project: patio meet-up no. 1

Thursday night was the inaugural Project: Patio Meet-Up at Raffe's Beer Garden, and the gods of beer and outdoor-drinking were truly shining on us since the daily deluge we'd been getting every afternoon and evening for the past week held off for one night only, not unlike a concert of Motown divas.





Raffe's Beer Garden
What I Loved: The beer selection at Raffe's is absolutely off the charts. Sure, it's 99 percent bottled, but when I saw they had Samuel Smith's on the menu, I would've been happy for them to serve it to me from a milk jug because it has been way too long since I enjoyed a Sam Smith's brew. I wasn't exactly at a Sam Smith's pub, being at Raffe's on Poplar Avenue here in Memphis, Tennessee, but I was reminded of the time that the AEB and I got so drunk at a Sam Smith's pub in Swiss Cottage that we apparently took dozens of pictures of ourselves on the tube on the way back to my place in Kingsbury and had ZERO memory of the little photo session until some time the next afternoon when I found the pictures on the camera. And even those didn't really jog anything, at least not for me. I lost about a half an hour of my life completely to Sam Smith's wheat, but there is photographic evidence and by God, the beer was worth it.

Why You Should Get Drunk There: The patio is great, small and intimate and tucked back off of busy Poplar Ave., and the interior ain't bad, either. The lighting is nice and dim, such that the person across from you ALREADY looks more attractive even before you've had a sip of anything, and though I did not sample them that night, I hear the gyros are out of this world.


cheers,
elizabeth

raise your bud light in the air

Wedding season starts today. Can you hear that? It's a DJ, somewhere, cueing up "Don't Stop Believin'." I am going to where he is.


cheers,
elizabeth

bad hair day doesn't begin to cover it

One morning back in college I was brushing my teeth, leaning over the sink, and in one awkward flick of the Crest SparkleKids I had toothpaste in my hair. And if you've ever had toothpaste in your hair then I don't need to tell you this, but toothpaste doesn't just come out. It crusts. And clumps. And becomes part of your hair's ecosystem and necessary for maintaining homeostasis.

I'm in a hurry on this particular morning to get into the newsroom, so I brush it out as well as I can (which is not well at all), grab my things and go. About five minutes later as I pull into a spot in the parking lot across from the journalism building, I see in my rearview mirror that the boy whose affections I was at this point seeking was also parking his car at that exact moment on the other side of the lot.

Immediately, because my brain is hard-wired for awkward and spastic, I panic. THERE'S TOOTHPASTE IN YOUR HAIR! My inner voice is shrieking at me and I am obeying its every whim and freaking the eff right on out because what will happen if he sees me with the toothpaste in my hair? Who dates a girl who spits toothpaste into her OWN HAIR? Who? Knowing that he will be repulsed by the very sight of my mishap of dental hygiene and that I must do everything I can to avoid such an unthinkable disaster, I whip that car door open and I am moving at a speed that perhaps would only be necessary in a bomb scare or alternate terrorist-type situation.

I see him approaching, and I know he sees me, but I grab my bag out of the trunk and make a bee-line for the building, pretending that I didn't notice him, my crusty hair just a-flappin' in the wind like the official national flag of Awkwardland, flying at half-staff in mourning for my dignity.

Now, I tell you all of this because -- I have plastic in my hair.

Like, hardened bits of plastic. All melded into my hair particles. Why? Why is this? Am I trying out for the next Lady GaGa video? No, no I wish that were the case. Actually what happened is that I left my 400 degree flat iron sitting on top of a plastic three-drawer rolling shelf thing-a-ma-jig and it melted the plastic right off the damn thing and (despite the PUTRID odor of incinerated synthetic fibers) I didn't realize this was happening and just sent that flat iron for a joy ride through my locks, leaving trails of white melty plastic all in its wake.

The good news is that mostly it is confined to one area of my hair and that mostly I think I've gotten it (sort of, a little) brushed out and that MOSTLY it is not noticeable at all, to anyone, except to me. In that way I imagine it is not unlike the toothpaste that caused me to break into a sprint to flee an oncoming cute boy. Whoops.

The victory here is how I'm handling the plastic chunks in my hair, really. Because -- though the situation itself will go down in the awkward hall of fame, along with most things I do -- I have not allowed it to make me behave awkwardly (any more than usual). I simply tell the story, and it's good enough comic relief, and since not a SOUL but me even knows the stuff is there, everyone sort of moves on from the issue.

