Farewell

photo: Rob Mercier

I was sitting here trying to write something about having purchased the wrong cereal, but I can't manage it.

We heard today that a boy who graduated just last year has ended his life. I did not know this boy. It is not my personal loss. Still. We shared a building for four years. I applauded at his concerts. He was taught by my friends. He was beloved by students I do know.

Most simply, though, he was 18 and will never be 19. That, I think, is a loss we all share.

It feels trivial to the point of offensive to write about cereal today. We'll try for funny again tomorrow.
 

Remember the Alamo

Michael David Rose Photography

A new movie theatre, the Alamo Drafthouse, has been on its way to my neighborhood for months. Maybe years. I signed up for its loyalty program before I even fully comprehended where it would be located because wherever it was, it was going to be closer to my house than any other movie theatre. And unless it was going to be all horror movies all the time, that made me already loyal.*

Well.

It turns out that it is even closer than I thought. Five blocks. Five. It's also bigger than I thought.  Five screens. Five. And they serve food and cockails there.  More than five things, probably, so we're going to have to let that go, but you get the general idea.  I'm excited. The theatre doesn't officially open until Thursday, but having been loyal since before loyalty was even a practicable option put me on the inside track for some specials. Advance notice. Special five dollar (5) (That one just sneaked in.) screenings of things that my schedule won't allow me to actually attend this week, but enticing nonetheless. A deal where, if you bought a gift card by a certain date, you'd get a food voucher.

I am as thrifty as I am loyal, so you can bet I bought a gift card. For myself.  Perhaps not quite the holiday spirit, but that food voucher is all mine now. Seconds after i bought the gift card, I used it to buy my first movie ticket, practically cackling with glee over my cleverness.  Star Wars. The evening my winter vacation starts. Tra la la and hooray for me.

Only after I hit "confirm" and printed my ticket, (I still print things. Shut up.) did I open my calendar to discover that I already had a celebratory first-night-of-vacation outing planned. And this is why, fair readers, I recommend that you check your calendar before you buy tickets to things.  This is not the first time I've made this mistake. I seem to have the impression that I do nothing with my time, when, in fact, I already have some theatre tickets for June. The calendar is just full of useful reminders like that.

I had no idea whether they would allow me to exchange my ticket. Nowhere on the site did it say they would, but it didn't expressly say they wouldn't. However, the theater was not yet open for business so there was no one to ask. Would I have to eat the cost of this (quite expensive) ticket, ultimately losing money on the already slightly pathetic gift card to myself/ $10 food voucher maneuver? It was, as they say in the movie business, a cliffhanger.

My big plan was to throw myself on their mercy, deploy charm, and remind them how steadfastly loyal I'd been to them before we'd even met.  It seemed important that I make my plea before their sold-out Star Wars frenzy of an opening day, but I've got a lot going on this week. It had to be tonight. I worked late and drove straight to the theatre with a fist full of print outs: original ticket, gift card, and, just in case, food voucher.

I parked directly in front. In movies, of course, this happens to people wherever they go, but in urban real life, it is reasonable to regard this as a particularly good omen. I strode in to what is truly an enormous lobby and prepared to tell the sad story of my own ineptitude. I had barely begun when they said, "You want to exchange it?  No problem."  You know what? I have a feeling they would have done it for just anyone. Loyalty schmoyalty.

I was grateful and they were accommodating and everything was swell until nothing worked. The refund should have posted to the something and the ticket should have printed to the something else and the transaction number this and the error message that. What with one thing and another, I was there for a half an hour. A half an hour during which handsome bearded men (they employ nothing but handsome bearded men, it seems. I personally dealt with no fewer than six, including one who thought I had previously managed a theatre in Austin. I haven't.) called me by name, apologized profusely, and commended me for my extraordinary good nature. I was having a lovely time, but they didn't believe me.

So great was their disbelief that they gave me a free voucher. To use for any movie. Whenever I want.  Ha HA.

