I know what you did last summer

You guys, every once in awhile I come across something that is just jive-turkey bullshit.

Today, that thing is a short article in Parents magazine (shut up, I already explained about the free subscription of unknown provenance and goddammit I need something to read before bed that doesn’t involve sponsored years, Quebecois separatists, Eschaton, drug dealers, people’s eyes getting stitched open and a guy being trapped like a bug in a glass, OK?).

But so anyway. The bullshit, let me show you it.

These jive turkeys want you to “have your kids make a lemonade stand,” the profits from which are supposed to go to “a charity” that they pick (so they’ll hustle harder to sell sell sell). You, the parent, are supposed to set it up and make it fancy (with “an old sheet” for a tablecloth, and “bright, eye-catching signs” to attract passing custom). Also they advise you to “Add an element of fun by having the kids set up a simple ring-toss game that offers customers the chance to win a free goody.” Also you’re supposed to do the following, which I will reproduce in its entirety because it defies my powers of excerption:

Offer tasty treats like baggies of a fun trail mix made with Cheerios, dried cranberries, M&M's, and pretzel nuggets. And you don't have to limit yourself to classic lemonade. Offer a variety of drinks (berry-flavored and sugar-free refreshments are great options).

This is the most wee todd did thing I’ve ever read. Lemonade stands are supposed to be the kids’ own goddamn idea. They’re supposed to filch supplies and furniture for it from your house and their friends’ houses (LW’s mom once made us pay her for the sugar and Kool-ade packets, because she could be a battle-axe like that. I think she thought she was teaching us Econ 101 or something, when really she was just fuckin up our Christmas). Signage, pricing and product offerings are supposed to be the kids’ domain. Nobody likes a fuckin killjoy Flandersy bag of goddamn trail mix, either. “Sugar-free refreshments” are the WORST. And what’s this game shit? “Simple ring-toss game” my ass. Toss rings all day long, I ain’t givin away any “goodys” for free, Chuck. Besides -- what, lemonade & cookies aren't fun enough? Fuck you. And finally – profits to charity? HELL to the no. I’m a kid, I gotta earn whatever way I can. See above re: fuckin killjoy Flandersy bullshit. It’s like Laura Ingalls’ sister Mary up in here – Laura’s all “Oh, I love these beautiful Indian beads we found down by the river!” and Mary, right in front of Ma and Pa so Laura can’t object without looking like a major shitheel, “Yes – let us make a necklace for baby Carrie with ALL of the beads! Which she is too young to play with, so nobody gets the beads! HA-ha!” And Laura’s all, “ … yeah. Yaaaaay.”

Parents -- and Parents -- please: Don't fuck with summer. Seriously. Leave your kids the fuck alone for a little while, why doncha?

Don't go around breakin young girls' hearts

Michael Jackson. GOD, you guys.

My sister and I used to put on the 45s of his songs and dance around like maniacs in our bedroom. I was convinced I’d meet him someday – preferably when he came to my school to thank me for starting a fan club for him. I had that poster of him with the yellow and white vest and shirt combo (and a button of the same image, which I wore everywhere). I was convinced I’d win the lottery for Victory tour tickets (I did not). I listened to Thriller so many times I wore the record out (you kids today think that's a figure of speech -- it's not). The videos were the first non-cartoon, non-Muppet TV I really truly mainlined in an obsessive way (MTV, unlike other channels, could just be left on all day long and you’d see the same things over and over and over and over). I just about DIED, watching him moonwalk w/the silver glove on that Motown special. I had a scrapbook into which I pasted a photo of him and the careful, hugely-written Magic-Markered words “Oh no!” over the headline about his hair catching fire in that Pepsi commercial. I tried to do his moves – no dice. Heh.

I grew out of it eventually – the obsession, not the original bunch of hits; those stand the test of time (I defy you to listen to “Billie Jean” or “Beat It” and remain unmoved).

