And I Won't Forget the Men Who Died...

The weekend has proven to need more recovery time than I had allotted for.  It was a busy one with lots of opportunities to embarrass myself and/or just kinda look like a jackass in general. But these things happen-to me anyway.
I got happy hour started a little early on Friday at a small neighborhood bar that happens to be known for its pasta, and also just so happens to be along the route of a regionally famous race for charity that draws horrible race for charity people in from out of town every year.
So there I was carbo loading on beer and spaghetti (not for the race, because I didn't even realize it was that time until I couldn't find a place to park-otherwise I totally would've been doing it for the race) when about dinner time I look around and find my group had been surrounded by runner types. With their tight ponytails and sharp features and stud earrings, swaddled in North Face and complaining about how crowded it was and demanding to know why they couldn't be seated.  As a local I'd like to know who recommended this place to these weekend warriors, when the only people who don't look like they're only there for the beer and pasta are the 90's CK commercial bartenders. And even they look like they smoke to stay in shape.
My point is had I known all this was happening I probably would've gone elsewhere-or at least tightened up a ponytail and put on a sleeveless fleece.  OK, I wouldn't have done any of that-but I probably would have passed on the shots and refrained from telling the pinched blonde next to me, "I don't run.  Ever. For anything. Like I would probably lay down and let myself get raped and cannibalized at End of Days.  I mean, but that's not an invitation or anything."

The rest of the weekend I knew exactly what I was getting myself into-the French film festival. There I was among my people -pretentious foreign film goers- when I realize about halfway through that I had without thinking worn a black and white striped top.  Really? To a French film festival? That's like wearing the t-shirt to the concert, or buying cowboy boots to go to Nashville. So effing basic. Excuses: I'm sure it was something in my subconscious. And I was still clouded from the day before.

   --This is like the time I wore a McQueen skull scarf to the Pirate House in Savannah, GA.  I. KNOW.  But I didn't know it would be so themey, all I'd read was that it was fine dining.  Well, fine dining it was not. And there certainly was a knock-off Capt. Jack Sparrow roaming around and interrupting our dinner conversation every ten minutes to call us all scallywags.--

Anyway back to the film festival where after about $100 of wine and tiny cheeses I began pelting my neighbors with the roasted chickpeas I couldn't stab with my fork. I did manage to make friends though, as I somehow always do.  After asking a group of men speaking French at the French film festival if they were Canadian, I introduced them to Betty. A shot of Crown in Redbull a la the Jager Bomb. You're welcome, France!
It is very well known that I am all class, all the time-or as my niece would say 'classy as fuck'. But that's what I'm here for, representing 'Merica.  Just ask any Frenchman.

#TBT

Maybe it's all the talk of Kraft products over the past couple of days, or it could be that I offer up a "donation" for some mandatory drug screening fun tomorrow. But an old friend came to mind for my throwback this morning...  Cheers.

I knew this guy who went by his last name, Brenneman. He came into town from Ohio the summer before my senior year of high school. He was older, probably about 23 or so. He told horrible stories about working in a cheese factory and his older cousin going to high school with Jody Watley. 

I had smoked weed many times before but had never really gotten anything from it. Then Brenneman taught me how to smoke a bong. The first time I got high I was sitting on his hand me down sofa with a tube of chapstick in my hand. I just couldn't let it go. When I finally brought myself to put some on, I dropped the cap behind the cushions. I got down on my knees and turned to slide my hand down the back of the sofa. It had a fold-out bed, and when I stuck my hand through the cushions, my arm got stuck in the bed frame bars. I giggled for what seemed like hours-twenty minutes probably- on my knees, ass in the air, with my arm stuck in a sofa while Brenneman cooked potatoes and omelets in a wok.
Why was a 17 year old girl alone with a 23 year old pot smoking man with a factory worker past? Better yet, with his questionable accreditation, how did he not take full advantage of this precarious situation?