Now that part is decidedly UNLIKE the toothpaste incident, because I did feel it necessary -- when I eventually did go on an actual date with this boy, a week or two later -- to bring up, completely unprompted and totally of my own doing, the morning when I beat feet to get away from him like a crazy person. He did comment that he had seen me that day, but he did not -- did NOT -- mention that I had behaved in any way out of the ordinary. Could I have stopped there? Could I? Yes. Yes I could. But did I?

Have you read this blog before?

I decided to share with him that I had fled the scene because I had toothpaste in my hair.



I think my number might've mysteriously disappeared from his phone after that. And good grief. I really don't blame him.


cheers,
elizabeth

a bit turned around on the old timeline

Like a good Southern girl, I regularly fantasize about husbands and babies. Well, maybe just husband, singular, but definitely babies, plural. Or even more like this: BABIES!!! Yeah, definitely like that.

I feel like said fantasies are pretty par for the course for my gender, age group and other demographic qualifications like geographic location. But here's the thing y'all. I daydream about being pregnant and having babies WAY more than I even think about getting married or being married or anything at all to do with marriage. It's not that I don't want to be married, because I totally do and I most definitely, assuredly, absolutely do not want to go about the having of the babies part without the getting married part happening first. The sequence of those events is kind of important necessary not up for debate.

I feel like some of this imbalance in the ever-more-by-the-day anti-feminist musings of the inner crevices of my mind can be blamed on the fact that babies are ALWAYS up in your face. When was the last time you walked out of your house, unprepared and unawares, and stumbled upon some lady in a wedding gown and a group of weepy bridesmaids on your front sidewalk? Unless you live across the street from some type of public garden or interesting water feature I'm going to wager the answer is NEVER. Never times has that happened to you.

But how many times do you run into babies? Or pregnant women? Or PREGNANT WOMEN WITH BABIES? How many times? Almost daily. There they are, those damn babies, all up in my face making me want them. And pre-maritally! FOR SHAME.

Let's juxtapose the cute fat little balls of fleshy wrinkly NOM NOM NOM that I just want to put in my purse and kidnap with the activity that I undertook last night: thank you note writing.

This is related. Stay with me.

I am a firm believer in a good thank you note, do not get me wrong. I don't think I need to remind you for the 47th time that my mama did, in fact, teach me how to act. The thank you notes I was writing last night were for the recent charity golf tournament that my sorority alumnae association puts on every year. Three sisters split the load of cards that needed writing, and by card number 25 I would have sooner signed myself up for a diagnostic colonoscopy than agree to write one more WORD, one single solitary letter on any piece of stationery, even if it was a thank you note for my recent millions and billions of dollars in lottery winnings. No sir, no m'am.

(Still related, I promise. Just keep with me.)

Once I finished my last card and sealed the envelope, I set it on the towering stack and thought to myself, "Just wait til you get married! Think of the thank you notes! Think how they'll each have to be personal and different and there will be THOUSANDS OF THEM and you will surely die from paper cuts and carpal tunnel! JUST THINK!"

And with that thought, with my wrists and fingers aching, I headed to bed, where I curled up with my copy of Jill Connor Browne's The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit. And laughed out loud reading stories about fat wrinkly Michelin Man looking babies.

Mixed in, inevitably, with plenty of tales about how those babies' mamas never should have married their idiot daddies in the first place.

See!?


cheers,
elizabeth

i am woman, hear me shriek

One of the many dangers of living alone as a single woman is that sometimes creepy crawly bugs and assorted other gross things happen. Yes, bugs HAPPEN. Especially when you live in an old midtown house built in 1920 where every nook and cranny is practically an open front door with a welcome mat and a cozy lamp on inviting them to come on in and stay a while.

And when these bugs happen, as a single woman, no matter how much you scream and writhe, no big strong man is going to burst forth from your floor boards to come and lay waste to the vermin so at some point you've got to put on your big girl panties, have a little sip from your box-o-wine and kill the damn thing.

And in the interest of feminism and everything, I'm sure there are all kinds of women who would not DREAM of needing a man or anyone to kill a bug or open a jar or anything for them, by God, and believe me, deep in my heart I'm so happy for them. Really. Truly. But I am not one of them. Not as long as there is a chair to stand on while I scream and point and babble, I will never be one of them.

