Happy Birthday, Tim!

Dang, I was lucky to grow up with such an awesome brother. I'm so proud of you and all you do.

Childhood Favorites are Funny Again

When I was a kid I loved Garfield. I can not emphasize this enough. In the early 80s, I thought Garfield was the most colossally hi-larious thing on earth. Okay, I was like, eight. Maybe nine. But still. Every time a new Garfield book would come out, mom (knowing full well of my deep affinity) would try to ensure I'd have a copy. At school, my friends and I would swap Garfield books at recess. I'd trade my copy of Garfield Takes the Cake for Aimee's copy of Garfield Weighs In, and so on. The only one that never left the safety of my bookshelf was Garfield Eats His Heart Out, because it was my favorite, and because I knew that little bitch Holly would probably take it and never give it back. These Garfield book swaps were serious business.

As I've gotten older, my sense of humor has darkened and twisted significantly. Things that amused me as a kid seem so pedestrian now. The antics of a cynical, lasagna-obsessed house cat had all but escaped my memory... until today. Bridget sent me a link that has joined the ranks of my favorite web comics: Garfield Minus Garfield.



Y'all, this is brilliant. From the Garfield Minus Garfield website:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

Like I said, brilliant. As a child I never picked up on how, um, quirky the Jon Arbuckle character is. I sure as heck didn't think I'd grow up to often feel like the female equivalent of him, but that's another post. Take Garfield out of the equation, and ol' Jon is (pardon my French) completely batshit crazy.

See for yourself: Garfield Minus Garfield

Dan Walsh, Garfield Minus Garfield's creator, is my new favorite Irishman for this genius creation. Even cooler, Garfield's creator Jim Davis is totally hip to it. Aaaand... Garfield Minus Garfield the webcomic is becoming Garfield Minus Garfield the book.

So, it looks like I'll be buying myself another Garfield book. And that, my friends, is something I never thought I'd be saying at 34 years old... but it cracks me up that I am.

I won't be swapping this one, though. You gotta get your own.

Here, Have Some Nostalgia on Me

Hey, remember the sputtering little line-drawn fellow from The Great Space Coaster? I had forgotten all about this strange interstitial segment until this evening. When I was a kid, I thought he was just speaking gibberish. Now, it is quite clear that he speaks in Italian gibberish. How hot is that? Almost as hot as the nightclub jazz playing in the background.

Here's a memory refresher:



And here is more than you ever realized you've wanted to know about La Linea: Wikipedia entry

Proof that I Spent My Early Years Wearing Leotards... Exclusively.

I am going to treat cyberspace to some old photos I found whilst putting stuff away last week.

Wake up, it's 1984

First: Halloween party pictures. My mom loved to throw parties. I always had a birthday party, but the big deal party for me was the Halloween slumber party. Mom would seriously go all out, making crafty decorations and snacks and fabulous costumes for me. She wasn't a subdued domestic goddess by any means, she was more about having fun and flexing her creative, free-spirited muscle. We didn't have much money, so she'd go out into vacant fields and pick dried thistles and spray paint them black to make spiders which got hung from the ceiling... stuff like that. She worked it.

Here we are in fourth grade, late 1983. Can you spot me? Trivia: All the pottery on the mantle was created by my dad.



And, the following year: late 1984. Hellcats start young, oh yes.



Now let's ROCKIT into 1984/85. To boost my low self-esteem, mom enrolled me in a local drill team. We were a parade-marching drill team. I remember marching to the theme song from Simon and Simon quite often. We also did holiday performances.

Anyway. The 1984 summer Olympics had gone on in Los Angeles earlier that year. Maybe it was because I was just a kid, but it seems to me they were a really big deal that go-round. I remember desperately wanting to be Mary Lou Retton, but was too tall to be a gymnast. So, I got dance lessons instead. Being that my only other aspiration was to be a Solid Gold Dancer (Darcel was my favorite), I was cool with that.

The Supreme Team was the name of my drill team and we had a standby routine that we'd do in competitions. We also had a Christmas routine, and a backup routine to Yaz's Situation. I still love that song. The standby routine was to a song called Junku by Herbie Hancock. Yes, a bunch of little white girls from suburban SLC were groovin' to Herbie. The song was used as a theme for certain events in the Olympics earlier that year, and is along the same lines of the more commonly-known Rockit (for which the video STILL gives me the creeps). But yeah, Herbie was and still is the man... it just wasn't until much later in life that I realized just HOW COOL he is after getting into Headhunters-era stuff.

But I digress. The photos below are from a Christmas show. Here is some more trivia: The mall we are performing in is the same mall my uncle was shot in last February. I'd never have imagined that 22 years later, someone I loved dearly would be shot, left for dead and paralyzed a mere few yards from where I was trying to concentrate on not screwing up in front of a crowd of Christmas shopping Salt Lakers. It's very heavy to think about how randomly and unexpectedly life can change.

Here, we are dancing to Jingle Bell Rock. I hated that song then, and I hate it to this day. But I did not let that affect my unwavering commitment to fierce jazz hands. I mean, really. Look at all those other lackadaisical, limp-wristed jazz hands. Mine were TIGHT.



And these are from the Herbie Hancock routine, complete with props (a coat hanger bent into a circle and wrapped in tinsel) and buck teeth that could put anyone else's to shame:





Man, I tell you, I lived in those costumes. Like, I would play in the front yard in them. And people would probably drive by and see the skinny, buck-toothed child spinning around on the grass in sequins and ballet slippers and just shake their heads. But I was oblivious... I had a weekly Solid Gold top 10 countdown to pretend to star in!

This glimpse into my past brought to you by an old shoebox and a mind-numbing case of procrastination. Good night.