all summer in a day

I think the sun is a flower
that blooms for just one hour

all summer in a day, ray bradbury, 1954

tommy!

sometimes what I love is the unchangingness of it all. I love going back and stepping back.

and really, going to tommy's can't be described as anything but stepping back. in all sorts of ways.

that bright red sign. the steeply gabled little stand. the attack pigeons.





I especially love the line drawing of mr. tommy. all smiles and hatchmarks. like, "you wanna some more ketchup? go ahead, they's a whole bucket of packets right in fronna you. take as much as you want. ketchup's good for you!"

and while you're waiting there for your tommyburger order, you're peering in, wondering who the tommy offspring are. is it the one cutting onions? the one on the phone? the one asking you if you want a large or supah-large coke?


and, then, voilà, tommy burgers. with a side of tommy fries. and fistfuls of ketchup packets.

a and yet, something is missing. something doesn't feel quite right. what is it? more ketchup?

...maybe...maybe, *s!, these just weren't ever as good as you're pretending to remember them as being.

somehow, I skipped straight from julian lennon's valotte to bon jovi's slippery when wet--though in hindsight, maybe not such a far leap after all. which the doors opened to all sorts of aquanet-sustained musical adventures. and then! 1987's appetite for destruction, which changed my life. but that's another story.

the point being there was a time when I cared that they replaced adam curry with riki rachtman. that's all.

love like this

when I was 5, the great love of my life, cody-from-across-the-street moved away.

for several glorious months, we avouched our love affair by trading pushes on the swings and licks from our handi-snacks cheese and cracker packets. we lived the summer in the sun, swinging our feet over the pool in his back yard and re-enacting that week's episode of SuperFriends, which he had to recap for me since I wasn't allowed to watch it. of course, I was always wonderwoman, and my wonderwoman action figure even had a detachable lasso. and cuffs that lit up. but I was always envious of his plastic man, which had been stretched beyond repair from an episode in which he had been stretched around the earth and tied hand to foot at the north pole. sadly, he didn't quite reach around my globe, and worse yet, he never recovered.

I didn't even know he was moving away until one day he was no longer there. and to mark the end of our summer together, was a shallow grave under the pink rose bush in our front yard.

my dad was weeding when he found the poorly dug hole. he rooted around for a couple of minutes and then came into the house to find me. "I think these must be yours", he said, holding out his hand. and when he uncurled his fingers, lying in his palm, were plasticman and the atom.

a summer in two sun-warmed bits of colored injection-molded plastic.

tokio hotel

brought to you by my 13-year old self, in conjunction with my present-day self who realizes that her 13-year old self was imminently cooler than she will ever be again:



I did use to love the pretty long-haired boys in eyeliner. where did they all go?

the lead singer, tom, reminds me of j, whom I used to have a crush on and would steal glances at all the time when I was dating i. I'd make excuses to catch him in his velvet-suited glory, leaning against the streetposts on telegraph or at popscene at the cat club, before it moved to 330 ritch. all hair and dark-rimmed eyes and thin, long fingers.

I'm sure he's probably the bagcheck dude at an amoeba somewhere or something.

o, back to tokio hotel. the obligatory ballad:


I told kisling that they were like an early crüe, circa too fast for love or shout. but I take that back now. more on the realm of theatre of pain. but cuter? and cleaner?

pussy cow

does anyone remember cal worthington and his dog spot? I don't really remember much from the 80s, but I remember these commercials:



and apparently, he wasn't saying "pussy cow" but "go see cal". eh. 24 years in translation.

galen

midnight cowboy at la bonbonniere

photo credit: chiik

it was a pretty ordinary moment. we stopped in for a snack--probably burgers--at a likely looking spot; a diner called la bonbonniere in chelsea that looked like it had weathered something more than the sunshine outside.

it was when this pair sat down that the particular shade of sunshine changed. what was it about them that makes me take out this photo, now, over a year later and stare at it? I don't know, exactly.

it's just that he was so tired. and was so careful of the little one. it was cold outside, and you can see they're bundled up yet, because they'd been walking a while and hadn't warmed up enough to unwrap themselves from the layers they were wrapped in. that blue backpack was so gingerly pulled off his back and hung up. you can't really see, but that brown corduroy jacket had at least 2 sweaters underneath, and all that puffiness made it difficult to maneuver his arms. and the chair was too low for the table, and so he's actually kneeling on the seat, with the toes of his tennies hanging just over the edge.

they split a bowl of soup, and after a bit, a hotdog. you can see the end of the dog as a bulge of cheek, and somehow, it is that little bit that sort of breaks my heart every time.

