ADD: 1, Cleanliness: Nil

Let me preface this by saying that I a) had only the best of intentions, and b) am glad my parents don't read this.

I'm at my dad's house in Midtown because he's gone for the week. He and my stepmother asked me to do some cleaning up while I'm here in exchange for some money. It's not a bad deal.

Anyway, after I finished lunch today, I noticed that the dishwasher was quite full, so I decided to run it and then put away the dishes. I scrounged around for some dishwasher soap, but couldn't find any. Instead, I grabbed the tomato-scented dish soap from by the sink and loaded the dishwasher's soap dispenser, turned it on, and went upstairs to check my email and such.

A few minutes later, I noticed that the house smelled like tomatoes. I ran downstairs, and the kitchen was slowly filling with tomato-scented foam.

Lesson of the day: dish soap that goes by the sink does not go in the dishwasher.

I got most of the soapy water off of the floor with some towels, but there's still quite a bit left in the dishwasher. I'm letting the soap settle, and then I'm going to...well...I'm not sure. Try to mop it out? Use a ladle? Run the dishwasher again? I have no idea what to do.

What I do know is that I feel pretty ridiculous right now. Proof that years of schooling doesn't buy common sense.

I should go back on my ADD meds. For reals.

foam party!
Kerry

Floating in my Tin Can

Ever since a particularly terrible rendition of T Rex's "Bang A Gong" combined with "If You're Happy and You Know It", I've been really reluctant to sing in public. It's not that I'm a terrible singer, but I'm not a very good one, either. Singing in the Fightin' Focus is one thing, singing with an audience is another matter entirely. Somehow, I always manage to forget about that one time when it's P&H karaoke night.

Friday, after drinking weak vodka lemonade and getting caught up in a zombie walk at Trolley Tour, a bunch of us went to the P&H for some cheap beer and comedy gold. For possibly the first time ever, the host was having a hard time convincing people to sing, so Linsey and I got up to sing Tiny Dancer. We tried our damnedest - there were parts sung as William Shatner would have sung them, some commentary, and light pelvic thrusting. Colin sang (very appropriately) "She Blinded Me With Science". Other than that, it was the ususal mixed bag of dudes drunk on Maker's Mark singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and large team efforts singing "YMCA". All in all, a great time.

Kristin got to Memphis on Saturday, and that night, she and Andy got to join the the completion of one of my life goals. I finally got to see The Reverend Horton Heat. Until last Saturday, every time he played in Memphis, I was either underage or in Muncie. The one time he made it to Muncie, I was in Memphis for a job interview. But Saturday night, in a crowd of people with bad tattoos, I finally lived the dream.

Before the show started (which was at least two hours after doors opened), I started talking to some cool people that were standing near us. It turns out that they work at the ad agency that I tried to walk into a few weeks ago. When I told my sad tale of braving Cooper only to face a locked door, they laughed and told me I should have rang the doorbell. Anyway, all of us had a great time drinking and dancing and trying to figure out if the ginormous individual with shedding, over-dyed pink hair was a man or a woman.

Yesterday, Kristin and I spent the afternoon starring in a movie that Andy has to make for work. The movie is about the most wonderful of all Constitutional ammendments (the first one). Yesterday's shoot was about the freedom of the press. This involved Kristin opening a bathroom door only to be confronted with a reporter (me) and a photographer (Andy). You'll have to ask Andy if you want a better explanation.

Anyway, the shoot involved lots of things, including ridiculous drawn-on facial hair.






I've got to go back on Wednesday for more filming (I also get to represent your right to assembly).

In the meantime, I should probably head over to the little Memorial Day extravaganza that's happening this afternoon. I'm not even going to job search - it's a freakin' holiday.

lick the pen,
Kerry

There's A Kind of Hush

This may be totally wrong of me, but I find couples who fight in public to be quite intriguing. There's a couple in the coffee shop who have been fighting loudly on and off for the last half hour. It's a little weird. Did they have a conversation before they left their house that went something like this:

Dude: I'm so mad at you!
Chick: I want some coffee!
Both: Let's go fight at Otherlands!

Also ammusing was the church sign I saw on my way to have lunch with my mom. It was at a church that's notorious for sermon comedy gold. On Psalm Sunday, the sermon was titled "Jesus Said 'Bring Me That Ass'. Anyway, this week, the sign says "Sunday's Message: Gangbanging with the Lepers." I'm not even sure what that means. I have to believe that Jesus wouldn't want us to gangbang anyone. Are there even lepers in Memphis? Does the person who wrote that sign even know what gang banging is?

