this blog post is 2,836 words long, all the words are true

[I think I accidentally wrote this because of Freedom, where Jonathan Franzen manages to make every single detail of every character's life seem necessary just because it was lived and therefore has meaning, but I'm not Jonathan Franzen, so maybe it'll be terrible. But I wrote it, so you know. HERE]

I am moving to San Francisco at the end of the month, for abstract and possibly impulsive/illogical reasons. I have no plan.

My last trip to San Francisco was in 2000, the summer everybody left everybody else, including me. It was the summer I felt fucked for no reason and kept traveling distances to watch other people fight. Mostly they fought about how it's hard to love people and be far away from them, or how it's hard to love people and watch them change into a person you don't recognize, which I think happens like a year after high school, maybe, or maybe it keeps on happening.

First up was running away from Manhattan, where I'd just finished up an NYU photography class and was waitressing at the Olive Garden in Times Square. I chose to leave suddenly, like the indifferent, fragmented, endlessly needy but cold-as-fuck person that I was. I just haven't really ever not known what I wanted more than I didn't know that summer.

It was June, maybe 2 am, when I waved at the doorman of our midtown post-work haunt (I'd befriended the owner's son, who'd sent me some mediocre love poems and earned me the eternal devotion of his employ, regardless of my age) and walked, uncertainly dressed in platform sandals and a brown sunddress that made my legs look good, back to Mike's going away party. Mike, the 27-year-old law student I'd been sleeping with since February, was headed to L.A. for the summer for no discernible reason. He was perversely delighted by our collective disapproval of this decision.

High drama was underway: Jen, another server, had baked a cake for Mike and also confessed her longtime crush on him. So she was crying next to this cake we were scared to eat. Mike was on a rampage, inspired by Jen's friend Steve asking Mike to be kinder about rejecting Jen. For example, the "YOU? HELL NO!" was unnecessarily cruel. This only enraged Mike further: "Fuck you guys! FUCK. YOU. GUYS. I dunneedyou! New Olive Garden, all new friends, alllll new women!"

I thought, I'm sleeping with someone who just said NEW OLIVE GARDEN!

I'd probably cried 5-10 times in front of Mike already but that night I was the calm, embarrassed/horrified babysitter, all crossed eyebrows & arms. On our way out, Mike spun on his heels, grabbed the hand of the new young pretty OG girl and stuck his tongue down her throat. They kissed for two mortifying minutes, I stuffed him in a cab and he remembered nothing the next day. Being with Mike felt like a claymation fistfight in slow motion, like a game of "How Low Can You Go?", where the winner must completely evacuate vast reserves of self-worth.

Mike left for the airport and I trotted back to my apartment where I was greeted by the ballistic face of my psychotic pseudo-beatnick roommate Evan. Gorey-like, the elongated tool of his mouth and eyes dashed at me from all corners, screaming about my BLOWDRYER being PLUGGED IN (apparently a primary cause of unexpected house fires) and also about his IMPORTANT VOICE MAILS from AUDITION PEOPLE which I'd COMPLETELY ERASED like a person with no RESPECT.

After that pissing contest I decided to move out the next day instead of staying for the summer. I moved swiftly about my mess & boxes like a swan out of hell. I quit my job and scheduled a flight back to Michigan.

I bid adieu to my Oklahoma-bred gay best friend from boarding school, Hayden, who I'd moved to Manhattan with from Sarah Lawrence and who'd let Evan move into Our Apartment under false pretenses. Hayden was obsessed with Evan's obvious gay crush on Hayden, though Hayden didn't really want to fuck Evan. Hayden had hated my relationship with Mike, I had hated Hayden's relationship with cocaine and Evan. We were at silent odds.

Hayden was my "other half." We'd been obsessed with each other for three years. We pawed, held, cried, saved, even fucked (we'd decided having sex would make us as close as possible, adding a physical element to the emotional and what we perceived to be a "supernatural" bond between us) -- we could barely breathe without the other. Friendships like that don't last into adulthood, because you should know better by then.

Later that summer, Evan would try to kill Hayden with a broom. In September, Hayden would move to a Navajo reservation and I would start school at the University of Michigan, where I transferred from Sarah Lawrence because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and thought the in-state tuition was better suited to this kind of indecision.

I hugged Hayden like I might see him again in a few months. We'd never been apart much longer than that.

I never saw Hayden again.

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I carried a barrel of anxiety/neediness in my stomach then. It was gigantic, it could swallow plants, but I also tried to keep it hidden by not talking too much. Then before you knew it you were knee-deep in my fucking barrel.

I was like a girl who wanted to be trampled on and was just looking for the right trampler. My personality was up for grabs -- first come, first serve.

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I booked a handful of West Coast trips to fill Michigan's endless numbered days 'cause almost as soon as I got home, I started going nuts, and there wasn't enough time to get a new job before school started. My brother and I were silent fighting about our own self-loathing, my Mom was dating a track coach who's son had sold her a ton of Cutco Knives.

I felt like the protagonist in one of those popular late 90s films about sad people w/nice houses. I'd be watching TV but would feel like I was standing at attention in an empty carpeted room, staring out the window, vacuum cocked in my right hand like a machine gun.

Nothing happened. My friends were out of town. Nothing to think about but the past; which I hadn't enjoyed too much at the time. Or the future, which made my stomach hurt.

You might notice that nothing was wrong, really. Like I didn't have any "problems."

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I'd spend a week in Berkeley with my old friend Magali and another in Seattle, coinciding with my friend Genna's trip out there, to visit our friend Sabri. Genna & Sabri were boarding school friends. I can't believe I traveled so far to be around people I loved. It was unlike me.

Seattle was pleasant -- we went raspberry picking, made a lot of complicated meals, went to a museum or two, took an overnight jaunt to Vancouver where we fell in love with the city, and also, for one drunken night in a restaurant we couldn't afford with big windows overlooking the water, fell back in love with our friendship.

But also Sabri & Genna, who'd been best friends like small beautiful turtles, were having the first falling-out of their friendship for reasons including Genna's disappearances to meet up with her boyfriend and Sabri having read Genna's diary.

I was stuck between Genna & Sabri and their fight, but I wouldn't take sides. They'd been these little rabbits, see. Like little animals joined together, like Hayden and I had been. They were both short, and Sabri was a designer-clad Indian and Genna a pale redhead who preferred Value Village but they had this special thing that made them seem identical.

Now they hated each other and I didn't know anyone anymore. That's how it seemed.

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Mike emailed me: i'm gonna get a local exchange # so it's cheaper for my many ho's to call me. so, speaking of ho's, I've already had a date. Yep. going back out with her tonight. she's sweet, but not as sweet as you. as i remember when i first met you you put up this 'facade' :) of how you really are. a bunch of bullshit. you are truly a nice genuine person. see the good things i say about you?

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"Sooooooo I'm a total pothead now," Magali told me when she picked me up a the San Francisco airport.

"Magali, guess what? I actually want to smoke pot right now," I said. I never wanted to smoke pot.

"Really? Ooo, this is so exciting!" she smiled. Magali was warm and sunny and optimistic and my time with her was serene, but distant 'cause I thought she could tell that I was changing into a person who might try and "fit in" at the University of Michigan when classes started in September. Selling out, like Ani had told us not to do.

I also knew she hated Mike, for example, and hated my fixation on him as I had no explanation for liking him besides that I was needy.

We saw the Indigo Girls, smoked pot from Magali's sister's Oregon farm, took hikes in boots & shorts and went to museums and mostly I thought about how crazy it was that I'd always had the upper hand in our friendship despite Magali always being infinitely cooler. She spoke three languages, eschewed leg-shaving and other patriarchal beauty institutions, kissed boys and girls, made perfect mix-tapes and sewed fabric into her bellbottoms to make them baggier. I guess I made her laugh.

But then things got bad, just like with Genna and Sabri, because Magali's ex-boyfriend Joe had illogically decided to visit her and she didn't like him anymore. His need made her cranky.

Mike called and said I should fly to LA from SF to see him. And so I did. In LA, things were already sad because Lana, an Olive Garden friend, had decided to also visit LA that week to see Gerard, a friend of Mike's who she'd fucked a few times. She'd also fucked Mike and two of their other friends. I hated hearing Mike and Gerard talk about Lana, like she was a hamburger they'd both eaten. I felt bad for her because I thought the only thing that made her sex life different than mine was that she was really funny-looking and I was only kinda funny-looking and I had that one brown dress that made my legs look cute.

