Bette Davis Is Probably Lying...

With everyone wrapping up the year with "Best Of" lists, 2015 is going down as the year models fought back against body shaming, Bill Cosby took that Spanish fly routine to a whole new level of batshit, and transgender mania.  But for my readers, 2015 is the year White Girl Walkin saw Star Wars.  And a week ago today I was surrounded by Millennium Falcon t-shirts and the kind of people who actually buy the commemorative popcorn tin.  I am way overdue for my review/synopsis.   Now I know better than to spoil a new Star Wars film, so I'm going vague here.  Just the tip...

This film doesn't stray too far from the originals in style or story.  There were a lot of 40 somethings clapping and whooping and carryin' on--especially the skinny bitch beside me.  I've never seen someone so small use up so much space.  Anyway, I think the fact that things didn't get too crazy flashy modern was appreciated.  Now for the highlights.

There is of course a sexual tension, will they/won't they situation.  Only this time I don't think there is a chance of creepy blood relation getting in the way since one of them is white and British,  and the other one is black and talks American.--Speaking of this, space in 2015 is really diverse.  There are British people and Irish people and brown people and yellow people and lots of angry, pinched little gays.  There's even this sloppy vagina faced guy:

But is it necessary that the black guy still has to be a garbage man? C'mon with this.

Storm Troopers.  They're not going anywhere.  I've heard more than one person say that Storm Troopers are Nazi-ish.  I never quite saw that.  Well it's made pretty clear this time around, and as someone who's seen a real-life Dachau tattoo, I'm gonna need that to be taken down just a smidge.--While we're on Storm Troopers, is it me or do they have like the worst armor in the world?  No Storm Trooper that gets shot ever keeps going or lives.  They are walking around with giant iPhone cases as protective war gear. Luke Skywalker got a brand new hand within 10 minutes in like 1980,  how are these uniforms not better?  Can we get them some Otter Boxes at least?

The bad guys do really, really bad stuff.  Oh, and the new wanna be Darth Vader is like if Vinnie Barbarino was a school shooter.  Only I've seen that guy in an episode of Girls, so I'm not afraid of him.

The good guys do good stuff, some Top Gun stuff happens, and there will clearly be a sequel.

Stay tuned...

Jaws Was Never My Scene and I Don't Like Star Wars...

I have a confession to make.  Along with having never been camping or never ever having had egg nog, I have also never seen Star Wars--nope none of them.  But I was born in the 70s and always knew the characters, so I get the gist.  Anyway,  I bought my nerd wife tickets for the The Force Awakens, and in trying to pretend to be interested, I guess I asked the wrong questions.  Well that was remedied pretty quickly because this weekend I was treated to a marathon so I will know what is happening come December 23 while I keep myself occupied  with a giant cherry coke and red vines.  

So to make life easier for those of you out there like me, the following are the White Girl Walkin Cliff's Notes of the Star Wars saga.  But be warned, if you are planning to watch for yourselves, there are spoilers.  And if you have seen the films and are a fan, well then I guess it's up to you to decide if we should still be friends.

The first film: A New Hope.  This is actually not the first chapter at all, this is part four of the story.  But when I asked why we weren't starting with the actual first one, there was a lot of huffing. Apparently the films telling the first three stories had Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, and Jar Jar Binks in them which is horribly offensive to Star Wars purists.  So missing like the first six hours of the whole thing, here's where we begin:

Luke Skywalker is an orphan living with a strict uncle on a space farm, but all he wants is to be a pilot.  There's this nelly queen robot walking around with this short funny robot for comic relief. They're sort of like Bert and Ernie.  The Ernie robot accidentally shows a private film to Luke so Luke  wanders off on this mission to find the hot chick in the projection.  Somehow he hurts himself and Obi Wan Kenobi rescues him and tells him all about the force and a little about his (as far as we know) dead father.  Some more stuff happens and Luke's aunt and uncle end up dead so Luke is free to fight the empire.  Then he meets Princess Leia (the hot chick in the projection), and everybody meets Han Solo.  And some Top Gun stuff happens.  Apparently Obi Wan and Darth Vader come face to face and have a light saber fight, but I fell asleep during this part.  I'm told that's where Obi Wan died.  Then there's more Top Gun stuff and the Death Star (bad) gets obliterated by the good guys (Luke, Han, Leia).  Then at the end, Leia gives Luke and Han Olympic medals while Chewbacca stands there awkwardly because he's technically just like a pet and doesn't get a medal. 

