I hate Halloween.
I’ve always hated Halloween. It’s in my least favorite month. Of course now that I live in Los Angeles, I guess I don’t have a least favorite month. October used to be my least favorite month when I lived in Minnesota because it’s the beginning of the end of nice weather. October in Minnesota is usually cold and grey and dark, with six more months of cold, grey and dreary weather to follow.
I hate Halloween for many reasons. One is it was almost always freezing when I was going trick or treating in Minnesota. You had to bundle up, so no one could see your costume anyway. I remember dressing up as the devil, Superman, a left over 70s person (using my dad’s old clothes), a hippie, a ghost, a vampire and some other things I’ve forgotten. I never got to go as my favorite choice Wonder Woman, although I did wear a schmata on my head for a long time as a little boy so that I could pretend I had long flowing hair like Kelly Garret (Jaclyn Smith) from my favorite show “Charlie’s Angels”. I wore a towel on my head with a belt on top to keep the “hair” from falling off my head. I don’t know which disturbed my parents more, me wanting to have long pretty hair or that fact that I also looked like I was trying to dress like an Arab.
I’ve always hated carnivals, amazement parks, the circus, fairs, and those sorts of things. I can remember my grandmother taking me to Valley Fair (an amusement park in Minnesota, not sure if it’s national) when I was maybe 6 or 7 and I didn’t want to ride on the rides and wanted to leave. She yelled at me, telling me that I was not a normal kid and why couldn’t she have a normal grandchild. I was her only grandchild, so she was constantly frustrated.
When I first went to Las Vegas to visit my Grandma, (this was the first time I had ever left Minnesota; I was 13) she took me to the Hoover Dam and to Circus Circus. I hated them both and told her so. We had a big fight that day. She and my mother always loved carnivals and events like that. They also both loved women in prison movies and cafeteria food.
On Halloween day you were supposed to come dressed to school in your costume. I refused to wear my costume because I didn’t like my classmates knowing who I wanted to be. I still don’t like to wear costumes. I always feel stupid in a costume. I was always the only kid who came to school not in a costume.
My mother had a Halloween tradition of scaring me and eating most of my candy. She would wait until I got home from school to scare me. Usually she wasn’t there when I got home from school. She’d hide and when I came home, she’d either jump out at me dressed as witch or I’d find her at the bottom of the stairs covered in fake blood, pretending to be dead. I never found any of that very amusing. I also didn’t like it when we’d play the blind game and I’d be the blind person and she’d walk me into things, but that’s not a Halloween story, that was the rest of the year.
After scaring me, she’d invite her mother over and we’d scare grandma. Mm mother would say she had to go downstairs to get something. She’d make a lot of noise like she fell down the stairs. Grandma would rush downstairs and discover my mother “dead”. Just when she would get close enough to touch my mother, my mother would rise up and laugh. It really made Grandma angry.
After I’d come in from a cold night of trick or treating, usually by myself or with some weird friend I found, my mother would take my bag of candy and tell me she had to "inspect it for razor blades and poison". I’d go to bed and in the morning, the crappy candy and only apples would be left. The good stuff would be already eaten by my mother or stashed away somewhere.
This year I will be on my way to Austin on Halloween day. I arrive that night. It will be the first time I’ve ever been to Austin or Texas. Texas scares me, but I’ve heard such great things about Austin. If I like it, I will move there and I will get on with my life.
I tried to find a Halloween type song, but hell, it’s not even Halloween so today the song is “Tomorrow, Wendy” by Concrete Blonde. This is an amazing live version from their 1994 “Still in Hollywood” CD. I’m still in Hollywood, so I know how that feels. The song was written by Andy Preiboy, the same person who wrote another one of my all time favorite songs “Loving the Highway Man” (posted on this blog in September). I love the vocals and the lyrics of this song.
Concrete Blonde—Tomorrow Wendy (live)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/43273994057dac
“I told the priest
don't count on any second coming
god got his ass kicked
the first time he came down here slumming
he had the balls to come
the gall to die and then forgive us
no, i don't wonder why
i wonder what he thought it would get us.”
Showing posts with label Austin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Austin. Show all posts
October 19, 2007
October 7, 2007
Shining as she reeled him in
I booked my trip to Austin. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard so many good things about it. I am keeping an open mind. I may move there, I may not. I won’t know until I visit. I arrive on Halloween.
One of my loyal readers who also knows me in the real world pointed out a story I had forgotten. It’s related to yesterday’s story about my stepmother Corinne.