At any rate, I ended up wasting an entire tube of chapsick. I never found the cap and it found its way onto the carpet.  And to this day I think twice about eating processed cheese food.

And they hop they pretty ass up on the hood of that pretty ass car...

When I was a kid all my friends ever talked about was turning 16-getting a driver's license, where they would go, what they would drive. And when we were 16 and driving hoopties and collecting obnoxious key chains, all they wanted was to be 18-not listening to their parents, moving out, getting tattoos. And when we were 18 and piercing our parts and underage drinking, and waiting in line for concert tickets, all they wanted was to be 21-buying their own Aftershock and going to bars and finally becoming an adult.
But all I ever wanted for as long as I could remember was to be 28.  I'm not really sure how I arrived at this number.  Maybe it was because my Dad always told me I wouldn't really be an adult until I turned 25, or maybe it was because my only sibling was nearly 10 years older than me and my perception was skewed. Either way-not only was I wishing my life away, but I was wishing myself to the brink of 30.
For someone now on the brink of 40 that seems like a horrible idea, but looking back I made a pretty good call on 28. At that age I was just adult enough to be totally independent, come and go as I pleased-but still able to get away with a bare fridge and zero shits to give. I was slinging drinks for a living which meant cash in hand, a sleep till 4 pm schedule, and sometimes even blow for tips. I was embarrassingly in love with someone who just wasn't that into me, but I did have the attention of a good number of pretty beautiful people.  And I took full advantage of that-though my confidence and looks hadn't even peaked yet.
That time in my life only started to spark fires that most people would never even imagine having to put out.  I traveled on an illegal Chinese bus on a regular basis. I once got on it with just an hour's notice and a toothbrush. My writing was finally beginning to turn into something bigger than myself-almost quite literally it turned me into a whole other person-or entity really. I made a movie, I flirted with fucking my way to the top, I wrote a song that charted in Denmark. (be jealous)  I drank vodka and Bushmill's on a PBR budget. I started riots. I had everything from harshly lit art galleries to CBGB in my day planner. I climbed high, and fell hard-on a constant roller coaster of young want and hope, and adult misgivings and pessimism. And every lesson that I had to learn over and over again as a kid, a teenager, a twentysomething finally sunk in. Because when you're 28 there is no hiding from hecklers behind Mommy's leg.  No one kisses your skinned knees or picks up the tab. There is no guidance counselor for almost 30.  So you make a fool of yourself and you share too much, but you keep going because maybe you will accomplish something in there somewhere. And when you do you hear every nuance of every round of applause. Then you feel every failure like you will never pick yourself back up.
But at 28 I was never afraid of being hungry.  Or alone. Or STDs.
Because at 28 I just didn't fathom there would be a 40.

The Weekly Walk With Me

It's the little things that keep me going.  For better or worse, the highlights of my week...

Seven Things

7. Discovering my strawberry breakfast bars bought in the NATURAL FOODS section do not in fact contain strawberries.  They do contain strawberry flavored cranberries and strawberry laced apple puree.  Well played, science.

6. Monica Lewinsky's comeback.

5. This diversity fail I came across while old lady antiquing.

4. "It's like the Warhol Factory, but with my dick"-Brent Ray Fraser

NSFW:  http://www.vice.com
I'm not really sure how male UTIs work, but I don't want any of my boyfriends to try this at home. Ok, maybe a couple.

