#Don'tBeThatPerson

It finally happened. A legit reason to mock all the people who use YOLO like it's a word and not an excuse to act like an irrational ass-bag. 

Fine. A second reason. 

I am just now hearing about this story, although it happened two years ago.

Teen Tweets YOLO, Dies In Drunk Driving Accident

I have hated the YOLO trend since I first head about it, but in a casual way. Like you hate the band that your Ex made you listen to, or the way we all hate Nickleback but keep them around because almost no one can explain why... And this story has pushed me into a deep loathing. 

I am sorry that this kid lost his life, and I can only hope his blatant misuse of the "Carpe Diem philosophy" taught others a valuable lesson. 

Music recommendation and swashing buckles

Okay, call me late to the party (don't actually call me that. It's kinda cumbersome, as nicknames go), but I was just given the most recent Fall Out Boy album by the room mate I'm not related to. Perfect summer jams, the whole album is easy to listen to with only one song that I feel like I skip every time. The boys managed quite the comeback, and I am ashamed to have lost track of them for the last five years.

Anyone who can get Elton John to appear on their album is too cool to function. I'm so proud of them. 

Also The Musketeers just wrapped up their first season. I can not recommend this show highly enough to the nerds like me who love all things swash and buckle. Athos is brilliantly snide and cranky, D'Artangnan is adorable if a little clueless. Porthos is a stone cold bad ass. And Aramis is... Dreamy? Perfect? His hair makes me weak in the knees?

Dear Lord, thanks for this one. 

Combine this with newest Doctor Capaldi as a mustache twisty big bad guy (although, be warned that his 'tache in the last two episodes is comically fake. He got cast as Doctor Who and they made him shave his real lip warmer off) and a host of strong, confident, vaguely sociopathic women. There is almost no one on this show I'm not attracted to. 

I'm serious. Watch this show. I'm planning on working it into my pop culture references. 

Scottish men and scarves

So I'm back in Laramie for the week and mostly it's been pretending to relax while becoming more and more befuddled by the fantasy football league that I still don't fully understand how my coworkers talked me into joining. We had our draft today and I am proud to report that I drafted some people, and that other than that I am still mostly clueless about this whole stupid game. And my coworkers are absolutely no help. 

So I did something today that was simultaneously brilliant and horrifying. I talked my step mother into getting hooked on the new Starz show Outlander. Brilliant because her reactions were priceless. Every time Hottie McScottish was speaking Nicko grinned and nodded her head, even when she couldn't understand him through the accent. And then Hottie asked the main girl if she wanted him to throw her over his shoulder and Nickos hand shot up and she went "ooh ooh yes please!" 

This was a horrifying decision because this is a Starz show. With graphics sex scenes. That I sat through in the same room as my parents. I decided that after the male on female oral scene I can never look my father in the eye again. Or that it is just funny enough to go in this years Christmas card. I go back and forth. 

But luckily during the second episode, my older sister called. I took the call and went into the other room just in time to avoid some chick getting her bodice ripped from her body. Caroline and I were wrapping up our conversation, and she asked for my step mother. Who might as well have been on another planet from the dreamy unfocused look in her eyes. I offered her the phone and she put a hand in my face and pushed me out of her tv eyeline. When I reported this to Caroline, she took it exactly how I would have imagined. 

Caroline: Give Nicko the phone. 

Me:  She's watching the cute Scottish guy. The episode isn't over. 

Caroline: Caitlin, give her the phone.

Me: She won't take it. She's watching the cute Scottish guy. She pushed me. 

Caroline: Hand her the phone. 

Me: No. I'm not even in the same room. I left before she killed me. 

Caroline: Go back into that room and hand her the phone. I am her daughter, I am more important!

Me: What is so important that she can't finish her show? 

Caroline: I need to talk to her about scarves. 

At this point I was laughing too hard to continue the conversation, which Caroline did NOT appreciate. 

In my Bonnie-ass house in scottland

I'd like to share this conversation between my sister and I that actually happened yesterday

Me: F today

Christy: yeah. Feel you there. 

Me: I think I found our scottland home. It's on a loch. It looks bonnie and shit.

Christy: sold. I love things that are bonnie and shit.

Me: if you're mocking my language, I say only that I'll take the high road if you take the low road and I'll be in our bonnie-ass scottland house before ye.

Me: if you're not then, rocking. Join me on the high road and we  can arrive at the same time. 

Christy: I was not mocking but I almost wish I had been. And that I'd been able to hear you sing that little ditty.

