Call me a cynic, but "Kate! YOU have nice legs!" is a suspicious beginning to a conversation. Yet, so began the crackly cell phone conversation I had with my co-worker this afternoon.
It turns out I was correct to be skeptical, and -- long story short -- you may now add "stand half-naked in front of God and everyone, including a photographer," to the list of Things I Have Done To Be a Team Player at Work (right after getting mugged by geese, buying every basketball-hoop-shaped kids' wastebasket in stock at four greater Iowa K-Marts, and standing in street sludge in front of Minneapolis' Target Center while people asked me if I was an American Idol contestant).
Okay, perhaps making the long story short is ineffective in conveying the Oh-My-God-I'm-Freaked-Out-ness of the phone call, which was precipitated by the refusal of multiple co-workers to model a nightshirt and fuzzy slippers for our merchandise catalog, most likely because the outfit: a) is ridiculous; and b) involves wearing no pants.
I should actually add that, if you need someone who isn't afraid to go pantless in front of a camera, I may be a good option. Our family's photo albums are filled with images of me as a youngster, wearing only a shirt and underpants, sitting at family gatherings, watching Sesame Street, writing and illustrating my collections of short fiction/plans for world domination, etc. It's true: I ritualistically shed my pants the minute I walked through the door for many of my single-digit years. Not sure when this became uncouth and inappropriate (probably two years before I stopped doing it), but I'm afraid to say that most of my adult years have been spent rather boringly wearing pants almost all the time.
So in order to complete this assignment I was going to have to rediscover the spirit of my half-naked inner child.
I retreated to the restroom and put on the nightshirt and the fuzzy slippers. I looked, well, ridiculous. But I was taking one for the team. Boldly going where no person in her right mind has ever gone before. Wearing no pants in front of my co-workers. Wearing no pants in front of the camera...
I am not a model. Heck, I'm not even really that much of a girl. When I was frantically trying to put on some makeup before heading over to the photo shoot, another co-worker offered me the use of her some-kinda-special comb. "What do I do with that?" I replied. She giggled. I think she thought I was kidding. "Hey, at least you're wearing earrings today," another helpfully chimed in. Yes, it's a special day at our office when Kate remembers to accessorize. Alert the media! She's wearing a belt AND a bracelet!
Everything I know about modeling I learned from Tyra Banks on America's Next Top Model. This means that the extent of my knowledge about good modeling is that I know it involves reading Tyra Mail and being something called "fierce." I tried to think about being "fierce" in the nightshirt and slippers, but it just wasn't coming to the surface. The photographer didn't like my idea of channeling every men's underwear model I've ever seen and doing the "Look! A tree!" finger-point. So they handed me props: a coffee mug and a newspaper. Apparently instead of being fierce I was supposed to pretend I had just woken up and started reading the paper when someone pointed a camera in my face. In a fierce manner, of course. "Ooh, I'm so surprised that you are taking a picture of me while I'm wearing my nightgown and reading the paper," is apparently the message we were trying to convey, artistically.
And when art involves wearing an oversized T-shirt, no pants, and ridiculous slippers while not pointing at a fake tree, I'm just clay to be molded. Molded into a tan-legged frump to be plastered on catalogs and the innernets. Victoria's Secret, you may want to send your scouts to check me out. Just don't ask me how to use an eyelash curler or be fierce. Because I don't know.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Trying to ford a river of Pabst Blue Ribbon
So it was over a month ago that I went to Portland, but I still haven't written anything about the experience. Not exactly sure what has been the cause of my writer's block, but rest assured that I always inevitably find the temptation to deliver verbose blow-by-blow accounts of my vacations too overwhelming to stand. The level of detail in which I documented our trip to Aruba four years ago, for example, should serve as proof of this phenomenon. In other words: Never question my commitment to being a giant geek.
Okay, so Oregon.
First let me say that if it weren't quite so many miles from the UMW I would move to Portland in a heartbeat. I have always had a fascination with the Pacific Northwest (stemming from my religious devotion to watching Twin Peaks as an adolescent, perhaps?), and this satiated my desire to spend a good bit of time there in a way that my New Year's 2003 trip to Boise did not.
My friend since junior high who was also my roommate during freshman year of college, Winnie, was kind enough to play host to us. She has a cute house, an even cuter puppy, and a cute ex-chef husband who vaguely resembles Justin Timberlake and currently makes a living harvesting barn owl pellets in scary ghost-town looking places down south. Seriously.
