Musings, etc

Like Nobody is Watching

/ aliciaashcroft / 2 Comments

After two days of a cold—after two days of blogging about William Holden cracking his head and bleeding to death and Martin Luther King’s untimely demise, I fear I’ve taken my readers to a dark place.  But sometimes, that’s just how it is.  I’m finding that I don’t always know where each blog is going to go.  The other day I wrote about zombies, and the piece wound being a metaphor about a failed relationship.  I recently wrote a blog about an altercation at a drug store, and then I got an e-mail from a friend saying that the woman I wrote about might have been her mother.  Of course that bothers me, but at the time of writing, that was not my concern.  It wasn’t about what it said about her, it was what it said about me.  I can’t let myself be consumed with that kind of self-consciousness.  I can’t fear that no one will read and then dread the consequences when people do read.   I can’t fear that my readers will be bored, offended or disappointed.  I have to write about what I find fascinating and hopefully that translates well. There is nothing I love more than researching and writing, and there’s nothing that means more than being read, and that my words could be a small part of your day.

That being said, I think its high-time that I switch gears and tackle male strippers.  Last night, two co-workers and I went to a bar to see “Canadian Playboyz”. (I think the ‘z’ makes it sexier, don’t you?)

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Kathleen had often reminisced about going out in the 1980’s, and what a hoot such events were.  Of course, I hadn’t gone out in a few years (see Foot-lose) and when the event was mentioned, Jessica quickly helped make the idea a reality.  Tickets are bought, and the plans are made…and of course, I get a cold.  But I work diligently to  achieve better health in anticipation of the night.  (Come hell or high water bitches, I’m going OUT!)  The girls come round to mine and jello-shots and rose wine is imbibed, and my husband drives us to the bar.  The, ahem, ‘performers’ have not started yet, and we giddily anticipate what is to come.  Jessica boozily confesses a fear of seeing these naked strangers…like, the whole thing.  Kathleen has told us stories—one of which when a stripper took her glasses and put them on his ‘member’.  I love this story because I always imagine her squinting blindly as he backs away ever so sexily with her eye sight on his cock. (You’re going to bring those back right?)

article-2346071-00057EBE00000C1D-960_634x536The MC comes out, and riles up the crowd.  The three of us are hanging back, but there is a decent crowd of hyenas, er I mean women, panting in the wake of this beefcake, who keeps alluding to the fact that soon these guys are going to get “naked and sexy” (as opposed to what? “Naked and flatulent?” “Naked and Crying?”)

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And lord knows what these beefcakes are up to, because the clock strikes ten on a show that was meant to start at nine, but it doesn’t really matter because we are drunk and dancing.  The MC returns, once again throwing around the “naked and sexy” guarantee.  He starts selling 50/50 tickets to the audience—the prizes included being dry-humped by a naked stranger—which seems like a good deal to at least 50% of the audience.  He goes on with a general: “here’s what you get for ten dollars, here’s what you get for twenty”, and we’re not really listening because we want to save our money for more drinks.  But the mention of the grand prize did capture my attention, ‘for the most horny and nasty woman in the room’.  Ugh, who wants to win that prize?  (And further more—is there a worst word in the erotic lexicon than ‘horny’?)

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The strippers go out into the crowd, selling tickets and grinding up on these women, who are squealing like nubile teenaged girls. Oh my god, this is like my worst nightmare, these strange men are licking and kissing, and pushing up against you in their tight jeans…in front of everybody…for money, no less.  When they passed us, we all just dropped our eyes, as if the floor was the most interesting thing we had ever seen.  The MC begins a new game: he chooses a couple of women from the front, asks them what their favourite sexual position is, and another stripper comes out, and performs it on her as she…fakes an orgasm.  The woman who faked the best orgasm won a lap dance.  And these gals did not hold back, screaming like they were on as sexy roller coaster.  This whole scene is really testing my feminist values.

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I came as a lark with some friends, but I really was expecting some cheesy, hard bodied dancing to Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like a Wolf”…not denim clad doggie style with some shrieking participant.  And really, in the end, their whole shtick was 15% actual dancing.  But let me tell you, they did do some choreographed Backstreet Boys type moves, but I couldn’t stop imagining them rehearsing it in their mother’s basement.  I looked at their website in preparation to write about this, and as it turns out, the bar couldn’t swing the extra $50 for “Full Monty”, so we were stuck with the “G-string Show”, which mostly involved a lot of ab rubbing and butt clenching.  This all suited me fine; I couldn’t handle seeing those things swung around like helicopter propellers anyway.

