Heard in a car on I-65 somewhere in Indiana

“Arby’s. I like Arby’s. What’s your favorite Arby’s sandwich?” (Deb)

“I usually go with the Giant Roast Beef.” (Robert)

“That’s a good one. Do you get Arby’s sauce or Horsey sauce with that?” (Deb)

“I usually go with the Arby’s sauce.” (Robert)

“I like the Arby’s sauce, but usually go with the Horsey sauce on the roast beef. But sometimes I like that Big Beef and Cheddar. It has the Arby’s sauce already on there and it comes on the nice onion role.” (Deb)

“Sure. That’s a good sandwhich.” (Robert)

20 second lull.

“What do you usually get at Taco Bell?” (Deb)

“Oh, I like to see what new thing they’ve come up with. They’re always wrapping something.” (Robert)

“True. True. I like the Enchirito. Although I was pretty upset when they took it away for a time and then brought it back without the black olives on top. That was disappointing.” (Deb)

Another lull.

“So do you think the Maple Bun or the Baby Ruth is an uglier candy bar?” (Deb)

“What? I’m unfamiliar with the Maple Bun.” (Robert)

“Have you ever heard of a Big Turk?” (Robert)

“Uh, no.” (Deb)

“It’s a Canadian candy bar. It looks sort of like a Charleston Chew, with chocolate on the outside. But on the inside it’s got kinda this purple, grape filling. I mean, you’re expecting some kinda carmel or nougat or something, but no. It’s this weird purple middle. When I was at the airport in Toronto, I had a bunch of Canadian coins in my pocket so I went to the vending machine and bought as many candy bars that weren’t available in the States with my change. So I bought a bunch of these Big Turks.” (Robert)

“Did you know what they were before you bought them?” (Deb)

“I think you just answered your own question.” (Robert)

 

40 Is The New Black – Part IV

On with this story.

I now had a 2% return on my efforts. Which was so much better than the 0 I was expecting. Now I was able to get down to the anxiety of the actual party. I had been scouring my piles of old photos and photo albums to find pictures of Kevin and spent a couple of days at my mom’s going through her photos so I could get some of him as a young tyke. My original intention was to write little “Kevin facts” with each of the photos. I enlisted Robert’s help in this venture. We both found this to be tedious and decided to just start making stuff up. (Robert’s were far superior.)

I had spent many a lunch hour going to various home stores looking for the perfect centerpieces. I wanted something that I could use with the photos. I bought a bunch of little plastic dishes from the CB2, filled them with sand and river stones and then made little wires with clips on the end that would anchor in so the photos would stick up like flowers. We also printed up larger photos to hang on the walls. Robert was kind enough to create a huge, I mean HUGE, banner that said “40 is the new black” and another smaller one with his leftover roll of paper that said “40 es Negro Nuevo”. Black and silver table cloths and paper plates, etc. were purchased from the party store. And Beth was ordering some black and silver balloons. The decorations were set.

The part I was least looking forward to was the food. I had to have enough for 100 people. I didn’t want to ask people to bring anything but I also didn’t want to spend a fortune on catering and I certainly wasn’t about to make anything. So of course I decided my mother should take care of it. Now, I’m just not good at giving directions. I can never find the balance between being to bossy and not giving any helpful information at all. In addition, my mother was going to be gone up until the day of the party. So after one phone call of “that’s a lot of people” and “what kind of food did you want to have” and “where do you want to order it from”, I decided to just take care of it myself. I order several party trays from local Jewel and figured I could just pick them up on my way up to Milwaukee.

I ordered based on how many their website said each one would feed. So I ordered a lot. When I went to pick up the food, I already had the trunk packed with the decorations so everything was going to have to go in the car with me. I was helped to the car with my many boxes of cheese and sausage platters, taco dips, veggie trays, etc. and we started loading them in. Some of them were precariously balanced and I hoped for the best. The kindly kitchen manager asked if I had far to go. “To Milwaukee.” His eyes grew larger for a second and then he said “Good luck with that. See ya.”

