Ghost Posts on a Big Day with bonus Confessions of a nervous puker

Today is my kidlet’s birthday. It’s also the day of her class trip to the zoo, as it worked out, and thankfully the school at which I teach is on Spring Break, so it’s all come synchronicitously together in order that I could chaperone the trip and spend the day with her classmates and her. Which is where I’ve been all day. Unless …

When I was a kid, there were no less than three separate occasions on which I was supposed to take a field trip to the zoo with my school and got so excited the morning of the trip that I threw up and was told I could not go.

Consequently, my first zoo visit was in Berlin at age 18. No regrets, because it was a kickass experience, as well as informative: did you know that one of the zoo’s elephants was actually the first casualty of the Allied bombing of Berlin? Tell A Friend!

Well … that’s a pretty bleak fact, any way you look at it, really. Maybe keep it among us. I’m sorry I even said anything. Lately I’ve been blurting out awful things: I don’t know what’s going on with me.

As an example, I was next going to tell you that, growing up, besides vomiting my way out of zoo visits, I also got sick on my birthday two different times, and, in one instance, my mother briskly carried out the party in the backyard without me while I knelt on my bed and watched out the window of my room, but that’s bleak, too. Then I was going to say that I still throw up all the time when I’m nervous, upset, or excited, and it’s not an uncommon sight to see me roll down my window and have to puke out the car while behind the wheel, driving on my way to some place or person I feel Ways about that get my guts all knit up, but that’s even worse. Jesus wept, this is supposed to be about my kidlet’s birthday! I’m giving up.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow (today) finds me on the trip as a chaperone, and not so excited that I got sick and the teacher and my mom made me stay home. Again.

Teevee Time: Simpsons category Inaugural Edition feat. plea for help

Woo-hoo! (Homer voice)

via.

Oh, my goodness, dudes. The classes for the credential program into which I’ve been busting my ass to get accepted during my absence from the journal are so right-hand-to-Jeebus insanely expensive that I’d seriously sell my blood if I hadn’t been turned down in the past.* Anybody got any far-fetched ideas that are “so crazy they just might work” as to money-making schemes that don’t involve illegal activities or door-to-door knife sales (I consider those two things on a par)? I am taking ideas.

*Tragically true story.

Sk8 or die: Cool your jets/don’t have a cow/who the hell are you

A few weeks ago, one of my kids tossed off some Simpsons line, and I made some similar quote in reply, and the students asked, “You know The Simpsons?” incredulously. I said, “Pfft! I’ve been doing the Bartman since before you jive turkeys’ parents even kissed at their eighth grade dance.”

But I can’t feel too cool because I said “jive turkey.” And it was indicated to me by my dearest friendoh who is my barometer of hip that only old people say that anymore. Thanks, Miss D!

Flashback Friday — Self-audit (finally starting it up again) and Advice: FROM me ABOUT Zooey Deschanel, totally SFW!

This post originally appeared on Dec 2, 2009, at 9:57 PM.

Grand news. The parent-teacher conference went wonderfully!, beyond my wildest dreams!, and I think I may even have snowed kidlet’s teacher in to buying that I am an adult, an elaborate new con on which I’ve been working, whose growing success at the grocery, church, and among new acquaintances is beginning to perturb me and make me check for crow’s feet.

via zooeydeschanel.us

On the way back from picking up the kidlet and Special K from the park where they played while I was at the conference because I was busy conferencing on top secret conferencey shit, Katohs and I were discussing all things fantastic, adorable, unique, and vintage-ish, as we are wont to do, and she said, “I came to a point in my life where I realized I was never going to get to be Zooey Deschanel, and I was like, ‘What’s the point in going on?'”

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

I replied, “But that’s okay. All we can do is try to inject a little Zooey into each day, like be inspired by her energy!” advancing one of my typical over-optimistic, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, hippie-crazy-go-nuts solutions that often barely even mean anything in the final analysis. When I am up against a tough point in conversation with a friendoh who is downohs, I sometimes morph into Dharma from Dharma and Greg — cryptic comments about the universe and energy and destiny just fall out of my mouth. But I think, actually, this time I managed to string together some pretty good advice!