The history is this: My mother met Corinne back in 1970. They were neighbors. Corinne’s kids were my best friends growing up and now they are my stepsisters. My father ended up marrying Corinne and my mother never forgave her, even though she didn’t want him. She didn’t care about my father, but she felt betrayed by Corinne for dating my father and then not telling her that she was dating him.
My mother was dropping off one day at my father’s house which is the house where she used to live. when she got to the driveway, she noticed Corinne’s car parked there. She dropped me off and then proceeded to drive all over my father’s lawn. I’ll never forget the look on Corinne’s face when she heard the screeching of the car and saw my mother driving all over the lawn. My mother is not someone you want to cross and Corinne has always been afraid of my mother.
Corinne’s youngest daughter, Caroline, was born two years after me and five years after Corinne and my father first met, back when my parents were still married to each other. Caroline bears a striking resemblance to me. If I were casting a part for my sister (I have no known siblings), I would definitely cast Caroline because she really does look like me. She also completely shares my father’s politics. They would often talk about issues and agree with each other on everything, meanwhile my stepmother and I would egg them on by talking about how much we like guns and how poor people should be forcibly sterilized. It’s always easy to bait my father because he takes things so seriously.
For a long time I have wondered if my stepsister is actually my half sister. One Sunday after family dinner, I stole a fork that Caroline had used and put it in a plastic baggie so that I could have her DNA tested and compared to my own.
I called a bunch of places that do DNA testing, but every place was either too expensive or told me they couldn’t do a DNA test without the person’s consent. I still have the fork with the DNA on it, so if any of you readers out there know how to do a DNA test, let me know and I will send you the fork and some of my DNA so you can test it to see if Caroline and I are biologically related. I’d really like to know.
Today’s song is the first Joni Mitchell song I have posted on this blog. It’s from 1975 and it’s called “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” from her “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” album. The reason I chose this song to go with this entry is because it’s about what the suburbs does to people and the petty things people do to each other when they are in a relationship. The song is full of incredible imagery, like:
“A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives
And paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid.”
Joni Mitchell- Harry's House/Centerpiece
http://www.zshare.net/audio/40787494ba060c
The song reminds me of the relationship between my father and my stepmother.
“Yellow checkers for the kitchen
Climbing ivy for the bath
She is lost in House and Gardens
He's caught up in Chief of Staff
He drifts off into the memory
Of the way she looked in school
With her body oiled and shining
At the public swimming pool ...”
One of my loyal readers who also knows me in the real world pointed out a story I had forgotten. It’s related to yesterday’s story about my stepmother Corinne.
The history is this: My mother met Corinne back in 1970. They were neighbors. Corinne’s kids were my best friends growing up and now they are my stepsisters. My father ended up marrying Corinne and my mother never forgave her, even though she didn’t want him. She didn’t care about my father, but she felt betrayed by Corinne for dating my father and then not telling her that she was dating him.
My mother was dropping off one day at my father’s house which is the house where she used to live. when she got to the driveway, she noticed Corinne’s car parked there. She dropped me off and then proceeded to drive all over my father’s lawn. I’ll never forget the look on Corinne’s face when she heard the screeching of the car and saw my mother driving all over the lawn. My mother is not someone you want to cross and Corinne has always been afraid of my mother.
Corinne’s youngest daughter, Caroline, was born two years after me and five years after Corinne and my father first met, back when my parents were still married to each other. Caroline bears a striking resemblance to me. If I were casting a part for my sister (I have no known siblings), I would definitely cast Caroline because she really does look like me. She also completely shares my father’s politics. They would often talk about issues and agree with each other on everything, meanwhile my stepmother and I would egg them on by talking about how much we like guns and how poor people should be forcibly sterilized. It’s always easy to bait my father because he takes things so seriously.
For a long time I have wondered if my stepsister is actually my half sister. One Sunday after family dinner, I stole a fork that Caroline had used and put it in a plastic baggie so that I could have her DNA tested and compared to my own.
I called a bunch of places that do DNA testing, but every place was either too expensive or told me they couldn’t do a DNA test without the person’s consent. I still have the fork with the DNA on it, so if any of you readers out there know how to do a DNA test, let me know and I will send you the fork and some of my DNA so you can test it to see if Caroline and I are biologically related. I’d really like to know.
Today’s song is the first Joni Mitchell song I have posted on this blog. It’s from 1975 and it’s called “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” from her “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” album. The reason I chose this song to go with this entry is because it’s about what the suburbs does to people and the petty things people do to each other when they are in a relationship. The song is full of incredible imagery, like:
“A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives
And paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid.”
