Hey boy, here’s a quick update on the fake art that I sling over at Somnambulant.

My friend Bridget requested a portrait of her and her boyfriend, and she specifically asked for glitter and I was more than happy to comply. I would use glitter on EVERYTHING if I could. I still want to glitter our ceilings but that might be the straw that finally breaks Henry’s back of steel.

And here’s the painting I did for the Warhol customer, and I realized that I never got a picture of the final, touched-up painting. This was one of the progress shots I sent her, so it looks slopp(ier than my paintings usually do):

Her boyfriend is from England, so she wanted me to paint them as tea bags (specifically the pyramid-shaped ones). Years and years ago, she had me do a sushi couples painting — I like when people throw out-of-the-box ideas at me!

(I mean, once I’m done having my I CAN’T DO ITTTTTT pity party.)

I can’t remember if I posted this here yet, but after David Bowie died, my friend Kendahl requested a Goblin King portrait. I was so excited about it that I considered calling off work to start it immediately. (DON’T WORRY, I DIDN’T. I’m still The Best Employee Ever.

)

And then my friend Lizz had a baby so I made her this name plaque for him:

All the eyeballs came out of an old copy of Alternative Press. There’s some Vic Fuentes up in there and…I think Jack Barakat and Alex Gaskarth. Possibly some of the guys from Real Friends.
And my current favorite!   So last week, I was getting ready for bed when the image of Steve Buscemi as an octopus popped into my head. I figured, who cares if it’s too niche or obscure to sell, I HAVE TO PAINT IT.

I started it that night, when I should have been sleeping, and had it done by the next day. If only I could churn out my customs that quickly. Ugh.

Anyway, he’s available over on Etsy if you or anyone you know are really into that kind of thing.

And lastly, I’d like to say goodbye to Norm! He’s on his way to his new home in DC where I’m sure he will be happy. (His story can be read here if you’re interested in being lulled to sleep.)

Thank god for Valentine’s Day keeping me busy! Custom paintings and serial killer Valentines—thanks for keeping me in business, sickos! I mean that lovingly.

***

I have several paintings that I started but then I started thinking of our annual Easter bunny pictures so now everything else in my life is at a standstill, on the back-burner, in limbo, because now this is all I can think of and why am I at work right now when I should be running around getting costumes put together, ugh.

I think Henry is really going to hate this one.

Stop. Bullet-time.

• One of my lithops (Barbara, to be exact) is hatching! I’m so happy that I have kept these alive long enough to witness this glorious and erotic act of nature. I have some other lithops that are definitely not thriving like these living stones, I’ll tell you that much. I’m sorry, but succulents actually aren’t that easy to maintain, so a big FUCK YOU to whoever started that myth. It’s been a constant struggle for me ever since getting into the whole seedy underbelly of sleazy-sounding plants, but the payoff is rewarding. I fuss over them constantly, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I have my favorites. Like PANNE, who fucking DREW has set her sights on and I feel like all I do is scream at both cats to lay the FUCK OFF my succulents.
• Chooch thought he had lead poisoning the other day, and we were like YOU DO NOT HAVE LEAD POISONING but then he started reading off the symptoms and I was like “OMG I THINK I HAVE LEAD POISONING?!”

• A few weeks ago, we attempted to make the first installment of Chooch Chats, which is when I was quickly reminded of the fact that Chooch and I DO NOT WORK WELL TOGETHER and that there is a reason my outlet of choice has always been the written word and not film. So fucking frustrating! Some of my friends are still holding out hope that we will try again, and we almost did this past Sunday, but SURPRISE I was in a horrible mood so that didn’t happen.
  • Also, I asked on Facebook for my friends to submit questions and only one person did so it’s hard to have Chooch answer questions when there aren’t any, lol. (Octavia, he had an answer for yours though!)
  • Notice Drew in the background, sniffing around for succulents. Fuck off, Drew.
    • J/K I LOVE YOU, DREW.
      • But seriously, you’ll be living in he basement if you don’t lay the fuck off my plant-babes.
• GAYLE gets migraines and has determined that the light around and above her desk exacerbates said migraines, so now she has her sights on MY DESK. She even bought this lumen measuring thing to see how much more depressing it is at my desk than hers. First, she placed it on Amber2’s desk, and it was like 800 lumens, whatever that means. Then she put it on my desk and the count was more than halved. Everyone’s desk measured the same, around 800, but mine! Todd and I even stole the meter from her desk on Friday and re-measured, and sure enough, you’d expect that I work inside a cave in relation to everyone else. “It’s because of your dark aura,” Gayle said. UGH SHUT UP GAYLE.
  • Sike. I know a compliment when I hear it.
    • If I lose my desk, Glenn is going to party.

• Remember when Henry asked me to marry him and we had the greatest wedding of the entire 80s decade?
• The only thing getting me through this goddamn winter is all the rad shows peppering my concert calendar. At work today, we had to pass around a calendar to pick our late shifts and I got excited all over again when I saw all the nights I have blocked off because of shows.  Thank god for music, year-round.
  • THE CITIZEN SHOW IS NEXT WEEK AND I’M SO ANTSY WITH ANTICIPATION. I don’t even care that I’m going by myself.
    • I mean, I do care. It sucks to be a loner. BUT IT’S CITIZEN AND TURNOVER FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.

• A few weeks ago, we had dinner at Drew’s (no relation to our cat, probably) and by a happy coincidence, it was Greek Night. We only eat at Drew’s once every 8 years, so we did not know that this is apparently a HUGE event for the Forest Hills peeps. That place was rockin’ with old people getting their spanakopita on. Sadly, there were no vegetarian options on the special Greek menu except for a salad and FLAMING CHEESE which I fucking love, so we all ordered regular old American food like racists, and then also ordered the cheese. “Ah, getting a little bit of the Greek in there, I can dig it,” our waiter laughed after we basically snubbed the rest of the Greek menu. I LOVE HIM. For a myriad of reasons. The main being that he wasn’t Henry. We sat there listening to some old man (presumably Drew) travel to every table that ordered the flaming cheese, and then making a HUGE production of setting it aflame and bellowing OPA! So when he finally came to our table, we were ready for a show. Except that there was no entertaining lead-in. Just *fire* and a lackadaisical “Opa” and then a “Don’t touch this part of the plate, it’s hot.” Wow. Who’s the racist now. And then I was super looking forward to the baklava sundae BUT THEY RAN OUT OF BAKLAVA!? Ugh. So Chooch ordered red velvet cake, which all three of us shared because it was gigantic, and this was after we told Chooch he wasn’t allowed dessert because he ate like zero bites of his burger, and then he pouted and decided to punish himself, which is my favorite thing ever, Chooch the Martyr. So Henry wrote Crybaby on his place mat with an arrow pointing to Chooch, and as the evening went on, he added “spoiled” and “big, big” in front of it.