The second film: The Empire Strikes Back opens in the North Pole where the Abominable Snowman attacks Luke and eats his ram-dinosaur thing.  Meanwhile, Han is trying to leave the Rebels (all the good guys) to pay off a debt.  But everyone is so worried about Luke that Han can't bring himself to go without finding him.  So he goes off into the blizzard and finds Luke freezing to death.  To save his life, Han cuts open his own ram-dinosaur thing and stuffs Luke inside his guts to warm him up. He lives.  He's in the hospital when Leia lays a big ol' kiss on him just to show off in front of Han--This will be important later.  When Luke gets better there is an attack on the Rebels by these giant metal elephants.  The Rebels win.  Then Luke is trying to go somewhere (?) and crash lands in this swamp where he meets Kermit the Frog's dementia stricken grandfather.  This turns out to be Yoda. For the next few weeks Yoda and Luke do this Karate Kid thing so Luke can learn to be a Jedi.  But he leaves early because he has this acid trip in the marsh.  In the meantime, Princess Leia is running around with all the hairstyles I ever saw my eastern European grandmother wear, and getting sexually harassed by Han and Billy Dee Williams. Billy Dee Williams ends up  betraying everyone and handing Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and Bert and Ernie to Jabba the Hut, who is bad and gross. But Han has to be frozen in carbon first, and the others get the opportunity to escape.  Luke finally meets Darth Vader, and Darth tells Luke that he is his father AND THEN CUTS OFF HIS HAND! But space hospitals can just give you a new one, so it's totally fine.  Now everyone is alive, but  they have to concentrate on getting Han out of the carbon.

The third and final film:  The Return of the Jedi opens with Luke now a Jedi master in a chic black uniform and riding boots.  Princess Leia tries to rescue Han from Jabba, but she gets caught and becomes Jabba's slave.  Famous Princess Leia bikini stuff happens, and Jabba is like a big phlegmy slug-booger-cat.  But then Bert and Ernie and Luke and Billy Dee come to rescue her.  Han is freed, but then the whole crew is taken out to this pirate ship in the desert to be eaten by a venus fly trap. Of course they escape, and Leia strangles Jabba to death with her slave chain. In the meantime,  the bad guys are building a new Death Star.  Luke goes back to Yoda to clear some things up, and then Yoda finally dies because he is like 900.  But this is where Luke discovers Leia is his sister-which is a little questionable because of all the previous sexual tension between them--and that hospital kiss.  While all this is happening everyone else ends up in a forest surrounded by teddy grahams.  Then they get attacked by more giant metal elephants and the teddy grahams help the Rebels destroy them all. Back at the new Death Star, Mr. Burns shows up in a cable knit hooded duster, and we start to see how Darth Vader turned bad. Luke confronts Darth Vader again and there is a lot of fighting, and then Luke CUTS OFF DARTH VADER'S HAND!  But then Luke is like "fuck this" I'm not fighting you, so Mr. Burns gets pissed and tries to electrocute Luke.  But Darth Vader is not havin' it because deep down he really is a good person, so he throws Mr. Burns to his death.  Luke and Darth make up, but Darth dies anyway, and Luke escapes with his body.  Some Top Gun stuff happens and the new Death Star blows up too, and with Darth and Mr. Burns dead, the whole galaxy is free again.  Luke has a private funeral for his dad, and all the teddy grahams celebrate with the good guys.  And all is right with the world.

The end.

Chain Smokin' While The Stereo Plays Noel, Noel...

So this is Christmas.
I'm trying to get into the holiday spirit here, but I had the AC on cooking Thanksgiving dinner and it is now 72 degrees in mid-December while I try to get all of these fucking cookies baked.

Sidebar:  Yes, I cook Thanksgiving dinner and bake cookies and use the word cunt and swallow. Yes, I'm like the all time perfect woman.  But I'm also married, and wake up early on Saturdays, and I will not do your laundry.  So you know, everything's a compromise. 

Anyway,  I was saying:  I'm pretty sure as I'm standing in this hot kitchen knee deep in vegan muffins while all the polar bears in the world burst into flames, that a flying insect of a summertime sort just flew up my nose.  If I wanted to holiday in these conditions, I would still be living on a marsh.  I moved  north so that I could have snow days, and be guaranteed at least four months out of the year when I'm not walking around all shiny and pink.  Like some happy can of Spam in a Hawaiian parade. Whether you call it climate change, the apocalypse, or armageddon, the struggle is real.  And nobody is having a cozy cup of cocoa to celebrate.

BUT, I did sit on Santa's lap today.  And he gave me a present.  OK, it was like a keychain--but who in 2015 does not love attention from a beard?  And a random stranger paid my tab, which is like the third time in as many months that something like that has happened to me.  And I sang Happy Birthday to a lady named Barbara who was shit faced on Italian restaurant table wine at 3 pm.  I don't know Barbara at all, but she may just end up on my cookie list.  And I have a gay Christmas wedding to look forward to. I might pull out my cutest sundress for it.  Cookie anyone?