I only had to pull over once to right a wayward taco dip tray and drove with the air conditioning on to make sure the deviled eggs didn’t turn and cause some undesired results. I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to just order the food from somewhere in Milwaukee. That 20/20 hindsight can be a real kick in the ass.

The set up went pretty smoothly with many helping hands. The place actually looked pretty good.

Now the plan to get Kevin to his own surprise party was a simple one. Our friend Eric was going to pick him up to go bar hopping in the neighborhood. And the Club G would be the first (and last) stop. Robert was concerned that Kevin wouldn’t be dressed appropriately for such a fest. But Kevin being Kevin, I knew he would never show up for a night out looking like a goon.

We told everyone to arrive at 7pm and to be on time because it was a surprise, yo. I decided not to tell anyone the estimated arrival time of the man of the hour to avoid anyone thinking they could get there at the last minute. We figured the one fly in the ointment would be our dear friends Chris and Jeanine.

Eric left to go pick up Kevin and intended to be back at 8pm. He called us when he picked him up and we made the announcement of how we wanted to handle the surprise. We had decided that instead of the usual shout of “Surprise!” when he walked in, we would try to orchestrate a slow clap. I believe everyone should, at some point in their life, be on the receiving end of a slow clap. Some day I hope to do something to deserve such an honor. We corralled everyone into the corner and told them Robert would start it off, I would join in and then it should progress organically. I was envisioning the slow clap from “Can’t Buy Me Love” but would be happy with the one from “Lucas”.

As we were all waiting, eager for Kevin’s arrival, Chris and Jeanine walked in. It’s nice that you can rely on some people. Eric told us later that he saw them walking down the street and circled the block.

Moments later, Kevin entered the room, under the impression that he was to secure the video bowling game while Eric got drinks. Everyone was completely silent for a moment. And then Robert started his clap. The excitement was too much, though, and very quickly, everyone was clapping and shouting.

And Kevin was surprised.

And all the printing and stamping and emails and food ordering and decorating was worth it for that one moment. What I had wanted was for Kevin to know that he was worth it and that so many people felt the same way. Babysitters were arranged, travel plans changed and schedules adjusted so that people could be there. And they all came.

We gave Kevin some time to greet everyone and get over the shock. Then we presented Kevin with his celebrity well-wishes. My dad gave just about the best speech he could possibly give (seriously, it was funny and touching and absolutely perfect!). The night gets a little fuzzy for me after that. I was trying to be “responsible” and turned down shots and just stuck with beer for the night. I didn’t take into account that drinking a keg would still have detrimental effects.

In a lot of ways it was like a wedding, with all the planning and anxiety. And then it was just over in a night.

And we had WAY too much food.

 

Breaking my heart

This is breaking my heart. I saw these whales in February. I may have seen these very whales, maybe not. I saw a few groups of mother and calf. And there was one calf that had been injured that week by a boat propeller. Our guide was very eager to find the calf and see if it was healing.

The whales put on quite a show for us that day. It was the one thing I really wanted to do while I was in Puerta Vallarta. I’ve always had a thing for marine mammals. I’m not sure why. Maybe a combination of their size and the way they travel together. The way the moms go up for air with the babies, even though they don’t need to go as often.  Despite their enormous size, they still manage to maintain this awesome grace when they break the water.   Even when they’re showing off and feel the need to exert their power, hefting their huge bodies out of the water, they still make it seem like it’s just choreography.  Like they’re just part of an elaborate Esther Williams water dance.  Yet there’s something sort of melancholy about the way they communicate with each other.  Their songs seem so filled with yearning. Yearning to connect with others like them.  Like they just need someone to talk to. Despite being the biggest out there, they still need to feel like they belong to something even bigger.

 Or maybe I just have a repressed Aquaman fantasy that’s surfacing (sorry) because of my hours of watching Entourage.  Who knows.  I just hope these two make it back out to sea and up to Alaska.

