When I got off the elevator this evening, the prevailing smell was the very same combination of almost dry paint and industrially cleaned/new carpets that transported me back to my high school, Butler Hall, circa 1980 or so during the warmer part of the day, about late July/mid- August. All the major maintenance done and the classrooms repainted and ready to go for the start of the school year. (I almost posted this on Facebook, but seeing as people from my high school have been friending me, I get that uber-insecure feeling about reminding them that I was the janitor's kid and therefore maybe grew up at that school...I know this is silly of me, but hello, me = very silly and insecure sometimes.)
Right. By the time I reached the end of the corridor and slid my key into the lock? I was already lost in nostalgia, which I think should be classified as some kind of (mild) mental disorder. Or who knows, maybe it is? The fact is, by the time I was stuffing the towel in the crack under the door and opening up a window? I'd been sucked down the nostalgia whirlpool.
So instead of watching LOST (via the abc site), I found myself clicking on the season/series finale of UGLY BETTY. No, I have not actively watched this show since the first season. Once I realized they were not going to follow the traditional mexican soap opera formula and were going to keep Betty as ugly as they could for as long as they could? And make the mexican family so uber-tacky mexican with worse accents than what I have? I lapsed. Bad first generation Mexican-American, no churro for you.
But like the good American soap opera it became, I had absolutely no problem picking up the story line and getting caught up on just about everything (except for the Scottish lady, and maybe the surgically altered sister...but that's what the internet is for). And though it didn't quite end the way I'd expected (and dreaded) it to? Okay, really really didn't want it to? It was a great thing to watch. (I hope that was vague enough for anyone out there who hasn't watched it yet but is still going to.)
See, I never got past the nasty, skeevy, ookie Daniel. The fault is completely mine. I could not separate the Daniel character from the skeevy, ooky, nasty character he played on the L-Word. In fact, he pretty much WAS the same character! And we all HATED him. Yes, I may have seen the entire first season of that show, I mean Jennifer Beals! Am I aging myself when I say her + Sting in The Bride inspired countless terrible fake victorianeque short stories that filled journals that even my best friend never saw? And hello? As 'Alex' she was a freakin' welder in Flashdance! Okay, and maybe a stripper or whatever, but dude! WELDER! Hmm, this explains so much about me that I am laughing as I reread this paragraph.
But yeah! UGLY BETTY, skeevy Daniel, cheesy stereotypy mexicans, and Macy Gray's "Beauty in the World."
The other day I actually wondered out loud how I'd lived (so very long now) without ever having heard anything by The Insane Clown Posse, and now I'm thinking I need to not only listen to ICP (they are rude and crude and make me LAUGH, but I will not subject you to a link), but hi Macy Gray and the lyrics to the song they played to end the show made me cry and feel so good at the same time.
Dude, LIFE SUCKS, but blue skies, butterflies, and shaking your booty to the beauty in the world can make it just a little bit better. Even in front of the Watts towers...or the sketchy alley with the um, interesting decor...Oh LA, how I've missed you:
"Throw your hands up and holler
HEY YEAH
When you don't know what to do,
when you don't know if you'll make it through"
And yeah, I'm in uber-polyanna mode right now, but it seems to be what I need, so we're all good.
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