I Burned a Hole In the Dining Room Table...

For those not in the know, it's the fourth night of Hanukkah. The fourth night focus is on dining--maybe not so much the act of eating, but the whole production of setting a table--making things pretty, sharing food.  I don't profess to be the expert here, but that's the general idea.    
Totally appropriate tonight because the holidays always make me think of people I've lost touch with. And lately I've been thinking of a dinner companion that fell off the face of the earth.
He was always sort of around on the outskirts of my circle of friends.  Everybody knew him, but no one really knew him.  He was serious-faced, an introvert.  My friends and I called him Suicide Watch.  I'd barely even had a conversation with him, and then one night at a Nascar race of all places (don't ask) the guys I was with got too drunk to drive me home.  So Suicide Watch offered, and it was either risk being choke-fucked to death in a semi-stranger's SUV or spend the night in an RV at a Nascar race.  I took the ride.  A few days or so later he asked me to lunch, and over a hummus plate I told him about his official moniker. And from then on that's what we did. We ate together.
Every couple of weeks he would get in touch and we would have dinner.  Every time a new restaurant opened, or some old school cocktail started trending we would be there.  Sometimes he paid, sometimes I did, sometimes we split the check.  And sometimes we drank cheap wine and ate frozen pizza at my place. We never really talked about anything important-no thoughts or feelings. We didn't share things about our past, we didn't talk about the future.  We usually talked about the here and now, what was on the news that very day, what was happening at his office.  We made fun of the people around us.  I'm not even sure what kind of music he liked.  From the outside it would seem like we didn't have much in common.  He was quiet and serious, and I am...not.  He was athletic, a cyclist, a rock climber.  I am...drunk most of the time.
But he was good to me. He accommodated my vegetarianism. He called me to make dinner plans once after I'd only been home a few days after surgery.  I told him I had been sick and wasn't presentable or up for solid food.  Instead of taking a rain check, he came over anyway with soup and watched black and white movies.  He pretended not to notice when, after living out of state for a while, that I'd come home 40 pounds heavier than when I left. We kept eating anyway. In fact the only thing that put a stop to our dinner dates was me telling him I was getting married.  He never got in touch again.
I didn't give much thought to our friendship at the time.  He never tried to make any moves, never even flirted, and I never thought of our meetings as anything other than dinner.  A night when I didn't have to try too hard to entertain anyone or give life-changing advice or worry about if so and so was going to show up at the bar.   But I wonder now what kind of escape those dinners were for him. Was it the food and drink or the no frills company? Or maybe he was stalking someone that whole time and I was his cover.  Or maybe he had an ex and he wanted it to get back to her that he was out with some tattooed brunette.  Whatever it was, I miss it.

#TBT

And given nothing, left with the same
too tired to let my own rage well up inside me
I let it sit and fester at the bottom of my gut
not rage, too exhausted for anger
infection
some virus or bacteria, flesh eating
succumbing to it, sloth-like
wanting just once to be saved
without having to cry out for help
and I wait for it
like Moses on Mt. Sinai
I want to fall to my knees, give my life over to God
but they are too bruised already
and I fear they won’t hold my weight
bitter chalk sits at the back of my throat
comfort in a child proof vial
limbs too heavy to lift up
and wipe the sleep from my eyes
head too heavy to shake away true dreams
that will come later, and with no explanation
show me my one true love
show me this divine plan
but don’t come unannounced
disgusted by the state of it
this valley of the dolls
this bay of pigs
there’s dirt in my bed
and I can’t remember who put it there
clouded
the stench of ammonia and plastic
burn a hole in my brain
self inflicted dementia, genetic delusion
I won’t walk barefoot in this house
I won’t break bread at the table
for fear I‘ll find bits of Dr. Thompson’s brain there
I won’t answer the phone at 3 am
for fear a late night suitor will want in
through the back door, into the junkyard
out through the front, contemplating on the doorstep
with hands in his pockets, unclean and shamed
this will never be written in a notebook
for all prosperity or just a few well meaning offspring
the truth of this having come to me months ago
in a moment of sobriety and feeling
the pressure of it sitting in my chest
afraid to scream out loud
or breathe in too deeply
for fear my lungs will split open
so I live short of breath
turning over in this kennel
in this rabbit hole, this cave
this dirty bed, this leaky toilet, this blown speaker
building up a tolerance
to this loss, to this weight
to this ignorance, to this mountain
to the smell of airplane pussy
to this air I breathe, polluted and heavy
with fumes.