Ghoul's Night

(LIGHTS UP on FIVE GIRLS--RO, SHELLS, ALICE, KALE, AND PAKE in a CAR, en route to an abandoned motel in Phoenix.)

RO: You guys, I'm looking up skin walkers right now on Wikipedia.
SHELLS: How is that scary?
ALICE: ...because Wikipedia is hAuNtEd! OoOoO!
PAKE: Wicked-pedia.
       (KALE laughs.)
RO: Well, that wasn't scary. I'm redoing my Google search.
ALICE:...You mean...hAuNtEd Google? (Beat.) Boo-gle!
       (KALE laugh.)
RO: ...Is Ya-ghoul good? I can't tell.
SHELLS: No.
ALICE: Hey, guys, what's a ghost's favorite board game?
        (Beat.)
PAKE: Scattergories?
KALE: Boo-gle? As in Boggle?
ALICE: (Bitter someone got her Boggle joke.) Ouija Board, idiots!
PAKE: I dunno. I thought mine was pretty good.
ALICE: What's haunted about Scattergories?
PAKE: I dunno! It's just a fun-ass game!

(GIRLS drive off into the distance. FADE TO BLACK.)

Nobody Loves You When You're 23

Here are the anthems of my 24th year (IE bein' 23)--in chronological order:

1. What's My Age Again--Blink-182
an anthem to the year itself
2. Going Away to College--Blink-182
an anthem to thinking about grad school
3. Dance Music--The Mountain Goats
my plane jam for Germany travels
4. Someone to Watch Over Me--Gershwinz
an anthem from the musical my fam saw in Germany
5. Here's Looking at You Kid--The Gaslight Anthem
an anthem I would wistfully listen to on runs in Chicago summer
6. Party in the USA--Miley Cyrus
an regressive and two years too late anthem for starting my life over in da desert
7. I Am the One--Next to Normal
my biking tune of choice, never left my iPod shuffle all year
8. Leaves in the River--Seawolf
an anthem for missing Midwestern fall
9. Strays--Tim Kasher
an anthem for late-night playwriting
10. HAM--Kanye & Jay-Z
an anthem for upping my running mileage all year
11. Blazin'--Nicki Minaj
to play while poolside/feel cool/love Ye a lot
12. Beautiful Mistake--The Ataris
so much GD Ataris this year...boop
13. Blow-Ke$ha
an anthem that played before EVERY SINGLE IMPROV SHOW ALL YEAR--forever and always hearing that trollop stutter her B's will remind me of Freeze Tag
14. Girl's Just Wanna Have Fun--Cindy Lauper
an anthem played during one of my favorite sketches I wrote in 2011
15. Someone Like You--Adele
(for some reason) my anthem for finals/winter in AZ/lots of belting in Chelle's car
16. The Scientist--Aimee Mann
an anthem for missing my family
17. Broken Bird--Jack's Mannequin
an anthem from Andy's new album, angstily sung by me frequently
18. Art Is Dead--Bo Burnam
an anthem that asked me what I asked myself (What is da point of art though...?)
19. Black Star--Radiohead
an anthem for seeing Radiohead live
20. Alone--Glee Version
the anthem in my head during my entire Virginia trip
21. My Heart Will Go On--Celine Dion
I don't wanna talk about it
22. 21 Guns--American Idiot Musical Recording
an anthem I spoofed for a sketch about gun legislation this spring
23. What Makes You Beautiful--One Direction
an anthem I somehow got everyone to listen to like twelve times en route to LA for Fracas

Bug, Kale, moi Girl's Night. February 2012. Photo by Chelle/Shell.

Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world.

I wanna be the one to walk in the sun, and girl's just wanna have fun.

Last Year's List:

http://aliceoutofcontext.blogspot.com/2011/05/wise-men-say.html

Just a Nightcap of Gratitude (Friendship and Food)

Bug with a whipped cream handlebar. October 2011.

During sketch rehearsal, I walked to Taco Bell to buy Chelle a burrito. I was't sure if I should get something or not. I didn't. As I picked up my order, the woman said she accidentally made an extra veggie tostada. Did I want it?

Rehearsal Con't. The night ended and the ladies kicked the boys out of our rehearsal space. We exploded immediately into gossip and gushing.

Girls Night became Old School on accident. Just last semester's originals coming over to my place for dessert. Kale hadn't eaten. I called her from my bike listing what I had in my fridge. Leftover ziti from Chelle, beet pasta from Bug. On Monday the sweetheart had trekked down the block to my front door with the delivery of spaghetti and beet balls, which, ironically, she and Kale ended up eating tonight at midnight in my kitchen while the aroma of nutella brownies puffed from the oven. It felt sweet and secure. Communities of women who love and don't compete are the best. All of us have grown significantly in the past few months, and that's something to celebrate.

