Last night, DJ MrRid came over with eight DVDs of The Midnight Special. You oldies remember those—the live rock shows on TV every week. Oddly, I didn't watch them back then but we had a blast last night. Earth Wind and Fire. Small Faces. Aerosmith. Kiss. KC and the Sunshine Band. Minnie Ripperton. Peter Frampton. Delicious and we still have hours to go.
I was struck, once again, how nice it was to see people on TV with lumpy hair, crooked teeth, pores. People who look like the people we see every day, only dressed up. Or not dressed up. Those were not dressing up days. Some guys looked pretty smelly. But still, it was nice to see people I could imagine hanging out with instead of people so perfectly toned, exquisitely groomed, and impeccably dressed, I would be struck dumb in their presence.
What are we doing to ourselves? We're beating ourselves up with relentless images of unattainable beauty. We're wasting countless hours and dollars on things that have nothing to do with our true potential value to society. We hate ourselves.
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Has anyone every pined for you? I don’t think anyone has ever pined for me, and that kinda bums me out.
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Our front yard swarms with busy, busy squirrels and I’m not the only one who has noticed. A red-tail hawk has been hunting here. The other morning, I saw him lift off with a squirrel. I’m haunted by the image of the squirrel’s little legs hanging down helplessly.
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Tom and I went to the Fair on Friday. Funny how sometimes the Fair clicks for us and sometimes it’s just off. Last year was great, this year was off. We should know better than to try the exciting new fried foods of the year. They’re expensive and we’re almost always disappointed. The chicken fried bacon ($6, I think) was mostly salty, the chocolate dipped strawberry waffle balls ($5) were gummy. Nasty. I didn’t finish mine. Fortunately, my funnel cake was as good as I expected.
But I had the wrong shoes and my feet hurt and Tom had been working like a dog all week and he was tired. We saw a daredevil act, but heights make me so tense that I couldn’t enjoy it. We saw the dancing dogs, sat in a new car, saw a kid throw up, looked at the creative arts. But this visit, we weren’t feeling it. Mostly we felt sticky. The waffle balls were our last-ditch effort at fun and when they didn’t work out, we went home and fell asleep on the couch.
(State Fair 2007)
Although, lest I romanticize State Fair '07, I will report that the fabulous expensive pillows we bought last year suck. They are rock hard and I woke up with a stiff neck the two or three times I tried to sleep on one.
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Last week, a friend and I went to a dance recital at SMU. Student dancers dancing student choreography. The kids were all very talented and it was a lot of fun.
I’m not big on regrets. I decided long ago not to nurse regrets and have been mostly successful. I acknowledge my regrets but don’t wallow in them. But one of my regrets is the way I ignored my body through my youth. I envy dancers for their control of, respect for, and joy in their bodies. I wish I could dance. I mean really dance—turn my body into a leaf or a stream, into anger or ecstasy. I think that would be swell.
7 comments:
People who pine for others rarely say so to the people they are pining for. So for all you know you may have had a virtual army of silent piners looking longingly at you from across a room.
(1) Did you not have a turkey leg at the Fair? For shame! No wonder it wasn't a good Fair year. (2) I think HDTV can bring everyone down to an even scarier than normal level if they don't have the right lighting and make-up. (3) Did Mark bring you the David Bowie Midnight Special with Marianne Faithful dressed as a nun and the Troggs and some Spanish band named Carmen? It was FABULOUS.
1) I forgot about the turkey leg until I reread my State Fair post from last year. I am ashamed. We might make a return trip
2) I hear that all the cosmetic surgery is a problem with HDTV.
3) Haven't seen the David Bowie one yet but it's probably in here somewhere. We saw the Spinners dance with rubber bands for Rubber Band Man.
I always wondered what it would feel like to do a tumbling run and finish with a double flip. Having upgraded to HDTV and viewing people on a rather large plasma screen, I wonder why anyone would allow an HD camera near them. The answer from the make up artists is to make all the people look like rubber masked cyborgs.
Sophie,
I am hoping you can help me with this, I sent people to the fair and encouraged them to go to the Hans Mueller Beer Garden to watch the parade at the end of the day and they said it wasn't there (the Beer Garden, I'm sure the parade is still happening). Can it be true? Did you notice?
Gosh, I actually didn't notice. It's usually one of our stops but we were full of chicken fried bacon. We must have walked right by it....one of us would have noticed if it was gone, I'm sure. It's listed on the fair website, as right next to the stage, as always.
Hooray for pores! I am full of them and any future footage of my puss in HD won't eclipse what I spy in the mirror every morning after a night of Scaraoke.
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