the worst weeks are the best weeks

oy vey. mamma mia. ay coron. oh, man. it feels like the last 14-days have been a lifetime, because it seems i have experienced a lifetime's worth of emotion. likely, i am being hyperbolic; i don't think i have really fit a whole life's worth of feeling into a fortnight, but it has been intense. would you like to have an abbreviated list form of what i am talking about? (although, in the interest of full-disclosure, most of this happened in the last 10 days, but i really wanted to use the word fortnight.)

• i attended my three-year old niece's dance recital and basically fought back a barrage of tears threatening to break through the dam of my tear ducts the entire time. "childhood! families! the sweet sense of accomplishment in working hard at something and sharing it with an audience! alas, my own fleeting youth!"  i only cry publicly when watching Titanic or My Girl (okay, and basically any movie tailored for emtional manipulation).
• my car was stolen. out of the lighted underground garage at my apartment building. (it had been broken into the week prior. literally, broken into. the delinquents broke the quarter window on the passenger's side door, and rummaged through my stuff, mainly dirty laundry,but they did take my driver's license, which was stupidly sitting in a cup holder and some headphones and possibly, a spare key, which would explain the grand theft auto.)
•  slept in the house i have called home since my adolescence one last time before ownership transferred to a new couple. the block i spent the majority of the last decade on is now mainly inhabited by retirees. in my head, and sometimes aloud, i call it "old row." with love.
• my baby sister turned 20! she really used to be my baby sister, but as we age at the same rate the relative distance between our years keeps shrinking and makes it feel like she is aging even faster. and also makes her my best friend.
• when driving said baby sister home from work in a car my mother had lent to us poor carless souls the dratted prius stopped in downtown salt lake and because we were not adept at managing its complex machinery. we spent forever merely sitting at the stoplight waving at people to pass us because we couldn't even figure out how to get it into neutral while it was malfunctioning.
• my car was found! but the tires and radio were not. this made the task of recovering it quite an ordeal. however, i found a cup of evidence that the culprits unwisely left, and unfazed by the grossness sifted through it until i discovered a McDonald's receipt with a time stamp. do you want to know the psychological profile of someone who orders a steak, egg and cheese bagel and ICE in their orange juice? a hardened criminal. i've already called up mcdonald's to get some tape but haven't had a chance to go to the police with the evidence yet. (i got all crazy about solving this matter vigilante-justice style, but that was because i had done the whole batman watching thing. (extra parenthetical side note: does anyone think the dark knight rises contained an implicitly anti-occupy message? i could see how it could be read that way, but i plead political innocence on its behalf. but i once heard a sociologist say "nothing is innocent."))
• i went to a mumford and sons concert with baby sister in honor of her birthday, but lost the tickets. after a laborious search through all the trash in my car, we decided to hope to be offered a chance to plead our case. as we walked through hoping to find a ticket-taker with a listening ear, we realized we had walked passed the ticket-takers and were in the venue. no harm, no foul, eh? also, i gave (by proxy) mumford and sons an embroidered pillow i had made. i trusted one of the less beloved touring bands to get it to the headliners who had taken refuge somewhere away from the crowds (and they did and said winnie thought it was awesome). tickets were found behind glove box the next morning.
• my dear friend eliza turned 23. we relived the exploits we engaged in on her 21st year. new tradition?
• bought a new battery for the motor scooter i intend to sell, any interested buyers here? ran into a long-lost friend at the battery store who gave me his personal discount (after my car debacle came up).
• sold off my childhood, yard sale style. with my dad's relocation, the cache of crap/physical memories that our family of five had accumulated over the past 24 years had nowhere to go. good-bye books. good bye toys. good bye freezer, even though we were never close. however, we donated most of the proceeds to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (I am running the NYC marathon for them, if you don't recall. for more details, or to donate, click here:  http://www2.michaeljfox.org/site/TR/Sponsored/TeamFox?px=1012705&pg=personal&fr_id=1210 ) 
• i actually started to let people know about my Michael J. fox Foundation fundraising effort and a dear friend i met last summer and haven't seen in a year made a very generous donation. i was moved that she cared about me and the effort. 