• Henry saw an ad for a housekeeping position at a private gay club as a second job and I was like OMG PLEASE APPLY. What a great second job that could be for Henry! You know, since LYFT only lasted ONE WEEKEND. Henry’s all talk, you guys. He couldn’t hang.
• Things I was told last week at work: I’m a wasted talent; I have a dangerous mind; I’m basically a bully.
• We were listening to a New Jack Swing playlist the other night and I accidentally told Henry that I have the Soul 4 Real CD, twice, in the span of 10 seconds. My memory is a candy-coated raindrop.

• Oh would you look? It’s Drew and Penelopiss hulking around SUZY BANYON before I moved her someplace higher. I’m sorry, but you don’t fuck with SUZY BANYON.
  • Henry calls Penelope “Penopoly.” LIKE MONOPOLY. So dumb.

• A few weeks ago, I caught most of the Eagles documentary on CNN. The next day, I mentioned it to Henry, and he was all, “There’s one on Netflix too” and for whatever reason I YELLED, “Oooh, let’s watch it!” Because suddenly I’m a huge Eagles fan? I mean, I like them well enough but certainly not enough to watch two back-to-back documentaries. Anyway, it took me about 35 minutes to realize it was the same one I had watched the night before on CNN, but I still continued to watch along with Henry, because I was waiting for the part when they poached the dude from Poco. I grew up listening to all that shit, so Poco is another band that brings back fond memories of my childhood, even though I think I only know two of their songs. So we’re watching this, and I admitted to Henry that I always thought that the Eagles were always a band, you know? That they all hadn’t previously had music careers with other people, that it was always just The Eagles.
  • After it ended, I told Henry that I DGAF about all those “you might be a douche if you like Hotel California” lists and memes that circulate in Facebook from time to time, because I think that is one of the best songs ever written, and I honestly can’t NOT listen to it in its entirety when I hear it on the radio. “That and ‘Africa’ and ‘In the Air Tonight,'” I added, and Henry just grunted.
    • A few days later, Henry told me he heard that the dude from Poco who joined the Eagles also recorded Africa with Toto! MIND=BLOWN.
      • This reminded me of the time that I heard a song on the radio that reminded me of my Pappap’s kitchen and I was freaking out trying to remember who sang it (this was pre-Shazam, you guys; probably in 2002 when searching the Internet required elbow grease. So I was all stressed out, trying to remember the name of this band, and meanwhile, Henry and I had bought the most delicious cake in the world from Bethel Bakery, a raspberry ambrosia, and I had become obsessed with that cake AND song at the same time, only to find out that the band who sang the song was Ambrosia. I LOVE WHEN THESE THINGS HAPPEN.

• In the span of one school day, Chooch got detention and accepted into the gifted program. That sounds about right.
  • Apparently, he landed himself in lunch detention for “yelling out” and “being silly” in art. I think he’s at the point where he is collecting detentions as a hobby.
• Speaking of hobbies! I have been fucked by the inspiration gods these last few weeks and have all kinds of pointless paintings I’m working on!
  • Fun fact: when Kara, Corey and I visited La Hutte Royal a few weeks ago, the docen asked us (and another couple who were also there for the tour) if any of us were artists/involved with art in any way and I casually declined to answer because I do not consider myself an artist. Here is where you would find me shrugging if you peeked through my front window right now. Shrug shrug shrug. But that doesn’t stop me from slapping down paint!

• Everybody has been flipping out because some Steeler named HEATH MILLER retired and I was like, “Who? Oh.” Then I saw his picture on Facebook and I was like, “Who? Oh.” That’s definitely not who I thought it was. I thought I knew what he looked like, when in fact, I’m fairly certain I have never seen this man in my life. He wasn’t even the same race as the man I was picturing. So.

• Last week, Jeannie and I had dinner after work with BARB, who was kind enough to grace us with her presence. Barb arrived right in time to start singing along to Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” and I was like, “Man, I miss making fun of her everyday.” Can’t she see how selfish her decision to resign from The Law Firm was?! DID SHE NOT EVEN CONSIDER HOW IT WOULD AFFECT ME!? I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since what I sadly referred to as Mournday. Basically, Jeannie and I just sat there and ate while Barb talked so quickly about everything from her favorite song (“Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites) to all of the TV shows she watches. Seriously though — it was a really great dinner at Villa Reale and it was awesome as always to see Barb. I think she needs to get out of the house more often, say, from 8am-9am Monday through Friday when she starts driving me to work after the trolley construction begins.
  • After dinner, Barb came back to my house to meet Drew and Penelopiss, and that’s when I learned that she killed the fucking succulent I gave her for her dumb birthday!! Succulents are so fucking easy to maintain, BARB!
    • NEVER MIND MY FIRST BULLET POINT UP THERE.

OK, I think I’m sufficiently purged. CARRY ON.

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I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, talking on the phone to my on-and-off again boyfriend Justin when my mom burst into my room and shrieked the words that would forever rattle in my brain with all the other loose screws. I spent the rest of the night filling my Composition book with orange-inked screams, denouncing God and making promises to the devil.  

Teenaged angst mixed with true tragedy is one volatile recipe, guys. Look out. 

  
That one moment in time completely changed the course of my life. I didn’t understand how my Pappap could suddenly be dead when I was just at his house earlier that evening, and he seemed fine. He was sitting on his Reserved For John spot on the couch, talking to someone on the phone about business as usual. 

  
He was alive, and then he wasn’t. 

 In his element: manning the grill during the copious cookouts and pool parties we had every summer. 

I credit my friends and teachers for helping me get through the aftermath. My friends Lisa and Christy, especially. And I don’t think it’s random that while so many other friends have come and gone, they’re still here. They walked with me through the deepest trauma of my life and made sure I didn’t sink. This day is making me think of so many things and I am so glad that I wasn’t alone then. 

  
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him, how he was taken from us abruptly, on a fluke, and I certainly don’t miss him any less than I did in 1996. But I think what I miss most about him, is his uncanny, effortless knack to hold our family together, like sane, stable mortar between our crazy, cracked bricks.   He was the greatest father figure to me. He was my goddamn hero.   