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The show ends and we hit the dance floor, which is my favourite part of the night.

5566361209_8d6fb92b75_zI am now certifiably in a new chapter in my life: married, in my thirties and unconcerned with being cool, which is good because I’m not cool, so I don’t have to worry about it anymore.  As I’m dancing, my eyes fall on various figures in the room, and there’s so much evident self-consciousness in the room.  Everyone is aware that there is the possibility of judgement (this is a bar packed with women after all), that there is an edge to everyone’s actions.  Some girls are dancing like there is a camera on them; others dance like they shouldn’t have had that last drink, and others are dancing, eyes darting all around, looking to see what else is happening, who else is here, cell phone in hand, rouged faces illuminated by the screen’s light.  As for me, I’m dancing as if I won’t go out again for another three years. I danced as if nobody was watching; drunkenly deciding that this is how I should write: fearlessly, recklessly, and with little regard of what others think about the way I move.

17h4rImages Courtesy of Google

 

Martin Luther King Jr’s Mountain Top Speech

/ aliciaashcroft / Leave a comment

Martin Luther King Jr’s Mountain Top Speech

This is an excerpt from his final speech, as referenced in today’s blog…all the best to you all xx

King on the Mountaintop

/ aliciaashcroft / 4 Comments

This morning I woke up, still feeling unwell, and thinking that I would blog about the difficulties I’m having with my new cell phone (the problem not being with the phone, but with me).  I turn on the radio—CBC 2, and the news mentions that today, April 4, marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  You know me; I head to the computer to learn more about MLK.  After a lot of reading, I wound up watching several speeches, and finally I watched a documentary about his life, and the social movement he helped develop.  After all this research, my head was too full of too much information.  I soaked in the tub and washed the dishes, the whole time my face is twisted in this disturbed expression.  I want to write about this…but where do I begin?  It’s such a huge part of history, it is connected to so many other stories, and it’s all so heart wrenching.  Who am I to write about this? But it’s inside of me now, this information that before this morning, I knew a bit, but not a lot.  And now I am haunted, and must release the ghost.

Ralph Abernathy, one of King’s closest associates, said that the movement started with Rosa Parks, a woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person in 1955; and while King did not create the social movement, it created him.  He was a Baptist minister who was elected as Present to the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association), which established the Montgomery Bus Boycott, following Parks’ arrest.  This boycott brought national attention to racial segregation in the South. In 1957 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was created, with King as president.  The SCLC was a major component in the Civil Rights Movement, and their mission was to restore particular rights to the African-American community following Gandhi’s non-violent approach to civil disobedience. 

King was extremely active in the movement until his death in 1968. He was beloved, revered, but he also made a lot of enemies; the FBI had logged approximately 50 death threats up until the year of his murder.  One letter in particular urged Dr. King to commit suicide, referring to him as an “evil, abnormal beast” and repeatedly scribing three menacing words: “You are done”.  The FBI and J Edgar Hoover did not appreciate King’s message or his influences on others—especially when he went beyond the issue of segregation and criticized the war in Vietnam, amongst other issues, like the division amongst the rich and poor.  That is when he began to pose a threat, and according to Hoover, made him “the most dangerous man in America”.  When King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1964, Hoover said that he was “one of the lowest characters in the country”.  King was considered a subversive and was subject to investigations under COINTELPRO, which was a government sector meant to: “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” organizations and individuals.  King knew that his life was in danger and apparently said so to his wife Coretta following the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy: “This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you, this is a sick society”.                       

The 39 year old minister, activist, husband and father was in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 to participate in an on-going protest of over-worked and underpaid sanitation workers (being paid “starvation wages” in a job that was “two steps above slavery”.  The night before his death, as a storm raged outside, he delivered his final speech.  In it, he refers unknowingly to his impending demise: “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will…I may not get there with you….I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man”.   