 

It’s good to have friends

Courtesy of the brightly-colored old lady, Us Weekly :

“Spencer tells Usmagazine.com: “I’ve always thought that the punishment should fit the crime. Paris has changed her image dramatically over the last couple years. Now she is such a good role model and a smart business woman. So it’s a shame that a miscommunication between her and her people is landing her in jail. She should get probation with community service, but no way should she be put in jail with real criminals.”

Spencer, a political science major at USC, also tells us that once he gets 100,000 supporters to sign his online petition he will hand-deliver it to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.”

A few things I’d like to point out:

- “I’ve always thought that the punishment should fit the crime.” So maybe she should’ve had to cross the street wearing all black at night while drunken heiresses careen towards her with their headlights off?

- “Paris has changed her image dramatically over the last couple years.” Yeah. Sure. She used to just be considered a self-centered, entitled heiress that liked to go clubbing. She’s dramatically different now.

- “Now she is such a good role model and a smart business woman.” Do you think he had a straight face when he said that?

- “So it’s a shame that a miscommunication between her and her people is landing her in jail.” Her “people” told her it was okay to drive for work. She doesn’t have a job. And why not just pay someone to drive her around? I just can’t understand that one.

- “Spencer, a political science major at USC, also tells us that once he gets 100,000 supporters to sign his online petition he will hand-deliver it to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.” I just hope I can someday do something this heroic for a friend of mine. If he pulls this off, I’d like to see him get a slow clap as he ascends the steps of city hall to deliver the petition.

 

40 Is The New Black – Part III

After hours of the type of regret that usually follows an evening of margaritas, I came to the same conclusion I usually come to after an evening of margaritas.  I was just going to have to suck it up, accept that I had done something foolish and live with the fact that there were people in the world that believed I was a complete moron.  But this time one of those people would be Johnny Depp.

Robert came up with a livable solution. I could print out labels with just the word “Fashion” (with the correct spelling, of course) in a different font so it looked more “meant to do this” and cover up the offending spelling. I had labels that would fit over the misspelled word perfectly and started the tedious task of lining the labels up in the printer, printing them out, cursing after the labels weren’t lined up correctly, trying again and then finally adhering 300 labels to 300 cards. Of course each of these cards then needed to go in envelopes with self-addressed stamped envelopes and the postcard with the explanation of what I was trying to accomplish So that took me about a week and a half.

When I finally had all the packets ready, I organized them into piles for each of the big agencies.  Right before I left for a week vacation, I dropped them off at FedEx and hoped for the best.  There were a handful of stars that weren’t represented by one of the big agencies and had smaller representation.  So I sent these ones out individually.  I checked the postal service website to make sure I had the correct postage and, after entering the dimensions of the envelopes on the form, was assured that they required no additional postage.  So I headed off for vacation, confident that I would return to a pile of signed cards and photos.

When I returned, I did return to a pile of envelopes.  Unfortunately, they were the same pile I had sent out to the celebs with the smaller representation.  All returned for insufficient postage.  Now I could easily slap an extra stamp on these and send them back, which I did.  But the real problem was that I had put the same amount of postage on the self-addressed stamped envelopes (which were the same size) that were to be sent back to me.  So after all the planning and printing and adhering and stuffing and FedExing, it was all going to be for naught. And I relinquished all hope of ever receiving a single card acknowledging Kevin’s birthday.

And then it happened.  I came home one day and checked the mail expecting the usual bills, credit card applications and coupon circulars.  I reached in and pulled out one of the all-too-familiar envelopes.  At first I just assumed it was another envelope being returned for insufficient postage or a non-deliverable address.  I quickly realized the envelope was addressed to ME!  That’s right! The envelope was marked that it was short on postage, but since there was no return address, it had no place to go but my mailbox.   I was giddy realizing that someone took the time to send something back.  Did they sign the card?  Did they send a photo?  Maybe they were replying that they would actually SHOW UP at the party!  I couldn’t contain myself.  I ripped open the envelope.  There was no photo, just the envelope with the card.  I pulled out the card and opened it.  And there it was.  The card I had printed and then painstakingly corrected with my sad little label.  Signed by Jennie Garth.

