All Over the Place

Maddie Hayes: David, may I please have some ANSWERS?
David Addison: Delaware, all of the above, 90 degrees.
- Moonlighting

I've had difficulty focusing today. Do I have AD/HD and someone forgot to tell me? If so, where's my Ritalin?

No topic tonight, just me babbling incessantly. For those of you who know me, it'll be just like I'm there.

Halloween is rapidly approaching and for the first time in seven years, I will not be spending Saturday night at the Warehouse. Or any bar, for that matter. Halloween Saturday is one of the nights we used to refer to as "amateur night" when I was still bartending. To say that the place will be crowded is an understatement. Halloween actually surpasses New Year's Eve as the busiest night of the year, and every moron in the city seems to come out of the woodwork to drink themselves into a drunken stupor. I counted fourteen ads for bars and clubs having costume contests in CityBeat, including some that I had never seen advertise in that paper before. (Soupie's? New one on me.) This doesn't include the Creepy Crawl in Main Strasse Village, which is being co-sponsored by seven bars in Covington. No, my days of being packed sardine-tight into a not-well-ventilated room full of inebriated frat boys and rednecks are over. I'll be at Zappagirl's house baking cookies (she has bat-shaped cookie cutters!), eating pizza, and getting ready to go to Fearfest at Paramount's Kings Island. I'm unnaturally excited by the prospect of going to this Fearfest thing. Cheesy haunted houses and roller coasters? Where do I sign up? I'm such an overgrown kid.

I didn't get a chance to go to Kings Island this year, which means I have still not had a chance to ride Son of Beast. Ooh, new record breaking coaster! The tallest (218 feet!) and fastest (78.3 mph!) wooden coaster - and A LOOP! Whee! I'm so excited, and a bit nervous...but it's a good fear.

Speaking of fears, I thought of an interesting irrational fear to add to last night's entry, although it wasn't mine. When my sister was three or so, she was afraid there were alligators in our basement. We had a playroom down there, and the carpet was green, so she figured that they were just blending in, waiting to get her as soon as she stepped foot down there. Tee hee.

Man, she is so going to kill me for telling that story.

Sudsy Malone's, the local laundromat/bar is booking bands again. Hooray! You just gotta love a place where you can get a beer and listen to a band while you're folding your unmentionables.

I saw a review for Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, and it wasn't very pretty. The reviewer gave it an F. It's really irritating that it's Halloween and the only decent horror movie that's out right now is The Exorcist, which Roger Mexico and I just watched a few weeks ago.

I think I want to see Charlie's Angels. The TV ads kick ass. But I still ain't going to some franchise bar in the Main Street Entertainment District (TM) to get preview passes. Especially a club with the oh-so-original name of "Bar." Give me a break.

So apparently there's this place called Anything Airbrushed that will do your Halloween costume makeup for you. Um, is this for lazy people or something? Part of the fun of the costume thing is actually designing and assembling your costume, not hiring a makeup and costume crew to make you look picture perfect. Yeah, you might win a contest, but where's the originality? The creativity?

(This from the girl who went to the Witches Ball dressed as a fairy, and discovered that there were at least 10 other fairies there.)

Nash joined me for a beer last night, asking for my assistance on his Halloween costume. He's going as Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit. I wish I was going to the parties he was going to, or he better take some pictures. When I called him this afternoon, he was on his way to pick up his black contact lenses.

Roger Mexico and I are going to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's house tonight to see the new kittens and decide which one he will eventually be adopting. Wonder how the cat he has now is going to take to the addition to the family. I have a guess. Two words. Hockey puck.

Looking at the Fall Dining Guide in CityBeat is a really bad idea when you're hungry. I want to go eat at every one of the featured "new classic" restaurants - right now. Too bad I don't get paid 'til tomorrow and budgeting is going to be tight if I want to go to Fearfest and the Elliott Smith show at Southgate House. Maybe I can squeeze in a stop at Kaldi's next week. Mmm...Kaldi's. Bacon and roasted red pepper cream cheese wrap. Hazelnut coffee.

I must stop drooling all over the keyboard now.

Homecoming is this weekend at the university near my house. Homecoming = parade = blocked off streets. Memo to myself: sleep late Saturday.

And finally before I sign off for the evening, I just want to sing the praises of my local corner market, or as Roger Mexico and I refer to it, the hippie store. It's run by a bunch of Deadheads. They have a framed picture of Jerry Garcia over the register. I'm not kidding. They also have the most eclectic mix of merchandise in the world, including a great import beer cooler, Wild Berry hand-dipped incense, ethnic foods, clove cigarettes (hooray!),an ATM, and a soda cooler that has both Tab and Jolt. The girl that waits on me in the mornings when I take the bus has been reading On the Road. They used to deliver pizza, too. The year I got snowed in and ran out of cat food, they had everything I needed - and they took my debit card. Rock on.

OK, I'm outta here. Time to go see the kitties and get something to eat. Not necessarily in that order.

Nothing to Fear But...

