I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
I got lots of cold weather gear for Christmas, so for the last few mild weeks, I’ve wondered where this big, bad, northeastern winter is. Bring it on - I’ve got L.L. Bean snowboots now, biotch! Everyone around me has chided me and warned, “It’ll come soon, but shhh! Don’t let the gods hear you!” It seems it’s too late now, though.
The kids were slightly more insane on Friday the 13th. In the case of I.S. 666, though, a slight difference can mean the difference between a crackdown from the SWAT team and the usual barely patrolled chaos. Fortunately, nothing too terrible went down, but the kids’ decorum was atrocious.
Me: Can you imagine if our bodies only worked in a different way, and the neurons and circuitry in our brains only allowed us to speak about something after doing it?
Funny.
I had to look up what the abbreviation SURR stands for when I wrote the previous entry. When I typed it into a search engine, a message came up: “Did you mean ’surrealist?’”
A parody by Bobby and I, sung to the tune of “Surfin’USA”:
“If everybody lived in ghettoes,
across the USA,
then everybody’d be SURRfin,’
the West Harlem way.
After meeting Louis Sachar, Bobby and I walked the streets of Morningside Heights, looking for some fun. We found a trashcan ablaze on a street corner. As seen on TV, folks! Bobby demanded I pose. (Notice how I’m gingerly holding my vintage 1970s purse away from the flames).
On Tuesday, I went to my first book reading/signing in NYC. I’d previously wanted to see Joyce Carol Oates and Frank McCourt, but unfortunately let other obligations take precedent. Bobby found out Bank Street Bookstore was giving out free tickets to see Louis Sachar, the juvenile fiction author most famous for Holes. If you’re anywhere close to my age or younger, or you work with the younger population, you’ve probably been exposed to Sachar’s writing. I have been minimally. In second grade, my G/T teacher Mrs. Richey read There’s A Boy In The Girl’s Bathroom aloud. I have a copy of Sideways Stories from Wayside School at home that I never read.
I’m from a small town. In fact, I don’t often name the small town I’m really from. Instead, I always say I’m from the surrounding small town, which people from my small town think of as the city. ‘Tis true.
Oh, I’d love to talk to one of my college sociology professors about this ad from Craigslist:
Straight guy seeks same for thoughtful affectionate friendship - m4m - 36
————————————————————————
Years after Aaron and I declared ourselves the reincarnation of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (and acted accordingly), I read that comedienne Margaret Cho and one of her old boyfriends also thought they were just as crazy, artistic, and fanciful as the famous Jazz Age couple. In the book I’m The One That I Want, Margaret Cho said something like, “We thought we were the beautiful and the damned. Turns out, we were just the okay-looking and pathetic.”