3. An update on a classic for under $80.00.  STOLE THEM.

2. This perfect White Girl Walkin gift.

1. This.

Ryan Adams @TheRyanAdams · Mar 22

I covered Creed "What If" yesterday and made it sound like a sad bluegrass ballad. I don't care #comeatmebro

#TBT

Before we get into the analysis- this picture was taken in 1984. On the first day of second grade. I may have mentioned-or you may have gathered- that I was always a few years ahead of my time when it came to certain things and this, my friends, is definitive proof.
How is it that at the age of seven I somehow knew this would be the go to pose for millions of overly confident camera fuckers in the 21st century?  
How could I possibly know these analogous colors would work together for a fashion risk that would totally wow at recess?
The chic blunt bangs, the edgy saddle shoe and striped crew sock combo--did Bill Cunningham take this picture??!!
I actually still wear socks like this sometimes and had a Marc Jacobs shirt with this identical cut just a few years back when he was going through his pilgrim thing. Nothing much has changed in 30 years-I grew boobs and earned some battle scars, my nose has been tweaked and I did get that missing tooth back-but I'm still a 'pretty fearless even on the first day of second grade' kinda chick most of the time.
You're welcome.
And to my blonde friend, wherever you may be, I started to crop you out of the picture but that flowing side pony is everything...

Words May Move But They're Never Moving Fast Enough...

I learned today that #TittyTuesday exists.  I looked it up, and there they were-titties.

Here's the thing: "titties" is one of my least favorite words.  It's so juvenile and so vulgar at the same time.  It puts a knot in my gut and makes my teeth itch. It just conjures up a visual of the type of grown person who would use such a word.  I feel like there's a combination of questionable choices in hygiene and stunted education involved. There's probably Dorito dust under their fingernails, and they drink their chip crumbs from the bag. On the other hand, I am a grown adult who uses "boobs" instead of the word breasts.

Sooo: Titties=Gross.  Boobs=Perfectly acceptable.  Breasts= Doctor's office or University

But "tits" is OK in the proper context.  Like, you wouldn't say, "Fuck my boobs."  The only appropriate word in this context would have to be tits.  Fuck my tits.  See what I did there?
My point is, people are afraid of the wrong words for the wrong reasons.  A person overheard in a crowd throwing F bombs all over the place is appalling, but only because this person is desperate for attention and lacking social grace. It's silly and stand up comedian. It's sad. This person's words aren't that offensive because they aren't really saying anything. However, try throwing the word "fucking" (with a hard  I N G in the calmest voice possible without losing eye contact) into a sentence and suddenly you are the most terrifying adversary ever.  As a woman, words like pussy and cunt don't bother me at all.  In fact, they are two of my favorites- but I really only ever use them as insults, never to describe actual body parts. Because that would just be gratuitous. And you know, sometimes we really are just cunts, or gash, or snatch.
The problem I find with words like this though, is that people think that calling a woman a cunt is the be all end all of insults.  Everyone throws the word cunt around-ask anyone in Europe-but calling someone, for instance, a "vaginal blood fart"-now that takes a certain amount of confidence and panache. It also takes a pretty steely resolve to say it with a straight face.  At this point whoever is on the receiving end of this lashing knows you mean business and they will walk away from a battle of words with you.
And that's when the real blow to the ego starts to sink in.  Because when you call someone "slack jawed" they have to stop and think about what you've just said to them.  The word bitch is heard and is immediately processed and accepted as anger or disapproval, and then there's nothing else to think about.  The ego/brain knows this as, "Ooo. Lady. Mad."  But calling someone slack jawed-especially a slack jawed person-will have them reliving the words and the moment over and over again until they finally understand what you mean, which is "I'm smarter than you, you backward, corn fed fuck, and my disdain for the fact you and I as human beings have the same basic needs makes me want to choke on my own vomit until I'm dead."  This person now knows that they are ruining the lives of everyone around them.
And that should always be the goal with the type of person who uses the term "titties".
So on this #TittyTuesday, maybe you'd like to play around with your words instead of your Dorito dusted dicks.
P.S. Glory Hole is taken. Now... go!

Picture Me In a Hospital...

