Open Letters

Dear Kettle Chips,
Thank you for making Spicy Thai chips. They are addictive and awesome and delicious.
Love,
Spooner

Dear Trident,
Thank you for making gum that is strong enough that it can actually battle Kettle Brand Spicy Thai Chips.
Love,
Spooner

Dear Slumdog Millionare,
You were good but you weren't THAT good. Don't get too big for your britches. That's my final answer.
Love,
Spooner

Dear babies,
Please learn to comprehend sarcasm so we have something to talk about.
Love,
Spooner


Dear woman wearing jean jacket and jeans,
God bless you, but no. Nope. Uh uh. Not even you can pull that off.
Love,
Spooner


Dear Wafflehouse,
Every time someone thinks it is a good idea to patronize you I come to regret it later. Almost immediately actually. You are like a visit to my grandmother's but with less condescension.
Love,
Spooner


Dear Huddle House,
Please read my letter to Wafflehouse. Ditto to you, slugger. If possible, you are actually worse.
Love,
Spooner


Dear Sing-star,
You are the best game ever. Thank you for showing me how badly I suck at rapping, and yet how truly awesome it is to sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Don't Go Breakin' My Heart” into a Playstation microphone. Now expand your song catalog. Beyonce please.
Love,
Spooner


Dear Brian Krakow,
I recently realized that most of the guys I date are basically you plus 15 years. That is kind of weird but now you are suddenly way cooler to me and that kind of creeps me out.
Love,
Spooner


Dear people who don't know who Brian Krakow is,
ABC's 1994 show “My So-Called Life” nerdy neighborhood kid, you commie loving bastard.
Love,
Spooner

Dear scale that says I've gained 15 pounds in a little over a month,
One of us is lying. My clothes say I'm right. Who is your character witness, scale? Who? Suck it.
Love,
Spooner


Dear people who are still reporting on Sarah Palin,
WHY!? DEAR GOD WHY? Is there really nothing else going on in the world, cuz I think there is. Now quit it.
Love,
Spooner


Dear Boyz II Men,
Reunion tour? Really? I didn't know we were even missing you yet. But you are coming to Greenville and I am DYING to know your demographic.
Love,
Spooner

Edit it

One of my good friends is a teacher at my old high school, something I consistently forget. I was talking to her the other day and she said an old teacher had asked about me and that teacher wanted my email address; she was planning to come to Asheville for a conference. This teacher had taught my honors English 9 class but was more familiar to me as the yearbook adviser, the person I probably saw the most the last three years of high school, saw more than my family. Junior year I was an assistant editor; senior year was head editor. Yearbook at my high school wasn't an extra-curricular activity: it was life. The high school had one of the top yearbook programs in the nation; it consistently won every major award on state and national levels. This all sounds crazy unless you have ever seen the difference between a nationally recognized book and a regular one. Then it makes perfect sense. But that sort of work requires the amount of time usually only reserved for athletes pursuing college scholarships, and so I was in the yearbook office a half-hour before school started, during two of the seven periods of the day, and 4-6 hours after school. And some weekends. (I wasn't the only one. My senior year we had a staff of 120. Out of a school of a little under 1100. It was actually one of the popular things to do) I loved and hated it, the same feelings that I still reserve for the adviser of the book. I should rephrase that. We always had a complicated relationship. It was the hardest period of my life due to everything outside of yearbook and thinking of that time brings up rough memories. I love her dearly. I had only thought of her in passing these past ten years until my friend mentioned her coming to Asheville, and now it's all I'm thinking about. What am I supposed to say about these ten years? What is there to tell? Much too much, and yet nothing. I don't know how to successfully zoom out; what big markers to hit. I don't know how to edit this.

I don't know if we will actually connect. But if we do, I hope words come too.

Into the Arms of Florida

So my blogging has been severely limited lately, due to several factors, among them time, access and a severe crackdown by The Man on computer usage at work. What like I'm not supposed to obsessively check and write blogs on the clock? Lame.

This weekend I ended up on a 62-foot Schooner with a plastic cup of red wine in one hand while the other gripped to whatever was available for gripping. The seas were high and it took all of my conscious energy to not yell “WHEEE!” at the crest of every wave. The sky was gray, the sand was gray, the ocean was gray but it did little to dampen my spirits. My ancestry is a long line of ship-captains and the sea truly is in my veins. I feel like a different bit of life comes to visit me out there.

I was in Saint Augustine for a four-day adventure that mostly included eating, planning the next place to eat, getting to the next place to eat, recovering from eating and then celebrating by having a beer. It was lovely. I love Asheville but it is such a joy to skip town and see something else.

The lighthouse on the island also served as a landmark; the spiral-painted tower the only denotation between cardinal directions. We climbed the lighthouse on Sunday morning; being that my only reoccurring nightmare involves spiral staircases I was less than enthused to undertake the process of ascension (and even less that of distention) and my knuckles were white with the strain of my grip. I got quiet; I do that when I'm terrified. I don't like it to be known how hard my heartbeats. I stood on the balcony with an underwater archaeologist who works at the site and he could point out histories and disasters only known by their wreckage. His words gave it all a sense of place.