What I do know, though, as of Saturday night, is that comparatively speaking I'm really not so bad. Because Saturday night I got to see my friend (and upstairs neighbor, as I may have mentioned) Megan react to the sight of a cockroach.

I was helping her move an extra window unit that was in my closet up to her apartment, and as she was looking around in the kitchen for an extension cord I spotted the wiggly little antennae of a roach sticking out from behind the fold of a jacket that was hanging on the back of a chair in her living room. And y'all, I may have squealed a little bit in pointing the thing out, but I have NEVER seen such a reaction out of anyone to a roach as what came out of Megan.

It was hysterical. When the roach fell from the jacket (after I beat him out of it with a women's magazine, IRONY) he ran underneath the couch. My bug philosophy is kind of out of sight, out of mind, but Megan was not having it. She said she wouldn't be able to sit in the living room not knowing if he might crawl up on her shoulder at any minute to say YOO HOO THERE FINE LASSY! Fancy to meet YOU here!

She pulls out the couch, and naturally the little guy goes scurrying. He runs for the kitchen, and I follow him, but the magazine is big and unwieldy and I keep missing him and causing him to scurry more and eventually he runs underneath the stove. I commented that at least now he was in the kitchen, and not the living room, and I headed downstairs. Not five minutes later, as I was getting ready to doze in front of Flight of the Conchords, I hear a thunderous sound coming from upstairs, from one end of the house to the other, a few strong THWACKs and then silence.

I hear my phone buzz. It's a text message, from Megan. "I got him!"

Later that night I lent Megan my roach spray so she could give her floorboards and kitchen a good dose of the stuff. And so yesterday, when I was washing dishes and a relative of the recently deceased came scurrying across my backsplash, I reached under the sink for the only other thing down there that wasn't cooking spray. Windex.

And I sprayed that little bastard with Windex until, dazed and confused and stoned on glass cleaner, he fell down into the sink, where I finished the job with a nice steady stream of hot Memphis water.

Only he was too big to go down the drain. So I grabbed a table knife and stabbed at him until all his little pieces washed down, bit by bit. Take that, roaches! I am your NEMESIS! I will spray you with whatever I got, I don't even need no fancy roach spray bitches! I am an innovator of bug murder.

Of course, that knife is still sitting in the sink. Because frankly I may never use it again.

Roach guts. Shudder.


cheers,
elizabeth

project patio no. 7

Otherlands Coffee Bar
What I Loved: I'm pretty fond of Otherlands across the board. It's down the street from my casa, they brew a good cup of coffee and they provided me with countless hours of wireless when my apartment was woefully without the internet last fall. They have a great deck and they've got a decent line up of musical choices on any given weekend. Mr. RB and I were there to hear Julie Odell, a singer-songwriter gal who plays piano (while her husband plays guitar and they're so cute it makes you believe in the possibility of true hipster love).

Why You Should Get Drunk There: Well, maybe you shouldn't. I mean, you could. Technically speaking. They serve beer, and though it's all bottled they have a nice selection -- I sampled a Fat Tire as seen above, and the PBR was the property of Mr. RB -- but it's kind of a mellow place for the whole "gettin' DEE-RUNK" kind of drinking. It's more of a place for the one or two beers, chill out, watch a band, have an in-depth existential conversation kind of drinking. Be cool like Fonzi. That kind of thing.


After getting rained on and rained out last time around, the first Project: Patio meet-up has been rescheduled for this Thursday, May 27, still at Raffe's Beer Garden on Poplar. We'll be there from 7 til 9 p.m., so come join us and sample a tasty brew outdoors!


cheers,
elizabeth

in which i got Dooced

When I was 16, I was a free spirit. I was a free thinker. And I was definitely, most assuredly free with my tongue.

It's safe to say that before mid-May in 2001, I'd never really met anyone my age like me. I had plenty of friends, sure, but it was not an unobserved fact that they did not have the same passions as me, the same thirst for knowledge, the same sharpened wit. But something happened to me nine years ago this weekend, something very important and very seminal -- I became a HOBY ambassador. So that's where they'd been hiding everyone just like me.