One of my Somnambulant customers works at the Warhol Museum. She had me make a custom painting for her for Valentine’s Day, and as a sweet little perk, she put me on the list at the door, so Chooch, Henry and I got to spend a leisurely afternoon eyeballing some arts on Saturday. It was cold and snowy that day so having something fun to do indoors was welcome. I hate staying home during winter weekends.

I was kind of nervous at first, because the last time I was there was three years ago and I don’t want to say that Chooch was a dick, but he was definitely….a dick. I mean, a six-year-old in a multi-floored museum probably is a bad idea no matter who the kid is.

Also, add Corey to the mix and Chooch was pretty high-energy. And it wasn’t even that he was bad and like, getting yelled at by the museum police or anything. But he rushed us through because, you know, he was six.

But this time was awesome! We made it through every floor and he was genuinely interested in things, especially Male Genital Diagram.

“The names on these things are so weird,” he museum-whispered to me and we started cracking up while pointing at butts.

Highlights for me are definitely:

• Watching Henry walked briskly past every single piece of art because art is garbage to him. “Dogs Playing Poker” or GTFO, right Henry!?
• Chooch’s extreme discomfort on the audio-visual floor, which featured a black and white 14mm film that had something to do with a sensual haircut. And then what I referred to as the Velvet Underground Den, a room hidden behind a heavy black curtain with seats in the middle and floor-to-ceiling heavily-psychedelic images projected on every wall while Velvet Underground pulsated us back to the 60s. Chooch was like, “NO THIS IS NOT FOR ME” while I was like, “THIS WHAT OUR NEXT GAME NIGHT SHOULD BE LIKE!”
• The Mr. Chow exhibit. Yes, the famous restaurateur! In addition to portraits of him painted by his famous friends (such as Keith Haring and Basquiat), Mr. Chow’s own pieces are currently on display, and I’ll tell you, refuse and coagulated eggs never felt more inspiring. Chooch and I were in awe, pointing out the various garbage we were able to discern among the paint, while Henry frowned and waited for us by the steps. I felt so motivated to go home and paint shit after that!
• In one of the rooms, there was a box of costumes which patrons were encouraged to try on. This was definitely Chooch’s jam. We walked on him modeling a black garment, similar to a witch’s robe I guess, and with a very stern visage, he slowly opened the robe to veal a pink tutu beneath it. The serious face melted into his signature “Derp” and he slowly shook his hips accordingly. Of course there was an audience for this.
• Getting to chat with my customer, Kris! She’s stuck with Somnambulant from the beginning, through all of the hiatuses and changes. She’s just a really cool broad. I painted her and her British boyfriend as teabags, the triangular kinds, because he loves tea. Her tag is an American flag and his is the Union Jack. It was so ridiculous, but really fun to paint!

The only lowlight was that all these cool-looking people were like, “I LIKE YOUR SHIRT!” to Chooch and for once, no one said anything about my stupid purse. Chooch was so smug about this.

Before we left, he got to try his hand at screen-printing. One guess what he chose to screenprint….

Yep.

Henry and I have many recurring arguments, usually over his unwillingness to put the seat down or let touring bands crash at our place.

(He at least picks up his socks now, either that or he just stopped wearing them since I retaliated by throwing away every sock I found of his on the floor, and now he just doesn’t have any left.)

The other night, we live-acted another episode of The Things We Fight About Most: Season 15, Episode “Henry Eats An Orange Again.”

We were standing in the kitchen together, peacefully co-existing, when it happened. The initial SQUIRT SMOOSH SMACK SLURP of his teeth and tongue tag-teaming in a juicy mastication match, wet nectar spraying through the air like a carefully choreographed money shot.

I’ve never felt more uncomfortable around someone eating a piece of fruit; it feels like walking in on your parents fucking. This should be done in private or at least not until others in the house are provided a pair of ear plugs. He sounds like he’s performing oral sex in citrus porn EVERY TIME HE EATS ORANGES. Must be how some of you feel when you hear the word MOIST or OINTMENT, like nails on a chalkboard that’s also being used to administer a pelvic exam on you.

Just imagine his beard glistening with post-coital orange jizz interwoven between those grizzled bristles.

I just can’t stand it.

And every time, it comes as a shock to him, being called out for being the sleaziest Sunkist gourmand this side of the fucking Green Door.

UGHHHH go fuck yourself with that orange! YOU ALREADY SOUND LIKE YOU ARE. #getaroom

For a day that’s supposed to be steeped in calendar-dictated synthetic love and bacon-flavored sentiments on beds of rose petals (isn’t that what you young couples do these days? Wrap everything in bacon?), my house was popping off with explosive attitudes and screeching histrionics. I was still half-sick and miserable; Chooch was code orange whiny—and if we’re being frank, probably feeding off of my irritability;  and Henry was just tired of taking the brunt of it.

So, no gluten-free, lavender-infused, edible-gold-sprinkled, heart-shaped Pinterest-approved pancakes for us. :(

It was starting to look like Chooch and I weren’t going to the Never Shout Never shout that night after all. My only saving grace was that he hated me slightly less than Henry.

(Henry committed some heinous slight against him that evening, didn’t make him a King’s banquet for dinner, and then when Chooch whined about wanting more, different food, Henry started yelling about how he’s not a restaurant and he’s tired of making separate meals for everyone and then I got involved by yelling, “Well fuck me for being ethically against eating meat!” and the night just went south from there because it’s all about Henry. Henry Henry Henry!)

The only thing we had in common with Valentines Day was the color red we were all seeing.

But we managed to compose ourselves and push in our devil horns long enough to get in the car and have our chauffeur drive us to Mr. Small’s, where we were magically transformed into MOTHERFUCKING SWEETHEARTS.

This could only mean one thing.

HENRY is the catalyst. Henry, you reactant! Henry, you motherfucker. 

As soon as Chooch and I walked into Mr. Small’s, one of the guys from the opening band, Waterparks, interrupted his conversation with some young fan girl to say to Chooch, “Hey, I like your hair!” Chooch just casually shrugged, like, “Yeah, of course you do.”

Duh.

I wish I was more like Chooch. Instead of cooly brisking past, I was choking on my tongue in an attempt to thank the kind boy on Chooch’s behalf.

We purposely arrived two hours after doors. I rarely miss the opening bands, and I think it’s so important to support them, especially the ones that are local. But I have to consider that my nine-year-old has a low threshold for standing in one room. So, we missed Waterparks and Get the Picture (sorry, guys) but arrived just in time for JuleVera, whom I was really looking forward to after missing them at Warped Tour due to conflicting set times.