the best weeks are the worst weeks because with the bad you know how to measure and cherish the good. every kind deed has felt immeasurably kinder in light of feeling so vulnerable. i have felt this before during difficult time. i think when things are hard you learn how to love people better and how to accept their help and affection with grace and gratitude. if i were poetic i would try to write things in profound moving words. but all you get is this recap of the madness and some ideas in prose.

sometimes, you gotta make things happen

so, i was not chosen in the random lottery to run the nyc marathon.

and i was gutted. i had thought it was my destiny.

however, i started perusing the other option for getting into the race: running for charity.

i scrolled through lists on many cancer research charities and then saw the michael j. fox foundation for parkinson's research and thought, 'i would love to run for them.' my father's family has a history of parkinson's (even though most research concludes it is not a hereditary illness. shall we blame environmental factors?) i sent out a email registering my interest, was put on a waitlist and one week later, i was accepted to team fox.

maybe this was my destiny after all.

also, would you like to make a donation to the michael j. fox foundation? i have a $3000 fundraising commitment, but it is for a great cause.

why tomorrow shall be a fateful day

Tomorrow, April 25th, 2012, the New York City Marathon draws from the lottery of prospective entrants to determine who shall run a torturous 26.2 through the five boroughs of the metropolis. I had made running in this race a resolution last year, but I was thwarted by the luck of the Scheidler. (If you succumbed to clicking the hyperlink, I will let you know that I also failed at writing a book and improving my accordion skills but did start flossing regularly and spent the summer in London.) Only about 10% of lottery entrants are selected, and in 2011 it was even fewer.

I am so ready to run this marathon. Well, ready fashion-wise, not physically. I have decided what to wear (pizza shirt), what to listen to (four episodes of This American Life and then some "pump-it-up" songs to try to finish at my goal time of 4:30), and how to do my hair (pigtail braids). The powers that be in heaven and on Earth should recognize that running this is my destiny.

But, tomorrow's drawing may have a much more profound influence on my life.

I have chosen to view being selected to run in the New York City Marathon as a sign that I should move to New York City.

NYC has had a crazy appeal to me for years. Who know if I subconsciously internalized the episodes of Friends my mother watched dedicatedly throughout my childhood (a series which I watched myself chronologically in its entirety during college one or two episodes at a time over breakfast). I applied to NYU as an undergraduate, but was daunted by the crippling cost of tuition (okay, and a little bit of fear at the great unknown). The great travesty is that I went on to earn a Master's degree from NYU, but NEVER lived in the city or even New York state! (Sure, you will never hear me complain about living in Florence, but maybe it is now time to reside in the Big Apple.) I also may be strangely compelled to move to NYC because my mom changed the ringback tone on her phone to a well-known Sinatra song, so every time I call her I hear, "Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it: New York, New York."

I am a prime candidate to be eaten up by a big heartless city. I can be shy and antisocial and absentminded and naive. But I am also hoping that living in the city of dreams (is that a real nickname, or did I just make it up?) I may be motivated to do the thing I always say I want to do: write. Screenplays, novels, short stories, zines, plays, musicals, songs, telenovellas, poetry, letters, resumes, quips, jokes, notes on the palm of my hand, maybe even graffitti.

I also think moving to New York is really terribly trite for a wannabe writer. But things happen in NYC. And how can it not be trite to move to a city where 8 million people live already. "Get off your hipster high horse (not stoned high, judge-y high), Roni and do what you want to do without arguing with yourself about its originality," I say to myself.

I have a job that I am suppose to work until November 16th. I like the people and like the job sometimes. To move to New York, I would have to forsake duty in the name of whimsical aspiration.

But if I do get it, I have a date for the day I hope to arrive in the city suitcases in hand: July 1st. But what will I put in these suitcases? Can I logically tote my guitar, cello and accordion across the country?

However, these problems can be considered after I see what fate the gods of chance decide.

Little Demetri

So, it turns out that I have an odd fetish with bestowing comedians with handmade trinkets.

When I bought tickets for the SLC Radiolab show, which featured Demetri Martin, I figured I ought to express my appreciation to the performer for coming up with some of my favorite quips that I routinely misquote, such as:

"Saying I apologize is the same as saying I'm sorry, except at a funeral."