I've written here several times in the past about the impact that HOBY (Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership) had on me as a teenager and has continued to have on me as a volunteer entering my tenth year of service with the organization. And were circumstances different, this very post might have been about that very thing. Because were circumstances different, I might have been returning today from the Tennessee HOBY seminar, a seminar I organized, orchestrated and led as a 21-year-old college senior just three years ago. But I didn't make the trip to Nashville this year, and it was by no choice of my own -- in February this blog (and that sharp wit and free tongue) earned me an unamicable, unceremonious divorce from the very organization that taught me to value such qualities in myself. I got Dooced.

Back in February I wrote a post that talked in frank terms about sex -- less a how-to, more an opining on some tales from my own personal (often awkward) history. Just two days after the post went live, I got a phone call from my Director of National Programs with HOBY. A parent had called the HOBY International office and complained because their child had read the blog post.

And let's qualify the word "child," before we go any further: this would have been a teenager of at minimum 17 years of age, as the student was an alumnus of the program.

I'm completely blind sided. The next thing I hear is, "You've violated the HOBY Code of Conduct." That punishments are possible, that those punishments might include suspension or complete expulsion from the program. I'm flabbergasted. My heart is racing. My DNP tells me I can either take the post down or I can increase security settings on Facebook so that underage friends wouldn't be able to access links to the blog from my profile page. I did both. And I waited.

Just two days later I had an e-mail in my inbox from HOBY Tennessee. It simply said that HOBY International had directed them that my services wouldn't be required for the next three years. I was devastated. I was too overwhelmed to finish out the day at work.

That weekend, a certified letter arrived for me letting me know that on a national level, the jig was up. And that was it. Just like that, a "code of conduct" violation happening so far outside the grounds of my work with the organization, the first offense in an otherwise exemplary and stellar career as a volunteer, had made me persona non grata, and never once was I offered the chance to plead my case. That weekend, I submitted a letter of appeal, a lengthy letter in which I cited this very fact, that I hadn't been allowed to participate or even be aware of the process, as well as the fact that the code of conduct cannot govern the lives of volunteers 365 days per year and that other prominent volunteers and employees post equally questionable (by HOBY's standards, not my own) content on their own Facebook profiles or social media accounts.

This letter went unanswered for more than two weeks. After multiple follow-up e-mails from me and numerous empassioned letters from fellow volunteers, I finally did receive an e-mail accepting my request to speak by phone. When this phone conversation took place, I was told that "something had happened" and "they hadn't received my e-mail." Now, were this 1995 and we were all using AOL mail and I was chatting you up on IRC, you could probably still convince me that the big bad purple people eater that lives in your internet cables ate my e-mail. But when I'm sending you something from a GMail account, the 15 people who were blind carbon copied on the e-mail all received it just perfectly fine, and shucks, y'all, it's 20-effing-10? Please excuse me while I laugh riotously. Should only take a moment.

Naturally, during this phone call I asked pointed questions about the policies behind this decision, including the Swiss cheese level of holes in the organization's code of conduct that includes the phrase "while serving HOBY," yet apparently applies year-round. Naturally, all of those questions were (not) answered with beating-around-the-bush, not-really-saying-anything-but-still-managing-to-talk-endlessly answers. Finally, at the close of the call I inquired again about an official appeals procedure, knowing that, just like the official policies that dictated my suspension, there wasn't one. I was told, "I'm a person you can appeal to." Here's the thing. I'm pretty decent with the English language, and there is a difference between "your official appeals process" and "appealing to" someone. This is not a Save the Children campaign, and I am not Sally Struthers. I'm not appealing to your emotions for you to donate $10 a month so a starving kid can eat dinner tomorrow. I couldn't give three shits about your personal opinion on this matter. I want to provide you with an official appeal.

Nonetheless, I had nothing in front of me but the options she'd given me. So I compiled a letter, yet again, and sent it off to her the next day. I proposed some alternate solutions. If they were so concerned about my online identity being connected with HOBY, then I would go through this blog to remove all mentions of the organization and do the same with my Facebook profile, even going as far to simply defriend any HOBY alum under the age of 18. This, along with the illumination of the heinous double standards and complete lack of policy, I felt would be sufficient to resolve the situation.

Apparently it was only sufficient in getting me a one-year reduction of sentencing. You'll pardon me if I'm not falling at anyone's feet to thank them.

