Double Flee A

Embarrassing facts about me, interspersed with jaded observations of our basically empty culture:

I thought up a song I was convinced should be recorded by Harry Connick, Jr. and tried to get him to talk about it with me, but was given an impressive runaround by his "people", even by runaround standards. Because of my temporary enthusiasm, I am now on his mass emailing list. His agent or fan club or somebody sends me an email every once in a while to remind me that Harry Connick, Jr. is famous. When I see those emails I try to delete them before I can read the subject line to get back to my comfy old life of denial, but it never works. To go ahead and try to get myself off the mailing list would miss the point of denying the whole thing. I'm also afraid that if I did try to get off the list I'd get an email back that said "Oh, no you don't. You're B-U-S-T-E-D."

We went downtown to watch the Holidazzle parade. Every float was sponsored by some corporation. The TCF bank snowman came through waving at people. His waving hand said TCF in the palm, each letter the size pf a dinner plate. How festive. It was nice to see a bunch of people in the holiday spirit, but it's hard to muster up any enthusiatic spirit when everything you see is an advertisement. I guess it fits the season, though, the season of hyperconsumption. It's one culture that assimilates us all and makes us brothers and sisters in the most American thing there is, overspending. It's like that jingly bell noise on the speakers renders people helpless over their credit cards. That's the real magic of christmas, disenfranchised people under the gun to show their love by buying people off, powerless over their feelings of emotional inadequacy. Santa Claus came by fat and jolly, a classic Coke santa with white beard and all, but his red suit was tip to tip Taget logos. It was tacky, but if I was paying for the parade, I'd make Santa advertise for me, too. It's like this t-shirt I saw that says "I have the dick, so I make the rules."

We went up to Marshall Field's for the christmas offering. Some years they do the nutcracker, this year they did snow white and the seven dwarves. It was a nice presentation, kind of funky. You could practically hear the smartly dressed designers going over the details as you walked through. "Ok, the diamond mine where the dwarves work is actually a dance club called the diamond mine! And they have the wedding at the diamond mine at the end and it's like, the story's the same, but way funkier!" It was very well put-together and if you've got kids, it's a winner.

I saw a redheaded girl downtown today that I haven't seen for years. The lovely J and I passed her, rather symbolically, I thought, in opposite sides of a revolving door. I know I haven't seen her for years because for a little while I had a crush on her. I felt she made my life a little more interesting by just being around, because I'd wonder if I was going to see her and whatnot. Once I was on the same bus as she, and I saw her reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, and I was delighted. I went right out and read Cannery Row and some other Steinbecks so that I could talk about it with her when I eventually ran into her. Which I never, ever did. The really desperate, embarassing part: I had a lot of time on my hands and worked in a really quiet bookstore so I thought I'd make her life a little more interesting, made a bag up with some books in it I thought she'd enjoy, and left a note on it with an obviously false name on it, in the same way we did at the bookstore with things that have been paid for and are waiting to be picked up. I then made a note in an envelope that said on it "for you", which I was going to give her when I saw her and vanish (I only saw her in passing in public and was planning to disappear), which would tell her that I saw her reading Cannery Row and to go pick up the bag of books I thought she'd like, and then in the bag there was some information on how to get in touch with me in an indirect way, so as to leave the ball in her court and not be too damn creepy. It wasn't as creepy, I don't think, as it was plain different, and I thought she'd be flattered by the gesture, and if she wasn't, she didn't have to get in touch. Months later, that note was found by my now (thank goodness) ex-girlfriend and resulted in a really difficult "explanation process". Guys, you know the one. She was cheating on me anyway, which I was ninety-nine per cent sure of. When you're cheating on the other person, though, you have to act twice as hard like you're not, so it was a bad day, as you can imagine, for Dale. I practically ran to the store, took the note out of it on how to get in touch with me, and the books became part of my collection, which I gave away and sold most of this summer. I hadn't thought about that for years now. And that's the story of the anonymous redhead and what a lonely maniac I was and how doing something nice for someone can get you in trouble with someone else.

Was happy tonight when gas dropped to 1.699 a gallon when I was on empty.

posted by dale @ 10:14 PM