Men's shirts, short skirts, whoa-oh-oh!

Big Girls Don't Cry

When I felt the tears welling up, I was surprised and then really proud of myself because it dawned on me that I haven't cried since moving here. I have never shed a tear in Arizona. I mean, that's pretty cool, right? Like, I left everything, have been alone, have had bad days, have had mondo amounts of work, have gotten sick...and, yet, I've still never cried.

Previous things that have made me cry:

-Not being able to find the pizza restaurant I wanted to eat at (2009).
-The movie Harriet the Spy (2005).
-Koon calling the Spiderman movies "gay" while we were in Tokyo (2008).

So...my non-tears are actually pretty remarkable.

But, yesterday, I was right on the edge. As I was beelining to my improv show, I was halted by HUGE twenty-foot posters of bloody fetuses with captions like, "Real feminists don't support abortion." I was disgusted and immediately so so angry. I marched right up to one of the men handing out flyers and said, "Excuse me. I find this extremely offensive." He assured me it was necessary, and we argued, my temperature boiling, before it came to this--

Me: The world is over-populated.
Him: You need to check your facts.

Then, another student came up to us and interjected, "Excuse me. Are you a vegetarian?" The man paused. "No," he said. And that's when I felt* my throat begin to close, my eyes begin to redden, and I looked down at my watch and realized showtime was in ten minutes, and I really didn't have time to fall apart in the middle of the student union commons. So, I left. And fifteen minutes later I was playing "Say What." And twelve hours later I was eating ice cream out of the carton during Girl's Night with Bug and Kale. And 24 hours later I'm writing this to you after a morning of running and writing and writing in my gratitude journal.

75 days in Arizona and still dry.

*I can't quite tell you what moved me to near-tears. Ignorance? Death and people's concepts of it? The meat industry--still plugging away under everyone's moral radar? Or, I could be starting my period soon. Dunno!

Sketchy Girls

Yesterday night as I was biking off campus, the parties were just getting started. Thursday night and the streets are flooded with packs of students hitting the bars. I waited at a light with two other young men. One tatted out with long gnarly hair holding a skateboard and one guy in a suit holding a briefcase.

A triplet of girls walked in front of us yapping loudly to one another--they all wore skin tight skirts that barely ended below their butts. The guys watched the ladies as they passed. The skater inched back to the business dude in an attempt to have a private conversation away from me. I braced myself to eavesdrop their offensive banter. But the skater said quietly to the other guy, "It's just like...where's your self-confidence?" The business dude nodded. "They're young. They have a lot to learn."

So, that was nice.


Girls with self-confidence! The ladies of my sketch group! Out for Ethiopian food to celebrate our first sketch show of the year! It was this afternoon! It went well!

Falling Into My Lap

Our kitchen--observe the evidence of Boy Roomie's homemade ale brewing on the stove and counter and sink. Notice the covered banana bread.

Today things fell into my lap. I think it's karma from a donation I made to a Save the Arizona National Parks campaign against my better judgement this morning. I was walking just off campus when I got stopped by a volunteer, and one thing led to another, and suddenly I was dishing out fifteen bucks to save beautiful places I may never visit.

I felt guilt tumbling in my stomach--silly donation or right choice? Then, as if on cue, a girl offered me a free chocolate cookie outside an ice cream sandwich shop. Free Thing #1! Then--

2. An advertising exec stopped me and asked if I would answer some questions about hockey for a short video. Apparently, a big name hockey star interviewed me, and I gave really stupid answers to all his questions (I think the ad was about how little people know about hockey in AZ). Anyway, they liked my footage so much, they gave me six free tickets to a game. Swanky lookin' seats too.
3. A beautiful, dark, and cool September night for bikin'.
4. Upon arriving home, I was completely enveloped in cinnamon. Girl roomie had her beuff over, and they had just pulled banana bread out of the oven. Who do you think got the first slice? Moi. We unwound to MTV, and I was just about to hit the hay when the other four ladies of my sketch comedy group called me up.
5. Cut to a certified girls night complete with Mean Girls playing in the background as we talked about boys.
6. Chelle baked those Pillsbury sugar cookies with pictures on them--back to school variety. Which I ate.
7. Kale works at Starbucks and, thus, had a huge bag of leftover scones, muffins, danish, oh my! Which I ate.
8. Arriving home in the wee hours of morning, I said, "Thanks, moon," because she was so big and so bright.

NOTE: I wrote this last night, but decided not to post it as I was falling asleep at the keyboard. Good call, Alice--it was littered with little sidebars like, "but idont needany" and "dad foam theeeeeee."

Everything's beautiful,
everything's a holiday,
the day you live without it.