I'll spare you the exact play by play of every step of the fight from then on, because it's been waging since February, painstakingly, constantly, and it's only recently died down. I have pursued this matter to every possible board, entity and individual within the organization, to no avail. Knowing that the people at the top were the decision-makers in the matter, I went above them and contacted the Board of Trustees -- as did many other volunteers on my behalf. The board of alumni and volunteers who advise HOBY International were expressly told they were not to discuss my case, because it was under appeal.

And here all this time I thought there was no official appeals process! Silly me. Oh, wait. Yeah. There's not one. Glad we got that cleared up.

When it became clear that the fight was a futile one, I began considering this post. And what I would say. Because all along, when the sentence was handed down I knew that I could never realistically see myself coming back to an organization that had hurt me so, so deeply. And I know that it's not about those people, or what they think. Everything I've ever done for HOBY, everything I would've done in the future, is about the high school sophomores who get to experience the change in their lives that I did nine years ago. And they are the reason that this weekend was a tough one to get through. Because of course I want to be there. Of course I do. But the scorn I feel? The anger, the resentment? Those feelings aren't going to go away.

And since I knew that, I felt a little bit more sure of writing this post. Because I knew writing it would be a death sentence. Writing this post means that even at the end of my shortened, merciful two-year term of suspension, I won't be coming back. And it rips my heart right out of my chest just to type those words because every ounce of who I am has been touched by HOBY in some way.

But I can't stand up for the principles and ideals of an organization that taught me to be who I am and then slapped me right across the face for it. I no longer believe in what they stand for. And if HOBY taught me anything, it's to stand up for what I believe in. And only what I believe in. And I believe in the power of my pen. I'm a writer and a humorist and the post I wrote was goddamned funny. Yes, it was about sex. It was about a late-bloomer girl who has crazy, hysterical misconceptions about sex and finally figures out the answers and lives happily ever after. If you want to know what I really think? Seventeen-year-old me could've really used to read something like the post I wrote.

So hopefully that kid, whoever they are, learned a little something from what they read before mommy got on the horn with HOBY. Because if, by chance, this student had been an ambassador at the seminar the year before, they would've been part of an impromptu sex education discussion that happened when an AIDS speaker misunderstood the direction and shape her remarks should take. And if by chance, she was there for that, she would've heard another ambassador voice something that he believed, at 16 years old, to be fact:

"Oral sex isn't sex because sex doesn't happen unless a sperm fertilizes an egg."

But yes. Let's keep sex from the children. Who knows what awful things could befall teenagers with such dangerous knowledge.


cheers,
elizabeth

why hello, old. meet new!

Mr. Risky Business and I have fancied ourselves martini-sipping, elbow-rubbing socialites a bit lately. If by martini-sipping you mean beer-drinking and by elbow-rubbing you mean getting business drunk and maybe accidentally touching the ass of the person behind you when you stumble toward the beer table. That's kind of more our speed.

Anywho.

We made an appearance at a soiree on Tuesday night to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Memphis Connect (who I blog for e'ry once in a while). The event was held at the new Playhouse on the Square and it was the first time for both of us to see the facility. Completely stunning, fancy pants art on the walls, the whole works.

There was Ghost River beer on tap (get on my taste buds I LOVE YOU) and yummy munchies that included little individual barbecue nachos, almost too cute to eat, but then you got over that when you remembered it was pulled pork and the only place it was supposed to be was in your digestive system.

As we downed our beers and scarfed our tiny nachos, though, we had no idea that this was to be a night of introductions. Of old meeting new. First, we walked up on the first meeting of my current boss and my future boss. And instead of standing to the side and waiting for them to finish chatting so as not to up the awkward ante -- because when have you EVER known me to pass up an opportunity to do JUST that? -- I busted right into the conversation and even commented on said awkwardness.

Then I talked to new boss and Mr. RB chatted with current boss and moments later we regrouped to move on to bigger, better and yet more uncomfortable interactions.

I kid.

But we DID see Mr. October.

We didn't exchange words, but I saw him across the room once and we made eye contact, long enough to warrant a wave from him. Not really like a full-handed, back-and-forth kind of wave, but more of a two-finger, "I'm sort of saluting you but not really from my forehead" kind of wave. A short while later, as he was leaving the room, he walked right by us, within inches, and waved again. This time it really was weird, because he was really too close to be waving and why didn't he stop and say hi? Because really, at that distance, I would've either committed to the conversation or done the old "I'm going to pretend I just don't see you right now."

