Mic Check

Does anyone else want eighty-seven babies right now? No? Just me? Let's keep calm about the fact that I get a little homesick for my future when I see those women in their late thirties pushing souped-up prams on bike wheels carrying however many children the last round of fertility treatment gave them as they run along the Charles at ten in the misty mornin', oh!, but.

But. In a stunning display of imaginative departure from the realm of the real, I found myself far from Cambridge this morning, somewhere in the future with the morning off and a chocolate lab at my side pushing the world's most intelligent, well-formed children along unfamiliar terrain as my trophy husband was off in the distance gathering baby raddicchio he'd grown himself and simultaneously shooting a wild boar threatening the villagers (there are always villagers) with a bow and arrow he'd fashioned from the willow in our backyard which, now that I think of it, could only have been in the south of France. I'm pretty sure both the raddicchio and boar end up on our dinner table that night, which -- you guessed it -- was hewn with care from the giant oak under which we met during a Quaker meeting and was blown down in a fell wind the spring after he left to practice emergency medicine in the heart of the Congo. Questions abound: have I converted? how, if I am in my late thirties, am I in such incredibly good shape for a mother of two? why do our children speak Farsi? is his accent real or affected? does he love bacon?

Well, shoot. In the interest of quitting what Pastor Um calls "the business of imaginative hedonism," I'll admit that the boar was a bit over the top. Also, I'd settle for either a.) a handful of toddlers to babysit (Karly, get on that) or b.) a digital camera; but in the meantime, here are some public service announcements:

Peter Choi, I have your CD's and am holding them hostage until the fall. And Krishnan, stop telling people I have crushes on them. And don't argue; I know it's you. I am much too balanced, if somewhat emotionally remote, to engage in such foolish chicanery with the kind of impervious, hopeless optimism which you ascribe to me. See above.

What did they sell at Goodwill in the '70s, anyway? T-shirts and blue jeans?

Add a little wood paneling to that scene.

Qualified and Still Laughing

Now I love to dance, but just as one might love to eat bacon three times a day for extended periods of time, it's rarely a good idea to let love get away from you like that. That's the kind of love you have to keep a strong grip on, natch? It may be laudable at times to have the power to clear a twelve-foot berth on the dance floor with one's hips, but it's been my general experience that doing so and surviving the crowd's censure usually requires a barfight, a hail storm outside, a broken stiletto, or some other natural disaster. In short, I usually reserve my peculiar mix of interpretive dance, modern ballet, and my patented roll-your-hips-around-to-the-right-and-forget-to-roll-back-down-to-the-left-three-legged-toe-hop for my kitchen, which has nicely tiled floors perfect for sliding around on.

Kim was right to be concerned, then, about the reception my dance moves would get on the Philadelphian dance floors when we popped in there last spring. I'm sure it wasn't so much that she was wary of being left alone on the dance floor with some Army recruits as much as it was her concern that I have a good time regardless of who got taken out when I bent over to the front and touched my toes, so she did what any good friend would do: staged a dance party for two in her dorm room at the time and took matters into her own hands. The first problem Kim faced? I didn't know the music. "Who is this?" "N'Sync." Can you hear the exasperation, oh my people? Second problem: my rhythm. Because I've got rhythm, yes, I do, and God said it was very good -- but He's the only one in my corner. I can still see it: we're both glistening, Gillian is nowhere to be found, we've pushed the futon back, and Kim's in control:

"Okay, have a spin by yourself. Now try to find the beat, and then just move along to it. Good. Good. Hm. Well. Is that the best you can give me, soldier? Don't answer that. Oh! That was almost -- something. Interesting. Song over."

I turned to her to learn my fate.

"Well," quoth she, "you found a rhythm. Unfortunately, it wasn't the right one." I'd like to say we got the kinks worked out, but -- y'all know me. I can't walk without falling, let alone differentiate between the two-step and the Peanut Butter and Jelly, with that last one being a shout-out to my cousin Christopher who swears that there is such a dance move in the hip halls of West Palm Beach.

