Genesis of my Dorkness

So...here I am, circa 1984,1983, maybe 8th grade, probably 9th grade...no, I think 8th grade...when all I wanted was a pair of argyle socks for Christmas. I don't know if it was due to the fashions of the time (velveteen knickers, button up polo shirts with ribbon bows at the neck----a strange manifestation of glam rock gone bad ten years later?---who can say?) ....Mayhaps it was due to my love of British everything (and they always talked about argyle socks at some point in a Lord Peter Whimsy detective novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, my fave in those days)....anyway, this is an iconic moment in my dorkhood. Now, let's talk about how that dorkness shows itself even today....
Or, rather, yesterday. Yesterday, I went to my current favorite photo developing shop, Wolf Camera near Central Market on Lamar.....it is my favorite because they develop photos from ancient slides and negatives and don't give me guff. They don't roll their eyes and act all superior. Thank God, as that was my experience at a certain location in Dallas.....but anyhoo, let's stay on the positive side here...So, I popped into Wolf Camera to see if my photos had arrived from wherever they go to be developed. And there was Cute Blue-Eyed Man-Boy. He works at the counter. He takes the orders, answers the questions, does not roll his eyes. Plus, he is super cute. I try not to notice his cuteness. In fact, I am really self-absorbed upon the receipt of my photos because I have never actually seen these pictures before, they are treasures culled from mysterious and strangely sized negatives. I make him look at the cute photo of my mother when she is 20 years old and in a bathing suit, holding my older sister (as baby) on her lap.....I make excited chit-chat. I drop off my "disposable" camera and agree to return in two hours to pick photos up; they should be of the State Fair and Halloween, so I am jolly in my anticipation and trot on home to clean house and do nothing much.....
I return to Wolf Camera in three hours. I am in route to Katie and Jason's Free Lunch Party, where we all get to eat free at Chipotle thanks to Jason randomly dropping his business card into a fishbowl.....I think, "Get photos, run to lunch/dinner, wheee!" But when I run into the camera shop this time, and see Super Cute Blue-Eyed Man-Boy, it seems busy. Some girl looks at me all crazy when I want to get my photos and then she DOES roll her eyes when Cute Man-Boy brings them over to me. I lack the carefree attitude of the morning. Cutie Blue Eyes, however, is charming as ever. He asks what I have done in my three hours, and I blather something about organizing costumes. He, with good conversational skills, prompts me to explain. I say something about how my photos should document some of these costumes, and I quickly show him some of the pics....but my heart is racing a bit too much, from flirtation or social anxiety disorder, I can't say which.....I mumble something about being in a band called the Sexy Finger Champs, and of course he has not heard of us but notes our suggestive title. I mumble that our last show was two weeks ago. I try to shove my photos back into the envelope. I stutter that we have songs about Jean-Luc Picard and Nipples. Yes, I used those two titles as my examples. Am I retarded? Yes, to some degree, I need social skills training. Because, instead of just being friendly and telling him something like,"Oh, but even tho' I am no longer in a band, come see me as a dancing reindeer in the YellowTape Theater Co. production of "The Ultimate Christmas Musical The Musical!" or the comedy stuff at Coldtowne Theater or my reading my teen angst journals at Coldtowne in November (Nov 16th at 8pm, to be exact)....instead, I said, after he expressed interest in the Jean-Luc Picard song, "Well, you have good taste if you like Jean-Luc Picard....urgh, see ya!" and trotted out of there.
Ugh. It cannot be good to get that nervous from casual chatting. I will try, in future, to do some Zen breathing or something. Because I do have a box full of slides that still need to be developed before Christmas...and I hope that the Cute Blue-Eyed Man-Boy will still be there.

Hard Times

This is my wonderful niece, Shelby, who is currently in hospital. I can't really blog about this. It is upsetting and many folks are praying for her. No time to blog lately. Just send good thoughts out to Shelby.

Let me entertain you....Hey kids....ahh, my once creative life, as seen here in photo...did I not appreciate it enough? No, I think I just had lots of pain and spinal surgery that took me out of the game for a few years and now I am trying to find creative outlets again.....but I miss the heady days of yore when we Sexy Finger Champs would play here, there, and yonder....here is Chepo's first show with SFC, Dallas,TX at the Bar of Soap....Daniel Clark on bass at the time and Luke Alexander hiding back there on the drums....this is probably about 1998! Jesus, time flies. Our next show is September 1st, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend! It was supposed to be an opening gig for the Pocket FishRMen reunion, but I think that is postponed; however, I still wanted to rock, so come out and see us with (I think) the Free Range Bastards....c'mon, I have reviews from both Japan AND Austin that say I am some sort of punk rock Bette Midler, so you will have a rockin' AND comic time!
See, here is more proof of performance, the later Sexy Finger Champs configuration(photo taken in 2000 maybe?) with hot and sexy Rebekah W. on bass (behind my bunny ass) and Chepo's booty in the right foreground, hiding Snoopy on drums....this was a fun show at Club DeVille....well, enough of memory lane, off to participate in life right now.....

Well, well.....it has been about a month since last I posted.....I have had out of town guests almost every week in July, except for last weekend when we had a family emergency in Dallas; my most beloved and wonderful Grandmother (age 96) was hospitalized and then put into hospice; she is slowly shutting down and leaving us. And I have been very sad. She taught me so much! And she has always believed in my dreams even when I didn't---encouraging me to sing and make up songs and do theater and to write and to love movies and the beach and.. and.....well, she is the most pleasant and happy woman in the world despite so many hard times and I hope I have somehow learned a little about being as pleasant and passionate and active and funny and a great hostess and....I just cannot do her justice. Let this picture from her "tween" years express her fun-loving nature and sweet disposition (we think this is from 1921 or so, when she was 10? or 11? Not too much older or younger but hard to know....) It is the best photo ever!
(Note: Okay, I will go enroll in a computer class right away; I really don't know how to get this photo NOT to have lots of pixels or get it UNDER the text, etc etc...oh well.) To my few friends who read this (sorry I don't know how to do "links" yet, either...) well, I will try to keep you up on news of Grandmother in the coming week.

I found this today during a search for my high school diaries and journals (hoping to participate in a "Get Mortified" event, but more on that aspiration later.....) yep, and I found this little scribbled note that I copied out of The Doomsday Dictionary, probably whilst I was listening to the Smiths or something:
"Thanatos (also, death instinct)-- One of two primal instincts attributed to man, the other being Eros. The function of Thanatos is to restore higher organic organization to a simpler, pre-vital state. In this, Thanatos is expressing a tendency evident elsewhere in nature for organization to run down into a greater simplicity.
The laws that regulate the compromise are obscure."

I think I left something out of the full entry, but this is all that I selected. I still love the final sentence: "The laws that regulate the compromise are obscure."