Me: if you take the looooow road then I'll take the high road and I'll be at our bonnie-ass scottland home before yeeeeee! For you were too snarky to hear the address and now you'll get eaten by Nessiiiiiiiiiiiiieee

Me: bagpipe solo. 

Christy: woooooooww. 

Me: I'm working on a second verse but my knowledge of Scottish culture is limited to braveheart and Amy pond.

Christy: yeah. Me too. Threaten someone I guess.

Me: you'll take my life but you'll never take my freedom! And you'll never take the mansion from Skyfaaaaaaaall! If you wish to find me, you know just where I'll be. In my bonnie-ass house in scottland. 

Me: it may need a second pass. 

Christy: oh my god. I'm crying. 

This is what happens when Chris and I are forced to wait too long between projects. 

I'm Getting On My Soapbox

Ok guys, this is gonna be a rant so go ahead and skip this if you're not in the mood.

I'm bisexual. I've know this for damn near a decade, I'm out to everyone I know and care enough to tell. Having said that,  I've never wanted my sexuality to be a prevailing part of my identity as a person. I'm a geek, and a writer, and a musician, and a sister, and a friend, and an amateur cook and a million other things AS WELL as being bisexual, so with societies habit of focusing on sexuality I've basically back-burnered my bi-ness to avoid being branded with a bright pink triangle that obscures everything else about me.

I mentioned in there that I am a geek. A nerd. And damn proud of it. I roll Supernatural quotes into everyday conversation. I own a sonic screwdriver. I read comic books and graphic novels hand in hand with my actual books (Plenty of both). I get actively annoyed at people who pretend that they are too cool to love superheroes. Because you're not, and now you sound pretentious. Well done, imaginary person I'm having a mental fight with. This is why you have no friends.

The nerdsphere has a reputation for being all inclusive and accepting of everyone. Sometimes it really does deserve that, especially when it comes to comic books. Strong women and LGBT characters thrived in the comic book world since the 80s. Three decades before Ryan Murphy raised his douchey (straight white upperclass male) voice and said "It's OK to be different". Thanks Ryan, you atrocious halfwit. The world of TV and movies, even genre TV and movies, is struggling to catch up with the wonderful diversity that other corners of the Geek world have been up on for years. Joss and Brian Fuller are helping. They really are. But for every character they create that shatters the expectations of the hetero-normative TV scape, we get a headline like this:

"Constantine" team on why character won't be bisexual

Fuck you people. I have so very few pop culture characters that I can relate to in terms of how I view my sexuality. And Game of Thrones offed one of them almost as soon as he was introduced.  There are so many straight characters on TV, and Hell we get more gay and lesbian characters every year. Why is is that despite the fact that bisexuals make up 1/20 of the population, and that women are more likely to identify as Bi than men, we have Jack Harkness as the lone TV character who was both bi, and didn't have that as his main story line.

The blonde is John Constantine. 

And apart from my personal issues with taking away this character trait, it really fucks up the origins of Constantine. You see, John Constantine was created in reaction to the Thatcher era politics of England. A lot of the "demons" he faced for the first few years of the characters run were thinly veiled allegories for political oppression. And one of the main issues that Thatcher was conservative on was homosexuality. By making John Constantine bisexual, the character was immediately at odds with the oppressive views of the world around him, and therefore doomed to Hell. It's like having a version of Superman where Krypton never exploded and Clark Kent just decided Earth needed a jackass in tights to protect it sometimes. The origins are important, they provide the main fucking character motivation. Which leads me to believe that the show is not being run by anyone who was a fan of the character of the Hellblazer books. Which is sad in it's own right. So I say again, fuck you people.

I'm off my soapbox now. Back to posts about music and sexually aggressive star clusters. 

Let Me Rest

I've been having a lot of issues sleeping. Not that I've ever been real good about keeping a consistent sleep schedule. I was the kid who stayed up till 1am on school nights routinely and then shot out the front door of the house at exactly 7:36 every day because that's the last possible moment I could leave and still make it to school on time. Sleep and I have been unwilling allies all my life, struggling against each other as I fight my need for it with every night.

But these days I'm no longer getting 6 hours a night and then sleeping in on my days off. I'm getting 2-3 hours a night and maybe 8 on my days off. It's stress and depression related, I know that. I know I could probably use some therapy and maybe some doctor regulated medication. I also know that at the rate I'm going, I'll have my credit card payed off just about the time I need new tires on my car again, and with the extra people we just took on at work I'm not looking at any overtime in the foreseeable future.

So fuck it. Let us turn our eyes to a beautiful song that sounds ancient and is thematically appropriate.