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

I think we women often admire a quality in another woman and somehow, whether it is something ugly and atavistic, or something society has trained us to do that we can more easily shake off, we want that quality for ourselves instead of simply accepting with grace and admiration what a lucky thing it is that that other woman has the quality we like and how fortunate we have been to experience it. We are a covetous bunch, we ladies. “If I could sing like her; if I had hair like hers; if only I had her body; her style; her car or career or cake serving set…”

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

“…then?” What? Your life would be perfect? Never! There has never been a perfect, easy, or charmed life in the history of EVER! We are wasting such chances with our jealousy and poisonous reaction to a standout quality in another gal, blinded by our instant avarice: when something sticks out in your mind about another woman, ignore the negative instinct and instead seize a vital opportunity to connect with a woman, as two people. We need all to work on this.

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source

We have to love each other first, because then loving ourselves will come next, and then when you have so much going on already, it’s only natural that the love of whatever man or woman strikes your fancy will follow! (See, if the whole admire-other-women-and-love-them-for-the-reflection-of-the-creator-in-them-that-is-also-in-you bit didn’t work, then hopefully the it-will-make-your-crush-crush-back bit will. I’m new-agey but also very sneaky!)

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)

None of this is to say Katohs was jealous. She was expressing admiration for Zooey Deschanel. But I think it’s interesting that our culture has conditioned a young woman, especially even one as bright and categorically outstanding as Special K, to, when she sees a woman she admires and idolizes, even joke about wanting to be her, rather than just be able to be like her. Weird people we all are or have been made to be. I’m trying to change, personally. I’m hoping it’s something that can be a choice.

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)

Other highlights: over lunch at Thai House, I introduced Katohs to the concept and history of “spoonerisms;” kidlet told me flatly that she was going to marry Jude Law, and, when she did, I would need to build her a house for them to live in (knowing Jude Law and the rumors I have heard of his skeeviness this is entirely possible and I guess I had better start saving); and Special K and I determined that it is mainly okay to slap a baby if the baby is really, really annoying.

via zooeydeschanel.net

No babies were slapped in the writing of this self-audit.

edit: So this is the promised Flashback Friday post that picks up the thread of thought in the 69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 5 post. It’s all about rejecting the modern standard of cattiness and pointless avarice and trading them for cooperation and admiration. I mean, Jesus Christ, we are playing right in to the hands of the machine with this bullshit behavior, ladies. If you’re all bound up in bitching each other out, then you’re not paying attention to what’s going on around you, which means you’re not trying to change anything, which means everything can stay its shitty same self, which means the machine wins. Do you see? Revolution! — won’t you please help me do it up right?

Daily Batman: Girl Talk

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I think there was a board game called “Girl Talk” when I was young but if it was ever played at a party I was either not invited or in some other room reading Bunnicula. Probably both. I think there was a game called that, at least … shoot. Now that’s bugging me … I’m giving it a googly-moogly.

Girl Talk was one of a rash of “teenage girl-themed games” that appeared on the market in the 80s and 90s based around boys, talking on the phone, dancing, having parties and sleepovers, and other “girl-ish” themes.

Like, omgz! Gag me with a spoon! Math is hard!

via

It was similar to Truth-or-Dare. … Each action (or question) is worth a certain amount of points. If you did not perform the action or answer the question, you had to wear a zit sticker. Some people actually thought the zit stickers were fun as well.[citation needed]

“Citation needed.” I should fucking well say so! None of that sounds fun even at all: it just sounds like junior high gym class.

Guess who likes you in this talking telephone game. I’m guessing that boy who threw the music stand at me and keeps riding his bike by my house wearing black socks with teva sandals. I always attract the sanest, winningest dudes on the planet.

