Katie Neuner and the Unbreakable Sternum of Doom

Remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the Bad Priest with the horn-helmet reaches into that guy's chest, rips out his heart, then lowers the now-heartless dude, still breathing, into a pit of fire? And then the heart catches on fire and Bad Priest has a good laugh, and there's a lot of ceremonial drum beating? Yes? Okay.

My brother and I watched the shit out of that movie as kids. We watched the shit out of everything in the Indiana Jones franchise* (including the 'Young Indiana Jones' series - remember that? With River Phoenix? RIVER PHOENIX IN FRANCE? Granted, there was a fair amount of trench warfare going down, but still. RIVER PHOENIX IN FRANCE. Dork girl fantasies breathed alive, my friends.) But particularly that one. It was the most fun. The plot was the easiest for kids to follow. It was the only one that featured a kid. And the only one without Nazis. Even if they do get their faces melted off in the end, Nazis are always a bummer.

So even though Raiders of the Lost Ark's Marian was a better feminist role model, and Sean Connery was cranky-screwball hilarious in The Last Crusade, it was still Temple of Doom that hooked us the hardest. It taught me a lot of influential life lessons: adults can sit on pillows on the ground to eat dinner. Don't pour perfume on elephants' heads. If someone is shooting at you in a crowded nightclub, run behind a giant gong until you find a window to jump out of. And, while I didn't realize it until recently, that de-hearting scene cast a drippy net over my whole life, bled into everything.

The way I saw it, unless something could - metaphorically - rip my heart out through my sternum and set it on fire with a combination of squeezing and maniacal laughter, then it didn't matter to me, and I was fine. Be it a person, an event, an experience, a feeling: all that mattered was keeping my breastplate intact. I went for so, so long with a miniature Short Round perched on my shoulder, shouting, into my ear, with utmost concern 'Indy! Cover your heart!'

I mean, in a way, it worked. I was vigilant. If I never gave anything the power to pull my heart out, I was completely safe. I could take or leave whatever, whoever I chose. It never hurt to leave. It made it very, very easy to pack up and bounce, or to let wonderful people fall out of my life without putting up a fight. When you live like that for too long, it's easy to start thinking you're invincible. But of course that's not the case. Bulletproof vests don't make you bulletproof. They're just vests. And eventually, someone will just shoot you in the head.

But delusions of invincibility have a habit of lingering, a way of getting tied up with your sense of worth and your sense of purpose, and, ultimately, the pernicious little conclusion of leaving you entirely, utterly cold. I don't for a moment second guess where I am right now, or how I got here - in a way, I'm glad I was so unattached to the operations management elements of my life. Gracious, I might have actually become a lawyer**. But what I would like to do right here is give a big, messy, runny mascara and knotty haired apology to people in my life I may have treated like that. Cold is worse than mean, cold is worse than bitchy. Cold is worse than crazy. Cold implies that you don't matter. And you did, you do. You matter. So I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, that I didn't give you the power, I didn't even give you the opportunity to root around in my - metaphorical - chest cavity. I covered my heart for way too long, and you deserved better. I'm sorry I assumed everyone, everywhere, was trying to sacrifice me to unspecified gods and dump my body in a hole full of lava.

Because that is completely insane. No one is trying to do that. Life is not trying to rip out my - metaphorical - internal organs in a creepy underground religious ceremony. Or, maybe it is***. Maybe it is. Maybe life, when you actually like, participate in it, is all just that part where the Kali Ma dress Willie up in that white outfit and lock her in that cage-contraption and she's raised-and-lowered over the fire pit for like, ten minutes while they try to wake Indy up from the Black Sleep, and the entire time she's like 'WTF!' and semi-hysterical, and all the flowers from her massive lei are falling off, and her hair's getting all crazy from the...humidity? Why did I assume it was humidity? Maybe just because she was getting kinda sweaty down there, but anyway - the point: She looks super fly in that scene, and after she gets out of the cage, she's so much more badass for the rest of the movie. I think she even punches some big dude in the face at one point. And, I don't think she'd have reacted to the Rope Bridge of Death Over Crocodile Canyon incident nearly so well if she hadn't been through the whole fire pit ordeal.

