Category Archives: no i really do love ohio

But Everyone Looks Awful in Their Senior Pictures, Right?

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 13, 2008 – 2:20 pm
Filed under narcissism, no i really do love ohio
Tagged as ,

My mom died of brain cancer my senior year of high school, and since she was a teacher at my school, the principal gave me a sorry-your-life-is-ruined gift of a senior photo package worth some hundreds of dollars. It was a pretty cool present, I thought, since I’m generally narcissistic and loved the idea of having my picture taken over and over again in several different outfits by a willing photographer rather than my not-easily-coerced, annoyed-by-my-pestering-whenever-we-went-anywhere friends.

The photographer was a lanky guy named Scott who was so typical of all the now-thirtysomethings who had graduated from my high school: black mullet, tapered black jeans, tucked-in cheap flannel shirt, black sneakers, giant aviator wire-framed glasses. You know, your basic child molester ensemble. He was nice enough and made polite conversation with the friends who came with me for my shoot, but I think he thought he was shooting for Playboy or something. I of course brought several sweaters to change into, because his props included things like wagon wheels and hay bales, which was fine with me, because I’m straight offa the farm. But he kept telling me to “change into something slinky”, as if I had brought along my littlest black dress to lounge around in on the unfinished wood floor. And then he kept telling me to not smile and to try to look sexy, which was pretty hilarious what with my wearing patterned sweaters and faded jeans and all. At one point, he positioned me in this fake doorway covered with stucco that was supposed to be reminiscent of Mexico (because every Ohio teenager dreams of being Mexican?) with one hand on one side of the arch and the other hand on the other side and told me to look “dark”. And by that, I’m pretty sure he meant “less-clothed”.

The great thing is that my good friend Sheena, who also had her senior photos taken by Scott, really did bring slinky dresses to her shoot. That tramp.

And the even greater thing is that in the set of photos that my dad loved most and wanted to have blown up to astronomical proportions for everyone in my family to display on their fireplace mantles, I had this stray curl sticking out on one side of my head very obviously. When we looked over the proofs with Scott, he told us he could alter the photo to make it look natural, and we agreed to it. Now, in these days of Photoshop whizzes, that would be an easy feat, but this was Ohio in the year 2000, when my family and Tracey’s were the only ones in the whole county to own computers.

So when the pictures came back, poster-sized to outdo all of my cousin’s photos in my grandmother’s living room, one side of my head looked normal and the other side had an extra inch of afro-like curls DRAWN IN with a black marker. It doesn’t in any way resemble the rest of my hair, and you can pick out each of the swirly marker lines very distinctly.

But hey, they were free.

Happy Birthday, U.S.A.!

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 9, 2008 – 1:10 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, holidays don't suck for me, living in new york is neat, no i really do love ohio, restaurant ramblings
Tagged as , , , , ,

For the past two years I’ve been in New York City for the 4th of July instead of at home in Ohio watching my family burn off their fingers on sparklers like I’m supposed to, I’ve purposely avoided the fireworks and gone to dinner at Serendipity, first with then-boyfriend Todd, who hated crowds, and then with now-boyfriend Kamran, who appreciates a sugar coma as much as I do but still managed to get me back to his house in time to see the throngs of fireworks-viewers streaming off FDR Drive but not a lot of the show itself last year.

This year, though, Kamran was off visiting his family in California, so I let myself get talked into watching the ‘works with my friends Beth, Emily, Sonya, Adam, Christos, and Chad, and Emily’s friends Jeff and Carrie. Emily and Beth had bought us adult sippy cups on their way to my house, so we stopped off at my C-Town to buy Crystal Light and water to mix in with our vodka and rum like the high school girls we are. I was carrying Emily’s brother’s ridiculously adorable Yorkiepoo in a bag over my shoulder, and the checkout girls went crazy over how cute it was. I thought I was the new star of the grocery store until I came back the next day, and they were all like, “Where’s the dog?! . . . Oh, it wasn’t yours? SNUB.”

We spread out the blankets that Emily and Sonya were so kind to bring in the park between the Brooklyn

and Manhattan bridges

and set to sippin’

and piggin’ out.

Just as the show was about to start, it started to rain pretty heavily,

so everyone got out their umbrellas and totally blocked my view (but in kind of a pretty way).

I’ll admit that fireworks viewed through the Brooklyn Bridge are a bit of a novelty

but after they were over, I was like, “That’s IT?! The fireworks in Ohio are 100 times better!” Everyone just sort of shrugged me off, but I seriously think these people don’t understand how seriously Ohio takes its fireworks. Not only do they use the awesomely pun-y name Red, White, and BOOM!, but they have a whole mash-up of America-themed songs playing on a local radio station that the fireworks are timed to perfectly. Everyone brings their portable radios and sings along, the finale lasts at least 20 minutes, and only one or two people get stabbed every year. Honestly, what is the 4th of July without Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” playing on a million boomboxes around you?!