Joni Mitchell- Harry's House/Centerpiece
http://www.zshare.net/audio/40787494ba060c
The song reminds me of the relationship between my father and my stepmother.
“Yellow checkers for the kitchen
Climbing ivy for the bath
She is lost in House and Gardens
He's caught up in Chief of Staff
He drifts off into the memory
Of the way she looked in school
With her body oiled and shining
At the public swimming pool ...”
September 23, 2007
Just an ordinary man slipping away…
My new boss, I’m sick of him already, he wears cut off jeans with holes in the back and no underwear so I see things I don’t want to see all day long.
Everyday I have to untangle my Ipod headphones. I try to keep them untangled, but it doesn’t work.
I’m still recovering my Friday night when it took me two and a half hours to get home in the rain.
A friend is coming back from some place far off and she will come back with all kinds of obnoxious revelations.
I spent today looking up info about Austin and planning my escape.
I was thinking today about the first job I ever had, which started this long hateful journey I have with employment. My mother calls jobs “adult daycare” and I have to agree. Most of my friends are amazed by my ability to avoid employment, but I’m not. It just comes natural to me.
I’ve hated every job I’ve ever had, so why would I be out searching for this?
I’ve gotten away with everything I could in jobs, almost as much as my mother, but I did not steal. I did once send a lava lamp to my friend and charge it to a mean customer’s account when I worked for a home shopping channel years ago.
My first job was at a place called Hal’s. It was a men’s clothing store located in Knollwood Mall in St. Louis Park (or was it Hopkins?). My father played ping pong—I mean table tennis, with the owner (he’s dead now just like everyone on my father’s team).
My father helped me make a hand written resume, but I can’t remember what was on it. What could have been on it since I’d never had a job before this point?
The job, like every job since, was not a good fit. First off, it was at a men’s clothing store. I knew and know nothing about clothes. When a customer came in with her son, she asked me if we had any sport coats. I asked her for what sport and she rolled her eyes at me and sighed heavily in that entitled suburban mom kind of way. It’s funny that I would ask her what sport since even if that was the correct question to ask, I would have had no idea about anything related to sports.
We had to stand the entire time and I found that unbearable. I was also horrified one day when the effeminate, fat, closeted gay guy I worked with was wearing the same cardigan sweater that I owned. When I got home, I threw that sweater away.
I remember that my mother and her non-lesbian “roommate” (that’s for another blog entry) came in and they purposely unfolded and messed up the sweaters that I had just folded “the Hal’s Way” (I still fold clothes this way). Then my mother’s “roommate” came back to the storeroom where I had gone to escape them and talked to me and I got in trouble with my boss. She said the rule was no non-employees in the storeroom. I pretended I didn’t understand her, which is my way of coping when a boss yells at me.
I lasted for a month and a half. I still don’t understand clothes. I have no idea how to dress. I look at old pictures of myself and I think I look like I escaped from the group home.
I think a lot about what I should be wearing now that I am almost 34. What does a 34 year old wear? Certainly it’s not “nice-nice” clothes. I mean I don’t own a suit or a tie or even a sport coat, so I don’t know what to wear.
I was thinking about the song “Ordinary Morning” by Sheryl Crow. I feel this way, the way she feels in the song, the part about slipping away. This is from her “Sheryl Crow album from 1996. I’m not a big fan of Sheryl’s hits, but some of her lesser known songs like this one are some of my favorites. No one writes in such detail about depression. I once saw Sheryl Crow on TV sing opera and I was amazed. She has an incredible voice.
This song is exactly how I am feeling today.
I'm just an ordinary man slipping away…
Sheryl Crow—Ordinary Morning
http://www.zshare.net/audio/381644578f9055
Everyday I have to untangle my Ipod headphones. I try to keep them untangled, but it doesn’t work.
I’m still recovering my Friday night when it took me two and a half hours to get home in the rain.
A friend is coming back from some place far off and she will come back with all kinds of obnoxious revelations.
I spent today looking up info about Austin and planning my escape.
I was thinking today about the first job I ever had, which started this long hateful journey I have with employment. My mother calls jobs “adult daycare” and I have to agree. Most of my friends are amazed by my ability to avoid employment, but I’m not. It just comes natural to me.
I’ve hated every job I’ve ever had, so why would I be out searching for this?
I’ve gotten away with everything I could in jobs, almost as much as my mother, but I did not steal. I did once send a lava lamp to my friend and charge it to a mean customer’s account when I worked for a home shopping channel years ago.