A few hours later, after RB and I had left and gone home and watched a movie and were unwinding for the evening, I check my phone. There is a message. From Mr. October.

He says, "It was good to see y'all tonight. Haven't had a chance to say this, but Mr. Risky Business is a good guy. He's the kind of guy you're looking for."

I want you to sit with that for just a second because WHAT THE WHAT was the only thought I was really capable of for a good few minutes after I initially read it. I guess first and foremost I wonder, what's the point of that? Why didn't you just stop and talk to us, if it seemed important to relay that message?

And next, of course, WHY was it so important to relay that message? And perhaps my biggest question, WHAT does that even MEAN? He's the kind of guy I'm looking for? We went on four dates. How is this information with which you're acquainted? What kind of guy is this exactly that I'm looking for? Someone who's willing to be blogged about?

And how was it good to see us when you didn't even SPEAK TO US? The confusion just rambled out of my mouth in run-on sentences that all ended with my voice being raised but maybe weren't necessarily questions. I mean, it's nice enough. A nice sentiment. "Your boyfriend's a good guy" is always a pleasant thing to hear. Still, I was baffled.

I put my phone away, finished rambling and sighed. I looked at Mr. RB and said, "If he thinks I'm not going to blog about THIS, well, he hasn't learned a thing."


cheers,
elizabeth

open mouth, insert foot

Saturday night, after Mr. Risky Business and I almost fell asleep in our chairs at Otherlands (thanks to the potent combination of beer, a cozy dark room and singer-songwriter girls with songs that sound like the sleepy-time music my mom plays her kindergartners at nap time), we headed to my cousin's place for a party. Returning to the scene of the crime, as RB put it, since it was at this fabled duplex back in January that we'd first met.

The party this time around was actually for my cousin's duplex-neighbor-mate. Is that even a thing? I don't know. He lives on the other side and they often leave the doors open. That's the information I have.

Anywho. The party was to celebrate his graduation from college which apparently took just a little bit longer than it takes most folks and thus was even more worthy of massive celebration.

So Mr. RB and I are hanging out, chatting, drinking a beer, and we start talking to this guy who RB knows. They seem to run in similar circles. And at some point something comes up about music, and he asks me what I do. So I say, "Well, I guess I can go ahead and say it's my job -- I do marketing for the Memphis Music Foundation."

And he says, I shit you not: "Oh yeah? My wife applied for that job."

My whole body froze. It felt a little bit like I'd just said, "Yeah, well so's your mom" to someone whose mother had been tragically and unexpectedly beheaded the week prior in a combine accident. ALL ABOARD THE TRAIN TO AWKWARDTOWN. Chugga chugga choo choo bitches!

Turns out, it wasn't such a big deal because she didn't have any media or marketing experience and hadn't been asked to interview. She'd known it was more of a long shot. And she was pretty cool. We chatted for a while about the job and some other stuff, actually, but my memory of it is cloudy. This is perhaps because moments before, Mr. RB and I had been in the kitchen and poking around in the fridge for beer. The choices were Pabst and Bud Light Lime. Mr. RB, knowing what a snob I am, commented that there wasn't anything in there for me. But I, knowing that we were at a house party and sacrifices must be made, said, "Just hand me whatever."

This was an error. Bud Light Lime? It tastes like dish-washing detergent. Seriously. Not even necessarily the green kind. Just detergent. SOAP. The sudsy shit. I think I drank a fourth of the bottle before I just couldn't take it any more. The jug of citronella torch fluid was starting to look more appetizing.

But that one clearly had a label that said, "DO NOT DRINK," so I didn't even think of trying it. Maybe the Bud Light Lime people should consider that, too.


cheers,
elizabeth

you're never too old, barry

A few weeks ago, a little note arrived for me in the mail from Planned Parenthood, inviting me to their annual supporter party. Hmm, let's see. Opportunity to get inside big ass East Memphis home on Shady Grove and ogle rich people's belongings while also wearing a dress and eating foods whose names I can't pronounce and drinking free wine served by people in vests? YES PLEASE. Normally I might need to consult my calendar, but y'all know my schedule is always open for events involving 1.) cheese, 2.) free booze and 3.) the liberal and open discussion of the functions of the uterus in mixed company.