Anyway. Moving on.



I went downtown today to apply for some part time work so that I'll have both an income and something to do with myself. I applied at a clothing store, a coffee shop, and a restaurant. If I hear nothing by next Friday, I'm going to call them. I've worked in retail (I sold band instruments for a while in high school), but I've never been any sort of barista or waitress. With my ADD, I'm not so sure it's advisable. Anyway, I want to give it a shot, if for no other reason that it'll be entertaining for you to read about.

I also authored a brutally honest cover letter and sent it along with my resume to the West Memphis Evening Times. Hopefully, I'll hear back. If I can find a story in West Memphis, I can find one anywhere. I'd really enjoy the position, and I hope they email me back.

In other news, tonight is Trolley Tour night. Trolley Tour is pretty fun - riding the trolley is free, and all of the art galleries and shops in the South Main Arts district stay open late. They also serve free booze. Yay for free booze. It's a nice way to get some culture for very little cash, and I'm all about that. Plus, the people watching can't be beat. Tonight is also Karaoke night at the P&H. (Dude, it sounds like I live at the P&H - I swear I'm only there 1-3 nights a week. That's not so bad!)

Kristin is coming to Memphis this weekend because she can. I'm not sure what we're going to do, but I'll chronicle the whole thing in meticulous detail right here. In the meantime, I'm going to get off here and get this weekend started. But before I go - some upcoming features: My Weekend With Kristin! The Job Search Continues! Funny Vintage Photos of My Family!

Check back often.

Have a great holiday weekend!

interrobangin',
Kerry

The Long Awaited Photographic Evidence of The Beer Hunting

So, there we are, in the woods. Kristin took all of those photos, and there are more of the actual hunting on my camera, which is, well, elsewhere.

In other news, I had an interview at a nursing home today. The job was a marketing assistant position that was currently being occupied by an elderly woman named Maudie. I wasn't too interested in the position, but they overly tan woman who interviewed me is going to pass my resume on to the PR department.

This nursing home was like...woah. It was nothing like any other nursing home I've ever been to. The lobby was huge, with a ginormous glittering chandelier and crazy floral patterns on every available surface. There are apartments, and townhomes, and a nursing home. Apparently, it's where the Memphis elite go to retire. It was pretty impressive.

Despite hearing back from the PR position that I had originally wanted and finding out that they couldn't hire me, I'm feeling a little better about my job search. There's a chance I can still get in at this agency but in a slightly different capacity. I don't really want to say too much. So, let's talk about other things instead.

We played P&H trivia last night, and we tied for fourth. It was a little strange, though, because right before the game started, several kids that I marched with in high school showed up. They were all freshmen and sophomores when I was a senior, which means that they were entirely too young to be in a bar. And it's always strange to run into people that you went to high school with, but its even stranger when they show up in midtown, looking older than you.

Anyway - my mom and Kevin and I are going to have a fun family dinner. I'll be back tomorrow.

eat your weevils,
Kerry

Chupacapras are Nocturnal, Guys!

It's hard to belive that I slept almost 12 hours last night and am still pretty tired. It's also difficult to understand why I'm still so sore. Colin, Andy and I made our sluggish return from the Easter Beer Hunt yesterday, and I'm still in recovery mode.

We arrived Friday night after almost nine hours in my car (a trip which included a ride through Elnora, Ind., Stankiest Place on Earth). Matt, Kristin and Kyle were already there, and had passed the hour between their arrival and ours with drinking and some mild campfire building. While Colin, Matt and Kyle pitched our seven-person tent in the dark, Kristin and I drank green tea Smirnoff (who knew there was such a thing!) and caught up over the making of dinner.

The first night was pretty typical camping - there was booze and food and scary stories (i.e. the last entry here) told around the campfire. Around 2 a.m., we stumbled into our tent for some rest. I know that camping isn't supposed to be super comfortable, and that was alright - we all made peace with the uneven ground and the cold. We did not, however, make peace with the child who ran around the campsite switching between maniacal laughter and cooing like a retarded turtle dove.

The next morning was a little rough, given the lack of sleep and the hangovers, but we woke up and cooked a slightly different version of the meal we had made the night before. Matt got out his guitar, and he and I sang a rousing rendition of Belle and Sebastian's "Meat and Potatoes" to complement breakfast. Kristin and Kyle left shortly after that because Kristin (lamely, I might add) had to make jelly with soccer moms for her internship. She didn't respond to my guilt trip (I'll admit, it wasn't my best, as it was delivered pre-coffee), and I was a little bummed, because though she left me a few bottles of Green Tea Smirnoff, she missed the best part of the weekend - the Easter Beer Hunt.

