Kate's Point of View

The Product of Creative Frustration

Month: February 2007

Where has all the cleavage has gone

By

On February 21, 2007

In rock

When I was in college I used to hang out at one of two bars during my freshman year. Really, that paints a pretty diverse picture when the reality was that 98% of my time was spent at one bar. The Greenery, aka The Cheese, so named because it was so cheesy. I recall weeks where I quite literally went to The Greenery 7 days a week. They served beer to people who were underage, had a cheap cover if you had to pay a cover at all and had a dance floor where I could dance to all the Boom-Boom and Bubblegum I desired.

In the post-grunge days during which I went to The Greenery, my typical attire consisted of some tight-ass jeans and a teeny tank. This was year-round, mind you. When it was cold I took one of my flannels – remember, this was post-grunge so I had a lot of flannel sitting around – and threw it over my outfit. As soon as I entered the sweaty meat market of the Greenery, the flannel was promptly tied around my waist. This way, see, I could display cleavage year-round. Sadly, while this worked in theory, I had no cleavage to show so really I was just showing off my collarbone. It’s a nice one.

As I progressed through college I became aware that the older students didn’t paint on their clothing. In fact, by wearing snug but not spandex-like clothing, they were better able to display their bodies in a way that was sexy but not slutty. (After all, the great girl dilemma in trying to dress in a way to pick up men is finding that careful balance between sexy and straight-up ho.) Even after, thanks to four years of drinking lots of beer, eating a fair share of Goodfellas and Mother Nature, I finally got cleavage, I still managed to be slightly more discreet with the show than my freshman self would have encouraged.

Last night I went to a Guster concert at Bogart’s, near the University of Cincinnati. Guster, though having started playing music before I began college, attracts a definite younger crowd. I am talking people in college and even quite a few still working their way through high school. While it’s slightly unsettling to realize I like the same music as these people I refer to as kids, they make for fabulous people-watching.

I saw leggings and skinny jeans in full force and done well. I saw girls wearing empire-waisted tops without looking knocked up. And I saw girls wearing tops that defied the slush and ice outside. These tops tread a careful balance of containing bosoms and displaying them in all their glory. I saw cleavage that harkened images of the Grand Canyon. Cleavage you could lose your money in. Amazing cleavage. Cleavage my freshmen self would have been jealous of and would have proudly displayed in winter months as soon as the flannel was tied around my waist.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Finding a home for random facts

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On February 20, 2007

In family / friends

This past week on This American Life one of the segments focused on people who love quizzes – people who love quizzes so much they participate in 36 hour (sometimes lot more) long quiz competitions. They started interviewing this one quiz-lover named Dave and I’ll admit that all I could think about this guy was, “What a loser.”

He talked about his love of the trivial. His love of learning. At one of his jobs he actually had a boss come up to him and complain that he made too many literary references in his conversation. (Mind you, he did not do this in his job. This man’s boss was complaining about his literary skills.) The guy was understandably confused. Then one day he and his friends were having a conversation about monkeys, something Wonder Boy and I do more than you’d care to know because monkeys are awesome, and he started throwing in all of these facts. I think the way the guy put it is that he was “forcing knowledge on people.”
What he liked about quiz competitions and clubs and such was that the people there wanted to learn. They appreciated his huge bank of random facts.

Then the host, Lisa Pollak, said, “The thing that can be annoying in the real world is the same thing that makes you good at solving puzzles.”

This is when I started thinking, “Aw shit. I identify with this guy. Dammit.”

Pollak went on to say, “On a puzzle team, Dave can be himself, only better. I think this is true for a lot of people whose talents require the right context in which to shine. Think about it. A boxer without a boxing ring is just a guy punching people. In a puzzle competition a buy with a mind for obscure facts can be a star.”

So the thing is, I think this applied to me and a lot of friends. (Yes, that’s right. I am applying this new loser status I’ve just realized to some of you.) See, I’m smart. But I’m smart about random stuff. I love school and I love learning but it’s not the mainstream stuff I love. I will never remember dates and I will rarely remember peoples’ names. But weird facts? That’s where I shine.