I was SO there.

I took along my mom and one other cast member, and the three of us spent most of the evening out on the back patio of the house, ogling the immense, sprawling back yard and chit-chatting with various other party guests. And having our wine refilled regularly, of course.

After about an hour or so, we were asked to come inside to hear a few words from Barry Chase, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region. Barry is a little firecracker of a man and if it were physically possible, I would have been holding him hostage in my front pocket ever since he spoke to the crowd on our final night of The Vagina Monologues. As he wrapped up his remarks that night, he told the audience, "I'm too old for this stuff, but you all be sure to use a condom!"

It was at that moment that I first wanted to spread him on a biscuit and eat him for breakfast because he is the cutest effing old man I have ever met in all my days. Oh, Barry Chase. You're never too old, you pistol.

Anywho.

As Barry was speaking, someone walked in the front door, which was located just a few feet behind where he stood on the landing. I peered around the tree (yes, THE TREE) in the middle of the foyer, and poked Andrea, who was standing next to me.

"Is that who I think it is!?" I whispered gleefully, my little liberal heart a-beating and my HUGE DORK instincts kicking in.

"It's STEVE COHEN!" she hissed back. And we both shuddered with political glee. There may have been giggling. I blame the wine.

We poke my mom and point out who's just walked in, and she says to us, probably loudly (again, the wine), "Yeah, I knew him back when he had hair." We giggle again. Next thing we know, he's been asked to say a few words. Naturally, he is totally unawares that this was going to happen and thus has absolutely nothing prepared to say, but hey, since they dragged me up here, maybe you'd like to hear this gripping personal story, that is both heartbreaking and thought-provoking, that explains my deep passions and convictions for the Planned Parenthood cause. Just if I have to say something. Hope that'll work.

What the what. Politicians.

So the three of us are chatting after he's done with his remarks, and he starts walking toward us. It seems like he's going to walk right by us, but perhaps when three sets of eyes are staring right at you it DOES actually burn into the back of your head. Or possibly Andrea and I were preening like teenage girls hoping that he'd notice us and then OH MY GOD HE NOTICED US. We immediately extend our hands to shake his and introduce ourselves, and he asks if Andrea and I are sisters, and we say no, and I say this is my mom, we're the related ones, or something incoherent resembling that, and then my mom reaches out her hand to shake his, and says, yes indeed:

"I knew you back when you had hair!"

He paused for just a second, maybe trying to remember her, or maybe trying to remember when he had hair, one can't be certain, and then said, "Yeah, I thought about doing something about that, but nah. I think this is a good look for me."

Oh, Steve. I'd vote for you.

(And so would my uterus.)



cheers,
elizabeth

do what makes your heart sing

What a difference a year makes.

This time last year, I was heading back to New Jersey after a week at home visiting friends and family and volunteering. After a weekend in Nashville, as I got into my car to head back to Memphis, knowing I'd be on a plane in 48 hours and knowing that said plane would take me back to a miserable, un-air-conditioned apartment and a miserable diet of hot dogs and toast and a miserable job and miserable MISERABLE, I just lost it. I bawled.

I bawled the way you do when you're a kid and you cry so hard that you lose your breath and struggle to catch it back between hiccups. It had been a few months since I'd come to terms with the fact that everything I'd ever wanted in life -- to move to New York, to work for a magazine -- maybe wasn't what life had intended for me, after all. But I still hadn't figured out what was intended for me, and the feeling of limbo, of being stuck in the purgatory that was Jersey City, making just barely enough money to pay the rent each month and invest in more off-brand hot dog stock, that feeling was tearing away at my insides, pulling me apart piece by piece, and as I bawled, all of those pieces were flooding out through my eyes. And through my hiccups.

When I think back on that stunning display of maturity and the feelings that it represented, I am overcome with gratitude for what life has delivered to me in just 12 short months. Sure, there are no accidents, and I worked my ass off for every last inch of it. I found a loop hole in my lease, I planned and orchestrated an incredible 36-hour road trip to retrieve my belongings from a questionably secured mini-storage, I hit the ground running and made connections and found a job and an apartment and one morning I woke up and I was happy.