If this was the only thing I received for my efforts, they were now worth it.  Jennie Garth had acknowledged my request and complied.  I became the biggest Jennie Garth fan in the world.  I remembered how glad I was that Dylan chose Kelly over Brenda.  And how Kelly chose herself over Dylan or Brandon.  I looked up what Jennie was up to these days and was pleased to see she rode horses and spoke Italian.  I marveled at how much we had in common and how soon Jennie and I would be best friends, talking about horses in Italian.  Hope had been restored.

The weekend after, I received another envelope.  This one had a card AND a photo. Both signed and personalized with a “To Kevin”. It was from Jonathan Silverman.  I appreciated his extra efforts to personalize the card and photo.  And he had added extra postage to make sure I received the package.  Now loving Jonathan Silverman

Another card arrived the following week.  I was on a roll.  This one was just the card.  Signed by Barbara Eden.  There was something about the perfectly neat and straight signature that made it feel like it was signed with such care, like it was from a favorite aunt. 

And then the crème de la crème arrived.  I returned from another week’s vacation (I know, right!) to find two more envelopes.  Richard Gere sent a signed photo in the card, but didn’t sign the card.  The effort was still appreciated.  I had an Academy Award nominee respond!  I had hit the big leagues.

And then there was the other envelope.  This was one that wasn’t sent to one of the big agencies but warranted the extra effort to make sure this person received the invite.  It was signed “Love, Dolly Parton”.

 

Only Human

After reading about Hiasl, the Austrian chimp some people are trying to get declared a human, I couldn’t help but think about the eventual Hollywood film on his plight.

Snatched as a baby while playing in the jungle with his friend Rosi, young Hiasl is torn from his family and the only life he’s ever known.  A life filled with endless frolicing with his young playmate, under the ever watchful eye of his protective mother.  The poachers toss young Hiasl and Rosi into a sack as the mother screams helplessly as they are carried away.  Headed for a life of torturous pharmaceutical experiments, Haisl and Rosi are saved by the kindly customs official who finds a safe haven for the two friends in an animal sanctuary.

After 25 years living in the sanctuary, making friends and establishing a routine, Hiasl’s life is again turned upside down as the sanctuary heads for financial ruin.  A number of attempts at fund raising have failed and it looks like Hiasl will be left out in the cold once the doors to the sanctuary are closed for good.

One of his caregivers, a young woman that would-be-so-hot-if-she-just-took-off-her-glasses-and-let-her-hair-down, laments the fate of her simian friend while crying into her drink at the local pub.  Enter the impossibly handsome slick lawyer who takes notice of the damsel in distress and can see how hot she would look if she just took offer her glasses and let her hair down.   Taking a seat next to her, he eventually charms the reason for her tears out of her.   Pretty caretaker explains that although a number of people have offered donations to help with Hiasl’s care, under Austrian law only humans are allowed to receive direct donations.  Pretty caregiver leaves feeling hopeless.

 Handsome lawyer ponders the issue in his office the next day, gets a Eureka! look and picks up the phone and calls pretty caregiver.  “What if we had him declared a human?!”  A who? wha? how? exchange follows, with bits tossed about on how the caregiver talked about Hiasl as if he were a person, blah, blah.

 We then move into the preparing for the trial montage, large books are poured over with furrowed brows, witnesses are found and lost, etc.  And then onto the trial itself.  Various experts are questioned and cross-examined, old guys with white beards pearing over their glasses saying things like “No.  I’m sorry. He is not a person.” 