I give you Let Me Rest by David Wax Museum:

Be still my nerdy heart

The BBC made a tv show of the Three Musketeers. It's glorious. No really. Go now and watch. I'm one episode in and it is both more faithful to the book, and much more fun than any of the adaptations since the Michael York version. I highly recommend it. 

Also, if a decent helping of homoerotic subtext doesn't put you off a show, Syfys Dominion is a ton of fun. Good summer show. 

I'm posting at eleven at night because I've given up on going to bed at a reasonable hour. I've managed to clear up a lot of my depression simptoms from my days, but I can't seem to control them at night. My mom and my sister called in quick succession the other morning and because this is the way my brain works these days, I was sure they were calling because someone died. I was holding back tears when I finally got my mom on the phone. No one died. She was calling to ask about my impending trip out to Colorado and my sister was calling to complain about another sister. And it still had me spending the whole day on the couch in a ball of barely contained emotional fragility. 

I know that depression lies. I know that as a writer, I have chained my emotions to a continuous roller coaster ride that rises and falls with my very fragile ego. And from a rational point of view I understand that the ups and downs I'm experiencing are all in my head. But the fact that they exist in my head is the problem. 

Enough of these heavy issues. I'm off to take my very jumpy cat downstairs where she cannot hear the pre 4th of July fireworks. I probably won't get much sleep tonight, but in live for the hope that there's always tomorrow

When it rains...

So I finished the last post and got onto spotify to play around with some new music. And almost like it found me, this song came on the radio. I literally know nothing about Antony and the Johnsons except that this song is gospel in all the right ways. It pushed its way into my head from the first piano chord and started its work on me. Rest assured that I will soon own this album. Weird that I should post about being unable to properly mourn and then find a song that so perfectly encapsulates that pain. This is probably the most healing I have felt in a long time. Might be a coincidence but it's a welcomed one.

This is River of Sorrow by Antony & the Johnsons

The Incredible Process of Letting Go

Two and a half months. The longest break I've ever taken from this blog. I thought about posting a lot, but the truth is I haven't had the motivation to do much of anything lately. A small explainer first, and then I'll get to the actual post.

This last three months has been a cluster fuck of emotions. I lost Elly, which I am no where near dealing with or even addressing in a healthy or sober fashion. My writing partner and I are making significant (But secret because that's how Hollywood works) steps into making our little show a reality. I found out that a guy named Nick, who I worked with for years, died in a really stupid and pointless way. Put all together it just made for to many emotions to deal with.

Weirdly enough, I didn't attend Elly's funeral. I couldn't. There was something to being confronted by her death that I wasn't sure I would be able to take. And maybe that was a mistake, and I would be a more healed, better person if I had sucked it up and gone. But I didn't. I did go to Nick's wake. About a hundred people (Mostly people he had worked with) gathered at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood to drink burbon and talk about him. There was food at one point but I didn't stay that long. I had a couple shots of his favorite stuff and admired how many people this gruff and slightly caustic man had touched enough that they were in mourning for him. I cried a little, but not in front of anyone. And then I walked around Hollywood for a bit and drove myself home.

The reaction I should be having to all the news we keep getting about the show should be a wash of good feelings. I don't know if it just hasn't sunk in, or if all the sad and angry things I'm feeling just wont let the good emotions poke through. I know I miss Elly. I know don't actively miss Nick, but I'm angry about the incredibly stupid way that he was lost to the world. I know that this show being made would give my sister and I the life we've been fighting for, the life we want.

And in the mean time I'm hooked on pop music. Literally. Pop music gives you a dopamine rush that no other kind of music allows. It's a good alternative to my usual summer music (Punk) and it's a cheap alternative to the therapy I so obviously need.

Enjoy

For the record that I Bastille doing the most adorable cover of a terrible Miley Cyrus song ever. EVER

A Few Thoughts About My Week

I never used to worry about sexual aggressive galaxies. But thanks to Bailey and a recent class trip this conversation was had:

Bailey- apparently the three types of galaxy interactions are collision, cannibalism, and harassment. Does one galaxy complain to its boss about the repeated unwanted attention of the other?

Me- listen, when one galaxy spends most of its time staring at the other galaxies star clusters...

Bailey- "sir, I feel that the Milky Ways behavior is inappropriate." "Now, Andromeda, just because he stares at your spiral arms and strokes his central bulge while leering at you is no reason to over react"

Except B has a point. Harassment is not fun but I suspect it's a great deal more pleasant than canibalism. 