The next day, shortly before 6:01pm, Martin Luther King Jr. was standing outside his hotel room, #306 at the Lorraine Motel (known as the King-Abernathy suite, as they apparently stayed there often).  The room was on the second floor, and he waited on the balcony as his mate went back inside to apply more cologne. According to the many internet sources, the general mood amongst King and his men was lively, everyone was getting ready for dinner, and they were laughing (and according to one source, a pillow fight ensued), and feeling joyful.  People had started to gather down below, as his exact location (room number and all) was being announced on the radio.  Jesse Jackson was on site, and recalls King calling down to musician Ben Branch a moment before he was murdered: “Make sure you play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty”, which were allegedly his last words.  When King was shot—one single blast that broke his jaw and neck, severing a jugular vein, it ripped his necktie clean off his shirt, and he died within the hour.  And just like that, the merriment had ceased and this man died for a cause that had defined his life, and changed the lives of so many others.

That same night, Robert Kennedy, (who would be assassinated two months later), announced King’s death at a campaign rally in an African-American ghetto in Indiana.  Throughout other parts of the country, in over 100 American cities, people were rioting and it was believed that Kennedy’s speech—stopped rioting from happening in Indianapolis.  He insisted that King’s death not be in vain, that his approach to non-violent civil disobedience was not to be in vain.  “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black”.

This was only 45 years ago; it was not that long ago that racism existed to this extent, that peaceful marches were interrupted with police dogs and fire hoses.  And in some ways, I fear some things haven’t really changed.  Wars are still waging, there is still a huge division between the rich and the poor, and there is still so much violence, hatred and bloodshed. There is still a need for people to fight the causes of equality and justice.  And you have to be grateful for those who have the strength to defend those causes.  My head is now swimming with all these names and faces, the stories and struggles, and I am grateful for the morning news to have lead me to a place of better understanding.   

 

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Slipping Away; Holden On

/ aliciaashcroft / Leave a comment

In “Julie and Julia”, Julie’s mother warns her: “You have a full-time job, you have a husband, and now you’re gonna get sick from blogging”.  I won’t blame having a cold on blogging, but today I don’t have much of an attention span.  But—I will prevail…sort of.  This morning I woke up feeling bloody awful.  How infuriating, I went through the entire winter without so much as a sniffle, and suddenly spring breaks, and I am knocked flat with a bug.  I remedied my unhealthiness with a piping hot bath, more sleep, several oranges, and a black & white movie.  All tucked up under a blanket, watching “Sabrina”, my mind, as always, wanders to a variety of places.

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As I half-watched the movie, I remembered a morbid catch-phrase my mother and I had developed.  For years I lived in bachelor apartments alone, which was a concern to my mother, as if I could apparently slip and fall, and not be found for days.  She’d call and ask whether I had “pulled a William Holden”.  Holden was one of Audrey Hepburn’s love interests in “Sabrina” (and her lover in real life, until his admittance of having had a vasectomy put Hepburn off).  They reunited ten years later, in 1964 for “Paris When it Sizzles”.

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Hepburn was a style icon, a big star and married to Mel Ferrer.  Holden was in decline…at least physically.  From all accounts, his drinking got out of hand because of her presence.  He made some embarrassing attempts to rekindle their romance.  Which included, but was not limited to–trying to drunkenly climb into her balcony hotel one night.  In 1981, Holden, a long time alcoholic, slipped on a rug and fell at home, cracking his head on a bedside table.  He apparently just laid there, not doing anything to help himself, and then just bled to death, and was found four days later.  That my friends is known as: ‘pulling a William Holden’.

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After “Sabrina” and subsequent research about Hepburn, Holden and Humphrey Bogart (who was rumoured to have disliked Audrey, and was a genuine prick to all those around him) I was feeling unable to do much else but continue resting on the couch.

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I searched Netflix for another film; I came across “Valley of the Dolls”, a film I had never seen, but had heard a lot about.  And I soon learned why it was voted one of the “Fifty Worst Films” of all times.  It stars Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, and Sharon Tate, about a bunch of gals trying to make it in Hollywood, who inevitably succumb to the lure of booze and barbiturates or “dolls”, as they are referred to in the film.

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The movie is so bad, but not a “good-bad” kind of movie, it’s just bad…which suits me fine because I’m not really paying attention.  The film has inspired the mother of all internet research webs: from “Valley of the Dolls” to Sharon Tate to Charles Manson, to the Manson murders to “Helter Skelter” to Roman Polanski, then back to “Valley of the Dolls”, and Jacqueline Susann, (the book’s author), which lead to Judy Garland (meant to star in “V of the D”, but was then fired, because of her own ‘doll troubles’).

