Albert saved my soul, or so he thinks

Apparently leaving a bar at 2:30 am on a Monday night in Mission Hill screams "Lost Soul" to one particular Boston city cab driver. It couldn't possibly scream that I got off work and had a beer and now just want to get home safely, but anyway, Albert, as I came to know him, began chit chatting with me once we dropped Marcy off at her home. She apparently isn't in need of saving. Just me. After I informed him that I'm relatively unimpressed with my current career path, he began his sermon. "Please forgive me, I don't mean to cross the line, but God has a plan for you, you just have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior." Yep. With that simple sentence Al began the process of saving my lost soul. Those of you who know me well, know that I am fascinated by religious people, particularly those who are so passionate that they feel the need to reach out to try and convert random people they encounter so clearly I was quite intrigued. Nobody had ever actively tried to save me before so I assured Albert that he wasn't crossing the line nor was he offending me.

He continued on about how he loves me, and Jesus loves me, and there is a very real devil who is trying to keep me from reaching salvation and he uses his people - the Godless people - to lead me away from Our Lord Jesus Christ. Now please note, dropping Marcy off and getting to my house takes no more than 7 minutes at that hour of the night so once we arrived at Rena St., Albert stopped the meter and asked if he could continue. I told him by all means to continue saving me. He then asked me to pray with him and I agreed. I then repeated after him, and asked God to save me. Amen. He told me that his name, Albert, means "noble" and to him that means his inherited higher character is what encourages him to save lost souls. He then asked what my name means. "An officer of the court." I replied to which he had no response except "Well, isn't that nice."

Albert then gave me a piece of paper and a pen and asked me to write the following on one side:

Jesus loves me!

1-800-759-0700

Ask for a higher calling

and on the other side:

iumi.org

He then informed me that I have a God shaped hole in my heart that can not be filled with money or fame and will only be filled when I accept God into my heart completely. He told me that while he loves Mr. Barack Obama, he is bringing America quickly to its downfall as he is not running it as a Christian nation and had Mr. John McCain been president we'd be at least on a path towards salvation as the founding fathers wanted this nation to be a Christian nation despite any evidence I could come up with to contradict that and if we don't become a Christian nation again, we will meet our demise. This is where things escalated out of control as Albert simply just started listing passages I need to read in the bible and they are as follows:

John 8:58 - "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

John 14:6 - Jesus answered "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me"

Isaiah 9:6 -

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Micah 5:2 -

"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,

though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times."

Genesis 3:15 -

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."

Exodus 3:14 - God said to Moses, "I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "

Deuteronomy 18:15 - The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him

By this point, it was after 3:30am and I needed to get to bed as I had to work in the morning so I thanked Albert for everything, he asked me if I was saved, and I said "I think so." Apparently that was the wrong answer. "NO!" he exclaimed, "You ARE saved. You've accepted Jesus into your heart, right?" I couldn't tell him that I was really just partaking in his exercise in futility because I was fascinated by him and wanted to know exactly what went into saving someone's soul through the glass of a cab window. "Yes." I responded warily looking to the sky awaiting the lightning strike from above. Albert and I parted ways with him convinced he'd done God's work and converted one lost soul.

For those of you who aren't going to call the number, it's for the 700 Club or the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Feel saved yet? For those of you who do, Albert's website has a Salvation Confirmation Form you can fill out so he can congratulate you and welcome you to the family of God.

A collection of my wintery thoughts in search for employment

These were all written sometime between mid-January and earlyMarch whilst I was in search of a job:

"I've found myself recently searching the snowy streets of Boston for places where one is allowed to sit and read or sit and write or sit and rest without purchasing anything and I think I've gotten pretty good at locating such places to keep myself warm whilst killing time before an interview as I rely solely on the train times to get into the city when necessary. I'm currently in the center of Quincy Market at one of the low wooden tables with small wooden stools on the North Side of the market surrounded by the interesting crowd filling the overly touristy market at 11am on a cold friday in late January. A few small families, not small in stature, but small in number. Mother, father, son. A single eccentric looking older woman whose cerulean blue scarf matches the sweater she is wearing under her black coat with only the end of the left sleeve exposed. She has a black winter hat with two gold pins on the front brim. One I can't quite make out, but if I let my imagination run free, it looks like ET slinking around on his back legs. The other is simply of a left hand. The woman is wearing big framed glasses that fall just to where her cheek lines begin. Her coral colored lipstick has been ever so slightly smeared with the spoonfuls of chowder she's shoveling into her mouth from paper cup via plastic spoon. There is a group of Hispanic teenage boys sharing plates of fish and chips, chattering away far too quickly for me to ever follow with my less than basic understanding of the Spanish language. I still have an hour to kill before my interview and unless another interesting character comes along, I'll just be entertaining myself with Ken Kesey and his Demon Box of delights."

"I hate myself anytime I find myself sitting in a Starbucks somewhere but significantly more when I'm dressed for an interview in a suit and heels somewhere downtown, with my pretentious Grande something or other, which in reality is really only black tea but veiled behind it's 60% post-consumer fiber cardboard sleeve and it's green and white 10% post-consumer fiber cup, onlookers could mistake it for a Grande Skinny Soy Vanilla Latte with an extra shot, no foam. My only hope is that my copy of Demon Box sitting next to my notebook deters people from thinking I'm as pretentious as I feel I'm faking to be.

It's dark in this part of town, seemingly all the time. It's the sort of place the sun can't find and nobody seems to notice. Too many too tall buildings with too many too important business people too busy to care about the noteable vitamin D deficiency downtown.

Fifteen more minutes until I'm thirty minutes early."

"The charcoal grey clouds are stampeding through the dolphin grey sky at an alarming rate. The flags, struggling against their teather to the pole, the bare branches on the February elm trees, writhing eastward all makes me feel like I should be heading that way faster than I am. Stagnant at the train station patiently awaiting the arrival of the 5:38 local into Boston, more patiently than a handful of people standing almost on the tracks themselves with the asinine thought that perhaps if they stare hard enough the train will come. It's late. There is nothing you can do to make it arrive faster. Train approaching, please remain behind yellow line. The words echo in my ears. There is something about simple instructions that make adolescent boys, waiting in their Kevin Garnett jersey's to go to the Celtics game with their oblivious, cigar smoking fathers, completely ignore the warning of an approaching locomotive. One boy heads towards the track to see the train approaching. It's coming much faster than the local train. Another Acela barreling through the Mansfield station. He doesn't realize as he leans his head out over the track. His father laughs and slaps his buddy on the shoulder paying no attention to his child about to be torn to pieces. "Look out!" I start yelling but nobody hears me over the screaming of the train horn. The boy, finally noting that the 150 mph train was about to tear his tiny pinhead off his green jerseyed body, dives away from the track as the cars of the train are so fast passing that they're out of sight by the time he makes it back to his feet. "Whoa!" He says to his friends. He looks up, dad didn't notice. I'm crying."

"Yet another homeless, jobless wandering sort of day for me. I had an interview at 9am at Fanieul Hall for an Assistant General Manager position at Zuma Tex Mex, which looks to be a sub-par tourist haven with stale chips and watery, overly salted margaritas. We'll see. I got an interview for a position at The Red House in Harvard Square and I had time to kill before I could head over there as I was given a 2-4pm window so I thought the best way to spend the few hours I had to kill was to fin a table in the rotunda of Quincy Market, on the south side, near the wall. I drifted between sleep and Salinger while the sun slowly rose through the high window, warming my face and back with it's weather blocked rays. With those panes of glass between me and the outside world, I nearly forgot about the frigid temperature and the reminder that the spring winds have yet to begin blowing despite the turning of calendar pages.

