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Due to my five-year anniversary with LuthorCorp this March, and due to a little nifty in our benefits package that allows us to buy or sell a week’s vacation, I have four weeks of vacation this year.  This dovetails nicely with my shiny new Egg Board fellowship at WCDH, which is tentatively scheduled for June 15.

I had expected to hear plenty of grumbling from LuthorCorp about taking all this time off at once.  I expected a discussion of who is going to cover for me while I’m out, and why we can’t afford a temp.  I expected to get a stern lecture about what a burden I was placing on everybody, and how we are not Funky Little Company anymore; we are a big public Fortune 500 company and the rules are different now.  What I did not expect to hear was no.

No, we can’t spare you.  No, you can’t take all of your earned vacation at once.  No.  No.  No.

Fortunately, I have three things working in my favor.  One is that I had the presence of mind to push back, even though it meant exchanging the only harsh words I’ve ever exchanged with my boss.  Another is that my sweet and wondrous co-workers within earshot have vowed to help me in any way they can.  The third is that we had this conversation just minutes after I had done a really big favor for another salesman and his multimillion-dollar customer.

I am supposed to meet with my boss’s boss today, who has the final say, and who is both a good guy and an old friend (he recruited me into this company and before I came to work for him he wrote me a reference letter for a scholarship when I was in culinary school).  It is for this reason only that I am merely rattled, and not depressed.  But since we have 8 inches of brand-new snow on the ground—9 if you count what we’re supposed to get this morning—whether he even makes it into the office today is anybody’s guess.

To quote my friend Johnette, I’m gonna have a drink and walk around, I’ve got a lot to think about, oh yeah.

Begging your indulgence, dear friends...the vague malaise that was prodding at me a couple of weeks ago seems to be returning with a vengeance. I spent most of the weekend trying to determine whether the sore throat I’d picked up was an incipient head cold, another mysterious industrial pollutant in the neighborhood or a sign from the Fates that it’s time to freakin’ dust, already. I decided to sweat it out on the treadmill at lunch and was rewarded with a wave of exhaustion and what feels like a low-grade fever. Well, at least it will keep me warm when the blizzard rolls in.

Belated thanks and applause to nakedjen, Snowball and Kenneth, who answered my Five Questions so sweetly and thoughtfully. (Kenneth’s description of Reading Terminal Market is worth the price of whatever you’re paying for your ISP. For those of you who have never been to Philadelphia, trust us: Reading Terminal Market is the most wonderful place in the world, and he nailed it in four paragraphs.) Additional thanks and a round of lemon-drop shots to Alicia and goliard, who did not let me twist in the wind, but posted their own zingy replies to orionoir’s Five Questions. No thanks to orionoir for putting us through that. Dude, one of these days your luck is going to run out. 

When I was on my sabbatical the week before last, feeling lonely, fractious and bumpy, the fabulous, sexy and not-at-all-evil Walt rode to my rescue by mailing me a pair of books that he knew would cheer me up. Indeed they did. (Walt is a genius at knowing when I’m down and in need of old Hollywood gossip and trivia: last summer he mailed me a copy of Louella Parsons’ Tell it to Louella, which I received on August 14, the day of the blackout.)

One of them is Otto Friedrich’s City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940’s. I haven’t started it yet because I picked up the other one first, but Walt says that there are good stories abounding in it, including some about Charles Laughton massaging his own genitals with stage fright. Friends, I don’t ask more from my Hollywood trivia than that. The other one, the one I am deep into now, is Alexander King’s May This House Be Safe From Tigers. I don’t know how I got this far in life without hearing of Alexander King (although the fact that both of his books are out of print; Tigers was published in 1961), but now that I’ve got him, I’m never letting him go. I asked Walt if Alexander King was famous for anything besides being a “poet, painter, cartoonist, raconteur and frequent guest on the Jack Paar show.” He has graciously given me permission to quote from his letter:

Alexander King is one of the stars of an unwritten book about the celebrities who rotated in and out of the Addiction Research Center of the US Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. They specialized in morphine and heroin and would take anybody, but there was a regular bus from NYC. If I remember right, Chet Baker for sure, Sonny Rollins, God knows who else, were his classmates. Wm Burroughs [Jr] wrote ‘Kentucky Ham’ about it. They used to dole out free drugs in exchange for permission to experiment on ‘em. To top that, they were experimented on by Dr. Harris Isbell, who was on the CIA payroll, and gave some of these poor guys LSD for 75 consecutive days.

