Have I ever mentioned that Alan Colmes works out at my gym, every day? (He actually works out on the same strange bike-elliptical hybrid that Dale Peck used to work out on. I guess it’s the VIP machine.) He always looks to be in agony. (Whereas I look like an angel.) I’m pretty sure it’s him. I’m generally good at celebrity spottings that impress no one.
This morning, I watched Fox News from my fluffy cloud that hovers above the recumbent bikes. I almost never watch Fox News, unless it’s a clip provided by a reliably left-wing kneejerk news blog. Sure, that’s awfully biased, but so is the unexpurgated channel–just in reverse.
It takes a singular vacuity to be a Fox News morning anchor. I was wondering how long I’d last as one before I cracked.
‘Can’t we all just get along?’ You’re asking this in a story about how Costco won’t carry Coke products anymore? Do you even recall the origin of this quotation?
Wow, so Obama’s mortgage aid program hasn’t magically solved the foreclosure crisis overnight? Amazing. I mean, look at the War on Terror. We sent in troops and they found Saddam and we got peace in the Middle East in record time.
Let me make sure I fully understand those last two stories. Just to be clear. Unemployment is at 10% nationwide and personal debt is as bad as ever. And today’s Cyber Monday, when everyone who is employed goes to work and spends the day not doing their work and shopping online. And that’s a good thing?
Aaaand we’re back from our commercial break. Hey, did you guys see that Goldline spot we just ran? The paid spokesperson was that actor who played the brain-damaged guy on OZ. And you know who else is a paid spokesperson? Glenn Beck. I feel like there’s a connection here.
My dad brought a giant plastic tub of ephemera to me a few weeks ago, the last remaining proof that I did not arrive on this planet a shambolic, 30-something nihilist. Contents included high school yearbooks, collected letters, notes from junior high, “books” I wrote as a child, sad-clown essays I wrote in high school, random objects of long-lost significance, and Very Strange Jewelry. I guess the “I ♥ Chatham” pin falls into the last two categories. It’s likely that I picked this goody up at the Chatham Fair, especially given that it was nestled in a pile of Columbia County Right-to-Life brochures, something I also picked up (in large quantities, say, 20 or 30 at a pass) at the Fair.
I sifted through literally hundreds of letters dated between 1986 and 1997. I recycled some of them–I was a prolific letter-writer, and honestly, some of the people with whom I corresponded just weren’t very interesting and when my Collected Correspondence is published, I want the wheat and chaff separated.
But if you are reading this right right now, I kept your letters. I swear.
I had two very active pen pals as a teenager, both of them friends I’d made the summer after my freshman year of high school. I haven’t even had the opportunity to read through all their letters, but the few I did glance at as I sorted I remembered in their entirety. I’m happy I held onto them (somewhat unwittingly — they were in my dad’s storage space) all these years because the letters were intimate companions at a point at which I was very, very sad. Like, all-the-fucking-time-sad sad.
I’m not in touch with either of these people anymore, and when I consider how close we were, it seems strange. I had a brief urge to try to reconnect. After all, no one is hard to find anymore. But also, no one is ever as interesting as you remember them to be.
(You can never go home again. Especially if home is Chatham. Christ.)
In other news:
Nine months after I bought the thing, I’ve finally started converting my records to digital format. Here, for nostalgia’s sake, are two songs from the 1990s. The first is a band called Tonka from a split 7″ (b/w Suburban Propain–who still exist, apparently). I got this 7″ at my first all-ages show. I was 15. Steve, the guy who produced it, was manning the merch table and he gave me this and an Inspector 13/Libido Boyz split. We became penpals for a while. I remember remarking that I liked Tonka better than SP and he replied, Tonka are great but they eat meat and smoke cigarettes. I get on them for that all the time. Weren’t the 90s so cute!
I don’t know how well this has aged, to be honest. Ah well.
Tonka, Thirty-Something
Next we have a band out of Albany called Beef. They no longer exist, but the label, Cash Cow, does. A high school friend of mine dated the bassist. They were excellent, though a bit “eclectic,” perhaps, for the upstate NY Champion sweatshirt and backward baseball cap crowd. I think they gave this 7″ to me on their southeast tour–they came through Savannah and I seem to recall making them spaghetti and my boyfriend at the time was a dick to them.
It really captures that mid-90s upbeat, snotty, hell-what-could-POSSIBLY-go-wrong-with-the-country anodyne sound I miss so much.
Beef, Towncar
Where did she go?
I am lazy. If you're bored, go visit my tumblr, updated daily with other people's witticisms and erudition.Also by me
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