Throwback Thursday: 1985

     😅😋😍                                                                                                 "Hey," I said to Diana, "if you get a chance while you're in the states...didn't you say your sister kept that newspaper clipping of us in high school, the one of us at the tennis courts with my dog?"

Michelle DiPoala, left, and Diana Tramontano, both of Roxbury, chat Tuesday afternoon at the Roxbury tennis courts off of Route 67. Meanwhile Grover tries to take in a bit of the conversation.

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#HireAWriter

"I was a rocket ship filled with untapped potential. 

With Year Up, now the sky is the limit."

Dear Marketer,

Your transit marketing campaign

forces awkward metaphor and leans on tired, old cliche.

You probably spent a lot of money on this shit.

It should be better.

Hire a writer, fer fuck's sake.

Yours,

SuperLowBudge

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God is no longer an explanation of anything,

but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. 

God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.” 
― Douglas Adams

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The Great Purge: The Monday After

Dear Diary

Monday. Today I woke up late, ate a buttery English muffin, dropped a whole thing of iced coffee all over the kitchen floor (same floor I'd just washed yesterday, natch) and then I did nothing of any value to anyone the whole rest of the day. Except for cleaning up the spilled iced coffee. If I'd put the coffee into my body instead of onto the floor, maybe I'd have gotten more done today. But here's what I've been doing all week...

• I re-arranged the porch furniture and fixed it up so it looks nice. Joe's been enjoying sitting out there of an evening, with his feet up, enjoying our little urban oasis. I brought one of my stone gargoyles out there to sit with my little plants (basil, thyme and rosemary). 

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Peaches!

The peach trees are full and gorgeous. H and T say they're gonna pick soon!
I said, "I'm gonna just stand underneath this one with my mouth open.

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Hey, that's perfect for Throwback Thursday

Centre Pompidou, Paris (mid-2000s)

Diana's son is 12, and I only just met him yesterday.
I did everything possible not to make the kid feel weird when we met for lunch.
From his babyhood I've thought he had the eyes of an old soul.
Nice to meet you, son.

I visited Diana in Paris, way back in the early 2000s, just once.

This is us, the only photo from that visit (taken by her *asshole husband.)

We forgot to get a photo yesterday.

We look just like we do here, only twenty-something years older.

The 90s were so weird
I loved the ribbed mock turtleneck I'm wearing. 
It was so soft, and it traveled well for my job at the time.
I also bought one in black, red and hunter green.
This one is the color of vanilla bean ice cream.
I insisted on rocking "The Jennifer Aniston" on my head.
Someone should have punched me in the face.

*I'm sure his friends think he's great. But we have never gotten along. 

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The Originals: "I Can't Believe I Fell For Another Damn Vampire"

Jenny and I are both binge-watching The Originals on Netflix. I called her today to find out where she's up to in the series. I myself have finished all four seasons in record time. I do not recommend pursuing such specious glory. You will rot your brain, plus your eyeballs might fall out the front of your damn skull. It's just that it's hot out, and I am unemployed at the moment. (Please hire me.)

"Marcel has just taken over the Strix," Jenny said, meaning she's in season four. Excellent, she's almost done Always and Forever'ing and then we can dish about the season ending. "Marcel is my new TV boyfriend," Jenny said. Since we're playing, my TV boyfriend is Niklaus. Don't tell anyone. I'm gonna be 48 next year. I can't believe I fell for another damn vampire.

So, a thing about me. I've always been a fiction sensualist. Over and over again I crush hard on a story and forge a deep connection with the most exquisite characters. When I was in 3rd or 4th grade I fell in love with Huckleberry Finn, for example. I mean Huck Finn the character, as conjured by Mark Twain and existing only within the pages of the book. I adored Jo March, and I loved Catherine's Heathcliff. I wanted to live with Willie Wonka, and in my 20s I developed a thing for Egon in The Real Ghostbusters. You understand I mean the cartoon. My brand is: I've always been a sucker for the brainy ones. I really enjoy immersion into a good story, and The Originals is a pretty good story. It's sexy, it's engaging, and it's a beautiful show visually. I love that New Orleans gets to be a character on her own. It's a charming enough show all around that the clunky bits are easily forgiven. For example, you need to ignore the fact that every Mikaelson has a different English dialect, despite having been Always & Forevering around the world together a great deal of the time. Just one of those threads that you don't want to pull too hard.