He includes this informative, scary link.

But back to King. There are great, great stories in here, including a chapter on his trip down to Lexington, a polemic on the corrosive effect of advertising on the content of television shows, and some truly funny and inspired cartoons/slice of life vignettes. (A caveat:  one thing that is less than great in here is King’s condescending and dismissive attitude toward gay people.  It is not atypical of the prevailing mores of the day; in fact, it is probably much more tolerant than most of the prevailing mores of the day, but I’m still sorry to see it.  I would like to think that if King had been born 30 years later, his attitude would have been different—but then again, if he had been born 30 years later, he would not be nearly the character that he was, shaped as he was by his time and place.)

There is not a single page that is not full of sublime, silly, profane, obscene, outraged, giddy language, and I’m afraid that given half the chance, I would quote the whole book right here. So instead I will try my damndest to not do so, and to leave you with this excerpt, which functions as an introduction to a tale of Alexander King watching a pair of seasoned, work-proud garbagemen and the sugarfoot trainee assigned to work with them:

These days I no longer keep any animals around the house, but once, quite a while ago, I was for some reason or another pretty deeply involved in raising hundreds and hundreds of tropical fish, andImust say I derived a great deal offun and even satisfaction out of this expensive pastime.

Remember in my time I have known whimsical hod carriers, dignified sewer inspectors and even poetic chimney sweeps. Hey! I knew chimney sweeps...

The worst thing about being the American Egg Board Fellow at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow is discovering that LuthorCorp might have issues with said Fellow taking all of her vacation at once to go honor the terms of her fellowship.  Stay tuned for what might prove to be a very interesting story.  (Or what might be much ado about nothing.)

The best thing about being the American Egg Board Fellow at the WCDH is that now I can walk up behind Lloyd as he makes the coffee, slip my hands into his pockets and growl into his ear, “Hey, baby, ever done it with a Fellow?”

Oh, mercy.  Alicia did say that since the questions were up to the interviewer, said interviewer could make them as nice or as evil as s/he wanted them to be. And yet...I went ahead and sent a comment to orionoir, even though I know him well enough to know better than that.  Sure, pally, I said, go ahead and interview me.

Well, a deal’s a deal.  Here is the deal, in the form of rules of the game:

1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 - You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You’ll include this explanation.
5 - You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

1. in excruciatingly precise detail, please recount the plot, theme, pov, setting, grammar, style and special effects of your last sexual fantasy. include an endnote discussing your choice of font, its history, and a general overview of all antecedent and descendant fonts.

Define “last sexual fantasy.” I seem to be having a different one about once every seven minutes.  Let’s see...there was the one with Ewan McGregor on the uptown 4 train—no, wait, that was at dinner...there was the one with Johnny Marr hiding in wait for me under my desk, positioned strategically in front of my ergonomically correct chair...no, no, that was a lover I had who bore a striking resemblance to Johnny Marr...dammit...at any rate, the grammar was correct for blank verse, the style was both rococo and baroque (and if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it, rimshot), and special effects were designed by Len Hapgood’s Kost-U-Less Flash Animation Emporium.  Font is known as “that nifty default font from TypePad, but would have been Garamond if only I knew how to spell it.”

2. did at least one of your parents have higher hopes for you than seems to be the case? explain just why things have been such a big fucking disappointment; assign blame on others whenever remotely possible.
No, not at all.  My parents groomed me to be the first woman justice on the Supreme Court, and as soon as I save enough box tops to pay for Harvard Law School, then nothing can stop me from...what...really?...are you sure? (crestfallen) Um...*this* is a big fucking disappointment, and I blame Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg for squashing the dream.

3. are other people concerned about your a) drinking, b) smoking, c) sexual practices, d) eating, e) hairstyle, f) fertility, g) lack thereof, h) complexion, i) drug use, j) driving, k) laziness, l) workaholism, m) gambling, n) housekeeping, o) parental disciplinary failure, p) lawn, r) internet use, s) lowlife friends, t) lack of friends, u) inability to cook a turkey, v) pigheaded political beliefs, w) cholesterol, x) body odor, y) pets, z) mental health? for q), simply answer question u) while pressing the pound key.
Yes.  Except for u).  I rock the house when I roast a turkey.  Nation-states crumble into dust, powerful men weep at my feet as they beg me to please, please tell them how I get the dark meat done to perfection without drying out the breast.  Ha.  As if I would give it away.