So, to sum up:
1. I exchanged my ticket
2. I got a $4 refund for moving from an evening to a matinee screening
3. I got the attention of numerous handsome, young men for a fairly extended period of time
4. The (handsome, bearded) manager gave me his card, lest something go awry with the, admittedly, very goofy hand-written ticket I now have
5. (five!) I got a free movie voucher.

So, contrary to the original "check your calendar" lesson I tried to foist on you earlier, I guess the real moral is, be an idiot.  It totally pays.
 

*Some of my faithful readers, by which I mean one, may bridle at this and wonder where my loyalty is really. To this reader let me say, the Castro will always have my heart and if you give me a good reason, I will always show up at the Roxie.
 

Maybe they just don't sleep

I have just come home from the school's winter concert, a thing that always astonishes me not only because of it's just so damn good, but because of all the other things I know those young musicians are doing with their time. In addition to all that homework, I mean. And, believe me, there's a lot of homework. The nature of my job is that I know only a few of our students, but I can tell you that:

The boy on the vibes who did some swing dance moves with the girl on the flute?  They're both playwrights. He's also going to India on a school trip tomorrow.  She was in Midsummer Night's Dream in the fall.

Trombone soloist, harpist, and two singers?  Playwrights.  The tall, smiling blonde in the middle of the chorus?  Headed to India in the morning.

That remarkable girl who sang a song originated by Mahalia Jackson and then finished the piece by soloing on the alto sax is in my playwriting class too, but is also a fierce basketball player.

The the very sweet boy who just got accepted to Brown and was first violin in the chamber orchestra tonight is also headed to India in the morning.  "I wish you were coming with us," he told me, which might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said.

Sometimes I lose track of why I have been in the same job for nearly fifteen years, and sometimes I know exactly why.

A marked woman

My kitchen door opens to three short flights of stairs. The very top of the stairwell ends outside my upstairs neighbors' kitchen, and the very bottom at a door leading outside. My kitchen door is between the two. Once outside, you could turn left and head past my next door neighbors' apartment and on into the back yard, or you could turn right to the trash cans and the side door to my garage.

I have the apartment miracle of my own washing machine. It fits, very snugly indeed, into my pantry. The dryer could neither be vented from nor fit in the kitchen, so it lives in the garage. The arrangement necessitates a little damp-sheet-clutching field trip down the back stairs between one and the other. This works out perfectly well and is the sum total of my exercise regimen.

A couple of days ago, armed with wet socks, I pulled the kitchen door open and gasped a small startled gasp. Unaccountably, there was a sign stuck to the door with four pieces of duct tape. It said "Kari" and my address.  Seeing as how I know who I am and where I live, and since I never expect company through the back door, there could be only one explanation.  The neighbors must have taken out a hit on me. What the holy hell? If anyone should be hiring a hit man around here it should be me.

I opened the outside door and found another identical sign, this one next to a similar one listing the upstairs neighbors' names and their address. Are we anticipating the postman vaulting over the garden wall for a change of pace?  Curious, I walked up to the next door apartment and found that they too had an identifying sign next to their back door.  Maybe the neighbors hadn't made the call, after all. Perhaps the management company wants us all dead so they can charge $5000 a month for every apartment in the building.

But then I remember Rose from next door telling me that ever since the upstairs boys had colonized the back yard in order to allow their collection of bellowing bros and shrieking sorority sisters to roam unrestrained in the manner of cage-free chickens, party-goers have regularly attempted to walk into Rose's apartment, presumably in search of a bathroom or, possibly, a keg.  What is actually in Rose's apartment is Rose, her husband, and their newborn baby. The drunken confusion hasn't been going well for anyone involved.

These signs, therefore, must be an attempt by the boys upstairs to illustrate to their guests that A) there are, in fact, three apartments in this building, two of which contain people who want nothing to do with them and B) as such, it would be better not to try to enter those people's apartments.