Their singer Ansley is only 18 years old. So young! And as soon as she started singing, Chooch looked at me with ruddy cheeks and this big goofy grin that I recognized as his I’M IN LUFFFFFFF AND CANT FIGHT IT HELP I’M DYING face of anguish.

“We have to go to their merch table after they’re done!” he hissed.

Guys, I didn’t expect to like them as much as I did, but they sounded great, and any young band that can spend three minutes between songs doing a drum and guitar solo without coming off as douchey or losing the interest of the crowd has genuine talent.

Chooch declared that this is his new favorite band and I’ll co-sign that.

As soon as their last song ended, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me over to their merch table, quickly, before the line gets too long!

Sadly, most people there were more interested in the dregs of the music scene, namely Metro Station who were up next. So not many people rushed to the merch tables.

I was super proud when Chooch passed up the row of CDs and pointed to the vinyl, which I happily purchased for him. CHOOCH IS AMAZING. THE NIGHT IS AMAZING. EVERYTHING IS AMAZING WHEN HENRY ISNT THERE!

Lol sike. But seriously, Chooch and I generally get along much better when. Henry isn’t in the temperament equation.

Right after I paid the top-knotted merch girl for the record, Ansley walked over. Begin obligatory awkward transmission of the night.

She seemed shy, he was definitely shy, and I was shoe-horned into an uncomfortable position of being Son’s Mouthpiece. So I quickly said it was our first time seeing them.

“Oh cool! Did you like it?” she asked Chooch directly.

“#^*^^+£[#^@&$” he gurgled with a nod. Then I quickly took their picture and whisked him away before we could fall any further into social peril.

LOOK HOW RED HIS CHEEKS ARE!

We went back into the main area afterward and scored a decent spot in a sparsely populated area by the bar barrier, and I was thankful to sit down on the floor with my back against a wall, because I had the day-after-food-poisoning weakness. Chooch smiled deliriously at his record for awhile and then eventually, Metro Station came on.

I try really hard not to flat out hate a band, but my feelings for Metro Station come very close to simulating bricks of ultra-negativity being hurled through glass walls. OK I hate them. They were pretty popular in what, 2007 or something? Because Miley Cyrus’s brother is in it? And they had one catchy song called “Shake” that made all the Radio Disney kids feel like rebels for listening to what they were told was “punk” music?

Then they went away and it was wonderful! Five Metro Stationless years!

And now they’re back. And disgusting. Honestly, they sound like mediocre karaoke at the corner bar. But they have BRIGHT STAGE LIGHTS  and TRACE CYRUS!

That’s MILEY’S BROTHER Y’ALL.

He took his shirt off at one point and all the girls screamed their panties right off their bodies and onto the stage, and I was just left standing there in a stupor, like “Ew, why?”

And when they lovingly name-dropped their homeboys in Attila and Falling In Reverse, I was ready to go home and start my own Pittsburgh chapter of Girls Against Misogynistic Bands.

Get the fuck out of my face with your Ronnie Radke shout-outs.

Total lowpoint of the night. And they didn’t really match the vibe of Never Shout Never anyway, so why. Even Chooch was cringing.

Turnover playing over the sound system while Metro Station’s fecal residue was being scrubbed off the stage. I actually cried out, “Ooh, it’s Turnover!” and I doubt anyone cared.  Chooch definitely didn’t.

The singer of dumb Metro Station walked past us and I was really angry to note that he had a CURE PATCH on the back of his dumb black denim shirt. Robert Smith’s face does not belong on such filth.

Never Shout Never took the stage at 10 and the night vastly improved. Chooch’s excitement was contagious. Every time Christofer would describe the next song, Chooch would quickly shout out what it was going to be and he was so happy the one time that I got it wrong, because he’s Mini Erin, and that’s something I too would gloat about.

At one point, Chris mentioned that he had been eating “marijuana-infused honey from Denver” all day, and what he really needed right then was a cup of red wine, half wine half gingerale, and someone should be awesome and get that for him. Chooch was like, “MOMMY! DO IT!!!” I mean, we were standing right on the other side of the bar so I could have easily turned around and snapped my fingers, but I figured 20 other broads were well on their way back to the stage with his wine…

Also, I’m such a great mom for exposing my 4th grader to this shit.

After another song, Chris said, “So…where’s that wine?” because no one had actually gone through with it so then I was like OMG SHOULD I BE THE ONE!? SHOULD I DO IT!? but by the time my mind worked out 87 different variations of how this scene could play out, some dude had climbed onto the stage and handed him a cup, courtesy of some chick who is probably still Snapchatting about her 10 seconds of recognition.

It would have been pretty hilarious to send Chooch up with it, though.

Ugh. Missed opportunity!

Anyway, they played one of my favorites, “On the Brightside” and I was so glad!

And Chooch kept screaming “Red Balloon!” and then when they finally played it, he smirked at me, like “See what I did?” Sure Chooch, whatever. He was stoked when a menagerie of balloons was released from a net in the balcony. Kids and balloons, amirite?

We moved closer toward the end of the show, once I was confident that I could stand without leaning back on something sturdy and we realized that there was an empty pocket near the left side of the stage.

Being there made me think of all the shows I’ve seen in that place, and how fucking fantastic it is that now Chooch is seeing shows at this exact same venue. This night was pure magic. (With the exception of Metro Station, ugh! That part was fucking voodoo.)

I left Chooch alone during the encore so I could buy him a shirt before the merch table was swarmed with people. The merch guy told me that Chris wasn’t going to be coming out after, and that he already had done a meet and greet before the show, so part of me was sad for Chooch, but super stoked for myself because all I could think about was RESTING MY WEARY BONES IN MY BED.

“Oh well, at least I’ve already met him once,” Chooch shrugged, content with his JuleVera experience and just an overall night of beautiful music (and 30 minutes of garbage cacophony).
  

***

On the way home from the show, I was angrily retelling the horror story of Metro Station to Henry.

“One of their songs was literally just them yelling ‘she likes girls girls girls,'” I seethed.

“Oh, I thought they were saying ghosts. ‘She likes ghosts ghosts ghosts….'” Chooch piped up from the backseat.

You’re giving them way too much credit, buddy.

Finally, they made a video for my favorite song on their album. Ouch, my black fucking heart of coal. 

:(

My plan today was to come home from work, boss Henry around, and then at some point blog about various weekend things that didn’t involve me puking or buying holy light fixtures. But then I watched last night’s mid season premier of The Walking Dead and now I’m dead. All the ghost of  me feels like doing is posting pictures of cats, so that’s what is going to happen. Maybe the church lamp will resurrect me sometime during the night and Alive Erin will waste your time with other, non-cat-related things. 

