Tavie Subscribe to blogs i like:
2719 hyperion
dave foley
mark mckinney
e.mail
archive
Posts [Atom]
amy
andrew
barb cooking blog
big fat deal
boing boing
carl
caroline
cartoon brew
chris
cityroom
consumerist
ebert
erin
the fat nutritionist
feministe
feministing
gena/ deadly stealth frogs
gothamist
jezebel
jim hill
kate harding
kids in the hall lj
kirsten on jetwit
kithblog
matt k
mike t
nathan
post secret
racialicious
the rotund
rynn
sarah
sarah c
sean
sepia mutiny
tea rose
tiger beatdown
toby
tom
two whole cakes
webcomics i read:
american elf
american stickman
elfquest
lolcats!
masque of the red death
the perry bible fellowship
toothpaste for dinner
ultrajoebot
xkcd
Other places to find me:
me on the tumblr
me on the flickr
me on the formspring
me on the twitter
i want:
wish list
i've read:
goodreads list
tomorrow. It's a classic dark ride, beautifully executed, but much
more important to me because it symbolizes quite a lot of the precious
relationship I share with my father. It's his favorite movie, you see,
and when I was a little girl, this ride was very scary to me. It was
so scary, in fact, that apparently I refused to go on the ride unless
I could ride next to my father so he could "protect me from the wicked
witch". I'm certain I outgrew this fairly quickly, but Dad and I
continued to playact that I would refuse to ride it without him. When
I grew up and started going to WDW without him, I would still skip
this ride, only going when he was traveling with me. Now, of course,
he'll probably never go to WDW again - the thought of him there
without Mom is painful and absurd - and so I suppose it's just as well
that the ride is closing forever, because that little part of my life,
symbolic of a much bigger part of my life, is also gone forever.
--
Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)
Uncle Tom, Andrew and Joanna showed up. They had brought a portable grill, as people often circumvent the "no portable grills" rule - but today, a security officer was patrolling the cop and ticketing those with grills. Some people had been staked out since 6 in the damn morning.
We sat in the shade and wondered what to do. The heat was wet and stifling, so we ended up taking a little red bus back to the dark, cluttered, dusty, but blessedly air-conditioned apartment, where Andrew cooked the meat on stovetop and in oven, and we picnicked around the table.
We salvaged the day.
--
Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)
The ceremony is in Coney Island, for whatever reason. Kirsten was really keen for the whole family to be there. Of course, Tante Joan got picked to be on a jury - she's trying to get out of it, but won't know until Wednesday night. Regardless, Dad and I will be there for her. We'll all go to dinner that evening, with TJ and some friends.
Because the ceremony is in the morning - rather hideously early - I took the whole day off, and because it's in Coney Island, I invited Kirsten and Dad to sleep over at my place the night before. I'll probably stick them in my bedroom, where there's both a bed and the little flip-out couch (O the luxury of having a "couch" in my bedroom!) and Sean and I will crash on the fold-out in the living room so we can stay up late watching tv.
--
Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)
But there are some lingering issues (not necessarily caused by, but certainly exacerbated by his advancing age and the fact that Mom's no longer there.) Hoarding stuff, taking food out of the trash, worrisome things that drive my sister crazy and will get worse when she moves out and he's living alone. So I turned to Google (teacher, friend) and found an elder care support forum.
Reading the posts is both helpful, and incredibly heartbreaking.
This one post is formatted like just the saddest, saddest poem I've ever read:
Posted December 28, 2011 03:00 PM
hello everyone
My dad is getting up wandering at night
doctor put him on seroquel 150 mg, this helped
him sllep thru the night
After his lastest fall at home
doctor put him in rehab home for 30 days to build muscle strength
Now he is on 100gs
My dad is getting up at night
wandering to other rooms and nurses cannot keep him in bed
The pyche doctor called and wants
him on 200 mgs of seroquel twice a day
My dad is not eating and has lost 13 pounds
since thanks giving
he is 122 pounds
down from 135
Any advice, knowledge on seroquel effect
you all have experienced would be helpful
Brittany, because my sister refused to see it with me (DENYING HER
PAST) and I loved it so much that I actually want to see it again. I
became 13 years old again in that theatre and I admit that I don't
have a lot of perspective - I generally consider myself a fairly
discerning fan of musical theatre, but although I admit my bias, I
have to say, the show worked extremely well. It improved on the film
(which I love) and the expanded songs and changed lyrics worked really
well. The cast was young and cute and energetic and wildly talented -
the leading man, Jeremy Jordan, is certainly going to be an enormous
Broadway star and I honestly believe he deserves a Tony nod for his
performance. I even like the girl-reporter character that they brought
in- a much more engaging love interest than that bland thing they had
in the movie. The kid who played Specs was a particularly incredible
dancer, and David was fantastic, too. All-around talented cast (even
the vaguely uncomfortable over-30 members of the cast.)
I want to see it again. I can't remember the last time I came out of a
Broadway show feeling that way.
I guess I'm one of those "Fansies". I guess it helped that almost
everyone in the theatre was exactly my age.
--
Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)
her something really nice. So I told her she could pick any Broadway
show and I would take her.