I'm a pretty big fan of athletic apparel, so it was a pretty cool thing that Winnie works for Nike. We got a tour of the campus and a pass to shop at the employee store, where we spent $750 on $1,500 worth of stuff in the course of an afternoon. But hooray! Sports bras for life! Also: Shoes! When we visited the Nike campus, we avoided parking in Michael Jordan's parking spot. Apparently it's not really reserved for Michael Jordan, though, Winnie informed us. Um, we're gullible Iowa hicks. Haven't you heard?
On our first night in Portland, we went to dinner at a fantastic Thai restaurant and then to the Last Thursday festival on Alberta Street. It's basically like an art festival where all of Portland's most interesting characters come out to play -- unicycle riders, the performance artists at the "clown house," random ranters, ravers, painters, and musicians. Despite the perponderance of junk of everywhere, it's really cool, actually. We made our way to the lawn of an Alberta Street drinking establishment, where I snapped this incredibly flattering but oh-so-funny picture of Win drinking a can of PBR (which, apparently, is the official canned beverage of the Greater Portland Area):
Two significant things happened after I took this photo:
1) A woman squatted down and peed in the lawn in front of approximately 400 people, including my husband...who couldn't quite wash the perplexed look off his face for the rest of the night after witnessing this event and urging the rest of our group to steer clear of the puddle.
2) A riot, apparently, broke out on Alberta Street. At least according to this blog.
The next day was all about checking out the city. Winnie decided the best way to do this was to ride on the controversial sky tram up to the Oregon Health & Science University, which has a great view of the city and even, on a clear day, Mt. Hood. I say the tram was controversial because it takes you right over people's houses. The houses of people who protested its construction, lost the battle, and now keep their curtains permanently drawn. You really could see right into the houses were they not, so I can see why they were unhappy. We were easily the youngest people on the tram, and we did resist the temptation to visit the hospital gift shop at the top of the hill despite the urgings of the tram operator.
Later that day we went up in the west hills and visited the rose garden. We thought this was a good place to take a prom picture. So we did:
Instead of a wrist corsage, Kate is sporting a Nike handbag purchased at a rock-bottom warehouse price!
They also had some viewers that cost a quarter. Which we didn't have. So we used the opportunity to take another stupid picture.
Hey! It's another stupid picture! It must be Kate and Ben's vacation.
The next major highlight of the visit was our day trip to the coast. It is GORGEOUS. See photographic evidence of gorgeousness below:
Winnie knew of a semi-secluded beach we would enjoy that was only a short hike away, so we took the dog and headed down to the shore, where we were apparently so overcome with rapture over seeing the ocean that we decided to mess around like total dumbasses, which to me makes for a perfectly awesome time. Winnie and I tried to get out modeling careers off the ground by practicing some sexy butt poses on the beach, but really Maya the dog was better than we:
Sexy bitches. Literally.
I also have to admit I was a bit surprised how many sufers were hanging out...er, hanging ten...at this particular beach. It was really not warm. And the water was really, really not warm. And I really, really, really don't know my surfer lingo, as I believe my exact quote was "Let's hang some ten." I am not sure that "ten" is an adjustable quantity in that sense. I believe if you were hanging some ten, it would just mean you were hanging eight or six-and-a-half or Pi or something like that. Hey, I'm from Iowa.
But man, did we have fun at that beach. It's good for the soul to see the ocean for those of us who are locked between the Missouri and Mississippi. And they had saltwater taffy and fish n' chips and rock formations and look! They have waterfalls!
Speaking of waterfalls, the next day was cool because we spent it hiking near the Columbia River Gorge, which is phe-nom-e-nal.
I mean, look.
Multnomah Falls was really cool, but there were also lots of people there. So Winnie took us over to the Horsetail Falls Trail, which was a pretty easy hike with very few tourists and lots of great scenery. Like this:
As is true with anything related to me going on a vacation, we goofed around. Here's a botched attempt at a photo of Winne holding the waterfall in her hand while I look surprised in the background:
The hike was definitely worth it, as the top of the trail netted us a great view of the Columbia River.