Giles: Don't taunt the fear demon.
Xander: Why? Can he hurt me?
Giles: No, it's just...tacky.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Fear, Itself"

Whoops. No entry last night. Got a little sidetracked after Buffy last night, and never managed to post. So much for self discipline.

When I was a kid, I used to be afraid of big dogs. There were a lot of them in my neighborhood, but the one that terrified me to no end was Shadow, the German shepherd across the street. He barked at everything, and I remember at one time someone told me he was a retired attack dog. I'm sure this was just a colorful tale told by the kids on the block, but when you're six and a large dog is straining at his leash, barking ferociously, it sure as hell seems true.

One time when I was playing at the neighbor's house, he broke his chain and got loose. And since we all know at that age that dogs can smell fear, he headed straight for me, ready to rip my throat out. OK, not really. He did run circles around me, barking maniacally at me the entire time. I responded in my usual manner. I burst into a wailing sob until his owner restrained him.

I have outgrown my fear of big dogs. I have a friend who owns a Rottweiler the size of a Mack truck, and urban legend says that the dog still has a bullet lodged in his head from when he attacked, was shot, and kept on coming. Charlie is one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met, and I had no problems with the fact that he chose to sleep in my room on a camping trip a few years ago. Another friend of mine has a female pit bull terrier who loves me to death, and has never intimidated me. (Of course, I've never given either of these dogs reason to be aggressive towards me.)

But still, I have my irrational fears. Things I know I have no reason to be afraid of, but for some reason I cannot shake. One of them I rediscovered Monday afternoon at the movies (Bless the Child with JohnnyB). There's a scene where Kim Basinger's car goes careening into the side of a bridge, breaking through the guardrail, and ends up hanging precariously over the looooooong drop into the water. You know the scenario. One muscle twitch, and the driver's going to freefall into whatever river the bridge spans. This scene bothered me more than anything else in the movie. During this tense moment in the movie, I was attempting to recall the emergency instructions I'd seen on a news report years ago. I was freaking out.

Now seriously folks, what are the chances of me going out like this? Why did this scene make me break out in a cold sweat? Maybe it was because I remember driving over the Sunshine Skyway with my family a few months after the accident back in 1980. (Obviously, we were driving on the span that did not have a 1200 foot gap in it.) It was creepy as hell. I was looking out the window at the parallel bridge, and then it just STOPPED. At this point, my brain realized how far above Tampa Bay we were, and I started panicking. Just looking at the pictures on the link still gives me the weebies. Yikes.

I also have an irrational fear of sharp objects. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's because I'm a klutz and I'm sure that if you ask me to peel the vegetables with that razor shap knife, I just know I'm going to cut myself and end up bleeding all over the potatoes. Me + Exacto knife = bad mix. I'm just convinced that it'll slip out of my hand or whoever's hand is holding said pointy thing and will end up embedded in my leg (or somewhere more lethal). I think I've watched too many bad horror movies or something. (Guess who didn't see Phantasm? Flying steel sphere with all kinds of pointiness coming out? No thanks.)

But the worst (and albeit, probably the most irrational) fear that I have is the fear of being alone. (Warning: "Poor little me" whining ahead. Proceed at your own risk.) I don't have it all the time; I enjoy my own company and can usually find some way to amuse myself. But every once in a while, I find myself thinking that everyone I know has better things to do than put up with me, and I'm going to end up being one of those crazy ladies with 87 cats that dies alone and the cops can't get in because there's newpapers from the last 15 years blocking the door.

Ridiculous. Completely self-centered, pessimistic, and stupid. But sometimes I think that way. This past weekend a bunch of my friends went camping, and I didn't know why no one was returning my phone calls. I figured it was something I did, and drove myself crazy all Sunday trying to figure out where I screwed up.

And then there's the whole romance thing. Yeah, I'm a hopeless romantic, and while I'd like to think that somewhere out there is this fabulous wonderful guy that will worship the ground I walk upon with out being stalker-esque, sometimes I wonder if I blew it years ago and didn't even realize it. What if it was that guy who gave me his number at Club Paradise back in July 1987 that I could never manage to arrange a date with? What if that was it, and I'm doomed to a life of Mr. Not-Quite-Rights? We're back to the cat lady scenario again, and I don't like it.

Yes, I know I'm overreacting, but sometimes I wonder when it's my turn for the damn fairy tale. Just because I'm a hopeless romantic doesn't mean the emphasis has to be on the "hopeless" part.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. B-O-O H-O-O, poor little me. I make Morrissey look like a happy kind of guy.

Actually, I'm in a pretty good mood, but this whiny crap has been kicking around in my head for a while and I thought it would be better to get it out so I can get on with my life. Maybe after hitting fresh air, it will decay away and die.

OK. Enough wallowing in self-pity. I'm going out. Time to take my misery and grind it into the dance floor.

But if someone sees me dancing and singing along to "How Soon is Now?" just smack me, OK? Or just sic a large dog wielding a big knife on me.