Yes, but do they dress themselves?

A couple doors down from our house is a costume shop. In the two months we’ve lived in this building, I’ve never once seen the shop open for business, and I’d just begun entertaining the action-packed thought that maybe the shop was really a front for a drug-running circle when I noticed, one morning on my way to work, that the window display had changed.

Previously, the assorted mannequins were all dressed in Egyptian garb–headdresses, Cleopatra kohl and all–but now, oh yes, they’re all done up as pirates. Wussy, mannequin boys in knickers, with patent buckle shoes and cascading black ringlets; she-pirates in emerald velvet waistcoats. Bandanas and parrots and stilletto boots abound.

Oh yes. Shiver me timbers, indeed.

God is my DJ (part II)

To pick up where I left off in my previous entry:

What I remember from starting services at Breakwater Church before was the crackling energy of a new church–all of us so excited, so ready to go–and this Breakwater had none of that. Walking in the door, I felt something like sorrow–a new, deep humility that marked the faces of everyone I talked to, particularly Rick (my favorite person/head pastor mentioned in part I). Somehow, Breakwater has aged, but the change is very becoming.

There were no more than twenty people there, only a quarter of whom I knew from the old church, and we scooted our chairs up close to Rick as he gave his message; we closed our eyes and listened, we fiddled with key chains and sleeves. Kids played and giggled behind us as he spoke, and it was all deliciously unplanned–Rick let himself ramble, telling stories; as he closed the sermon he said, simply, “I’d hoped to say something really moving here, but…this meant a lot to me when I wrote it, you know, so maybe I’ll just pray that God will do something cool for you, too.”

All the churches I’ve been to in the last two years have had this in common: they have not been Breakwater.

Sitting in the very chairs I remember folding up after services, I realized that all I’d ever wanted in a church was for it to be Breakwater, and that, at some point, even Breakwater ceased to mean what it once had to me–a safe haven, a family, someplace to come and drink bad coffee and make noise, or to sit still and ponder.

Or to laugh. Which is what I did mostly.

Nostalgia was at work, sure–”oh, I remember that amp, and how the volume knob was so sticky, and sigh, I remember blah blah blah”–but something more was happening too, an intense gratitude that, through everything God’s led me through (just because I didn’t see him much doesn’t mean he wasn’t there), he should bring me back here.

Ah, home.

You can find anything on the Internet, if you look hard enough…

…including demotivational posters:

(despair.com)

…or who you were in a past life:

In a Past Life…

You Were: A Greasy Viking. Where You Lived: New Guinea. How You Died: In Childbirth.

(Who Were You In a Past Life?)

Also, ever seen the Leeroy Jenkins video? Well, I just found out that they have a whole website dedicated to all things Leeroy Jenkins–including a Leeroy J. techno mix to the tune of the Mortal Combat theme.

Please don’t ask how I know the Mortal Combat theme–I can only blame my brother.

God is my DJ (part I)

Madeline L’Engle: If we feel that we already know something in its totality, then we fail to keep our ears and eyes open to that which may expand or even change that which we so zealously think we know.

Bertrand Russel: People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.

So, guess what I’m doing tomorrow? I’m a-goin’ to church!

This is something I do occasionally. I used to do it a lot more when I went through a rather fundamentalist phase, but the last couple years have been pretty church-free, due to the extreme dislike I developed for (O King of stereotypes) “churchgoing folk”.

“Jesus save me from your followers” and so on.

See, the church I went to, the one where I figured God was alright after all, was really, really cool. Pastors under thirty, with tattoos and such; a funky downtown building; tons of punk rock Christian kids (I was one of them, I admit)–the place was my third home, and I played bass in the band, and we played such cool music…

But there was a falling-out or two among church members and pastors and we were included in all this mess, and these falling-outs resulted in Mitch and I (and several other people) leaving the church.

I was a sad little Christian. I’d lost my home.

I started clinging fiercely to certain beliefs–dying my hair back to brown, taking out my piercings, and so on, in an effort to seek out “who God wants me to be.” I cleared out anything “unChristian” (oh, what a sad-sounding, hollow word) from my closet, my bookshelf, my CD wallet, and started memorizing Scripture to keep me afloat in these difficult, church-less times.