"Owning a dog in a city tells you a lot about a person. It says, 'My desire for companionship outweighs my distaste for picking up poop.'"

"Dream catchers work, if your dream is to be gay." (No offense intended to dream catcher lovers straight or gay, or Native American communities. Mainly, I am making fun of my father. No offense to him either. I kid because I love.) 

So, I crafted (poorly) an effigy of Mr. Martin (that I hope he did not choose to burn.) The photo I posted was pre-stuffing, but I made his arms far too skinny, and stuffing them was devastatingly difficult, so I left his arms floppy and meatless. I explained this to Mr. Martin, and he self-deprecatingly remarked that it was anatomically correct. He may not have noticed that Little Demetri has no feet.

Our exchange was fairly routine. He was appropriately gracious and kind. He asked if he could keep it, and I said that was why I was presenting it to him. I told him I thought it would be creepy if I kept it. Especially after I embroidered "Fan Art of Voodoo" on Little Demetri's T-shirt.

Bringing Little Demetri and Real Demetri together wasn't terribly difficult. After the RadioLab show, which was absolutely terrific by the way, my friend Eliza's support supplied me with the courage to awkwardly stand by the stage hoping to get the attention of someone involved in the production. We tried to wave down  RadioLab host Robert, but he was distracted with equipment, but then Demetri came out to greet the handful of celebrity-obsessed loonies like myself.

I did not get a picture, so you may allege this never happened. It felt creepy enough giving someone a fabric rendering of themself. I also am not huge on the "getting pictures with celebrities." I feel photos can be a misrepresentation of reality. What does obliging a public figure to stand next to me smiling like we are buddies prove? That I was precocious enough to make demands of a famous person that I really know nothing about? I think we have this tendency to believe pictures are truth, maybe less so in the age of photoshop, but even before photoshop, photos are a framed isolated view of reality. And enough time on that soapbox.

But if you are looking for proof, Demetri said that if he ever updates his website (which he says he really hasn't had updated in like 5 years) he definitely wants to have a section of fan stuff, and that he would feature  Little Demetri with the tag that it was made by Roni from Salt Lake.

how many episodes of the west wing does it take to dye your hair?

 well, if your hair is like mine, long and of moderate thickness, and you are doing the work yourself instead of commissioning a licensed hair person or delegating the dirty work to a friend, i would say one-and-a-half episodes. and that is just for the application and set time.

before boldly making the decision to dye my hair red 100% by myself, absolutely no assistance, i looked like this. though, it should be noted, that is not virgin hair. my natural color seems long-forgotten, though i figure it is somewhere in the light-brown category. however, i find something remarkably liberating about being able to change my hair. it is a sort of assertion that my life is my own. that's why i chose red today. a part of me hoped it turned out bold little mermaid red. for no other symbolic reason other than i desire to live my life boldly. (i wasn't thinking i ought to leave my life behind and sell my voice to a witch to follow some man i saw briefly one fateful night, not at all.) also hoped that the dye would have some fancy-pants name like vermillion, or ideally soviet red (i would love to tell people my hair was soviet red), but it was just red, but to figure out how it turned out you will have to scroll further into the depths of this post.

 i made a bloody mess of myself that is for sure. also made a bloody mess of the bathroom. the money i saved buying the cheap dye (do i look like a Rockefeller? well, did they have any red heads?) will likely be spent buying mystical cleaning supplies like the much heralded magic eraser. however, i won't need to magic erase my face as the poor man's solution, warm water, did the trick.

waiting was intense. i could feel my hair physically heating. it was like it was letting me know that there was a chemical change in process. molecules were going wild, while i was fretting over the possibility of my hair bursting into flames and missing a spot (though missing a chunk of hairs would have fled from mind had my head ignited). once i lathered the stuff on the first strip of hair, i figured there was no going back, and truth be told the application process had been more arduous than i anticipated. nervousness and excitement abounded in my little bathroom while a symphony of witty political banter played on my laptop propped on the toilet. will i look like a fool tomorrow? will president bartlett and his wife reconcile?

