Feb 192021
 

I honestly don’t think I ever even heard the word “foment” before until that former President, forever dingleberry Trump incited an insurrection and suddenly that was the word du jour on all the news channels.

Anyway. Just wanted an excuse to use that.

So here are some things, not necessarily five as we’re wont to do here on Fridays, because I’m feeling more in a freestyle mood if you know what I mean and if you do please tell me because I don’t know anymore.

I watched that Netflix documentary about the Cecil Hotel last week – it was good but I felt it was also kind of repetitive and while I wished there were more episodes exploring more of the dark history instead of just focusing on the Elisa Lam case, I also think that they could have accomplished the same thing in probably less. Does that even make sense or am I typing in circles again.

Numerous times while watching this, I had the thought that this is 100% the type of Roadside Shack of Doom that Henry has put us up in various times throughout the years. In fact, I’m convinced that if we had had to stay in LA at any point during our whirlwind trip to Coachella in 2004, we would have been walking the same blood-stained hallways that Richard Ramirez once roamed. I mean, the actual place he booked for us during that trip was a Knights Inn in San Bernardino that was also hooker housing (I talked to one of them when she came out of a neighboring room as I was petting a stray cat and she said, “Oh, there’s lots of cats around here – we feed them every day!”).

And let’s not forget that seedy Red Carpet Inn outside of Newark – I mean, THE CONNOTATION AND ALLUSION BEHIND “RED CARPET” IN THIS CONTEXT ALONE IS NAUSEATING.

This inspired me to go digging for that particular vacation journal because, can’t travel now so might as well live vicariously through past sojourns, right? A thing you need to know about me is that I have fucking journals all over the house. Like, tons of them. Like, if I ever became a former President, they’d have a good place to start with my library collection. Until you get to the later ones when I wasn’t yet aware of how problematic my “jokes” were. Y-I-K-E-S. Let’s just say I’ve had lots of years (and self-education) to, um, grow away from that.

While digging through a cedar trunk (Henry’s from the SERVICE!!!) of my self-penned tomes, I found the very first journal in my Vacation Series, which I must have started when I was 9ish?

I barged into Chooch’s room to read him this super adorable disclaimer but he interrupted me to guess, “does it say ‘caution: very uninteresting content’?” WOW JUST WOW guess I won’t be leaving him my hand-written vacation journal canon in my Will.

Eventually, I did find the specific journal I was looking for and was reminded of how mentally unstable and self-loathing I was back in 2004 when Henry and I took that California trip – I was apparently VERY AWARE of the girth of my arms and fixated on it to the point that it ruined the entire vacation for me and probably made Henry reconsider his choices. I’m still very neurotic and self-conscious but I think I have gotten A LITTLE better over the years!?

Yikes.

My mom asked me if I want these torch lights that she salvaged from my grandparents’ house because she feels that it would really complete my decor, lol. Yes I want them! However, after going back and looking at pictures of them when they were still hanging in saluting stasis in my Pappap’s goth hallway (which, ironically, was blood-red carpeted), I’m now remembering how gigantic these suckers are and wondering where I would put them, plus there’s the whole electrical side of it to consider (Henry reminded me 87 times during this discussion that we do not own this house and while he has his electrician-guy background, he doesn’t want to be doing electrical work on a house that he does not own). UGHHHH. What to do!? I  guess I will take them and store them and hope that one day I will wake up and think, “This is the day we start actively house-hunting.” I dunno why I’m being so lazy about this. (I mean, I do know – it’s because we don’t want to be limited to where we can buy a house while Chooch is in school, but still, I have to wonder how much of that is just an excuse because I’m such a fucking weirdo when it comes to change.)

(Hopefully Chooch, the Zillow Prince, doesn’t read that last line and take that as his cue to start sending me house listings again lol.)

Back to my vacation journals. The one with the Coachella recount also had the tail end of our weekend 2003 road trip to Lancaster, PA which was supposed to be my consolation prize for Henry ruining my birthday trip to Boston/Salem by getting the flu (according to my journal, we had to abandon our Salem itinerary halfway through the day and go back to the hotel because Henry thought he was having a heart attack and knowing me, because you know, I am me, I’m sure I verbally eviscerated him the entire car ride back for ruining my day. Anyway!!! I know certain reader(s) enjoy being taught shit by Henry, so here’s a little lesson that he taught  me at 8:43PM on August 8th, 2003:

Truck drivers used to “swap” toll tickets so their toll would be cheaper but then they got caught, which is why the rest areas usually have two different ways to get in so that the traffic doesn’t cross or something. [Now that I’m typing this based on what I wrote in my vacation journal, it doesn’t make sense so I’m sure I was only half-assedly listening.] Anyway, those shady-ass truckers got busted because of the discrepancy in time on the turnpike tickets. Quotes Henry, “It made it look like it only took them an hour to drive 300 miles.

Hahahaha!” According to my journal, I laughed really loudly and mockingly so I basically haven’t changed at all. Sorry, Hank.

Drew likes to sit on the mantle, much to my chagrin, and here she is bird-watching with Trudy. Please note that after this morning, Trudy no longer is wearing the matador-red tiger robe because it was bringing out the bull in Drew’s sister Penelope, and I’ll tell you what, little gets the blood pumping quite like the sound of a mannequin hitting the floor behind you in an otherwise ghostly-quiet house while you’re concentrating on work.

I’ve started to slowly add things to the wall adjacent to the Cure Corner – when I say I have a lot of Cure memorabilia, I mean that I have so much that I have actually been uncovering prints and posters that I had no idea I had, or even when/where they came from. So yeah–I could decorate an entire house with just the stuff that I’ve collected since, when, like 1999 I guess.  But right now, I started with these three smaller things: a sketch of Robert from the artist EsQui, the picture of me meeting Robert OMG kill me, and — bear with me — this cute 3D cockatoo art that I bought from some store based in Amsterdam when it came to me late one night (when alllllll the best/stupidest ideas visit me) that I needed something cockatoo-related in that area because if you didn’t know, Like Cockatoos is in my Top 10 favorite songs by the Cure.

Henry was shining his phone’s flashlight at this corner for me while I took pictures because it’s shrouded by a moody pink light up there 24:7 (actually more like 18:7 because we have the light on a timer lol). As soon as it’s OK to have parties again, I’m going to insist that all of my friends take turns sitting here so I can take their pictures. Maybe this could be like a polaroid zone.

Here’s me: how can I effectively turn my home into a functioning modern art exhibit or at the very least, an Instagram-trendy cafe but without the baristas. This has been my dream for quite some time but ever since Corey, Kara, and I visited this one abandoned house-cum-art installation a few years back, I was like THIS IS FOR ME. More secret passages and fireplace-crawl spaces!

OK, maybe I will consider buying a house sooner rather than later, before my friends are too old and feeble to army-crawl in between walls in order to access the bathroom-slash-movie theater that only plays silent, vintage porn.

  2 Responses to “Friday is For Fomenting Facts”

  1. “Like Cockatoos” is way up there for me as well. That creepy little riff, and the verses I always try to sing in one breath. <3

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