Don't Break The Spell

"No research for you!" Jenny scolded.
"I won't." She's known me a long time. Since college. You see, I tend to ruin for myself the whole experience of an immersive show like The Originals. What happens is that the show ends and I want "more." So then I go full dork becoming knowledgeable about the cast and the writers and the logistics of the production. It's hard not to do that! My adoration for a great fictional character has me on a slippery slope. I'm always one fandom-inch away from diving into online message boards. Then what follows? Fan fiction? Cosplay?

Getting drawn fully into fantasy stories requires a commitment. Do you realize that our movie Supermans have all been unknowns? Robert Redford was considered before Christopher Reeve, but "That's Robert Redford in a unitard," is how that would have gone. That's breaking the spell. Especially in a fantasy fiction TV series, you must willingly and repeatedly suspend disbelief, resist tugging too hard on any thread, and above all: do not break the spell.

Other Times I Broke The Spell

I don't even know the actor's name who portrays Klaus, and I'm going to do my best to keep it that way. Klaus is my favorite new vampire. I kind of have a thing about vampires, and I mean back from the 17th century, Romanticism and 18th century lit. Love that stuff. Up until Twilight I used to pride myself on my knowledge of vampire lore canon. Twilight is not canon. That's ridiculous.

Angel

David Boreanaz

I watched the entire Angel series, but not until years after it was on the air. Bones was already on before I started Angel. I loved that show. David Boreanaz was pretty good in that. To quote the three witches, "Mmmm, Annngel." Not a great actor, but he's got a certain charm and I like him. I like him on Bones, and I'm sure I'll watch whatever he does next. He's pretty cool. But while I was watching Angel, I made the mistake of looking online to find out more about the actors. I told Jenny I wish I hadn't done that. I told her about David's obsession with the Flyers hockey team, and about some goofy candid shots I found. "Dafuq am I gonna do with a vampire that got on a Snoopy shirt?"

Quentin Coldwater
(The Magicians)

Jason Ralph

Made the same exact mistake with The Magicians and Quentin Coldwater...I mean...okay well NOW I want to make him some nice soup and help him with his homework. But when I was his age, man, Quentin Coldwater was every guy I had a crush on, basically. He's gorgeous and shy and smart AND he can do magic? Come on over here and sit on mama's lap. I'm saying, I've always been a sucker for the brainy ones.

Then there's the time I went looking into Christian Kane, who was on Angel and then Leverage and now The Librarians, where he plays another brainy one. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a "Kaneiac," which is what he calls his rabid fan base of probably-mostly-old-ladies like myself. But I kinda dig everything he does. He reminds me of *my brother, also a handsome, fit actor that rides horses and plays guitar and sings. It's just that in some concert video I found online, he seems sort of needlessly crass. Is Christian Kane a dick? Anyone know? I hope not. I was so in love with Eliot on Leverage.

I did the same exact thing with Lost Girl. Dammit, me. Next time just let the succubus be the succubus. And how great a wolf did Dyson make? Up until Klaus, that guy was the best wolf. Now Klaus is the best wolf.

I am definitely leaving out many other times I broke the spell.

It's Not Just A Vampire Thing

When I finished season four of The Originals, I figured I'd give The Vampire Diaries another shot. Maybe my opinion will have changed, I thought, after seeing The Originals. You know. Since I loved The Originals so much.

Oh, would that it were so.

I hate The Vampire Diaries. I seriously can't get more than three episodes in before bailing.

The Vampire Diaries is so stupid that I just want the idiot vampires to kill every last one of those idiot kids, then I want Buffy to come in from another franchise altogether and stake all the vampires. I truly dislike every character on that fool show, and the one I really cannot stand is the annoying blonde that, later in the series, becomes a Klaus Mikaelson love interest, as I understand it. Caroline, that's her name, right? That's ridiculous. Klaus would find her unbearable. There's no way Klaus wouldn't snap the bitch's neck and leave her in a drainage ditch.

