DecaAwesome List Number Three

Here is the DecaAwesome List for the week ending 11/22/08.

1. Simply Limeade. You wouldn't think that limeaid could be this delicious, but oh, it is. It. Is.

2. My sister. M truly rules the school. She sent me MST3K DVDs for Thanksgiving because she is amazing and she loves me.

3. MST3K. Keeps nerds entertained for hours.

4. Psych. Also a gift from my sis that I am only now getting to enjoy. I should probably be sleeping, but I'm watching another episode.

5. Super fluffy hotel beds. Like sleeping on a cloud. A king-sized cloud.

6. Sap. The closer I get to the holidays, the sappier I get. In my mind, I'm making lists of things I'm thankful for. I'm like that.

7. Red Trolley. San Diego's microbrew. Delicious.

8. Crossword puzzles. I love these things a lot.

9. Short nails. I like to keep my nails plenty short. Looks neat.

10. My friend Di. Who I will see on Saturday. She is a fine artist, a writer, a great Mom, and seriously one of the coolest people I know. She's like, top 5 for coolness.

Drabbles for Christmas!

Part IX in the Blog-A-Week Series

I'm a little early this week. I am in San Diego at a conference, and I will likely be too busy tomorrow and Saturday to get this done, so I am doing it now. I don't have much time until the next event (the adjunct faculty recital in which C and K are performing), so this is gonna be a short one.

You might actually think this is a little bit of a cheat, but I am offering something, so you might just forgive me.

I have lots of friends and I would love to give all of them presents for Christmas, but since going out and buying people stuff is just not going to happen, I offer a service instead: Drabbles.

A drabble is a very short story, about 100-200 words, and I will write one for you! You write what's called the "prompt." Choose the characters, the situation, the time period, and/or an object, and it is my job to weave them all into a coherent (or semi-coherent) little story.

In the past, people have requested to put themselves in stories, or have chosen historical figures as characters:

KC (my friend), Thomas Jefferson, hiking, an attractive woman

Some try their darndest to make it tough:

Oscar Wilde, rabbit stew, the Moon landing

Some feature television characters or people from books:

Percy and Penelope (characters from Harry Potter), ribbon

Arthur Dent, wheel of cheese

Get the idea? You can also request a style of writing: romance, film noir, action, whatever.

Or, you can make your request very abstract and see what happens (see Arthur Dent, wheel of cheese).

Whatever you decide, I will take your drabble requests and get them to you by Christmas. It is my gift to you. If you want me to write a character that I don't know, I might ask you some questions. Either reply to this blog or email me directly, and I will get on the case!

DecaAwesome List Number Two

This is the DecaAwesome list for the week ending November 15, 2008. In no particular order:

1. Dictionary.com. This is a website where you can look words up, and I use it all the damn time. I call it up on my Blackberry and look up words to find out their etymology or how to pronounce them. It's awesome.

2. Pandora.com. My roommate showed me this site. It's like a customized radio station, of sorts. You put in a band you like and it classifies their music and then suggests other bands or artists that do similar things. In a lot of cases, it'll show you people you already know, but it will also introduce you to folks you might never have heard of otherwise. It's probably run by a bunch of cave-dwelling musicologists.

3. Patrick Waburton. His cartoon voices, especially Brock Sampson on Venture Brothers, are so frickin' high-larious. His voice is just...so funny. Also, it was his birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday, Patrick!

4. Rieslings. Yummy white wine.

5. Not teaching middle school. I'm thankful for this one every day. I get to teach college now and it's way more fun.

6. Lush Bath Products. They're great products and they have labels that say who made them so it's all very personal. And also, they smell like chocolate and strawberry and grapefruit.

7. CocaChicken. This is a dish that T makes. It's chicken cooked for a long time in ketchup and coca cola and jebus, it is delicious. The chicken is so tender, you can cut it with a fork.