This is all, f'real, like 20 minutes in a Subaru from Winnie's house. And when I say Subaru, I mean Subaru. There is an unofficial Portland city ordinance, apparently, which states that you must own a Subaru and a dog to live there. And when you're cruising around in your Subaru with your life partner wearing your Columbia or Nike or Adidas athletics gear, you must have the dog in the back of the car. And have your radio tuned to Q97.9 FM all the time, so you can hear Mims' highly musical song, "This is Why I'm Hot," every 10 minutes. Okay, don't do that last part. But you can!
This left one adventure before we could leave: driving up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood.
Coming to your hood
And wow -- Timberline Lodge is the hotel they used for the exterior shots in the movie The Shining. A movie that scared the pee out of me. And it was a little creepy seeing it, even though there are no snow tunnels or psychotic killers or Here's Johnny but rather just a bunch of caffienated Oregonians with their snowboards.
And a ski lift. And a massive parking lot. With Subarus.
We had a hot alcoholic beverage inside and then tromped through the snow on the side of the mountain. And who can resist an April snowball fight in 60-degree weather? Certainly not me.
I'm a really bad over-actor.
So there you have it: Go to Portland. You will not regret it. There are so many things to do, including the ones mentioned here plus also locking your keys in your rental car, golfing, purchasing Columbia jackets sales-tax free, pointing out electrical wiring inadequacies in art galleries, eating candy, thrift store shopping, and going out for breakfast like every day. Oh, and Chai! Real Oregon Chai...take that, Starbucks evil-doers.
Raising a can of PBR in thanks to my Portland friends,
That Weird Girl from Iowa
Okay, so Oregon.
First let me say that if it weren't quite so many miles from the UMW I would move to Portland in a heartbeat. I have always had a fascination with the Pacific Northwest (stemming from my religious devotion to watching Twin Peaks as an adolescent, perhaps?), and this satiated my desire to spend a good bit of time there in a way that my New Year's 2003 trip to Boise did not.
My friend since junior high who was also my roommate during freshman year of college, Winnie, was kind enough to play host to us. She has a cute house, an even cuter puppy, and a cute ex-chef husband who vaguely resembles Justin Timberlake and currently makes a living harvesting barn owl pellets in scary ghost-town looking places down south. Seriously.
I'm a pretty big fan of athletic apparel, so it was a pretty cool thing that Winnie works for Nike. We got a tour of the campus and a pass to shop at the employee store, where we spent $750 on $1,500 worth of stuff in the course of an afternoon. But hooray! Sports bras for life! Also: Shoes! When we visited the Nike campus, we avoided parking in Michael Jordan's parking spot. Apparently it's not really reserved for Michael Jordan, though, Winnie informed us. Um, we're gullible Iowa hicks. Haven't you heard?
On our first night in Portland, we went to dinner at a fantastic Thai restaurant and then to the Last Thursday festival on Alberta Street. It's basically like an art festival where all of Portland's most interesting characters come out to play -- unicycle riders, the performance artists at the "clown house," random ranters, ravers, painters, and musicians. Despite the perponderance of junk of everywhere, it's really cool, actually. We made our way to the lawn of an Alberta Street drinking establishment, where I snapped this incredibly flattering but oh-so-funny picture of Win drinking a can of PBR (which, apparently, is the official canned beverage of the Greater Portland Area):
Two significant things happened after I took this photo:
1) A woman squatted down and peed in the lawn in front of approximately 400 people, including my husband...who couldn't quite wash the perplexed look off his face for the rest of the night after witnessing this event and urging the rest of our group to steer clear of the puddle.
2) A riot, apparently, broke out on Alberta Street. At least according to this blog.
The next day was all about checking out the city. Winnie decided the best way to do this was to ride on the controversial sky tram up to the Oregon Health & Science University, which has a great view of the city and even, on a clear day, Mt. Hood. I say the tram was controversial because it takes you right over people's houses. The houses of people who protested its construction, lost the battle, and now keep their curtains permanently drawn. You really could see right into the houses were they not, so I can see why they were unhappy. We were easily the youngest people on the tram, and we did resist the temptation to visit the hospital gift shop at the top of the hill despite the urgings of the tram operator.
Later that day we went up in the west hills and visited the rose garden. We thought this was a good place to take a prom picture. So we did:
Instead of a wrist corsage, Kate is sporting a Nike handbag purchased at a rock-bottom warehouse price!
They also had some viewers that cost a quarter. Which we didn't have. So we used the opportunity to take another stupid picture.
Hey! It's another stupid picture! It must be Kate and Ben's vacation.