Captain America comes out Thrusday night. I will be seeing it like the good uber nerd that I am. You should see it to. It kicks off a truly wonderous summer for geekery that includes two marvel movies and a Wachowski sibling film. Be still my nerdy heart. 

My nephew is getting married tomorrow. The news has sent my (admittedly prone to hysterical gestures) family into a tizzy. While I stand by wishing him luck while not expecting a whole lot, the marriage is a last minute thing. He told his mother in a text message. So now my stance is "I wish them well, and don't really expect much, and also I hope that kid grows out of his asshole faze before someone beats the living snot out of him because he will only cause trouble for the nurses."

So those are my big thoughts for the weekend. Have fun and be safe. Only one week to the return of Bucky Barnes. 

March Music Recommendation

Hey all,
I know, it's been near a month. I'm out of practice. I've been off balance since my friend died, and truth be told I don't know that I'm handling it all that well. Actually I'm 99% sure that what I've been doing doesn't qualify as "handling it" so much as it is blatant avoidance.

In that vein, this moth's music recommendation is hitting home for me. His name Is Armon Jay, and his album Everything's Different, Nothing's Changed came out in January. It's got a bluesy feel that fits his Southern base.

The title track is currently my "jam" and I mean that if you were to visit my profile on Thisismyjam.com you would find the music video. It's a song about transition, right down to the chord structure. He opens it with "I'm feeling unsteady, a little off balance" as a way to start a story about not knowing how to fit anywhere. About looking for vices and distractions to pull him away from the inherent failures of his reality. By the time the ending refrain kicks in with a haunting chorus of "I will wait for you" I feel like I'm falling into a hole that matches his.

He's on our now, so you should definitely check to see if he's gonna be hitting up your area. He's a little squirrelly, as performers go, but worth the watch.

You can find his music video here.

Elly

I wanna tell you about my friend Elly. She moved to Laramie when we were 10, and she was the weirdest kid I'd ever met. She had this super long blonde hair that flowed down her back and she was hyper and read during recess. We didn't get along all the time, and I was a little too dark to see it right away but she had a light that seemed like it flowed out of her. Not to mention a killer singing voice.

Last April, just shy of her 24th birthday, Elly was diagnosed with cancer. It was agressive and scary, we didn't think she would lsat the week. But Elly never did back down from a fight. Six months later she was running a 5K and basically giving the middle finger to her doctors. When I saw her over Christmas she was thin, and a little weaker but the light was still there. She still wanted to talk about Supernatural and Leverage. She wanted to know if I'd run into any cool famous people in LA. She wanted to hear what music I was listening to and she was showing off her new leather jacket. We talked and caught up. I listened to her talk about all the traveling she wanted to do and the places she wanted to see. We ate a few Reeses (she always had some with her) and then I hugged her and told her how much I loved her before letting her go get ready for Christmas mass with her family. 

Elly died last night. The details seem to interest everyone else a lot more than they interest me. I care only that I lost a friend. I care that she'll never see 25, or go to Spain or Alaska, that she has all these days that she should have had that got stolen. And I care that I am a better person for having know her. She was a blessing in the purest sense of the word. 

I love you Elly. I will miss you so much. I'm about to put on Pirates of the Carribean and eat a whole bag of Reeses. Cuz I know you would like that. Thank you for every choir concert, every field trip, every lazy day watching tv in my basement. I love you. I love you. 

You're gonna get sick of me ranting about Noah Gundersen

But his album came out on Tuesday and I have been letting it soak into me slowly like healing waters. Oof. Near perfection which I totally saw coming but it still gave me those unexpected moments where the music swells like a tide and I get to let myself wash away for a minute. I am sitting in my dining room right now with the track Boathouse ringing in my ears. The violin is pulling in an almost painful way and Noah is singing a song about a broken man with a broken family and when the chorus kicks in I feel as broken as the man in the song does. 

Noah is playing a sold out show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood this week. I will be there, and I'm dragging my sister Christy along with me. So far I've only managed to talk my best friend into being as obsessed as I am, but by Friday night I know I will have Christy on board. Because she has emotions and the Gundersen family is spectacularly good at manipulating emotions and playing them with the same talent that drives their voices and words. 

Christy brought up an interesting story last night. She pointed out that when we discovered Mumford and Sons it was because a friend of hers made a point to play them for her and she wrote down to look them up. This is significant because when we fell head first into the world of music that the Mumfies opened up we gained some of our favorite artists. Without those boys there would be no Laura Marling when I feel like I need another jaded woman to sympathize with. There would be no Avetts to help me feel grounded, and no Johnny Flynn to make me feel like rereading a Shakespeare play to find all the meanings I missed the first time round. Yes, the odds are that we would have stumbled into this music eventually, but it's so woven into the time in which I discovered it that I can't imagine what those days would look like without those songs. 