So the moral is I just have fun out there and take the comments as they come. I have my moments, just like the rest of us whities (Krishnan, represent!), but it's like one of my first-graders told me a few summers ago after watching the staff practice our routine for the upcoming talent show: "Miz Jessca, you is white. You is the whitest white girl I ever seen. But you know what, Miz Jessca? That's okay, because you so white you almost black all over again." I mean, yeah. When it's just you and me and five of our closest girl friends and the music's good, we're all the same. Get your butt out there and pray they turn the lights down low -- off, preferably -- that's my motto. I have definitely heard my share of witty remarks about the matter, however. Here's the newest, straight from post-finals Friday night festivities, courtesy of Dan S.:

"You are a really good dancer.* No, shut up! Really!* I had fun at Antua Nua! What, you don't believe me? Would I lie to you?* I mean, you are a really good dancer.** No, really! Why are you laughing?* It's not funny; I really mean it!*"

Pause.*

"Okay, okay. What I mean is you're a really good dancer, considering,* you know, how you grew up in a cultural bubble listening only to classical music and Billy Graham. And, you know, are Caucasian.**"

*Interject my disbelieving laughter.
**Interject me wiping my eyes. Sometimes I love being the DD.

I'm Going Your Way, Anyway.

All the other girls here are stars; you are the northern lights
They try to shine in through your curtain: you're too close and too bright
They try and they try, but everything that they do is the ghost of a trace of a
Pale imitation of you
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

This party was made with the night air and the chance that a smile
Will wind its way from your face to one of the boys in your line
You act like you're hip to their tricks and you're strong
But a virgin Wurlitzer heart never once had a song
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

I know you are waiting, and I know that it is not for me
But I'm here and I'm ready, and I saved you the passenger seat
And I won't be your last dance, just your last good night
Every heart is a package
Tangled up in knots someone else tied
I'll be the one to drive you back home, Kathleen

Crawl up your trellis quietly back up into your room
And I'll coast down the lane of your drive by the light of the moon
And the next time we meet's a new kind of hello; both our hearts have a secret:
Only both of us know about the night that I drove you back home, Kathleen

I've always found the Old Testament to be thrilling and rather scandalous, if a bit barbaric -- biblical bodice-rippers abound, and decimation's a mandate from on high (oh, those pesky Moabites!) -- but inapplicable, for the most part, to my life and times. My fingers seem to find Ecclesiastes and its melancholic Preacher more readily than they do Deuteronomy; I don't know, but "Shibohiah begat Slibohia who begat Slidomiah begat Shibohiath, and there was much feasting in heaven, amen, at which appointed time the angel of the LORD did come down from on high and decree that there should be weeping and gnashing of teeth; wherefore, if a woman dost bleed in her time, do not go in unto her, neither shall you touch her, for she is an unclean thing, but bring unto the house of the Lord seven albino three-winged doves. Selah," just doesn't have the same ring as God espousing the Democratic Party through the prophet Isaiah: "But the liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand." (That's Isaiah 32:8, for those of you convinced I've taken that out of context. Fie, I'd never--!) The battlefields of the ancient peoples, the halls of Ahaseurus, blood feuds and stolen birthrights, murderous jealousy and women warriors -- these were stories from my childhood, as much a part of my literary history and as real to me as Narnia or Middle Earth; enlightening, perhaps, but not necessarily relevant.

But lately, that's been changing; I find myself turning most quickly to the stories I know so well. This makes sense, I think; we all have our own inner clocks guiding the applicability and pull of certain works of art, certain authors, entire cultures: to borrow an example from Sarah Brown, you read Catcher in the Rye differently at 16 than you do at 30 (Sarah: "At 16, I might have loved Holden Caulfield...at 20, I'd already dated him several times and was sick of his sh*t." ) Do I care that I haven't read Moby Dick? Eh, I'll get around to it. Am I concerned that Asia bottoms out on my list of Top Five Places to Visit? Eh, that's for the next five years after this next five years. Are we looking for a point in all of this? Maybe. As usual, the moral of my story involves things you can eat, namely salt. In my reading lately, I've been thinking about Lot's wife.

