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Posts tagged ‘Lady Gaga’

May 3

23 Comments

Pearls Ain’t Free

Welcome to “One Night in Bangkok” the series. Follow me through Hong Kong and Bangkok while I act as my Rotary Club‘s delegate to the International Convention in Thailand, with posts that are titled from the lyrics of the song “One Night in Bangkok.” If this is your first visit to the series, please click here to begin at the beginning.

(Please imagine all l’s as r’s in the cab driver portion of the dialogue.)

You UK, yeah?

American.

The cab driver slung us into the left-side door as he whipped around a curve.

American. That lady in China. American one. In China.

Yes. Lady Gaga is in Hong Kong right now. Four concerts.

Nonono. Not that one. What her name? Hillary?

Oh! Hillary Clinton is visiting China? Really?

Yeahyeahyeah. Hillary. American lady. In China.

Huh. I had no idea.

That other one. Crazy Gaga. She crazy gaga.

And, that about sums up my time in Hong Kong.

Crazy gaga.

I’m so glad I came.

The next post, whatever it is, will be from Bangkok. Wish us luck.

Aug 3

25 Comments

Why Can’t I Be Addicted to Drugs?

Instead, I have an uncontrollable urge to buy clothing. A specific item of clothing, mind you, not a wardrobe free-for-all, where I go on a Lady Gaga inspired shopping spree without regard to price, or utility, or the need to wear pants to cover my nether regions.

Stupid catalog companies send me lines of cocaine, I mean, catalogs, in the mail, regardless of how many times I have filled out forms asking them to remove me from their mailing lists. With the shaking hands of an addict, I must get my fix, thumbing through them before I hurl them into the recycling bin, desperate imprints of desire already burned into my feeble brain.

It will remain there. Really. My fingers will point-and-click their way to those images again.

What is perverse is that my drug of choice seems to be……….grey sweaters? Seriously? Can I not be more racy in choosing a narcotic? Like, maybe, a shot of chartreuse, some neon orange, or even flipping teal? An actual color, perhaps, instead of something…….bland.

I don’t know why every time I open a catalog, my eye zeroes in on a grey sweater. I have at least six of them packed away for fall and winter already, all varying shades of grey, it’s true. But GREY nonetheless. I look like a walking thunderstorm every time I don one of them. That’s a problem, because thunderstorms are not attractive. They’re threatening. They zap things to death. Okay, maybe they dump much needed rain on the landscape, but too much quantity at once means little of it hangs around to do any good.

I once had a director in a play who told the cast that he liked thunderstorms. He thought they were in a turn-on. In fact, he blocked a whole love scene around a thunderstorm, and went into great detail acting out the various business for each person. He sold that atmospheric mayhem like it was something erotic. Sensual.

And, I think it brainwashed me into thinking grey is sexy. Compelling. A “come-and-get-me” without putting it all out there on display. Like uber-drugs, grey hooks a person before they know they’ve been ensnared, before they know they’re in trouble.

Yep, I’ve convinced myself. I’m definitely going back to the Anthropologie site tomorrow and buying that blasted grey sweater.

Too Much is Just Enough: Grey

Mar 9

24 Comments

Giving Up on Lent

Religious preference is not something I often broach in this space. I want this blog to be lighthearted and fun to read, meaning that the topics of religion, politics, and dissing other people’s children (and thus the parenting skills of the diss-ees) must remain undiscussed. I have never had the urge to pen a polemic.

However, today marks the beginning of Lent, a season that (given my unnamed denominational upbringing) I thought was spelled L-i-n-t for much of my life and referred to the particles I got out of the dryer. The concept of going without something for forty days and forty nights was lost on me.

Maybe that’s because I went without a lot of the things everyone gives up for Lent during my formative years. I’m not bitter about any of it, and I’m not questioning anyone’s parenting skills on my blog. (Just putting that out there for re-iteration.) My parents did the best they could for me, and I know they both love me very much. I love them, too, very much.