America or Something Like It

I found America today. Twice.
She wasn't hiding out in the halls of Congress, the Guggenheim, the Grand Canyon. No, that would be too iconic. She didn't smile, didn't wave, didn't look my direction—no, that would be too Canadian.

She acknowledged me as I handed her money and walked out, so in that way today I was America's John and that's just kind of disturbing to think about.

Yes, I found America today. Twice.

My first America find started at 8am, when I, in my professional-looking best, got into my car to drive 2.5 hours to freaking Surry County, NC which in its county seat of Bumblefuck houses a very nice and impressively new Court House.
Because THAT'S HOW MANY SPEEDING TICKETS THEY ISSUE. They may have a Burger King as their only restaurant but they got a nice Court House, paid for by the ticket revenue they collect.
More than any other county in the state.

Legalized fraud? You betcha.

Back on Christmas Eve I got busted for going 80 on the Interstate...in a 70. With traffic.

Ten miles over exactly. With traffic. Ticket was $15. Court Costs? $121. Seriously Pissed? Priceless.

I pleaded down to an “improper equipment” ticket which carries a larger fine but no insurance points and today I was driving up to hand them my money and leave. I walked into Bumblefuck's fancy courthouse and was face to face with a slimmer version of Wilford Brimley in a bailiff outfit.
“You a lawwwyer?” Slim Brimley asked.
“No sir.” I replied in my pearls.
“Well you dressed too pretty to have to be in court.”
I don't know what Emily Post would have me say after someone comments like that, so I simply took my things and went to find my courtroom.
I was in the courthouse for exactly 10 minutes.
And I was told I was “dressed too pretty to have to be in court” twice.

And to be truthful, I was. The place was packed with women with stringy hair and ill-fitting, poorly made clothes carrying screaming children with Lightening McQueen and some leaked condiments on their shirts. The men were in work pants or wranglers, all with some NASCAR paraphernalia on their bodies somewhere. It was like being drugged and waking up smack-dab in the center of a “be the next Joe the Plumber” contest. I swear if someone had seen me in my glasses and my hair up and said I looked like Palin I would have lost it.

Then tonight I made the mistake of “stopping by” Wal-Mart.
Everyone knows that there is no such thing as “stopping by” a Wal-Mart. Even at 2am those checkout lanes wide enough to sort cattle are still sorting the bleak-eyed stares that come from being in a Wal-Mart. There is always, ALWAYS a line.

And I hate that place, why did I go? Truthful answer: the $5 DVD bin. One of the benefits of going to Wal-Mart is the feeling of leaving Wal-Mart. I come out of there feeling like the smartest, most well-dressed, well-adapted, hygienic and successful person to ever walk the earth. I come out confident I can face tomorrow. Again I ran into women threatening children with mortal harm with one hand and handing them candy and video games with the other, teenagers shopping for baby things, polyester people in a plastic place. America. Or something akin to it. It's like where Brittany Spears should be if fate hadn't totally effed up and put her in a position of quasi-relevance.

I couldn't help but feel like the American dream is alive and maybe one day Brittany could come back to her people here in Wal-Mart and traffic court land.

(I wrote this post very quickly, attempting to try a different voice than I usually use, a more poppy tone. I worry I may have come across as too snarky or even snobby. If that is true, I don't mean to be.)

Damn You, Tonya!

This is Dave.
Dave has been a friend of mine for almost 8 years. We met at the camp I worked for in Virginia where we all lived in tents and crazy things happened regularly. Dave came as a companion to my friend Shelby (now his wife) and he brought along an exuberance that is unmatched, a zest for fun that is both light and deep. We have had many adventures in these years (one of my favorite involves a situation attempting to explore a new cave). He is a dear, dear friend. Like a big brother only with less fights. When three of us came down with giardia, Dave was the one who volunteered to drive the deathly ill people 30 minutes to the hospital in a 1989 maroon Caravan. He and I have run many programs together, having so much fun in the process our kids would tell us to calm down. Our interpretive dance to Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” is still one of the funniest moments of performance I’ve ever been apart of. He is another in a long line of people who blew into my life and have taken root. I am blessed by these roots.

Dave has cancer.

I got an email from him a few weeks ago, detailing the discovery of Tonya the Tumor, a softball size germ cell tumor that is sitting in this chest, overlapping his lungs and close to his heart. Of all the cancers to get at 29 it is one of the most treatable and he is in chemotherapy, with hopes that he’ll be done with it before summer starts. He called me this past weekend to see if I had any questions about his cancer, to make sure I wasn’t worrying too much and to see how I was doing. We talked for about 30 minutes and I got to ask the questions I wanted to ask, let him know how much I loved his friendship, and make him laugh as much as I could. As long as I’ve known Dave he has had the gift of good attitude. No matter the situation, no matter the resources at hand, no matter how glum it looks, Dave has a good attitude that is full of realism and yet abounding joy.

I can’t believe I get to have people like him in my life.

Not because he is sick, but because he is Dave.

(this is Dave with his twin brother, Dan. Dave is the one in the sombrero. Both are equally awesome.)
Dave's CaringBridge Site.