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2006-01-11 @ 4:49 p.m.
why girls named falafel are so delicious


Sorry if I just go on and on about the weather, but we�re once again about ready to hit 50 degrees in a part of the country where -20 at this time of the year is not unusual. And it got me wondering. Is this the Apocalypse? Did I miss out on some mysterious cloud formation that spelled out 666 last Sunday, when I was at the yuppie store scooping up vast quantities of dark chocolate non-pereils in a subconscious attempt to hoard chocolate for the End of the World? Because that would be what I would do if I knew the End of the World was coming. That and have vast amounts of wild, uninhibited sex, as well as watching the rest of �Six Feet Under� and telling all the people in my life that I love them even though I act like a self centered asshat most of the time.

So I did once again go for a walk today. I had told my friend �G� online I was going to the gym, by why? Why bypass the great outdoors full of birds, nature and a chance to be gang banged converted by a flock of Mormons. Oh dear. Here I was, innocently walking around The Village that is so Martha Stewarty that even Martha Stewart wouldn�t believe it, and suddenly I rounded a corner, dressed all in black like I usually am...damn heathen hippie. And there was a bunch of fresh scrubbed, well dressed Mormon boys on a mission. To tell you about JEEEE-sus.

YIKES!!!!!!!


Where do I go? What do I do? I�m on foot. I�m 47. They�re all in their 20�s. Surely they could outrun and tackle me in the name of Jesus. They do, after all, have the Big Guy, on their side. I immediately started to cross the street and they all started to follow, if not surround me. ��scuse me ma�am (grrr! There�s that �ma�am� thing again!), we�d like to talk to you about our Lord Jesus Christ.� Me: No, thank you. I went to Catholic School. I�m good.� (now breaking into a light sprint). Suddenly I realize they�re all chasing me down Limestone, like some crazed Mormon posse. �But we just want to talk to you about His message!� Me looking back in terror. Fortunately they finally got the message, as I nearly calapulted over the hood of a 2006 silver Mercedes SUV that was parked on the other side and they were left standing in the middle of the street yelling, �Happy, God-filled Day!� and �Jesus Loves You�.

Oy! Do they have sprays for that?

Anyways, I continued to walk towards my apartment and walked past this old paper mill which has been abandoned for several years. Amazingly the doors were open and I looked inside and it looked like the worst hazardous waste disaster site in the Northern Hemisphere. It�s really a huge fire disaster waiting to happen and I�m really amazed that some kid hasn�t taken a match to it yet. But as I looked in, and it reminded me of my new acrylic painting class I started on Monday night. Now why would a abandoned hazardous waste dump remind me of my art class at the �Y�? I guess it had to do with the cute, somewhat unorthodox art teacher we had for the class.

The last one time class I had taken there had been taught by a bland middle aged woman who was exactly the type of person you could see teaching an art class at the �Y�. Mildly talented in art. Liked dropping names of local artists in class. Liked to tell how she had won a ribbon at the State Fair for one of her paintings. Woo. In other words, the human equivilant of Muzak.

But this kid, probably about 24, was rough hewn, blonde, energetic, goofy, had multiple piercings and really had no idea how to teach a class. His key phrase was �Go for it!!� (dude). Now you have to understand..1) this is the �Y�. 2) this is in The Village 3) Being staid is in, being original and free -- OUT! I still like living here though. I can just be weird and artsy in my apartment if I want.

So the class consisted of about 7 people, all of whom were probably 60 and above. I was the youngest. They all had the L.L. Beane/Blue Fish vibe going. When they went around and were asked their occupations, everybody except me had been a school teacher. Whenever I say my job title, nobody ever knows what it is, and then if I choose to explain I work with mentally ill people, everyone usually kind of shifts uncomfortably in their seats. Of course if I were a shrink, that would probably be different, but I�m not. I did get a laugh unexpectedly when I said I was taking another art class on Wednesday night but I was bored drawing �naked people�. Heh! I guess nobody in the Village has ever seen anyone nekkid except for maybe the gardner out in the gardening shed.