All that is missing from that game description being my eighth grade P.E. period is me trying to grab my clothes and get them on as quickly as possible before Jamie Sawyer [not her actual name but in case she has turned her life around I do not want her to feel persecuted] gets done in the bathroom (having no need to change clothes, as she refused to dress for gym class, she would merely use the changing time to reapply her layers upon layers of black under-eye liner) and starts roaming the locker room looking for things to steal and people to punch.

This is strikingly close to Jamie’s middle school “look,” including the hickey from specious older sources, only she also teased her hair up very high in the front.

The first several weeks that my old friendoh Tweaky Lawn was at our school, she had transferred from Texas as a pre-established rather badass bully and all-around riot grrl and needed to establish herself in the ladies’-prison-yard-style pecking order of the middle school ne’er-do-wells, so she had winning scuffles with some scattered pretenders to the crown of All Time Baddestass Girl.

I heard a rumor one Friday morning on the bus that Tweaks was going to fight aforementioned thief, boxer and brigand Jamie Sawyer (basically a girl pirate in Doc Martens) but found that too incredible to be true. She had only just got here, and who would invite flannel-fist enclosed, painful death by pummeling like that? To voluntarily choose for that half-inch of eyeliner and, I shit you not, nearly-foot-high mound of teased bangs to be the last thing I ever saw?

Like this only shitty and too much so that you look tired and cheap.

No, thank you. I told the person who told me they’d heard from reliable sources about Tweaky Lawn’s intention to fight Jamie that Tweaks was smarter than that and it couldn’t be so. Jamie was more than a bully or tough girl, she was heading toward being a full on junior psychopath who regularly terrorized people she considered weaker than she with more than normal relish, like, picking on the special kids and working herself in to a froth cussing out teachers who were like 100 years old. She also liked to set fires. (I know, right? Aileen Wuornos much??) I figured Tweaky wouldn’t get herself tangled up with that, even if she had mentioned that “that bitch” needed “her attitude adjusted.”

Shortly after lunch the news came down through gossip channels that both girls had been suspended, and I wondered over the weekend what the outcome had been. I really liked Tweaky by then and I hoped she hadn’t been hurt too badly and wouldn’t be embarassed.

via

I found out those fears were in vain when Jamie came in to our first period gym class that following Monday. She haughtily refused to look at anyone but actually went to her locker and pulled out sweatpants and a properly labeled “‘J. Sawyer,’ S__ Tigers” shirt that I did not even know she had and started putting them on like it was something she always intended to do. Two of her fingers were taped together with a splint. For once she wore no makeup, because not only was one eye black, but the other was nearly so and was also entirely red from the outer corner to her pupil — Tweaky had broken the blood vessels. I’ve always viewed her as a kind of lady Hercules since then.

The story has to do with this.

The story of how Tweaky and I met, when I gave her a bloody nose and shockingly lived to tell the tale, I will save for another day. I told it to my eighth graders when subbing last February and it apparently made the rounds of the small private Catholic school at which I substitute teach — where you have a conference with your teacher and the principal if you have below a B in a subject — and was such a popularly horrific tale of the gritty public school world that when I subbed in the seventh grade a few weeks later, I was scarcely done with attendance before they demanded to hear the story firsthand.

Wow. All donesies. This has been your Girl Talk edition of the Daily Batman.

June is bustin’ out all over — time to jump along with it

Today has gone about as I expected, but with weirdly more zen-like contentment and even restrained happiness.

The principal as much as said at the interview that she would have to go with the more experienced teacher to fill the position at the school where I’ve been working as an aide and substitute, no matter how she felt personally about me, due to parent demand for fully credentialed teachers, as I had anticipated. I assured her I understood that with the parents, it is always a delicate balance and I appreciated that she was in an awkward position. We agreed it was a shame that I can’t in good conscience take out a loan and pursue my credential until I have a job to finance that academic endeavor, and the promise of one in my own field is worth holding out for, but I can’t secure a position like that without proof I am at least beginning an effort to be in a credential program, which puts me in this awful Catch-22.

