Coming Soon To A Theatre Near You

Often, I e-mail myself with (riotously funny) blog post ideas because if I don't, they immediately leave my booze-addled brain and I will be staring at a blank computer screen into the wee hours of the morning trying to remember the story that was finally going to put Brutalism on the map.

This also serves to provide the "full e-mail inbox" validation that I crave, and if that must be achieved by sending e-mail to myself, then so what? (Though I do wish I would stop sending myself performance enhancment product solicitations.)

I just came across one of these "e-mails to self" that I sent to me a few weeks ago. It includes the following suggested topics:

• Disappearing after Children of the Corn late show with Erle
• Simon -- G.G. Allin documentary, convincing me for years that I broke wind when I fell asleep in a room full of people (I didn't), threesome in New Orleans
• Kath -- walking across broken glass a la Loni Anderson, Circus of the Stars

Much like movie trailers, I'm thinking these stories may be more compelling in the abbreviated format above. I ask you, gentle readers, do you want the whole story(ies) or is it more fun to let your minds wander?

The Curse Of The Minibar

(Originally posted 12/17/04 -- but deserves another run...)

Have I mentioned that I worked for THE ORGANIZATION THAT DOES NOT HATE FREEDOM for more than five years? One of the best jobs I ever had (and I've had a bunch of 'em). I worked with some of the most fun people during those five years, and I'm sure it had very little to do with the fact that I was single, in my 20s and drinking heavily.

I did a lot of things for NRA and one year I got put on a special project -- the Charlton Heston Celebrity Shoot out in Dana Point, California. Glamour! Excitement! "Celebrities!"

While there, I had a bet with a consultant as to which of us could get our picture taken with the funniest celebrity (funny in a B-list way, not in a "ha ha" way). I ended up winning -- finding and taking a picture with Jerry Mathers. The photo became my Christmas card that year with the greeting, "Merry Christmas. Love, Kathleen and the Beav." I gave one to a friend of mine in grad school who later became my husband. He still likes to joke that the reason he fell for me was that I so freely gave out my "beaver shot."

My Beaver shot.

Earlier in the evening, I was hanging out with Nat from the Peach Pit on Beverly Hills 90210. Seriously, at that time, he was my Brad Pitt -- I so loved 90210. I talked to Nat (still cannot remember his real name) in the bar for an hour or so -- don't remember a lot of it. About a week after I got back from the shoot, however, my sister (who lives in Florida) and I each received autographed head shots of Nat. Apparently, at some point in the evening, I wrote down both addresses and gushed enough to prompt the head shot sending.

But the best story......
One night, I stayed out til four in the morning, partying with some of the celebs at a party that only the cool kids were invited to. Now, because I worked for a non-profit, I was sharing a room with a co-worker on this particular trip. She had gone to bed around 10:00 that night and was fast asleep by the time I found my way back to the room. At this point, the minibar was just screaming to me, so I opened it, found a huge Hershey's chocolate bar and that's the last I remember -- UNTIL....at about 6:00am, I woke up to my roommate standing over my bed and yelling like a maniac. She was practically hysterical...pointing at me and screaming. I jumped up and also started screaming and ran to the bathroom to see what she was pointing at.

Apparently, in the dim light of the hotel room that morning, the choclate bar that I had fallen asleep with had smeared all over my face and bed, looking a lot like blood. She thought someone had come into the room and blugeoned me to death while she slept.

I was still clutching what remained of the chocolate bar -- apparently only willing to give it up once it was pried from my cold, dead hands.

Me and Robert Stack's daughter. She's handsy. Read comment thread.

I Want Candy

Ahhh, Halloween...

Some of my favorite Halloween memories involve dressing up for costume parties when I was in my 20s and first living on my own as an adult. Every costume I ever wore (punk rocker, biker chick, Miss America) always somehow included one common accessory -- handcuffs. I guess I used to be a lot bolder, because I distinctly remember cuffing guys to me during parties. I wouldn't even speak to them...I'd just go up to one I thought was cute and wordlessly cuff him. (Let's all say it together: It is a really good thing I met Canetto when I did.)