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Garland died in 1969, (the same year as Sharon Tate’s murder), and was found on the bathroom floor by her fifth husband, twelve days after her 47th birthday.  It’s all so tragic, how people destroy their lives, they don’t mean to, sometimes they just…slip, and can never get up again.  The film has ended, I’m not feeling any better, and this blog has taken a terribly grim turn.  But I can certifiably say I’m doing better than the gals in that god-awful movie …but it makes me want to lay off the cold meds nonetheless.

Judy Garland dramatic photoImages Courtesy of Google

 

Rebuttal Struggle

/ aliciaashcroft / 4 Comments

Have you ever have the experience where someone says something unbelievably rude, insensitive or stupid, that in the moment you just drop your jaw in disbelief, but it is minutes, days or even weeks later where a rebuttal comes that is far more cutting than, “Yea, well…so is your mother?  I don’t know, isn’t that what the kids say these days?”  Over the years, I have found myself lying awake at night fantasizing about the machine gun spray of insults that would destroy the person who deigned to sass me the way they did…six months ago. 

What makes me think of this, you ask? Oh you didn’t ask? Well then…I’ll get back to having something nasty to say later…and when I do get back at you, it will be a doozy—or totally not worth the wait— I’ll be coming back at you well into my eighties, and you’d be like: “Sorry, what was this all about?”, and I’d stare at you blankly before realizing that I had no idea what I was going to say in the first place or where I am for that matter.  What do you want from me? I’m old!  But anyway, today at work, I was finishing up my work week with a little cleaning and puttering.  My industriousness builds, and after I wash a load of aprons, I vacuum the laundry area, and then decide to do the stairs as well.  I wouldn’t recommend that, lumbering down the staircase awkwardly, vacuum in hand.  A guy from the warehouse begins to climb the stairs, so I step aside to let him pass.  “You having fun?  Vacuuming the stairs…you like doing that?” he says, chuckling.  The rolodex of possible comments whirred through my mind, but all I could muster was “No…it’s not fun”, before going back to work.  Poor guy.  I’m sure he thought he was being a real laugh riot, but there are few worse things than people A) watching you work B) making unnecessary comments about said work.  Just walk on by buddy, just walk on by.  This makes me think of this book that my brother Anthony had when we were kids: Al Jaffe’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”.  My goodness, it would crack us up.  For those not familiar, it’s a comic where someone says something stupid, “Are you vacuuming?” and the other person has three things to say in response like: “No I was trying to give a hickey to the carpet” and whatnot.  I need something like that in real life; they need to create a phone app for that.

My husband and I currently live in a townhouse where the living quarters are stacked on top of one another.  For ages, there was no one living upstairs, and within the last month, a young couple with a small child moved in.  And since then we have enjoyed the endless symphony of thumping, thudding and dragging…of what I presume is furniture.  Frustrated with the endless noise, Ben and I discuss whether we should pop over; maybe they don’t realize that they are disturbing us.  “You go over then”, says Ben.  “Why me? Why is it always me having to do stuff like this?”  “Because I’m so tall and immense (“immense” is a word he loves to throw around), I’ll just intimidate them”.  And I’m not intimidating at all, months ago I had a mild altercation with someone, and as I tried to firmly stand my ground, I sounded an awful lot like a Bee Gee strung out on cough syrup—high pitched and dangerously shrill.  So, I slip out, and knock on their door, waiting with trembling hands and a pounding heart (have I mentioned that I don’t enjoy confrontation?).  The woman answers the door and looks certifiably unfriendly.  “He-he—loow”, I start. Uh oh, there’s that Barry Gibb voice again.  She says nothing, which makes me even more nervous.  “I was won-der-ANG, if you would mi-ind, keeping the noise dounw-nn”.  Her eyes narrow in on me.  “You see, we’ve got a kid, she’s five and we can’t help the noise”.  The child is standing behind her mother, and couldn’t weigh more than forty pounds, and clearly is not wearing steel capped boots, so I know that the onus is not solely on the child.  I see that she is moving to close the door, so I try again, “I app-re-CIATE th-aaat, thanks for your ti-iiime”.  Fuck.  I don’t think I got my point across.  But my pitch was excellent.  Of course, when I relay the story to Ben, I am snappy, sassy and totally articulate.  “She’s like: oh we’ve got a kid, and I was like: ‘Oh is that daughter? I was about to compliment your mother on being so small and youthful’.  And then I was like ‘Listen, if you can train dolphins at Sea World, surely you can teach your kid to not stomp around like an a-hole before seven in the morning’”.  But Ben, just smiles, and listens intently, because he knows I didn’t actually say any of that.

