Saranator, the Roller Derby Queen

I have just completed my first 10 minutes on rollerblades, and although not exactly graceful, my short stint did not result in any blood loss or long-lasting emotional damage. I feel that all things considered, the whole process was a success. It was also not made any easier by the fact that Jake was chasing me with a remote control car and that Hans was running around a stabbing me with a wooden sword. It all got better after I got the sword away from Hans and started using it as a sort of crutch to slow down. I now know that the stopper does not actually stop you, it just slows you a bit. Let’s just say that it was a good thing my car was in the way. Going up hill was taxing, but also much less frightening. Gabby did it with me and she was much more talented. If I were a Derby Dame, I would look like this…

I'm Like the Wind

So the one day I decide to read the paper on the train, I find out that Patrick Swayze died. It totally ruined my morning and I teared up right there on the metro. The guy next to me probably thought I was insane. I’ve had She’s Like the Wind stuck in my head all day, and every time it runs through my mind I see him naked in a lake with Jennifer Grey. I also learned that the Iraqi reporter who chucked his shoe at Bush was released from prison and that Eddy Izard ran a marathon with an ice-cream truck accompanying him that played the theme song to Chariots of Fire. Ah the useful things you learn from reading the paper.

Then I spent all day organizing Monitor record covers and putting them in folders with pretty labels. I also got to meet the son and daughter-in-law of Moses Asch, the man who recorded all of the Folkways albums. I then crammed in a fast dinner and a lot of coffee before booking it across the universe to Willow Restaurant where I was trained and thrown onto the dining room floor. My feet hurt. My back hurts. My right ring finger hurts. My brain hurts. I am so tired and I need to finish my homework, take a shower, and make my lunch for tomorrow. Why am I writing this?

While frantically running around with bread rolls and trying to understand the completely nonsensical table numbering system, I met some really nice people. Not the patrons, they pretty much all sucked, especially the men having a business meeting, but the other workers were great. I am the only white busser who doesn’t speak Spanish as a first language, but that’s not going to stop me. I love all the other bussers, who are all Hispanic, especially Richard who took care of me all evening, and the waiters are also great. They’re all young guys with great senses of humor. The best part is seeing the two faces of everyone. There’s the very polite I’m-talking-to-a-customer face, and than when they go back into the kitchen it’s all “Can you believe that fucker wanted to change tables three times?” Highly entertaining. The guys are all very polite to me and ask lots of questions. The first question Peter asked me was if I had a boyfriend. This is going to be great. I can tell.

Those Dirty, Dirty Candymen

I love watching people. The way they walk, the way they stand, what they do with their hands when they talk or sit quietly, how they act in the metro, what they do when they pass me on the sidewalk, it’s all fascinating. Today, I watched a man under the Hirshhorn as he ate his lunch and watched the fountain go up and down. At one point, he took of his leather work shoes and sat wiggling his toes for a minute before getting up. I watched another man walk from the metro. He fully extended each leg before setting it down with no give to his step at all. He looked like he didn’t have knee joints and to top it off, he didn’t swing his arms.

I love men in suits. They all look the same so they’re great fun to make up stories about. The jumping off point is whether or not they’re wearing a ring, then how old they are, etc. Sometimes they have funny, colored socks or an interesting belt buckle, which makes for more of a base for the story, but mostly they all blend together unless you really pay attention. The metro is the best place for people watching. Lots of men in suits.

I did more cataloguing today. More of the same; fixing other people’s mistakes. I’m almost done though, and then I guess I’ll move on to something else. We also had an office meeting with everyone from the Folk Life collection. It really is the most interesting mixture of people. It’s funny. At the Shelburne Museum, people kept telling me that if I thought the bureaucratic shit and the interdepartmental cattiness were bad, I should just wait until I got to a big institution like the Smithsonian. They were SO wrong. I have come to the conclusion that the Shelburne Museum is just fucked, and that any issues they might have are solely their own and are entirely their fault. The Smithsonian is a completely professional environment and everyone seems to genuinely like one another. Each department is interested in the doings of everyone else, and no one back stabs or  belittles. People are kind and inclusive and understand the equal importance of everybody else. In contrast to Shelburne, where each department thinks it’s the most important and the most worthy of attention, the Smithsonian understands its role in society as a whole and the integral part that the cohesiveness of what is essentially a business plays in keeping it all together and working.

Part of the meeting was spent in laughing about “The Desk.” This is not just any desk. This is the American Idol desk. Since Paula Abdul, one of the judges, has resigned from the show, they needed a smaller desk. Hmmm… what to do with the old desk? Aha! The Smithsonian will want it because they like to collect pieces of American culture and stuff! Who knows, maybe someday it will be art. So basically, the desk (which of course nobody wanted) got passed around like a hot potato, and eventually landed in the folk life collection. Because it speaks to the history and struggle of our nation through material culture? So then, the director of the collection had to do a press release stating the reasons why we would want the desk to make it sound like we had a choice in the matter and to save face. Anyway, now the desk is on display in the castle where stupid Americans come and take pictures of it. Oh, it also has a neon sign. Yes it does. Personally, I think the archives should get it. The table we have for processing papers and artwork isn’t big enough and that desk is substantial.