But Gerard had a new girlfriend now, Brittany, who was 16 and rode in the front seat of the van like a terrier, tucking her lanky tan legs beneath her and eschewing the seatbelt for an advantageous body position that enabled her to constantly keep tabs on the passengers facial expressions; like maybe she already knew she was dumb and wanted to make sure her new boyfriend's friends hadn't noticed yet.

"Hey uh, I told you I quit working at The Olive Garden, right?" Mike asked. He always started sentences with "I told you" or "Can I ask you something" and ended conversations with "Lemme go."

"Yup, three or four times, genius." I said.

He rubbed his knuckle into my ear; "Oh, how I've missed my Marie!"

Mike took me back to his place. I'd helped him pack to leave Brooklyn, so I don't know why his barren room surprised me.

"You couldn't even buy sheets?" I asked, staring at the bare mattress he'd dressed up with a pillow and that comforter I'd always hated.

We had sex. Afterwards he said that although he'd dated a lot of girls this summer, he'd missed 'my body,' which I took as a huge complement and rode it like a dream through everything that happened those next two days and big chunks of months afterwards, which would be some of the most numb and miserable and empty of my life.

I'd only planned to stay in LA for one night, 'cause Mike frequently stressed that he couldn't stand being around me for more than 48 hours at a time. When I called Magali to tell her I was staying an extra night, she seemed distracted and more than fine with it, but I felt guilty, like now she knew that I just wanted to be fucked, but also to complain about being fucked afterwards.

We traveled mostly as a group -- Mike, Gerard, another friend, Brittany, and Lana, who cried in the bathroom, messing up her makeup, while I tried abstractly to help her with problems that seemed insignificant compared to my self-loathing and World Hunger.

Mike was uniquely chivalrous at times, like taking sticker pictures with me at Venice Beach and telling me he loved me in a big brotherly voice. For a second it sounded like a fatherly voice, which scared me but not as much as it should have.

Mike said he had a cold and insisted on taking NyQuil for it.

"But you'll be sleepy! You'll sleep through our time together!"

"No I won't."

"But why take drowsy and not 'not-drowsy'?"

"Uh, because the drowsy kind works better? That's why it makes ya sleepy!"

After sake bombs at a strip mall sushi joint, more drinks at a club I'd gotten into with Lana's ID, and, once home (Lana spent the whole way back fighting with Gerard), a joint, Mike fell asleep on the floor. Everything felt trippy like I'd been dropped into the story of someone else's life; or rather like I'd flown myself right into someone else's life.

After Mike fell asleep, I wandered innocently back into the living room, where I was greeted by the unexpected sight of Lana's ankles on Gerard's shoulders and him fucking her like a jackhammer. I scampered back into the hallway, horrified, my head in my hands in the darkness thinking how the fuck did I get here. Lana was gasping, Mike was snoring, the dude was grunting, I was not yet crying but surely would be soon.

What the fuck, you asshole, I said to myself. Who are these people? How did you get here? I was stoned, they were fucking, he was an asshole but a passed-out asshole and who the what the how did my Mom let me go here. I met him at the goddamn Olive Garden. I'm a child, goddammit, I'm clearly unable to care for myself, will somebody please, please, please, please rescue me please just tell me what to do I'LL DO ANYTHING and what did I do with those thoughts, what did I do.

Well I drank the rest of the NyQuill and passed out into cherry-sticky sleep and flew back to Magali's, where she and Joe were at odds. She smoked maniacally and worried about me leaving her there with Joe. Just like I'd left Mike to pick up Lana's devastatingly lonely body the next morning and left Sabri with Genna's secret emotional breakdown and its walls. I'd left Hayden with Evan, and now here I was in this totally fucked place, and it was one of those moments, you know. When you realize you're fucked and you realize, I am a person who takes wrong turns, I am a person capable of gigantic miscalculations of spirit and personality, I am anybody really

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Magali and I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in early, dark, morning, flanked by cars headed to work. I told her that it looked beautiful out there and she agreed. She was taking me to the airport, and I didn't know if I was ready to leave or not. Surely I was ready to leave these people, but I wasn't ready to give up on mountains.

I'd seen cities that looked big enough for my needs -- Vancouver, where I wanted to live. San Francisco, where I wanted to live. Los Angeles, where I knew I'd always be visiting people. Seattle, which is a difficult place to complain about because everything seems fine there.

I came back numb, thinking only of the geography and not the people in it. I'd had a good time with the trees, I thought. I had a good time with that bridge. I wanted to be like Sweden, somewhere green where people never changed and always gave me what I'd come for; some place like my first two nights in Berkeley before Joe came, smoking and pouring cream in our cereal.

Maybe we'd emerged to announce who we'd become and then retreated into the new universes we'd been preparing for, alone. We had to tear each other apart in order to change without being sad all the time.

Really, I guess, it was a matter of who had the guts to scream NEW FRIENDS, NEW LIFE, NEW OLIVE GARDEN, NEW GIRLS into a crowded room. Who among us was willing to not only push people away in order to evolve and leave without dying, but to announce this intention to whomever is within earshot? It was better to pretend, after all, like we were just cranky, that it didn't mean anything bigger how selfish we were that year. Me too, including me.

There is a need, sometimes, to run away again, because it's just been so long since I've done it. It's just been so long since I've had a chance to leave, and sometimes I'm not sure what else I can do to show you how much I love you.

Sunday Top Ten: Gayest Moments of My Life Part ONE

As your Mom(s) probs told you, I'm a finalist in the LGBT Blog Awards (voting begins January 5th). Therefore today I must talk about gay things. (Every day is gay day at my other blog auto-straddle, just FYI). I've perused the blogs of my nine co-finalists -- including an actual famous person, the web's largest LGBTQ group blog, last year's winner, a famous well-established news blog, an activist transwoman, an "openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush authentic feminist" and um ... "the internet home for the American gay conservative" -- and determined my only chance to win this thing is via a RUDY -esque last-minute triumph of underdog glory (You can call me "Marie" for the chanting part, 'cause "Riese" only has one syllable. RU-DY, MA-RIE, etc.). Chances are it'll be less like Rudy and more like real life, where the underdog sits on the bench and eats peanuts from a can. Well ideally cashews.

Obvs I'm honored to be on this prestigious list among these world-class bloggers, I love everyone, this is great for visibility, and I'm totally pumped just to be nominated. I think I represent the NeXt GeNeratioN of insane queer weirdos. I feel much like Blabbeando (an excellent blogger and new-discovery, thanks Webblog Awards!), who said in his "I'm a finalist post": "There is the itty-bitty detail of being matched up with Joe, Pam, Bilerico and Andy Towleroad as nominees. Beat them for the award? Yeah, right." Me too, Andrès, me too. But you know what, RU-DY RU-DY! YEAH! AN-DRÈS!

I feel among friends -- up there with Pam of Pam's House Blend, who I worked with on the 8 Against 8 Campaign -- her blog is fabulous and I read it every day. Also I know Susie Bright (my fellow bisexual nominiee) -- she's one of my favorite feminists & sexperts & writers in the world, and she edited The Best American Erotica of 2007, and picked my story to be in it! -- read Susie interviewing me here.

To segue into this weeks Gay Top Ten Topic let me tell you about when I met Joe.My.God who won last year. Lesbo blogger Curly McDimple organized the '07 Gay Blogger Weenie Roast, which I attended out of gay pride although it combined several of my most loathed activities: daytime drinking, outdoor eating in hot weather, networking proactively, beer, socializing with strangers, and traveling to the farthest reaches of Park Slope from Harlem by subway on a weekend. Sometimes one must suck it up and stop whining in order to be a good networker.

But I went (see photo of Hav & I expertly networking with Jamie, who's not gay but I forced her to attend anyhow) and brought Haviland, Carly and Carly's friend Roy (he's the one who told me "that's Joe.My.God, he's a real big deal") and it was super gay. Also super balmy, I sweated like a nun at a gay weenie roast.

Our new friend Caroline (we'd just met her on the rosie cruise) (she's now engaged to Heather Matarazzo) was there bartending, so it was awesome to see her AND I ran into a lesbo friend from my brief tenure at Sarah Lawrence -- well, she wasn't my friend exactly, she was my gay best friend's lesbian friend's then-girlfriend. We were sorta friends. The moral of the story is this was super gay and that's how it is with the gays.

But was it one of the Top Ten Gayest Moments of my life? No probs not, doesn't stand a chance against Tegan & Sara or the No on Prop 8 Rally, which brings me to today's Top Ten Topic ... to be delivered in two segments of five, 'cause doing all ten at once would be really long and I know you're all very busy.