My first job was at a place called Hal’s. It was a men’s clothing store located in Knollwood Mall in St. Louis Park (or was it Hopkins?). My father played ping pong—I mean table tennis, with the owner (he’s dead now just like everyone on my father’s team).
My father helped me make a hand written resume, but I can’t remember what was on it. What could have been on it since I’d never had a job before this point?
The job, like every job since, was not a good fit. First off, it was at a men’s clothing store. I knew and know nothing about clothes. When a customer came in with her son, she asked me if we had any sport coats. I asked her for what sport and she rolled her eyes at me and sighed heavily in that entitled suburban mom kind of way. It’s funny that I would ask her what sport since even if that was the correct question to ask, I would have had no idea about anything related to sports.
We had to stand the entire time and I found that unbearable. I was also horrified one day when the effeminate, fat, closeted gay guy I worked with was wearing the same cardigan sweater that I owned. When I got home, I threw that sweater away.
I remember that my mother and her non-lesbian “roommate” (that’s for another blog entry) came in and they purposely unfolded and messed up the sweaters that I had just folded “the Hal’s Way” (I still fold clothes this way). Then my mother’s “roommate” came back to the storeroom where I had gone to escape them and talked to me and I got in trouble with my boss. She said the rule was no non-employees in the storeroom. I pretended I didn’t understand her, which is my way of coping when a boss yells at me.
I lasted for a month and a half. I still don’t understand clothes. I have no idea how to dress. I look at old pictures of myself and I think I look like I escaped from the group home.
I think a lot about what I should be wearing now that I am almost 34. What does a 34 year old wear? Certainly it’s not “nice-nice” clothes. I mean I don’t own a suit or a tie or even a sport coat, so I don’t know what to wear.
I was thinking about the song “Ordinary Morning” by Sheryl Crow. I feel this way, the way she feels in the song, the part about slipping away. This is from her “Sheryl Crow album from 1996. I’m not a big fan of Sheryl’s hits, but some of her lesser known songs like this one are some of my favorites. No one writes in such detail about depression. I once saw Sheryl Crow on TV sing opera and I was amazed. She has an incredible voice.
This song is exactly how I am feeling today.
I'm just an ordinary man slipping away…
Sheryl Crow—Ordinary Morning
http://www.zshare.net/audio/381644578f9055
September 22, 2007
If we listen to every question that we ask
I bought my pillow. I also went to buy my favorite blue cheese chips, but the only store in LA that carries them did not have them as usual. I’ve contacted the makers of these chips and ordered from them before, but they have since stopped their online and phone ordering. I talked to many people from this company and told them how hard it was to get their chips which are my favorite and I told them I would never eat any other kind of chips again and still they refused to let me order. When the store does have them in stock, they are usually stale. So if you want to help me out, visit http://www.goodhealthnaturalfoods.com/ and tell them you want to order their chips online because you can’t get them anywhere else.
So I brought home my new pillow and also bought another foam mattress pad. I sleep on a couch/bed thing that is a twin size. It’s horrible. My apartment came with furniture, which I thought was a good idea at the time, but now I hate this place and I hate all this wicker. It looks like some mean Grandma’s house. Actually it looks like a restaurant I never liked in Minnesota called Pannekoeken. Actually it looks like a Pannekoeken threw up in my apartment. http://www.pannekoeken.com/ On a side note, my grandfather built all the Pannekoeken restaurants in Minnesota. He didn’t eat in them, just built them.
As I was changing my sheets and putting the new mattress pad on my horrid bedcouch, I was thinking about how much my life has slipped down/away. When I looked at the mattress I remembered that it is the same mattress as the one that Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character slept on in the movie “Sherrybaby”. In that movie she lives in a halfway house.
As I put the new mattress pad on top of the old one (the bed’s hard so I am trying to add some padding so I don’t have to feel the springs in my back), I looked at the huge Noah (that’s me) sized sweat stain on it. (I do sweat a lot, always have.) Then I looked around my apartment, which didn’t take long because it’s just a small room and I remembered how excited I was a few years back to get a full size bed and to live in a one bedroom apartment instead of a studio. This was Minnesota, where rent is cheaper than LA. I never thought I’d end up with a twin size bed in a one room apartment again. Of course this time, I don’t even really own a bed because this bed is part of the rented ugly couch.
What I am saying is that I have to change my life for good, for better or be done with it. I always lean to changing it for better, but I like to think (love to think) about being done, but no one really wants to talk about that with me. I think about it all the time and it fills me with peace and joy. To be done. To say no, I’m not here. I’m checked out so I am leaving.
