Mother on the Orient Express: Part Six (The Train)
So here’s what my mother didn’t know: that months ago I’d asked the Orient Express travel agent if she could help me make even more of Mom’s dreams come true. If you don’t remember, Mom wanted to sit in the bar car of the Orient Express, drinking a pink squirrel while listening to them play “Sentimental Journey.”
“I think we can try to figure that out,” said the agent, understandably hesitantly. Just in case, I emailed her two YouTube links to the song, plus a link to purchase the sheet music, and eBay’ed my own sheet music, which was nestled next to my laptop in my cabin. I emailed the recipe for a Pink Squirrel, which I found on the Mad Men website, of all places (go ahead and read it; it’s gross), and had a print-out of the thing in my notebook. In short: I dorked out.
Mother on the Orient Express: The Update
Look, I went through a redesign and then I was in the dictionary and then I was really busy with multiple pitches and if I finish this script I’ve got due in the next couple of days I’ll have turned in a pilot script, a manuscript and a screenplay all in the past six weeks. So I don’t want to hear it! My fingers have been typing! And I still updated here! What do you people want from me?!
Confessions of a Mighty Summit Convert
Full disclosure: I thought it was going to be stupid.
An Open Letter to Matt Damon’s Character in Contagion, from His Character’s Ex-Wife
[Note: there will be spoilers]
Hey, Mitch.
I heard that skinny blonde bitch you left me for was Patient Zero. Way to fucking go, dude. Nice environment to expose our daughter to. And speaking of Jory, thanks for keeping her during the whole “Mitch is in Quarantine” time. That sounds like a fantastic idea. Why not force her to live in a place where everybody just died of a mysterious, seemingly unstoppable, uncurable illness? Did you even Purell that shit before you had her sleeping in Clark’s old bed? I bet not.
And I don’t want to hear the whole, “But Patty! We were in a forced Quarantine! We couldn’t leave the city!” Because you sure found a way to escape when you were married to me.
Look, I might smoke in the house, but my lungs never killed a child, unlike what happened when that floozy whore you left me for came home from her “business trip” and coughed all over the place.
By the way, she was fucking all of Chicago. You know how I know? Because she killed Chicago. Just wiped it out in one spread of her legs.
Tales from the Accidental Asshole: The TV Critic
This story is old enough now that I feel like I can talk about it without incriminating anyone involved, other than me, which is fine, because I’m the only one in this story who comes out looking like an asshole.
We go way back to 1999 for this one, back before there were blogs, before there was Television Without Pity, when there were just online journals and the invention of Mighty Big TV. I was lucky enough and honored to be one of the initial writers for MBTV–>TWOP, and due to network scheduling, my recap ended up being the very first one posted on the brand new, shiny site. It was for a little show called “Get Real.” You probably don’t remember it because you were watching this other little show that premiered in that same time slot: The West Wing. Consequently, I’ve never seen an episode of TWW, although I did get to visit the set one day and Martin Sheen told me I had a “black soul,” adding: “In the good way.” But that’s another story for another day.
Calling Off the Jam
This weekend my league is holding try-outs for subpool, the tiny team of no-longer-rookies who practice with the team skaters and sub on bouts in hopes of getting drafted to a team. It only happens about twice a year. It’s the first time there have been try-outs since I came back to derby last winter.
I didn’t sign up.
Please Help the Bay Area Derby Girls
Dear friends:
Saturday, July 9, was an evening of mixed blessings for the B.A.D. Girls. After a successful Championship event at the Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond Harbor, league members who were transporting the money raised from the event were robbed at gunpoint.
Thankfully our league members were not injured. However the robbery was not only a shock to our community, but it took our entire financial reserve and profit for the event, totaling thousands of dollars that would have gone towards both future events and our practice venue.
The B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls is a 501(c)(3) and has been entirely volunteer-run since inception. To be robbed of badly needed funds is devastating; to have our league members’ lives threatened is irreparable.
Due to the ongoing investigation, we cannot release further details on the case but we have absolute confidence in the San Francisco Police Department to bring us justice.
While the SFPD works on the investigation, the B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls are in dire need of fundraising. We have always depended on the kindness of our fans and our community. In this time of need, we are reaching out for your generosity once again. Like the strongest jammers, we do not fall after one hit, and we have no intention of allowing truly despicable scumbags who would steal from a non-profit organization to stop us from rolling. If you can please donate to the B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls to recoup some of these financial losses, we would greatly appreciate any amount. Your donation will be fully tax-deductible. In addition, if you can donate items for us to raffle or venue space for us to hold a fundraiser, we promise to make it worth your while and continue to bring you the best roller derby in the Bay Area.
Like the community that we all practice and play in, we are strong. We have always been a league of extraordinary women who are undaunted by obstacles.
Roller derby is a sport that embraces challenges, enables resiliency, and celebrates the spirit of the best in humanity. We intend in honoring that spirit and moving forward from this crime toward a much brighter future with all of you. Thank you again for your support. It means more to us now than it ever has before.
To support the B.A.D. Girls, please donate by clicking the “Donate” button on
our home page. Your donation is tax deductible.
To donate a product or venue space, please email pr at bayareaderbygirls dot com
For press inquiries, please contact Katy Lim at katy at bethechangepr dot com
We Didn’t Win
For those of you who can’t get enough of things my mom says, I had her play Game Time for the latest episode of Extra Hot Great, as I transcribed her answers. It was a maddeningly difficult Game Time where you listen to 21 clips of fictional languages from film and tv and have to guess where they’re from.
My favorite part is where she just says “Nemo.”
The transcript is here.
here is a test | come try to break pamie dot com
Ever since the shiny new redesign, whenever I let you guys know I have a new post, we somehow succeed in crashing the server. The guys at the help desk are watching right now, so feel free to click a few things.
Like, did you know I have tags? You can read all my posts about roller derby, or Oprah or flip through the remarkably popular dork tag.
Or you can flip through the OCD-skilled archives, picking a month at random.
Whatever gets this site fixed so that I can update more frequently without losing visitors because I have no tolerance for the slow load.
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