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THE TOP TEN GAYEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE ON EARTH
Part One, Items 10-6

First an honorable mention During my Mom's NYC weekend visit in April '07, my then-girlfriend TB was playing "percussive stuff at this new monthly Queer/Trannie Ethnic Drum party in Brooklyn." The idea of going to gay things with my gay Mom makes me really itchy, and although I protested that I wasn't ethnic enough for the drum circle (and I anticipated it involving actual granola), TB insisted and Mom was down. Therfore on a rainy dark April night I took Mom to far-away-land, Brooklyn on a series of buses (train canceled). Although TB had anticipated a "down-to-earth spiritual, tabla/djembe, chill-in-living room sorta thing" we got "whoa nightclub, ethnic hipsters and miked percussion." (all quotes are TB's, from this) and she apologized and said we could go, as it might not pick up for many hours, I had an article to write and Mom is a Mom -- it did pick up later, but by then we had cabbed it home.

The point is that had serious Best Gay Moment POTENTIAL but due to the thwarted extra gayness opportunity (actual ethnic hippie drum circle), cannot rightfully be on this list. But it deserves a moment.

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10. The Rosie Cruise

Everything about the Rosie Cruise is so gay, I could probs assemble a Top 10 Gayest Moments on the Rosie Cruise for each year I've gone (Alaska, Key West 1 & 2, New England/Canada 1 & 2 ). Gay families, gay children, themed costume nights, Susan Powter wandering the boat yelling about her vagina and/or yoga, a musical theater-heavy performance schedule, and the identically-outfitted "R Family Team" regularly introduced by the song "We Are Family." It's a bunch of famous gays with a bunch of normal gays and their kids and then rascals like us. Where else can Andrea McArdle ask you to come wake up her husband with "look at all the hot lesbians in your bed!" It's so gay and by gay I mean happy.

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9. The Mz Hip and Fit New York 2007 Contest

This was a two part exercise in gay-ness -- Hav was nominated for Mz Girl Nation (GirlNation hosts a gay Saturday night in NYC where everyone who's anyone goes to run into everyone they've already kissed) and Heather and I told her to do it 'cause we thought it'd be funny. It was FUNNY, obvs she won by a landslide.

I dragged my then-girlfriend to the event at Nation AND to the next event at "DUVET" (where Mz GirlNation would fight against Mz Cattyshack and etc for the "Mz Hip and Fit New York 2007" title) both populated largely by impossibly young fresh-faced Dos-Equis-chugging lesbians whooting and hollering Scores-style. We made a sign with markers. At DUVET, about 10 - 12 lesbians had to run on stage, dance, and then get voted on by the applause generated by the legions of friends they'd forced to attend. There were no speeches. There was also supposed to be no stripshows, but all the girls except Hav totally removed at least 50% of their outfits on stage. Hav was over it by this point and besides, nekkid-in-public isn't how she rolls, she's a lady from Savannah.

The first place winner had fake tits, they'd never let that shit fly on Miss America.

For some reason Haviland doesn't like flaunting this honor on all her promotional materials but I feel it should be her new nickname, like Haviland "Mz GirlNation" Stillwell. Google that, she-bitches.

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8. My Mom's "Gay" Picnics

Back in the 90's, my Mom used to host these "potlucks" for her "friends" from her "group" for "women in transition" in our backyard [I almost put "backyard" in quotation marks too, but then I realized, no, I mean, that for sure was indeed the backyard.] and try to con me into attending.

As you know, I dislike the following things: 1. outdoor eating, 2. outdoor picnics involving plastic/paper flatware/dishes and lawn chairs, 3. large gatherings of women my Mom's age, 4. doing anything at all whatsoever that my Mom wants me to do ("4" is also the reason why I was straight as an arrow for so long), 5. eating large meals at mid-day, 6. large gatherings of people I don't know, 7. large gatherings of people, 8. other people, 9. tuna salad casserole.

Mom's primo con/strategy to force my attendance was The Grill Trick. Although I'd insist I didn't want any part of the potluck, Mom knew eventually I'd be hungry (and I was, 'cause she'd moved all the food from the kitchen to the "back porch") and then, when I expressed interest in eating a grilled item she would not, per my request, permit me to wait inside for delivery of said item (she would've only had to slide open the door and pass off the burger, no biggie). Instead I was forced to go outside, defenseless save my Angsty-Depressed-Emo-Teenager Skater-Who-Doesn't-Skate cloud of hostility, and place my request directly to the grillmaster ... and then! sit and wait for preparation!

During the waiting & subsequent eating period, I'd be obligated by "manners" to meet people and consequentially listen to women in transition talk about transitional things, like civil unions and the Women's Studies department at U of M. That was really gay. Her friend Tabitha was kinda cute though.

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7. Melissa Etheridge concert in Atlantic City on July 4th, 2008

I'd never seen the Eth before and was therefore unawares that she unleashes mountains of gayness upon the crowd not only during her songs but BETWEEN songs. She basically told the story of every girlfriend she'd ever had, performed beneath a banner of Tibetian prayer flags, and called herself out for being a stalker. Real lesbians from New Jersey abounded -- women willing to miss fireworks for The Eth -- sang, swayed, cried a little, adjusted their tool-belts, etc. As you can see in the photo, Caitlin is popping her collar and Alex & I are full of passionate lesbian feelings. I love Melissa Etheridge forevs & evs.

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6. NewNowNext Awards - May 2008

A;ex & I plugged microphones into our pants pockets 'cause we had no actual outlets for them, I was sick and therefore looked like a cokehead, Tinkerbell was there in her Uh Huh Her outfit, the red carpet was actually grey, we were totally dissed by Christian Whateveriano from Project Runway but totally treated as 100% legitimate journalists by everyone else, Candice Cayne said we were "GORGE," The Dazzle Dancers got glitter on Tinkerbell's nose, Ricky signed my vintage '95 My So-Called Gay Life poster and Michelle Paradise asked Tinkerbell for her number. Our actual friends Carly & Robin work(ed at the time, in Robin's case) at Logo and therefore were present, amping up the OurChart factor. Anyhoo then I felt sleepy sloos, I'm not really good at being out late at night.

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I bet you are on the edge of your seat for Part Two yeah? January is a big month here full of excitement so you should probs put a cushion on the edge of your seat or a dildo, because there is so much fun to look forward to. Also, I clearly have a thing for befriending um, Capricorns? Birthdays - Caitlin (6th), Kelly from TLL (8th) (thank you facebook), Natalie (16th), Haviland (19th), my friend Erika from middle school (19th), Crystal (20th). OBAMA DAY on the 20th. L Word Premiere on the 18th. Also, it's fucking cold.

Every Day is Christmas Day Top Ten Holiday Specials Spectacular

(My brother) Lewis & I had a team meeting today and decided next year we're gonna do this thing on a nice spring weekend. Mom said okay if we can go on outings. I said let's go to the Henry Ford Museum, Lewis said okay. I said let's go when Greenfield Village is in season, Lewis said "that's pushing it." That's fine, I'll churn my own butter, I don't need a historical recreation village to work my wood for me.

Anyhow speaking of the good parts of Christmas, as a young Jew in Amerika, I grew up la-la-loving Christmas Specials. They warmed me from my navel to my gut (short path physically, but long path emotionally) and made me yearn to be like everyone else, as I so often did as a child. In retrospect, perhaps this elementary burning desire to fit in was a kind of overcompensating -- feeling intrinsically abnormal (queer), I wanted even MORE to constantly appear normal (Christian). In further retrospect, I think it's 'cause Christmas Specials rock, I love the endings with the HANDEL! and the CAROLS! And the pan out! Everyone smiling & doing that squeeze-hug thing!

I've been writing this in bits and pieces. As much as this is a Sunday Top Ten obstensibly about Christmas specials, this is just a scrapbook of my slapshot brain in ten-minute intervals over the last three days.

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Also:
www.justgive.org.
The perfect present for anyone on your list. If they don't like it, then they're a bad person. Srsly. So it's a win win.
+++"Sunday" Top Ten:
Every Day is Sunday for Jesus Top Ten Autowin Christmas Special

10. Cross-Country Reunions: People from far-away places all come together for the joy of Christmas, yeah? Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections is not actually a Christmas special, it's a book (one of my top ten favorites actually), but anyhow it takes about 500 pages to unravel the events resulting from the mother's determination that the family MUST have a "real family Christmas" that year. It's a popular plot for family-reunion centric films and television cast reunions. In the Autowin X-Mas special, Haviland would come all the way from L.A. (or Savannah, where she currently is) to someplace we all wanted to be like Belize.