Adrift in a sea of strange churches, we tried a few, but quickly tired of the “we’ve never seen you here before; you must not be a real Christian” attitude, and so we decided that we much preferred coffee and eggs and toast on Sundays to offbeat clapping and small talk.

We stopped looking for God among the stained glass and dusty pews. We’d given up on finding him among the theater seats and strip lighting a long time ago, and figured that PowerPoint presentations were a sure sign of trouble.

Without the bubble that common belief provides, I began to let go of some of the rather alarming prejudices I’d accumulated (“unChristian.” Pah). I developed an appreciation for Linkin Park, body piercing, red lipstick and fiction (God, what did I do without that?)–all things I’d loved dearly prior to my own private Middle Ages, but that I’d shunned on my well-marked road to holiness.

Not to God, necessarily. But to holiness.

And, oh, now I love such sinful things–margueritas and red wine, Harry Potter, tattoos and the word “fuck” (which I am still too timid to say out loud without checking for signs of imminent smoting). I just don’t have time to go around feeling guilty for everything. It’s exhausting.

This does not make me better than anybody, I know–that is perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned over the last few years. My road is not everybody’s road–far from it. But I like it here, it’s nice, and the scenery’s constantly changing.

I am a happy Christian, if imperfect and always asking pesky questions.

As for what prompted this entry, I ran into one of my favorite people from my old favorite church today–and there has been a big overhaul. The church, which had moved from its funky downtown building to a strip mall in the gross suburbs and thus lost a lot of its congregation (Mitch and me included), has now moved into a funky old church in a funky old neighborhood close to downtown. The staff has changed significantly, and one of my other favorite people is now head pastor. The church is very small again. It is starting, essentially, from scratch.

Funny how things come around like that. I am thrilled by the possibility of going back, though I harbor no illusions that everything will be just like it was, oh no–I am very different, I am older, Mitch is too, and so is everyone else. To go to church, expecting nothing but to hang out with God for a bit, sounds fantastic.

…continued in Part II.

Oh no, they didn’t! (But yes, they did)

While browsing through People magazine, I happened upon a full-page advertisement for a new made-for-TV movie. Some choice text from the ad:

It wasn’t such a good thing.
Cybill Shepherd is MARTHA BEHIND BARS.
Domestic diva cleans toilets!
Martha teaches her cellmates arts and crafts!
Jailhouse tart baked with apples of shame!

Yup. Complete with photos of Cybill/Martha looking pensive as she gazes through thick cell bars at the camera.

I am not joking.

Mitch caught this fish…

…and it’s a big ‘un!

Baton twirlers are hot

I own three sweatshirts, and this morning, I opted to wear the gray, hooded one–which happens to have WESTERN stamped across the chest in blue “your-college-here” block letters. This, I realize upon entering the University of Washington campus, was not the best choice.

My mom, my stepdad Steve, Mitch and I are here for the Huskies vs. Somebody game–more specifically, we’re here to watch my brother Ross play sax in the marching band–and everybody we encounter within the gates of UW’s Campus is either a sorority girl, decked out for Formal Rush Week (think Mean Girls: The College Years), or a Husky fan.

The place is awash with purple and gold: Husky banners trail from pick-ups and sedans and RVs; men in Husky jackets and caps toast the game with Husky beer mugs; tacky gold W earrings wink from beneath carefully teased bouffants. Stuffed huskies, draped in purple and gold mardi gras beads, perch atop trash cans. Students rush by with pawprints fake-tattooed on their cheekbones, flaunting their “U of Wash” T-shirts; little girls in UW cheerleading costumes hang off their mothers’ arms, and one old woman sports an eyecatching cap, which is completely covered in sequins–lavender, surrounding a gold W.

“They don’t have a problem with Western here, do they, Mom?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest. I am sincerely concerned about getting mobbed–after all, I am pathetically outnumbered, and I’ve heard tales of the old-school feud that UW has going with Washington State.

Mom laughs. “No, down here they think you Western kids are nice.”

I’ll take nice, if it means not getting attacked by rabid Husky fans.