Brigitte Bardot photographed by Phillipe Halsman, 1951.

But overall it was a really positive, loving, and upbeat interview, and it accomplished my chief goal, which was to demonstrate the sincerity of my committment to the little community she has created at her school. She was really nice and spoke glowingly of things she hoped we would be able to do in the near future. She said frankly that she wanted me on her staff and that once this position was filled according to tradition and political appeasement, there would not be pretty much any competition for whatever new openings may arise next year. It was a good talk.

via Square America.

So. Happy thoughts. Great things happening in my life with these tutoring jobs for the Scamps and kidlet finishing up kindergarten tomorrow, plus my Katohs graduates high school tonight, and all in all I’ve got a million things to be thankful about and a new season in which to celebrate them. And I have decided — no more hiding and tossing in my sleep. No more anxiety and self-doubt constantly wracking me. No more tearing at my fingernails and spitting them out while my mind hashes through all the ways things can go wrong and obsesses over my bank account.

Audrey Hepburn photographed by Philippe Halsman, 1955.

Time to start leaping a little. Let’s do it!

Valentine Vixen — Kona Carmack, Miss February 1996

Photographed by Richard Fegley.

Kona was born and raised in Honolulu but has been living in North Carolina for the past year while she attends college. … By the time she turned 16, she had followed her younger brother, La’au, into the surf and soon was challenging ten-foot waves (well, one anyway – and that was enough). “I was always the only girl out there surfing, besides my friend Kili,” she says.

(“Aloha, Kona.” Rowe, Chip. Playboy, February 1996.)

Ms. Carmack used the same trick in college that I did: sitting up front so you can’t fool around. If I wasn’t in the very front row, I started feeling like I could tune out or even skip class, so when I got serious about school, I was front and center in every course. If I hadn’t done that, lord knows how long it would’ve taken me to finish college!

Regardless of the subject, Kona sits in the front row so she doesn’t miss anything. “It’s kind of nerdy, but it works,” says Miss February, a marketing major with a 3.4 GPA. “I also raise my hand a lot. If I don’t understand something, I’m not just going to sit there.”(Ibid.)

One of the most liberating moments of her first year came during English 101, when she wrote a term paper blasting antiporn crusader Catharine MacKinnon. “She argues that Playboy is pornography,” says Kona. “I don’t happen to agree.” She got an A.

Kona excels in the classroom, but she’s no egghead. (Ibid.)

Heaven forbid.

FAVORITE BOY NAMES: Fletcher, Nicholas, Victor, Tristan. (Playmate datasheet)

Nick and Victor are great names, but Fletcher and Tristan, erm, not to step on any toes but … not so much.

My daughter’s father’s sister named one of her two sons Tristan. He is an adorable and bright little boy but, out of all the boy names in the world, I’m not sure it’s the first one with which I would’ve gone. I think my husband once told me his mom wanted to name him Tristan but my father-in-law put his foot down. Isn’t that how the story went, husbandoh? Pretty sure it was “Tristan” or “Dorian” or some shit, you know, something real get-your-ass-kicked-in-school faggoty.

I like how I make guilty amends for possibly insulting dudes named Fletch and Tristan, but cheerily slander homosexuals. I guess it’s because I know that I’m not a bigot. But all apologies just the same to anyone with no sense of humor and anyone who has somehow missed the fact that I rather obviously trend toward batting both left and right and therefore ought be excused from call-outs for gay slurs with the same impunity that permits black people to call each other you-know-what. (Boy, that didn’t even come out very sincere, did it? Jonohs once told me I apologize too much, but it seems when the chips are down and I have to mean it, I’m not much good at mea culpas. Sorry again.)

In a business in which it’s easy to put on an act, Carmack doesn’t have one, leaving her vulnerable and exposed, especially to the question that has to be asked: “So, what about the Playboy thing?”

“Oh you!” she squeals, “The very first question!”

Carmack has no regrets about posing for the magazine’s February 1996 centerfold.