While I know I'm currently destitute and beyond any point of peculiarity, I'm not sure that Cafeteria Boston is the place for me to work. Once you get past the typically upity, judgemental, obonxious air of superiority carried by most survice purveyors on Newbury St., you sitll end up in some low-ceilinged basement restaurant that despite it's self-proclaimed "American Bistro with Mediterranean Influence"-dness, it smells oddly like curry and I couldn't decipher if it was the Indian restaurant a block a way, or just perhaps the staff themselves. Off to the Red House which I know lacks both the obnoxious pretention and the smell of Tandori Chicken. Also, a homeless man said he'd call me later.

I stood in the Park St. station, subterranean, awaiting the always efficient red line to carry me and everyone (minus the bald man strumming his guitar and singing Oasis slower and sadder than I ever imagined possible into his microphone, booming out from his lone, battered amplifier) to their cross river destinations. The tracks, I happened to notice - as I don't often look at them - resembled city blocks in a well planned midwestern city, evenly spaced and perfectly straight. Amid one of the "blocks" was a dead rat, stiff back legs fully extended, front legs seemingly absent without further inspection. A block and a half up the tracks was a whole bagel. One can only wonder which came first, the rat or the bagel.

I waited for the train to arrive, expecting but knowing the impossible odds, that upon impact between train and rat there would be a bloody explosion covering our panhandling crooner in rat innards. Relief? Disappointment? Neither really as I held my breath as the train passed with no incident. We all piled on and after two soft dings of the bell, the music abruptly and mid-lyric disappeared."

Eight Reasons I'm not $113 Million Dollars Richer

Someone from Queens won $113 million dollars playing MegaMillions yesterday, and that person wasn't me. Here are the eight solid reasons why I'm not a millionaire...yet.

1) I didn't play. OK, so technically I didn't buy a lottery ticket for this drawing, but I did when it was at $90M, $65M, $42M, and so on all the way down to $12M, so I suppose the title to this post should be "Top 10 Reasons I'm not $90 Million Dollars Richer"

2) The Awwww Factor. I don't have one. I'm a middle class, 20 something from Boston who is (mostly) self sufficient. There is no mortgage to fall behind on, I didn't get laid off, I'm not a cowboy living off the land, and I ain't got 6 children. There's no reason anyone who doesn't know me should feel good about me winning lots of money.

3) I'm too intelligent. Some people might think that being too intelligent to win a game that has been referred to as a "tax for dumb people" doesn't make sense, but I'm convinced the Powers That Be are all about some GED redneck from backwoods Georgia or Iowa or Montana winning the Jackpot because those same Powers own the E! network and those same rednecks will make for entertaining TV whether they end up with a reality show or on THS Investigates: The Curse of the Lottery II.

4) I'll spend and save my earnings wisely. This may be more aptly labeled as number 3a, but I'm sure I'm going to struggle to get a substantial amount of reasons anyway, so it gets it's own. I have spent admittedly abnormal amounts of time thinking about and/or planning what I would do with the majority of my money if I were to win any exorbatant amount. It's not so much that I expect to win, as that I just want to be prepared if I do. How much would a house cost in Wellfleet on the water? How much would a vineyard in Argentina cost with a 5 bedroom house attached? How much would it take to pay off my loans and debts, to pay off my family's debts? Perhaps new clothes without holes or pen stains or a wallet to hold my belongings so they're not all just stuffed in my pockets. With all of that considered, I'd still have a lot of money left for savings (and maybe an Aston Martin or two...yes, I'd get my license).

5) I'm too rational. I have no ties to any particular set of numbers, I'm not superstitious, I don't think my birthdate is lucky, nor is yours. With all that said, I always quick pick the numbers instead of playing a particular set and with some quick google research used to find statistics that match my cause, I found that according to the 1996 New York Daily News,"Quick Pick is not the best route to winning. More than half of all players use Quick Pick instead of selecting their own numbers. But Quick Pick has accounted for only 38 percent of the winners".

6) I'm too good at not working. I'm not one of those people that would continue working my job because I'd need something to give me purpose in life or my passion for waitressing is just too strong to stop. Amazingly, I can find plenty to do with my time if I have all the money I need and (you can ask my friend Kevin), it's fun to have me around because I'm up for just about anything when I don't have to work in the morning. Want to fly to Holland tonight? I'm in. Want a weekend in Vegas? I'm in. Beer Olympics? Done. Rugby World Cup? Sold.

7) I'd get really fat. I realized yesterday that one of the major reasons I can't save a lot of money is because I like delicious food. I like to go out for delicious food, I like to cook delicious food and if I were to have a completely disposable income, I would spend a lot more time and money doing both of those things. Now, in theory, I'd have a lot more time to work out and money for a personal trainer, but in reality, I don't like working out and won't like it more if I pay someone to make me do it. Actually probably quite the opposite, I'm also really spiteful.

8) I'm not convinced I'd help stimulate the American Economy that much. I'm not a down home girl who thinks my back yard is all of the world I need to see (not that I have a back yard, but you get the point). If you look at the things I've mentioned I'd do with my money, nearly half of my theoretical spending thus far is off shore. You might never see me again if I win the lottery because I may spend my time between my cottage in Chile and my house in Malta.

So I probably put too much thought into why I didn't win and someone else did considering that I didn't even play, but I will not be deterred. I'll probably go buy a ticket today as $12 million dollars (the lowest the jackpot goes/is at now) would change my life substantially and I'm not one of those people who will only play when it's up over $100 or $200 million because I'm not that greedy. I am, however, greedy enough to desire a cool twelve mill and make plans for my life thusly. And with the creation of this list, perhaps I'll take a different approach, and start picking my own numbers based on some random reasons so when I do win, I'll have something to say about it at my press conference that will make all the spectators say "Awwwww."

Update:

9) I have no real plans for giving a substantial amount of money to charity. I'm not one of those people that claims I'll give half my winnings to feed children in Dorchester or something. I'll probably do something good with my money- maybe I'll do some volunteer work, but in all honesty, other than those that have been charitable to me, I have no strong sense or desire to give up much of my winnings.

1 Rena

Well, after an extended period of blog silence, I've finally reconnected after settling in at 1 Rena St in L.A. (Lower Allston).  I've moved into a lovely 4+ bedroom apartment with a motley crue of roommates for the next three months, my bedroom being the + part of that statement. 1 Rena St is a quaint brown house split into two apartments, the owners living in the lower apartment, and renting the above one to my roommate Phil and the parade of subletters moving in and out on their whim.  I am the most recent of these subletters, crashing in a tiny bedroom on the third floor with one small window and a futon to call my own.  After a week of relative madness (literally - Katy was in town and I was at my parents house every night I wasn't working), I've settled in officially with my puppy, my computer and my pots and pans.  My new roommates include the aforementioned Phil, sort of an enigma from a small town in northern New York and aspiring East Coast Dog Whisperer; Jason, who is afraid of ghost stories and works for a private jet company based out of New Hampshire; Jess, a tall girl who plays volleyball all over the country and works for Brine volleyball; and Jen, of whom I know very little as she's super quite and we've only met twice.  Our other roommate is Twix, a 15 lb puppy of something like a Rat Terrier breed and now, his hopefully new best friend Roscoe.  It makes for quite a bustling apartment with 5 humans and two puppies coming and going as we do, but for the first time since September of 2008, I have keys to come and go as I please, I have my own space to keep my stuff, and I have my dog.  I've also acquired (at least for the next few months), a flat screen HD TV (no analog pizza here); a nice, well-stocked kitchen; and a friend to tucker out my little guy and give him some exercise. 

