storyteller

You know how you see things on TV or in the movies and you’re like – how stupid are you? Flashback to this weekend when I text someone, ‘Houston, there no tp in here SOS!’ to which the response was, ‘You’re in Houston?’ And this is when I realized I had text the wrong person. Add this to the pile of ‘I’m an Idiot’ evidence. My boyfriend once text his mom from MY phone ‘you ready to light up?’ To which he then tried to salvage by telling her that we were grilling with our neighbors. (it was January in Chicago. we weren’t) So in conclusion, double check you’re texting the right person. Also, don’t listen to voicemails from your brother on speakerphone while you’re in a fitting room. Now 7 women who were in Nordstrom Rack on Saturday think I’m being investigated by the FBI. Thank you for that. In other great nuggets of wisdom, after using nail polish remover, maybe don’t lick your finger. You would think I would have learned by now, but in true me fashion, I’ve always chosen the more rigorous path. I am ruled by a wild heart with a zest for wonder. I rarely stand still. I am very much an out of sight, out of mind person. Not in an ignorant way, but in a physical energy way. I always have been. It’s not that I don’t care or that anyone means more or less to me but it’s how I function. When I’m out of town, I’m gone. Even when I’m in town, I’m hard to pinpoint. While my life may be an active volcano, my love for the people in my life is evermore. I have friends I haven’t talked to in years and all it takes is a single text to bring us right back to where we left off. This past week I’ve heard from so many people and it’s such a relief to know that time has not taken that away from me. So to all of you who reached out, to those of you I haven’t talked to in ages, to those of you I talk to consistently and to those of you I don’t even know taking the time to read my gibberish, I cannot thank you enough for your support and all around awesome. I am one lucky lady. Besos. Hugs. Fireworks. Champagne. (in no particular order)

Between this white eyebrow hair and the guy my friend is talking to getting a hip replacement this week, I am not feeling young. Add my chiropractor appointment in there and the fact I’ve been eating dinner around 6:30 – when do my geriatric discounts kick in? I bought pull-on dress pants this week. Yes, I sure did. ON PURPOSE. As in, that is what I was looking for. Somebody send me mini-curlers and a M-S pill case. I am tired. I need a head massage and hug that never ends…and a cupcake. A chai cupcake. I realize you’re going to read what I’m about to say, roll your eyes and think – man, she’s really gone all California hippy-dippy but did anyone feel that full moon this week? It was a supermoon and it was heavy – I felt it in my bones. I’ve always had an intense relationship with the moon. I am a selenophile – a lover of the moon. Or maybe I’m a werewolf, it wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, the moon wouldn’t let me rest and so I wrote from 9 in the morning until 5am the following day. I couldn’t stop – it was a bit of a madwoman by candlelight vibe. I was in the zone. I am very much a creature who loves my sleep but sometimes my mind won’t allow it. She has so many words to sort through, so many thoughts to settle, so many stories to tell. So when my mind finds peace, I let her rest. I have a strict no-alarm policy in this house. I say I’m tired but the reality is I don’t have time to be tired. Sometimes when I wake up, I’ll grab my computer and before I know it, I’ve been in bed writing all day. The working and the resting and the living and the thinking. It’s a delicate balance. Everything is. It always will be. Balance is hard for maniacs like me. So I overthink and sometimes those thoughts spill into coherent sentences and every once in a while I sleep.

Well ladies and gentleman, if you think SNL has been bad the last few decades, it’s about to get worse. Funny man (sarcasm) Elon Musk will be hosting this week and people are outraged. What else is new? But seriously, even the castmates are upset. Musk tweeted ‘let’s find out how live Saturday Night Live really is’ to which Bowen Yang reposted and commented ‘what the fuck does that even mean?’ So spirits are high at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and I can’t wait to see what garbage they come up with this week. It does make me question Lorne’s critical thinking skills a bit. The decision seems…untimely? Do I think Jeff Bezos would have been the better billionaire white man choice? Yes – but again, I’m just a girl crusading for pineapple on pizza in a world that won’t have it. And for all of you wondering – YES, I still watch SNL every week. It’s one of the reasons I do what I do. I quote something from it at least once a day. I don’t care how bad it’s gotten. I always find a gem in every episode (always might be a strong word) and you better believe if they asked me to join the cast I’d be on the first flight out of here screaming the whole way there. Let’s be real about life, shall we? We tend to hate on a lot of things real easy but at the end of the day, you know deep inside, your moral high ground would tumble down if you were given different opportunities. But you’re not – you’re sitting on your couch, eating pizza for the third time this week, giving two thumbs down to everything you watch like you’re the magistrate of television but if Lorne called and asked you to host, you’d for sure poop your pants. And THAT is me being real. I actually didn’t know I had all that in me but here we are…life is unexpected isn’t she?

Alas, my thoughts on the 2021 Oscars. It got a lot of heat, but I actually enjoyed it to be honest. I didn’t feel like I was smashed over the head with the same old faces and the same old names. It was a breath of fresh air. I loved all the background stories and no one got music-ed off the stage, which I always find so tacky anyway. Yuh-Jung Youn might be my new favorite human. Harrison Ford in a close second who’s dry humor just kills me every time. Please tell me you’ve seen the video of the magician at his house who finds his card inside of an orange in a bowl in his kitchen to which Ford says ‘get the fuck out of my house’. And I don’t care if you like her or not, but what’s Glenn Close have to do to get an Oscar?! Chloe Zhao wearing tennis shoes all night… I mean…OBSESSED. There were obviously some questionable moments, including and mostly limited to Halle Berry’s hair. I mean…(my eyes are just kinda wide open and I have no words) She is lucky she’s hot. That hair on top of my head – I’d look at my life and call it. Time of death – that haircut o’clock. I have yet to meet a single person who enjoyed Mank so that’s a ‘no thanks’. Every time I see Joaquin Phoenix all I can think about is how during his acceptance speech when he won best actor for Joker he referred to his girlfriend as ‘my dragon’. So don’t listen to anyone when they tell you it doesn’t matter what you say. It does. It’ll stick.

There were a lot of beautiful moments and yes, it’s an awards show and mostly bullshit with behind the scenes politics and blah blah but it’s also storytellers gathered together in one space to celebrate an art that continually saves me. I watch TV and I watch film because it makes me feel a little less alone, gives me a little more hope and makes this world seem so much more united than it appears. Jon Batiste reminded us that ‘God gave us 12 notes’. Everyone past, present and future has and will always have access to those same notes. It made me think about all the music out there in the world. The different eras and artists and how music truly transcends time. One blank page. What are you going to do with yours? And to Tyler Perry, I will meet you in the middle. I will stand by you and refuse hate because I, too, believe that conversation creates change. I, too, see what the Internet (which is apparently capitalized now), social media and algorithms are doing to all of us and how we think. I encourage everyone to listen to his speech and meet us in the middle. Xx