She picked Phantom. PHANTOM. I am notoriously snotty about Andrew
Lloyd Weber, and Phantom in particular. We went to see it in 1994, I
think, me and Steph and Kirsten and Erica, and I remember just sort of
rolling my eyes at the pomp and spectacle of it. Well, anything for
Steph. I got us really good seats, and we went to John's for really
good pizza beforehand (joined by my father and sister for dinner) and
then we went to the show and, I have to tell you, it was a hell of a
lot of fun. Maybe it's because I'm older and more willing to let
myself enjoy "uncool" things. Maybe I've increased my love of camp
(oh, it was the gayest Phantom ever - when he took to the stage after
the bows to shill for Broadway Cares/EFA, he was practically showering
the front row with lisp-juice) and maybe I was just slightly moved by
the scene where Christine visits her father's grave and sings a lament
for him. Everything comes back to my Mom these days.
--
Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)
A perfectly acceptable Easter yesterday at Tante Joan's. Mom was missed. Mom is missed. I miss Mom.
Did a little of my Godspell-watching. Tradition is tradition.
Out of my total body of Facebook friends, about 25% are people that I
originally knew in "real life". Everyone else is someone I either met
online, or met through someone I met online, no matter how close we
are in "real life" now. In other words, I am someone who has
historically been able to make strong connections via
computer-medicated communication. Way before Facebook. Way before
Twitter. This is how I grew up and became the Tavie I am today.
And it started in 1993. On Prodigy. On the family computer, the old
Macintosh LCIII, and the old 14.4 modem. (Or was it 56k? I seem to
remember the 14.4 upgrade being a big deal.) So there was Prodigy, and
my discovery of something called Message Boards. Prodigy had them. And
the first thing I looked up was a movie called Newsies.
Rewind to 1992. My obsession with Disney's Beauty and the Beast (which
has never waned) lead my mother to take my sister and I to a
double-feature of that movie with a live-action musical called
"Newsies". We figured wedl sit through it in order to get to the good
stuff. We came out obsessed. Fucking obsessed. Well, we were
13-year-old girls. It was hormonal. There were hot teenaged boys
singing and dancing. We loved them so very much.
So, 1993. Message boards. Some instinct tells me to lurk, get to know
the rules first. Everyone there has picked something called a
'handle', some name not their own, to go by on the Newsies board.
There was a 35-year old named Teresa who was a sort of de facto 'den
mother' - she seemed impossibly old and wise back then. Now that I'm
almost her age, I wonder if I would get the same kind of enjoyment
hanging out on an internet forum populated by 13-year-olds - but the
online was younger then, smaller. Anyway, she was nice. She had kids
our age.
There are precious few female characters in Newsies, and the message
board was entirely populated by females. Teresa went by the handle
"Medda", for "Medda Lark", the slinky, middle-aged dance hall mistress
played by Ann Margaret in the film. I don't remember who snatched up
the handle "Sarah" - the pretty teenager that gets to kiss Christian
Bale in the movie. The remaining females were a couple of singing
nuns, an unnamed woman ("Patrick's Mother") who sings a brief solo in
the opening number, and the super-jewy mother of the 2 non-orphan
Newsboys, Esther. All of the Newsie handles were taken - we had a
Cowboy, a Mush, a Spot, a Crutchie. So pickings were slim by the time
I got there. I reluctantly went with "Esther", a name I detested - and
I soon began signing my posts as "Esther/Tavie", and then just "E.T.".
I discovered early on in my internet life that I don't do well with
handles, that online, I'm actually more Tavie than I am offline a lot
of the time - that I could be most myself when I was nothing but words
and mischievous energy. Nevertheless, E.T. became very popular on
that message board.
It was so old-fashioned! I didn't even know what "e-mail" was, then -
one of the girls, I think it was Crutchie, explained it to me. We
exchange snail mail addresses and wrote long letters to one another.
There was a fan-made video cassette passed around from person to
person, dubbed "The Delancey Tape" (after the "Delancey Boys", some of
the movie's villains.) I think the tape was just a bunch of kids
telling the camera why they loved Newsies so much. I don't really
remember the content of The Delancey Tape, but I think I still have it
somewhere. (Yeah, um, I'm not a good person to send chain-anythings
to. Chains tend to end with me. I was supposed to mail that video on
to the next girl almost 20 years ago. Yipe.)
We all had favorites from the cast - but most of us picked obscure
bit-players and background dancers, to set ourselves apart, to seem
"cool". It wasn't "cool" to say Christian Bale was your favorite - it
was way too obvious. (We were clearly kidding ourselves, ladies.) I
focused on a character named Mush, played by a singing actor named
Aaron Lohr who went on to such illustrious roles as "that guy from The
Mighty Ducks" and "that guy with a bit part in the Rent movie". Oh,
how I swooned over Aaron Lohr. We all watched "Roundhouse", a
Nickelodeon sketch/musical show that swallowed up many of the lesser
Newsies. We all mourned the death of Dominic Lucero, a dancer who
played a named character, Bumlets, with no actual lines in the movie.
Poor Dominic died of cancer 2 years after the movie came out. We wept
over him.
I don't know how long I participated in Prodigy's Newsies board, but
it was long enough to become popular, to start threads that encouraged
pages and pages of responses, and to realize that people like me and
listened to me online - to turn from a shy, fat, awkward pre-teen into
the incandescent Online Persona I would inhabit most comfortably from
then forward.
So, fuck yeah, I'm seeing the Newsies musical.
--
Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)
