 Speech Stress |
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I'm being assigned the task of drafting a commencement address to be delivered at a major state university. Excuse me? I do not really know the speech deliverer well at all, and I have no idea what he wants it to say, and they are supposed to have humor and insight and shit, and where am I supposed to pull that out of? My ass? He is the kind of person who is too important and busy to sit down with me in the speech preparation process, and I am just wholly irritated. There are tons of commencement addresses online, but hello, you cannot rip those off, because someone will know, if not the average listeners then the press, and I can't make the man look like an ass, God bless him. My name is not Sam or Toby or Will. I hate everyone. Maybe I can just channel Diane Court and have him say, "I have glimpsed our future. And all I can say is ... go back." Maybe I could find someone to wail "The Greatest Love of All" a la Joe in the background. I am being consoled in my moment of stress by the revelation that this is being performed in town this month. O Glorious Impossible! I can't wait. Speaking of music that makes me happy, ever since I heard a Hem song on Rob's brilliant Chubbin Mix, I've been learning more about them, and Elizabeth sent me their CD, and I melt with heartbreaky goodness every time I listen to it. So far, "Lazy Eye" kills me the most. and sees you the same as before when you lay beside me every night though now you are with me no more i can still see the hem of your dress and the comb as it's parting your hair and the person i held is still there in my lazy eye that looks at you and sees you the same as before Jesus! It is gorgeous. Hauntingly, movingly gorgeous. I've been detoxing off the Halloween candy overdose of last week and trying to eat like a normal human. Drinking tons of water is not keeping my face from breaking out I swear to God worse than it ever has in my entire life. My face is grotesque. I'm scaring myself. Shelley tells me I should buy expensive facial products because Clinique can make all the difference, but if I can't buy my facial products at Walmart, I just don't know what to look for. I watched my little brother play last night in a bar that I frequented in my early college years and found myself sitting on a bar stool surrounded by eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds and their hands holding cigarettes or wobbly pitchers and just outcooling each other like crazy. I couldn't help but remember all of the opaque, multicolored shots we used to do at that bar (my personal favorite was called "bucket" -- what?) and the time I took a football trainer home with me who called me incessantly for weeks afterwards while I avoided him in mortified horror. (I actually took him to a friend's apartment, and he passed out on the couch after trying to grope me and show me his athletic trainer rings simultaneously, and I fled upstairs and slept on the floor of my friend's room.) (In fact, I think he was the reason I got caller ID for the very first time. Hello, 1994!) Or the times one of us would end up sobbing drunkenly on the sidewalk outside. The spilling, the making out, the passing out. Good times! My brother sang a song greeted with an enthused reception that went something along the lines of "Fuck You Hard." I'm sure my mom would have found it heartwarming. Truly, though, he was awesome. He is so at ease on stage and his voice and his guitar playing are beautiful. People rocked out geekily all around me to the sounds of college faves Dave Matthews, John Mayer, and my oft-supposed long lost twin, Anthony Kiedis. I asked a young man next to me if he thought I looked like Anthony Kiedis, and he responded blankly, "Who's Anthony Kiedis?" I almost wept in relief when I was carded. I was just watching my brother and I was so proud of him that I clapped fervently and cheered after every song like a complete dork, sloshing my Miller Lite onto my matriarchal sandals. How is he almost twenty years old? How did that happen? I love him so much that it hurts. Oh my God, I was just trying to find the lyrics to that profane song that everyone seemed to love and that my brother sang with such profound relish, and it is a Tenacious D song, which of course I did not know. I am unhip to a TRAGIC degree. I might as well just come out and admit that I have no idea how this happened, but it did. I have become a person who watches "Judging Amy." I used to think this was the most boring show in the history of television, and it really is kind of boring, but Tyne Daly and Amy Brenneman and the tertiary actors are so good that I've been sucked in. It doesn't really inspire any kind of reaction in me, like the one of glee when I watch "The O.C." or the one of impressed and surprised movedness when I watch "Joan of Arcadia," but when I watch it, I somehow enjoy it. I know, I hate myself.
© Copyright 2003 elb |
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