Actually, my day-to-day functional "family" -- my friends, that is -- we're never more spread out than we are during the holidays. It's weird, that urban life does that to you, and then going home you end up feeling more disjointed and out of sorts than you do the rest of the year, which I think is the opposite of what Charles Dickens intended. Or G-d.

It might surprise you that for two girls who spend most of our Christmas vaycays texting each other in all caps about various neurotic inabilities to exist outside our prescribed comfort zones, Haviland & I share a deep burning love for The Christmas Special. Especially A Very Brady Christmas. We made a whole vlog about it but there was no sound. These things happen. Not in X-Mas specials, in X-Mas specials there'd be a miracle, and the miracle would be Sound. 9 times out of 10, "a computer disaster being fixed" would be my kind of miracle.

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9. Angels: It's dangerous to confuse people with angels. (Magnolia: "it's dangerous to confuse children with angels.") I do it all the time, I'll never stop. I wouldn't mind a Juliana Hatfield angel, like Angela got in My So-Called Life's Christmas episode, Angels. Hatfield's voice is probs how angels really do sing. Soft, but weathered. Santa wasn't a huge surprise for me, it was always hard to believe one dude could buy and carry around all that shit. But angels? Why not? Why the hell not?

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Jordan : My old man used to knock me around, too ... he hasn't done in a couple of years, though. He's too scared. 'Cause the last time -- I-I threw a chair at him.
Rickie : Well, I'm going to light a candle for you on Christmas Eve.
Jordan : Oh, yeah, you think that changes anything?
Rickie : Yes.

[At the end, Jordan lights a candle. 'Cause he feels the spirit of hope & togetherness, just like the whole Chase family as they all go to church together with Rickie because his Dad beats him but they're all together in church and singing and the angel died from freezing but that's okay.]
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8. Pageantry!: I used to love this book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever -- the Herdmans are this white trash family that everyone else hates. The kids fully smoke & swear & drink and eschew church but by some YA novel-esque twist of imagination and ridiculous fate, they're all cast as leads in the annual pageant. As expected, Hijinks ensue. I can't remember exactly, but I feel like it was awesome and everyone got the true meaning of Christmas in the end, which is good will & brotherhood to all mankind. There's nothing I love like a poorly put-on community theater-style play, and I put on many in my day.

Though I did execute an admirable production of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (I was Cindy Loo-Hoo) in 1991, I haven't had another chance to exercise my video making skills with any of the classic stories of Christmas. Maybe next year. Haviland can be Dasher and Vixen. I'll be Cindy Loo-Hoo again, obvs. I epically failed the first time around 'cause my cousin Glen made me laugh so hard I almost wet my pants for real -- when it was announced that it was Christmas-time he popped out of bed like a jack-in-the-box with big wild eyes and went "IT IS?" and then you can see my little Bam-Bam ponytail just bobble on my head as I attempt to contain myself.

When you're a kid and you say "I almost wet my pants" you're usually actually kinda serious. Now it's just a figure of speech I guess. Obviously everything's under control in that area now and also was at the time. I've been writing this in stages as I have a series of small, self-centered meltdowns, and I think that comes through in the writing. I wonder how many people really read the random middle bits, I bet you mostly skim through. Get the start, get the end, comment, go read AfterEllen. For all of you in the middle, don't be surprised if you get a miracle in your stocking.

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7. Sing-a-Longs: Say what you want about Jesus, that kid wrote some smokin' hot tracks. Mom used to hate it when I'd try to turn Christmas songs into Hannukah songs just so I could sing them, but I WAS DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS. Boyz II Men's "Let It Snow" didn't necessarily imply Jesus. Driedel Driedel Hoo-ha is a bad song. I'm a big fan of David Bowie & Bing Crosby singing "Little Drummer Boy." My heart melts for "Do They Know It's Christmas," and all other charity-centric Christmas musical ventures. War is Over? Possibly one of my favorite songs of all time.

In the secret Christmas Special of my life, we'd all gather together and do "Hark Herald the Angels" like at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and I'll turn out to secretly be an amazing singer. I love it when that happens. OMG! I just remembered that I've gone all X-mas season without listening to my favorite Christmas song of all time, "All I Want For Christmas (Is You)" by Mariah Carey. I gotta crank that shit up tomorrow on the drive to Ohio!
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6. OMG SUSAN POWTER CUT OFF ALL OF HER HAIR FOR CHRISTMAS !

Sorry, I went to youtube to look for a video, and I saw her (I only subscribe to Susan Powter, FourFour and Sara Benicasa, I'm very picky obvs) and her new video titled "the best holiday gift ever." This is my gift to you. No it's not the gift of wellness and fat-burning. It's the magic of transcribing anything Susan Powter says onto paper. It's one thing to hear it and quite another to read it. I'm not skipping anything here, that's not what the dashes or ellipses mean.

"This is the finale because i'm keeping my hair like this for as long as I like 'cause the stuff i'm gonna do with black roots and blonde tips -- the freedom of it! The feeling of it on my head -- don't even ask -- I'm gonna be doing a lot of big sweaty stuff -- and I just -- need like -- cute that you can -- POSH SPICE-E it up -- because it's time you see what's going on, I haven't been able to show you -- it's time you understand -- should I tell you? That I just did a yoga class, but not just yoga, not even just -- when I talk about exercise, don't even think that you know what I'm talking about, because you don't. I'm talking about wahtever I do which sometimes involves exercise and whatever I do which sometimes involves and weaves in and I take pieces from sprint energy and burning fat and yoga and step and I do whatever the hell I want whenever the hell I do it and by the way it's FREEZING."

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5. Surprise Guests: A new puppy! The Ghost of Christmas Past! Santa Claus! The soldier is home from war! Families Reunite! It's Rickie! The kitten is warm! It's Elijah! It's Jesus! It's Tickle Me Elmo! Daddy's dressed as Santa Claus! the Surprise Guest unites the cast of said Christmas special, is unexpected and delightful and often homeless. Often enters in large wintery trenchcoat, shakes off the snowflakes and is embraced by children. Is a breath of pine-green-fresh air. I'd like to request Ryan Clayburn or Uh Huh Her. Those would be my top two favorite unexpected guests who are alive. Tinkerbell wants me to mention Littlefoot but she'll see her soon enough.

Sometimes it's not a surprise guest so much as it is a surprise FROM a guest. Like in the Saved by the Bell Christmas special, which takes place in the mall (the mall is one of my many obsessions), where the girl Zach is crushing on turns out to be homeless. Luckily it's Christmas so everyone gets some turkey. I don't like turkey but if I was homeless I might change my tune.

Who will be the surprise guest at tomorrow's Bernard family Christmas? Wouldn't it be funny if I was like -- ALEX! No. The surprise guest will be Tinkerbell. At the Hannukah party, she was not well received. I do not have high expectations for X-mas recieving of Tinkerbell. Hopefully next year I'll be dating someone famous but secretly gay, like Ellen Page, 'cause then my family would be eased into the idea gently, via movie star.

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4. Muppets! The first X-mas special of all time, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, featured a cast of 100% wooden puppets. Why not muppets? 'Cause they hadn't been invented yet. Luckily times have changed. No offense to the wooden puppet movies, I loved those too.

Muppet movies combine all of my favorite aspects of visual entertainment: Muppets (I'm actually 1/2 muppet, true story), carefully coreographed singing & dancing numbers, witty inside jokes, and famous people dancing with muppets. This year's Muppets X-Mas Special features Jessie Martin, Mayor Bloomberg, Jane Krakowski, Uma Thurman, Whoopi Goldberg, etc. It doesn't hold a candle to A Muppet Christmas Carol or A Muppet Family Christmas. To be honest I only watched about 10 minutes of the new one. Where was I? I love muppets. What was the point of this Top Ten? The point is that somehow I've managed to spend the last three days entirely in my head, no matter where I've been.

Which is why I wish I was a whole muppet, not just a muppet in some pictures.

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3. Random Star Buffet: Instead of actually writing this, I've been watching the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special with featured special guests Cher (iconic pop diva!), K.D. Lang (lesbian lounge singer!), Laurence Fishbourne (serious actor!), Frankie Avalon (cheesy 50's crooner!), Charro (lunatic with big boobs!), Whoopi Goldberg (versatile comic actress!), Magic Johnson (basketball star!), Little Richard (actual singer!), Grace Jones (wearing an incredible outfit and signing!) and Oprah Winfrey (talk show host!) This video of KD Lang (starts around the 2:00 mark) in a denim bedazzled DRESS singing "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" will probs make your head explode. (See screenshot, left). Pee-Wee's special is really first-rate, you should watch it.