Now that I'm all settled in, its time to begin searching for a place for September. Hopefully one I'll be in at least for a year.

Sunday at Frankie Santucci's

Please see below to read Sunday at Frankie Santucci's. Great post. Great folks. Great 'za

My Distaste for Humanity

I'm sitting, between shifts, at one of those lousy chain restaurants with more TV's than anyone knows what to do with, all showing different sports related tickers and information nearly sending me into an epileptic seizure, simply because I wanted spaghetti for lunch and wasn't willing to spend a Harvard Square fortune for a pretentious small plate of significantly better quality fare to suppress my hungover stomach. The music is - as expected - louder than need be and a contemptible, corporate approved collection of instrumental, sophisticated, cool jazz, smooth R&B and lounge music. The bartender, Allison, as she makes sure each and every customer knows, is an overly perky - must be highly medicated or supremely depressed - twenty something screeching corporate restaurant hyena and is yelling something about a special Rolling Rock deal at me to which I must have nodded as I ended up with a 220z beer in front of me, but in reality I was distracted by her dark banana curled pony tail garnished with a pink ribbon, and the two curled tendrils hanging in her face.
Everything in her life is "So good!" "So Awesome!" or "So Perfect!" and I know so because she let all of her patrons know. She is thrown, only briefly, from her obnoxiously peppy nature by a customer named Lorraine - which incidentally is the name of Allison's grandmother and thus in turn her sisters middle name - who is a woman whose size alone is cause for discomfort. She stands easily near six feet tall, shoulders like a lineman and a protruding gut on which her large breasts rest. After her $2.75 Rolling Rock to which she added three olives (?), she and Allison get into a discussion, nearly an argument, about mixed drinks and the excess of any mixed drink being poured down the drain. She wanted Allison to make her a Pina Colada and add the alcohol after the mix was made so no portion of her shot, 2 oz of Bacardi rum ended up going down the drain. Eventually, and reluctantly, Allison did, but only after threats from Lorraine involving the Better Business Bureau as well as the Attorney General, as if he has nothing better to worry about except the fraction of a shot of sub par rum mixed with coconut and ice being dumped into her clearly alcoholic glass.
She somehow lured me into the discussion where, after asserting that I am a waitress, I clearly had the back of the supremely obnoxious server who only moments before I was imagining bound and gagged in a completely non-sexual way. My support of the bartender only led to more adamant and outrageous arguments from Lorraine, in her Patriots embroidered jean jacket, her hair slicked back into a tight bun and her sunglasses resting on the crown of her head. Eventually, mostly because I couldn't hide my contempt for Lorraine's existence any longer, I conceded my position, flipped open my notebook and proceeded to reproduce the experience there so as to avoid any more conversation with either party on that or any subject. A song whose chorus keeps repeating the phrase "Popsicle toes" plays in the background. It's well past time for me to get out of this mass-produced hell hole.

Excursions in Suburbia

  The wannabe Faneuil Hall bar that somehow was banished to the wannabe white collar, but not quite there yet, suburban nightmare filled up quickly Saturday night with groups of friends of all ages, though mostly over thirty, as the band set up in the corner in front of the large television playing the UConn-Villanova NCAA game. My friends and I, urbanites through and through, were there not only to support the band, as my uncle was the lower lip-biting, bespectacled bass guitarist and backup singer, but also because I promised my friends the very real and certainly guaranteed opportunity to mock the locals, the townies as it were, as Mansfield is quintessentially a Townie Town, and that was made painfully evident only a short time later.

  The band starts pumping out an enjoyable selection of 90's soft rock hits that Rob Thomas probably has on a mix-CD he made sometime at the apex of his career but has since forgotten about. My aunt, a Mansfieldite herself, is in my party and quickly acknowledges that just about everyone around us went to high school with her - twenty five years prior.  It became evident that the social heirarchy of the high school dynamic doesn't have the opportunity to grow or change when nobody leaves the town. The wannabes still want to be as "cool" as the cool kids, and the cool kids know that at least in their own little microcosm that they are still just that.

  To our left was a table of four women sitting awkwardly behind the speakers, each eating a salad with dressing on the side and almost obnoxiously typically sharing an order of mozzarella sticks. Their clothes are clearly a bit tighter than they're comfortable with but it's Saturday night and they're effectively on the prowl, still trying to catch the eye of the same guy who didn't notice them at junior prom and only signed their yearbook with his name, no message. They all wear pearl earrings and a pearl necklace - but lord knows, not the dirty kind- and sweater sets. They stayed at their table all evening, staring longingly at the dance floor, wishing so much that they could just let go for once in their lives.

   In regards to the dance floor, immediately to my right, it was covered with a gaggle of women appropriately referred to by a member of my party as The Real Housewives of Mansfield, MA as each of them was dressed completely in Real Housewife uniform. Starting at the feet, each of the six or so forty-plus year old women were wearing heels somewhere over four inches tall disabling their already feeble excuses for dance moves to a general body sway and an occasional slow turn. Each woman wore a pair of tight black pants to show off the fact that they've all been able to keep their bodies in general good shape with a combination of constant and excessive dieting, hours upon hours at the gym and- for some of them- their secret addictions to railing the prescription drugs they've convinced their therapist they need. Their upper bodies were covered with any sort of blouse, covering their arms of course, as not every woman can compare to Madonna biceptually, in black, white, or some combination of the two. Each and every lady had bleach blond hair, perhaps to cover their grey hairs, or even worse, to cover the fact that they were naturally born a brunette, as so few of those on the dark side get let into the clan.

  Among them, I was eventually informed, was the  - and I quote - "It Couple" from high school.  One of the clones standing awkwardly in front of, and constantly trying to get the attention of her "it" husband. He stood, pretty tall, if I had to guess, the letterman jacketed football quarterback, leaning against the bar, staring past the band at the NCAA game, despite the fact that UConn was significantly ahead. His Stepford wife stayed directly in front of him, every once in a while turning to face him, and as awkwardly as her high heels and tight pants would allow tried to "grind" (as the kids say) down the front of him which would elicit only a look of acknowledgement from the letterman, followed by a swig from his Bud Diesel bottle. 

 And people questioned my intense desires to get away from high school.

Sunday at Frankie Santucci's

The following is an account of a pizza Sunday with Frankie Santucci and his boys - no exaggeration, no joke:

Having woken up in what my friends and I like to refer to as "bonus time" post a night that began early and ended, well, early - around 5AM, Mallary Santucci and I piled into her mother's oversized, white, early '90s Isuzu Trooper, the juxtaposition of the tiny 4'9" lady and the giant vehicle always putting a smirk on my face. She sits in the large, fake white fur covered bucket seat, her tiny legs reaching for the gas pedal, as she starts it up to get our caravan mobilized heading North from Narragansett to Cranston, where we were informed by Frankie (her father) that the boys "Ray, Edmund, Joey, Mikey. They're all here and the first calzone's already in the oven."

