Just another pinch-me-is-this-my-life moment

I discovered a singer songwriter named Dayna Kurtz through Charles when he and Shan put a song of hers on their wedding CD. I still don't know the name of it, only that it's #3 and that when it's on I must sing it as loud as I can. I love her blend of jazzy rockabilly and power passion ballads. Not only is the music an emotional shag, but the lyrics... they are pure wordistry, built to splay open the human experience and make it raw and tender and awfully delicious.

Dude, I should write for SPIN.

When I moved to LA, I signed up for her mailing list because I just knew that she'd stop by the City of Angels on her next tour. Everybody does. But she didn't. She went to Amsterdam, Austin, Buffalo... never even looked out west. I figured if I didn't get to see her in LA I was never going to see her.

So imagine my surprise when I get a newsletter just before Valentine's Day that includes shows in Memphis and Nashville. And then imagine my surprise when at the bottom of the show calendar there's a little note about a house concert in Prospect, Ky.

Total disbelief ensued, but I replied to the email and asked (okay, begged) for details.

It was true. Dayna Kurtz was playing at a house concert in Louisville, the tickets were $15 (including wine, beer, Bourbon, homemade paella, a potato frittata, and red velvet cupcakes), and I was freaking going.

I dragged sleepy pregnant Shannon out with me, and together we went to some strangers' house to listen to one of the singers who's made me fall in love, given me strength I didn't think I had, and reminded me how to daydream. She sat less than 10 feet away and could have been even closer if I hadn't been so starstruck.

Because it's 96 degrees outside.

Fall is one of the few things about Kentucky that I find redeeming. If there's a crisp breeze in the air, the smell of soggy earth sprouting from the ground, horses racing under a bright blue sky, and a zombie parade on the horizon, I can tolerate the rampant obesity, the slow motion twang, the threats to pedestrians and the Jesus campaigns in  front yards. But when I'm riding my scooter home and the bank says it's 96 fucking degrees outside on Oct. 11th, well, fuck Kentucky.

Luckily, McSweeney's is feeling my rage and I'm going to share this rant of f-bombs inspired by fall. And gourds. And bad attitudes like the one I'm having today.

It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. By Colin Nissan.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, "Aren't those gourds straining your neck?" And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, "It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not."

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they're both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that's upsetting, but I'm not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I'm going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I'm going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it's not summer, it's not winter, and it's not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it's fall, fuckers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you're going to fucking love my house. Just look where you're walking or you'll get KO'd by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you're going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

Unpacking the Boxes

We moved. I don't actually mind moving, especially when it means we get two bedrooms and more cabinet space than we really know what to do with for less than we were paying. I guess I should qualify that -- I don't mind packing and unpacking boxes. I hate the heavy lifting part of moving.

Because we have extra closet space, I've decided now is the time to go through all my crap and get rid of some of it. Some of it is just too good to throw out without one more laugh, so, my fine friends, be on the lookout for some of my purged crap to come your way.

I'm one box in so far, and I just opened the big red trunk that is officially so heavy I can no longer lift it. Right on top, front and center, floating above everything else was my Youth Walk Devotional Bible... with strips of paper referencing specific scriptures tucked in between pages... looking like I used the thing all the time. I went through what Shannon calls a Jesus, Goodie Goodie phase when I was about 13. Here's my take on it. Church was where my friends and I hung out. A church retreat was a good excuse to spend the weekend with friends, even if it did mean we had to watch videos of aborted babies in buckets. Church was the organization that took me to concerts where I could hold hands with boys. Shannon remembers it differently. According to her, I was all Ms. Perfect and completely Jesused out, and she has shared her version of reality with Mack. He mostly believed me until I popped the top on the red trunk tonight and there was my nicely worn devotional bible. And if that wasn't bad enough, it had one of those spin the wheel to the way you're feeling and get some suggested scripture to read thingies. And if that wasn't bad enough, it also had this:
That's right, personalized Jesus notes. I still feel like it was more of a social thing than a religion thing, but there is evidence to the contrary now. And when I discovered this next gem, I really started to wonder if I'm not a little mental:
That's right. It's a calendar. A calendar from 1992. A calendar that my dear friend Heather, who was one of the friends I went to lock ins with and at whose church I probably still hold the record for most Papa John's pepperocinis consumed in a contest, gave me Christmas of 1991. When I was 13. When I didn't really need a calendar to plan anything. I'm sure I loved this calendar because it had lions on it and I was in a lion phase when I was in my Jesus phase, but I know I loved it more because Heather had touched it and had given it to me and anything she touched and gave to me, I worshipped. Maybe it wasn't Jesus I was on fire for, after all. Either way, I have lugged that damn calendar around with me for FIFTEEN YEARS now. That calendar has been with me from Louisville to Lake Charles to my parents' house in Lexington to my college in Lexington to my first apartment in Lexington to my first rental house in Lexington to my first purchased house to my storage unit to my first Los Angeles apartment and now to my second Los Angeles apartment. I'm officially throwing it out. If I've managed to keep Heather this long, I don't need to hang on to this calendar anymore.