These are songs that I freely allow to transport me to different places, or change my mood up or down because they are worthy of that right. They vibrate at the same frequencies as my mind and heart and wholy belong in my world. They have been pulled into my identity like twigs into a birds nest. There is no way to dislodge them without undoing a huge chunk of me. 

So I am grateful that Christy chose to spend that day with her friend. I am grateful that he knew that Christy would enjoy that music. I'm grateful that she was listening and turned around to share that music with me. My world is richer for the music I have in it. 

With that in mind I will continue my one woman quest to push Noah Gundersen, and Justified, and Keats, and anything else I can find beauty and value in. I hope people will do me the same courtesy even when it does feel like a political campaign. Because our lives are improved when we connect to something, and my life in this respect gets a little better every day.

My imperfect reactions

So I want to share an experience I had at my job tonight, but I'm hoping you will all hold back your judgement till the end of the story. This is not me bitching about my job. Most days I really like what I do. My theater is old and tiny and full of history. Working there is not super difficult or intellectually stimulating but it gets me in a social setting talking about things I love or reading or just hanging out with friends in a place that's not my house for 40 hours a week. I don't want you to take this story as a complaint so much as a meditation on an ongoing problem I have with people. 

My theater has a lot of old customers. More than most because generally the people willing to sit through three hours of French film are either film students or the elder population. I love most of our little old people. They're some of the most interesting and accepting people I meet. And today was senior day at the theater which meant we had a rush on the over 62 crowd wanting to see said French film because tickets are less than $5. At one point in the afternoon a woman came in. She had missed the last show of her film and the next one didn't start for an hour. She was fairly grumpy about it because the later show didn't have what she called the special price ( I always find complaints like this funny because people seem to think I can create shows and theaters out of thin air) and said she was going to dinner and might come back. The other manager who was sitting with me remarked on how negative this woman's attitude was but I didn't really give it much thought. 

Then two hours later she returned. I asked her how her dinner was. She complained that it was both overpriced and not very good. I gave a small half smile and rang up her ticket while she yelled at the people standing behind her for being too close. I rang her up for the senior price. It turns out that this woman was not a senior and the special price she had mentioned was the matinee price. She was livid. I admitted my mistake, fixed the transaction on her card and stayed as quiet as I could while she railed at me for being so rude. Then she went to the other manager and started shouting insults at me across the lobby. Here's where I want to start the discussion. The insults that she chose were about my weight and physical attractiveness. This had probably close to nothing to do with how I actually appear to her. If I had to guess I would say that her real goal was to make me as visibly upset as she felt (a losing battle as it was based on the false assumption that I give two shits what any customer thinks of me or the way that I look) and since my insult to her had been based on appearance, that's where she decided to hit. Because what girl living in our society who isn't a size two doesn't worry about their weight a little? What girl anywhere in this country doesn't worry that they aren't pretty enough?

I worry that I live in a world where my first instinct on hearing these was to justify my appearance. To tell her that I may be a little overweight but I am by no means "grossly obese" as she annunciated quite clearly several times. I worry that my next instinct was to comment that I thought she was a senior because of her aged face and tatty wig. I worry that even though I could tell this woman was unstable and clearly I had hit a nerve that I never intended on, my first thoughts jumped to defense and offense and not to understanding. 

So here I am, post work, sitting next to a hot bath that I ran while I typed out my thoughts. I have the next two days off to recover from this and all the other little strains that the last week of work has pushed on me. I have promised to spend time thanking my mother tomorrow for instilling me with enough self restraint not to lash out at someone without thinking it through first. I have promised to spend a little time thinking about ways to push myself to reacting with compassion before I react with anger. And I have promised to cut myself a little slack when I fail at that. I am only human after all. 

"I don't  know any perfect people. Just very flawed people who are still worth loving" john green

This is what drama is for

So as my sister and I were flipping through Netflix we had the following conversation.

CT:If someone had a gun to your head and said you either had to watch the first three episodes of the Carrie Diaries or Olympus Has Fallen, which would you choose?

Me:Death. Shoot me.

CT: That's a little dramatic.

Me:I'm dramatic? You put a gun to my head over a TV show.

CT:Mine was hypothetical. You chose to end your life.

Me:I chose to HYPOTHETICALLY end my life. You stuck me in a room with a gun toting terrorist with a Sex and the City fetish and a thing for Aaron Eckhart.

CT:...

Point for me.