After about an hour, four raw pizza doughs, some girl scout cookies, and iced coffees, our three car caravan pulled up in a small suburban neighborhood to a quaint little house with five or six cars strewn about the driveway and roadside. Mal, being the family member and most comfortable with the situation, entered the screen door first. Inside, the house had a nostalgic feeling of a blue collar classic rock video, probably by John Cougar Mellencamp, back when he still was the Cougar and before a cougar was a nickname for an older lady (which will come up again later in this story). The panelling on the walls, the long carpeting and mismatched furniture. There were four large Italian men squished into a small living room, crowded around an older large monitored television showing the Bay Hill Invitational Golf Tournament, yelling at each other and into the kitchen about some apparent long-running golf game they have.
"You guys havin' a team pow-wow over there? Tryin to get a strategy togethah?"
"It's only April and you're already bustin me about this?"
"You know you're not allowed to have a golf magazine in your bathroom, tryin' to gain an upperhand in the bathroom"
"Happy Bay Hill weekend!"
And so on.

Frankie was in the tiny galley kitchen manipulating a two pound pizza dough on the counter, with one Margherita pizza already sliced on the table and a chicken sausage and broccoli rabe calzone next to it. "I been cookin' for three days straight for this. I started cookin' Thursday for this weekend, Mal" After the hugs and introductions, Frankie offers us a drink."We got some red, followed by some red. Then some red" He says while he pulls out bottle after bottle of red wine. And in a traditional Italian fashion, he immediately offers us all the food he's currently got. The pizza, the calzone and some soup."You guys want some soup? Who wants soup. It's the healthiest thing you'll eat all day, everything else is garbage. Here, have some soup." He handed everyone a bowl without anyone having a chance to answer. It didn't matter if you didn't want soup, you were eating soup, and to not do so would be disrespectful.

He opened up his oven, put the dough onto his pizza stone and started creating as Joey, his brother called it, his next 'za. Olive oil drizzled all over, sauteed garlic spinach, caramelized onions, chipotle maple chicken, applewood smoked bacon. My mouth was watering at the idea of it. "That's what's happening" Joey kept reminding us as Frankie gave us a lesson on pizza making.

Caleb, sitting in the corner, was offered a Miller High Life, which after the night of drinking we'd had before, he took his time on. "What? You gonna take two hours on that thing? Want me to put a nipple on it? Waiting for it to get to 98.6 degrees before you drink it?" All the men berated him until it was gone. "Kahlib? What kind of a name is Kahlim? Calem? Kahleeb? Is it Hebrew?" The questions continued until they all just shrugged off his name and started calling him "buddy".

"Hey Edmund" (Who I should just interject was larger than a normal sized doorway both in stature and girth) "You want some soup? It's the healthiest think you'll eat all day." Mal just looks at us and shakes her head. Apparently it's just another day at Frankie Santucci's.

Wine continues flowing, mostly into my glass as others had to drive home later, and the glasses of the older gentlemen. Apparently Bobby wanted to come get his pizza to go, so he can watch the golf tournament in HD to which Frankie and Joey respond repeatedly, "Welcome to Analog Pizza. We don't delivah." The pizza comes out, cools and is cut and I take a bite of the most delicious, crispy, perfectly cooked pizza I've ever had. There is no exaggeration there, it has ruined pizza for me forever because nothing will ever be as perfect as that slice was. I had had two slices of the other one, and this third piece filled me up but I couldn't help but eat two and a half more slices.

"Hey, Ray" Frankie yells, "Ray, have you had any soup? You want some soup? It's the healthiest thing you'll eat all day. Everything else is garbage. Here, have some soup."

David Nardalillo, owner of a funeral home in Rhode Island and lifetime friend of Frankie Santucci (and apparently everyone else in the room), rolls, almost literally by the size of him, into the party having just come from a funeral, dressed in a suit, removes his jacket and I immediately notice a spattering of blood on the bottom of his white button down shirt.
"What's the blood from Colonel" (Apparently Mr. Nardalillo's nickname).
"Don't you worry about that Frankie"
He says seriously, then looks at Marcy, Caleb and myself "I bury people for a living, and sometimes they're dead." He says to us and we all sort of just nod at him, not asking for any further clarification. He then bursts out laughing, pulls out a 750 ml bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and pours champagne for all of us kids, making sure his glass gets just a little bit more than anyone else. He sits down and proceeds to regale us with tales of his adventures with the Santucci family and the other boys in the room. They're trip to Florida, they're trips snowmobiling, how he broke his leg, how it snapped and hung and needed to be rebuilt."

"Hey Dave, Colonel, you want some soup? Healthiest thing you'll eat all day. Let me get you some soup." The colonel just laughs, and we giggle with him.
"Analog Pizza. We don't delivah" Joey chimed in.
"We don't delivah." Says Mikey.

David Nardalillo decides that we are now family and tells me that if I have anyone I need taken care of, I should just let him know and don't ask any questions. Then he tells us stories about a friend of his called Uncle Roland. Uncle Roland used to be a sniper, worked in law enforcement his whole life, is a trained killer and can shoot out your eye from 500 yards away. David called him up with a problem once, and Uncle Roland showed up with 5 guys in a matter of minutes to "take care" of the colonel's "problem".
"What's your name?" David asks Caleb
"Caleb"
"Calem?"
"Caleb, with a b"
"Ok. Paul. You're name is Paul now. You want to hear Uncle Roland's voice?" David called up Uncle Roland and passed the phone around the table while we all listened to his voicemail. The phone was passed to me, I put it up to my ear and on the other end was a man who sounded like an angrier version of Brad Garrett (Everybody Love's Raymond's brother) and said "...leave me a brief message..." and I handed the phone back to David. He starts speaking into the phone, "Hey asshole. It's the colonel. I got a problem, I need you to take care of. Call me back."

"Hey Mikey, did you have some soup? Want some soup? Healthiest thing you'll eat all day"
"Analog Pizza, we don't deliver.""
Hey Paul, you need another beer? Or you still nursin' that first one?"
"We got some more red, anyone need more red?"
Uncle Roland calls David back, talks briefly to Paul, talks briefly to Mallary (who he informs should call 911 before he gets there because he's going to kill anyone who needs to be taken care of) and then again to David. The Colonel tries to tell him he was just screwing around and that he should come over for a drink, but apparently he's made Uncle Roland upset. You're not supposed to joke about having problems fixed.

Mikey decides its time to drive home, at the question of his ability to drive his response is "I'm moderate, I'm moderate. It's ok, I'm moderate" He didn't look moderate. He looked drunk, but away he went with a promise to call once he got home.

David has Edmund, who he refers to as his bodyguard, drive him to the liquor store around 6pm after making Paul promise him that we wouldn't leave until after he got back. After his departure Frankie informs us that the liquor store closes at 4pm so he'd be out of luck and back in no time. Two or three more pizzas have come out of the oven at this point, but after the perfection of the chipotle-maple chicken one, I can't even fathom putting a different one in my mouth and don't partake in eating anything else, although the bottom of my wine glass does stay wet with some red for the entirety of our visit.