There's a great Halloween story that involves my dad, back when we lived in an apartment complex in Syracuse, New York. My sister and I had gone out trick-or-treating dressed as Frankenstein (her) and an angel (me). We were probably 4 and 5 at the time.To make my costume, my mom had dressed me in an old white nightgown of hers and had made fantastic cardboard wings that she covered with aluminum foil --giving me a wingspan of a good three and a half to four feet across. She also made me a halo out of a shaped wire coat hanger -- also covered with aluminum foil. My sister and I trick-or-treated for a couple of hours and then came home to immediately begin gorging on candy. (Okay, fine...I was the one who was apparently intent on upping my risk factor for diabetes. She was one of those annoying able-to-delay-gratification types who would be pulling out her treat bag the following summer to sift through the treats and then select a single piece of candy to savor. And of course, I was convinced she did this simply to torture me.)

With our trick-or-treating done, my father decided that he and a friend should enjoy some trick-or-treating themselves. So, he put my costume on over a pair of jeans, and headed out with a beer stein. Since we lived in an apartment complex, he manged to get his stein filled up very quickly with whatever beer or hard liquor our neighbors had on hand...all of them thinking this was very funny, of course.

He was gone for a while on this mission and when he returned home, he tried to walk through the front door into our apartment, but could not. He tried again -- no luck. Confused as to why he could not walk through the doorway, he tried again. Still -- stuck on the front porch. My (sober, and therefore unamused) mother intervened at this point and managed to get his drunk self focused long enough to understand that he simply needed to turn sideways to fit his giant angel wings through the door.

The Devil is in the details,
Brutalism

Batter, Batter, Batter....

So a bunch of employees in upstate New York were refusing to work this past weekend because a Swinger's Convention was being held in their (sold out) hotel.

Being the curious, investigative type that I am...I (naturally) have some questions:

1) When you think of locations in which to engage in deviant sexual escapades, do you really think Buffalo, New York? Who is this convention planner?

2) As long as your job is not sheet-changer or hot tub cleaner-outer, why would you not beg to work that weekend?

3) If you worked that weekend and saw that your former fourth grade English teacher was a conference attendee (not a stretch, based on what we know about the lifestyle), would you ever be able to use the word "conjugate" again without wincing?

4) How often do you use the word "conjugate" now?

5) Do you think that if they called the event a "swap meet", the employees would have been none the wiser?

"Entice the Falls" my ass,
Brutalism

Just Like Heaven

Somehow, this photo, taken by Kathyconnolly, perfectly sums up what I was feeling the night of the wedding. I twisted with Jack, did the Molly Ringwald '80s dance with several partners (it's the swinger in me) and bounded all over the dance floor. (I have missed working out the past two days as my calves recover.) I promise a wedding recap post soon.

Bend Over, I'll Drive

Subtitle: F&#K you, Margaret Zuidema*.

This weekend, my mom married Jack, and invited some of my close friends and some of my sister, Patti's, to the wedding and reception. My sister and I were a year apart in school and had different groups of friends, but of course some of them knew (or at least recognized) each other. At one point during the reception, I brought my friend, Kathyconnolly over to Patti's table to talk to some of her friends that I thought Kath might have known...including Margaret Zuidema. They politely said "Hello" to each other, but there was not much recognition on either's part and Kathyconnolly went back to her table while I chatted with Margaret for a few more minutes.

Margaret casually mentioned to me, "You know, the last time Patti and I got together, we were talking about that day we dropped you off at driver's ed." A lightbulb went off in my head as I remembered just how she and Kathyconnolly knew each other. I ran over, grabbed Kathyconnolly and screamed, "You know Margaret because she and Patti are the ones who got us blackballed from behind-the-wheel." Kathyconnolly ran over, screamed, "F&#K you, Margaret Zuidema" (In a friendly, kidding way, of course), and within moments all of the teen angst came rushing back...

Back in the day, Kathyconnolly and I were taking a summer class for driving instruction so we could then get our learner's permits. Each morning for a week or two, we would meet in a high school parking lot, assemble on a bus where a tight-shorts-wearing-angry-that-he-was-teaching-this-god-forsaken-class-during-the-summer-just-to-earn-a-few-extra-bucks P.E. teacher would provide some instruction, and then we'd leave the bus to get into some cars in the parking lot to practice what we had learned.

And, since my sister and Margaret already had their driver's licenses, they were sometimes (unhappily) tasked with hauling us around...especially when we had to go somewhere legit (like behind-the-wheel classes).