And as he got weirder and weirder over time, I did what I always do with Teh Real Crazay: I mentally cut him off. I – like most people, I suspect – didn’t want anything to do with a Krazy that huge. I never knew what to do with it, you get me? I’d read news of his latest antics or legal trouble or whatever and just recoil with disgust and helpless dismay – but that’s all. And the news yesterday that he was dead … well, that just seemed like it was probably bullshit, some very weird publicity stunt, or an attempt to get out from under his various debts and obligations.

But it’s true, apparently. And of all people, Corey Feldman, on (of all things) Larry King, last night had some insight about the man that made me just power down. Feldman refused to discuss his personal falling-out with MJ, but said that the thing about MJ and kids was, kids were the only people on the planet who didn’t want something from him. He said, “[T]he reason why he was able to get along with children so well is because they didn't demand anything of him. So you could have a conversation with him, and it wasn't like you were secretly waiting for him to write a check or sign his name to a contract.”

That’s about the loneliest, saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

Also: Suburbia and Its Cultures, Sense and Sensory Perception, and Aerobics

Internets, Mr. Gleemonex recently asserted that he took Chinese Literature and Film and [Something-Paradigms & Contradictions-something-or-other] In Japanese Film (both of which sound unbelievably obscure and dense to me) to satisfy the two-semester “cinemas of foreign cultures” requirement for our major “because they were easier to write papers about.” I myself took French Cinema and Italian Cinema for the same requirement because I thought THEY would be easier to write papers about.

Mr. Gleemonex, indignantly: “How can you write a paper about French movies? It’s just a bunch of people sittin around smokin and beatin dogs!”

Touche, Mr. Gleemonex. Touche.

However, for your continued amusement:

------------------------------

Courtesy of the 1992-1993 Columbia University Directory: Actual Classes I Took In College

History of world cinema: the sixties.
1960-64: From Psycho to Dr. Strangelove, absurdism, alienation and anomie begin to take hold on screen with the collapse of censorship and the onslaught of violence and horror. The nouvelle vague erupts along with the radical youth culture in Europe and America. Among the directors represented are Bunuel, Bresson, Truffaut, Godard, Fellini, Hitchcock, Wilder and Losey.

History of world cinema: the sixties.
1965-69: From Blow-Up to Bonnie and Clyde, the moral center of the cinmena cannot hold as psychic and social disruptions become the order of the day. Among the directors represented are Preminger, Polanski, Bergman, Penn, Hopper, Rohmer and Peckinpah.

Film aesthetics and theory.
An introduction to the main currents in film theory, from Eisenstein to contemporary feminist criticism. Using such films as Wild Strawberries, Rear Window, and Fatal Attraction, topics include the realist/formalist debate, the function of ideology in film, and the relation of word to image.

Race, gender, and the politics of rock 'n roll.
A study of rock music from the perspective of issues in contemporary cultural theory, with special emphasis on political significance and diverse representations of race and gender.

Besides, it's not "Magik." It's "Magick." Ask Drew Barrymore, she'll tell ya.

Internets: No one – NO ONE – ever really loved the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Uh uh, shut up, you don’t, and neither does anyone else, not even the band members, not even their own moms.

Maybe you dig on their fonky sounds, or had sort of a thing for Keidis back in the day (even though he’s always sort of looked like he doesn’t wipe very well), or played “Under the Bridge” a million thousand goddamn times that one winter after your crummy breakup, or their shit is part of a “Yay 1991!” playlist on your iPod, or whatever. That’s all valid. I mean, I myself once paid to see them live (a mad mad mad roadtrip to the Metroplex with LW and SJ and CB, in which we drove too fast and screamed too much and acted like banshees and actually flagged down a car full of hot guys ON THE HIGHWAY to get their numbers – well, SJ and CB did; Gleemonex the Righteous Teenage Virgin stayed right out of that) and it was a pretty good show.

