Halloween girl party!

Why do I agree to these things? Oh yeah...cause it's fun!

Burke

Old photo, new favorite person in the world.

Happy Father's Day

Just missing my dad today. Kind of blue. He was a sweet, smart, loving father, and I'll never have anyone love me that much again. Love you, dad.

NED Fest

We had a throwdown Friday night in Athens, and I've just about recovered enough to write about it. A few months ago Lynda

Lynda shows KO how it all works

said she was thinking about getting Oh OK together to play a benefit for Ingrid, and wanted to know where I thought would be a good place to hold it. She said she was looking into getting some more bands together and maybe have an art auction too. I said to contact Little Kings, which she did, and voila! NED Fest!

Beautiful artwork from Michael Oliveri, Sam Seawright and Andy Cherewick

First of all, Ingrid is our lovely sweet talented FUN friend who is beating breast cancer's ass for the second time.

The Lovely Ingrid

She had it once before in 1995 (is that right, Ing?) and had been cancer-free until this year, when they found something under her arm. She has undergone six rounds of chemo and is facing it all like a total trooper (not moany groney at all!) and since she's way up in Boston, we wanted to do something to help her out, long-distance wise. NED stands for "No Evidence of Disease", Ingrid's goal which she will reach, I have no doubt. So NED Fest seemed appropriate as the title of the party!

Volunteers extraordinaire Rebecca, Amy and Asia

I enlisted KO, planning superstar,

The Lovely KO

and we got Kim too, since she has gallery experience, and we took over the auction/art side of the night, while Lynda focused on bands and t-shirts. We ended up with fourteen artists, 23 works of art, one vacation package, three yoga packages, a book package, two REM collectors' items and two sets of jewelry sent in by two different jewelers. We raised $5000 on the art, door donations and t-shirt sales, plus another $5000 someone donated in an anonymous check.

Sunny, KO, Marianne, Lynda and John, with birdhouse he won

Here are some action shots of the evening:

After the wonderful event at Little Kings, after we finished up the bands and closed the auction and distributed the goods, we went to KO's room at the hotel for an after-party. Of course, things soon devolved into old school craziness which lasted till 5:00 am:

All in all a great success! And only a teeny hangover on Saturday!

Hellooooo

I'm super busy, but wanted to drop in and say hi to my faithful readers. TONS of news but it will have to be posted after my trip to Athens. More later.

"Normal people are so hostile"

That's a quote from Dexter, my favorite show and my ultimate hero. If you've never seen the show, he's a serial killer who only takes out bad guys. But mainly he's incredibly hot, and smart, and just all around fabulous. He often says fabulous things, like the title of my post. It fits today but I won't bore you with details.

Next, to the real world. Last weekend turned out to be a complete blast, only to be followed by this week which has also been amazing. I'm finished for the year! Yippee! All that is left to do is to finish the dissertation and I'm golden. Life is good.

I'm working right now on a chapter on theater and mimesis, focusing on Genet and Artaud in general and Les Bonnes in particular. It's added a whole new dimension to the dissertation, which feels much richer now. If only I could make all the chapters feel like they fit together. But they all seem almost independent of each other. Chapter one covers the traditional murder narrative, the expectations of readers and analyses of a few early stories. Chapter two discusses the Papin sisters, their crime, testimony and trial, looking at how this true crime refuses incorporation into any traditional murder narrative. Chapter three examines the killer and the female as other, beginning with Aristotle's designation of female as monstrous and working towards other types of alterity created by/confirmed in their crime. Chapter four discusses theater and its ability to incorporate this monstrous other into the self, thus being the sole medium able to tell the story of the Papin sisters in a way that captures the essence of the women and their crime. Anyway it's exciting to get back to writing and to leave teaching behind for a while.

Here are a few images from various productions of Les Bonnes. The first is from a Theatre des Halles in Avignon's 2006 production of the play:
I love this set, from Teatro Altrove in Genova, 2008:

And this amazingly beautiful stage set by Alain Ollivier from the Studio-Theatre de Vitry in 1991:

What I would give to be able to actually see this play! Is anyone putting it on anytime soon?

Okay, back to work...

