Saturday, January 24, 2009

Meet Johnny

My good friend Elizabeth phoned me the other night to inform me that it was Linda Blair's 50th birthday. The reason that this merited a phone call is that Linda Blair and her movies had a profound effect on us. Here is the story.

I read somewhere once that the teen years are the most impressionable that a person will be in their entire life and that the stuff you liked back then you will like throughout your life. This has certainly proven to be the case with me and my friends. We all remember the same stuff, and here is why.
1) The TV only had 13 channels. There was no cable. It's true! Therefore, everyone watched the same stuff on TV.
2) There were no VCR's. You couldn't record a show and watch it later. (I know, how did we survive those dark times?) Consequently, everyone watched the same stuff at the same time.
Bacause of these two things, certain TV events were the talk of the school the next day. The more memorable ones were Roots and Trilogy of Terror, but the one that I remember as being the most talked about among my teenage girlfriends was a movie of the week called "Born Innocent" starring Linda Blair. We already knew her from "The Excorcist", so we couldn't wait to see what kind of role she would play next. And she did not disappoint!



She played a teenage girl that ended up in Juvenile Hall for reasons that escape me. In fact, most of the movie escapes me now except for that one scene. The scene we all talked about the next day. The scene where she was raped with a toilet plunger handle in the shower by the other girls there. They called the plunger Johnny. They said meet Johnny and then they raped her. Whoa. It was a fairly graphic scene and left a serious impression on all of us. As I recall, none of us ever ended up in Juvy. Or is it Juvie?



If you click to make this bigger, you can read the back of the DVD box in the original 70"s curvy font. Awesome!



And the front of the box is hilarious!

The next movie of the week she was in was called "Sarah T, Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic". It was good, but not as controversial and we must not have learned any lessons from it since by that time we were all stealing liquor from our parents' cabinets.



Sarah T., your efforts were in vain!

So anyway, I couldn't talk to Elizabeth the other night when she called because I was out knitting at Starbucks with a bunch of people, so the next morning she calls me at 6am to tell me that I should knit a plunger cozy. For Johnny. I declined. Then she said that if we lived closer then we could rent Sarah T. and watch it over drinks. That sounds perfect.

So Happy 50th, Linda. And thanks.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Out Of The Loop

Our phone and internet was out for 5 days. Seemed like a year. Irritating yet strangely peaceful. Totally inconvenient for sure. But we are back now. Yay!

Snow is melting slowly, no longer having to shovel the path to freedom. Starting to decompress from all the stress of the past month. Today I was actually able to enjoy some music in the car instead of trying not to slide off the road or hit another car.

I hope we have a long hot summer.

(Don't remind me that I said this when I complain about the heat in August. Thank you.)

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Roof Drama

So yesterday Steve and I decided that enough was enough in terms of snow on the roof, and made plans for him to shovel it all off today. I went to bed feeling good and relieved that I would no longer have to worry about one of those pesky roof collapses I have been hearing about every day here. I thought I was home free. After all, the roof had held and was not even making any creaking sounds.

Until this morning at 4 am.

The cracking sound woke me out of a dead sleep and I sat straight up in my bed. I thought that maybe I had dreamt it until it happened again 10 minutes later. I laid in my bed listening to the roof crack every 5-15 minutes until 5 am, then got dressed and went out into the living room until 5:30 when I couldn't take it anymore and called Steve, who said it was ok, we had a plan, just go downstairs where the collapsing roof cannot hurt you. So I woke up Leo and herded the cats and we all went downstairs where I felt better because I could no longer hear the cracking and managed to sleep for another hour until I got Steve. Thank God for him. He has been on the roof since about 9 am and now it is 4:15 pm and he is about 2/3 done.




Even though all the snow will be off the roof by the next storm which is tomorrow night, I am still a little nervous, all that cracking this morning made me jumpy. Please please get the snow off your roof if you can.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Freedom Isn't Free



But it sure is beautiful!








Thursday, January 01, 2009

Happy New Snow, I mean YEAR! Happy New Year!

I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone if I report that it is snowing again. This time we are supposed to get 5-7 inches, which in reality means about 2 feet. But that is OK because I have 4 days off which will give me plenty of time to deal with the roof when it collapses! We didn't do much last night. I did manage to stay awake for midnight, but only because I had a 90 minute nap earlier, or as I like to call them, periods of unconciousness brought on by shovelling snow.
So now it's 2009. I don't like resolutions because I suck at keeping them. But here is something I plan to do this weekend--organize my yarn. That is a big job because first I have to figure out where in the world I am going to put it all. I may even have to get rid of some. Just thinking about it is exhausting. I need some coffee. Be right back.

(Insert cheesy hold muzak here)

That's better. anyway, back to resolutions. I think I would do better if I just made resolutions at the start of every day, and just make the same ones over and over every day. I can do anything for a day that would kill me if I thought I had to keep it up for a year. Maybe not a day. Maybe fifteen minutes. I can do anything for 15 minutes. So today my fifteen minute resolutions will include cleaning my house, folding laundry (wow I'm really pushing it here), and taking down the Christmas decorations.

I feel another period of unconciousness coming on. Happy New Year everybody.