Someone pulls into the driveway and from the living room someone announces that Uncle Roland's here. Marcy looks out the window, and whirls around to Paul and myself. "He looks like Dog the Bounty Hunter without the mullet!!" We all sit awkwardly facing away from the door as Uncle Roland makes his way in. David isn't here to intervene if this man is actually coming to kill people and I worry mostly for Paul's life as he, unlike the other 50 year old men in the room, hasn't spent his life in Cranston and will probably stick out like a sore thumb. Luckily for him, David walked in with Edmund before Uncle Roland was introduced to us. David came in with another bottle of champagne, Andre this time, a bit more our style as it runs $4.99 per bottle but he quickly informed us that it wasn't for us, that he'd met a woman at the liquor store (which was supposed to be closed) and she was on her way over, after she dropped her kids off at home. In his gravelly voice, Uncle Roland berates David for getting him all riled up for a fight, "then you invite over some dizzy bitch and you expect me to just hang out?"
"Don't you call her a dizzy bitch. She was like someone right out of a magazine, gorgeous and breasts out to here" He says making an exaggerated motion with his hands. Uncle Roland decides to stay, have a couple fingers of Gentleman Jack and pull up a chair next to Marcy.
"Can I sit here? Are you with someone? When the dizzy bitch gets here, you're going to be my wife, OK Joanne?" Poor Marcy. We couldn't have saved her if we wanted to. This terrifying man was a trained killer.

"Hey Uncle Roland, you want some soup? I got some delicious soup here? Who doesn't like soup? What kinda person doesn't like soup? It's the healthiest thing you'll eat all day, everything else is garbage, have some soup." Uncle Roland didn't want any soup.

After some crude comments about what Uncle Roland plans on doing to the dizzy bitch upon her arrival, one involving the phrase "rented mule" which was a favorite of Uncle Roland's, someone asked David if the liquor store was closed when he got there.
"They said they were closed, but I told them they weren't." When we all laughed at him, he responded, "What? I paid in cash."

Uncle Roland stood up, had Mallary sit down next to Paul, who was next to me, who was next to Joanne, said "Now I want you all to know, that I'm a 51 year old man. Ok?" We nod. "Now what do you think of this..." he says as he proceeds to turn and pull his pants down to his knees. While I didn't see my comrades reactions, I can guarantee they were much like mine in that both hands flew up over our eyes, our jaws dropped and screeches and groans of terror poured out, while Uncle Roland burst out laughing, pulled his pants back up and took his seat back next to his wife, Joanne.

A truck rolled up and parked outside, as David and Edmund had stepped out to guide the magazine lady to the house. I peeked out the kitchen window and saw someone who looked as though she originally was black, but has self-tanned her way to a shade of florescent orange radiating off her dark skin. Her hair was many shades of blonde and gold (and upon closer inspection was quite obviously a wig) and she walked up to the house, made her way inside and comfortably introduced herself as Michelle. Now, there isn't any proof of the following presumption, but if I had to go out on a limb, I'd go ahead and say that "Michelle" was really once a man and is post-op or in really good drag because homegirl was impressive. She has a seat next to Uncle Roland, who introduces her to his wife Joanne and encourages Joanne to tell Michelle about her goose pie recipes.

"Hey Michelle, you want some soup? I got a great soup for ya if you like soup. David, get Michelle some soup."

I sat next to Paul, my jaw agape, baffled at what was happening in our lives and wondering why I didn't have my notebook to keep track of all of the specifics of the characters at hand, the things they said and how they moved and I apologize to my readers for my uncharacteristic lack of detail but between the wine and sheer bafflement of what was happening around me, I don't have as many specifics as I would have liked.

Somehow, Joanne was able to get herself out of there, after Michelle asked for her number so she could get her goose pies into a store in Cranston, we said our goodbye's to the men, Uncle Roland kissed me on the mouth, David Nardalillo gave me a hug (and asked Paul if he was a "Stem Gobbler" or a "Pickle Pusher" despite the fact that we were clearly together) and we all made our way outside where we said goodbye to Mal as she's on her way to South Korea for a year.

I also left out, as it happened somewhere between being mooned and goose pies, that Uncle Roland also did his best Silence of the Lambs Buffalo Bill tuck, pulled up his shirt and pulled down his pants and did a little dance, which got, from all of us under 50 year olds yet another terrified reaction.

We pulled out of there, trying to get back to Boston, all speechless and baffled, all of us repeating "Oh my God, Oh my God. I can't believe that was just our real life. I can't believe the past 6 hours were real."

I needed to share, despite the fact that nobody will appreciate the chaos of Frankie Santucci's pizza Sundays until they experience it themselves, but it made me so happy, the food was so delicious, the company was so...interesting and while I'm only a quarter so, it made me happy to be Italian.

A Reflection on Religion as a Detriment to the Progress of Humanity

   I recently saw Bill Maher's Religulous which was directed by Larry Charles who also directed Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and seems to enjoy mocking the masses of America, which is all right with me.  While many people saw Borat and thought about what the sad state our country is in culturally, I saw it, laughed at the jokes about our society and appreciated that someone else was there to point out how absurdly hilarous and unintelligent a large portion of Americans are. Religulous has a similar mocking tone to it, as Bill Maher questions organized religion, namely the three major Western religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and their devout, passionate followers but he isn't quite as degrading as Sasha Baron Cohen pretended to be as Borat.  

    Maher begins his documentry at Megiddo, Israel, the town below Armageddon, where Christians believe that Jesus Christ will come down from Heaven and save the Believers at the end of the world as Maher makes a statement regarding his distaste for prophecy only second to his distate for self-fulfilling prophecy because when that prophecy was made, only God could end the world, but man was able to figure out nuclear weapons before he was able to figure out world peace and acceptance. Clearly, Maher had a very specific audience in mind when he went about creating this film. It certainly wasn't anyone who believes the Bible as a non-fiction work, anyone who attends Church, or Temple or Mosque services, it is instead the 16% of Americans who consider themselves unaffiliated with any religion, and are more than content to keep it that way.  He shows, via a very technically impressive bar graph that the 16% of Americans in that category make up a larger percentage of the population than Jewish people, Black people, homosexuals or members of the NRA and it's at this point that his purpose of the film becomes clear. He's not creating the film just to mock, berate and belittle those who have faith in Faith, but instead as a call to arms for those of us who don't. Maher wants us to "grow up or die" in that we shouldn't believe in Santa, or talking snakes, or a man living for three days inside a large tuna and reminds us that the majority of the people leading our country do believe (except in Santa, because that's just ridiculous)...and those are just the Christians. 

   One of the questions Maher asks which really resonated with me, put into words how I feel regarding religion, was at a truck stop church in North Carolina when he asked the very helpful men there "Why is Faith a good thing? Why is believing something without any evidence a good thing?" in an attempt to apply reason to religion and while he comes off as ever so condescending he's really just trying to challenge something that so many people accept without hesitation. And to me while its disturbing that people believe in a supernatural man who can hear all their thoughts, it's far more disturbing that people believe in believing in God  - as in, without question, hesitation or thought, people believe in their religion because that's what they're supposed to do. 