Because they were forced to drive us, Margaret decided they should at least make it interesting one day when she was driving (my sister was in the passenger seat and Kathyconnolly and I were in back). As we neared the high school, Margaret drove about a million miles an hour into the parking lot, did a loud, squealing donut around the instruction bus and then came to a screeching halt right next to the open bus door. Kathyconnolly and I slunk out of the back seat and up the bus steps. As Margaret and Patti sped away without a care in the world to go buy Slurpees (or whatever it was they did with all of their drivers-license-having freedom), Kathyconnolly and I were forced to stand at the front of the bus and be made an example of for the benefit of all our behind-the-wheel classmates. Angry P.E. teacher screamed for twenty minutes about how that was a prime example of how NOT to drive a car and how we should always be concerned about safety and how irresponsible we were. (Please keep in mind that WE were not driving, had no control over how Margaret drove and wanted to crawl under the bus and die.)

We did manage to get through it and ran home and told my mom maturely dealt with the situation. We naively believed we had reached a detente as Patti drove us to behind-the-wheel the next day. She pulled into the parking lot slowly and carefully...and continued driving slowly and carefully as she deliberately ran over each and every orange pylon set up for our class.

*Margaret thought this was hilarious...so please don't think I am in any way disrespecting (or "dissing" as the kids say) her.

The Birthday Post

First of all, Happy Birthday today to loyal and hilarious Brutalism reader, Dilettante07! She was reading and commenting on this blog back when it was just a baby (and actually...so was she.) Little whippersnapper. Tante was one of the first people I met when I moved to DC in the early 90s. We have many ridiculous shared adventures including (of course) Dilettante Club, being co-flower girls in our friends' wedding in Santa Barbara, Oktoberfest, cocktail parties, a half marathon, smashing cake in each other's faces at our weddings, and more karaoke on video than I want to admit to.

Second of all, Happy Birthday to Avery, who turned four on October 9th. We celebrated with a princess tea party at our house for her and five friends. (At this age, all of the princesses come accompanied by one or both parents, so we had a decent crowd there. Which also included grandparents and our friend, Amy, who wore a dirndl and acted as a handmaiden, serving tea goodies to the girls.)

Before any party at our house, I update the quote board with a new quote. In an attempt to be topical, I wrote one by Stephen Wright that said, "I would kill for a Nobel Peace Prize." It made me chuckle...until it began a not-so-comfortable discussion among the adults about whether or not Obama was deserving of the prize at this point in his presidency. As party host, I was trying to remain neutral, while also trying to end the discussion. So I said, "Enough about that. How do you all feel about abortion?"

Apologies in advance to Avery for all of the play dates and birthday parties from which she will now be banned. She does make a beautiful princess, doesn't she?

The Paparazzi Will Just NOT Leave Me Alone

The Dilettante Club is being featured today in Washingtonian magazine.

Be more jealous that I get to hang out with these cool chicks every month.

We always have to look up how to spell "Dilettante," too,
Brutalism

Patrick Swayze -- A Delinquent Tribute

In the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I lived in an apartment in Charlottesville with my sister. She had just graduated from UVA and was working at CVS because she was an English major wasn't ready to enter the real world yet.

I was working a minimum wage job and taking a statistics class, hoping to get a "C" so that it would transfer without being figured into my (already horrific) GPA at JMU.

What does this have to do with Patrick Swayze, you ask? Just everything. My sister had a bunch of friends that she had met while working at the radio station at UVA. And to a person, they were (and are) the funniest bunch of people I have ever met. That summer, we'd just hang out at the apartment, drinking whatever beer our minimum wage salaries would afford us, and talk and laugh for hours. One of the things we laughed about? The defacement of albums at the radio station.

At the time, the Dirty Dancing sound track was huge, and much to everyone's chagrin, the Program Manager had put it in the rotation to play every hour. In retaliation, one of the crew had taken a little creative license with the Dirty Dancing album cover at the station. Immediately after the song title, "She's like the wind," for instance, he had penciled in "from my ass." And on the front of the album, where Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey were embracing, someone had artistically added a thought bubble from his head with the words, "that is not my finger" and a thought bubble from her head with the words, "that is not my belly button."

Also, on the Billy Ocean 12 inch single album (where he was wearing a long white leather coat and looking totally pimped out), our friend, Sean, simply added a period and a comma to make the album title, "Billy Ocean. 12 inch, single." Which, if guys were smart, would be the title of their Match.com profiles.

All of this to say: RIP, Patrick Swayze. I'm really glad it wasn't her belly button.

Pirou-wet

In a failed attempt to make me more graceful and more social when I was a little girl, my parents enrolled me in a ballet class.