Also, in reference to my very clever title, I had a conversation with Jeff Place, my temporary and very cool advisor who knows everything about every song ever, about all of the different versions of Candyman. Apparently there are actually two completely different Candyman songs and each of them in turn has been covered zillions of times. Don’t stand close to the candyman, he’ll leave a stick of candy in your hand, he’s the candyman… that sick of candy don’t melt away, it just gets better so the ladies say, say, he’s the candyman…

My Body is Their Wonderland

I have just been permanently crippled by an army man with a bayonet. I didn’t even see him coming. They’re very sneaky and like to hide in the pattern of the carpet. Fucking army men. I bet Hans could tell me what kind of bayonet it was too. I also found one in my bed the other day. WHY WAS THERE AN ARMY MAN IN MY BED? My bed is clearly not the sacred space I thought it was.

After I finished writing last night, the party went on and on. Symon and I were watching Malcolm in the Middle at 1 in the morning and during the commercials he was switching to this really stupid British talk show on BBC America. The guy was interviewing this chef who Gabby loves and Symon hates. Symon called him a knob, so I asked him what a knob was. It is a penis. We then had a superbly immature conversation about the cultural differences in human anatomical slang. He says tit, I say boob; knob, penis, und so weiter, und so fort.

I slept in a little today, but was awoken at 9 by Jake practicing the theme to the Pink Panther on his trumpet and the sounds of war between Hans’s tanks and the neighbor kid’s armored motor boats. I tried to go back to sleep, but unsurprisingly was not successful. I had breakfast and did a pile of mending for Gabby (the first of many such piles I’m sure), before heading off to Arlington for a lunch date with the Smithsonian and government Smith interns. I love being with Smithies. When it’s just the 9 of us Smithsonian people, the Smith vibe doesn’t really come out and I find myself almost forgetting that we all go to the same school. But when there are 20 or so of us, it’s a different story. I was trying earlier to put a finger on exactly what it is that makes a group of Smith women so different. I mean, there are the obvious reasons like that we’re all fairly intelligent, liberal, and mostly interested in the same things. Then there’s the fact that a good portion of the interns are gay, but I don’t think that’s it either. We have a certain crassness, rudeness almost, but also an affectionate sort of self deprecation. We’re the kind of group that I would be scared to approach if I weren’t already a part of it.

Anyway, I have skipped the most interesting part of my day. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like a piece of meat here. I get leered at, followed, groped, or in some way hit on, on what is becoming a regular basis. Either I have obtained some new qualities that I am hitherto unaware of, or DC men are of a different breed. Or maybe it’s because I’ve spent the majority of my life in Vermont (the nicest, safest place on earth) and at a women’s college. Incident number one was on rout 95 on the way to Virginia, when this guy in a black SUV stalked me for almost 2 hours. He would pull up to one side of me and wave his fingers at me to role my window down and at one point I think he actually wanted me to pull over. At any rate, after about 10 minutes, I completely ignored him and eventually he went away. In retrospect, I really wish I’d given him the finger or called 911. Not only was he harassing me, but he was also compromising not only my driving safety, but his as well.

Incident number 2 was the Indian guy in his mid 20s who sat down next to me in a virtually empty metro car on my first ever trip into DC. He proceeded to grill me on how old I was, what I was doing in DC, and other not-his-business types of things. I was careful not to give him any specific information like where I live or anything, but I continually dread that I’ll meet him on the metro again. The best part of this encounter was when he reached over and grabbed my side fat. MY SIDE FAT! I mean, that is MY side fat. NOT his side fat, and definitely not his side fat to GRAB. I understand that there were some major cultural differences in this exchange, and that he was actually trying to compliment me when he told me that I would be much prettier if I was just a little bit fatter. HA. Then he said that I shouldn’t wear jeans and that women should wear very short skirts (he demonstrated how short by grabbing (again with the grabbing) my thigh). Then I said that I was not in the habit of dressing like a slut and that, no, he was not allowed to touch my thigh or any other part of my body. He gave me a lovely hug before he got off the metro.

And then there was Brendan. Ah, Brendan. To validate that this keeps happening to me, my friend Jess (unbeknownst to me) was standing across the street at the time and witnessed the entire exchange. I was walking innocently through Arlington on my way to my lunch thing when I heard yelling. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from and figured it wasn’t directed at me so I kept walking. A minute later, this 30 something year old guy wearing no shoes comes running across the parking lot to my left and from maybe 30 feet away says that he was the one who had yelled before and that I must not have heard him. Apparently, he had seen the grungy paint covered cut offs I was wearing and had given a shout out because he was a painter too. Yay for him. I mean really, what does one say to this. His friend had said why not go talk to this girl so off he went. What’s your name, how can I contact you, can I see you again, what’s your number, my name is Brendan, etc. I was off to see Smithies. I was sick of being hit on. I was not very nice. He was parked in a no parking zone. The end.