So this weekend, when I got a call from the Memphis Music Foundation and was asked to join their team as Marketing and Development Coordinator, I had a brief out-of-body experience. Ex-squeeze me? A job doing something I love, surrounded by Memphis music, promoting Memphis music, living and breathing the soul of the city that first taught me to love the soul of a song?

Seriously?

It didn't quite seem real. It still doesn't. And it probably won't until the morning of May 17 when I arrive at the Music Foundation office on South Main for my first day of work.

Last night I said to my parents, "I have a job that uses BOTH OF MY DEGREES! Someone write a newspaper article about me! I'm an anomaly!" And though I was joking then, I know that red-faced, hiccuping, bawling me from just one year ago would have seen such a job as out of reach and perhaps even non-existent.

But y'all? It exists. It's in reach. It's less than two weeks away.

I've always thought of my life as a series of adventures, and this next chapter promises to be one of the greatest yet.


cheers,
elizabeth

it's all about who you know

I sometimes joke that Mr. Risky Business knows everyone, partly because he does kind of seem to know everyone, but also partly because he's never met a stranger. There would've been a time that I would've said the same thing about myself, but it's really not true. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting new people. I get high off of first impressions. But I am prone to occasional bouts of random sudden-onset shyness that attack with about as much predictability as the weather in Memphis in spring time and vary in severity from, "Ah, I'd rather not" to "OH MY GOD STRANGERS."

Not only does RB not have this issue, I think my sudden-onset shyness spurs him on to even greater feats because he so enjoys making me squirm just a little bit. And also, as we all know, I'm apt to say something monumentally stupid at times like these and that is pretty much always good for a laugh.

So on Friday night, we're down on South Main for the monthly art tour. He's painting and showing work, so Stef came down and joined me, and we did the do ourselves. I took her to the galleries that have become my favorites over the last few months, praised Allah for the good weather and got pretty punchy on free wine. On our way to make a drop-in at RB's gallery at some stage in the evening, a pitch-black coif of hair caught my eye as it floated by me on the sidewalk. I turned, and sure enough, it was Grace Askew (who RB and I recently saw play at Art After Dark at the Dixon and I recently wrote about on Live From Memphis).

Naturally, I share the sighting with RB later in the evening, not realizing that we'd be seeing her again in just a few minutes while I was face-diving into a soul burger at Earnestine and Hazel's. We'd just come back downstairs from a brief chat with Nate, the upstairs bartender, and a few trysts through the side rooms trying to reconnect with the unsettled souls of prostitutes in the nooks and crannies. It was just a few minutes after we'd returned to our table downstairs that she rolled in with a group of friends. RB decided to run out to the car to grab her latest album -- just purchased at the gig we'd been to -- and Stef and I, both being about three glasses of wine and two beers deep, proceeded to make love to the juke box and sing Al Green songs to each other. There was also a LOT of drunk dancing and arm flailing and I think at some point I attempted (and failed, poetically almost) to stand on a bar stool.

At some point during these festivities Grace and her crew escaped upstairs. The jury is still out on whether or not our dangerously high levels of OBNOXIOUS actually physically repelled them from the room, but the odds are good and frankly, I'll take that bet.

About this time, RB gets back and asks where Grace went. I quickly explain that I had repulsed her with my drunkenness. This seemed to require no explanation, so we headed upstairs to find her.

We found her kicking it with Nate, and RB got her autograph. She seemed thoroughly flattered and taken aback by the whole affair. I mentioned the story I wrote for Live From Memphis and told her the name of my LFM blog so she could check it out. And then, before I can word vomit anything too awkward or life-alteringly embarrassing, we skeedaddle back downstairs to join our party.

So with that under our belts Friday night, it really shouldn't have been any surprise to me that when we headed to the Barksdale Restaurant amid an absolute deluge of rain on Saturday morning, Mr. RB immediately made pals with our waiter, an adorable sass of a man whose flowery little accent I just could not get enough of. He spun tales for us about the Barksdale and local-celebrity-name-dropped a bunch of Barksdale regulars for us. Only you can just take out the word "us" and plug in "Mr. RB." At one point, he swung by the table to freshen up coffee and I nudged my coffee cup closer to him. He finished pouring Mr. RB's, flashed his pearly whites and headed off to the next table.

I didn't take it too personally, though. I don't think I'm exactly his type.


cheers,
elizabeth