 It looks like all is lost when handsome lawyer man, having his heart warmed by both pretty caregiver and Hiasl himself, decides to call Hiasl to the stand.  Although not speaking, Hiasl communicates with handsome lawyer and eventually the judge, too.  The judge makes a comment about Hiasl being more human than most lawyers and Hiasl gets his money.  Everyone is happy and Hiasl is rich and moves in with handsome lawyer and pretty caregiver, who are now getting married. 

 

40 Is The New Black – Part II

So, knowing Kevin enjoys those “Celebrities!They’re just like us!” moments I thought he would enjoy a handful of celebrities wishing him a happy birthday. I figured that if I invited a bunch of celebrities to his party, I would get a few responses of “Sorry, can’t be there. Here, have a photo.”  And I would give those to him as his gift.  I was telling someone about the idea and they brought up the fact that in another year, he would be turning 40 and we would have to have something big for him. So I decided it was best to hold off on that gift until the big 4-0 birthday. Which gave me more time to procrastinate on sending these invites out. In my mind, what I was going to do, was find various celebrity websites and send them an email.  I mean, everyone has an email, right? And not that I was thinking Madonna@aol.com was going to be received and read by the Material Girl herself, but maybe their P.R. person or agent or handler or whoever would get it and send a polite reply. I could print those out and give them to him.

Then there was the issue of when and where that party was going to be.I couldn’t just say “keep the last week of March/first week of April open” to these people.  I mean, they have shooting schedules and openings and award shows to attend, so I needed a concrete date and place I could provide to them. I started talking to our good friend, Beth, about this. And we realized what we really needed to do was throw a surprise party for him. I am not a good one for planning a party.  I’m always afraid that even if I invite 500 people, only five will show up and I’ll make those Mary Tyler Moore parties look like Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  But this had to be done.  I had celebrities to invite!  A date and a locale needed to be decided.  We decided that it had to be at least a week before his actual birthday, because it was just too obvious to have it on the actual birthday weekend.  And we already knew he was super popular, so it had to be a location that could hold enough people without being so big that it would look empty. We found the perfect location at the Club Garibaldi.  We figured we could wind up with close to 100 people (even if no celebrities showed up) and this space had a stage, too, in case we needed to get people on stage to say a few words or sing some karaoke.  And the weekend before his birthday was decided on because it was the only weekend that was going to work.  So a time and place was set. Now I could start with these celebrity invitations.

I quickly realized that sending emails was not going to work since very few emails were available.  I would need to send actual mail.  I started investigating how to retrieve all these celebrity addresses and found it much more difficult than I anticipated. I finally came across an online database of celebrity addresses and started the task of collecting the information.  I didn’t really have a specific idea of who I was going to invite, so I just browsed through the names and grabbed anyone’s info I thought looked either interesting or likely to respond.   I figured someone like George Clooney has too much fan mail to ever see even a fraction of it, but wouldn’t it be great if he showed up?  So he’d be added to the list.  Then there were others that I figured they may not be exactly A-list, but there was the potential they’d respond.  So I compiled my own database of celebrity addresses, sorted by agency, so I could send out large packages of invites to each agency.

I wound up with about 300 names and I realized it would be impossible to write that many personal invites and it would be better to print something up and send it to all of them.  I also decided, to get the most responses, I needed to make it as easy for them as possible.  So I figured I’d also print up a birthday card that they could sign and mail back in the provided self-addressed stamped envelope.  Photos were taken and scanned and copy was written until I finally came up with a postcard invitation design and a birthday card design.  At this point, I was feeling very proud of myself.

I sent the designs to the printer.  The invites had a photo of some liquor decanters from my house with copy on the back explaining about the party – I know you’re too busy to attend, please send the card back signed, yadda, yadda.  The cards had, on the front, a photo of Kevin as a young tyke in a little suit coat with a hat and it said “You’ve Always Donned The Height Of Fashion”.  And on the inside, it said “So of course you realized 40 is the new black.  I’m sure you’ll wear it well. Happy Birthday, Kevin!”

