making my bones
Fellow Californian-turned-frogophile Amy at C'est la Me posted her hilarious "10 things about me," accompanying photos and all, and ran across the field and tagged me. So now I'm it, but besides the fact that I can't get a straight answer on how to pronounce the name for this wild game of revelations (is it meem? or me-me? or même? someone help me, please), the prospect of coming up with 10 intimate facts about me is - if you can believe it - too much work for this blogger. I can be reserved.
Instead, I thought I'd reveal some of my progressive obsessions. That's right, starting from age four to approximately 10 years ago, (like I said, I'm reserved) here are some psychoses that have plagued me over the years. Enjoy!
1. As probably 99% of the under 10 years old female population in 1983 did, when I was about four years old, I would have committed a violent crime in exchange for an Enchanted Evening Barbie. Unfortunately, my dad was of the opinion that Barbie and her coterie of disproportionate lackeys were invented by Satan, reinforcing unrealistic, Hollywood beauty standards and encouraging little girls to equate sparkly gowns and invisible genitalia with femininity. Somehow, this line of argumentation did nothing to dissuade me from begging incessantly for Enchanted Evening Barbie. To no avail, though. Seeing that desperate times call for desperate measures, I managed to fall gravely ill with Tonsilitis and had to be rushed to the emergency room for a Tonsilectomy. Right on cue, poor Dad caved in and showed up in my hospital room with the extravagantly bedecked Peaches 'n' Cream Barbie. A short time later, fully recovered from Tonsilitis and Barbiemania, he discovered me happily digging a tiny grave in the garden for Peaches.
2. A couple years after Barbie's burial, a new television phenomenon swept across American airwaves, appropriately titled Solid Gold. Within seconds of watching the opening credits, I was hooked. A flock of long-legged, long-haired, painted dancers leapt, tumbled, and slithered out onto the multi-tiered stage, and commenced what my mom disdainfully referred to as "shaking their rears at the camera." One dancer in particular, the impossibly magnetic Darcel - that hair! - became my inspiration for modern dance interpretations of any music that might be playing around the house at the time, which was usually blue grass, folk, or blues - you get the dedication that this type of material demanded.
3. This fascination took a sordid turn (probably as a result of me being denied the pleasure of admiring Beverly's interpretation of Never) and I realized that my true calling was as what we in the industry call a "Vegas Girl." I'd skip and slink around the kitchen performing in my mom's bras, stuffed with oranges and/or socks, and making kissy faces at my one-woman audience. I really don't know where I got the idea that this was a profession to which a girl in classical dance classes should aspire (most likely from another TV that show my Mom explicitly forbade me to watch) but dressing up in fantastic costumes and heels (this all goes back to being refused Enchanted Evening Barbie, clearly) and prancing around on a podium seemed like a fun and fancy way to spend 8 hours a day. I don't remember worrying over the fact that there would be an audience of sleaze to contend with and that the amount of sparkle I'd be wearing would be next to none.
4. In a natural progression of preoccupations, I traded in my dreams of pasties for jingles. Advertising tunes, that is. Maybe it was in response to the odd expressions my parents friends gave me when learning that my dream was to do line-kicks "when I grew up." Anyway, once the advertising bug took hold of my ambitions, I compulsively began composing and performing commercials for any products within reach. Chapstick, fish, ice cubes - any tangible item was game for a really long-running advert, replete with cheesy radio voice and speed-freak enthusiasm. Then, in the 5th grade, my fervent desire to create compelling jingles found an outlet. After much begging from me and my background jingle singers, Mrs. Holthaus gave me permission to perform a grape jelly advert in front of the class. 60 seconds before recess was the zenith of my career as an ad composer, but man, was it good.
5. Something indecent must have seemed lacking in this PollyAnna métier of marketing kleenex and erasers, and the frustration of this realization led me to seek out more abject paths. Enter The Godfather and its seductive world of omerta and unrepentant violence. Suddenly I was spending my weekends with kids with nicknames like Paulie fingers and Vito the mouth, loitering around the bacci ball terrains near the wharf, and carving out a reputation at school as a wanna-be mob dame. The highlight of my obsession came when pal Anna-Maria's Sicilian grandparents insisted that I was, in fact, Italian, because Malone, a name as Irish as they come, is in fact southern Italian, pronounced MaLOné. Va bene.
This is where I beg off to reassert my Irishness with a Guinness and boiled... anything. Bloggers whose responses to the meme I'd love to read :
Misplaced in the Midwest
Une nouvelle vie de bohème
Matthew Rose
Solid Gold courtesy of YouTube
Instead, I thought I'd reveal some of my progressive obsessions. That's right, starting from age four to approximately 10 years ago, (like I said, I'm reserved) here are some psychoses that have plagued me over the years. Enjoy!