I was a sickly kid.  Not always ill, but somehow always maladied-and maybe that's not even a word. But I kept strep throat until my tonsils were removed as an adut. (Twice actually. Don't ask.) My chicken pox scarred, I picked up lice at school, I managed to impale myself on a George Nelson clock, I spent a good portion of third grade in a holster contraption when I broke my collar bone and dislocated my shoulder. Klutzy and sick. So it went. And with every small tragedy I was tasked with living through, there was my grandmother pouring camphorated oil all over it.
I spent a lot of time with her growing up.  For most people maybe that would mean I did a lot of lap sitting and eating chocolate chip cookies, but she wasn't much for blue rinses and aprons. She was a groupie-threw card parties every Friday night full of musicians and industry types.  The only stuff that ever came out of her kitchen was fudge (?) and Gatorade coolers full of vodka and OJ. She was tall and thin and never greyed until the cancer came. She smoked filterless cigarettes with a cigarette holder. She had eight last names by the time she died. She was my everything, but she was not a very good caretaker.
There I laid on her sofa every time I was sick or injured, under the same blanket, listening to her read to me.  Not children's books or fairy tales, but stories from the newspaper about killer bees. (I remember distinctly that article said they'd be upon us by 2012. I was terrified. I tried to calculate how old I'd be and wondered if I'd still be alive by then.) I watched wildly inappropriate daytime TV with her and sometimes even HBO.  I would lay there and close my eyes tight and try to remember what it felt like when I wasn't sick. How it felt when I was "normal" and listening to my records or playing outside. I would tell her that and how I felt like the sickness was just crawling all over me and soaking into my blanket, and she would roll her eyes at my seven year old melodramas.
There was a particular time I had some sort of stomach bug.  I guess I was whining a bit too much for her liking, so she gave me a gigantic dill pickle and told me to eat it all-it would settle my stomach and make me feel better. So I tried.  And before I finished it I'd lost every bit of fluid in my body. From both ends.
I'm not sure if she knew that would happen and I'd feel a little better, or if she knew that would happen and I'd learn a lesson about wallowing and maintaining some dignity. Either way I've grown to love her brand of evil. And over the years she really did teach me a thing or two about being a lady that I stand by to this day.
Sometimes you just need to eat the fuck out of a dill pickle.

#TBT

Originally Published August 2009

Just inside the shadow at the edge of the woods is a pile of shit my dog left. It fell like a thud on a pile of dried magnolia leaves and there I left it-to dry up, turn into white powder, and blow away in the wind. When it blows we will breathe shit dust, comment on what a beautiful day it is, how it looks like rain, how we love the smell of freshly cut grass, how the fresh air will do us good.
Every day we breathe shit dust. Every day we drink purified urine. Every day we shed skin, hair, mites. Blood drips from our faucets, slime slides from our caves. We invest and infest and infect.
Every day we breathe shit dust.

All the Little Birdies on Jaybird Street...

True story, I attempted to quit Facebook in 2015.  It doesn't really do it for me anymore-like that old lover whose stories you just loved until they began to ramble on and on, and started believing fake news, and suddenly became a talentless food stylist.  But then some friends eloped on New Year's Day and a guy died. If it weren't for Facebook I would be the asshole who didn't acknowledge these life events. Because I'd have no idea. Because assholes can't call or write-they Facebook. So it stays, for now, to be checked every other day or so like email, or chin hair.
But good news, now you can follow me on Twitter until I'm ready to break up with you, too!  I tried Twitter a while back, but I made the mistake of following CNN (holy notifications!) then Justin Timberlake didn't follow me back and I was devastated. So let's try this again now that I have something to say.
I'm talking to you, Mr. Timberlake.

Follow @whitegirlwalkin

The Weekly Walk With Me

Google tells me it's International Women's Day.  I would have prepared something but I feel like my own weekend was celebration enough.
I love road trips. If I can get there in 10 hours or less, I'm putting a clean pair of underwear in my pocket and getting behind the wheel. So when I got the itch this weekend that's exactly what I did.  I set out on a drive to connect with some family-mostly crazy women with even crazier stories to tell. And now more than ever I'm interested in hearing them.  I  don't know a lot of details about my mother's side of the family.  I know the basics, the most important bits, but she doesn't talk about them and in 38 years she's never allowed me to finish a sentence. What I do know I learned from my favorite great aunt. She was always more of a grandmother than my Bubbie.  She's in her seventies now, and round and squishy and I just want to lay on her.  So on Friday night, wifeless and with no schedule to keep, I hit the road.