  He discusses the fact that America has become synonymous with Christianity as "good Christians" believe in America and those of us who aren't good Christians have no patriotism. John McCain (you may remember him as throwing the Republican ticket out the window in the past election) said "The Constitution established America as a Christian nation" which Maher refutes with a series of quotes from founding fathers Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson who all felt that this country would be better off without Christianity influencing it's decisions.  Thomas Jefferson actually went so far as to take the New Testament of the bible, seperate out the dogma and produce the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth which according to Jefferson is "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man." And while I haven't read Jefferson's version of how man should act, I do believe it's evidence enough that the seperation of church and state should be upheld far more voraciously than it is.

  I'm not going to disect the movie scene by scene for you, but it is clearly edited for amusement purposes, adding appropriately placed clips of Charleton Heston as Moses, sardonic voiceovers and subtitles. Maher tries to make it obvious that religion and intelligence are mutually exclusive and while he makes a fair argument for those of us who already are leaning in that direction, he closes the movie with an uber serious address to the 16% of the population he's targeting with a bit too much alarmist hysteria for my liking. He seems to desire us anti-religious folk to try and shut down the major religions of the world because otherwise those who do believe will lead us directly to Armageddon. He may have forgotten that we do only make up 16% of the US Population and only 14% of the population worldwide and the chances that in our sarcastic, patronizing, sneeringly outsider way we're going to convince the rest of the world that their faith in faith is what's driving the world to its end are essentially non-existant. Besides, my lack of faith makes it easier for me to accept the end of the world whenever it may come, my lack of ability to change it, and my ability to sit back and enjoy the ride because I won't double down on religion just to save my ass when the end is upon us. 

Thoughts on a Train

She looks like every other ex-hippie-wannabe come suburban housewife and doting mother dressed in multiple shades of earth tone green, a pair of fairie wings slung casually across her shoulder and a small ball of energy attached to her hand, dressed tooth to toe in pink, purple, and princess with stringy brown hair matted to her head, a long, loud tongue wagging screeches too high for me to process at such an early hour.

Resembling something like an Ancient Greek Archaeology professor at a local university, he waddles around the train station in his unpressed slate grey slacks, brown rubber soled shoes, red patterened bow tie and dark suede panama hat. He's carrying two overstuffed bags, one a briefcase with manilla file folders protruding and bent, the black leather looking older and more worn than Joan River's skin, the other a forest green traveling bag with distinguished leather accents and handles. His grey hair pokes out from under his hat and out from his ears, and his wire framed glasses sit on the end of his nose as he peers over them to read the board announcing the train arrivals. He's late, or so he thinks he is for his 12:25 Amtrak to DC. Bustling past me to the ticket window I can see the liver spots on his face and his cheeks folded down over his jowles, and his busted capillaries on the end of his nose creating an omnipresent pink glow from a few too many sips from his brandy snifter. Plenty of time to catch that train, Doc. I imagine he has a palatial lisp or some other speech impediment that keeps anyone from taking him too seriously except for himself. There is no band around his left finger, just the imprint of where it used to be, where it sat for so many years before his wife passed away or up and left him because she was sick of being less important to him than the unearthed sarcophogus featuring Mycean fertility goddesses.

Overtired and addle brained, I sit on the edge of something great or a vast nothingness wondering whether I should shut my eyes and let myself tumble into the abyss or hold out for the attitude, aptitude, or eptitude of forward motion. My heart is cold, glacial almost for lack of love, loss of love, lick it and your tongue will stick, love. The train horn tears through me ripping my body in half at least, leaving me in blood soaked fleshy bits all over where I once sat.

At 12:26 the Acela barrels past my Providence local train, hopefully everyone is on board.

Who the Hell is St. Valentine anyway?

Due to my background in classic history, as well as my distaste for most things of Christian influence, paired with my general pessimism, I'm here to write just one of the many available, annually produced, anti-Valentine's Day scriptures. Like most "religious" holiday's celebrated in Western culture, Valentine's day has become a sales holiday to get chocolates and flowers into consumers hands; to fill up restaurants to sell their overly priced prix-fixe menues; to use the extra red construction paper, or candles, or cake decorations, or table clothes one more time before next Christmas; and to make sure every second grader get's their fair share of Necco Valentine's Day Candy Conversation Hearts and "choo-choo choose me" cards promoting romantic love and physical relationships far before puberty but if you look back into the history of the holiday or who exactly St. Valentine was, there are far less Whitman's chocolate heart samplers and personalized talking plush teddy bears than one may imagine.

The Catholic church can't even agree on precisely who St. Valentine was, as there were numerous Valentine's, or as the name implies, people worthy to be attributed to the feast of February 14th. He could have been a priest in Rome, a Bishop in a small town north of Rome, a martyr in some Roman province in Africa, or if you ask me, nobody imparticular. My personal feeling on the subject, is the same as my feeling on most Christian holidays in that it was created for the sole reason of superceding a Roman Pagan holiday. In this case Lupercalia, and in all honesty, I'd much rather celebrate "the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus" than a fictitious amalgimation of Christian "saints" who, I'm sure I don't need to remind you, were quite capable of purchasing their sainthood.

The obscurity of St. Valentine's identity implies that much like Christmas and it's Roman Pagan reciprocal Saturnalia, Valentine's Day was most likely a replacement holiday for Lupercalia, a pastoral pagan holiday celebrated between February 13th and February 15th which, as Plutarch notes, "...was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy." If you ask me, that sounds like a lot more fun than celebrating someone who may or may not have been martyrd for marrying Christian couples during the time of their greatest persecution with Edible Arrangements or overly priced rose bouquets.

The American Dream is no longer a savage journey, but just an old discotech

There's no passion in our generation. We've accepted a life of passivity. Of 'credit cards and parents that love us'. There is no need to stress or to strain or to work hard. The ideal of the American Dream died long before Hunter Thompson went in search of it's end and now everyone just expects the dream to be handed to them in a highball glass, or in a Louis Vuitton bag or in an overly vocordered hit single. We haven't had to suffer for anything. We haven't had to fight for anything we thought was right or moral or inspirational. Our "culture" has become so patheticly cookie cutter and suburban white middle class that it is difficult if not impossible to have faith or hope for our artistic future, despite the reintroduction of the words to our vocabulary by the new president and messiah. I find myself in constant pursuit of the mania of the counterculture of the late sixties and seventies because people were so mad and as we all know, "the only people for me are the mad ones." Maybe I just need more ibogaine or psylicyben in my life because I'm mostly unimpressed with myself and my inability to access that elusive raciness, the mania, the madness.

Ward! Beaver! Dinner's ready. We're having roast beef.

White Women are Fragile Flowers

I'd like to thank Beyonce, or perhaps more appropriately her parents Matthew and Tina, for creating a beautiful woman, with curves and all, talented enough to fight the general portrayal of women in mainstream media as waifish toothpicks, flaunting all that is unfeminine and encouraging women and girls of all ages to fight their natural body growth in unhealthy ways thus keeping their body as childlike as possible. In doing some research on this particular post, as the video posted above (or the actual music video -which I couldn't embed) is what encouraged me to write this appreciative note regarding the ability to accept my own curves a bit more, lead me down a more racially diverse road than I expected to head. Initially, I thought simply that a woman with curves is a rarity in pop culture and I should interject my "thank you" when I feel so inclined, and while Beyonce is a beautiful woman, with hips and natural breasts, a small waist and gorgeous legs, she is also a woman of color and while that doesn't matter in the way I appreciate her beauty, it does exemplify the dichotemy of what is considered beautiful for white women and what is considered beautiful for women of color.