I also kept these dumb things, my nametag from Heather's bachelorette party because someday she and I are going to be in the same room with my 300 pound red trunk and I'm going to remember I have this and pull it out and she will chuckle for one second and it will have been worth hauling it around for the last decade and a sign I flashed at cars when Heather and I were driving to Daytona Beach for Spring Break. The other side said SHOW YOUR TITS, but I figured since I was already showing a penis I'd tone it down, in case Jesus reads my blog and he's mad about what I said earlier.

Oh, lookey here. A Polly Pocket world without any Polly Pockets. Thank god I have this since I am 29!
I also found an entire bag weighing about 8 pounds of stuff from a friendship with a girl I knew named Leslie Smith. Leslie was my best friend before I fell in love with Heather and she stole me away (because her church was cooler). Leslie moved to Texas about the same time I moved to Louisiana. We stayed in touch until the end of high school. Last I heard she was valedictorian and a bonified genius. She was fun, but I remember we used to fight like cats and dogs. And we ate pickles until we were sick. And her brother played basketball and when I cheered for him, he would get furious and tell his parents to make me stop. They were larger people and I remember they used to lock the doors on Saturday morning because that was when they had sex. They were very nice to me though. They always took me to Chinese for lunch after church, and since it was my first exposure to Chinese, I decided to keep a menu remnant and a fortune cookie wrapper for the next 19 years.
(It reads, "My Year, 1990, Sesame with Leslie and Smith's," just like that with bad apostrophes and everything.)

Leslie had this video game where you dissected bodies and I always killed the patients because I wasn't good at the mouse scalpel. We played light as a feather, stiff as a board during one of her slumber parties and it actually worked, probably because her older brother was able to lift the girl up. She was the girl I made puff paint shirts with, the girl who gave me the nickname Ammi and she was Lesi, even though both nicknames sound dumb.
She was the girl I went to the mall with and ate at the Great Steak and Fry with. Regardless of my fond memories, I do not need to keep the gift bag with irises that she gave me anymore. I have no idea where Leslie is or what she is doing, and this bag of junk doesn't reveal either. I will only keep the photos... because we seem so small and yet so confident... and the letters... because letter writing is a dying art. I will throw away the clay pigeon I dropped at camp one summer with Leslie and then told everyone I shot it.

Luckily the stuff I have from my friendship with Erica Herren is limited to a self-laminated frumpy award, which I earned by virtue of being a slob with her. I also have a button from a trip to Disney World with my family in 1996, I think. More than 10 years ago. A button that says, "I Had a Blast." I, in fact, did not have a blast. We ate breakfast with Goofy and went on a ride that forever etched "There's a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day" into the memories of all my family members, and the whole trip cost so much that I had to finance my college education. I have the button, and I still have the student loan. (Did I mention I also kept the guide book and the claim check for the luggage?!!!)

Here is some crap I am keeping, because I'm not to that point yet with these things.

My Little League baseball cap. This season changed my life. I learned how to bunt AND take teasing from my peers and coaches. I also caught my first fly ball.
My Toys R Us name badge. As long as I have this, I have a job waiting for me.