1. As probably 99% of the under 10 years old female population in 1983 did, when I was about four years old, I would have committed a violent crime in exchange for an Enchanted Evening Barbie. Unfortunately, my dad was of the opinion that Barbie and her coterie of disproportionate lackeys were invented by Satan, reinforcing unrealistic, Hollywood beauty standards and encouraging little girls to equate sparkly gowns and invisible genitalia with femininity. Somehow, this line of argumentation did nothing to dissuade me from begging incessantly for Enchanted Evening Barbie. To no avail, though. Seeing that desperate times call for desperate measures, I managed to fall gravely ill with Tonsilitis and had to be rushed to the emergency room for a Tonsilectomy. Right on cue, poor Dad caved in and showed up in my hospital room with the extravagantly bedecked Peaches 'n' Cream Barbie. A short time later, fully recovered from Tonsilitis and Barbiemania, he discovered me happily digging a tiny grave in the garden for Peaches.
2. A couple years after Barbie's burial, a new television phenomenon swept across American airwaves, appropriately titled Solid Gold. Within seconds of watching the opening credits, I was hooked. A flock of long-legged, long-haired, painted dancers leapt, tumbled, and slithered out onto the multi-tiered stage, and commenced what my mom disdainfully referred to as "shaking their rears at the camera." One dancer in particular, the impossibly magnetic Darcel - that hair! - became my inspiration for modern dance interpretations of any music that might be playing around the house at the time, which was usually blue grass, folk, or blues - you get the dedication that this type of material demanded.
3. This fascination took a sordid turn (probably as a result of me being denied the pleasure of admiring Beverly's interpretation of Never) and I realized that my true calling was as what we in the industry call a "Vegas Girl." I'd skip and slink around the kitchen performing in my mom's bras, stuffed with oranges and/or socks, and making kissy faces at my one-woman audience. I really don't know where I got the idea that this was a profession to which a girl in classical dance classes should aspire (most likely from another TV that show my Mom explicitly forbade me to watch) but dressing up in fantastic costumes and heels (this all goes back to being refused Enchanted Evening Barbie, clearly) and prancing around on a podium seemed like a fun and fancy way to spend 8 hours a day. I don't remember worrying over the fact that there would be an audience of sleaze to contend with and that the amount of sparkle I'd be wearing would be next to none.
4. In a natural progression of preoccupations, I traded in my dreams of pasties for jingles. Advertising tunes, that is. Maybe it was in response to the odd expressions my parents friends gave me when learning that my dream was to do line-kicks "when I grew up." Anyway, once the advertising bug took hold of my ambitions, I compulsively began composing and performing commercials for any products within reach. Chapstick, fish, ice cubes - any tangible item was game for a really long-running advert, replete with cheesy radio voice and speed-freak enthusiasm. Then, in the 5th grade, my fervent desire to create compelling jingles found an outlet. After much begging from me and my background jingle singers, Mrs. Holthaus gave me permission to perform a grape jelly advert in front of the class. 60 seconds before recess was the zenith of my career as an ad composer, but man, was it good.
5. Something indecent must have seemed lacking in this PollyAnna métier of marketing kleenex and erasers, and the frustration of this realization led me to seek out more abject paths. Enter The Godfather and its seductive world of omerta and unrepentant violence. Suddenly I was spending my weekends with kids with nicknames like Paulie fingers and Vito the mouth, loitering around the bacci ball terrains near the wharf, and carving out a reputation at school as a wanna-be mob dame. The highlight of my obsession came when pal Anna-Maria's Sicilian grandparents insisted that I was, in fact, Italian, because Malone, a name as Irish as they come, is in fact southern Italian, pronounced MaLOné. Va bene.
This is where I beg off to reassert my Irishness with a Guinness and boiled... anything. Bloggers whose responses to the meme I'd love to read :
Misplaced in the Midwest
Une nouvelle vie de bohème
Matthew Rose
Solid Gold courtesy of YouTube
Comments
And Solid Gold?! Talk about a walk down memory lane... Love it!
This word is awfully big and girl this time you’re all alone.
But it’s time you started living.
It’s time you let someone else do the giving.
Love is all around no need to waste it.
You can have a town. Why don’t you take it?
You might just make it after all.
You might just make it after all.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-zpGtVtqQk
And I must confess that, after visiting Las Vegas when I was eleven, I too wanted to be a showgirl... A part of me still does. What can I say? I love sparkly things.
Tata Lisa
and thank you to anonymous for the Mary Tyler Moore link - I'm trying to figure out a way to get my alarm clock to yank me out of sleep to that tune - truly inspirational stuff.