whew, how quickly the weeekend goes by. tonight i showed my family the photos we took before dicso night. my computer was sitting on the counter, with the little thumbnails of the photos. my brother david glanced at them and said “who’s the stripper?” i said “me.”
he was chagrined.
it was the biggest compliment i’ve gotten all weekend.
but on the other hand, hmm, stripper is not the look i was going for.
disco night was…anticlimactic. as i was pretty sure it would be. it was fun getting all dressed up (like a stripper!), and it was really fun going to amy and jim’s house and taking lots of pictures. here’s a photo of some of us:
jim was taking the picture, because he didn’t choose to dress up, and lara’s husband bob isn’t in the picture because…well, i don’t know why, i guess because i thought it would be funny if it was randy and all these women. sorry, bob.
this is erica and bev and me; it turned out so dark, but i like it – it looks like it should be an album cover.
here’s erica, being a wild and crazy disco chick. i convinced her to wear the silver shoes i was going to wear that belong to amy, but she refused to wear any outlandish 70’s jewelry. erica can be a very stubborn individual. she’s the most polite and well-mannered person i’ve ever met, but she can be stubborn. she reminds me of shortie, mom and dad’s dog who i’ve put pictures up here of, because shortie, too, can be very stubborn. his stubbornness, though, usually involves going for a walk or refusing to go for a walk. i’m pretty sure erica wouldn’t balk at walking.
and here’s randy and me:
i have to put up this photo of me, just because i like it. it’s really crazy, i know, with the wild pants and the cacophony of color in amy and jim’s living room. Let’s call it “stripper in the living room.”
stripper in the living room
ok, so bev was pretty frantic because the event was supposed to start at 7:30 (DOORS OPEN AT SIX THIRTY!) and i guess she thought there were going to be millions of people clamoring to get in.
we talked her into wearing a sparkly top, and amy foofed her hair up, and gave her some big earrings (she gets frantic, but she’s MUCH EASIER to persuade than erica), and i think we finally left amy’s house at about 8:30.
we got to the warehouse, where the dance was, and a drunk couple weaved around in the space where we wanted to park. they seemed like a fairly angry drunk couple, but they finally staggered out of our way.
the warehouse is this new place in town where they have bands, but inside it looks kinda…dumpy. i mean, some of the dance places i went to in LA looked dumpy, too, so the dumpiness wasn’t really so bad. but when we first went in, the table where you paid was in this horribly brightly lit flourescent room, and that was bad.
we got into the main part of the place, and the crowd was sparce, and of course most people weren’t dressed up at all. there was a guy with an afro as big as a beach ball, with disco-type pants that he must have fashioned himself, because they had little wedgest of CD’s sewn down each leg.
this was an “all ages” dance, and yes, there were actual small children there.
the first band was…the hue corporation. “don’t rock the boat” is their big hit, and they were singing it when we came in. they were good, but then denny terio from DANCE FEVER came out, and he didn’t look bad for an old guy with dyed hair. he had women come up on the stage to dance with him.
he didn’t pick me.
i was relieved.
he mostly danced with older heavier women.
maybe he was afraid of me because he thought i was a stripper, and he was afraid i’d start taking my clothes off.
he danced with amy, who is the QUEEN OF DISCO.
he danced with this woman wearing a bright red weird pantsuit kind of thing – it was pretty tight, and had straps on the bottom, those kind of pants – stirrup pants? yeah, only it was one big outfit. she wore spiked red heels, too. i wonder what decade she was trying to represent.
we saw a guy there we knew, and he was wearing a slightly loud shirt, but he did have a big medallion on. i think jim was wearing an orange t-shirt that said “wheaties” across the front. maybe that was his silent protest to being dragged to a disco night.
he did seem to be having a pretty good time, though.
after denny terio danced (mostly he dance with the women just to show off his many high-energy fancy pants dance moves), TAVARES came out, and they were good. randy said their pre-recorded backup music included extra vocals, but i didn’t care, because they did sound good.
but anyway, we got there a little after 8:30, and it ended at 9:40. not a whole lot of time, but we were there long enough. at the end, they promptly snapped on the very bright overhead lights, which of course made everybody flee.
as we left, some scantily-clad younger women staggered in – actual strippers, maybe? no, probably just drunk 20 year olds – maybe they were the cleanup crew.
afterwards, we went to la bamba (if you don’t live here in spfld, it’s where you get BURRITOS AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD).
there were only two people in line in front of us, but i think they must have been extremely stoned, because it took them at least 20 minutes to order. finally, we got our food, and it was quite tasty, as well as fun to be out on a friday night, eating a quesadilla, drinking an horchata, wearing my crazy disco pants.
the rest of the weekend wasn’t nearly as glamorous. i spent a long time this afternoon reading william wycherley’s “the country wife,” a restoration comedy (written in 1675), which i have to write a paper on. ho hum. the beginning of the paper is supposed to be a page and a half summary of the play, even though erica said she’s always been taught that you should NEVER EVER summarize what you’re reading. but i figure, that’s one and a half less pages i have to fill with thinking up things to say about the play.
i need to be more enthusiastic about this endeavor, clearly.
i wrote the summary, and it was three pages, and i’ve been trying to cut it down, but then i got very tired.
i should have done more homework yesterday, but my mood was just a trifle too black for thinking about homework.
not to be negative in any way, of course.
today i also ran for 50 minutes, although i didn’t start till 10, and it was much too humid. then i went to the fit club and lifted weights, and then i was VERY TIRED. i have to be good about lifting weights, because i don’t want to get osteoporosis. at least twice a week. i really, really didn’t feel like going to the gym, but i dragged myself there, and when i finally started doing it, it wasn’t so bad, except sometimes it’s just so boring that i almost can’t stand it at all. there weren’t a lot of people there; i go there frequently on sunday afternoons, and the place is always pretty empty. maybe everybody went early in the day to get it over with, or maybe they were thinking about sunday being a day of rest.
there were big billboards in LA that read YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD. maybe they said YOU CAN REST WHEN YOU’RE DEAD. no, i think it was sleep, not rest. but will you enjoy it? I don’t think so, because you’ll NEVER WAKE UP.
and also, do you ever think about sleeping, how weird it is, really, that you’re just lying there unconscious (theoretically, hopefully) for hours and hours? it’s not the sleep per se that feels so good, it’s the lying down in bed and turning off the light and being able to REST and knowing that (hopefully) you’ll soon be asleep.
sometimes it does seem very wasteful, all the sleep, but boy, do i need it. mom said she was taking a poll about sleeping, and she says she thinks it’s only women who don’t sleep well, not men. i wonder why this is. do we have all the worry? or is it that we can’t let the worry go?
let the worry go. like the lemon pie.
ok then,
grace WILLING MYSELF NOT TO THINK ANY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AT ALL even though it’s sunday night.