Before the Barry Gibb in the doorway incident, we had a situation on our hands at a pharmacy.  I was suffering from epic heartburn, and we had gone to the closest shop in search of a remedy.  Facing a wall of medicine, I turn to the pharmacists counter for advice.  There was only one person working, and she is so intensely focused on her lone customer: a middle aged menopausal woman who is relaying her reproductive journey from her teen years from the sounds of it.  They are going over each product in her basket, giving each one a pet name and a back story while an inferno rages inside my esophagus.  We go to another drugstore and again wait for advice.  We are standing in the antacid aisle with another husband and wife duo.  Her heartburn is so bad that she is talking about sores in her mouth, so when the pharmacist comes round, looking to us as to who goes first, I look to ole mouth sores, who then commanders the conversation. I quickly step in, as she is clearly about to get into the nitty gritty details.  I take a mere thirty seconds to get the product knowledge I need, grab two items, and make a fevered dash to the till.  Of course, there is only one cash register open, and OF COURSE, there is a customer redeeming points and taking her sweet fucking time doing god knows what, I am a inches away from ripping open my bottle of Gaviscon and chugging it like I’m at a pre-teen at a frat party.  The transaction is completed, and the woman makes a move to walk away, and then turns her body back, “Aaaa-ctually, I forgot to get my lottery tickets”.  And from the fiery, hellish depths of my diaphragm, this disgusted sound ejaculated from my mouth.  The woman, hand on hip, looks over at me: “Excuse me? I am a paying customer, and I will not be rushed, thank you very much”.  Ben says “Calm down lady”, and again the rolodex of comments whirl in my head, but I say nothing.  But I wish my hideous heart burn on her…”Yea bitch, you feel like you got a bone stuck in your chest and acid in your throat…TAKE THAT!” I really got to work on my revenge tactics because according to the internet, you can give someone chlamydia, but you can’t give them heartburn.  In the meantime, please don’t be rude to me, I can’t take the hurt, and I won’t have a response for several weeks at least.               

 

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Fright of the Living Dead

/ aliciaashcroft / Leave a comment

I’m sitting in my friend’s newly renovated kitchen, sipping on a glass of red wine; we’re just a couple of wives having a chat, her year old baby is soundly asleep.  We discuss all subjects: our husbands, her schooling, my writing, and the topic turns to film and television.  I tell her about a lovely film I had seen the day before on Netflix, “Cairo Time”.  (Don’t judge the Lifetime network sounding title, it really was quite good).  “Oh it was so romantic, and the scenery was amazing, great acting…just a wonderful movie”, I recall dreamily.  She smiles at me, “I’ve really been into “The Walking Dead” lately.  I shiver, and suddenly see my friend in a different light.  Oh. My. God.  She’s a ZOMBIE…fanatic.  Panicked, I edged out the door and ran like hell down the street, screaming for dear life.  Of course I didn’t actually flee, we got a little bit drunk on the couch and watched “Roman Holiday”.

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Her comment did leave me a few things to consider.  This will come as a shock to no one, but I am going to make a statement for the record: I am resolutely uninterested in the Zombie genre that is infecting popular culture.  If I was in Playboy magazine, it would be one of my turn-offs.  I’m not a fan of death, disease, horror or the apocalypse (which would also be on my turn-offs list). I don’t enjoy violence in film, I don’t like to be grossed out or scared.  As I mentioned in the first paragraph, I’m the kind of woman who watches movies like “Cairo Time”.  But it’s everywhere these days, even Margaret Atwood has co-written zombie themed stories.  Genres upon sub genres have developed, even finding room for humour in the theme.  And while yes, I did chuckle amid the Abba/Zombie episode of “Community”, that’s really more an “A” thing, than a “Z” thing.  In fact, in writing this I half-watched “Shaun of the Dead”, which was perfectly funny—but to be honest I’d take “Hot Fuzz” any day over it.  But if it is serious, gory, flesh eating, run for your life, end of the world zombie lore, I just can’t hack it.