4. what were you doing during the minute which began at precisely 1:30pm eastern standard time (gmt -05:00) on thursday january 22nd 2004 and terminated at 1:31pm eastern standard time (gmt -05:00) on thursday january 22nd 2004? as much as you possibly can, reproduce the real-time second-by-second experience, footnoting all words, names, technical terms, and slang which may have been in your thoughts but which may not be readily comprehensible to a small child.
At 1:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, January 22, 2004, I was on the telephone with a buyer for an unnamed beverage and spirits company, explaining to him why we couldn’t sell him never-to-biodegrade plastic cartons for ten cents apiece when it costs us five bucks apiece to make them, stopping only to let him ask me if I had always been a loathsome piece of spider puke or if it was a skill I picked up on the job, and to remind me once again that Satan himself must have delivered unnamed beverage and spirits company into my evil clutches.  At 1:31 p.m. EST on Thursday, January 22, 2004, I hung up the phone, removed the fork I had jabbed into my forehead from my forehead and reflected once again on why I didn’t take that job gunrunning for those angry French farmers who like to blow up McDonald’ses.

5. what’s your deep dark secret? get it off your chest.
*I* am Keyser Soze.  Shhhhhh.

6. assuming heterosexuality, what reasonably well-known same-sex celebrity would you sleep with if the fate of the world absolutely depended on you so sleeping with said celebrity? if homosexual, pick opposite sex celebrity on whom with-sleeping the world’s fate does depend. if bisexual, pick wellable-nun cyllable celibritty celebaty famous person who sleeps with nobody with whom you’d be forced to sit in the honeymoon suite of the houston airport hilton watching a cable tv movie about the love between a figure skater and a hockey player defying all odds in order to culminate in an on-ice symbolic consummation which miraculously does nothing to endanger a pg rating.
Quite a lot of assumptions you’ve got there.  Okay, assuming heterosexuality, it would have to be the woman in the video nasty I picked up for Red Wine, Chocolate and Porn night while Lloyd was out of town for two weeks.  What do you mean it doesn’t count if I don’t give her name?  I don’t know what her name was—dude, it was a video nasty!

7. have you ever slept with some girl/guy, sheesh, s/he could have been all hairy with bad teeth and who knows what kind of bugs, you first met on the internet? okay then, just how many? a paragraph each, please.
Define “slept.” Define “hairy.” Define “bugs.” Define “internet.” Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  In order, “yes,” “seven...no wait, twelve...no, wait...do Olympic swim teams count as individuals or as a single unit?”, and “define ‘paragraph.’”

8. i don’t know what 8 is for.
But nine, nine, nine for the lost god, ten, ten, ten, ten for everything everything everything everything.  (That bitch took my money and went to Chicago...whoops, I’m skipping ahead a bit.)

9. if a really nice blog writing guy were to come up from behind and give you a big hug while you’re doing the dishes, would you blush all shades of a newly blossomed rose, saying “awwww” in a really endearing voice, okay, and then the nice blogging bloke were to be untying your apron ever so slowly and swoosh there it puddles on the shiny clean floor, and then—oh, never mind.
I tend to blush all shades of a brilliant ripe tomato, which tends to scare off really nice blog writing guys because they think I’m suffering from hypertension.  It really cuts into my fooling-around-whilst-doing-the-dishes-baking-the-bread-stirring-down-the-damsons time, damn the luck.

10. what is your understanding of string theory? how do you reconcile its inconsistencies with standard quantum physics, and to what degree do you feel that einstein’s model of relativity is nullified by subsequent work at both american and europaean supercolliders? please cite all relevant sources.
Everything I know about string theory can be encapsulated here. For ease of supercolliders, Mr. Simpson:Eric Idle::Adrian Wapcaplet:John Cleese.