Mostly just pictures of crackhead Drew this round. 

 She spent a good hour tearing around the house yesterday with a fortune cookie wrapper stuffed in her mouth like some sort of take-out dinner dessert mouse. She ran around growling, like anyone of us cared enough to take her treasure from her. This is exactly the kind of behavior that Marcy frowned upon. 

   
 Right after Henry told her she’s not allowed beer. 

Oh wow, shocking, even in my supernatural state, I can’t stop spewing bullshit. So in other before-I-died news, Chooch is angry because Henry bought me cherry pie yesterday since I was sick and apparently when Chooch is sick, Henry never buys him pie. 

“You never ask for pie…?” Henry answered tentatively, because like with me, you never know what you’re going to get when verbally sparring with Chooch. Earlier this evening Choochaccused me of saying “either” when I clearly said “neither”! AND YES, IT WAS THE PROPER USAGE. Oh, it was a fucking war up in here. 

Ok fine. I want to talk about lamp one more time because I’m obsessed with it and also terrorified of it. Henry actually hung it in our bedroom yesterday instead of leaving it in the middle of the floor to be tripped over for 7 months. I guess the power of Christ compelled him. 

  
We were talking about it at work today and of course Glenn had all of these boring technical questions about how Henry hung it (or how Henry’s hung LOLOLOL) and I was like, “Dude I don’t know? He took down our other light thing and then put this one in the ceiling?” And then Glenn used some man-word and I was like, “yeah sure, that’s what he did.” Glenn seemed impressed that Henry can do electrical things so now I’m picturing Glenn cutting down trees for the cabin that he and Henry are going to build together, and then Henry can make it light up with his electrician skills. 

As I’m typing this, the cats just collided with each other in mid-air and both dropped straight down to the floor, like a fucking cartoon. As long as they quit breaking my stuff, I don’t care what they do. BUT LEAVE MY FUCKING SUCCULENTS ALONE. 

You know how some people can be together for a decade+ and still want to swathe themselves in sequins and put on matching UNDERGARMENTS for Valentines Day? Henry and I are not that couple. In fact, I can’t remember the last time Henry wore sequins. :( So I don’t even stress over February 14th anymore. Especially after I baked him a cake one year and painted him an adorable ode to our polarizing feelings on music festivals, and he never does anything for me. NOT BITTER. Not even a little bit.

This year, my Valentine is Chooch, and we’re spending it with Never Shout Never at Mr. Small’s.

But then yesterday, Chooch ended up having his own pre-Valentines play date, so Henry was like, “Well, do you want to go to dinner or something?” SUCH ROMANCE!!

I decided that since this was the best he was going to do in the Valentine department, that we should go to Zenith since it’s my favorite and he never wants to go because he has it in his head that it’s a breeding ground for “pale, peaked* vegan hipsters.”

*(Pee-kid, not peeked—don’t get it twisted!)

His exact words. I have rarely encountered this human subset at Zenith, but full disclosure — I’ve never been there for their Sunday brunch so for all I know, that’s when all the vampire-complected Bon Iver fans come out to play, half-decapitated on their infinity scarves.

It’s almost as though I majored in Stereotyping.

We got there sometime after 5 because we’re nearly at earl-bird status, and I was smug to point out that there were only three other tables of patrons there, and none of them were boasting any offensive air of pretension about them.

One Man, Four Cups.

I’m not a big tea-drinker, but one of the things I always have to do at Zenith is order from their extensive tea menu. It’s part of the process! Kara will tell you. She knows. If I had spent half the time studying textbooks as I do that fucking tea menu…well, I’d still be in the same position I’m in now. Never mind. I forgot that I didn’t get far in life because of a different kind of stupidity. Hahahaha. Oh god.

I was torn between the Earl Grey Lavender and Maple Vanilla, so I asked the waitress for her opinion. She got all stressed out and called over to the proprietor, Elaine, for help.

“I don’t do anything lavender,” Elaine brusquely called over, scrunching up her nose. “So yeah, Maple Vanilla.” Elaine is my homegirl so I went with her choice, and it was a smart one because I’m currently chugging my Sunday morning coffee and crying that there’s no maple.

Elaine brought the pot over to our table. “Now, don’t pour this right away,” she said. “I mean it! I tell people all the time that it’s not ready, and then I go back in the kitchen and I can SEE them pouring it! I’m like, it’s gonna taste like crap!” God, I fucking love her.

OMG it’s a salad. You’ve never seen a salad before. Henry had to finish mine because I’m really picky with salads.

“Look at those lamps back there,” Henry casually pointed out, and I gave myself whiplash in my attempt to beat all of the invisible people around us in a race to see it first. Up in the corner, there were two majestic holy lamps dangling like carrots, begging me to buy them.

“YOU HAVE TO ASK HOW MUCH THEY ARE!” I cried, to which Henry responded with his patented “get real” smirk. I mean, why else would he point these out to me if he didn’t secretly desire to furnish our home with them!?

“I bet they’re $100 a piece,” he quietly guessed, before stabbing the rest of my salad with his fork.

“Well, you could be wrong!” I frantically said. “I thought that our wheelchair was going to be $500 and it was only $40!”

“Why would you think that wheelchair was FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS?” Henry asked in disbelief. Because I’m an idiot, OK? Is that what you want to hear?! The value of the dollar confuses me.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, Kara was 100% encouraging this purchase. It’s a wonder that Henry hasn’t tried to get me to stop being friends with Kara yet. (Jokes: No man controls my life.)

Our waitress reported back that the lamps were $80 for one, $150 for the pair. Henry thanked her and kept shoveling food in his mouth without giving me a definitive answer and I was losing my mind.

I was annoyed that Henry ordered the Moroccan stew, because that’s what I ordered and I wanted him to get the seitan so we could share. He’s so fucking selfish. He apparently didn’t “feel like seitan and asparagus” on this night. At least he ordered a different kind of vegan cake though, so we could share the chocolate blueberry and strawberry almond. Seriously, there are times when I consider stopping by just for tea and cake. Their actual food is always good, but those cakes. Those goddamn cakes.

Maybe I should have my birthday party there this year.

Meanwhile, guess whose puppy-dog eyes won the war of the majestic holy lamps!? I think once I cried, “IT CAN BE THE FIRST FUCKING VALENTINES DAY PRESENT YOU’VE GIVEN ME IN 10 YEARS,” he was overcome with guilt and decided that $80 was a small price to pay for an evening free of me pouting, slamming doors, and breaking glass objects.