———-

We left early this morning, after a brief tussle about our own Husky car flag (Steve wanted it up, proud and purple, heralding us as the half-hearted “I’m-really-here-for-the-marching-band” fans that we are, while Mom protested. Finally, the flag went up and stayed there, despite my attempt to sneak it back into the car), and, fortified with caffiene, we drove the 2 hours to Seattle in a comfortable, coffee-scented silence.

Once there, our first order of business is lunch, and this is a bit tricky, given the loosely interpreted rules about where you can and cannot have food around Husky Stadium. In Dempsey Indoor Stadium, for example, where Ross is playing in the pre-game “Husky Huddle”, you can not have “outside food”–only the five dollar chili dogs available at Dempsey’s concession stand.

So we spread our little hippie picnic out on a patch of grass near Dempsey Stadium, and unpack things like tapanade, olive bread, homemade brownies and Blue Sky All-Natural Soda.

And Baked Cheetoes.

I will say this: in the land of all things synthetic and impure, the Baked Cheeto is king. Not only is it tasty, fluorescent orange, and available in a wide variety of textures and cheese-related flavors, it also offers the comforting illusion of being good for you.

I love Baked Cheetoes.

When we finish licking the last sticky orange remainder of lunch off our fingers, we head into Dempsey, which is, of course, awash in purple and gold–and today is, oh joy, Husky Band Day, which means that Dempsey is packed with kids from high schools all over Washington, here in uniform to watch the Husky Band at work.

Thirty bands worth of high school kids. Hoo-rah.

We find a spot on the Astroturf and settle in, hoping that Ross will be somewhere within eyesight once the show gets going–and we don’t have long to wait to find out, because, a few minutes after we shrug off our raincoats and shuffle around, trying to make the most of our standing room, the Husky Band drum line sprints out onto the ‘turf, pauses for the briefest of seconds, and then proceeds to beat the hell out of their snares, cymbals and bass drums.

I love the drum line. Boy, with those drums they communicate some wild excitement; they deliver an intense anticipation of something, I do not know what–only that, in my case, it is not football. I couldn’t care less about the football, honestly, but I really like the drums.

With the drum line, out come the cheerleaders, and they are everything one might expect from cheerleaders: purple panties flashing beneath white pleated shirts, lean muscular legs, interchangable faces, and vari-colored hair ironed into sleek curtains.

They do handsprings and backflips, they bust out the pom-poms, while the boy cheer squad (oh, yes, the boy cheer squad) pumps their collective fist and chants something that I cannot catch.

I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet, clapping, as the rest of the band sprints out, purple and white uniforms crisp and accented by a glint of brass. There are nearly two hundred musicians, spread out over the front of the indoor stadium, and, though it’s tough to look cool in a band uniform, I’d say that most of them manage it pretty nicely–and that my brother, who is well over six-feet tall and standing dead center in front of us (“Yes!” my Mom calls over the drums, “How’s that for luck?”), looks mighty tough in his Husky threads.

But perhaps I’m a bit biased.

So the band leads us in some rousing renditions of “Tequila” (we all know the words to that one), UW’s fight song “Bow Down to Washington” (surely one of the weirdest songs ever written) and, ah, yes, “Louie Louie.”

That’d be the one where the whole sax section gets up in front and dry-humps their horns for the duration of the song–while playing the lead. It’s rather impressive, I must say. (Quote from my brother, later that night: “God, my quads just burn–I mean, you can only hump a saxophone for so long…”.)

Partway through the show (cue theme music)…out comes the baton twirler. Pretty and blonde, decked out in a sequined leotard (yup, complete with a gold W over her midriff), she is…possibly stupendous? I’m not sure there’s actually a word for it, but wow.

The only thing I’ve ever seen to rival her for hotness was at a funk show in Salt Lake City, when a dread-locked, bandau-topped, tattooed girl stood off to one side of the dance floor and executed all kinds of hula hoop moves that I’d never dreamed possible–shimmying the hula hoop from ankle to waist, waist to neck, neck to the fingertips of an extended arm, and back down again; whipping the hoop around her body, limb to limb, without any evident pattern, all while keeping perfect time to the music.

That was probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time, followed very, very closely by UW’s baton twirler.

Oh yeah, and I saw a firedancer once. That was cool, too.

So the baton twirler juggles and tosses and somesaults and smiles, as the band plays, dances, and occasionally sings, and all the while the cheerleaders shake their booties, pompoms and hair, and throw each other around.

