BtB FUN FACT: The festival turned me into a house! With a roof! I gots SHINGLES! AKA Head Herpes, or as Shando eloquently put it, "chicken pox for grown ups." It's isolated to the right side of my scalp and neck and nowhere else, so unless you give me a shampoo, you're not going to touch it. And no, you may not give me a shampoo. I had chicken pox twenty years ago and those dormant viruses decided that the time was right to take up doing improv, so they came out to play all over my head. I feel like someone beat me upside the head. My neck is so sore. I think I'm on the wrong type of medication. What I got is an anti-bacterial, but shingles are viral. Poopers.
Now that the festival is over, I can focus solely on my next volunteer-wrangling responsibility, the Ladycollege Class of 1998 Ten-Year Reunion and Pissing Contest. I'm a member of the Fab Four putting this shit on. Fortunately, these ladies have a sense of humor and are not lame in the least, so the '98s are in good hands whether or not they recognize it. But today is a watershed day, because on our little Myspace message board, someone finally posted something about my greatest fear about this thing. The elephant named Gloria in the room. Oh shit:
"I know this sounds nerdy, but can we have a tea (or cocktail hour, since we're grown-ups now) where we talk about our majors and how everyone tells me that my major was worthless? I'm curious to know what everyone's doing with their worthless majors. Ha!"
Oh, sister. Fuck you. Don't turn my reunion into some lame-as-fuck pissing contest where we all sip tea with our pinkies up and make ourselves feel alternately superior and shitty based on some non-scientific ranking system in which we assign meaning and merit to our life choices up to this point. Because if that's what the people want, then I'm treating it as a costume ball and showing up as a truck stop whore. I'm going to black out my teeth and find some hideous t-shirt that says "Best Blowjobs On Interstate 20!" I will use improv for evil and derail any and all sheepishness/meaningless comparisons/diminishing of life choices/etc
I also want to note that it's never the women who are by all accounts "successful" who bring this up, although plenty of successful women think they're unsuccessful. Life is hard. No one, not even Gloria, thinks they're the shit and have it all figured out. If anyone's the losers it's the women who go to Reunion to brag about themselves and seek to show others up.
Anyway, I have ideas for an independent, irreverent, funny, and philosophically-challenging Ladycollege alum magazine called S.LUM.M. (Smitha LUMnee Magazeen!). The officially-sanctioned alum mag is geared to please everyone, and we all know that "everyone" means "rich old ladies who are requested to leave the ladycollege something in their wills." So while the class notes section will announce this lesbo marriage and that gender reassignment surgery, the articles usually focus on traditionally successful career women of a certain age. They even recently ran an article about dating which completely omitted any discussion of women dating other women, which pissed off the younger, poorer alums but was defended by the magazine as an editorial choice based on "the different challenges facing women who date men" bla bla bla.
S.LUM.M. would be specially designed to acknowledge the fact that most women don't get the lives that the Ladycollege espouses as worthy of praise. I know that plenty of bitches are going to skip my reunion because they're embarrassed about being stay-at-home moms or kindergarten teachers or single or whatever the hell unglamorous and therefore unacceptable path their lives have taken. And I think it's bullshit that an institution that claims to have a handle on empowering women from all walks of life snatches away that power just to protect its image for the sake of prospective students and donors.
I have a short-list of things to write about. And I want Shiney in on this if I do it. I think everyone should S.LUM.M. at least once.
I get really irked by the "non-scientific ranking system." I'm sure some people (including some in my family) think I'm a loser because I'm almost thirty and still working in retail, but they will probably still think I'm a loser if I ever achieve my dream of being a professional cartoonist/illustrator. At least I didn't robotically struggle through college in some field I wasn't that into just to land some desk job where I waste my every waking moment and wonder why I hate my life.
Posted by: margaret at September 6, 2007 08:00 PMWell put, Margs. I look forward to your comic book.
Posted by: Mo at September 6, 2007 11:38 PM