It's a Klaus Thing

Klaus Mikaelson is my new favorite glowering leading man in the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His mother Esther was a powerful Viking witch a thousand years ago. She used dark magic to turn her children into vampires, including the sweet ginger son that she'd conceived not with husband Mikael the Viking, but through carnal indiscretion with a rather bookish werewolf. That's the storyline, that the Mikaelsons were the first immortals with blood lust, pre-dating the term "vampire." Mikael despised the bastard son Klaus, whom he chained and beat and called an "abomination." You'd think Esther would be an ally, seeing as how she literally created this tragically damaged immortal blood lusting beast. But she was a real bitch. None of the Mikaelsons got a fair shake in the parents department, but the beast within Klaus is wilder, fiercer, faster and stronger.

The actors have a big job to do, invoking the Always & Forever family screed spanning ten tumultuous lifetimes, without coming off as mawkish or punchworthy (see above, re: The Vampire Diaries). They're all great.

But can you summon a darker dude than vampire/werewolf hybrid fraught with both mommy and daddy issues? The guy that plays Klaus is amazing. He makes it believable that he's carrying a thousand years of baggage. There's a depth and stillness about his countenance even when he's exacting a bloody toll for some infraction, however minor. He's a beast, but just like his dearest siblings, you always want to be on his side. Hayley says a line to Cami at one point that fits: "Even when you hate him..." In a lesser actor's hands, this complex character might come off turgid and overblown. When the little black slave boy that you rescued, then sired, has grown up to become a powerful turbo-charged undead beast and he loves your sad sister and he wants to murder your fierce and noble brother, that's a lot to convey...and that's just Tuesday. Never a dull moment with these Mikaelsons, but Klaus has never had a chill day.

The Originals is a pretty good show. Klaus is my TV boyfriend. And I don't even wanna know his name.🐺

 Okay, I had to look up the actor's name or this is just ridiculous.
It's Joseph Morgan. This is Joseph Morgan.
That is all I want to know until The Originals is all done.

*My brother is Mike Lombardi. Here's how I know he's a talented dude, and not just because I'm his sister. I went to see Mike in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea in New York, and in the middle of the play I forgot that he was my brother. Spellbound.

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Please Tell Me What The Rest Of Your Life Is Like

This chick must be some kinda busy.
SarcasmSocity

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We are not enemies, but friends.

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I *need to tweet Hal Sparks that this shit really happened today

"Small black coffee, please."

"We don't have small, we only have medium."

"...that's impossible."

(blank stare)

I tried again, "What's the smallest size?

"We just have the one size."

"What is happening right now?" For a good three seconds I thought I was on a reality show. Like Hal Sparks was going to come out from the back and give one of his comedy lectures. Hal wrote this material years ago. Here's the thing. Gen X has had just about enough of this shit. #AllOuttaBubblegum.

Trust Me, I'm A Writer

I'll detail what you did wrong. I'll do it for free. Usually people pay me. But I feel I can help you improve your Customer Experience (CX). What should have happened is this:

"Small black coffee, please."

(Holds up the only cup to show me) "This is the only size we have, but I could just fill it up part way if you'd like?"

But let me tell you why.

Because Customer Experience Matters

You guys, no matter what your job, it's egregious to start any transaction on a negative. In this simple "a writer's morning coffee" example, it's not just for me but for the greater good of society. You see, if the first thing out of your mouth is a negative ("we don't...), you're souring the customer's entire feeling about your store. Straight off, there's a problem. Guys, we freelancers got enough problems. Bitches be broke.

The least that you could do as a small business in America is train your staff to make sure every transaction, especially coffee, should go smooth like Snoop Dog. Why give me this gatekeeper puzzle. I'm going to buy a coffee here today. Your goal is to make me want to buy a coffee here tomorrow, too, and then pick this place when it's my turn to lead writer's group next week. You should want me feeling warm fuzzies about the day's first accomplishment: coffee. What you're doing is sending me out the door perturbed, and then the first rando Masshole that tells me to smile is in real danger of getting that one-size coffee in his fuckin' face. So you see, your Customer Experience (CX) Fail is going to get a jerk some black coffee burns, and get me arrested for FuckThisShit. Do better. It's for America.