Still, here’s a short list of the things I went without as a kid:

  • Rock music – This was defined as anything secular, but especially 1970′s rock-and-roll up to present time. I guess country music wasn’t secular, because my Dad listened to it on the radio. In his defense, he tried to do it when we weren’t in the car, something for which I was grateful.
  • Pants – I was not allowed to wear pants to school from 3rd grade to graduation, and the dresses and skirts I donned had to be knee-length or longer. Yes, even my cheerleading uniform. Oh, and we couldn’t turn cart wheels or anything like that in our uniforms, lest we reveal our bloomers and cause lustful thoughts. That rule was a good thing for me, because I couldn’t turn a somersault, much less a cart wheel.
  • Split skirts – I took physical education in a split skirt. For FIVE YEARS, I had to wear that disastrous piece of fashion. I hope no one was offended when I skipped the culotte craze when it resurfaced several years ago. Ick.
  • Movies – NO MOVIES. EVER. I never even saw a G-rated movie at the theater growing up. It was considered a bad testimony to go to a movie theater to see “Pinocchio,” because someone might see my Mom there with my five-year-old self and think, God forbid, she was taking me to see “Midnight Cowboy.”
  • Bathing suits – I had to swim in my clothes. No bathing suits. (See comment above on lustful thoughts.) I guess no lustful thoughts were ever caused by wet t-shirts.

I could go on, but I hope you get the idea, Dear Reader. So, I’m not giving anything up for Lent. I think I will see one movie per week during the entire forty-day-span, play my ’80s hair-band iPod tracks every day, overspend on a new hat and debut it for Easter at my Lent-observing church.

I’m typing away to Def Leppard‘s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” right now. *Smile*

Too Much is Just Enough: Giving up on giving up

Oct 31

16 Comments

Rally to Restore Sanity Didn’t Meet in the Middle

And, it should have. My God, with the expansiveness of the National Mall at its disposal, one would think the organizers of the Rally to Restore Sanity would’ve used it intelligently……by putting the freaking stage IN THE MIDDLE. Instead, it was up toward the Capitol in the same-as-every-other-event-ever-held-there spot.

Okay. Okay. Maybe they have rules about that sort of thing. Maybe all stages have to be set with the Capitol in the background.

Still, in the spirit of moderation, we ran our middle-aged bodies through a basic-training-worthy obstacle course to get to the middle of the crowd. We dodged a giant turtle man. And, a pseudo Lady Gaga decked out in “Telephone”-esque crime scene tape and little else. And, people who decided they were going to sit down. And, the Cookie Monster. And, one of the Teletubbies. Seriously. It was more costume party than rally. It was THAT important to us to be in the moderate part of the crowd.

Yet, the organizers failed us, setting up the show on the left and/or right of the Mall, depending upon one’s vantage point. Right-leaners were incensed that the stage was on the left-hand side. Lefties thought the right-loving placement extreme.

The happy people were all in the middle. Here are some shots from our day at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Enjoy.

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Sep 12

6 Comments

My Super Bowl Prediction

Let me just start this entry by admitting something. I don’t know anything about football. Okay, technically, that isn’t true. When I was little, I used to watch it with my Dad, and I probably know the rules better than many. I can certainly follow a game.

I guess life took over, and I lost interest. Or, perhaps I became less interesting, as I attempted to know bits of minutia like how many wives Henry VIII had and how they died; screeched through classical voice lessons, practicing for hours by flapping my arms and hopping around the house (don’t ask); and finally got rid of the television all together because I couldn’t sit still long enough to actually watch it, with the pull of fascinations like scrubbing my bathroom floor or cleaning out my garage or memorizing just how many men went screwing their way across the country on the Lewis & Clark expedition.

I’m sure I’ve become a much more boring sort because I now know nothing about football.

Still, I’m going to make my Super Bowl prediction now. I likely won’t even remember who I selected by the time it rolls around in January. Or is it now February? I think maybe it is. When I last watched it, the game happened in January.

I’m sure that Budweiser will have the best commercial. They almost always do, so I’ve heard. Spectacularly, Lady Gaga will be the halftime entertainment. Maybe Lady Gaga will blast herself out of a huge bottle of Bud, wearing nothing but a costume made of beer foam and a Bud colored wig. The field will be full of her little monsters, and viewers will not be able to get whatever song she performs out of their heads for at least a week. It will be the greatest halftime spectacle in the history of Super Bowls.

Oh, I guess I should pick teams. I’m going to say that the Cowboys and the Steelers will face off in Super Bowl whatever-Roman-numeral-it-is-next-time. One of them will win.

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