Matt's parents and some of their friends from college have been conducting this fantastic activity for the last 31 years. This is an awesome tradition that starts out with a keg, because it's important that one be slightly drunk before hunting. The actual hunt only lasts a few minutes. It starts with some announcements read by a man named Roger who was wearing a referee shirt, then a whistle is blown, and about 20 drunk adults and several sober, underage "apprentices" go racing down a hill. The running stops after about the first two minutes and turns to slow ambling. However, I will say that Matt had a sweet power dive for a bottle of Little King that resulted in him tumbling over onto a second Little King.

After the hunting, there was an awards ceremony complete with bizarre prizes (president masks, beer shaped sunglasses). Colin, Andy and I won the award for the hunters who had travelled the greatest distance, and Matt won "Bringer of the Most Rookies." Prizes for these two great achievements included light up fake teeth, a rubber Blues Brother mask, and a small can of roadkill possum.

Following the hunt and subsequent drinking, we decided to relocate our campsite to the backyard of the cabin that Matt's parents had rented. There was plenty of room, and it was free. We didn't want to disassemble the tent, so the four of us picked it up and walked it about a mile uphill to the cabin. I wish I had pictures of it, because it was pretty ridiculous. Cars kept coming and the drivers would stare at us like they'd never seen four people carrying a tent that I could have parked my car in before.

Once at the cabin, there was pizza and (surprise!) more drinking.

We woke up the next morning hung over and sore from once again thinking that our campsite was much flatter than it really was. Andy looked like Morrissey, and my hair sort of had a charming Thomas Jefferson thing going on. We finally left around 11 a.m., and made the long drive back to Memphis.

The weekend as a whole was fantastic, and there are tons of details that I'm leaving out because they would just be too difficult to explain. It was an awesome time, though, and I'm already looking forward to next year.

Maybe the turtle dove kid's family will have learned their lesson about taking their child camping.

that's what she said,
Kerry

PS - Blogger is having difficulties uploading pictures today, so I'll try again later .

Graceland, Too: Like French Mustard

Last night, Colin and I took Andy, Caroline, her British Boyfriend Liam, Jeremy and Flanagan to that mecca of Mississippi weirdness, Graceland, Too. I've written about Graceland, Too before (there's an entry on No Formal Training). For those just joinging the fun, Graceland, Too is a private home in Holly Springs, Miss. that has been turned into a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week shrine to Elvis Presley. The man that owns it, Paul McLeod, has dedicated his life to his collection. The first time I went, I thought Paul was a little, well, nuts, but with more visits, I've grown more used to him.

But last night...last night was just weird.

We got to Holly Springs right around midnight and stopped off at the one open gas station for a pee break and so that Jeremy and Liam could purchase some pork rinds. We had tried to explain Graceland, Too to our first-time visitors, but it's one of those things that you just kind of have to see to believe.



After seven or eight visits, you sort of know how the tour is going to go. Paul is going to talk a lot about money and numbers. He may throw in a few morbid details. He'll speak really quickly, and the dentures, they will flap. If there's a girl in the group that he's never seen before, he may make some gentile passes at her and sing Elvis songs while doing some light gyrations.

But last night, we veered from the usual format.

I'm not sure what tipped us off that the tour woulnd't be business as usual. It could have been when Paul brought out the binder full of laminated photos of himself with lots of automatic weapons pretty early in the tour. Usually, the special experience of seeing this binder is reserved for rowdy Ole Miss kids who can't keep their mouths shut. The tour as a whole was a little more morbid than usual, and we shuffled through the house, smiling nervously and accomodating Paul when he decided to burst into song in a lame attempt to seduce Caroline and I. We were a little relieved to get to the living room where the photos are taken, if for no other reason than that it gave us a little break from the tour.



After the photos were taken, we were all standing around in the living room, and Paul started saying that in his tenure as the world's biggest Elvis fan, he's seen some pretty crazy things go down. We aked him to tell us more, but he claimed that he couldn't, what with all of the pretty ladies in the room. We laughed and told him to tell us anyway, and he got a little quiet. "Ok," he said, "I'll tell you, but the pretty ladies need to go on into the next room."

Caroline and I went into the next room, trying to stifle our giggles and overhear what was going on the other room. We couldn't make it out, so we chatted, sure Paul had sent us out of the room unnecessarily.