and then, my shower was the scene of a murder. MURDER OF THE OLD AND BIRTH OF THE NEW! if i had known i was going to get the irresistible, spontaneous urge to transform the fibers growing out of my scalp today, i probably wouldn't have spent all that time cleaning my bathroom yesterday. c'est la vie. 

and the result was subtle. no one will mistake me for the little mermaid. but it is definitely a red made for the summer. the crimson hues glisten in the light. and mad props to the world's greatest sister for the world's greatest sheep pajamas.

now, here is where i planned to get introspective and tell you more about the wild wave of assertiveness i was riding as a decided to dye my hair, such a simple process, but doing it was a weird reminder that i can do what i want. i can follow my irrational dreams to see if they pan out. hey i could move to new york, buy a fedora and become a playwright. except i don't like fedoras. maybe a boat hat, i hear everybody looks good in those.

Freeganism, Dumpster Diving and Social Justice

Ever unable to resist a dare, at one of Utah County’s finest Indian dining establishments, I stealthily glided over to an abandoned table to steal (commandeer? save from waste?) the scarcely touched mango sorbet the obviously-on-a-first-date couple had left to melt. I have never harbored a phobia of germs. My propensity to take on any dare coupled with the occasional flare-up of my compulsion to shock people has led to me consume dried-up gunk caking the bottom of my shoe, earthworms, grasshoppers and yesterday, a peanut butter, jelly and fish stick sandwich (although, there was never any germ concern in that circumstance, just an unpleasant taste/texture). Anyway, I didn’t care that an unknown couple had stuck their spoons into the mango sorbet a time or two. I just loved the thrill of taking it from their table, placing it squarely in front of me and digging in.

I learned of freeganism after I related the tale of the mango sorbet to a friend. I had never heard the term and when she said, “That makes you sound like a freegan”, I demanded she explain this concept further. I’d heard of dumpster diving, but never the all-in commitment to refusing to pay for food by foraging the urban landscape. I had never met—and still never have—met a devoted freegan, but friends who have been acquainted with those whose only dietary restriction is “free” told me that it was more than dumpster diving in most cases and included signing up for clubs where food could be guaranteed at meetings, crashing social gatherings for the grub, and routinely asking, “are you going to finish that?”. It sounded awesome to me. It still sounds awesome. It highlights how much completely edible food—it overripe fruit, past sell-by date preserved goods or half-eaten hotdogs—gets wasted in America. But even cooler, it transforms you into a food vigilante, rescuing innocent food from a life of decomposition outside of human intestines.

I want to try my hand at the freegan lifestyle. I am a college-educated girl raised in an upper-middle class family. My wages may be just a bit above a pittance now (I am an AmeriCorps VISTA making 110% of the poverty line), but I could buy myself food. I may have to offset my penchant for fancy cheeses by making top ramen my main entrée several times a week, but I eat pretty well. I get the vitamins, minerals, grains, protein and dairy I need and don’t go to bed hungry. What I am saying is this: I don’t need to sort through discarded food to fill my belly. However, I think preventing waste of any kind is great, wonderful, absolutely marvelous. Despite all my dreaming of living a gypsy vagabond sort of life, my life is pretty standardly middle-class americana. But I love alternative lifestyles. I love little niche societies that spawn out of dissatisfaction of American capitalism and consumerism and exist as their own irrepressibly idealistic and undeniably cool subcultures. In high school one of the fantasy-life concoctions I whipped up with friends was living in a moneyless commune where we used dollar bills for menial things, assigning them no use outside of their utility as paper.

But I am a girl of upper-middle class upbringing. I have been trained and am fully capable of living according to the mores of this society. I feel like if I dumpster dive I am depriving some person who for whatever reason is not fully capable of taking care of himself or herself because they cannot adapt to the rules of our culture. I feel like that if I found an incredible cache of past sell-by date canned corn behind a supermarket that I should allow someone who needs the corn more than I do. Or that if I am going to be a freegan, I should donate at least some of what I might have spent on victuals to feeding those who cannot make the money to feed or don’t have the capacity to forage for themselves.