Mitch and I elbow each other constantly, pointing and calling, “Ooo, look over there,” while trying not to miss our cue to shout “Go Huskies!” or “Tequila!” or whatever.

By the time it’s all said and done, and the last tassled cap has marched out through the stadium door, I’m thoroughly overstimulated.

And tired.

And the football game hasn’t even started.

———-

Okay, let’s just say it: football is weird. Does any game really need that many rules? C’mon.

Halfway through the first quarter, as Mitch is explaining to me what the hell a touchback is, I decide that there’s really no point asking “What just happened?”, when any explanation will require five minutes, several diagrams and some elaborate hand gestures.

Eh. At least I know what a touchdown is.

In keeping with Northwest tradition, it looked miserable this morning, making us all think jackets, hats and sweaters were necessary, but by noon the sun’s out and shining and I would trade a whole bag of Baked Cheetoes for my sunglasses, which I mistakenly left in the car (O cursed lack of foresight! How could I be so blind?).

As I my eyes glaze over with inattention, I watch the planes zoom in close overhead on their way in or out of SeaTac (I can just hear the captain: “…and to your left, you’ll see Husky Stadium, where a game is currently in progress–the Huskies are probably losing again, so you might not want to look…”), fiddle idly with my pile of discarded clothing, and stare unabashedly ’round at the crowd.

Finally, I pinch my mom and ask if she has a pen. “Why?” she squints at me, “what for?”

“…take notes,” I mumble, and she laughs.

“You’re not going to blog about this, are you?”

“Maybe,” I say, but by then she’s given me the pen, so ha! I dig out my trusty notebook and start scribbling.

Somehow, I make it to halftime, and I get all excited about seeing the band march and make funny, purple shapes on the field…but to my dismay, all the high school bands start filing onto the field with the Husky Band.

Combined, they take up the entire field. There will be no marching, I can tell.

Instead, they serenade us with a rather spotty version of “New York, New York” (“For your halftime confusion,” Mitch narrates for me, mimicking the announcer’s voice, “thirty-two different bands will play thirty-two different renditions of the popular Frank Sinatra tune, ‘New York, New York’–at thirty-two different tempos!”).

And then the game’s back on.

To summarize: what the crap?! The Huskies won!

———-

After the game, we do a bit of shopping on University Ave., because I need more of my favorite notebooks, and I only know of one store on the West Coast that carries them, and Steve wants another Husky flag for the car.

“So we can have one on each side,” he says, and I swear he’s smiling mischeviously. “Like a hearse!”

Mom rolls her eyes. Ah, how well I know that look.

We shop, we eat burritos, we drop Ross off at his frat house and say good-bye as Mom hands him a parting gift of laundry detergent, brownies and $10 in quarters.

“Go forth and do laundry!” We call, as we climb back into the flag-bedecked car and hit the road. The only tough spot on the way home comes when Mom tries to roll her window down, nearly tossing one of the Husky flags into traffic.

“Oops,” she says, as Steve reaches over her seat to snatch it out of the window and save it from almost certain demise–but not before a passing car (whose driver is, I notice, wearing a purple and gold windbreaker) spies the flag and gives us a solemn, supportive thumbs-up.

Alright, Freud: tell me what I wished for

When I was a wee lass, my dad taught me this very important thing.

No, wait, I can see you cringing, and I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry–this isn’t a childhood story. This is cool, I promise.

So, probably I’d just woken up from some nightmare or another, and my dad came in to comfort me and tell me it’s not real and blah blah blah, but what he said was this: if you can wake up just the teeniest bit, you can change your dreams, or you can at least make your bad dream a happy one.

Yeah, yeah, okay, stop calling us hippies and listen. His example was, if you’re having a dream where you’re falling, well, figure out how to fly. It’s that simple.

I had forgotten about this completely, because it’s not often that I have nightmares–usually I just have these bizarre, startlingly vivid dreams that sometimes come in narrative form, so I can write them down when I wake up and maybe pass them off as fiction some day.

The other night I had a dream that I’d cut myself, and I was out of bed and in the shower before I managed to convince myself that my left thumb was okay–I kept favoring it and trying to shampoo my hair one-handed. Doesn’t work well, I can assure you.