But when the guys came into the room, something had changed. They went from looking like this:




To looking like this:




(In case you can't tell, the first one is attentive and mildly freaked out. The second is close to all out horror.)

Caroline and I weren't quite sure what was going on, and I couldn't find a good time to ask one of the guys. We endured the rest of the tour silently, trying not to make eye contact with eachother. As the tour was winding down, Paul became more blatant in his efforts to get Caroline to stay in Holly Springs and "give him 100 babies, all named Elvis Aaron Presley".

At the end of the tour, we stood in the crowded foyer while Flanagan wrote a comment in Paul's guest book on behalf of all of us. Then Jeremy farted. Loudly. And it was just the break in the silence that we all needed. We said our goodbyes and rushed out of the house and decided to meet at the gas station where the whole trip had started for a debriefing. I still wanted to know exactly what had happened when Caroline and I had been banished from the room.

We crammed into a booth in the diner part of the gas station, drinking overly hot cups of coffee and eating Krispy Kreme. The boys elected Jeremy to be their speaker.

(and just as a warning, this part is going to be a little, um, Adult. Like, NC-17. I'm just telling the story as it happened. So, if you're uncomfortable with that sort of thing, quit reading. Mom, you may want to stop here for a second and pick back up in a few paragraphs.)

Ok...this is thouroghly creepy, so I'm going to type it as succinctly as possible.

Apparenly, there was a prostitute from Texas who made her way to Graceland, Too and decided to stay for a few days, and Paul had to call Jerry "The King" Lawler to get rid of her. Since Paul is a man with very flappy dentures, the boys missed a lot of the story and were only able to catch bits and pieces. The telling of the story ended with the phrase "...like French mustard." Then came the visual part of the story, where the boys were shown, um...well...evidence along the same lines as Monica Lewinsky's infamous blue dress, carefully hidden from the pretty ladies by a fleece blanket with a picture of Elvis on it.

*shudder*

(Ok...Adult portion over. Resume reading with your innocence intact.)

The ride back to Memphis was largely silent, punctuated by outbursts of giggles from everyone in the car which turned into group expression of the sheer grossness of the evening. For a little while, I was worried that Andy wouldn't ever speak to me again.

Even this morning, I'm still not sure if I can declare last night a good time or not. I slept until 11 a.m., like you do when you're unemployed.

I won't be updating again until Monday, though, because Colin, Andy and I are headed out of town this weekend to go to Easter Beer Hunt with Matt Trisler. I'm pretty excited about it, and I should be working on getting ready to leave tomorrow instead of writing the world's longest, creepiest blog entry.

I'm, ah, going to get on that now.

santa covered midget coffins,
Kerry

Just As Exciting As I Sound

So, the big plan that I devised yesterday didn't really work out. Well - parts of it did - I got in my car, I got a resume, and I bravely crossed the street. Upon approaching the door, there was an obstacle I hadn't really thought of. The door was locked.

I shouldn't have been surprised. This is midtown Memphis, and lots of offices keep their doors locked. (When I worked downtown last summer, we didn't keep the door locked, and sometimes, angry homeless women would come in and yell at us for no real reason. That creates an environment not really conducive to working.) I stood there for a minute, feeling a little dejected. They probably also keep their doors locked to keep out overzealous, unemployed recent graduates. We can be dangerous, you know. I decided against just slipping an unsolicited resume into their mail slot and slinked back across the street to my car.

I'm feeling alright today, though. I've applied for a few more positions, and I'm really trying not to worry about it. My Big Memphis Freakout can't get the best of me, or I'm going to miss out on all of the fun things to do around here.

Last night, in desperate need of some fun, Colin and I went to the P&H for open mic stand up comedy night. Yes, it is just as risky as it sounds. Three or four of the comics were really good. Unfortunately, they were strategically placed at the very beginning and the very end, forcing the rest of us to sit through an hour of porn jokes in the middle. All in all, it wasn't too bad, and Brandon, the host, is really great.

Tonight will be a little different. I'm about to out myself as a super girlnerd here, but damn, if I don't love some Gilmore Girls. Anyway, tonight is the series finale, and I (like most people with ovaries and some of our significant others) are really pushing for a Lorelai / Luke reunion. So, while Colin and my other friends get hammered and answer questions at the P&H Trivia Night, my friend Linsey and I will be on her couch, munching on junk food and making "awww" noises. It's going to be awesome!

For now, though, I've got to go rotate my laundry. The ratio of clean underwear to dirty underwear was a little disproportionate.

cleanliness is admired,
Kerry