Going to Athens

Cathy and I are heading up to Athens tomorrow. I'm excited but at the same time kind of not. We are going to a huge celebration in honor of John Seawright, a most beloved human being (see here and here,) and a party afterwards. I am happy to see all the people who will be attending, and hope to see my crush there, but there's also the ick factor, also known as "What if Paul and Ugh are there?" I doubt they will be, honestly, but you never know. If there's free booze and the possibility of getting high, Paul just might show. I shouldn't let it bother me; like Cat says, if they are there I will just hold my head high and ignore them, knowing how far beneath me they are. But still, I don't want to have to LOOK AT THEM and have it ruin my day. But my crush will be there, and lots of other fabulous people, so fuck em.

Good things about going to Athens tomorrow:

Cathy

Athenians I love

John Seawright
KO
TStand
Bad things about going to Athens tomorrow:

Paul
Ugh
Okay, the good outweigh the bad. Just pray for me, people, that it turns out to be a drama-free visit, in the spirit of the sweetheart that was John Seawright.

Vacation, kids and ghosties

I've been so negligent of my blog. I guess that is good and bad: good in that I've been very busy, bad in that I'm getting lazy and out of the habit of writing. Not to mention the fact that nothing REALLY is going on in my life. There's no excitement, no love affairs, no heartbreak (well, let's face it, I'd rather have no love affair than a heavy affair and breakup. Or would I?), no breakthroughs in my work. The semester is winding down...thank God!...and I'm just in cruise mode for the next two weeks.

One exciting event is that last week was the kids' spring break and we took a trip to Chattanooga. Wait...let me back up... first we had several surprise gatherings. One at Deb and Tom's house, which was loads of fun (cookout, good conversation, relaxed evening outside,) and then several with Nick and Rosie's friends either here or elsewhere, so it felt like they were really on vacation, though we didn't leave town till Thursday.

Read House, haunted hotel, lobby

So, Thursday we took off for Chattanooga, our vacation-destination-when- we-can't-afford-a-vacation destination. It's always a fun time, and this visit Rosie and I were determined to see the ghost of room 311. I had researched the ghostly stuff in some detail this time, and I knew the room would more than likely be empty, as they don't assign it to people unless they request it. As soon as we arrived we wandered the halls, to see if we could find someone to let us in the room. Alas, there was no one around.


Oooo spooky. So we wandered around exploring the hotel. Here's some cool stuff we found:

Original elevator sign

Original phone booths

Service area staircase

Then, back in our room, where I took more pictures. And lo and behold: Orbs!


The next day we did the usual Chattanooga things, had a yummy dinner at the Blue Water Grill, then came back for more exploring. This is a fabulous old post office downtown:



And an art deco beauty, "The Times":


And then there's Roy's Grill, possibly in an old Krystal, apparently vacant, sadly:


Saturday we took off for Mom's, but not before MORE exploring, this time around the Chickamauga battlefield. Very beautiful but kind of too much to get to today. Tune in next time for "Ghosts on a Confederate Battlefield"...

Shooting in my neighborhood

This morning Sean called me after taking Nick to school. "The house across from Rosie's school has police tape all around it, and there are police everywhere. Be sure the alarm is on and the dog is in; something's going on." I later learned that the man who lives in that house, a parent at my kids' school, had been shot minutes after he walked his kids to school across the street and was coming home to get in his truck and go to work. He later died at the hospital. The whole story is here

Needless to say I've been freaked out all day. They locked down the school, but no one gave us any news or details about the crime. Everything I know I've gotten off the internet or from the news. Apparently there were two guys who shot this man, and they were seen running down LaVista Road afterwards. But even though the school was taken off lockdown after a couple of hours, the news reported tonight (and it says in the above article) that one of the killers was thought to still be in the area bordered by LaVista, Frazier, Lawrenceville Highway, and Montreal....the exact area where we live!

But tonight it seemed to have calmed down. I even took the kids and their sleepover friends out for ice cream, coming back into the house in the dark. Then about an hour ago the police helicopters started up, hovering over our street, shining the lights in our backyard. It's scary as hell.

I am upset for so many different reasons. I keep thinking about that poor dad, saying goodbye to his kids, maybe talking about the weekend or what they were going to do that night, kissing them, telling them to have a great day, and walking away. Those poor kids (aged five and 10) had no idea they were saying goodbye forever.

Then I think about my own kids, and how scared Nicholas was when he got off the bus. He had heard it through the middle school grapevine, and didn't know what was really happening. I had become more and more relaxed about letting him walk places alone, and walking the dog with a friend and the like. Now I'm going back to being lockdown Mom. I hate that.

And I'm just afraid tonight. We have the alarm on, the dog is in, logically I know we're safe, but I know that guy is out there somewhere, and more like him. We aren't ever really safe.