11. so the blog writing guy, he’s dragged you by the hair to the bedroom, and there are sixteen tastefully arrayed scented candles (whatever was on sale… lots of patchouli, that would be your guess) but, whoa, look out, the laundry’s caught fire --
Anyone who would fill a room with patchouli candles deserves to lose all his laundry.  Whoops, I mean, (tenderly) it’s the thought that counts, baby…

12. what is it that most annoys you about other drivers? do you get this constant urge to mount a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on the roof of your car, wear an orange baseball cap with the name of a chainsaw company on it, and go cruising around looking for someone who’s just asking for it, well, do you?
What most annoys me about other drivers is their penchant for running over pedestrians like myself (although not actually myself, thankfully).  I get a constant urge to walk around with my keys in my fist so that I can scratch bloody murder out of paint job on the Focus of the the wet weed who turns into a crosswalk and misses me by a scant six inches.  This would be an admirable solution, were it not for the fact that my keys only weigh six ounces, while a Focus is just the slightest bit heavier.  Plus, said wet weed may not try to run you over with said Focus, but he may just decide to leap out of said Focus at the crosswalk and punch you in the mouth.  Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.  Heavens, no.

13. sheesh, this laundry’s a total loss, what a smouldering mess. why don’t we go out for a cup of coffee somewhere?
Sure.  I know a place in Hanover that makes coffee so good it’d make you slap your own auntie.

What a lovely idea this is.  Alicia at TwilightCafe, dreamer and thinker, invited readers to leave a comment if they were interested in participating in a five-question interview.  Here are her questions, and my answers:

1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
My favorite single memory from childhood is probably my very first memory.  I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I was small enough to still be sleeping in a crib.  I’m thinking I was a year old, maybe younger.  My mom and dad and I were living in my grandparents’ house in northeast Philadelphia, a house long since torn down.  (The state of Pennsylvania decided to build an access road through our neighborhood, so a dozen houses, including ours, were torn down.  The service road project ran out of money and the road was never built.  I have no idea what is there now.  I can’t bear to think of it.) My uncles, who were teenagers when I was little, shared a room.  My parents had the room next door and my crib was in their room.  I remember lying in the crib one night.  Mom and Dad were both still awake, watching tv in the living room, so I was alone.  The hall light was on and I remember looking at it.  From my uncles’ room blared Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention singing “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.” My grandmother tore into their room and yelled, loud, “TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN.  YOU’LL WAKE UP THE BABY.” I remember thinking it was funny that Grandmom was being so noisy.

Although it’s not a single memory, I have lots of pleasant memories of falling asleep in the back of my parents’ car on the way home from going out for dinner.  This was before my brother was born, so there were no car seats in the back seat, and I was allowed to unbuckle my seat belt and lie down in the back seat and sleep on the way home.  I can think of very few things that made me feel as happy and safe as lying in the back seat, knowing that my parents were doing the hard work in bringing me home, and all I had to do was sleep.

2. What new thing would you like to learn to do?
This is so embarrassing, but I’d really like to learn how to throw and catch a baseball.  I have terrible hand-eye coordination, except when it comes to cake decorating.  Anything that’s not food-related, I’m completely hopeless.  I have always envied people who could not only throw and catch beautifully, but could take such things for granted, who had so much confidence in the workings of their own bodies that they knew where the ball would go before it even left their hands.  I have been told that it’s an easy thing to learn, throwing and catching a ball.  I am trying to be hopeful, and not just assume that I’ll find a way to screw it up.

3. What would you do if you had the guts to try it?
I would travel alone to places where it might not be advisable for women to travel alone, such as Tunisia or Thailand or Goa.  I would travel to jungles and rainforests.  I would rent a trailer in the desert in Arizona and see how long I could be by myself without driving myself mad.

4. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I have never read Paradise Lost.  This doesn’t come up in conversation too often, but people who know that I was an English major, particularly other English majors, automatically assume I know Milton inside out.  Sometimes I fess up, but usually I try to play along vaguely, hoping that nobody notices I have no damn idea of what I’m talking about.

5. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Other than the places mentioned above, I would probably return to Amsterdam for a long-term stay.  My husband and I spent two days in Amsterdam during our honeymoon, and we loved it so much that ever since, we have wondered to each other if we could make a go of living there.  It is such a beautiful city, old and grand and happy.  The other night I was watching VH1 Classic, which showed the video for the 70’s George McCrae song “Rock Your Baby.” I perked right up, because I loved this song when I was a kid (still do, really), but I almost cried when I realized that the streets and canals along which George McCrae walked as he sang looked very, very familiar indeed.  “Is he in Amsterdam?” Lloyd asked.  At that moment McCrae walked past the hotel where we stayed, our little love nest, and I cried for real.

If you would like to join the fun, here are the rules:

1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 - You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You’ll include this explanation.
5 - You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.