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One night in Halifax, while on holiday with my best friend, we sat together in a restaurant as we waited for our husbands to return from yet another pub.  We had been shopping and Evelyn had found a comic picture book about what Zombies do and do not like (I can’t recall the title).  She and her father share an affinity over the zombie culture, and she had purchased it as a gift for him.  She elaborates further, expressing her general fondness for zombies. “Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think about what I would do if the world became overrun with the undead”.  “When you can’t sleep?” I clarify. “Yeah, I think about places to hide, where I’d get food”.  I’m a little drunk, and like a frightened, intoxicated child, confess that few things frighten me more than the concept of a zombie attack.  “It’s not a real threat”, she soothes me… and she’s a scientist, so I tend to believe her when it comes to things like this.  But there is something about the concept that makes my blood run cold.  I push the book away from myself, feeling slightly uncool for not thinking of zombies as entertainment.

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Years ago, following Christmas with my family, my fiancé (who is not my husband, but that’s a story for another day) and I went to the cinema to see “Walk Hard”, the John C. Reilly comedy that spoofs the life of Johnny Cash and other iconic musicians.

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Within the first fifteen minutes, he loses interest in the film.  He wants to watch “I am Legend”, a movie I knew little about.  The movie had not yet started, so he ducks out of the dark theatre, and I follow reluctantly.  The film begins with Will Smith and his dog, and it seems that they are the last creatures on earth.  Having anticipated a silly comedy, and not being one to just abandon a film as if it were a sinking ship, I was enthusiastically pouting, slumped in the chair with my arms crossed.  The movie was manageable at first; he’s gathering supplies, and experimenting with mice and listening Bob Marley, and then suddenly—BAM! Mutated vampiric zombies types appear out of nowhere, getting all up in in the mix, scaring the shit out of both Will Smith and myself.

I am Legend 5Then someone infects his beloved dog, and then he has to strangle the animal to stop him from reanimating, and I am instantly so over this movie. I walk out of the theatre, and head upstairs to the washroom.  I fuss with my hair in the mirror and wash my hands for an inordinate amount of time.  I saunter downstairs and wander aimlessly around the lobby, looking at each individual poster for current and upcoming attractions.  Eventually, I head back in to the theatre, as if stoically facing my worst fear.

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The film ends, not happily I will add, and I’m furious.  My fiancé really enjoyed the film, and just can’t understand why I’m so upset.  My eyes blazing, I sputtered venomously: “You know how I feel about the post-apocalyptic genre!”  But then again, I’m not sure that topic really ever came up, but knowing all that I know now, I will share this advice with readers:  before one gets married, you really need to discuss a number of things: how you want to spend your money, how many children you want to have, where you want to live, and, not only their stance on zombie culture in general, but whether one of you is going to abandon  comedy in favour of a post-apocalyptic science fiction horror film.  These are serious questions you must not be afraid to ask.  If you both love the genre, then you can dress up as married zombies for Halloween, and sleep soundly after watching back-to-back episodes of “The Walking Dead”.  But that’s not me, and that wasn’t us.  My husband, I’m happy to report, is also not a Zombie enthusiast…but he’s also not the kind of man who watches “Cairo Time”, he’s somewhere in the middle, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

cairo_time_bannerImages Courtesy of Google

 

The Chive’s List of Crappy Pre-Celebrity Jobs

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The Chive’s List of Crappy Pre-Celebrity Jobs

Just a fun little link to compliment today’s blog x

Grave Digging to Hips Swinging

/ aliciaashcroft / 2 Comments

My work days are long and taxing, but the consolation is that my mind can occasionally wander without affecting the tasks at hand.  My mind is a loom, weaving a tapestry of crazy thoughts and pop culture references…I really should invent a machine that transcribes my thoughts into print, so when I come home after a long day–it’s all there, ready to be edited–or shit, while I’m out there inventing mind-reading machines, why not get this bitch to edit?  Cut through all the nonsensical imaginings which, believe me, there is an abundance.  But in reality, my husband just bought me a new cell phone and I’m totally intimidated by it.  So…I’m not really the inventing type.  And I really wish I could be, I am  looking for that ‘dare to be great’ situation.  I remember this childhood scrap book with space created for each school year.  At the bottom of the page where you put your yearly photo was a checklist–‘what I want to be when I grow up': “Nurse” “Stewardess” “Actress”, check, check, check.  Why not?  To think of it now, the crippling indecisiveness of wanting to do ‘everything’ has lead to a whole lot of studying, traveling, and waitressing.  (PS, why does spell check have to hate-on the word waitressing? It’s a word dammit! I’ve lived it!)