The passive, aggreable, and unthreatening version of a wilted flower portrayed by white women for so many years in Hollywood is what we can thank for the rise in the need of sizes like double zero, websites promoting anorexia, and "Best and Worst Beach Body" specials running year round reminding us that cellulite is not acceptable no matter who you are and is a far cry from the appreciation of a curvy body depicted in paintings of the Renaissance or Baroque eras. Tyra Banks, Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, and Salma Hayek are all women with both breasts and hips who are considered beautiful by the mainstream but if you take a look at the white women considered beautiful, they're either Pamela Anderson-esque caractures of what women should be and plastic surgeon created cartoons, or they're like Angelina Jolie (who in my personal opinion was more attractive before she lost tons of weight), Rachel McAdams, Keira Knightly, Nicole Kidman or Jessica Alba, all of whom are certainly beautiful and I would give my right leg (but it'd probably take both legs for me to weigh enough to match any of their scales) to look like them, but none of them are women, even if I stopped eating for the next 4 months, I could ever be as small as. That's because I am a woman with breasts. I am a woman with hips. Granted, I could stand to lose some weight, but even at my most healthy, I'll never be a size zero. I'm simply not built that way.

There is hope, however, for white women in media to be portrayed as something other than a wilting, curveless, child-like nubiles or an overweight, sexless, unattractive secondary character. People like Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men, show that even white women can have curves, have breasts and hips and thighs and be considered attractive and not overweight.

Perhaps my post here is rambling and doesn't come to a concise point, but it's something I felt the need to touch on. My initial idea was to praise Beyonce for her fantastic body, her talent, her video etc, but had to acknowledge, as a white woman, that I should be able to be proud of the shape of my body as well, despite the fact that it is less accepted by mainstream media as typically beautiful.

The Unconsidered Ramifications of Suicide

Warning: This one is a bit morbid folks.


When Jeanne Morsett was planning on killing herself, she probably thought about how it would affect her husband Gerald. She most likely took into consideration the impact it would have on her two sons and her daughter, probably even her granddaughter. I'm sure she thought about all of them and then disregarded how her death might affect them because her problems were clearly more important than the potential problems she could cause. She then proceeded to the Mansfield train station where she threw herself in front of an Amtrak Acela Express train headed from Boston to New York, traveling around 150mph, to end her life in one of the most gruesome and public manners plausible.

What Jeanne Morsett failed to factor into her unthinkably selfish act, or perhaps she did factor it in and decided to disregard it right along with the feelings of her family members was how her death would impact me. She didn't seem to care about how it would affect the cute blond girl in the blue wool coat who ended up calling 911. She didn't acknowledge the group of teenage children who were waiting for the train, or the man who first saw her heading for the tracks, or the conductor of the Acela, or any of the passangers on board. She didn't care about all the police and EMTs and firemen who could have been called away from someone who wanted to live. She didn't care that I'd have to be the one to see the remnants of her body lying less than 50 feet in front of me. She didn't care that I wouldn't be able to sleep for days after that or that everytime I shut my eyes all I could see was her torso and leg lying on the train platform. She didn't care that I wouldn't be able to ride the train for a while, or couldn't be at the train station without crying every time I heard "Train approaching, please stand behind the yellow line" or even more anytime another Acela blew through the station at an insane speed. She didn't care that even months later I can't watch anything bloody or greusome on television, or that the phrase "its like watching a train wreck" will never be the same for me. She didn't care that sometimes I still cry myself to sleep because of her and for all of that I hate her. I have so much anger towards someone I've never met which is clearly futile but I can't feel anything else about it. She was so selfish and hurtful to so many people and while I have nothing but the utmost sympathy for her family and loved ones, I have nothing but anger for her and I dare you to try and be angry at a dead person you've never met. It is probably one of the least productive things I've ever done.

The Perils and The Positives Pertaining to Facebook

As of June 2008, I had completely removed myself from all of the social networking sites I had spent so much of my time building and perfecting, making sure to have the most obscure yet poignant quote to suit my mood, listing all my favorite books, movies, and tv shows and updating as necessary, keeping all the photos of me to ones that were of an attractive nature and filling in never ending time wasting surveys (on myspace) just because. I thought it was time to remove myself, to quit cold turkey, because things started to get a little sketchy on my end and here's what I mean.

I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to block out most of my youth and teen years due to the fact that they were as traumatic and horrifying as anyone who claims their awkward years were from the time they were 10 to the time they were 18. I went away to college. I made new friends. I separated myself completely from the awkward, insecure, little girl I was. Developed my personality to be one of someone who is much more in control of her own life and far more secure in who she is. Rock on, me. The problem came, however, when after a few years on myspace and facebook, people from my past started to creep back in, reminding me just how awkward and insecure I used to be. I was getting friend requests from people I was never friends with, people who in fact, barely spoke to me or acknowedged my existance for oh so many years. Now, this is not a "woe is me" rant regarding how hard life was growing up, because if I've learned anything, its that my life wasn't bad at all and that most of my turmoil is in my own head, not at all based in reality.

I began accepting friend requests from anyone who went to high school with me, friends or not and through that was able to see who they were friends with, thus expanding my high school connections. I understand that that is the purpose of the social networking site, but I eventually came to the realization that I am being most honest and open hiding behind the see-through wall of faux anonymity provided by the world wide web. I didn't need people I didn't even like 10 years ago to see where I work, what my relationship status is, or where I went on vacation last summer, nevermind the pictures of me drunk with my roommates, in a bathing suit, or running around on Marathon Sunday dressed like a 70s runner and making a general ass out of myself. Add that to the ability to keep checking the pages of ex-boyfriends or old hook ups, see their pictures of new girlfriends, or that they're now engaged. Or even worse than that is the ability (and the disturbing desire to) check in on said new girlfriends, or even old girlfriends. See her pictures and compare myself to her in every way facebookingly possible. It all came to be just a little bit too stalkerish and sketchy for me to live with.

Thus came my purging of all things social networking site related and it wasn't until I was mocked and berated by my new friends from across the globe whilst traveling in Mexico that I considered opening a new facebook page. They were all posting their pictures of our adventures on their facebook pages and in order for me to access them, I had to sign back up. With that I created a new page, with far less information, that nobody could see if they weren't my friend. I started to add my real friends as well as my new traveling friends so everyone could see the pictures from my adventure. And then, it began to happen. The people I ran away from facebook to avoid began to try and creep back into my life. Friend requests came and I was baffled by how these people found me so quickly or why they could want to be my friend. I found, however, a deeper strength within myself and hit the "Ignore" button when someone I knew in elementary schools younger sister wanted to be my friend. How simple it was! And how freeing. I didn't have to worry about becoming a creepy facebook stalker again if I wasn't friends with people I didn't actually enjoy.

The other positives that I've come across are that now the majority of my extended family are members of facebook and thusly I am able to keep better touch with the members of my family I don't get to see or talk to all that often. We can bond over Lost or the President or our pets. We can keep track of each others families and see pictures of vacations, all of the exact things I was avoiding from the people I didn't like, I now look forward to seeing from the people I love! I suppose it all boils down to the fact that these social networking sites are fantastic for keeping in touch with those you actually want to keep in touch with and with the simple and easy use of the ignore button, we can all do just that without fear of becoming a sketchball stalker of those we don't particularly care about.