But nobody LOVES them, really truly in their hearts loves RHCP.

---------------------------------

PS: Mr. Gleemonex’s response to the first line of this post – which I said out loud for reasons unremembered at some point this weekend – was: “Maybe people who grew up in LA.” To which I said, “I ain’t got time for them.”

You could come back next year as, like, a completely normal person.

Internets, I went to summer camp. Three times, a week each, over three successive summers (after 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades) because I DON’T LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES. It was a YMCA yute camp, with all the usual activities and swimming and campfires and shit. I went because I had latched on to the idea of camp as something kickass, via, I’m sure, some of the YA novels I used to read, and but primarily because the week always concluded with a dance on Friday night. With boys. Who did not know me from school. They would only know the Invented Me, the New Jan Brady, who totally always wore cool clothes and Designer Impostors fragrance and knew who Depeche Mode was and was not overshadowed by her pretty, popular younger sister or rock star older brother. You see where this is all going? Yeah, it’s on the express train to Sucktown, no stopping except briefly at Crapville and Dirtburgh to take on more freight. So, less talk, more blog:

Things That Sucked About Camp

It was hot. No surprise – North Central Texas, July. But at home I got to go to my cousins’ pool all day, and hide out at my grandmothers’ houses and drink root beer floats (with Blue Bell ice cream) in sweet, sweet air conditioning. These fools made me be OUT. SIDE. in that shit. Christ was it hot.

There was singing. A lot of it. Sing-a-long, my least favorite kind of singing, after Earnest Teevee Singing.

There were a million bitchy Metroplex girls there. All of whom were cuter than me and had actual boyfriends and knew how to use makeup and talked about their periods all the time (which I was flat not willing to do).

There was a pond. And I had to fucking turn over a canoe in it. On purpose, as part of the lesson in canoeing.

I was homesick as fuck, from minute one till I could see the place in the rearview mirror of my mom’s car on Saturday. Crippling, devastating homesickness, 24/7.

The food tasted like something expressed from a large dog’s anal glands, but they kept us so fucking busy all the damn time that we were hungry enough to eat it up and ask for seconds.

Wildlife. Eight-legged hairy Shatner, y’all – bees, spiders, wasps, hornets, snakes, fire ants, cicadas (which sound cool but have you ever put your hand down next to one of their vacated shells? O god!), all manner of flying nasty beasts and bugs, and the cabins were not shelter enough from the plague.

I only got to ride a horse once, and it took a dump during the trail ride.

The lame, annoying dances didn’t last long enough.

Why did I say, “Oh, go suck your own cock,” out loud yesterday? Read on to find out!

I was reading an article in the loathsome Sunday Styles section of the NYT about three recent Harvard grads (puke) who started a not-bad-idea thing on the Internets where alumni can sort of micro-loan money to current students to fill the gaps financial aid doesn’t address (e.g. cost of MCAT prep, cost of getting to Japan for study abroad, etc.), and they get quarterly updates from the young go-getter they sponsor, like with Sally Struthers’s weepy dealio with the hungry brown kids. Now, I could’ve used such a service back in my day (I did a psych study for three bucks and a cookie once, true story), and I’d probably be up for lending to a current Columbia student at this stage of my life – so like I said, not a bad idea. But then there’s this quote:

Brian Feinstein, 24, who graduated in 2007, said he lent $50 to a student on Unithrive because she is from East Longmeadow, Mass., and has the same major he did. “I lived in Longmeadow for a while when I was younger,” said Mr. Feinstein, now an analyst at a venture capital firm. “I found commonalities with her background.”

THIS is why everybody hates Harvard people so much.

Guess this makes ten.

Hey kids, don't smoke.

Sorry for the repost. Will have a normal post for y'all soon, I promise.

I would FREAK if my family forgot my birthday.

Happy birthday!

Hello, are you still there? Yeh, sorry, wrong number.