The next major highlight of the visit was our day trip to the coast. It is GORGEOUS. See photographic evidence of gorgeousness below:
Winnie knew of a semi-secluded beach we would enjoy that was only a short hike away, so we took the dog and headed down to the shore, where we were apparently so overcome with rapture over seeing the ocean that we decided to mess around like total dumbasses, which to me makes for a perfectly awesome time. Winnie and I tried to get out modeling careers off the ground by practicing some sexy butt poses on the beach, but really Maya the dog was better than we:
Sexy bitches. Literally.
I also have to admit I was a bit surprised how many sufers were hanging out...er, hanging ten...at this particular beach. It was really not warm. And the water was really, really not warm. And I really, really, really don't know my surfer lingo, as I believe my exact quote was "Let's hang some ten." I am not sure that "ten" is an adjustable quantity in that sense. I believe if you were hanging some ten, it would just mean you were hanging eight or six-and-a-half or Pi or something like that. Hey, I'm from Iowa.
But man, did we have fun at that beach. It's good for the soul to see the ocean for those of us who are locked between the Missouri and Mississippi. And they had saltwater taffy and fish n' chips and rock formations and look! They have waterfalls!
Speaking of waterfalls, the next day was cool because we spent it hiking near the Columbia River Gorge, which is phe-nom-e-nal.
I mean, look.
Multnomah Falls was really cool, but there were also lots of people there. So Winnie took us over to the Horsetail Falls Trail, which was a pretty easy hike with very few tourists and lots of great scenery. Like this:
As is true with anything related to me going on a vacation, we goofed around. Here's a botched attempt at a photo of Winne holding the waterfall in her hand while I look surprised in the background:
The hike was definitely worth it, as the top of the trail netted us a great view of the Columbia River.
This is all, f'real, like 20 minutes in a Subaru from Winnie's house. And when I say Subaru, I mean Subaru. There is an unofficial Portland city ordinance, apparently, which states that you must own a Subaru and a dog to live there. And when you're cruising around in your Subaru with your life partner wearing your Columbia or Nike or Adidas athletics gear, you must have the dog in the back of the car. And have your radio tuned to Q97.9 FM all the time, so you can hear Mims' highly musical song, "This is Why I'm Hot," every 10 minutes. Okay, don't do that last part. But you can!
This left one adventure before we could leave: driving up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood.
Coming to your hood
And wow -- Timberline Lodge is the hotel they used for the exterior shots in the movie The Shining. A movie that scared the pee out of me. And it was a little creepy seeing it, even though there are no snow tunnels or psychotic killers or Here's Johnny but rather just a bunch of caffienated Oregonians with their snowboards.
And a ski lift. And a massive parking lot. With Subarus.
We had a hot alcoholic beverage inside and then tromped through the snow on the side of the mountain. And who can resist an April snowball fight in 60-degree weather? Certainly not me.
I'm a really bad over-actor.
So there you have it: Go to Portland. You will not regret it. There are so many things to do, including the ones mentioned here plus also locking your keys in your rental car, golfing, purchasing Columbia jackets sales-tax free, pointing out electrical wiring inadequacies in art galleries, eating candy, thrift store shopping, and going out for breakfast like every day. Oh, and Chai! Real Oregon Chai...take that, Starbucks evil-doers.
Raising a can of PBR in thanks to my Portland friends,
That Weird Girl from Iowa
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
I peed my pants a little laughing at this.
If you're a Pearl Jam fan, this is must-see YouTube:
For what it's worth, these are the actual lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter:
Unsealed
On a porch a letter sat
Then you said I wanna leave it again
Once I saw her on a beach of weathered sand
And on the sand I wanna leave it again...yeah
On a weekend I wanna wish it all away yeah...
And they called and I said that I want what I said
And then I call out again
And the reason oughta leave her calm I know
I said I don't know whetherI'm the boxer or the bag
Ah yeah ehh....
Can you see themOut on the porch
But they don't wave
I see them round the front way yeah
And I know I don't want to stay...
Make me cry
Ooooh I see
I don't know there's something else
I wanna drum it all away
Oh I said I don't, I don't know whether I'm a boxer or the bag
Ah yeah ehh....
Can you see them
Out on the porch
But they don't wave
I see them round the front way yeah
And I know I don't want to stay
I don't wanna stay
I don't wanna stay
Don't Don't wanna
Oh... yeah... oooh...
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