I was so unbelievably shy that even though my older sister was in the class with me, I was scared to talk to any of the other little girls and was especially terrified of the teacher, Mr. Jack. Mr. Jack was what one might now refer to as a "frustrated-and-closeted-homosexual." Back then, I believe we just called him "artistic."

He scared me so much that one day while we were practicing in the gym after school and I had to urinate, I simply could not raise my hand and ask him if I could be excused to use the restroom. I held it as long as I could and then, inevitably, wet my leotard in the middle of class. (My logic here is admittedly a little flawed. In my pea-sized brain, it was less scary and attention-drawing to have a potty accident in his class than ask to use the restroom.) Many of the little girls in my class (including my sister -- always the loyal team player) pointed at me and laughed. After he realized what was going on, Mr. Jack bellowed, "Young Lady! Do you need to use the restroom?" (Which, to this day, strikes me as an odd question. I really wanted to say, "Um...no. I just emptied my bladder on the floor. I really wish you had asked me that five minutes ago, though.")

I was relegated to the back row from that point forward -- during class and for the recital. This marked the end of my (short and humiliating) ballet career.

(Any member of my family would now play straight guy and ask, "how old were you when this happened?" and I would reply "25" and then we'd all laugh heartily. It really never gets old. We're a fairly simple people.)

I Wouldn't Want To Paint It

It's a small world. (I just coined that phrase. Catchy, huh? I see
t-shirts...merchandising...getting Disney involved in some capacity...)

Supposedly over Labor Day weekend, I was sent a text message by Jeff Cockey. (He says he sent one, but I did not receive one. Either he did not send it or -- a more likely scenario -- he sent it and due to my complete lack of texting ability, I deleted it by mistake.) (Aside: Once, when I was due to pick Cockey up from Dulles airport, he texted to let me know he arrived so I could come get him. I wanted to let him know that I was on my way, but had no idea how to text back, so I pressed "reply" and then something like "QYR98621."  He wasn't sure if I had been abducted, was drunk, or if I was just completely technologically retarded.) He (correctly) went with option "C". (Although "Both B and C above" would also have been an acceptable answer.)

The Labor Day text was to let me know that he was at a party in Hermosa Beach, California, with none other than one of my ex-boyfriends (who lives on the East Coast and was out there visiting). Somewhere in between guzzling bad beer and ogling girls on the beach, they put it together that they both knew me.

Jeff Cockey -- he's the new Kevin Bacon.

Memory Lane

Remember your favorite storybooks from childhood? When you'd nestle into your parent's arm and listen to tales of familiar characters that you'd begin to think of as your friends? And how that opened up your world? Like the story about Babar, the sweet little elephant, gigolo?

Mon dieux!
Brutalism

Your Gubmint At Work

I am developing a style guide for the documents we create at my company. In doing this, I and another Project Manager who is working on this with me are following some of the Government Printing Office (GPO) guidelines to incorporate into our manual.

Today, we discovered that the GPO style guide helpfully indicates that the word "werewolf" is one word. Which, as always, raises some questions in my mind:

1) What kind of grammar idiot has ever written that as two words?
2) How come I've never been staffed on a werewolf contract?
3) How many of my tax dollars went into researching whether or not that was hyphenated?
4) Really?

Howling at the lunacy,
Brutalism

I'm Betting That A Phillip Hart, By Any Other Name, Would Not Smell As Sweet

Yesterday at work, I received an e-mail from a vendor. The naming convention for his corporate e-mail account was (like many) the first letter of his first name and then his last name. So, the e-mail I got from Scott Loth was Sloth@company.com.

Things like this amuse me probably more than they should. Although when I mentioned it in my weekly team meeting, my boss shared an even better one -- his wife had once worked with a Phillip Hart, whose company also used that type of naming convention.
Another friend said she once worked with a Richard Ebel, who was anything but.

How about you guys? Seen any e-mail addresses that were particularly (and unintentionally) funny?

Underpanted Should Totally Be A Word

Canetto wears a very specific kind of underpants. Mr. High Maintenance's brand of choice is nearly impossible to find in stores, and only after an exhaustive Internet search was I able to locate a site to buy them -- called -- get this -- FreshPair.com.

Because he just recently cleaned out his drawers and threw away a bunch of worn out underwear, he asked me to order him about 30 new pairs of underpants. (Younger women: I am speaking to you from your future -- this is what the carefree and fulfilling life of a 10-years-married woman entails.) Off I went to FreshPair.com and placed the order for the 30 pairs of boxer briefs.

