Category: portland

Repost- Sympathy for the Haley

I’m reposting what I sent in to I Could Kill Her last week.   (update: a local comic had a blog with her best friend for about a year, now I see that it’s a spam site.)


Barbie portrait by Miss Aurora.

My name is Virginia. I’m in my thirties, because I screwed up my original plan, which was to OD in a nightclub bathroom at 25 with panties around my ankles and a wet cigarette in my mouth.

I am constantly going to baby showers and being made to endure foul acts, such as sniffing and identifying various brands of chocolate melted into diapers, which is against the Godiva convention. I have, on some level, become inured to it. But nothing hurts like your first time.


My first time was Alisa. We met in Dallas, Texas, where we took drugs together, went dancing together. We had matching candy-colored vibrators. I was thrilled when she joined me in Portland, and I started dreaming about us growing up to be Cougars together.


Then the day came that she told me she was expecting. Worst of all, SHE HAD DONE IT ON PURPOSE! I felt like I was punched in the stomach. I pointed out to her that a baby is like a wild animal that will shit anywhere they happen to be. Babies are terrorists, and their weapons are noise and tears.

I tried to put on a brave face, but I don’t know how to do that, so I complained and felt sorry for myself. One day, she gave birth to a thing that I had to pretend was awesome, and whose fontanel she expressly forbade me to touch. I continued to call and pretend that times were still good, but if my stories were more than ten seconds long, or did not center on her little homunculus, she tended to drift off.


The breaking point came when her baby was approaching a year old. I will never forget baby’s birthday, because not only is it Cinco de Mayo, a day where I express my love for the Hispanic culture by drinking margaritas. That day, I stopped by the house to say hello and found a party in progress. A party I had not been invited to. A baby party.


The house was insanity. There were people putting food in their pants, smashing M&M’s into the floor, and talking about babies. A woman asked how I knew Alisa, and I said, I’ve known her all my adult life, how do YOU know her? Oh, I see. Three months of play group.

The words dripped from my mouth like toxin. I ran out of the house crying, tripped over something shaped like Snoopy and fell, sprawled on the grass in front of the picture window to the amusement of the adults inside. I swore never to return.

You Say You Want A Revolution-

Every Summer, there is a visible increase in bike ridership in Portland. Every year when the Tour de France starts, there are more bikes. This year, with gas topping four-bucks-fifty, there are still even more bikes.

In general, this is a good thing- for one, for the first time since the Carter-era gas shortage, car fatalities have gone down nationally.
On the other hand, I read that bike commuters are bad for the planet, because we live longer and use more resources, and if we really loved the earth, we’d all ride scooters and smoke.
Despite this, I like when there are more bikes, except when it inconveniences me- like when helpful wags wave at me manically as they approach in the wrong direction in the bike lane, or when the Portland police take it upon themselves to set up “sting” operations, like the one at the traffic circle in Ladd’s Addition on Monday. (In Little Rascals style, a bike who had been stopped at the Stop Sign Which Seems Superfluous circled back to the entrance of the Addition to warn the morning bike traffic that we’d better stop for once, which was very nice.)

This morning, a new commuter pulled up and we had the following conversation:

Nice Lady: Hey, I saw that you tripped the signal at 21st and Division! I thought we had to wait for a car!
Me: Oh, no, if you see a tar circle on the ground, pull into the outer third and it should trip the signal.
Nice Lady: That’s great! How long have you been bike commuting?
Me: (Bashfully) Well, several years anyway- I just hit 9000 miles on my odometer!
Nice Lady: Oh my gosh! Well, thanks so much!
Me: Um…Excuse me, but isn’t your helmet on backwards?

Magical Moments


Today I found a used hypodermic needle in my lavender bushes, which I thought about not touching, but wanted to photograph to show you people. If I die from touching a dirty hypodermic needle, I’ll get the Spouse to update the blog so you know for sure not to do it. A couple of years ago I found 200 rounds of live ammunition in my lavender bush, and at least this time I didn’t have to call the po-po. Usually I just find empty beer cans and fortified wine bottles in the bushes. Perhaps the bushes themselves have a drug, alcohol and violence problem. I guess Creston’s still in transition, but at least we have 500 coffeeshops and our own Safeway!

Bowie vs. Prince


I joined a Pedalpalooza event for the Bowie vs. Prince ride on Friday night. The idea is that a bike ride cruises around and occasionally stops to drink and dance to a biked sound system. I decided to express with my outfit the question, “what if the harlequin from Scary Monsters was really just a big-boned gal in a bike helmet?” The fantastic DJ Rhienna was also in attendance.

It was fun, although the music that started as very Bowie and Prince and quickly devolved to generic hip-hop, and I had hoped to see more awesome outfits. I did see 300 hipsters, 1000 cans of PBR, and about 80 helmets! There was a Screaming Lord Byron in attendance, and inexplicably, a Michael Jackson.

Strange things yelled at me on my bike:

1. Hey, do you have twenty dollars? Well, do you?

2. Hey! Your face!

3. Hi Virginia Jones! (not so strange, really)

300 people in the Safeway parking lot-like a flash mob, but more shambly and random.

We visited the bran’ spankin’ new Eastside Voodoo Doughnut, for those of us too drunk or lazy to go downtown to get one. Thank you, Jebus!

In the end, it is clear that Portland’s sympathies lie with the Thin White Duke and not the Purple One, but it was close. Prince is still the universal #1 artist that drunk girls request at parties.

Portland’s Naked Bike Ride


It’s Pedalpalooza in Portland.

Pedalpalooza is a fortnight of bike-related events that I had forgotten about until I left Harvey’s on Saturday at midnight to be greeted by a peleton of naked bikers. The two road comics I was working with were very impressed by the display, as I commented, oh, it’s naked bike ride time again already. Craigslist Missed Connections was also pretty active the next day, although suitors had to be fairly observant about bike makes, colors, and models, since “you were naked, so was I” did not really narrow the field.

Vampires Exist


Street signs can tell you a lot of things- to stop or slow down, that animals may cross the street, and which turning direction is less likely to get you killed.

However, this is the first time that a road sign has taken the time to let me know that bloodsucking ghouls are real.

Thanks, NW Natural! I’ll keep an eye out!

Postscript: Apparently, The Huffington Post has disproved the existence of vampires. Which is why vampires hate math!

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Recently Tivo recorded a film for me based on my interest in art stuff and Robert Downey, Jr., and so I watched a movie I’d never heard of called “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. The main message that I took away from this film, loosely based on a book based on a rumor based on the photographer’s life, is

Q: How can one discover one’s own artistic voice and vision?

A. To truly discover oneself as an artist, but one must first befriend, fully shave, make love to, bear witness to the suicide of, and then wear a coat made from the hair of, a dog-faced boy.

Q. Do you mean that metaphorically? Like, broaden your horizons?

A. No. I mean it literally. Go find yourself a dog-faced boy.

Q. Okay…thanks.

It was weird, and coming from me that’s saying a lot.