I know that grocery rescue is catching on. Nonprofits organize pickups with local grocery stores to take the food that they can no longer sell because of that dratted sell-by date and it gets distributed to people that will it eat before it has noticeably “gone bad.” However, I think we could go further than grocery rescue in keeping food from going to waste.

I worked at a thriving dive of a Mexican restaurant for five years. I started out as a lowly busser and was floored by how much food was left on the plates as we piled them into our bus tubs. At the restaurant is was customary for patrons to inhale the complimentary chips and salsa before their meal arrived and they tended to do a decent job polishing off their enchiladas or burritos but more often than not globs of beans and rice remained on their plate, often untouched. The freegan movement could benefit from busser allies. It is insane to think how many people could have been fed from the discarded rice and beans or half-eaten tacos.

Of course, only people who have freely and willingly committed to eat free food regardless of whoever else’s fork tines may have touched should be served this food; them and perhaps the truly desperate. It becomes a social justice issue. Just because someone is poor doesn’t mean they should have to eat beans I scraped off of someone else’s plate. Even if it could provide them a meal and save them money they could spend on other goods. Again, I do not know any self-declared freegans. But I imagine them mostly middle-class kids disillusioned with the establishment. Otherwise, they would probably just call themselves homeless people. But freegans can be freegans because they made the decision to live life that way. Other scroungers may or may not have made the implicit decision to live outside the confines of accepted behavior.

The mango sorbet I saved from an early retirement to a bus tub was delicious. It saved me money that I might have spent on dessert had I decided to splurge and the mild act of deviance gave me a bit of a high. I would love to be a freegan even though I don’t need to be. And for some reason, the second line of that statement, spawned all of this musing on Freeganism, Dumpster Diving and Social Justice.

Why I Love Sundance

I love Sundance (the film festival, although I do also have fond feelings for the resort).

I try to convince myself it has less to be with being starstruck and more to do with being in an environment, as pretentious as it may sound, where there is this undeniable emphasis on creating things. I love Utah. I do it is beautiful and it is my home, but Sundance provides a bit of needed escapism. Truth be told, I have only been up to the festival twice in my entire life and only for a handful of hours each time, but being surrounded by people who took risks and work hard to produce something that they can be excited about and proud of.

It is nice to be slapped in the face by your dreams deferred (thank you, Langston Hughes) because when you are lamenting all that you haven’t pursued you have to ask yourself, “What are you going to do about it?” And this whole week I have been enthused about recommitting myself to writing and have been drafting a stand-up routine in my head (I refuse to be held back by the fact that I am not exceptionally funny.) Cheesy phrases like “the greatest risk yields the greatest reward” and “let the beauty you love be what you do” are inspiring the crap out of me. Hopefully, the slight sting of my mild dissatisfaction with my current pursuits helps to propel me to a place I want to be.

That’s why I love Sundance.

If I Can Give Mike Birbiglia a Pillow, I Can Do Anything

I am feeling really emboldened right now (and miserably embarrassed. It has been an hour since the event that I am about to chronicle transpired and I still feel flushed).

Last night, nursing a cold, I settled into my apartment. Unfortunately, in my apartment I am completely cut off from civilization as I am deprived of cable and internet. At 7:00 I was facing early retirement if I didn't find something compelling to occupy my time. That's when the germ of an idea sprouted.

The Sundance Film Festival is happening this week. Every year I tell myself I am going to go. I am going to bask in the creative presence. You know, feel a small part of this artistic community that I continuously convince myself I am not cool enough to be a part of. (As the last movie I made was probably a shoddily produced music video set to some Good Charlotte tune, it really doesn't take much convincing.) Anyway, I went up first with my sister and we saw Reality Bites specially rereleased to commemorate its premiere at Sundance 18 years ago, and it was a delicious dose of angst. Especially since I can go on and on about how I am in the throes of an existential crisis (because I am your typical 23-year-old. Nothing new to see here people, move along.)

Anyway, Reality Bites made me excited about the festival and I resolved to see more. But the movie I really wanted to see was Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me. I saw his show at Kingsbury Hall last Friday, simply because I loved his storytelling on This American Life. At the end of the show he announced he had a film at Sundance, something I had not known, and when I learned Ira Glass was a cowriter, my resolve was titanium, sort of.