Once the totally-crappy-and-in-every-way-disappointing-but-for-the-fact-that-Carrie-served-warm-apple-pie-and-vanilla-ice-cream-in-plastic-cups fireworks were over, we decided that the subway was going to be way too crazy and instead chose to take a quick walk down to the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, where Chad promised us was a great bar. THIRTY-EIGHT MILES LATER (give or take thirty-seven), we were still walking. In the rain. At night. In uncomfortable shoes. I guess I wasn’t doing anything to hide how cranky I was, because Chad kept saying, “Who’s the biggest trouper here? Katie! She wins the trouper award!” and when I wouldn’t fold up my umbrella and enjoy the rain like everyone else, Emily and Beth started singing to Carly Simon’s tune, “Katie’s so vain/she probably thinks this song’s about her hair.”

The bar, Moonshine, turned out to actually be worth the walk (though I’m not sure you could convince me to do it again). There was an empty couch for us to sit on along one wall with the couch across from us occupied by young men with side-parted hair, one of them in a complete seersucker suit. The jukebox played Bloc Party and then Cat Power and then Devo and then HEART. There was plenty of Big Buck Hunter and House of the Dead


Christos, the Joyous German Murder Machine

a thick dark wood table for playing board games on


Seen here: Jenga, with Truth or Dare challenges written on each piece by previous Moonshine patrons

and . . . shoes nailed to the wall?


Please note Beth’s enormous cleavage.

What more could you want?

Completely Normal Rednecks

Posted by plumpdumpling on May 8, 2008 – 3:45 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, i used to be so cool, no i really do love ohio
Tagged as , ,

People in New York always find it so weird that I talk about how into my own sister I’d be if I was a lesbian, but according to this note that my Best Friend 4-Eva + 4-Lyfe, Tracey, saved from our early days of high school, incest is something I’ve never been embarrassed to talk about:

I’m from Ohio, though, which makes this totally okay.

Comment Here (For my LJ Friends: is that comment link annoying or helpful?)

oooHiooo

Posted by plumpdumpling on April 3, 2008 – 1:11 pm
Filed under no i really do love ohio

Tonight at 8:40, I leave on a plane for Ohio. My plans are as follows:

Tonight: My second-best friend from high school, Mike, his wife, Jessica, and our friend Jonathan will pick me up at the airport at 11 p.m. and take me to Skully’s for Alternative Ladies 80s, where we will meet my first-best friend, Tracey, and dance so hard. She and I will hopefully make out with all of our ex-boyfriends who happen to be there, not tell our current boyfriends, and spend the rest of our lives bound by our secret.

Friday: Tracey and I will wake up early and go shopping for our stupid pregnant friend Katie’s stupid baby shower, even though we both hate the idea of having children and hate Katie for ensuring that all of our conversations with her from now on will be child-centered. Then we will drink smoothies with Tracey’s mom and slop pigs with my dad, because we are from the country.

Friday night: I will go to a rehearsal dinner for my grandmother’s wedding. That’s right. My grandmother’s wedding.

Saturday: I will attend my grandmother’s wedding. I will remind her that my grandfather hasn’t even been dead two years, because his sister (my great-aunt)–who isn’t invited to the wedding because of a long-standing feud between the two of them (awesome!)–still loves him despite the feud, thinks my grandmother is a hussy for remarrying, and will reward me handsomely in her will to tell my grandmother so. I will also remind her that I spent $300 on a plane ticket for the occasion and that she’d better make it up to me in my Christmas present this year. I will gossip about the family with my sister, say for the thousandth time that it’s a shame I don’t get to see my cousins more, and wear shoes that no one will approve of but that everyone expect from me because I live in New York City now.

Saturday night: I will karaoke my little heart out, if someone gets their shit together and figures out the name of that one Japanese restaurant we used to go to in college. I will sing so much Heart and Pat Benatar that feathered bangs will actually come back into style.

Sunday: I will go to my friend-since-birth Katie’s baby shower with Tracey. I will not be happy about it. Not because I hate children but because we’re too damned young for this sort of thing. Now all parties at their house will involve some kid crawling around on the floor, we’ll all have to keep our drinking in check to ensure we don’t step on it, and Katie’s husband will probably become all responsible and upright and stop posing for lewd pictures with me on their pool table. I’m so pumped to see Katie looking all fat, though. And I will make plenty of snide comments about her weight to prove it. (Kidding! Love you, Katie!)

Sunday night: ROCK BAND! GUITAR HERO! SNIFFLING LIKE CRAZY BECAUSE I’M ALLERGIC TO TRACEY’S BOYFRIEND’S CAT, EVEN THOUGH I GREW UP WITH 3 CATS AND HAVE NEVER BEEN ALLERGIC TO ANYTHING IN MY LIFE!

Monday: Hopefully I will eat pizza with ex-boyfriend Todd at the pizza place that only he and I like out of everyone in the entire state of Ohio. I will try not to mention Kamran too much, and he will try not to touch my vagina (but will fail!). And then he will hopefully drop me off at the airport, because my dad has to drive to Indiana to pick up the new field cultivator he found using this newfangled thing called the Internet that he just signed up for a couple of weeks ago. Whee!

Monday night: I’ll return “home”.