I appreciate any effort to rein in the frat house antics that now define my home, but surely simply saying "second door on the right and upstairs" would do the trick? Particularly since, in order to even access the back yard, every one of these guests went first to the upstairs apartment. Simply retrace your steps, children. Quietly.

Today, the party began at 10AM. Streams of people for hours.  At one point, I happened to look out my window to see a young man standing in front of the building clutching a 26-pack of Bud Light, a Santa costume, and an iPhone, at which he was gazing bemusedly--how to get in?-- apparently too unfamiliar with 20th Century technology to simply ring his friends' doorbell. which was clearly marked and about two steps away from where he was standing.

I suppose if this is the demographic we are dealing with, they may be equally challenged by such ancient mysteries as doors and stairs. Perhaps there are signs sprinkled like so many Hansel & Gretel breadcrumbs all the way to the property line, identifying other such hyper-local landmarks as "garbage can" "hose" and "hedge" so the scores of inebriated young engineers can find their way safely back from the distant outpost of the back yard BBQ.

Christmastime! (And I don't care)

This is the adorable Christmas village on my friend Katy's mantle because she is not dead inside. Also, I stole this picture from Facebook without her permission. That's right. No Christmas spirit, also a criminal. That's me. 

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Last year, I did not put up a single seasonal bauble. I had planned to be reunited with my far-away boyfriend for Christmas, and was feeling very merry and bright and romantic-comedy Christmas-montagey about the whole thing.  We'll get a tree together!  We'll comically sing improvisational carols!  We'll eat and eat!  Everything will be droll and affectionate and lightly scented with peppermint and pine!

I was in.

Then his return was delayed and then we broke up altogether. I think it was a good decision, but it wasn't a particularly Christmasy decision.

The la la just evaporated leaving me no more than fa, which morphed rapidly into feh. I couldn't be bothered to tree and garland. I did still wrap my family's gifts with care because I love wrapping gifts at any time of the year, and I watched some holiday movies because I am not made of stone.

As I think about it, I did also bake one very festive cake, but that was, by far, the most enthusiasm I rustled up.

Here we are, a whole year later. I am not undergoing any particularly poignant emotional upheaval, and yet I think it's possible I care even less about Christmas this year than I did last year. I'm not one of those "I hate Christmas" people grinching around glaringly. I am both happy and sort of envious when I see other people's trees zinging past on car rooftops or twinkling in bay windows. It's just that somehow, totally against my will, Christmas has become cioppino. Cioppino is completely delicious and I have enjoyed it many times in the past, but if I never ate it again, I wouldn't miss it.

I don't want Christmas to be cioppino; I want Christmas to be chocolate. A treat I can't imagine a future without.

Is it necessary to have children to continue to be excited about Christmas?  Or do you need to be [happily] in love?  Or hosting a lot of holiday hootenannies?  If so, my chances aren't looking so hot.

Or...just maybe...many people eye the ornament box with deep apathy, only to find that having begrudgingly decked the halls, their dreams begin dancing with sugar plums. Is it fake it til you make it: holiday edition?

In my garage, there is a box of little pine cone people and a snowy village just waiting to be arranged on the mantle. When I was little, I had a small artificial tree of my own that I was allowed to decorate all by myself with wee wooden ornaments that my mother had gotten in Austria. The pine cone village was also my domain, next-door neighbors annually reassigned as to my seasonal whim. I cherished these things as only a very quiet, careful child could. I hadn't seen any of them for about 30 years, but last year I rescued them from my parents' attic.  Apartment-sized!  Perfect! I couldn't wait for this year to roll around to unpack them--a Christmas do-over.

Now the box reproaches me from the shelf when I park my car.

Fake it til you make it might not be the secret to Christmas cheer, but it's probably worth a shot. If I can't do it for me, I should at least be able to do it for the pine cone villagers.  God knows they've been patient enough. 

I've got the Fa.  Maybe the La La is in that box.

Fingers crossed.
I'll let you know how it goes.