Say we disagree on what "Medium" means, in a place that sells "Medium" and "Large." Fine, please refer to Hal Sparks. But...THIS coffee place only sells the one size. Why say "We don't have small" and start right off confusing me?  
Me no coffee. Right now I'm like a baby when you shine a light in its eyes. And you're holding hostage my coffee while you make me play you in a game of 20 Questions that I don't understand.

Retail Marketing 101: Turning a Problem Into a Promotion

Just in case you are hearing "stock more size cups," let me be clear: don't. It's fine. What I am saying is, do not make your store logistics into a problem for the customer. Sell the "one size" coffee but why not use the "we only have one size" thing as a marketing tool. It will cost you nothing to stick the cup on a funky little display with a pleasant-looking sign (write it ON THE CUP) saying "One Size!" and make a joke about it. Something like "One size fits most! But you tell us when to say when!" People love stupid old-skool shit like that.

Are you guys saying that modern day "Medium" is re-defined as being anywhere between ten ounces and fourteen ounces? Well I don't love it. But. If we're refining the language, then somebody put it in Urban Dictionary or something. We re-purpose words all the time, but don't just assume that the wordsmiths among us (hi!) won't pick a fight over the technicality that you cannot have a Medium unless you also have one size smaller, and one size larger, to bracket that shit. Fer fuck's sake. ∎
*I will never actually tweet that. 

"The only way that glass of iced tea 

is a Medium 

is if it can talk to the dead." 

- Hal Sparks

By the way, Medium has a real purpose in the beverage industry. We NEED Medium so we can feel like we are treating ourselves by ordering the not-smallest size. Everything else is so lean, money is so tight that we never get to do anything indulgent. So we should be ordering the small but we can go big today and get Medium. We can also feel righteous about not being a tubby little piggy and getting the LARGE when we haven't earned it.

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Say No To Every Nazi

Right now in Trump's America, there are Nazi-like mobs marching for their right to rid America of "defectives" and "take back their country." They wear no hoods or cloaks. They fly Confederate flags high, they call for violence and preach freedom. These are people who view the concept of diversity and equal rights as a direct threat to them, personally. "You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us" is their paranoid battle cry. They chant "If it ain't white, it ain't right." If you're not with them, you're traitors and "libtards." They are proud Republicans, and they have heard the "Make America Great Again" message loud and clear.

A few things. First: Hey guys? No one is trying to replace you. That's weird. Your heads are not right. You sound insane. You look crazy. What kind of choice is this to make for yourself? For America? Secondly, no, there's no "both sides" to the issue of white supremacy. We do not have a "difference of opinion." A "difference of opinion" is like "Cilantro tastes like soap." Not "Kill All Blacks and Jews." Are you fucking nuts?

Charlottesville

This past weekend they came to Charlottesville. They came to march against freedom, in the name of freedom. They came brandishing torches and waving the flag of both the Nazi party and the Confederates who fought against American values. They honor those Confederates as their patriarchal forebears whose segregationist traditions they seek to revive and strengthen, violently if necessary. They came with torches and battle cries and they claim they are fighting for their "rights" which extend to mean "kill Jews" and "kill black people" and by the way, they believe they should have the "right" to incite this kind of violence completely free of consequence. They call themselves white nationalists. The press calls them Alt-Right. Mr. Trump has obliquely suggested that there are "many sides" to the unfolding story that led us skidding sideways into August 2017.

Boston

These toxic torch-bearing individuals claim they're coming to Boston next weekend. Boston, as much trouble as we still have here with race relations, always gears up. This city I call home does have big problems, but the difference is that we, as a community, strive to do better.