Note to self: If looking for daytime exteriors for post-apocalyptic last-person-on-earth thriller without huge FX budget, downtown SF on rainy morning in June, a couple minutes past six a.m. on a Wednesday, will do the trick nicely. Just have that one gardener dude in city coveralls move out of the frame, hit “RECORD” and get shootin.

Nobody’s payin you to THINK, Son! I want that piece of paper on my desk before you leave here today.

Things That Are Awesome, In Which My Integritah Is Not Compromised By These Endorsements Because None Of These Products Or Services Are Aware Of My Existence, Much Less Paying Me To Pimp Their Shit Out To Y’all:

--Victoria’s Secret BioFit bra. People, THIS is what I have been fucking talking about. Different engineering for the busty girls, not just bigger versions of the same thing you mosquito-bite people can get away with. And it looks hawt too, not “corrective” or “orthopedically fashionable.” Since seventh grade I’ve been looking for this, and now I’ve found it. Vickybaby, I take back all the snide shit I’ve said over the years. Do whatever you want. This bra makes the rest of it okely-dokely all-squaresies.

--Sugar Free Red Bull. Ten calories, Shatner-only-knows-what chemicals. Tastes like a couple of stale Sprees dissolved in flat Sprite, but who cares, there’s only 8.4 ounces to pour down your face-hole at once, and it makes the Tired go away.

--Stonyfield Farms’ OIKOS organic Greek-style yogurt, in Honey. Thirty-plus years I’ve been all “meh” about yogurt. Well, meh-to-negative – too much sugar for not much payoff, unpleasant texture, requires spoon so isn’t really “to-go” food, not filling, either too many calories or too much weird aspartame shit to justify itself either way. But this stuff is FUCKING AWESOME. Filling, satisfying, all-natural, and delicious.

--Blurb.com. I recently made a hardback book on there – a yearbook, to chronicle the past 11 years for some friends who’ve recently moved out of state – and everything about the experience was fabulous, plus the book looks amazing. Top quality, very reasonable prices, on-time delivery.

--SitterCity.com. I used to babysit when I was a teenager – I got the jobs mostly through church (shut up, I used to always go to church). Now that I have a kid, I occasionally need babysitters. But where to find them, and how to know they’re not lunatics or space aliens or human traffickers? I have no family nearby, haven’t been to church since my wedding in April 1999, and I never even cross paths with any teenagers except the dirtbag boys who live next door. Enter SitterCity. People, this site is the kind of thing for which the whole entire goddamn Internets were invented.

--Burn Notice. The Gleemonex household is currently blazing through the entire previous season on TiVo, preparatory to joining the new season currently in progress, and although all the Miami exteriors are sort of giving me the fantods about global warming (that entire city is TOAST when the shit goes down), holy flaming SHATNER is this show awesome! So, so, SO much fun. And clever, and cool, and hott, and Bruce-Campbell-riffic.

It was fun being part of the Cool Side of the Room!

Actual Things Written By My Classmates In My Senior Yearbook, the 1992 Crag, In Which I Guess I Mostly Remember What the Fuck They're Talking About:
[Part IV of a series; I, II, and III are here]

I’ve lost my mind. I forgot to mention the best night of our lives: Guns N Roses. … Yeah, we got arrested. It was I, [Lab Partner], who got her handcuffs off. That was the best.
--Lab Partner

After all those years of studying (ha!) they are finally going to give us that piece of paper that says we played their game. Now its our turn to prove to “them” that we don’t need their “help” to get us where we going.
--girl who “may” have cottoned on to the fact that I was (trying really hard to be) a “rebel”

You’re going to have to visit me in [East Coast City]. I’ll see you on the society pages of Vogue. I’ll be writing the captions, “[Gleemonex], with date, Christian Slater.”
--thoroughgoingly delusional person, in many more ways than just this

You really need to stay off the drugs. HA!
--Mr. DHS, who, like everyone, knew I had never even seen a drug, much less done one. I was probably pretty goddamn obnoxiously vocal about that shit.