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I was discussing this with Robin, a former professor, now dear friend.  I had just read a slew of Nora Ephron books, and felt mildly annoyed at her idea of her ‘before-success’ job, which was writing for the Post in New York City, which followed a Wellesley education, and a brief intern position at the White House for the Kennedy Administration.  Not too shabs indeed.  Robin says, “Well, she’s not going to write about the crappy jobs”, she’s going to skip that”.  “Well I won’t skip that”, straightening indignantly, “I will talk almost exclusively about all the degrading, low paying jobs I’ve had, because people need to know just how long that road can be”.  My shoulders slump slightly: “That’s if…you know, anything fabulous ever comes of me”, I think.  Hmm, what a dreadful thought.

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But anecdotes about Ephron’s early days as a journalist is not what I, the unpaid writer, wants to hear, I want to hear three things about life: that people can immigrate to their spouses’ country’s with ease, that women can have healthy children late into their thirties and that extremely successful people suffered before they found their niche.  I want Brad Pitt in the fast food chicken suit, before the rambling Chanel # 5 ads and the fifty children he acquired with Angelina Jolie. I want Madonna at Dunkin Donuts, before the Gollum arms and as many fashion incarnations as Brad Pitt has kids. I want Channing Tatum as a struggling stripper because…who wouldn’t be into that?

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And my personal favorite, tied with Whoopi Goldberg as a beautician in a mortuary, was Rod Stewart as a grave digger. Come on! How do you not feel better about your station in life after hearing that? Imagine Stewart, shovel in hand, feeling the indignity of such a shitty job…do you think he thought to himself: “One day, I’m going to have a string of gorgeous wives and make a ton of cash, be a easy listening radio staple and have children well into my seventies…and my hair will always be awesome”.  Probably not…he probably did it because he needed the work, needed the cash, and couldn’t see the bright lights of his super sexy future.  Take these thoughts as if they are a cozy blanket and wrap that around yourself.  It too could happen to you.  But it better happen to me first because I need to hire someone to teach me how to use my fancy new phone.

Jerry-Hall-Norman-ParkinsonImages Courtesy of Google

Timing is Everything

/ aliciaashcroft / Leave a comment

Feeling exceptionally scattered today.  Worked ten hours, then home and out for a walk in the sun, and am finally sitting down, lap top ready and waiting.  I flip idly through my notebook for inspiration, shove a few potato chips in my mouth, and chew thoughtfully, thinking only that I would like to eat more chips.  My mind skips around like a flat stone along a pond, and I consider the ripples.  Throughout my work day I imagine what I’ll write about once home.  And ultimately it whittles down to one thing: how much time do I want to commit to today’s blog?  Recently people have been saying: “Oh I love taking five minutes out of my day to read”, which pleases me to no end, (if you keep reading, I’ll keep writing!), but it kind of makes me laugh, as any writer knows, it takes sooooo much longer to write it out than it does to read it.  But, lets be honest, if I was focused, and gave no time to my beloved “dicking around” on the internet,  I’d really shave off some serious time.  But that’s research people, I can’t write about Beyonce without watching a dozen or so videos.  I need to read about the movies I write about…and if that leads me from “200 Cigarettes…

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to Courtney Love to Kurt Cobain…

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to the Seattle Grunge scene…then so be it.

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Yesterday my husband was waiting for me to finish blogging: “When will you be done?”.  “Five minutes”, I lie.  I am half-watching scenes from “Jesus of Nazareth”, and reading about Mary Magdalene,  and obviously going to great lengths to prove whether or not Jesus was a hunk.  Not everything makes it to the blog, but believe me, it all goes into the vault.  And if ever you bump into me at some cocktail party, be prepared for me to drop some useless knowledge on you all.  The internet is my oracle in which to seek out all answers and also to waste just a shit-load of time.

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I’ve been really pleased with the last few blogs this week, and now I’m feeling a bit like when you were a kid and came home with an A, and your parents would say: “We are so proud of you, and will expect nothing but A’s from now on.  Oh crap.  Any room for a B average?  When I was in university, my ‘rock bottom’ was a B-, so that’s going to me my gold standard promise…I’ll always provide better than  C average work, but don’t be expecting A + work every day–I’d just hate to disappoint. As for right now, my husband is looking at me expectantly, I have a cold cider awaiting me, and these delicious potato chips aren’t going to eat themselves.

mindless-popcornImages Courtesy of Google