In my Christmas Special, I'd also like to assemble an all-star group of unrelated iconic figures. Obvs Haviland Stillwell and Tegan & Sara. I'd need some good dancers, maybe the cast of "In the Heights" or those little boys from Billy Elliot. Julie Goldman 'cause she's funny. Barack Obama -- good speaker, very popular right now. The Fab Five in their college form. The revival cast of "Sweet Charity" doing "Big Spender" or Audrey Hepburn doing the dance from Funny Face. RuPaul. Maybe if The Cure wanted to stop by. I'll think about this one I have some more. Who'd be in your variety show?

3. Even though we're adults and adults have problems our tragedies are overcome by the spirit of family and togetherness!

The best christmas special of all time, 1988's A Very Brady Christmas, is the perfect archetype of how adult Christmas should go. See -- Marcia's husband just lost his job, Peter's having an affair with his boss, Bobby dropped out of school to become a race-car driver, Jan's getting divorced and even Sam the Butcher has left poor Alice for another woman! Then Mike gets trapped inside his building! WHO WILL SAVE CHRISTMAS?

Well the kind recapper on IMDB explains: "In the end, Mike gets out of the trap after Carol (and the rest of the gang) sing O Come All Ye Faithful."

So there you go. No but really -- this never happens. Maybe if you're in Jesus's family, 'cause I thnk it happens sometimes for birthdays. But never has someone been like "man, we were all really down about Uncle Horace leaving Aunt Gertrude for a boy he met at the gas station, but then the spirit of Christmas overtook us, Grandma even learned to walk again! We just sang O Come All Ye Faithful!" In this sense, Christmas movies are the best kind of sci-fi fantasy films, and they fill you with a hope rarely replicated in life. If you've got the real thing though, then man -- you are lucky. I had it once. Honestly, I did. We did. I loved Christmas so fucking much, it was the best time of the year. Now we've got some grab bag of adult tragedies. Liars, tramps and theives. I'm the liar, Tinkerbell is the tramp. Just FYI.

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2. Travel Debacles Resolved by Magic Polka Bands!
Did you think I'd get away without relaying a moment-by-moment recap of my X-mas travel debacle? Of course not!

Christmas specials often involve a travel debacle. These are generally resolved in madcap hijinks and a scene in the airport where the bedraggled traveler will beg for a ticket to anywhere so they can see their family. I cannot imagine this kind of desperation but apparently it happens. JK Mom, it happened to me actually just this weekend.

Obvs I'll be writing Delta Airlines to share my feelings about their performance on Saturday. I arrived at the airport at 3 P.M. and arrived in Michigan at 6 A.M. the next day, meaning it officially would've been faster to drive. Also then I could've brought the kayak. I don't mind airplane delays -- I count on them, actually -- but I do mind an airline insisting that the flight is on time as we sit panicking in traffic, insisting the flight is on time when they tell me I won't even get ON IT 'cause after waiting in line for 10 minutes, I'm 3 minutes too late to check my bag -- I'm calling Alex telling her she's gonna have to come back and get me, I'm calling my Mom telling her I won't be coming home since they can't get me on another flight, and I'm actually upset about this, 'cause my Mom I know will be upset not to see me and I bought a kayak already -- I mind Delta insisting the flight is on time as I literally sprint to the gate, only to then sit through seven hours of them periodically switching the departure time to the present time about every 10 minutes when clearly that isn't gonna happen. It was just ... weird. I could've spent all that time at home, complaining to Alex & making animal noises with Natalie or perhaps exercising at the local gym. Or buying presents. I could've even felt safe wandering more than ten minutes away from the sign, which continued to tell us we were leaving in the next ten minutes.

It was kinda like I was having sex with Delta, and as soon as we started Delta said they were gonna come and i was like, oh, okay, that's unexpectedly quick for you, Delta, but still, that's cool, I'm on board, and then they were like, "no, it's too soon," and you know, we did other things unlikely to immediately incite orgasm or they closed their eyes and thought about my mother making cookies, and then went back to it and then Delta was like "omg, I'm almost there," and I was like ok and we were doing our thing, and then they keep saying they're almost there and then it's like hours and hours pass of me giving it my all and then it's the next morning and still no one has exploded all over the keyboard. Then we get on the plane and wait on the plane for another three hours, which I guess the analogy for that would be unnecessary cuddling when I want to go to bed. Or them being like "now you!" and me being like "I don't even give a shit anymore."

In Home Alone, Kevin's Mom ends up traveling home with a polka band headed by John Candy. I think? That would've been neat.

1. Happy Ending with Singing and Happiness and Togetherness where all is calm and all is bright.

I guess the thing is about Christmas Specials is you know it'll have a happy ending. Not just any happy ending, but the kind where everyone you love is gathered around a mutually loved place, having been through something tough, and the camera zooms out at the end to show everyone who's there, together, and there's music or maybe food, maybe a new dog or random homeless person.

And you watch the whole thing knowing this'll be the ending -- 'cause that's the only thing that's the same about all of these specials and movies -- which's more or less how we all want life to work out too, is knowing that all the delayed flights and fleeting angels and snowdrifts and yelling at strangers are just the little debacles you get through to reach the food and the music and the hugs. The kind where the camera turns and the angel is gone but someone winks, or smiles, knowing they were there, and everything's okay. Or something like that. The tree is all you ever wanted, the wagon makes your dreams come true, life really is that simple. And I'm pretty sure it is, actually, it's ME making it so fucking complicated.

And the grinch's heart grew six sizes that day
xxx xxx

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

I was writing this blog about Christmas Specials, and how I'd like my life to be like one. But now instead I'm sitting here in my Mom's office/my temporary sleeping quarters comparing my fingerprints to my baby fingerprints, photo-boothing and subsequently photo-shopping/poem-ing important documents, making tea and eating Hanukkah cookies like cookie monster.

I arrived at JFK Airport on Saturday afternoon at 3 P.M. for the 4:10 flight they swore was not delayed. Then they started delaying it. Then they delayed it more. And more ... and more ... I reached this room, my final destination, at about 6AM on Sunday morning. You can imagine how excited I was about this, and furthermore, my Mom let me sleep today unitl 5 P.M. It's like I have jet lag. Also it's embarrassing to say I slept 'til 5 P.M. Like I guess the day is over now, I missed it.

This is what happens to me in a house late at night when there's not a drop to drink and my system has lost track of the hours. I look for things I shouldn't look for and try to find things I shouldn't see. I wanted to find my birth certificate since I need to get a new passport, and my copy's gone, but I couldn't find it. But I did find my father's death certificate. An old passport where my brother looks confused & innocent and my mother looks young and ready for Europe. I don't know where she was actually going, I'm just telling you what she looked ready for.

A letter my grandmother wrote to her son. Handwritten four pages and it could break your heart I swear it.I don't know if she wrote it before or after he died, I really can't tell what the occasion was: Once I lay in labor clutching friendly hands, and breathing deeply and yearning for the end; when the fog lifted, a small form lay in my arms and it was my day. A hundred nights I went to your cradle and touched your warm body. You stood in your crib and reached for a sunbeam.

Anyhow it's this stuff that always makes it hard to be here. Not here -- it's not hard to be here here, in Michigan. I know how to be here and be aware of that stuff at the same time. This is where our lives went on, after all, this is where we continued, afterwards, to live. Ohio is still the place we are connected to through him, and we haven't had enough time practicing how to go on when other things keep happening , too, but i guess that's how time works. Time and families.

But Ohio is where we go from here for Christmas, to see my father's family. It was weird at first to go without my mother, then it was weird to go without my father, then it was weird to go without my father's girlfriend because then we were going just me and lewis, two angry annoying orphans fighting about music in a car not suited for the winter weather.

Because Crystal thought Ohio was actually IN Michigan, let me explain before I venture even further into my holiday stories -- I'm from the state of Michigan, this is where I grew up and it's where my Moms live. My Dad's family is the Quaker side, he's from Ohio a different state, located below Michigan. My Dad didn't ever live there as an adult, he lived in Michigan with us. Lately the routine's been that I go to Michigan from NYC to see my Moms, and then my brother and I drive to Ohio, and then I go back to NYC.

