Filed under ‘cute things kids say’ apparently during a particularly bad midwest storm of my youth (not the one where I was struck by lighting) I worried to my mother that a ‘big tomato was coming down the street’. It’s big tomato weather today and she just reminded me of that (I hadn’t thought of it in years, even though it was a running joke in our household most of my life). Will live blog any tomatoes as they occur.
Filed under ‘revisionist history’. It was our cousin JoeySteve who scared me about the “big tornado coming” and I thought it was a big tomato and would bring a pillow and my barbie doll case down the cellar every time it got dark and stormy and I thought a tomato was coming. You just started imitating what your smart older sis was saying.
You know what I don’t get? Girl Scout cookies. For real, I always figured it was a mutually agreed-upon feeling of guilt that went from “Oh you poor thing, walking around the neighborhood all day” to “Oh you poor thing, sitting in front of the grocery store all day” to “Oh you poor thing, you have this weird fixation with having your child ‘win the day’ so you are here at work harassing me with this order form” that drove sales. That and the horror stories I would hear from friends who had been through it, the stultifying compunction to sell, sell, sell! beaten into these poor things from a laughably, sickeningly young age.
But then there is the internet and even IRL* friends, and every year/biannually during “cookie season” there is this rush of high-fructose nostalgia that singes the nostrils, “OF IF ONLY I WEREN’T ON A DIET I COULD EAT THIS WHOLE BOX OF TAGALONGS.”
Straight dope though? That shit sucks. How long do you think those things have been around, how chemically preserved and colored and flavored must that shit be to sit in trays in cellophane in boxes in minivans in crates on pallets in semis in warehouses for EONS ON END before they can be distributed by this weird army of micro green berets, tugging at your very heartstrings? You are better off with the Keebler elves, for sure.
*Do you see what I did there???
I really wanted to like this… (just realized that ‘sponge-worthy’ is easier for the youngs to understand than McMurtry)
Also wanted to mention my sister lost because a girl in her troop went to the Wonder Bar to sell cookies to drunks in the afternoon. Note. the Wonder Bar used to be a lot different back then. More Trees Lounge.
Oh the Wonder Bar. Clearly that bitch knew a lot more about business development than I did. That’s going right into my marketing plan.
You may have noticed that advertising has found its way into the plastic bins you use at the security checkpoint in the airport. Yesterday, at O’Hare, I saw this at the bottom of the bins: “Wear your mismatched socks. We’ll never know. Amtrak.” I love that. In other words, doesn’t flying suck? Take the train. But what fascinates me is - how did that end up there? Who authorizes the advertising for the bins? Who owns the bins? Is it TSA? Is it the airport?
After sitting on the runway for 45 min, a passenger decided she needed to get off the plane so we returned to the gate. Then, after she walked off the plane, they held up the flight so they could FIND AND RETRIEVE HER LUGGAGE. This then led to another delay to re-fuel. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?
Is this one of the Seven Sisters?
Christmas morning breakfast at LAX. Suprising not bad.
I’ve lived in LA for 14 years but it still feels wrong to be standing on the corner of Melrose and Fairfax on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 68 degrees and sunny, trying to avoid being mowed down by tourists. Her – pink Juicy-ish tracksuit (in 2009 – or ever really) and him –the inevitable Ed Hardy t-shirt.
The other Lola, also at rest.
the horror…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/dining/16cookies.html
Here’s an Artist’s Interpretation of said encounter. All the making out: later.
Isn’t that my Veselka t-shirt?