We don't really learn what happens to Willie - in the Last Crusade she's out of the picture and Dr. Jones is chasing that (Nazi) German chick (which - come on Indy, have you been paying any attention? The Germans are always the bad guys!****) but I'm pretty sure she turned out okay. Nothing probably seems too overwhelming after a giant dude in sweaty face paint and a fake-goat hair loincloth yell-chants at you while a bunch of hypnotized cult members bang drums and the guy you're sleeping with locks you in a cage while under the influence of an evil blood-drink. After that, she could probably handle anything.


*I loved Indiana Jones so much, that, for a time, I really wanted to be an archaeologist. I guess working in historic architecture is kinda the same ballpark, and I'm glad I veered slightly  to the right on that one, because oh my goodness, have you ever met any archaeologists? They are the weirdest motherfuckers on the planet. Like, I am honestly not trying to throw shade at archaeology, but its professionals are truly odd. I can only imagine archaeology conventions. I would need so many drugs to prevent turning my hand into a fist and eating it. And I bet I could be on drugs, or be eating my fist, or both, and probably no one would notice. And NO ONE even vaguely resembles 1980s Harrison Ford.
**I love you, lawyer friends! No shade here, either! Just - let's be honest. Attorney-hood would really not have been my jam.
*** I do believe in magic rocks, after all
****I can say that because my last name is German.

On Main Damies

Last week, I stayed at my aunt and uncle's place on the beach while I took pictures for work. Sunday, Kyle came down to accompany me to my Martha's Vineyard site visit, because it's a weird fun dork thing to do on a Sunday, and that's the kind of shit we both like to do. Because we're dorks. It's cool. 

We left around 12:00, we were taking my rental car. I guess I'd opened the front door a little too wide, because the shit would not close - the rubber-line thing on the bottom of the door got caught up on the carpet. You know. It was stuck.

So I pull and pull and pull, but the door does not move, at all. I'm using both hands and all my weight and everything, and JUST when I was about to abandon the effort entirely and turn to snap at Kyle: "HEY, motherfucker, any interest in actually HELPING ME with your man-arms, or are you cool to just stand there and watch me do battle with this Door of Degredation on my own?", the carpet gave, or something, and I pulled the door shut. Phew.

As it closed, Kyle nodded and turned. "I needed to know that you could do that on your own," he said. "For when you're by yourself later." And then he started down the porch stairs. 

"Goddamn," I said. "If that's not one of the truest expressions of real-ass friendship I have ever seen."


Because - isn't it?

I Know Some People Would Rather Keep Gin In the Desk...

Quick, everybody: whatever document you're working on, just take three minutes and draw a monster on it with whatever 'Paint' feature your computer has. Seriously: a monster. Make it up. Just draw it right on there. Finished? Nice. How much better did your day just get?

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You can use my example above as inspiration.

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Actually I don't see why it has to be one or the other: Gin In the Desk v. Computer Assisted Doodles. Try both. I predict spectacular results. You might want to save it for Friday afternoon, though.

The Favorite Son of Greenfield Mass

Tom Bergeron has a book!!!

I love that man. And this picture is the best fucking thing I have ever seen. I want this on a t-shirt.

All That Matters Is What Makes You Happy

I am the weirdest Liz Phair fan. At least, I feel like I am. I don't know - it just seems like there are only two camps on this one, and I don't want to hang out at either one of them. The first camp made up of the people for whom Exile in Guyville represents the pinnacle of creative musical innovation, and the second camp: those who got turned on by - and listen to exclusively to - her latest stuff. I can get down with the campers in the first group, we seem to enjoy the same stuff, but they're a little too...like, intense for me, man. They're camping professionally. I just don't have that kind of drive. And since I don't particularly enjoy light FM radio, Dr. Phil, or Hollister-inspired wardrobes, I obviouly can't mix with the campers in the second group.

I just like WhiteChocolateSpaceEgg the best. It came along exactly when I needed to hear something girly and weird and sort of badass all at the same time. So it's my favorite. I really, really fucking love it. And I have no one to hang out with.

I don't know. It's just frustrating somethimes.