It's Monday. A whole new wave of anger, fear and disappointment has been surging all weekend. Right now, people are canceling plans so that we can gather at the Boston Common again on Saturday, August 19th. Now I need to get a Sharpie and write my mom's phone number on my damn arm again, so they can notify her in case something happens to me. I gotta go back down there again and say "no" to Nazis, because enough people voted for Donald Fucking Trump. True to his barely coherent bloviating barrage of campaign promises, here we are barely six months into this fiasco of a presidency and I have to go out to the Boston Common next weekend and literally object to Nazis. Nazis. Future grandkids (yours or not) will ask about what is happening right now. They'll look up from their 6th grade homework and ask their elders what it was like going to school in 2017, they'll ask what it was like before Trump. They'll have questions. They'll ask what you thought, what you did, how you voted. Are you paying attention to what you think, what you are doing, and how you are voting? What's your story?

Divided States of America

I keep thinking about a friend I used to have. We are no longer friends. This friend "broke up with me" on Facebook. Her parting shot was a reply to my outrageous suggestion that America can do better. She wrote, "Supporting a racist doesn't mean a person is a racist."  To which I replied, "In my opinion, it does." I stand by my words. So too did she, and that was the end of things. This is the "divided America" that we now navigate, where people are convinced that this is all fine. This is all okay, you can reasonably support outwardly vocal racists without taking on the mantle of responsibility for their violence. Where it's reasonable to shrug and say "oh well" when Nazis literally march for the right to exterminate non-whites and Jews, and anyone who says "hey, that's really not cool, like, at all" becomes the unreasonable one, the "libtard." I miss her. But here's the thing. If you're not against racism, then you're for it. This is no time to shrug and say "oh well." Nobody gets to sit this one out.

Gear up, friends.

Pick a side.

It's on.∎

Boston always gears up.
(Photo: Uncredited from the Women's March Boston site)

Related: The Revolution Will Be Digitized

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What Story Will You Tell A 6th Grader?

[Mrs. Dorozinky's class, 1984
St. Margaret's School, Waterbury CT]

I'd say that 6th grade was approximately the age when a poor-to-middling American Catholic school began to guide my squad towards current events and how we connect with history. We were but plaid-clad, doe-eyed whelps with brains of soft clay. Big respect for teachers in general, but double for those who steered Gen X,  and threefold for teaching at a Catholic grade school. It was a wild, windy, sticky affair. I'm still not over it.

Here's something that you need to know. "History" was not a real thing for us. They gave us this Bible as big as our history book. Both books had names and stories and dates, and were presented with the same degree of factual importance. George Washington and Jesus and Santa all figured into the narrative about the same, more or less. Picture that. We wove red, white and blue construction paper flags for July 4th and we hunted eggs on Easter, right after singing the "Christ has died, Christ has risen" songs at church. On Christmas Eve we went to bed leaving milk and cookies for Santa, then we squirmed all through mass on Christmas morning. We played Cowboys & Indians and they had us putting on plays dressed as pilgrims. They had us tracing our hands to draw Thanksgiving turkeys and those nuns yadda yadda'd over some key facts. Our world view was a disaster.

I had so many questions. Including why such a big a deal was constantly being made over our knees. They'd line us up and use a ruler to measure our uniform skirt hems. Hey nuns, guess what? At no time in life, as it turns out, were my knees ever the thing about me that got me into trouble. Would that it were so, but thanks for contributing to creepy lifelong body issues for generations of girls. You made us wear skirts and then you shamed us daily. You know what would have covered our knees? Pants. You could have simply let us wear pants.

I have a lot to say about overcoming the mindfuck that was my early Catholic education. What I will say right now is that the answers to my questions always led to more questions. Some I'm still asking. This is not about that. This is about when we first started to connect our tiny little world with the big outside world. But more on that later.

What Story Will You Tell?

So by 6th grade, they'd moved us past rote memorization, names and dates. It was around this time that we were given an assignment to write a history essay from a personal point of view. That meant interviewing a person who was there during this Major Event We Children Shall Drone On About Very Importantly. My mother suggested Grandma DiPoala. My grandmother had apparently been quite a snappily dressed good time gal who liked to go dancing, until she was left alone to raise three kids after the war. Grandpa DiPoala was "shell shocked," in the parlance of the time, and spent the rest of his life hospitalized. None of us ever met him, then he died. To make ends sort of almost meet, Grandma DiPoala had worked in factories, waited tables and did other jobs to put food on the table.