“It got me into the entertainment world and taught me so many lessons. I learned how to survive, how to be tough, how to be professional. I would not be the person I am today without having had that opportunity.”

This picture came from a different Playboy photoshoot and was shot by Chris Peter Paul. Kona was Miss March 1998 in Playboy Germany and 1997’s Playmate of the Year in Japan, so I’m guessing it’s from one of those, or possibly the Year In Review. I included it here because it is cute.

Yet she wishes people would get over it.

“When people meet me, they always say, ‘You’re so nice. You’re not at all like what I imagined.’ So I’m like, ‘Oh, thank you!,’ ” she says, with a huge, grateful grin and her arm extended in a pretend handshake.

(“Kona Gold.” Kam, Nadine. December 19, 2000. Honolulu Star-Bulletin.)

In 2001 Carmack moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California for cinematography. She graduated in December 2003 with cum laude honors, completing the five-year program in half the time. (“Old Friends — Kona Carmack.” Moniz, Melissa. August 2, 2006. MidWeek Oahu.)

“I really got into it and started producing my own little films.” (Ibid.)

One of those “little films” was a popular and successful documentary about the life of Duke Kahanamoku, aka “The Big Kahuna.”

Born in Waikiki in 1890, Kahanamoku pretty much singlehandedly turned surfing into an international sport, bringing his “papa nui” longboard, built in the style of old school Hawaiian olo boards, to the mainland and to Australia for swimming and surfing exhibitions. He was also a several-times-over Olympic gold medalist in swimming and in water polo.

In Newport Beach, California on June 14, 1925, Kahanamoku rescued eight men from a fishing vessel that capsized in heavy surf while attempting to enter the city’s harbor. Twenty-nine fishermen went into the water and seventeen perished. Using his surfboard, he was able to make quick trips back and forth to shore to increase the number of sailors rescued. Two other surfers saved four more fishermen. Newport’s police chief at the time called Duke’s efforts “the most superhuman surfboard rescue act the world has ever seen.” (the wiki.)

Pretty awesome, eh? Super-interesting man and great life story.

Upon graduating from film school, Carmack started work as a production assistant on the HBO series Deadwood. The next year, Carmack was promoted to executive assistant producer to Greg Fienberg. (“Old Friends.”)

After Deadwood, Kona went on to work as assistant to producer Randy Zisk on one of my favorite television shows of all time, Monk. Super-cool!

Although her home and career for the moment are in Los Angeles, her heart still belongs to Hawaii.

“I miss my family so much, that’s No. 1,” says Carmack. “I also miss surfing – I surf every day when I’m home. And of course I miss the food. I love it at home, I miss everything about it.” (Ibid.)

Carmack definitely plans to move back to Hawaii eventually, mostly to be closer to her mom and family.

“My mom is my best friend, and I’m really proud of her with what she’s been doing all these years for Easter Seals,” says Carmack. “It’s really her passion to help children with disabilities. She’s just wonderful, and she’s my inspiration.” (Ibid.)

The Easter Seals are a nonprofit that provide aid and services to children and adults with autism, special needs, and other disabilities.

The organization that would become Easter Seals was founded by Edgar Allen, an Ohio-businessman who lost his son in a streetcar crash. The lack of adequate medical services available to save his son prompted Allen to sell his business and begin a fund-raising campaign to build a hospital in his hometown of Elyria, Ohio. That hospital continues to operate today as Elyria Memorial Hospital. After the hospital was built, Allen learned that children with disabilities were often hidden from public view. Inspired by this discovery, in 1919 he founded what would become the National Society for Crippled Children, the first organization of its kind. (the wiki.)

Click here to visit their website. My goddaughter’s brother is autistic and though Panda and the Mister are some of the most loving and supportive people you will ever meet, not everyone is as lucky as Nathaniel. So please consider making a donation? — Hey, this could be your big shot at impressing Ms. Carmack!

