late afternoon, I walked back out onto Atwood avenue to ride the bus into the sunset so that I could interview some more niceladies down at the reen that evening. A funny and, as folks euphemistically say, "special" lady, who i had seen saying quirky things at bus stops before, was there, and she was all happy and conversational, and every once in a while she would turn to her quiet shy boyfriend and be all like "hi there honey; i love you honey," and then turn back to me and resume her chipper chatter. As many local bus riders know, the lady I'm referring to is a lot of fun, and one of the more pleasant personalities one might meet when hanging out at busstops. Now I can't remember her name, but she always tells ya her name and asks your name. She always enthusiastically addresses me as "lady" until she gets "betty" back in her repertoire.
She decided she should explain the days of the week to me. When i do this scene in the book i'll have to figure out some more days, because she had a title for each day of that week leading up to the accidental punchline about the following week's holiday, but here's what I can recall. Maybe some of the other day were personal holidays, like her and her boyfriend's birthdays or anniversary... She said
Tomorrow is Lincoln's birthday, then Sunday is Valentine's Day, and then
Monday is Resident's Day -- that means you don't get no mail.
She was such a happy-go-lucky sweetheart; she interpreted my delighted giggle as just me enjoying the explanation. Good, because i would never want to embarrass her or cause her to second-guess her friendly busstop talk. Really I don't think she woulda minded, why I was so tickled to hear what she said. I think her name is Cheryl. Should I change it for the book? Would it matter to anyone? I'm guessing not.
Then I got on the bus and went to the reen. Emogene must have been on the phone interviewing a respondent, because it would have been funner for one and all for me to just tell her the funny story, but instead when i went in to gather my papers from the office mailslots, I told the story to the champ, who was trying to act all gruff, but she couldn't help laughing when i got to the day when you don't get no mail. I don't know, maybe i interrupted an important email from someone challenging her gruffness, but i think she was just entering phone numbers or something else that wasn't really part of her gig, something that she angrily did anyway, because her narc of an assistant had to do everything the same every day and wouldn't take initiative.
May have been the beginning of other bad stuff in the champ's life or the sciencetwits kept making fun of our great rapport, or the saboteur being jealous that we didn't hate each other, but for whatever reason unbeknownst to me then, all silent-fury hell was about to break loose. I remember being intensely confused because as far as I could tell, nothing bad was happening, but she clearly felt so bad, or something, and it wasn't because i told a one minute story which didn't even stop her from entering whatever it was on the computer. It's a mystery veiled in enigma shrouded by ambiguity obscured by who-cares. I never was able to find out what happened that month, but it was big and it was very bad. But for a few years now that spring is just a perplexing memory and not so horrifying. That moment of that day wasn't horrifying at all, it was just a little blip of strangeness that foreshadowed what was about to happen in the early springtime. Anyway, enough water eventually flowed under that frozen bridge, and life is way good for the bettster now, and from what I last heard from the champ I gather that she is way happier now, and from seeing the pics of her newly-hatched son, I think he's way happy and healthy too. Brava. Everything always works out somehow, even if we don't know exactly what has happened to people.
Either that Saturday or the following Saturday, I spent much of the day emailing back and forth with kev about the eleventh anniversary of opening the bettystore, and how we shouldn't have felt so bad about how people in our hometown treated us. It helped a lot, to get that stuff out and I felt so much bettyer having discussed it. I was still trying hard to be more confident about meeting new people, and kev's encouragement that year helped me accelerate that process a lot! Same deal when discussing it with Lil' Tom a couple years later, and Scott F. when he moved here in 2001. People who have left our hometown have a different perspective than those who've stayed, and it kind of lets us off the hook to talk about (how we did the best we could while we were there and aren't necessarily idiots for not leaving sooner, and) how good it was to leave. Trying to discuss that last month, during a visit with julipuli, who is wonderful and doing great work with lucky kids who take art classes in the public schools, and is a blessing to everyone who knows her, well that was probably not the best approach, but i'll re-explain some other time, and she'll say she alretty understands... (whew).
After Scott's first novel was published and read by people who didn't live in our hometown, which many of us probably thought was a uniquely ganky experience, he said lots of people (in Chicago?) came up to him and said that the scene he described reminded them a lot of the music scene in their hometown during the late 80s/early 90s. Does it make it better that we were not alone in the gank? Dunno.
Click here if you're not offended yet.
Now, I'm sure Lincoln was probably an okay guy who drank only in moderation. And prolly Mary Todd was a nice lady todd. People make fun of their over-hyped images, and then almost everyone freaks out. Jonathan Ned Katz wrote about "friendships between men before the invention of homosexuality" and people thought he was saying Lincoln had a gay affair with Joshua Speed, in my homotown. Hometown. Sorry. Katz makes it clear they probably never did actually have sex but might have been closer to each other than to their respective wives, and that Mary Todd may have had a similar closeness to one of her female friends. (Both of which sound kinda straight to me.) Really I got bored early on with the supposedly controversial book, and I disagree that the concept of homosexuality hadn't been invented yet by then, although it was surely interpreted differently in the 1800s than it has been in our lifetimes. But maybe sometime i'll check it out again and learn more and make sense of it, if I don't get too bored. It has some pictures of old-timey fellers holding hands, which is nice. Here is a distant pipetti cousin who may or may not have been my brother, standing with someone who may or may not be his special friend, perhaps merely enjoying the props where their photo was tooken.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
For a bettier look at those times, check out Sara Vowell's audiobook Assassination Vacation, or if you're a complete poindexter check it out analog and just read the print version. You'll have so much fun you won't know you're learning American History!
I'll just say in case any of you know the name of that cartoon (on cartoon network?) a few years ago where they time traveled to correct famous historical errors or something, that I can't remember if Lincoln was in it or not because i can't seem to find it on YouTube. Maybe i'm not using proper search terms. If you don't use enough terms you get 9000 hits and if you use too many you get 0000 hits. Such a pickle.