I was thrilled. I was Lois Lane at last.

I came up with a studious list of questions for Maggie. I wanted to write the best essay Mrs. Signori had ever read. I had daydreams like Ralphie in A Christmas Story. 

It was a disaster.

I think I started by asking my grandmother what was the most memorable headline she could remember from when she was my age? She said "That's when I was a girl." I asked about the places she had worked. She said "That's when I was a girl." I asked what exactly she did there every day, and what she thought about unions. She said she did "piece work." She had no thoughts about unions. I still don't know what "piece work" means. On every other day, Madge DiPoala was a non-stop talker. A small, doughy banshee of a woman, Maggie kept up a steady commentary. She veered from complaining about the neighbors to the high price of bracciole. She'd make you sit and listen to turn-by-turn directions to places you'll never visit. She'd tell you the whole back-and-forth over a dime with the nun at the church tag sale. On every other day, Maggie had opinions except on the day that I asked her about what it was like to be a poor working single mom in 1950s America with immigrant parents. She had no opinion. In fact, she looked vaguely puzzled. It was as though she had lived on the outside of her own life, isolated in the neighborhood and distrusting anyone and everyone else. Entombed, socially. She hated black people. So much. And Chinese people and Indian people and Jewish people, but really especially she was appalled and incensed over anyone black, which spelled chaos, because I grew up in a mixed-race world, both at home and school. My grandmother spewed such hate about my black friends, even, that I was emotionally scarred for life and eventually would become estranged from this ranting racist. I have a lot to say about that, too, as soon as I can think of the words, and the right order to put them in...some day.
[Edit: We're Sicilian, which makes it twice as senseless for my grandmother to be so hateful towards black people...like...there's some African blood in here somewhere, lady, soooo...]

I had to fudge that whole essay. I was pissed. How do you live through those fraught decades and have no story to tell? Didn't you care? Weren't you paying attention? How about now, how about you? Because future grandkids (yours or not) will ask about what is happening right now. They'll look up from their 6th grade homework and ask their elders what it was like going to school in 2017, they'll ask what it was like before Trump. They'll have questions about why so many cops shot and murdered so many black people. They'll ask why so many people died. They'll ask if you supported the people that shrugged and said "oh well" when injustices grew into violence. They'll ask what you thought, what you did, how you voted. Are you paying attention to what you think, what you are doing, and how you are voting? What will be your story? ∎

• Related: Say No To Every Nazi
• Related: You Can Take Classes With Me

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Thrift Stories: Nobody Wants This Jacket? Edition

I saw this jacket at my favorite thrift store for $4.
I'd never fit into it, even at my smallest, but I asked my Facebook friends if anyone wants me to get it for them.
Nobody said yes. Bitches be trippin'. This is a great jacket.

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...hey, the new guy at the mattress store is super into it.

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Where did I get this?

Having a smoothie at Union Cafe.
I took out my iPad and headphones...
...and this small white cat figurine.
WTF?
Where did I get this?

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Oh no! A purple Croc egg fell out of its nest

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Hey, Old Friends!

Mary stopped for lunch on her way back to New Jersey.
(Photo: Mary Katherine)

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Lords of the Ring

Joe had the guys over for Lord of the Rings Risk. This game is Jacob's (in the hat). These guys play these kinds of long, complicated games. I can't even hang through the reading-of-the-instructions. Depicted here, Blake appears to be re-reading some portion of the instructions. That's Chris on the right.

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Happy Birthday, Lucille Ball

You fantastic, immortal superwoman.
The world would be so beige without your brilliance.
Happy Birthday, Lucille Ball!

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I admit that I was skeptical about this "garden in a can" thing.
But...
Porch basil! 

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Polish Mustard

When we finally do leave city life for a more serene lifestyle, the one thing I'll miss terribly is food shopping in the city.
We'll have to stock up on staples from our favorite little markets and bodegas.
Tonite I'm making Joe a real Polish dinner.
He is so excited for brats & cabbage.
Mustard is important.

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