I may do another kind of leaving. I might visit Austin. Do you know anything about Austin? I know, it’s Texas, but I’ve heard it’s a great place to live. I’ve never been, but I want to visit in the next couple months at some point. If you have any suggestions about Austin (where to live, what it’s like there, that sort of thing) email me at: theawfulrowing@gmail.com.
I’m not living the life of someone who’s going to turn 34. I’ve been stuck for almost three years now (three years starting November 21st). I need to get unstuck or be done.
Today I have for you a song that helps me a lot. It’s a song about choices, about paths and I find it amazing and heavenly. It’s Dolly Parton’s version of “Stairway to Heaven” from her 2002 Halos & Horns album (a great album by the way). You may think Dolly Parton? Why her? Because she’s an original and she has a sense of humor about herself (something that is missing here in smoggy LA).
I had heard that Dolly Parton did a cover of “Stairway to Heaven” and I listened to it out of curiosity and fell in love with it right away. Then I listened to the rest of the album and I was surprised how much I liked it.
Dolly was in the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, “9 to 5”. I remember going with my grandma and asking her what stoned meant. She told me the truth as she always did (unless the truth was about her), so ever since then I’ve had a special place for Dolly.
Take a listen to “Stairway to Heaven”. Open your mind and really listen to her and the choir and see if you don’t have an experience of lifting. Listen to this song when you need a pathway.
Dolly Parton: Stairway to Heaven
http://www.zshare.net/audio/37969098ea38c3
So I brought home my new pillow and also bought another foam mattress pad. I sleep on a couch/bed thing that is a twin size. It’s horrible. My apartment came with furniture, which I thought was a good idea at the time, but now I hate this place and I hate all this wicker. It looks like some mean Grandma’s house. Actually it looks like a restaurant I never liked in Minnesota called Pannekoeken. Actually it looks like a Pannekoeken threw up in my apartment. http://www.pannekoeken.com/ On a side note, my grandfather built all the Pannekoeken restaurants in Minnesota. He didn’t eat in them, just built them.
As I was changing my sheets and putting the new mattress pad on my horrid bedcouch, I was thinking about how much my life has slipped down/away. When I looked at the mattress I remembered that it is the same mattress as the one that Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character slept on in the movie “Sherrybaby”. In that movie she lives in a halfway house.
As I put the new mattress pad on top of the old one (the bed’s hard so I am trying to add some padding so I don’t have to feel the springs in my back), I looked at the huge Noah (that’s me) sized sweat stain on it. (I do sweat a lot, always have.) Then I looked around my apartment, which didn’t take long because it’s just a small room and I remembered how excited I was a few years back to get a full size bed and to live in a one bedroom apartment instead of a studio. This was Minnesota, where rent is cheaper than LA. I never thought I’d end up with a twin size bed in a one room apartment again. Of course this time, I don’t even really own a bed because this bed is part of the rented ugly couch.
What I am saying is that I have to change my life for good, for better or be done with it. I always lean to changing it for better, but I like to think (love to think) about being done, but no one really wants to talk about that with me. I think about it all the time and it fills me with peace and joy. To be done. To say no, I’m not here. I’m checked out so I am leaving.
I may do another kind of leaving. I might visit Austin. Do you know anything about Austin? I know, it’s Texas, but I’ve heard it’s a great place to live. I’ve never been, but I want to visit in the next couple months at some point. If you have any suggestions about Austin (where to live, what it’s like there, that sort of thing) email me at: theawfulrowing@gmail.com.
I’m not living the life of someone who’s going to turn 34. I’ve been stuck for almost three years now (three years starting November 21st). I need to get unstuck or be done.
Today I have for you a song that helps me a lot. It’s a song about choices, about paths and I find it amazing and heavenly. It’s Dolly Parton’s version of “Stairway to Heaven” from her 2002 Halos & Horns album (a great album by the way). You may think Dolly Parton? Why her? Because she’s an original and she has a sense of humor about herself (something that is missing here in smoggy LA).
I had heard that Dolly Parton did a cover of “Stairway to Heaven” and I listened to it out of curiosity and fell in love with it right away. Then I listened to the rest of the album and I was surprised how much I liked it.
Dolly was in the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, “9 to 5”. I remember going with my grandma and asking her what stoned meant. She told me the truth as she always did (unless the truth was about her), so ever since then I’ve had a special place for Dolly.
Take a listen to “Stairway to Heaven”. Open your mind and really listen to her and the choir and see if you don’t have an experience of lifting. Listen to this song when you need a pathway.
Dolly Parton: Stairway to Heaven
http://www.zshare.net/audio/37969098ea38c3
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