When we were kids, we'd all go down to Ohio together as a four-person family and it was a big deal. I couldn't hardly wait! It's not like that anymore. A lot of things are different now obvs and though the holiday season is allegedly about joy & family & togetherness & consumerism, after this weekend's snowpocalypse and my personal Delta Airlnes trauma I've re-determined that it's actually about Family-Focussed Masochism. Why do we insist upon gathering during this specific December week rather than, say, during a nice temperate week in September or May? 'Cause of Jesus? Obvs I think Jesus was awesome and etc but I feel like if he was still alive, he'd probs be in Zimbabwe feeding the hungry, or in Boca with Mary-Mag eating KFC. Next year in Jerusalem kthx.

Anyhow, though I generally avoid excessive nostalgia for youth & childhood -- though I'm actually petrified of it -- it's infected me every Christmas since '95, in different ways. People age and get sick, people have secrets, people have messed up, people don't show up, and all the trying is hard. Flying is hard, trying is hard. I get sort of tense and moody and closed-off and there's lots of slush and we don't go sledding anymore and I snap at people and wish I could go to the gym and I miss New York. What I'm saying is that it's my fault, but it's hard to figure out how to actively contribute to the positive energy of a situation while simultaneously refusing to reveal your actual self to anyone in the room.

I do love these people. I love them, wholly and completely, and they are my family, and they are the only ones who have been around all this time, though less often now. I love them absolutely and love to see them. But the weight of the holiday and the travel arrangements we must make to make it happen and the money that's to be spent when everyone is short ... I just wish we could have a picnic in June and go boat riding and call it a day, a good family gathering. We do well at weddings. Someone needs to get married again. I vote "not it."

I totes yearn for a time, that long-ago time, when making puffy-painted sweatshirts as gifts, playing an insipid game for bad chocolate with a wooden spin-top, eating lots of potato products, making paper dolls with my cousins and relishing my father's attention during the two weeks he was actually off work and not on a business trip was the cat's meow. And I don't even like cats. So you know I'm serious if I'm bringing up kittens in a positive context.

I have a new idea I'm going to instate next year to bring the spirit of Christmas back into our lives but adult-like. Doing things the same way we used to do them but as adults can be slightly humiliating, like wearing pants that don't fit anymore. I guess the number one "new adult way to celebrate' is "drinking excessively and discussing the calorie content of pumpkin pie." Hm. I like giving gifts though.

Anyhow enough of my rambling. Tomorrow I'll do a proper Sunday Top Ten, all about Christmas Specials. What are your favorites? Let me know!

What I'm digging right now:
The West Wing: In Excelsis Dio, Christmas with Jed Bartlet, Christmas Cards
Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
My So Called Life Episode 15 - Angels
The Office: Secret Santa Christmas Special , Jim Wraps Dwights Desk in Gift-Wrap
Arrested Development's Afternoon Delight
Charlie Brown Christmas and
of course our favorite A Very Brady Christmas

I want to listen to Ave Maria again and lie down on the couch. It's cold here so I need a lot of layers, I sleep like a marshmallow man. I'm safe underneath all the layers and portable too, and when I close my eyes I can be anywhere.

Merry Chanukkistmas! #2: If I'm Gonna Go Down, I'm Gonna Dehydrate with Style

Every year around mid-November, my Mother sends my brother Lewis and I an over-punctuated email requesting our Holiday Wish Lists ???????? and, consequently, she shares her & My Other Mother's wish lists with us, just in case we've become "people who think ahead" since last Hanukkah. Two years ago, my Moms' lists were ripe fodder for bloggetry comedy gold and included "queen size flannel sheets -- no flowers!", "Mac Word," "No-Batteries Flashlight," "Gas Card," 'Beading How-To/Starter Set," the uncharacteristically specific "Sharper Image Digital Dashboard Compass & Weather Station-CE352" and a Lawn Tractor, Snowblower and a Reciprocating Saw.

Last year, they failed me w/r/t providing comedy gold via wish-lists, possibly on purpose. Suddenly Mom #2 lost her zest for power tools (thusly eliminating a re-run of my favorite dyke-with-power-tools graphic) and wanted jewelery (?!?!), and my Mom shifted her passions from apocalypse survival gear to ... an electric toothbrush and a copy of a mix tape I made her in the 90's.

Not like it really matters what they ask for, it's a charade to me as I'm gonna go ahead and buy them books I think they should read instead, just like I do every year. I know my Mom thinks she wants a remote car starter, but who needs to start one's car remotely when all the adventure you need is right here in a wonderful work of LITERATURE? Right? RIGHT!

Anyhow imagine my delight when my Moms' Chanukkistis wish-lists arrived this year full of potential. Perhaps they think that after last year's "Riese being kicked out of the house and sent to a motel" incident, I wouldn't dare continue to lower my potential esteem in their eyes by making fun of them on my blog. Well I just so happen to like motels, so.

Also, "making fun of you on my blog" is the sincerest form of flattery in my world. Obvs look at my list of weirdos. And my other list of weirdos. Those ppl are all my friends. Even Tegan & Sara. I'm calling Tegan right now. She says what's up guys. I told her you said what's up.

So. The following is the wish list. With commentary.

[OH! BUT FIRST!

Look at the buttons !!!!! We got so many orders, you guys are Obvsing all over the place, keep ordering ... this product does not disappoint! I'll announce a new giveaway soon ... omg!

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Wish Lists.

My Mother:

Tickets for the Mandy Patikin & Patti LuPone concert in Detroit, 4/14/09-4/19/09.
Thanks for the deets on date & location, this'll ensure I don't accidentally pick up tickets for their engagement at the Key West retirement community the following week. Also we took my Mom to see Patti LuPone in Gypsy when she visited me in New York, what am I, a Patti LuPone machine. Patti LuPone doesn't grow on trees. Switch it up! It's not like I go see Uh Huh Her ten times in one year and four times in one week or anything.

Almost any other live theater/performance event (includes DSO and opera.)
Almost? See what she's doing here is expecting me to fill in the blanks. Just 'cause I came out of her womb doesn't mean I can read her mind. Even when I was in there I couldn't read her mind, so how could I possibly do that now, I'm not Magnito. Or maybe I could, 'cause she was a McDonald's manager while preggers with me, and now french fries are my favorite food.

Anyhow obviously I'm getting box seats for "Kwame a River: the Chroincles of Detroit's Hip Hop Mayer," it's at the Second City Detroit, family fun will ensue.

Or movie, or museum.
I can't afford to buy a whole movie so obvs I am going to buy my Mom The Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum (that's where budding lesbian moms take their daughters for early bird training, just look at the logo. Here's the hand, here's the hole, go to town) and request that next year that she give me the Giant Bubble or if possible any kind of human body part I can walk into, ideally a heart and barring that, another tunnel or cave where I can hide.

Actually though, um, I just went to their website and they're for real selling exhibits. I didn't know museums could do that? I could play with Ollie Oxygen, Holly Hydrogen, Wally Water and Mr. Catalyst forevs, I wouldn't even need Hav to vlog with me anymore. Also before I give it to her I'm gonna eat all the Astronaut Ice Cream.

Remote car starter.
Why can't my Mom start her own car? wtf? Where does she want to start it from? A lot of questions about this. I think people should start cars up close and personal, like in the driver's seat.

Cooking/baking dish that can go on stovetop and in oven.
Why would you want to put a baking dish on the stovetop? Isn't that what the oven is for? Personally, I know the oven's where you stick your head if you wanna die a là Lady Lazurus, and also for chocolate chip cookies. Maybe she wants to cover the burners so I won't stick my hands on them like I did when I was a kid. I'll find new ways to re-direct the room's attention onto me, mother, don't worry.

Earrings, (gold, hoops, gemstones)
Who do you think I am, Haviland? Hello remember raising me "gender-netural." I am not Haviland. I am Riese. When I get angry, I like to break things. Speaking of ...

Fiestaware pieces to complete my sets: Purple dinner plate and mug, Tangerine dinner plate and mug, Cobalt Blue mug and 19 oz bowl, Heather dinner plate, 19 oz medium bowl, and mug, Ivory dinner plate, 19 oz medium bowl, and mug. (last time I looked, Linens and Things had a great on-line clearance sale)

This is the internet age, I need to be entertained constantly, and I was tuning out already at "plate." I re-attuned at "Heather," since I know lots of cute lesbos named Heather, but then I dropped out again at 19 oz.

Also I fully appreciate that she's given me permission to snag her front-row seats to "Steve Harvey's After Party" but has specified the size of her required tangerine mugs to the decimal.

What happened to the originals is what I want to know.

-Instruction and guidance, sans ridicule and teasing, on FaceBook, etc. usage. (stop giggling and rolling your eyes!)