8. Iron Man. Yep. Another Robert Downey, Jr. movie. Saw it in On Demand last night. I had already seen it on the plane to Singapore, but it was way better on my pimp TV.

9. My lap desk. Keeps me from burning my legs while I'm putting in long hours editing and writing.

10. Venture Brothers DVDs. I own the first two seasons now and I've already watched all of season 1. It's good for what ails ya. 

The Most Powerful Person in the World

Part VIII in the Blog-A-Week Series

When I look back at some of the things I've done, I feel like the most powerful person in the world. Not because the things I've done have been so huge or magnificent, but because I did the thing/got the thing/had the thing happen that I wanted. It's like that old Disney adage: if you can dream it, you can do it. Now, before I start blathering on about this, let me take a moment to say that NONE of these things I'm referring towere things I did alone. I had someone's helping hand somewhere, even if all he or she did was stay out of the way. It's more likely, however, that these things were accomplished with the conscious help of many friends and loved ones, and of course, Joe Campbells "thousand unseen helping hands."

On Thursday, I did a couple of guest appearances at A Place Called Home (APCH), an afterschool program for kids in South Central. One of my former students works there teaching music, and over the summer, we hatched a plan for me to go and talk to his kids. So yesterday I went and I spoke to a group of middle schoolers and a group of elementary schoolers. All of it went well. I told them about being a singer, about my background, and I showed them clips of me and other singers, and sang for them. Also, I answered a million questions. It was weird being in front of middle schoolers again. It brought back memories, good and bad. The kids at APCH were mostly well-behaved and engaged, and even the troublemakers could be dealt with easily. It was a positive experience on the whole. Afterwards, I was talking to M about teaching middle school and about how difficult I found it. He agreed that it was one of the hardest jobs ever (take that, Deadliest Catch folks!). M then asked about the series of circumstances that brought me from a middle school in Brooklyn, to Los Angeles, through one of the most well-respected musicology programs in the country, and into a full-time job at LACC. And truly, at that moment, I couldn't really call up the many millions of machinations that made all of it possible. What I thought to myself was, 'I wanted these things, and they happened.'

But it sure as hell wasn't magic, because it was a lot of hard work. It was studying in the bathtub when J and I lived in the studio, buying a car just so I could get from one job to another, spending literally thousands of hours in the library, agonizing over words in the dissertation, spending thousands of dollars to go to conferences to give papers and get feedback. But none of that stuff matters in the big picture because it all went towards the completion of the goal. I set out to do something and it got done. It took five years of work and sacrifice (and tens of thousands of dollars), but it got done. That's a powerful feeling. The feeling that you can want something and that you can get it.

And it hasn't just been the Ph.D. and the job; there have even been people that I really wanted to get to know, and now I can call them my friends. Sometimes I feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. Those are good days.

But here's the thing, I don't really know what I want so my power isn't much use to me at the moment. But that's all right. Not knowing what you want isn't so bad either. Chaos has is own charm. Perhaps right now, chaos is the work of those thousand unseen helping hands leading me to the next thing.

DecaAwesome List Number One

For the week ending 11/8/08

A word before we start. I am a compulsive list-maker. At any one time, I have a master list that is categorized (stuff for school, special projects, errands, etc.), and a list that breaks tasks down day-by-day. Lists help me keep track of all the many things I must do. I also find them fun. Why? God only knows. Anyway, I love making lists of things that make me happy, and so I introduce to you, the DecaAwesome List, a top ten of stuff from the week. Sometimes I'll include an explanation with the list item and sometimes I'll let these things speak for themselves. In no particular order:

1) The Big Bang Theory and Venture Brothers. The two funniest shows on television. And they're two shows that were specifically designed to be funny to complete nerds. Big Bang Theory is on Mondays at 8 on CBS. Venture Brothers is on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network) every night at 12:30AM.