So this guy came out with his ladder and Henry was all upset  because he didn’t want the man to have to do this during dinner hours and kept saying, “I’ll just tell him we can come back for it” but I was like, “You shut your face, he looks very happy to be shoving tables out of the way and untangling wires.”

(He kind of didn’t.)

But I needed to leave with that lamp that night. I had already imprinted with it.

“Where the fuck are we even going to put this?” Henry asked, the regret of pointing the lamps out in the first place rising up in his eyes like mercury in a thermometer.

“In our bedroom, duh.” It’ll be the perfect complement to the crucifix collection I’m starting on the wall behind our bed. Sometimes he just doesn’t think.

Here’s Henry acting like a Big Help by doing nothing more than standing with arms akimbo.

“Now you screwed us all up!” Elaine joked, standing by the kitchen door as Henry walked back to the table with one of the lamps. Now they had to find another lamp for that corner. But that’s what happens when everything in your restaurant is for sale, I guess! Anyway, they said it’s from Woolslayer in Bloomfield, whatever that means.

My favorite part of Zenith has always been the post-meal store perusing. This was way less fun with Henry. He wouldn’t try any of the vintage dresses on for me like Kara does. :(

On again, off again.

I don’t think there has ever been a time I visited Zenith and left without taking a picture in this bathroom.

There were other things that I wanted to buy but Henry had that steely look of DON’T EVEN etched all along his weathered face, so I just figured that I’ll wait for the next time I’m there with Kara.

“You should have bought them both,” I said on the way home, knowing as soon as the words came out of my mouth that it was going to stir the pot in a big way.

“You’re never happy!” Henry cried. “You get one, you want two. If you got two, you’d want three!”

He’s not wrong.

****

I started writing this post last night, but then I was interrupted by an evening of violent vomiting. Henry thinks it was food poisoning since I woke up feeling fine; not food poisoning from Zenith though, because we both ate the same things. “It’s probably whatever you had for lunch,” he suggested with a tinge of accusation in his tone. This is a strong possibility, considering I made my own lunch and god only knows what goes on when I step into a kitchen.

However, what I think actually happened is that I brought something home with that lamp, some type of holy spirit, and it literally was exorcising me last night. Thank you, lamp. I feel less demonic than usual today.

After exploring La Hütte Royal last Saturday, Corey, Kara and I ended our cultural afternoon with PB&Js at Peanut Butter Jelly Time in Bloomfield. 
  

Mean muggin’ apple juice chuggin’

This spot is relatively new and we all felt #soblessed to be there, especially after Corey was almost vehicularly manslaughtered in the parking lot by a man who had even less ability than me to park his damn car. 

Peanut Butter Jelly Time is very tiny (I think there were only six tables?) but the people behind the counter were genuinely friendly and didn’t make me feel like a poser like I oft feel in Bloomfield/Lawrenceville— Pittsburgh’s Little Portland. We took menus back to a table and stressed over what to order for a good fifteen minutes. Corey ended up going with a classic Elvis: PB, bananas and bacon, which came with a story about how one morning before preschool, he was at our grandma’s watching Nick Jr and “Face” was eating a PB&banana sandwich so our grandma made one for Corey, and that was his first foray into the dreamscape of peanut butter sexin’ with the ‘nanas. Cool story, bro.

(No seriously, I really did enjoy it!)

Corey also got a carton of apple juice which was endlessly funny to Kara and me because it JUST WAS OK. It was such a small, child-sized carton and Corey is like a giant. How he made that last for more than 2 sips is beyond me. 

Kara ordered a PB&J calzone which wasn’t even a real calzone, but made on flatbread with a variety of fruit and honey shoved up in there. 

And I ordered something with Princess in the name, because it came with SPRINKLES. Also it was on Cinnabon bread, which was delightful. But dammit, our sandwiches weren’t oversized slabs of Americana like I anticipated, but just standard Wonder Bread-girth. 

Which was fine, but with a side of 10 animal crackers & a bottle of water, my lunch was close to $10. 

And I was still really hungry afterward!

So was Kara!

Corey seemed fine because he’s not forever fat like me or training for the full marathon like Kara. WHATEVER. 

How have I never thought to garnish my sandwiches with sprinkles before? I did go through a phase about three years ago where I sprinkled mini-Cheezits on my peanut butter sandwiches. DONT KNOCK IT. 

But honestly, the best part was just hanging out and catching up, especially because Kara and I rarely get that opportunity! 

Cute concept, friendly PB&J artisans, and it tasted good but this honestly wasn’t anything I couldn’t just walk into my kitchen and make myself. 

“Oh please, like you would ever ‘walk into the kitchen’ and make one yourself,” Glenn grumbled the following Monday when I was reviewing my lunch for all of my SUPER ENRAPT co-workers. 

I mean…true. But if I did, it would have tasted the same because none of their ingredients were like, churned in the basement. Tasted just like Jif and Smuckers to me! AND I HAVE THOSE IN MY KITCHEN RIGHT NOW. 

AND MARSHMALLOW FLUFF. 

I’m going to recreate this tomorrow. Bitch, watch me. (And in that episode, the role of Erin will be played by Henry J.)

Penelope Ann Killer has mostly adjusted to our house. I mean, she plays and eats and poops like her crazy-ass sister Drew, but the moment I try to approach her, she’s on like HIGH ALERT. Sometimes she’ll let me pick her up but she hates it so I try not to even though she’s so FLUFFY AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS HOLD HER AND SQUEEZE HER.

However, every single night, she makes herself comfortable in my bed, usually right between Henry and me, and this is when we’re allowed to pet her. Come morning, though, we’re back to being on a stranger basis with her. So annoying.

Earlier today, I thrust my phone over the glass divider behind me and said, “Look how cute Penelope Ann Killer is!” to Glenn, who looked extremely unimpressed.

“That’s what you named her?” he asked.

“Uh yeah,” I said, like way to pay attention. It was even on our department’s Wiki page! “You know, like Penelope Ann Miller?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Glenn mumbled, nodding off at the sound of his own monotone.

“FROM KINDERGARTEN COP?!” I cried, because hello, is she not a household name in everyone’s wigwam?

“I’ve never seen that,” Glenn gurgled on his ennui-generated drool.

“OMFG, are you serious!?” I yelled incredulously. “Well, what about Adventures In Babysitting?”