Monday after work, I drove up to Park City. It was a little like running away because I actually left work early (my existential crisis was in sort of a crescendo roar that day) and Park City seemed like a different world. I stood outside the theatre where Sleepwalk with Me was playing

next to a girl with a sign that said "I Need Tickets." It was a supreme act of moochiness, but that way I didn't have to say anything, and I didn't have any paper of my own to write something like "I want tickets more than her." (Not that I would do that. Because that certainly wouldn't endear me to potential ticket-sellers. Maybe if I had a sign that read, "I am going to die at midnight and my last wish is to see this movie", but like I said, I had no paper.) Anyway, I didn't get a ticket that night, and my feet were so cold and wet that it felt like Thor had taken his mighty hammer to my little toes when my circulation resumed. On the shuttle bus I was wincing like a madwoman. Hopefully, no one looked at me (who know what onlookers might have thought, gastrointestinal problems? I pray not).

But long story short. I saw the movie on Tuesday. And loved it. But more than that I got that cheesy sentimental feeling toward the filmmakers. I loved being in their presence, and sure, a good portion of that was being starstruck; I mean, I was 15 feet away from Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia! People who tell stories and make money for it. (Actually, in m head I kind of think of Ira Glass as a story pimp (even though he does pepper the radio show with his own anecdotes at times), and his featured storytellers are sort of story whores. But I think of him as a benevolent pimp. I don't know why prostitution analogies come so easily to me...) I would love to be a story whore (that looks so crude. Perhaps I should say chanteuse or trollop.) I would love for my work to be telling and collecting stories. (I could get into some analysis that seemed profound to me on the importance of having storytellers in society, but I am already rambling like a lunatic.)

Anyway, loved the movie and wanted to be cool enough to hang out with the crew. But I have no experience in their area, so when I was bored last night and too tired and under the weather to go to the library to check out a DVD or book, I took out my embroidery tools, and in about 3 and a half hours had crafted a pillow. (Seemed appropriate for a movie called Sleepwalk with Me.)

I didn't know if I would have the courage to give this pillow to the one of the filmmakers, and the Lord knows that I don't need another hand-stitched pillow for myself. So all day I worked up the bravado to give it away. I didn't think I would really have the audacity to bestow it upon its intended recipient for a couple reasons 1) any time I respect someone's opinion and desperately want them to think highly of me, I almost immediately lose the capacity to speak 2) I would seem like a stalker 3) I would seem like a stalker. But despite my fears, I showed up at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake with the pillow in my bag. I intended to get a ticket to see the show again, but that didn't work out (I could get into the details of that, but I haven't exactly been thrifty with words and this is already an excessively long post).

Near the entrance of the theatre, I saw a guy who had stood with the filmmakers to discuss the movie (I had also seen him the day had silently begged in the cold for a ticket.) I tried to pawn the pillow off on this man, Jakkob Jaffe, one of the producers. He said, "No, you should wait and give it to Mike. He'll love it." I told him I thought it would make me seem crazy. And he said, "We love crazy people." We then ventured on to amiable chit-chat, despite me feeling foolish, but we talked about NYU and student debt (because I wasn't very good about talking about films. I didn't know anything about the ones he was talking about). But then, he had to go in and introduce the film, and Mike was late. So I sat out there, with a pillow in my hand feeling like an obsessed fangirl (which maybe wasn't so far off) when finally, Mike came around the block rushing into the theatre. I sort of threw the pillow at him and mumbled some random incoherent sentence along the lines of "this is for you and have a nice day" as if I was his waitress or something. He moved along into the theatre and I ran from the scene of the crime.

However, despite feeling that this may be near the peak of my silliness (becoming emotionally attached to a pommello is probably the peak), I also feel so bold. Suddenly, I am thinking, "Hey, I'm brave. I should quit my job." "Look at me, I'm fearless. I should move to New York City."

I had the courage to give Mike Birbiglia, a minor celebrity, a pillow. I can do anything (because obviously, my shame and embarrassment threshold is pretty high.)