I can taste the sappiness

I constantly have those moments when I watch movies and TV and say, "life doesn't happen like that!!!" (Extra exclamation points indicate audio levels as well as emphasis.) But I was rendered speechless against this tale of true romance.

Basically, dude glimpses the woman of his dreams across the subway platform before the train whisks her away to oblivion. But lo, this gentleman didn't want to live with any what-if's, and used the Web-savvy of his generation to locate her within 48 hours in a city of over 8 million people. Moral of the first half of the story: dreams come true when you go viral on the Internet. The two united for a hot and heavily monitored relationship that lasted two months. They are now, "friends". Moral of the entire story: most Internet fads are shortlived.

Sappy love story suckers, you got served!

Karma Police

I should have helped the Italians. That's all I could think after two canceled flights, two horrible delays, near arrest, a security breach, a twisted ankle (not mine), a few public rants consisting entirely of cuss words, near suffocation in a throng of smelly, sweaty nerds at a comic book convention, missed industry parties, alienation by people I thought were cool, and sunburns in unholy places. And a few minor struggles with matched luggage. If I'd only helped the Italians, I wouldn't be angry, spurned, burned and most of all, disappointed. To read more about our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad trip to the San Diego Comic Con, I urge you to read RM's account of the tale. He has a sense of humor about it, while all I an manage is sardonic with a twang of bitter.

Suffice it to say that there was no need to rush to the gate at JFK last Wednesday. I should have stopped to help the spoiled-looking, casual designer label-wearing Italians whose lack of English-speaking skills and panicked demeanor had caused a glaucoma-ish glaze to settle over the eyes of the little old ladies working the counters at American Airlines ticketing.

RM said karma would punish me because I let them throw their hands up in despair, screaming, "non capito, non ti capito!" He said karma would bite me in the ass because I didn't use my rusty Italian to tell them that "la donna qui nell' uniforme ufficiale ti aiutera colle valige, e le porte sono all'altro lato della barriera di sicurezza la."

Well there, I've said it now...but at the time all that came to my mind was, "le scarrafaggie cogli ali" which roughly translated, means, "the cockroaches with wings." Maybe that would have helped? I don't know. All I can say is that I'm sorry, and I hope they ended up where they wanted to go!

Delving deeper...

Now that I'm officially hurled down memory lane, here's my first ever performance on the 1980 Olympic Arena ice in Lake Placid. It wasn't my finest work, but I was thrilled to death to be there. I was 10 and I was missing school for this!

VH-what?

The unfortunate aspect of growing up in the 80s and 90s is rearing its ugly head: VHS is now officially a thing of the past, gone the way of the 8-track tape and the LP. I, of course, was the last to realize this, and thought the precious VHS's that detail my past would last forever. Riiiight. So here's my first effort at digitizing our family's rather large collection:



Just as a subtext, I outskated the field, but got robbed by the judges, who told my coach in confidence that they couldn't reward me with the top spots because they were reserved for a few girls with fancy coaches from uppity skating clubs. The seedy underbelly of the sport of figure skating is not a myth.

More to come...