The 8 Best Things About a Road Trip

8. Junk food.

7. Places like this:

6. With bathrooms like this.  (I know. I would've figured out a way to steal it, but that leads me to number 5.)

5. Locals always watching because "you're just not from around here."  Actually this kinda happens to me in my own neighborhood too, but it's more fun when you have a legit reason to be ogled. Which leads me to number 4:

4. Nope, I'm not from around here.  So when I travel I use foreign accents.  Maybe they're good, maybe not-I've never auditioned for Downton Abbey or anything- but they tend to work on gas station attendants.

3. The Road Trip Radio Flip
I love listening to the radio in the car.  I will scan to anything with even a hint of a signal.  Radio really does tell me a lot about a town that seems worlds away from my own.  (Not to mention what a rock star I become on the highway.)  What are they listening to, where's the bar, what's the demographic?  How many strip clubs are in this town?  But beware of something I like to call Tricky Jesus.  You think you've found something palatable only to realize a Christian youth minister in an Affliction shirt is serenading you with all the sins you're trying to speed away from.

2. Solitude.

1. Sleeping diagonally on a king size bed.

Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying...

Contrary to popular belief, I have a job.  Not that I necessarily work per se, but there is a job.  A soul-sucker with fluorescent lighting and carpet squares.  Faux mixed media "art" on the walls.  Women of a certain age with dimpled butts pressed against neutral slacks. Men in cheap button ups.  I've considered wearing loafers, but pulled myself back and thought better of it.

In the kitchen-warning signs.
The fridge: "The contents of the refrigerator will be dumped every Friday, NO exceptions, MGMT."  "Do not throw away Will's cookie dough." "Don't even think about storing a jug of creamer and expect it to be there when you need it".  
The microwave: "Do not use paper towels in the microwave, they will spark. MGMT." (The fuck?) "But feel free to cook a kitten in it because it looks like we've been doing that for years."
The coffee maker: "Do not use hot water nozzle while coffee is brewing."  "Do not drink tea or eat ramen in the office. We will all know it was you who broke the coffee maker, and will have no use for the jug of creamer in the fridge."
On the wall, a wordless warning and perhaps the most telling of all:  a booger like crust on the paint at the counter.  It's been there for months. I like to give people the benefit of doubt-even illiterate ones-so I sit and stare and try to make out what it is. What is that?  Oatmeal?  Spittle drenched pizza crust?
And the bathroom: a coat hanger abortion in a Guatemalan sewer ditch. A sewer ditch where women cry and pray and call their childrens' counselors while just missing the metal box specifically marked for feminine hygiene waste.

I was even stalked here once.  Full-fledged, waiting for me in the parking lot, breaking and entering into a fingerprint secured area, protective order stalked. When my car was vandalized and disabled building management refused to take responsibility.  But they did want to keep me safe so they suggested I park in the visitor's lot, then gave me a parking ticket.  And I write this as I sit in a meeting run by a higher up who lost custody of their child due to a corporal punishment incident. NSFW has an entirely different meaning for me-for my own protection-but mostly for the safety of others. Because one day I will Walter White.

My business hours are basically every unused scene from Office Space.  The scenes that had to be deleted to prevent movie goers from thinking they'd accidentally wandered into a Lars von Trier film. This is my life now.  Lanyards and Tupperware salad.  Audits and practical tote bags. And tomorrow is only Wednesday.  But I do still have that booger...

The Weekly Walk with Me

Five Things You Need in Your Life This Week

5. GWARbar

4. Dead Lead Jewelry

3. Black Mirror

2. NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil-CRUELLA

1. The Bots