2) Chipotle - the restaurant. I ate food from there for the first time this week. It's always been a favorite of S and C, but I've never eaten there myself because I'm so damn picky. But then S told me I could have them make my burrito as boring as I liked. So I did and it was delicious. I even liked the cilantro rice, and I usually HATE cilantro. Score!

3) Pilsbury Cinnamon Buns. It's WRONG how good they are. Wrong. Also, I'm hungry right now.

4) Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Robert Downey, Jr. is maybe the funniest guy ever. I laughed like a freak throughout the whole thing. I just love meta stuff. Shane Black is a genius.

5) My purple pen. It was the one perk I got from judging the student Talent Show at school. It's just a plain Bic, but it writes in purple ink and it makes me happy.

6) Hotel pens. Yes, the nerd has two entries about PENS. The bulk of my pens comes from hotels. Sitting next to my keyboard on the desk is a pen from the Hyatt. I love hotel pens because they're free, and I usually get them when I'm at a conference. Conferences give me that good feeling of possibility so, by association: hotel pens = possibility.

7) Change. Not in a nickel and dime kinda way and not in an Obama way either. I just mean that you can be unhappy and you can change it. You can change your reaction, change your actions, change your situation, and just generally flip the script on almost anything. You just have to be willing to do it.

8) The Artist's Way. I'm reading it. It makes me feel like I'm validating my desire to write more. By reading this book, I am silently saying, "I'm serious about this."

9) The drum part of "Cherub Rock" on Rock Band. One of the most enjoyable songs I have yet played on this addictive game. Also, my band, Monkey Deathcar is very big in Amsterdam.

10) Editing. I was up until 3:30 last night working on the Accreditation Document, and even though the job is a total pain in the ass, it feels really good to fix something that's broken. Who ever guessed that I would be good at fixing anything? I can't fix a car or a dishwasher. I can't fix elections or contests. I can't even glue something back together without bonding two of my fingers together. But damn it, I can fix a sentence that makes no sense. I can make your subject and verb agree. I can maintain parallel construction and proper syntax. I can translate "english" into English. And I can have fun doing it, even at 3 in the morning.

~Hero

Dusty Corners of My Mind

Part VII in the Blog-A-Week Series

In addition to my normal blog entry, I am introducing a new feature this week: the DecaAwesome List. It's a top ten of things that have been awesome this week. I plan to make this a weekly feature and I might just make it its own entry. Stay tuned...

On the way driving to work today, I smelled tar. They must have been doing some road work or something, because as I drove by Alvarado on the 101, I smelled the unmistakable odor of tar. This smell has very powerful memories for me. When I was living in the Hunter dorms many moons ago (somewhere around 11-14 years ago), maintenance folks were re-tarring the roof of my dorm and the adjoining south building. The smell of tar permeated the air for weeks on end. God only knows what kind of lung disease I developed just from living there. So whenever I smell tar, it always reminds me of this particular period in my college history. And furthermore, it reminds me of a particular incident.

I was sitting in my dorm room, good old 1053 (spent every fall and spring there for 5 years). It was probably early afternoon. I want to say it was a Saturday...in Spring. And all of a sudden, the fire alarms started going off. I ignored them as I had learned to do from dozens of false alarms over the years. Until I heard commotion in the common area. I opened my door and leaned out to find people milling about and one very panic-stricken girl pushing the elevator button frantically and muttering something like, "On fire. It's on fire. Heh. FIRE." I turned around, grabbed a pair of shoes, my wallet, and my keys and fled down the stairs calling over to Panic Girl: "You don't take the elevator in a fire, you take the stairs." When I got outside, I joined a crowd of folks, and then I saw that the roof of the south building was en fuego. At first, I breathed a sigh of relief because my building wasn't in any immediate danger, but I reminded myself that fire is unpredictable, and that the two buildings were, in fact, connected. The more practical part of my brain started making a list of irreplaceable things I might have been about to lose.