First one month passed. Then, another week. That's when my campaign to locate the underpants-in-limbo* began. (*Unrelated aside: When I was in AP Art History in high school with my sister and our friend, Darren, we studied a painting titled "Christ in Limbo" that depicted Christ in between heaven and hell. To amuse us during a rather lengthy lecture one day, my sister drew a line over Christ's head and retitled the painting, "Christ DOING the Limbo". Heathens...all of us.)

I wrote a politely-worded letter to FreshPair that asked simply,

"Can you please tell me the status of my order?"

which received an automated reply with generic information telling me that a customer service agent would be in touch with me soon regarding my order.

No one got in touch with me. So, after another week, I sent another note, this one worded a little more strongly, asking,

"For the love of God....where are my underpants?!"

Again, an automated reply. But this one was followed up with a "personal" note from a customer service representative that did not provide one more bit of information, but gave me some encouragement that there was actually a human being on the other end of the e-mail address.

Another week passed, and I decided this called for some serious action, so I wrote another e-mail that went something like this:

"I've seen London, I've seen France, what I haven't seen are my underpants. Where the heck are the underpants that I ordered?"

And again, I received the most generic note from the customer service representative, with no indication that they had read or appreciated my psychotic ramblings directed at an automated response mechanism amazing wit.

Days later, as I was preparing to send a photo of my husband naked from the waist down to emphasize just how desperately we needed these underpants, we finally received a package of underpants in the mail from FreshPair.com.

Now with a happily underpanted husband,
Brutalism

Delicate Flower

The most fun thing about having Avery in preschool is she has a whole new audience to whom she can announce that mommy and daddy had an argument last night she learns things from other kids that are pretty entertaining.

Last night, in the middle of dinner, she jumped out of her chair and began walking around like a robot with her arms bent at ninety degree angles saying, "Ro-bot con-tin-ue." We had never heard or seen this before, so Canetto and I burst out laughing.

Because she was enjoying making us laugh, she cranked it up a notch to "Ro-bot poo-poo Diarr-hea Con-tin-ue."

The apple does not fall far,
Brutalism

Isn't It Ironic?

I sent an e-mail to Canetto earlier (he is picking up a piece of furniture later today out in Gainesville that we had painted and distressed) that read:

"Please drive carefully out there...lots of two-lane roads. Please play attention."

Perhaps I should heed my own advice.

We Can Hitch A Ride To Rockaway Beach

Friday night, I'm getting on a bus and heading up to NYC. "Sightseeing?" you ask. "No," I reply. "Bar crawling again?" "Been there, done that." I say. "Taking in some culture and good restaurants?" Sounds nice, but no. (And stop giving me the third degree. Sheesh...)

I'm going to New York to learn to surf. You read that right. I spent 15 of my formative years in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where there was both ample coastline and opportunity to learn, yet I never once gave it a go. (This, of course, did not prevent me from wearing t-shirts from every surf shop at the oceanfront and peppering my tweener conversations with words like "tubular" and "stoked.") (I'm nothing if not a dedicated poseur.)

As I head out to a Long Island beach on Saturday morning, I will try to forget that a 24-foot-long shark washed up on the shore there not even a month ago. People I have mentioned this to inevitably try to reassure me about my safety, claiming that this was a plankton-eating shark and that there is really nothing to worry about. Nothing except a TWENTY-FOUR-FOOT-LONG SHARK, FOR CHRISSAKES!!!

We're gonna need a bigger boat,
Brutalism

UPDATE: Thanks to Hurricane Bill, the surf instructor cancelled classes this weekend, so there will be no surf lesson for me. I am going to go home, put on my (new, bought just for this occasion) board shorts, clutch my bus ticket and play some Chris Isaak while staring forlornly into space.

Good Career Move

One time, my wise older sister suggested that the best way to get a paid vacation from work was to pull my skirt up over my head and run around my workplace babbling incoherently.

This has been a bit of a challenging week. I'm wearing a skirt tomorrow just in case.

A Woman's Prerogative

Our weekend at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore:

Avery (two seconds after seeing the dragon boats): "I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats. I wanna go on the dragon boats."

Avery (two minutes and $16 after getting on a dragon boat): "I wanna get off the dragon boat."

Avery -- ready to get off the dragon boat.