1. Absolutely not.
2. Not without giggling and/or rolling my eyes. Actually I can do it without giggling, but I have to roll my eyes. What else are my eyes supposed to do? Look at my Mom's facebook profile? "Maureen has become a fan of Patti LuPone"? "Maureen threw a plate at you?" "Maureen would like to invite you to throw a snowball at her vampire environmental cause?"
3. If I srsly can do this and have it count as a gift, that means I'd save myself the price of a gift, which means I'd save myself the work of earning money to buy a gift, which means I can basically think of this as a job, which I would do.
4. Except I can't. I just can't do that absolutely not.

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Before introducing you to my other mother's list, let me remind you that I am flying to Michigan from New York. Last year I drove. That turned out to be a bad idea, especially when I cut my finger open with a nail about an hour before departure time and consequently bled all over the steering wheel.

I cannot make fun of my Other Mother in-depth because she didn't give birth to me or adopt me and therefore her love is not unconditional. However, my Mom wrote out this list for her, so really again I am making fun of my Mom.

Food dehydrator (to make her own Beef Jerky) - though I admire the DIY spirit, I cannot admire beef jerky, and possibly would have considered this request were it not for this unnecessary detail. For example, on my:
,
I include The Cultural Resistance Reader. Innocuous enough, but what if in parens I added (to start a revolution, kill people, a là the SCUM MANIFESTO, which I expect in my stocking or pay the price). You know?

Kayak, (our stretch of AuSable River is too shallow for a conventional canoe.) - Right. Two years ago y'all wanted a canoe ["We're not getting a canoe, because then they're gonna want me to ride in it." -my brother], and now you want a kayak? Next year you'll be asking for a Moped (global warming has melted AuSable River entirely) and I'll wish I hadn't carted that effin' Kayak onto AN AIRPLANE.

Belt Sander - I don't know what this is. One time at band camp in the psych ward, my ex-girlfriend made me a belt in arts & crafts. Is this like that? I'm just trying to relate to you, bisexual-to-lesbian, it's like mano a mano but en engles.

A large/tall cactus plant and/or a Jade plant. -I'll leave "large/tall" alone, but I think cacti are Weapons of Mass Destruction, so praise Allah I will not bring it on an airplane, but you bet the first stop when I get into Michigan will be the Giant Cactus store to get one of these. Actually I'm quite serious, obvs this is what I'm getting, it's not every year you're actually asked to provide someone with a house plant.We can put it in our new Hands-on Museum.

Readers Digest subscription - The one portable item on this list has already been snagged by my Mom (see Mom, now you can't tell my Other Mom to read this, 'cause then you'll spoil it, like when Lewis told you that we got you a bike, which you no longer ride, good thing we didn't get that Canoe or it'd be collecting dust too, along with my ice skates from the 80's and all the books I try to force you to read).

I shared my concerns w/Lewis re: the portability of other mother's list, and he told our Mom about these concerns, and Mom suggested that, pending security clearance of said cactus, we could get Other Mother a "recipe book to use with a food dehydrator." Or: "Socks, she can never have enough of them." Truer words were never spoken. I mean, who says "I have too many socks?" No one, right.

Lewis asked what my plan was and obvs I told him I will be getting a gigantic/significant cactus plant and he responded: "Now that you mention it, a giant Cactus would be pretty awesome to have around ... if you got space, why not fill it with the most dangerous plant known to man? I'm serious. Add that to my list too. I wonder what it would taste like dehydrated ..."

Clearly it's things like "food dehydrator" that get me going on a nonstop internet investigation. We need a word for that. "The act of investigating something on the internet like a crazy person all night long, prompted by something small and innocuous, convinced that JUST ONE MORE SEARCH WILL BRING THE GOLDEN TICKET."

Apparently, one can produce pretty much anything with a food dehydrator. E.g., "cosmetics, mushroom soup, sloppy joes, pesto and moist banana bread." MOIST banana bread! That's like the Cracker Barrel version of the band Limp Bisket.

What if I just got her a lifetime supply of beef jerky and cut out the middle man? This woman Mary Bell is like a Beef Jerky superhero, and her hairdresser called and says he thinks she's a gay. Whatever, she's still no Kwame a River. I bet she never even drinks water. She's just got no need for it you know. Give me that sandwich, let's dehydrate that stucker STAT.

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My brother's wish lists remain similar in spirit over the years though specifics change. As he grows, he changes. Instead of A MILLION DOLLARS!!!! he asks for An American Express Gold Card.

He's also asked for "something that will make my honda ruckus go faster except for the nitro kit." It's like he speaks another language.

Furthermore he has requested a jetpack. With a link, in case we can't find one at Wal-Mart while Kayak-shopping.

He also asked for "anything from thinkgeek.com except the t-shirts," so I had to go look at thinkgeek.com, and I found this, which was special too, and I would get it for myself as a joke but it's too expensive. I also saw a "LIttle Einstien" bobble-head I wanted to get for A;ex, but then I forgot:

Luckily Lewis has learned to ask for "books Marie thinks I should read," so I can do what I was gonna do anyway without being asked "where's my kayak?"

Oh also, wanna see a dyke with power tools? She can sand my belt all day!

UPDATE: My Mother e-mailed, two days after sending us her wish list, with a mesage entitled "wish list addition" and the following request: "consistent weekly phone contact from each one of you. and at the very least, my phone calls returned w/in 24 hours, as you would expect from me." Obvs I called her back immediately, between that and the Facebook lessons this is shaping up to be a cheap Christmas/Hanukkah, I'll just get a cactus from the wild, done and done. No I can't do the Facebook thing. Gold gemstone hoop-has, here I come.

In two days I will be in Michigan.

Yup.

Automatic Fun House of the Day: 12.4.2008

When I stand on the windowsill and lower the windowpane I can see into other people's windows, right across the alley. I could do this all day. In Williamsburg, there was a couple we used to watch. While watching, I'd think; we could just as easily be the couple in the other window, if only we wanted totally different things than the things that we actually want.

I think I should've gone to school for web design programming or whatevs it's called. I want to be the person who can type in the special codes to make things look right on the interwebs. How many times have you been willing to die for a person like that? So many times. I've been trying to teach myself HTML, a quest that began in 1996. I've got italics down now, but tinkering with basic templates can be tough.

Also, I deleted my Google Reader feed on this blog 'cause I wanted to change it, but instead of changing it, Google Reader invited my entire address book to read my shared items in a deceptively personal-looking email. If you are one of those people, I'm sorry. And no, I don't really want to share any items with you, but thanks for checking in. JK I love everyone, please link me pot psychology.

No really, I have a weirdness with Google Reader, I use it very specifically. Most sites I read every day I won't have on my feed, I'll just check in -- Jezebel, Gawker, HuffPo, The New York Times, Arts & Letters. Etc.

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Quote: “The same week of high school that I quit track, I missed a math test. I never missed math tests but woke up that morning and something about the sun through the curtains, rolling out in its smooth ivory rays, made me unable to move. The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day by day decision if you want to agree to that proposal.” (aimee bender, an invisible sign of my own)

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Links:
1. Aggressive capitalism has come to an end: "our future has never been brighter." (@ode magazine)
2. Paul Carr challenges Evening Standard film critic Nick Curtis to try Twitter for a week (@guardian uk) -- after Curtis wrote, after using twitter for two hours, that Twitter was "endless prattle from people with too much time and too little imagination" and "facebook statuses on crack," Carr makes Curtis try it for a week 'cause he used to think so too, and after a friend made him the same one-week deal, he's come to think that "Twitter, unlike Facebook, has the power to change the world." (@the guardian uk)
3. The Days of Their Lives - Lesbians Star in the funny pages of Alison Bechdel's "Essential Dykes to Watch Out For" (@nytimes)
4. Norton's Writers Recommend - includes Diane Ackerman, Andre Dubus III and Nicole Krauss. (@writers recommend)
5. Best Book Designs of the Year 2008 (@nytimes) and A Year in Reading 2008 (@the millions)
6. Princess Leia's wild, bipolar adventures (@salon.com)
7. Maureen Dowd's What Tiny Fey Wants (@vanity fair) and Emily Gould's take on it: "if this is the best magazines can do, then they deserve to die." (@emily magazine)
8. If you haven't already seen it: Prop 8 the Musical ! Sarah Chalke (LOZO!), Jack Black, John C. Reily, Margaret Cho, Maya Rudolph, Neil Patrick Harris and MORE! (@funny or die)
9. The "Mad Men" dilemna: why you might be suffering from Quality Show Fatigue. (@nymag)
10. In Which it Happened That Night: after canceling her 10-day membership to the NYC Republicans Club (the first person to ever do so) -- "my brief stint as a Republican was purely an all access pass into their election night event (“Victory 2008!”), which I attended, more or less, for my own amusement." (@this recording)
11. Check out Olympia Zagnoli, the illustrator who made that over there [15 Ways to Sleep on a Train]

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Last time, I brought you insomnia poetry of randomly assembled lines from my 2000 diaryland account. This time, I wanted to do the same thing -- but realized it's not the same with paper diaries that were written to be private. So I bring you livejournal randomly assembled poetry. This has three stanzas or whathaveyou.