I was sooo excited the day the cards arrived from the printer.  I tore open the boxes and admired how lovely the photos turned out.  I placed the cards on my desk and would periodically glance over at them and smile, giddy with excitement of sending these out to the chosen celebs.  After a couple hours of this, I glanced over at the birthday card, smiling with the anticipation of being excited all over again, only to have my smile quickly drop.  Suddenly, I was able to actually READ the card. The front of the card did not say “You’ve Always Donned The Height of Fashion.”  It actually read “You’ve Always Donned The Height of FaSion”.  FASION!  I knew it was my fault and not the printer’s.  I usually work in web. Typos are easily and quickly rectified.  Print was relatively new to me.  It was too late (and too costly) to re-run the print job.  I cried on and off for a few hours. I wondered if I could convince the world that the spelling of fashion had actually changed.

 

40 Is The New Black – Part I

The planning for Kevin’s 40th birthday began well before his 39th.  Kevin has a big birthday party every year.  It’s combined with two other very fine Aries’ birthdays and you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a good time.  It also tends to be my drunkest night of the year.  What often happens, I see people whose company I rarely get to enjoy and in the course of conversations, I seem to drink whatever is handed to me – a fresh beer, a shot of whiskey, large tumblers of Gran Marnier.  I become pretty nondiscriminatory as far as what I’ll let slide down my gullet. And sometimes I forget to eat first.  This results in either falling down or spending the entire next day running to the bathroom every time I swallow so much as a sip of water.  I look forward to it every year.  It is a testament to Kevin’s likeability that so many faces you don’t see all year turn out for this event.

The year before his 39^th birthday, I got the idea that it would be funny to invite a bunch of celebrities to his next birthday party. Kevin isn’t exactly celebrity obsessed, but he does enjoy a good celebrity sighting.  He lived in London for a time after he graduated college and I grabbed the opportunity to take my first over-seas trip to visit him.  While he was there, he worked at the Clinque counter in Harrod’s department store.  After a day of independent site-seeing, drooling over works of art I’d only ever seen in books, I went to meet him at work.  I was a little early so I decided to do a little browsing.  It was right before Harrod’s big after-Christmas sale and they had most of the merchandise covered up, getting ready for the big sale.  Not that I could buy anything anyway, being the poorest of poor college students at the time.  But I was interested to see what Harrod’s, world famous department store, had to offer.  I was dressed as I would normally be dressed at that time, as if I had woken up ten minutes before class and had to rush out the door – ripped jeans, black boots and the ubiquitous black leather motorcycle jacket.  Apparently this wasn’t the attire of the preferred Harrod’s shopper as I was followed by sales people in every department I visited.  And not once asked if I’d like to try anything on.  I wandered up to the shoe department, just so I could torture myself with all the shoes I could only dream of some day sliding my feet into.  It was there that I noticed another shopper in similar apparel as my own, black leather jacket, black boots, black leggings.  But this one had an unmistakable hairdo and despite trying to hide behind an over-sized pair of sunglasses, I had a good idea who I just came across.  I wanted to be certain.  I was pretended to check out a shoe display while stealing glances at her.  She wandered over near me to check out the shoes I was pretending to eye (probably figuring with our similar tastes is clothes she would find something to her liking).  She lowered her sunglasses down her nose to get a better look at the goods and I stole a quick glance.  It was most definitely her.  I tried to think of what I should say.  But I couldn’t come up with anything other than “I’m so glad to see someone else shopping here dressed as inappropriately as I am.”  And that just didn’t seem like a good idea.  She meandered away to check out another display and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to follow, so I headed down to the Clinque counter to see if my brother was about done.

When I got down there, Kevin turned to me, eyes wide, and said “You’ll never guess who was just here.”  I didn’t want to ruin his moment so I held back.  And then, as if he was exhaling a final breath, the single syllable name escaped his lips.  “Cher.”