And wouldn�t you know it? This one woman came late. She had been in my other class and I guess is kind of a fixture around the art room at the �Y�. She has a voice that reminds me of the hillbilly woman in �Saturday Night Live�s� recurring sketch about the Appalachian ER room. Kinda high pitched and tres annoying. And to make matters even worse, she had a mother of a cold and was sniffing and gurgling and sneezing and horking her loogies into kleenexes and throwing them next to me. Like ewwww! So like when the art teacher went around shaking everyone�s hand and shook hers first and then mine, I counted the seconds until I could kind of secretly slink off to a nearby sink and wash her Appalachian E-coli flesh eating bacterial guck off my ever lovin� body.

And you know what made me really angry? Once we started painting our color wheels, she had the nerve to ask if she could stick her brush into my yellow and before I could answer, she had already buried her brush up to the wood in MY PAINT. That, I guess, would have been ok, if she hadn�t contaminated my yellow with stray black paint from her brush. The nerve!!! Bitch!

But the real fun was when our young teacher started making our class less YMCAish and more like a real experimental art class. I like that. I like being challenged and showed new ways to do things. I guess this kid is mainly a sculptor, and after looking at the paintings he brought in, its true. But he started showing us how to mix in various compounds to provide various textures under the paint. One thing was like spackle. Another had the consistency of glue and with that he had small jars of stuff like iron oxide dust from a foundry he used to work at, dirt (!!) and a big paint bucket full of wood shavings. All of the staid Villagers just sort of stared at him blankly, like �huh?�

The poor woman next to me, who was probably in her 60�s, twirled her paintbrush around in yellow, red and blue paint for the entire 2 hours. I think she was afraid she was going to make a mistake. That�s the great thing about art...there�s no such thing as a mistake, there�s only opportunities to make something better. So only me, and one other woman, applied all the smoky, dusty, lung cancer producing additives to our paintings. Brian, our baby art boy teacher, was all excited when we partook of his chemicals.

Our homework? Bring in stuff we can mix into our paint/paintings next week. On one of his paintings, he has smashed an old calculator and glued all the tiny electronic parts on the paper and then painted over them for a 3D effect. So when I was walking by that old factory today I was trying to think what I could find in there, that would be toxic enough to close down the �Y� and evacuate the entire Village with interesting enough. And I did come up with one idea....condoms! Can you imagine the screaming involved by the old ladies in the room, if I whipped out a ribbed condom and started slopping compound all over it and painting it like an oblong rainbow!! Yay me!!

It�s funny, I�m uptight in all areas of my life except art. I wonder why that is. Hmm. Guess I should talk to �A� about that sometime. We did have another fun session on Tuesday. Not much is going on in my life right now. I am still walking around, somewhat stoned on my pain medication, so its like walking around in a Beatles song from their psychedelic period. As usual, it was about my love life, or lack of one. Poor �A�. He truly does have the patience of a saint.

We mainly talked about our forthcoming group and other important things like the game show, �Deal or No Deal�. I�ve only watched it once, and I think it was because my ass had morphed into the couch the first night I had taken that pain medicine and couldn�t reach the remote. But I like Howie Mandell. I actually used to have a minor crush on Howie in the 80�s. Yeah, I know. I�m a freak. I just don�t have any interest in pretty boys like Brad Pitt. I like guys with a sense of humor. And if they have the dark hair/dark eyes thang, even better. So we were talking about the show, and I was telling him the show made me kind of angsty and that I would probably fold the moment I won like $100. And he said it was all based on odds and that anybody could win big. And that subject quickly fell to the wayside. Why? �A�s� REAL favorite part of the show are all the girls with the suitcases. Figures. (me rolling my eyes). I then said, �Have you noticed how none of them have normal names like Mildred or Betty?� and �A� said, �Yeah, they�re all named names like Apolonia and Falafel�.

Falafel?

I then asked him something I�ve been dying to ask him. To say the famous line from the show.... "Deal or no deal�. Why? Well...............�A� has more than a fleeting resemblance to Howie (except with hair, of course). At first he wouldn�t do it. Decorum, you know. He is my shrink after all. But then he finally did it and I collapsed in laughter. It really was funny. Or maybe I was stoned, still. But for the rest of the day, everytime I thought of �Deal or No Deal�, no matter where I was, I would just totally crack up. Thanks �A�, that really made my day!


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