That same dream, I dreamt I had another tattoo, and I remembered it well enough that I was able to sketch it out later that day. Crazy, huh?

So usually, I don’t want to change my dreams.

But last night…whew. Last night I had a bad one. After some unremembered chain of events in which I betrayed somebody and found myself separated from Mitch, I ended up on a beach. Not just any beach, either. This was the creepiest beach I’ve ever seen.

To my right was an abandoned train trestle, slick black and slimy, and covered in wormy shapes that stood out from the pilings like fingers. Beneath the trestle stood some six-inches of brackish water.

As I watched, a creature that roughly resembled a young alligator, but black and sticky and without eyes, crawled over the trestle and dropped into the water–which covered the creature more completely than such shallow water should.

(Shivering)

To my left was a stretch of pale, rocky beach, which was covered entirely by the bleached skins of thousands of gray-and-white snakes, Because there were so many (none of them were more than a foot long), there was no telling whether all of the snakes were mere skins…

Behind the beach was a range of low, jagged, jet black mountains.

(Still shivering)

The color in the dream was all bleached out. Anything that wasn’t solid black was gray, or a sick-looking olive green. The water in front of me was nerve-rackingly still, and I stood on the only bare patch of sand.

Not a sound. After the scary-gator dropped into the water, nothing moved–not even me. I knew, like you know things in dreams, that I had to go one way or the other, but both looked terrible and neither worth choosing. So I stood still.

And then I remembered, hey! I don’t have to be here! Who writes this stuff, anyway? I wondered. I want to dig them out of my subconscious and have ‘em fired!

So I started trying to think up a big, nice-looking bird to come swoop down from the sky and carry me off–but because the dream felt so bad and mean, the best I could do was a hawk. Okay, a giant hawk, I thought, and kept concentrating until a sound broke my attention with a resounding snap.

Over the mountains came a huge, huge–let me reiterate: HUGE–wave, and it dropped right into the scary water and all of it came rushing toward me, snakes and scary-gators and all, and the best I could manage was to lift myself up, inches above the water so that as it rose, I felt only a bit of spray on the backs of my legs.

Bird! I kept thinking, as the water rose and I rose slowly, slowly, C’mon, bird!

And it must’ve showed up at some point, because I woke up.

My (very) minor mischief

Yes, today is a day for minor mischief. I don’t know what it is–perhaps a trying week, perhaps a certain anxiety knotting itself up around my collarbone–but today I cannot contain myself. Or, okay, I can contain myself, but just barely.

As I walked past City Hall this morning, on my way downtown, I noticed that a 10-man protest was underway, picket signs and all–something to do with electrical inspectors, or a shortage thereof. Anyway, it was not the protest that caught my attention, oh no–it was the camera crew. On the pretty lawn of City Hall stood an honest-to-God news reporter, staving off the rain with a knee-length jacket (a gray color, inevitably called something savvy like “slate” or “charcoal”), speaking calmly to the cameraman as the wind did a number on his salon-styled hair.

The camera was rolling.

And my clear shot at the sidewalk directly behind the stoic reporter awoke something devious and wonderfully childish in me. I wanted nothing more in the world just then than to commit some playful act of mischief–nothing so high-brow as flashing or streaking, no, all I wanted was to run up behind the reporter and make a face, stick out my tongue and give him bunny-ears. Something like that.

Oh, but I stifled the impulse and went on my way, smirking. I contained myself, but just barely.

Later, at my favorite coffee shop, I ducked into the ladies’ room and noticed that someone had written “INDICT BUSH FOR CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE” on the little chalkboard near the toilet. I rubbed out BUSH and wrote YOUR MOM. And then I chuckled to myself. So juvenile. So unabashedly immature.

Later still, I impulse-bought a cheap bottle of Royal Red nail polish and spent the better part of the afternoon painting my finger- and toenails a deep, glamorous, ’50s starlet-style red. (I am usually of the “clear or none at all” nail polish persuasion, and so I made a spectacular mess of it.)

Now I am typing daintily, trying not to ruin my nails.

America, let’s step it up a notch

The name “Princess” was ranked 748 in the 1,000 most popular baby names in America for 2004.

My name (Thea) did not make the cut for any of the last 25 years.