“Nope.”

“She was Brenda, the best friend!”

“Didn’t see it.”

“DON’T YOU REMEMBER SHE RAN AWAY FROM HOME AND GOT STRANDED AT THE BUS STATION AND BROKE HER GLASSES?!”

He had pretty much dropped out of the conversation by then. I almost posted on Facebook the simple (YET COMPLICATED) statement that Glenn has not seen Kindergarten Cop but I was trembling with too much rage.

This prompted me for the next hour to share the jarring news with everyone who walked past my desk.

“Well, I can kind of see that,” Michele said, insinuating that he’s too old to understand the critically-acclaimed cinematic game changer of IT’S NOT A TUMAH.  And then Todd agreed with her and I was like, “STOP DEFENDING HIM! STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR GLENN BEING A LAME. GLENN IS A LAME AND WE ALL KNOW IT!”

Unbelievable.

Anyway, my whole point was that the credits of Kindergarten Cop marked the first time I ever saw the name Penelope spelled out and I distinctly remember laughing, “PENNYLOPE? What a dumb name!” and then shockingly, my mom corrected me instead of letting me go through life pronouncing it that way. Because that’s a thing my mom would do.

  
It might be 18 degrees right now, but the semi-mild weather on Sunday filled me with hope that I’ll be riding roller coasters and having ice cream drip down my chin in no time. 

IN NO TIME. 

I’ve been combatting the blustery blahs by basically ensuring that I have no down time. Last night I stayed up until 1am making work Valentines and cracking up like a lunatic — and it helped!  

I made 19 others because I have no life. 

The Penguins losing this game against the Rangers right now does NOT help.   

Watching these two act like fools? That helps. 

Henry buying me Artifex Pereo’s “Time In Place” on vinyl? Also helps.

The other night, I put on a new jack swing Spotify playlist and lip-synched dramatically in Henry’s face because that’s just who I am, and then I started rearranging the bedroom (again) while laying in bed. I came up with a solution to the lack of storage.

“Here’s something to consider and by that I mean this is what’s going to happen: you’re going to move all of your clothes into the attic. You can share The Man In the Attic’s closet!” 

Henry’s shit is still in my room and it’s been like 3 days since my proposal. (LOL not that kind.)

Yesterday at work, Amber2 brought up conjoined twins and we mused over what it would be like if I was a conjoined twin. “I wonder what my other one would be like?”

“Normal,” Amber said with no hesitation whatsoever. 

“I was thinking the same thing,” Glenn said, like he was a part of the conversation suddenly. He even chuckled, kind of. Shut up Glenn. Then he said my other would probably be a carnivore and we spent way too much time thinking about that.  

  
All Drew and Penelope do is eat and destroy my stuff. 

I recently realized that the Emarosa show we’re going to in Lancaster is on Easter weekend and I’m so relieved because for once we won’t have to scramble for Easter plans this year. I have such a love/hate for holidays because of the whole “nowhere to go, nothing to do” conundrum. But this year we’ll be out of town, woo! And it suddenly occurs to me that we should make Emarosa AN EASTER BASKET. Dumb or amazing???

I’m too full of February to write anything else right now. 

Troy Hill is a neighborhood somewhere on a hill some direction outside of Pittsburgh. You know, over there.  The last time I was there was when Andrea was visiting in 2011 and we went to see the largest collection of relics this side of the Vatican. Right up there on Troy Hill! It was also the first time Andrea got to hear real life Pittsburgh accents, so that is usually when I think of when, if ever, Troy Hill comes to mind.

Those relics are kind of a hidden gem here in the city. I never knew they existed until I took some Christianity class at Pitt back in 2006 (once upon a time, I was going to major in English Writing and minor in Religious Studies—look at me now!) and the professor told us about it and while most of the class looked bored as fuck, I was furiously scribbling the information down in my notebook because BONES.

A few years ago, Troy Hill added another gem into their hidden treasure chest when some art-savvy dude bought an abandoned house and then commission German artist Thorsten Brinkmann to set up shop and turn this average, unassuming Pittsburgh brick house into a gesamtkunstwerk called La Hütte Royal. Kara and I have wanted to check this place out for some time now, but like usual, we get distracted by life and it gets moved to the back-burner. However, last month when I asked her if she wanted to go to the Mattress Factory with Corey and me, she rekindled the idea of La Hütte and Corey was definitely on board for this change of scenery.

Touring the house is free, but an appointment must be made. I was mildly stressed about this because 1. I hate making appointments and 2. I hate having responsibilities. THANK GOD I was able to fulfill these requirements through email, and that is how we ended up with a 2pm engagement on Troy Hill last Saturday.

This is also how I learned, 9 months after purchasing my car, that I absolutely cannot parallel park by relying on the backup camera. Plus, Kara and Corey were heckling me! Finally, I went old school and threw my arm over the back of my seat and successfully parked without the aid of a visual device.

“THIS IS LIKE A TEXTBOOK PARK JOB, TOO!” Corey exclaimed. “Like if we had a ruler, it would be the perfect distance from the curb.”  That made me feel better for the previous botched attempts, so thank you COR-COR!

(That’s what Chooch calls him and it’s incredibly obnoxious.)

Here’s the telephone pole that I did NOT wreck into, no thanks to the backup camera.

I texted the docen, Ryan, to let him know that we were running on time and then the three of us tentatively climbed the steps of a very unassuming brick house on a regular old Pittsburgh street. Kara made herself at home by plopping down on the porch swing while I tried to pee in anticipation of who was going to open the front door. I kept envisioning some stuffy older man like Dick from the Bayernhof, but instead we got a young college student in skinny jeans and a beanie and in my head I was thinking, “LET’S BLOW THIS LA HÜTTE STAND AND GO TO A BEACH SLANG SHOW TOGETHER!”

I mean, I was like, “Oh hello, Ryan. I’m Erin.”

AND I’M SINGLE AND CERTAINLY NOT EVEN CLOSE TO 36 YEARS OLD.

J/K.

We had to wait for two other people, who turned out to be SOPHIE the COSTUME DESIGNER and her plaid-shirted companion. They both seemed to be drowning in each others’ ennui. SOPHIE of course had previously visited La Hütte, but her manpanion had no idea where she had brought him. Another fun date with SOPHIE, he probably mumble-cored to his other lumbersexual bruhs over nitro coffee and poutine the next day.

(I swear to god, I leave the house repeating to myself, “You love people. All people. All people are love” but then I find myself standing on a porch with the likes of SOPHIE and I remember why I often dislike leaving the house.)

