Three Times #KidsintheHall Helped Me Through Shitty Stuff

1) Hotel LaRut

I was married, once. At 20, I was probably not ready to be married. My erstwhile ex-husband was definitely not ready to be married. All in all, marriage was a mistake.  I got a couple of pretty amazing kids out of the deal, so it ain't all bad, though.

I usually don't like to use identifiers here, because privacy, but this joke may not make a lot of sense if you don't know his name was Tony.

After we split up, whenever I was down and listless and complaining and crying, my best friend would put on a fake French accent and ask "What's wrong, my Michelle?" (Full disclosure: My name is not Michelle.  But you probably already knew that).

At this point I would slowly start to smile, and put on my own fake french accent..

"Oh, Silvee.. I can't help thinking about Tony..."



2) But Do You Love *Me*

I dated a dude once.  A dude, who although he professed to like an awful lot of things about me, always came back to how he just didn't quite feel *that way* about me.  Me, being the sucker I was, let him come back into my life numerous times, only to have the same conversation again, until I finally had to say "Enough!"



I'm not so sure this was one of those times where laughter is the actually the best medicine but those nights of drinking wine straight from the bottle while sobbing "I'm an icky, icky tree!" sure helped me work through some stuff.

"ICKY ICKY TREE"

3) The Cause of Cancer

Shitty things happen in life. Sometimes terrible, horrible things happen to good people.  Or, at the very least, to well-meaning people.

But, I digress.

When horrible things happen, sometimes it is comforting to have some kind of faith that everything happens for a reason.

We call those reasons 'Scapegoats'.

So when I was diagnosed with Stage 1 colon cancer, I had the perfect scapegoat in Bruce McCulloch. It helped that Bruce was always my least favourite Kid, so in a twisted part of my mind, it made sense that in his vengeance, out of spite for being my least favorite, that he would maliciously grow a tumour in my colon.




Dave's right. He doesn't even sound sorry.

Weekend Update... but sadly, not the one with Tina Fey or Norm MacDonald even.

This will be a much shorter post than I had originally anticipated as I have roughly five minutes to throw a quick post up while I finish my coffee before I have to head into the bathroom, pretty myself up a bit and head out for another FUN-filled week at work.

Friday night, after getting the Sunday newsletters to bed, I went for a quick drink with my fellow co-workers.  Fun, and something that should be done more often I think.  Couldn't stick around long as I had a previous engagement to go thrift-store shopping with one of my best friends.  I scavenged for parts to my halloween costume, which came to me through Pinterest at the last second and managed to pick up a winter jacket and some curtains for my front window so I can stop flashing the neighbours.  As per usual, K and I ended up reducing ourself to giggling fits to the amusement of the Goodwill staff with our running commentary regarding some of the more... um... 'unique' and 'vintage' finds.

For dinner we went to a nearby East Side Mario's where my menu had gunk on it and our waiter threw coasters at us and hovered while we tried to decide.  It was disconcerting, this manner.  He was not an incompetent waiter.. all our order arrived in a timely manner and as requested.  But so aggressive! It was like he was waitering AT us.  Not the most impressive restaurant experience I've had.

Saturday was a day of coffee and cuddles and relaxing and not getting much of anything done.  Wouldn't have done it any other way.  That night I travelled to Toronto with Tess to Toronto to see the Mountain Goats in concert.  I have written previously my love for this band so you know this was very exciting for me.

See the excitement? My phone is shit and I don't have a working camera right now, so this is what you get for pictures.

The show was not disappointing (aside from the fact that the Phoenix is sorely lacking in seating of any kind so my legs were not happy the next day).  John Darnielle - with whom I got to meet and speak briefly - comes across on stage as someone who not only is happy with what he does, but genuinely excited... like 'Holy shit I can't believe I get to do this for a living' excited when he performs.

They played a number of newer songs, along with older tracks that I recognized as well.  J.D. also manages to engage the audience, telling stories and interacting and improvising.  There were a few tunes I got the impression had been made up on the spot.  If that's the case... wow.  Just wow.  Amazing.