LIVEJOURNAL MAGNETIC INSOMNIA POETRY

I just want to drive in the sunshine,
listen to sugarcult too loud.
Maybe if Britney Spears was my girlfriend then it would be o.k.
If I knew what was wrong, I could fix it. But I don't.
(march 2002)

This week begins Operation: Enduring Relationship.
Plan: you must love Stephen Dunn, strange food,
fantasies of trips to South America, art you don't understand,
theater, stories, books. My stories.
I want you to know me.
(october 2002)

this is our dog, oscar, eating his dinner
tonight i had salmon, baked potato and a spinach-feta-driedcherries-olive-oil salad.
I made it myself.
tonight, oscar had dog food.
that is one of many differences between oscar and i.
(december 2002)

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On the Night I Die I Swear I'll Sleep Outside Your Window OR "My Life as a House"

Me? I'd keep my library on the wall's built-in-bookshelves. Hardwood floors. Exposed brick. Exposed book. We don't need mirrors if we have each other, we need windows to see what's out there but not too much everything, 'cause then we won't be able to see each other anymore. I want us to really look at each other is what I'm saying.

I had a house once. I mean -- I lived in a house, and it was mine as much as anything can be yours when you're a child and don't really have anything but still believe that you will, one day, have everything.

I nested there, as surely and solidly as anything in the world could've been my nest when I was a child and didn't really have anything but still believed I would, one day, nest somewhere else, somewhere spectacular like in Troop Beverly Hills or The Little Princess.

I never liked adventure stories of swashbuckling, journeys, warriors, quests -- I liked novels where precarious girls in frocks and bare feet discovered secret worlds in the wardrobe or in a box in the attic, stories where adventure was as local as wallpaper.

Natalie, my bestie from college who I lived with at two separate addresses there and crashed with last week, saw her Fiji dream house in Architectural Digest. Simple, clean lines, beautiful, next to the sea, surrounded by mountains and green, endless green. Open & floor length windows, glass walls and the bamboo bedroom walls open up to the spectacular sea. Hardwood floors, lots of ceiling fans, crisp linen, a beautiful kitchen where she can see all the people she loves sitting at once with wine and laughing. Stainless steel everything. Huge bathtub. Colors, and light, and dreamity dream dreams.

And when, at thirteen, my parents got divorced and we were made to leave that house I owned [or thought I owned] I left kicking and screaming, literally, staging a sit-in on the blue carpet in the style of the Vietnam protests my parents had told me about. I said I could not go. I demonstrated this by burying my head in the carpet. To my left -- the closet I'd turned into Samantha (a doll)'s bedroom. To my right, the futon and my loft bed and my desk where I wrote stories on my loud clanking electric typewriter.

To my all around -- my walls; posters of places I wanted to visit (like New York City) and hulking portraits of my hero Nolan Ryan who kept on pitching 'til he won.

Haviland wants a place like this hotel in L.A. called the Visceroy, like 60's stuff like in Bewitched [her typo was "betwitched," which's better, yeah?], the decor from I Dream of Jeanie, and lots of mirrors and of course the beach, always the beach and the waves, and the wind in her fairy-tale hair.

In the fifteen years since leaving that place on 431 Crest Avenue [like the toothpaste], I've switched addresses 23 times. As unhinged as that's made me feel, I've established certain precautions -- I always know where I'll be at least two weeks before I go there. I've never, for example, had to crash, or put my everyday things and furniture in storage, or couch-hop. A luxury, sure, but for me it's hardwired as hardwood and the only thing that keeps me grounded in a life of freelancing and freewheelin' and now, no legitimate roots anywhere, noplace I've ever lived that'd have me back or even knows my name.

Carly: "my dream house is whatever house Robin is living in. What, too gay?" Carly's dream house is not too big and it's modern but not cold, and there's a pool and room for dogs, and she can entertain or just sit around and watch tv in her pajamas. She says, "I can't figure out if that means I want a house on the beach in CA or a penthouse in Manhattan. Guess I'll have to get one of each!"

At boarding school near the end of my junior year, my writing teacher invited his workshop over for dinner. I rode my bike there, it was on campus. I had lots of coffee which was still a drug to me then because I was 16 and full of hope and spirit. I didn't say much 'cause I was shy, but I remember the books in his room, and the warmth they created with their words and possibility. I remember the brook in the backyard, like a cheesy watercolor rendered beautiful.

I remember, remember tangibly, the feeling of whipping through air on my bicycle from his house afterwards and thinking, "Marie Lyn Bernard the world is at your fingertips/handlebars!"

That was when energy, not oblivion, was my drug of choice. And I decided that night that when I got home for the summer I'd build myself a cave -- I'd always loved that shit, the treehouses and secret clubhouses -- a cave no-one else could squeeze into -- a place where I'd read poetry and write brilliant brilliant heartbreaking things. I'd write a novel, I said. All I needed was the right space, the right cave.

Adam's number one awesome houseboat is MacGuyver's. Distant second; Duncan during the relevant season of Highlander. In his elementary school sketchbook he drew his dream house -- he sketched it. It was a castle. With a moat. And a wing for his mommy because he was/is that kid. And he went on to form his romantic archetypes from the relationships in fantasy novels which wasn't healthy but the women were plucky (he chose the angsty young sorceress nobody understood, not the ditzy princess in distress). And then there was a real-life man with a real-life wife who had spines; spines of books, candlelight. That, after all, is his dream house: "I would probs want more light than he got, but it was night when I was there, so just about anything would have more natural light than nighttime."

And so, here I am. Basically what happened was I was all set with the apartment and then five days before I found out it wasn't going to happen ... I don't, and won't, go into detail, because it's my life as a house too, and it's complicated and I hate myself already for typing this sentence already.

Alex wants something she can build with her own two hands, with materials from her stranded desert island, but she realizes that fantasy sounds a lot like nightmare. So then there's this: a margarita shack on the beach in Mexico, where she'd sleep in a hammock and make margaritas all day. But then there's this too: the tree-house. That Swiss Family Robinson house in Disneyworld, anything where she could be inside and around a tree, the warmer the better.

But the whole situation leaves me unhinged, lost, and that's why I'm couch-hopping. I feel dislocated, like Houdini could pop off both of his nice shoulders you know? My Dad used to talk to me about Houdini a lot. I liked how Houdini was stuck in this tiny space and could dislocate his body from himself and that was how he made magic.

I realize, oh I realize, that there are children in Darfur who'd love to be sans-address but have a bed to share with a friend or a couch to hop to, close one's eyes on. Perhaps if I didn't realize this, it would be easier to figure out how I feel. But every thought I have is overrridden by the other thought; the thought of people who are sleeping on the streets, who need more than my change/change.

My short list includes the loft from Igby Goes Down, The Factory, that house in the Hitchcock movie with the cliff chase and the hanging, Walden Pond, the house my writing teacher lived in, and more and more and more that I will think about tomorrow and then add 'cause this post is totes incomplete, like you and me and everyone we'll ever know.

Caitlin. Wants a house on the beach with a pool and a backyard and she imagines her dream house to be like in Life as House, the movie that said: "I've always thought of myself as a house, I was always what I lived in. It didn't need to be big, it didn't need to be beautiful, it just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be, I built myself a life, I built myself a house, with every crash of every wave I hear something now. I never listened before. I'm on the edge of a cliff, listening. I'm almost finished. If you were a house, this is where you'd want to be built" and "What? Do I still love you? Absolutely. There's not a doubt in my mind. Through all my anger, my ego, I was always faithful in my love for you."

And so, nowhere I am. And so I do not know who I am. And so I want more than anything to be proud of myself. Which won't set us free but Who I Am is the great mistake in a life full of mistakes.

And so tonight I will go to sleep, ideally, though I've struggled with sleep the past few days 'cause I'm not good with strange spaces, and so I panic, and so tomorrow I will wake up, and I will go to work, and I will, if I have the time, attack this post and try to make it into something as glorious as four walls, as something I could dig into, as something I could keep. Something I can own, as much as any child can own anything.