Rocking "A Sleeping Giant"

Join me, friends, on my first foray into writing about music.

If you like punk/rock music, please, I'm begging you, check out The Growlers. Made up of Rob Carmichael (vocals, guitar), John Beaudette (Guitar, Vocals), Marc Beaudette (Drums, Vocals), and Chris Moran (Bass, Vocals), this foursome of friends from New Hampshire, currently residing in Allston, MA, are coming out soon with their full length album "A Sleeping Giant" featuring their single "Smashed" (download it here).

My decision to write a little blurb about the band, who if you don't look closely could be mistaken for their other and currently more well known band, Destroy Babylon - same great musicians, very different vibe - comes after perusing their facebook page and coming across this video of what I can only assume to be one of Rob's least favorite songs, but even the Stones and Springsteen have to play their oldest hits, whether they're the artists favorites or not. (P.S. Rob is the lead singer with the sexy rock leg (but he's taken ladies, by a very hot, awesome, bandaid rocker chick named Magellan, so cool down).)


The first time I heard "Harvard Ave", I loved it. Granted it was years ago in a basement bedroom with Rob, our friend Tom, too much Johnny Cash and my first foray towards the bottom of a bottle of scotch, but either way, the way Rob was able to capture the vibe of anyone who spent part of their twenties crawling the streets of Allston searching for more than just their way home blew me away. The song itself is a testament to how the band has grown and developed its sound over the years as it's been tweeked and changed lyrically and instrumentally. Harmonies have been added, verses rewritten and if you ask me, the final product is significantly better than the original, although the original will always hold a special place in my overly-sentimental heart.

Their new single "Smashed" is an extension of the new version of "Harvard Ave". It exemplifies all of the growth the Growlers have gone through. Rob knows how to write a good song, his verses are thoughtful and well written, his hooks are catchy and on top of that, homeboy can sing. "Unholy Ends" brings in just a touch of their Destroy Babylon feel through the accompanying horns, but not so much that you could ever confuse where the two bands are coming from. With that said, and those two songs released, I'm looking forward to an entire album of tight rock music.



You can catch The Growlers:

Friday Feb 6th at Fontana's in NYC @ 9pm

Thursday Feb 12th at Baseball Tavern in Fenway @ 1opm

and Sunday March 1st at Great Scott in Allston, MA @ 9pm



Also listen on facebook and myspace

“We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion” - Erica Jong

Monogamy is such a touchy subject in our society filled with theives, liars and cheats and my controversial or pessimistic stance on the subject comes from both personal experience as well as being a keen observer of people and their behaviors. I feel as though, much like Erica Jong infers in her quote above, that monogamy is not something that comes naturally to humans. We, if you ask me, are not a creature of soul mates or forever, but instead creatures of multiple partners and the here and now. Humans, by nature, only succomb to monogomy with the exhaustion caused by dating losers, degenerates, sociopaths, drug addicts, pathalogical liars, or if you're me, all of them rolled into one charming and handsome package.

But enough about my love life, lets take a gander back in history, as I can't even blame the Catholics for this one. It wasn't their fault that back in the day they were illiterate and unable to read the scriptures, thus they were left in the hands of Roman Catholic Priests and were to understand their word as God's Law. Before Pope Bene Ocho mandated priests into celibacy based on the fear that priestly offspring would inherit Church property or money, Catholic Priests actually had numerous wives and mistresses showing that perhaps even God wanted us to be polyamorous. Then Romans introduced to Catholocism the idea that only those who were poor and celibate were highly spiritual, giving up all worldly goods and pleasures bringing one closer to God, which in fact was more of a Greco-Roman paganistic concept than it was a traditional Christian one. Add to that centuries of tradition and expectation and you're left with our current society filled with judgement for numerous sexual partners and a feigning of monogamy for societal acceptance. Archaically, the definiton of monogamy is the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime and due to the fact that humans aren't monogamous by nature our society has created a loophole by allowing more than one marriage through annulment or divorce and has altered the true meaning of the word to fit our polygamous nature.

Beyond marital monogamy, social or even sexual monogamy goes against deep seeded evolutionary predispositions. Black vultures, prairie vols and beavers. Those are the three both socially and sexually monogamous animals found in the wild, and out of those three, only the prairie vol hasn't become that way to further the species, but intsead simply out of laziness. If humans were actually monogamous, we'd all only have one sexual partner in our lifetimes. Very rarely does that happen these days, which I think is great. Monogamy is unnatural. Some people claim that perhaps if I find the "right person" monogamy will come naturally with the relationship but I think, perhaps, I'm just that much more in tune with my animalistic nature than I am with societal conventions.

"Keep a diary and one day it'll keep you" - Mae West

We all seem to be exhibitionists these days, not the pornographic type like leaving the blinds open while getting railed from behind by a hairy man named Jed so that a passing neighbor can catch a glance, you give 'em a wink and send shockwaves reverberating through your suburban wonderland, but instead, creating blogs so those we know and those we don't are able to read our 21st century, post-"I love Aaron" or Stephen or Christian version of a diary minus the heartshaped lock and key, with the expectation that our insights, ideas or implications are that much more groundbreaking or earthshattering than any of the other millions of people commenting on society and its oh-so-many foibles. What a narcissistic, egocentric, self-absorbed way of life we have these days and I am obviously no better, despite how much I'd argue that point. This is my obligitory "welcome to my blog about nothing" post where I am to explain that I'm writing this blog because I'm bored or because I have a lot to say, because Bailey's life is super thrilling or worth keeping tabs on. Clearly if the blog is about nothing, I am bored and my life is not worth keeping tabs on. It's not groundbreaking or earthshattering but perhaps I do have a lot to say, hence my attempt.

I fancy myself a writer and hope to someday be promoted to an author -which I hear comes with a heafty pay raise- but first need to be able, not to produce something of quality - because in this day of books written by Britney Spears and George W. Bush, we all know they'll publish just about any printable shit whether it's well written or not, so long as there's an audience for it- but instead to simply produce something complete. I have a vast and never ending collection of story beginnings which I can't throw out because they're all promising enough that upon completion and editing they could quite possibly be my entrance into the world of real writers. I can't seem to write fiction past a strong introduction and prefer instead to incriminate myself and my associates in something resembling more like autobiographical fiction where the names have been changed to protect the not-remotely-innocent from everyone except themselves and those who know them. Writing for me is a labor of life. It's like exercise, I know I'll feel better if I just make myself do it, but I can come up with thousands of things to do instead. Everything needs to be perfect in order for me to sit down and write, it can't be too cold and it can't be too hot, it can't be too sunny or too nice a day, I can't write when I'm sober, I can't write when I'm drunk, I can't write if there are people in the room or if there are no distractions, I can't write if I can't sit cross legged or if I'm wearing jeans, essentially I can't write except under perfect conditions, but just like Joseph Heller said "Every writer I know has trouble writing" so I suppose I shouldn't feel so badly.

I think it's about time for me to cease my babbling regarding the trials of authorship thus I will leave you with this, taken from a quote by Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House Publishing:

"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer?"



...Yeah, me too.