Put me at a game board for Trivial Pursuit and I start to salivate. Add Danny, both Jasons and Alex to the table and you watch our cheeks flush and our feet get antsy. It’s an environment where we can finally make use of all of the trivia we’ve been collecting.
It’s also possibly my most annoying state for all of the rest of my family. Sorry guys.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Wow

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On February 19, 2007

In uncategorized

I recently tried to enroll ins some program through my energy company that would allow me to save money. I signed up and then received this rejection letter. You can click on the letter to see a larger image, but below you’ll see why I was rejected.

Why I was rejected:

  • The account number is invalid, incomplete, or incorrect.
  • The account address is incorrect.
  • The county in formation associated with the account is incorrect.
  • The account is in arrears.
  • The account holder has moved or is about to move.
  • The account is inactive.
  • The account is too large for the Program.
  • The account has been enrolled with another gas supplier.
  • Other reasons.

Wow. What did I do right?

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Addictive, news-filled tidbits

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On February 9, 2007

In uncategorized

Years ago I sat in a meeting, the youngest at the table by at least 15 years, and listened to the people around me talk about National Public Radio (NPR). I sat and quietly listening, knowing better than to mentioned my favorite radio stations that kept me up to date on boom-boom, bubblegum and the like. At some point a woman sitting across from me noticed the slightly glazed look on my face.

“You don’t listen to NPR, do you?”

“Nope,” I said.

“That’s because you’re young. We’re old.”

Hey, she said it; not me. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure I even knew what NPR was before that. In retrospect, I know that my dad was and is an avid listener of NPR because he likes the music on it. But other than that…

As I’ve aged, I’ve heard more and more of my friends talking about NPR. I rejected them these friends and their old-people-radio ways. Then Wonder Boy started quoting it.

(Technically, he is out of the range of my three-year age limit by about three months and maybe those few months make all the difference.)

When I say Wonder Boy was quoting NPR, I don’t think it paints the full picture. In just about every (intellectual) conversation I take part in I end up saying something like, “Well, I read this one thing in the New Yorker…” Occasionally I will reference Time Magazine, but I consider that to be a pretty fluffy source of news so I am much more likely to city the much revered New Yorker. Over time Wonder Boy essentially started throwing this back at me, just replace New Yorker with NPR.

I let this go. It made for good conversations. What did I care he listened to old-people-radio.

Then he introduced me to “This American Life.” The weekly segment basically became a lover I started cheating on him with every Sunday at 4. But how often could I get away on that day at that time? Not often, so it ended up a pretty lame-ass affair.

Oh, but the power of the internet. This past summer my parents got me an iPod that I asked for but was rarely using. Then I discovered that I could sign up for a podcast of “This American Life” and revel in my nerdy passion.

I kept my relationship with the NPR segment a secret so as to maintain my presentation of being young and cool. (Shut up, Jake.)

But alas like so many good things, I couldn’t accept this new great thing as enough and I started to explore other NPR podcasts. Lots of them. Hours of them. Like, hours worth every single day. I fall asleep listened to Diane Rehm and wake up listening to “This I Believe.”

Hi, I am addicted to NPR podcasts.

I am old.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

On toasting conservatism

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On February 7, 2007

In family / friends

Some of my best friends are conservatives. Really. Okay, maybe one of my best friends? There are a lot of moderates I am friends with, too, but they aren’t nearly as entertaining as My Conservative Friend.

One of the reasons I like to hang out with My Conservative Friend is that we get to egg each other on and try and make the other person’s head pop off. For instance, while out drinking a few weeks back I told him of some consideration I was giving to an MBA program. His response, after a slightly agape mouth and widened eyes, was to say, “Welcome to the Republican party.” (My consideration of the degree pretty much ended there.)

Years ago there was this bar near the University of Cincinnati called Big Reds where they had a weekly special where you could buy an inexpensive pint glass and then get $1 beers all night. (You could use the same pint glass from week to week so it was a great deal.) I went there one night with My Conservative Friend and his business fraternity (which is basically a collection of people who own a LOT of navy blue suits and white oxford shirts) to drink. Now I’ll hand it to My Conservative Friend, he knows how to drink. But on this particular night THEY ALL TOASTED RONALD REAGAN.

After I got done peeing my pants from the absolute idiocy of this, I asked My Conservative Friend the meaning of the nonsense. “It’s Ronald Reagan’s birthday,” he said. Oh lord. I probably peed myself again, which he presumably expected from me, His Liberal Friend.

Yesterday was Reagan’s birthday. I had some beer. I thought about My Conservative Friend.

It was nice.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

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