The night ended with 'No Children' which, anyone who goes to Open Mike night knows, is probably my favorite tune of theirs.  An excellent choice for the end of night sing-along.

Oh dear.  I've gone way past my time limit.  Gotta go throw my face on.

Tootles, all.

Two random vocalists that make me want to kill myself with joy

Source

Cat Power - Her voice is evocative of that kind of straight-whisky drinking, chain-smoking in a dark dive bar, of the type that was probably at one point classy as all hell, but has since become a refuge for derelicts and the lost. She sounds like what that woman who sang Bette Davis Eyes should have sounded like, instead of sounding like Joan Rivers doing karaoke. Love and Communication haunts me and it pisses me off to no end that I cannot, for the life of me, sound one-tenth as good as she does singing this song.

Source

Dallas Green - Consistently reminds me of guys in high school that I wanted to have write sappy yet earnest ballads and sing them for me in hushes tones.  The type of guy that would sit back and not say much until someone pulled out a guitar when he'd reluctantly join along, quietly at first, then gradually getting more into it until everyone else suddenly just shuts the fuck up and sits there blinking, thinking 'Holy shit.  This kid can actually sing!'  On Sleeping Sickness he pairs up with my all-time favorite vocalist, Gord Downie and my head explodes from all the awesome.

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I have a post up at Different Paths, Same Destination regarding the Children's Health Care of Atlanta's fat-shaming campaign. I'm told it's good.  Go check it out.

The Internet is Effing INSANE.

So, first of all, if you're not reading The Bloggess, you are missing out on some top-notch funny.  Seriously, you three, you need to get on it.

But not only is she funny, she's apparently crazy-powerful as well.

This week, a gentleman *koff* by the name of Jose of Brandlink Communications found this out the hard way.

Here's the full backstory, but I'll sum it up real quick-like for ya:

 - The divine Ms. Lawson receives poorly-researched PR pitch for something having to do with Kim Kardashian and pantyhose.
 - Jenny responds how she usually does to unsolicited PR pitches... with a short letter and a picture of Wil Wheaton Collating Paper
 - Jenny receives short, snippy but on-the-whole still fairly professional email response from Erica at Brandlink Communications.
 - VP Jose replies by calling Jenny "a fucking bitch" but has mistakenly hit Reply All.

In the immortal words of Eddie Izzard: "*sigh*  Stupid man..."

 - Jenny calls Jose on his remark, explaining this her usual response to unsolicited pitches, and most people either find it funny, or at the very least, take the hint.

 - Jose basically tells Jenny she should be flattered that said PR firm should even find her relevant enough to send pitches to.

Let me just add here, that @thebloggess currently has 170K+ Twitter followers to @brandlinkcomm's 900-someodd.  The woman created a Facebook page for a giant metal chicken that has over 26K likes.  This is not what I would call irrelevant.  Irreverent, maybe, but definitely not irrelevant.

Again:

- With a single tweet and a blog post, said Bloggess unleashes an unholy, sulphur-raining maelstrom of internet smackdown on Brandlink Communications.

It was awe-inspiring.

I'm convinced that "Please Stand By For Demonstration of Relevance" is officially the most bad-assed line since "Yippie Kay-ay, Motherfuckers."

I can't read that line without imagining Jenny standing on top of a mountain, arms raised, with lightning flashing and thunder crashing while angry hordes of bloggers and tweeters come swarming from over the surrounding hills, right up into BrandLink's "grill" - so to speak.

I don't think I have to remind Ms. Lawson of Uncle Ben's old adage of great power and great responsibility.  Jenny has also used her blog as a platform to help others by promoting philanthropic causes and in one case, simply publishing one Christchurch, NZ woman's utterly hilarious plea for help.

Wow, those are five words that don't seem like they should go together.

Anyway, if my blogging efforts resulted in me becoming even 1/457 as 'relevant' as this one, I'd consider myself one very excited blogger.