I wonder if they ever made it to florida.

déjà vu

it's the overabundance, I think, that always did me in. skies, sunshine, entertainment, warmth, love. endless and overwhelming. I'm basking in it but at the same time choking from the excess.

I remembered this as I sat down looking at the table set with alverta osetra caviar, lobster, and two kinds of foie gras. if food is the way to your heart, I can feel mine being blocked off by impenetrable plaques built up by extravagances.


poops, you should've traded places with me these past few meals. you know I'd be just as happy with a stack of naan and a cadbury milk tray. but for future reference:

valentino: I'm not so in love with italian restaurants, although, there's something to be said about a place that says, "if you don't see your favorite dish, ask for it and we will produce it for you. if you don't have a favorite dish, tell us and we will create one for you." I now have a favorite dish.
urasawa: sushi is as sushi does, unless it's so overwhelming that you can only sit there and tell the waiter, whatever. just bring me whatever.
providence: the 8-course dessert tasting menu was worth everything. how else can you explain being compelled to put something described as just "bacon, peanut butter and banana" in your mouth?

boys on film

john taylor still has the ability to reduce me to that sort of girl. and if you don't know what I mean, it really isn't worth the time in explaining. I won't get it right and you won't understand.

let's just contemplate this picture instead:




things I love:
boys who can wear white pants
rolled up shirtsleeves
bare ankles, wrists & collarbones
the pulling off of casual
treehouses
hair that makes you want to pull
seersucker

grow up

I remember it so clearly: it was the fifth grade, we were on the upper playground, whiling away the noontime recess after lunch. It was warm out, late spring, maybe, and I was sitting with the other girls when Kevin came up to me and asked to speak with me away from the others. He was with Mookie, two of the more popular boys in the class, and good friends of mine, so it didn’t seem odd or suspicious in any way. I left the other girls and followed them out about 20 feet or so, away from anyone who could hear us. A huddle of girls on one side of the yard, another of boys on the other.

Kevin cleared his throat. Looked down for a second and then straight at me. Mookie was fidgeting with some kind of anticipation as I waited for one of them to say something. “We just wanted to tell you, that all the boys were talking, and we decided that you were one of the nicest girls. And the coolest.”

“Yeah, you’re really bitchin’”, that would be Mookie, who had decided “bitchin’” was the word of the month.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, it’s nothing I’d ever really considered before, but I was cool. Or at least an approximation of that in a way that was acceptable in my eyes. I went to all the same parties, hung out with the same people, did all the same things afterschool. I didn’t really care or think about what I looked like, but never questioned whether anyone else did.

“But, none of us will ever go out with you because you’re too ugly.” Okay, so maybe that’s not what he said, exactly. But it’s close enough, and that’s definitely what I heard.

It didn’t hurt. When you’re 10, you don’t really have the resources to feel pain or indignation at judgment that’s being passed at you. After all, they’d had a conference, and it was decided. I was too ugly ever to be considered. But I was nice. I think I thanked them. I’m sure I did. And then I walked back over to the girls and sat down, continuing our conversation where we’d left off, and shelving this somewhere in the back of my mind. Where it would sit and slowly ferment until it pushed itself back into the front.

I didn’t actually remember this until years and years later. Somewhere in college, as I was telling Idaho a story about something, this popped into my head, and I remembered. And in that instance, nearly a decade after it happened, everything I hadn’t felt before flooded me unawares: hurt, anger, shame, sadness, betrayal.

Do we ever escape our fifth grade selves, in the end?