Diversityay!

I doubt I'm going to shock anyone by saying this, but say it I will: Boston is one of the most segregated cities I've ever encountered. For a state so blue, this has always bothered me. If the states were individual socks, you wouldn't ever be able to figure who to roll Massachusetts up with. Eventually you'd just have to take our navy asses and ball us up with a really faded black dress sock, wear us with long pants when all your other socks were dirty, and hope no one noticed. And yet, here Boston is, all racially compartmentalized by neighborhood, often right down to the block. It's incredibly disheartening. (I'm not a sociologist, or an urban historian, so I don't feel comfortable tackling the socio-economic racial politics. Suffice to say - it's something that bothers me, and it bothers me daily.)

So imagine my delight when I discovered Boston Bowl over the weekend. Apparently everyone already knew about Boston Bowl, but for those of you who, like me, thought they were stranded in a metro-area choking with preppy-polo Ralph Laurenoclads for all your bowling and bar sports related needs, fear not. Boston Bowl has bowling, obviously - candlepin and regular - and an arcade, and pool tables, tons of weird food options, and plenty plenty plenty of beer. $6 for an aluminum bottle of Bud Light isn't going to win the award for best deal in town, but they let you run around with them unrestricted, and the draught beers are cheaper - even the Harpoon - if you and the people you're with aren't insanely impatient about waiting in line.

Anyway, I was many different kinds of pleased by this place, mostly because there's just this incredible dearth of comparable places in the city where you can go and see a representative from nearly every race, age and income tax bracket hanging out and having a good time. (Sidebar: I almost included Somerville's Good Time Emporium, in this category, but the bloom has kind of gone off that rose. Personally, I love me some Good Time, and I've never been anywhere else where I can play old-school arcade games - Original Ninja Turtles! The four-player one! - carnival shooting games, skee-ball, go-karts, laser tag, batting cages and never be more than twenty feet from one of about five full service bars...but if I had kids, I would not take them there after nightfall. And I'm fairly certain that if you lingered for long enough, you could catch some form of hepatitis in the bathroom.) Walking around the city in the days following my Boston Bowl initiation, I tried to figure out how they had achieved this feat. The answer is really quite simple: they succeed by shamelessly appealing to the gigantic dork inside everyone.

Not to sound like like that Amanda Bynes movie that came out last summer, but there is plenty of dorkiness inherent in every human. And no activity puts this on display better than bowling. Think about it - before you even set up your screen and pick teams, you have to surrender your kicks and don rental footwear. Now everyone is wearing the same shoes. Equal - fantastically evenly nerdy - footing. The only way to differentiate yourself here is to bring your own bowling shoes...dropping yourself immediately into the basement of bleatingly uncool footwear. Before you know it, everyone has their pants rolled up all weird, and is making up stupid nicknames for people on their team, and eating weird food that one normally doesn't encounter outside of a 4th graders birthday party...bottom line - you just can't be cool when you're bowling. It's one of those very rare great human equalizers. And maybe we don't have them in Boston (notice how I'm carefully side-stepping those loaded socio-economic issues again...not saying they don't exist - but this is just a blog entry about the socially soothing effects of the American bowling alley, after all) because we're all just too busy on our Massachusetts trip to let our guards down for more than five seconds at a time. This whole bloated superiority complex we all tend to take on from time to time (oh, honestly, stop with the denial, if you live here, you suffer from it too) is just really...tiring. When we let it go, we stop being so mean to each other and can actually hang out. Or maybe I'm totally off base. Maybe everyone in the city just digs bowling so much that they're all willing to put up with each others shit if they're at least separated by lanes and tables. Who knows. I told you - I'm not a sociologist. All I know is Boston Bowl is doing something everyone is appreciating the shit out of.

Plus, they give you free socks with every shoe rental. Free socks! Another great human equalizer. The powers that be at Boston Bowl should be nominated to some kind of state executive committee. Everyone could hang out, eat french fries, and wear free clean socks. Then it wouldn't matter that you can't roll up Massachusetts and bundle it with another state. We'd all have our own fresh pair, with the word 'bowl' right above the little flag logo. Great success.