Ryan gave us the run-down on the rules, which included twisting doorknobs (all doors that open can be entered), sitting on chair-like objects (everything but the chairs in the tiny dining room could be sat upon), and red-curtained fireplaces (there is only one in the house and that was our cue to get down and crawl). I asked about pictures, because I know Corey’s head was going to blow up in wonder, and Ryan happily said that we could photograph our faces off for all he cared, and we were welcome to share them on any social media sites but that we would need permission from the artist if we want to, you know, put them on a blog or whatever.

I didn’t say anything but the whole time, I was thinking, “Does my zero-revenue-generating blog with 5 followers count?” Like, I didn’t want to ask and be laughed at. So I said nothing and figured OH WELL I just won’t post any. Except for that first photo down there of Corey, because that bell-thing comes up all over the place when you Google search the house so I made the executive decision that this was OK because I don’t really feel like bothering some German artist right now.

Once we were in the foyer, backs slightly arched to avoid Suffocation By Large Hanging Torture Bell, Ryan collected our jackets and sent us on our way. I was relieved that SOPHIE and her downtrodden date got a head start into the basement, leaving us free to explore without judgment.

We started in the basement, which had a boxing ring built in what appeared to be the garage. Here is where I want to start spewing out every single detail of what we saw, but I think it’s kind of worthless to just read the words instead of actually experiencing it. Because putting it here in type makes it seem like it’s someone’s refuse, belongings left behind, that were just strewn about haphazardly and stamped as Art. But it’s not like that — there is a method to the madness, rhyme to the reason…it’s just that I don’t know exactly what those methods and rhymes are because I’m not Thorsten Brinkmann.

The house’s innards have been completely revamped into what the inside of my head looks like, a/k/a an explosion of color, hidden passages, and filth.

The main floor was primarily built around vinyl and I had to really dig deep to keep from lying supine across all of the beauty. All of the “chair-like objects” in the living room had record covers adhered to the surface…so needless to say I came home with new dining room chair projects for Henry.

I lied. Two more pictures. Will I be arrested?!

The upstairs is where shit got real crunk. We had to crawl through a tiny fireplace and along secret corridors built between the floors and it was horrifying and exciting all at once! I am so claustrophobic and hate not knowing where I’m going, especially when tight spaces are involved. I think Chuck E. Cheese’s infamous Cheese Factory ruined me at a young age.

Please tell me you know what I’m talking about. It was the first introduction to trauma for many kids in the early 80s, and it was definitely my first encounter with the crippling fear of being abandoned and left for dead inside a giant wheel of Swiss cheese, inexplicably sound-tracked by ominous outer space bleeps.

This is how I felt about La Hütte, with the added sensation of voyeurism thrown in. There were times when it really did feel like sneaking around someone’s decrepit home.

The tour ended in the attic, when we burst through a door on a wave of Corey’s bombastic laughter to find SOPHIE and her ambivalent beau (ambivabeau?), seated in old beauty salon hair dryers and watching a film of Thorsten himself trying a number of ways to sit in a chair.

Afterward, Ryan (who was sitting in the corner and I didn’t even notice!) was anxious to get some sort of dialogue going but I refused to speak in front of SOPHIE so we all kind of just sat there while SOPHIE talked about being in COSTUME DESIGN SCHOOL and Ryan was like, “There’s a whole school for that?” So yeah, take that SOPHIE. Anyway, we stuck around while Ryan escorted them back down to the foyer and when he returned, we all had a nice chat about the house, the owner (who lives down the street in a really nice house with a black fence), the artist, etc. etc. Ryan told us that Thorsten built the installation around the history of the house and its previous inhabitants, and used most of the things he found around the house.

I was hoping he wouldn’t make us go around and offer our interpretations, because I am really horrible at that. I love art–I love making it and I love looking at it, but I rarely try to “figure it out.” I can only tell you how it makes me feel, and this house made me feel like Alice in Wonderland—like I was somewhere I wasn’t meant to be, and it was at times beautiful and quirky, and at other times creepy and uncomfortable. And in keeping with the Alice theme, I was reminded a lot of how I felt the first time I watched Alice, a stop-motion film by Czech director Jan Svankmajer, who also made Little Otik which absolutely wrecked me during my pregnancy.

While it’s not clear to me what Thorsten hopes visitors will take away from La Hütte Royal (I tried not to read too much about it before we visited), I personally felt like we were in an entirely different world. For most of our time in the house, I had no idea what floor we were even on, because there was so much crawling and climbing. I loved the play on dimensions and how space was completely fucked with—it was basically my dream house. In one room, I’d expect to see the white rabbit, and in the next, Leatherface. When can I move in!?

After a nice discussion with Ryan, we excused ourselves. “We’re going to eat PB&J now at Peanut Butter Jelly Time in Bloomfield,” I explained (IN CASE HE WANTED TO COME, TOO).

“That sounds disgusting,” Ryan said.

Somewhere, PB&J is art, OK Ryan?

Because I lead such an exciting life, I stayed up late Friday night watching old Wildwood, NJ videos on YouTube.

There is something REALLY ENCHANTING and perverted about watching the home movies of strangers and I don’t give a fuck, I’ll do it until I die.

I would say about once a year, I go through heavy Wildwood withdrawals and I need to nourish myself with copious amounts of nostalgia, even if it’s another persons memories.

My family vacationed in Wildwood every summer. It’s one of the few spotty memories I have of my birth dad, and also some of the best memories I have of my mom.

My grandparents came too, every summer, and it was just the fucking cherry on top of the entire year. I can’t think about that beach and boardwalk without being flooded of the best memories and thoughts of my Pappap. Literally, the best memories of my whole life were made in fucking New Jersey, of all places.

I haven’t been back since 1991 and as much as I want to, I’m also terrified because I don’t want to see how much it’s changed.

I stupidly made the mistake about 10 years to look at the Morey’s Piers website and I felt like Morey himself had kicked me in the gut with a steel-tipped boot, that motherfucker.

ANYWAY. Before I wind up just straight up living in the rabbit hole, let me get to my point. One of the videos I watched on YouTube was a clip from a 1994 documentary and now I’m utterly obsessed (what else is new) and going to buy the entire film because how I can not have a chunk of cinema like this in my private collection:

I’m kind of sad that I only ever experienced Wildwood through the eyes of an innocent child, there only to ride some fucking dark rides and eat a goddamn hot dog at Hot Spot B. I never got in a fight with anyone there other than my step dad. And I didn’t even put him in the hospital!