Anyways, I enjoyed all the crazy shit you write on your locker and books.
--Most Attractive, who clearly recognized me as a future babbler-on-the-Internets

He’s my sexy man! In 10 years we’ll be married and living in Jamaica!
--CK, over a pic of the coach with whom, as I have stated before, she was … somewhat obsessed

“[Gleemonex], help me, I can’t get the donuts off the floor – my mom will kill me!”
--DR, in re: the various crap ground into the carpet of our post-prom motel room, which was rented under her mom’s credit card

Thank you, thank you, thank GOD for you the wind beneath my wings.
--TV exec

In a couple of years I will read about you in some Swedish magazines, “[Gleemonex] marries Christian Slater; will she retire as U. S. President now?”
--Swedish exchange student, inadvertently adding weight to the claim that I had some sort of thing about Christian Slater – whom, honestly, I really do not remember being that torqued up about.

Your such a Fucking great terrific God Damn person. See you this Fucking summer. Fuck you.
--generally mild-mannered guy I didn't know all that well, who … well, it’s been 17 years and I still don’t know what prompted this. Or if he was serious or what …

There is too much good stuff on the Internets. I'll never be able to get through it all.

This fact causes me a certain amount of low-grade stress.

But, at least, I can get to some of it. Such as this, which is further proof that Shatner loves us and wants us to be happy.

Don't let too many monkeys fly out of your butt!

Actual Things Written By My Classmates In My Junior Yearbook, the 1991 Crag, In Which, Oddly, I Mostly Do Remember What the Fuck They're Talking About:
[Part III of a series]

Don’t Dance too hard with Mr. B. at the G’N’R concert!
--girl who, like me, had no idea how that was going to end up

Remember: eat your cereal w/a fork & do your homework in the dark.
--fellow Pump Up the Volume obsessive and Winona Ryder/River Phoenix worshipper - a guy with whom I used to call booze “liquid fun,” who now has an actual TV show, on network TV

I’ll never forget your attitude problem and me, the anarchist pervert. … Chemistry always and forever. … anyways don’t dye your hair black and chop it off.
--Lab Partner (NB: hair comment refs my obsession with Winona Ryder and announced intention, never fulfilled, to get hair like hers & like Samantha Mathis’s in Pump Up the Volume)

Yeah I’m going to be a Looser and cruise the country in my Jeep listening to Eagles, Doors, James Taylor, and Steve Miller. Yeah, so what if it’s a lame dream – I’ll probably end up cruising [Cowburg] County in a bug that doesn’t have a radio. Dreams are good.
--Lab Partner’s sister, now a fine upstanding citizen and architect

OH BABY! I want to lick creme de menthe from his chest
--CK, below a pic of the coach with whom she was … somewhat obsessed

Going to the Regional Science Fair was about the worst thing I have ever done in my life.
--CK, who knew I would’ve found it so myself

I’ve watched you over the years and you have gotten prettier every year! Now you are a beautiful young woman.
--some girl I absolutely cannot place, but whose comment now sort of creeps me out

Who knows where it will go [“it” being the fact that we kissed once], how long it will last [bout two more months, at which point I found a boyfriend who didn't say stuff like that] or if I will live past 25 [holy Shatner, dramatic much?].
--guy with whom I was in the last phase of obsession; same Facebook philosopher as in the previous installment of this series of posts

Have a great congressional summer and try not to get mugged by Mike Tyson too many times.
--future member of the Dirty Dozen, re: my upcoming summer in D.C. as a Congressional Page

Idiocracy

Do y'all ever wonder what kind of a world we live in, where Susan Boyle's mental/emotional crisis makes bigger headlines than a goddamn Air France jet full of people disappearing over the ocean and a doctor being gunned down at church by a Christianofascist terrorist?