Dig Leslie Nielsen on the cover. Goddamn, he’s one suave fucker. (Left-field Blue Velvet reference to wind things down. You’re welcome.)

Sam Haskins Month, Day 6: Gill the art student, Girl Two

“Gill, the art student with ribbons in her hair.”

Click to see larger.

“…images from my book Five Girls. The model, photographer and in this case the Rolleiflex camera are all comfortably anchored flat on the floor.” (Sam’s blog, April 13, 2008)

All five of the models in Five Girls, like Sam, are from South Africa. That’s where he shot the book. I’ll see what else I can dig up on the girls.

Self-audit (finally starting it up again) and Advice: FROM me ABOUT Zooey Deschanel, totally SFW!

Grand news. The parent-teacher conference went wonderfully!, beyond my wildest dreams!, and I think I may even have snowed kidlet’s teacher in to buying that I am an adult, an elaborate new con on which I’ve been working, whose growing success at the grocery, church, and among new acquaintances is beginning to perturb me and make me check for crow’s feet.

via zooeydeschanel.us

On the way back from picking up the kidlet and Special K from the park where they played while I was at the conference because I was busy conferencing on top secret conferencey shit, Katohs and I were discussing all things fantastic, adorable, unique, and vintage-ish, as we are wont to do, and she said, “I came to a point in my life where I realized I was never going to get to be Zooey Deschanel, and I was like, ‘What’s the point in going on?'”

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

I replied, “But that’s okay. All we can do is try to inject a little Zooey into each day, like be inspired by her energy!” advancing one of my typical over-optimistic, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, hippie-crazy-go-nuts solutions that often barely even mean anything in the final analysis. When I am up against a tough point in conversation with a friendoh who is downohs, I sometimes morph into Dharma from Dharma and Greg — cryptic comments about the universe and energy and destiny just fall out of my mouth. But I think, actually, this time I managed to string together some pretty good advice!

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

I think we women often admire a quality in another woman and somehow, whether it is something ugly and atavistic, or something society has trained us to do that we can more easily shake off, we want that quality for ourselves instead of simply accepting with grace and admiration what a lucky thing it is that that other woman has the quality we like and how fortunate we have been to experience it. We are a covetous bunch, we ladies. “If I could sing like her; if I had hair like hers; if only I had her body; her style; her car or career or cake serving set…”

via zooeydeschanel.us (again)

“…then?” What? Your life would be perfect? Never! There has never been a perfect, easy, or charmed life in the history of EVER! We are wasting such chances with our jealousy and poisonous reaction to a standout quality in another gal, blinded by our instant avarice: when something sticks out in your mind about another woman, ignore the negative instinct and instead seize a vital opportunity to connect with a woman, as two people. We need all to work on this.

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source

We have to love each other first, because then loving ourselves will come next, and then when you have so much going on already, it’s only natural that the love of whatever man or woman strikes your fancy will follow! (See, if the whole admire-other-women-and-love-them-for-the-reflection-of-the-creator-in-them-that-is-also-in-you bit didn’t work, then hopefully the it-will-make-your-crush-crush-back bit will. I’m new-agey but also very sneaky!)

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)

None of this is to say Katohs was jealous. She was expressing admiration for Zooey Deschanel. But I think it’s interesting that our culture has conditioned a young woman, especially even one as bright and categorically outstanding as Special K, to, when she sees a woman she admires and idolizes, even joke about wanting to be her, rather than just be able to be like her. Weird people we all are or have been made to be. I’m trying to change, personally. I’m hoping it’s something that can be a choice.

Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)

Other highlights: over lunch at Thai House, I introduced Katohs to the concept and history of “spoonerisms;” kidlet told me flatly that she was going to marry Jude Law, and, when she did, I would need to build her a house for them to live in (knowing Jude Law and the rumors I have heard of his skeeviness this is entirely possible and I guess I had better start saving); and Special K and I determined that it is mainly okay to slap a baby if the baby is really, really annoying.

via zooeydeschanel.net

No babies were slapped in the writing of this self-audit.