I stood out there with my friend Dan and got giggly. I tend to do that when I'm not immediately involved in a situation. After a while of watching and smelling the tar burn (fire is a mesmerizing sight), a bunch of us--some in pajamas and slippers--walked to a Starbucks a couple of blocks away. There wasn't anything that we could do about the fire, so we figured: latte. Or in my case, a nice cup of tea.

There's something special about those moments that are so far out of the ordinary that they stand out. I knew it was unlikely I'd ever see the dorm fire again, and we also figured out that the FDNY had the situation well in hand right away. So we sat in Starbucks, sipping our drinks, savoring the uniqueness of the moment. A moment that I always remember when the good people of L.A. County public works are filling a pothole or patching up some street I'm driving by.

Amazing how the mind remembers such details. The smell of tar will forever remind me of: college, the dorm, Dan, fire, Panic Girl, and sitting in Starbucks across from someone wearing pajamas and bunny slippers.

~Hero

BOO!

Part VI in the Blog-A-Week Series

Yesterday was Halloween. I wore two costumes. At school, I was a "sexy countess" (the label said so) complete with a "scarlett o'hara" wig. It was a strange little costume because it's not really anything specific. Just a vague 18th century-type thing. But it was a sort of theme with the other young faculty in my department. Then last night at a friend's party, I was a Playboy Bunny. I chose that costume because it was flattering, but more importantly, it was a costume that came in my size. So many of the other interesting costumes I saw came only in larger sizes.

The bunny costume was successful. It was not without problems, though. My ears got caught on all hanging decorations, and I spent the party tugging down the back of the skirt for propriety's sake. As costumes go, it wasn't too uncomfortable. Except for the shoes which were excruciating. I could barely walk this morning. Today I am wearing big, fat, clunky, flat shoes. Ahhhh...

So I started thinking about how we choose our costumes as adults and how we chose them as kids. It's kinda fascinating. When we're kids, we pick characters we like and identify with. Like Luke Skywalker or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Or something more general like an army guy or a surgeon. Halloween gives us a chance--even when we're adults--to play pretend for a day. Dress up really fancy or, in contrast, go the ol' hobo route. Take all of Boba Fett's badass street cred without actually becoming a bounty hunter yourself.

Some people pick theme costumes they can wear with a significant other or friend. I remember P and S coming as doctor and accident victim one year. C and K always choose a theme for the two of them. Last night, K was a dragon and C was the warrior princess destined to slay him. A married couple came to the party as party games: he was Operation (complete with removable sticky body parts--entre nous, when I got home I realized his "water on the knee" was stuck to the bottom of my shoe) and she was Twister (her hat was the spinner). Or you could choose based on a group idea. When I lived in Queens, every year, my group of friends said it was doing Star Wars as a theme. I was going to be Boba Fett, but it never actually happened. *sigh*

As we grow up, getting a costume is really more of an inconvenience than anything else. Like, "Oh damn, I have to decide what to be by Friday." It's not like when you're a kid and you see a movie in June and you just KNOW that you're going to be so-and-so in four months. And if you're in a couple, you have to wonder if your significant other is going to be annoyed if you're something that stands alone ("So what am I supposed to be, honey?"). And if you're single, are you going to pick something that might get you someone's digits?

I admit, I kinda copped out this year. A Bunny? Really?  As I said, it was the only costume I liked and fit into. I wasn't dying to be a bunny. But there wasn't anything else that piqued my interest either. I miss the days when I was a kid and picking a Halloween costume meant something. It was a statement of ideals, of what was important to you. Did you want to be the hero Luke (even though he was a little whiny)? Or did you want to go as the badass scoundrel Han? Did you want to be a heroic firefighter, or a rock out in a toga? Princess or pumpkin? 

Is it just because I'm grown up that I don't care so much about what I am anymore? Or is it that I'm missing some heroes in my life? I don't know, but I do have hope that it won't always be an inconvenience. Next year, maybe someone--real or imagined--will emerge and I'll want to be them for Halloween for next year.

If not, there's always McLovin'.

~Hero