I always felt her punishment was disproportionate to the crime of looking back to Sodom; doubtless she was thinking of friends and family members still left behind. I'd look back, too. It'd be hard not to. It's not every day the heavens unleash cans of whoop-fire and whoop-brimstone, right? I, frankly, never saw a problem with her turning around; it seemed human of her. And while my diligent Sunday school teachers always stressed that one shouldn't look back to the dangers from which one had been miraculously saved, I wonder if that's not a rather limited reading of the passage. It seems to me that there's no harm in looking back occasionally; there may be harm in not doing so, in not realizing you've already loved like this, or felt like that, or tested fate by hopping down the stairs while eating toast and putting your pants on. No, the real harm comes from not being able to turn back again, in not being able to say, "Well, that was interesting. Moving on!"

It's just that I have a wee problem with the moving on, with the "in my head" goodbyes. Like dates--particularly those that may or may not involve grilling your own meats, or lunches on Thayer Street, or the entire hairdresser debacle-- I tend to think they never really happen in my life. I don't generally enjoy cutting ties, even when the ties I'm cutting just involve shutting off the "What if and why not?" switch in my head; and a bad habit of mine involves rewriting my own history so that I never get left and I never leave. But this time...I don't know. I'm honestly confused about the appropriate course of action. I can't seem to tear my eyes away from the city, you know?

Writing things here somehow makes letting go more bearable (since the two people who've made it this far will hold me to this), more of a conscious act in which I willingly participate rather than have forced upon me -- like Lot's wife. You become entrapped in your own imagined past if you're not careful, recreating moments and conversations that exist only in your head; even if what's in your head is an accurate transcription, that matters little if only you remember it happening that way. The past can consume, can close of all roads but those leading back to itself --certainly it has its own flavor and its own allure, but it ever remains the same. Nothing grows in salt. It is what it is, and what it is is very good unless you're over 50, overweight, a smoker with poor blood pressure, or Jessica L. Curtis -- in the latter case, you've just had too, too much of a good past thing. Poor Lot's wife. Poor me, by default! Can we pretend I'm pitiable? Thank you. Moment over.

Apologies to those who didn't realize they were stumbling upon a self-help book today. I know I can't ever be specific here, and I know people read to see their own names, glean any gossip, find links to Mario Brothers theme songs, and the like. But sometimes I write just for me; this is one of those days. I've journaled much on this matter privately, but that hasn't done the trick. I don't mind if you stopped reading; in fact, I've somewhat counted on that fact. The thing is that it's important to me that I get this down. If I feel like it's on public record, I have to turn back around now, leave the city, concede ontological defeat -- it's a matter of pride now, and pride has a funny way of making one act more quickly than memory. What do the Armenians say, Derek? My soul loves your soul. But at this particular moment, my soul's gotta get the heck out of Dodge if it's going to have a chance of escaping becoming a large, JC-shaped salt lick. I mean, I like deer...but they ruin the garden. And this summer, I am all about a garden.

Asseyez-vous.

This will be me tomorrow in the Con Law exam (I'm the one busy talking; you may have to right-click, Copy Shortcut, and paste the URL). I love the total composure the female newscaster displays, like she'd go on looking at her con law notes/ "In other news, firefighters..." rehearsed speech even if she were dead. Reminds me of Emily Jennings. Yes, Jenninea, the woman in the front on the left -- that's you during exams. Totally composed. Red, cold hands. Cheekbones that could cut diamonds, were there any diamonds in Stuart 315. And the guy on the right who doesn't know what to do with himself is the perfect foil to that serenity.

Life is good. For some reason, I'm not worried about this exam. It's already five o'clock on Friday in my head; I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but I got to speak briefly with the three Male Sanctuarians with whom I habitually take the air. Side note: Bry, Josh King says you must meet us in Rwanda. Apparently, he's selling spots like indulgences -- his words, not mine. I'd email you about it but who knows how that will go. Anyway, he says he's got it in his head that the only way he's gonna make it out of the house once we get there is if we go out first and don't get shot by poachers, which is what he thinks is going to happen. We're bait to him. And if you don't come, I'll be bait all by myself, yada yada...he has no idea how well I can fight off poachers on my own, methinks. Side note over. Kenji also got some airtime with the JC, as follows:

Kenji: When are your exams?
JC: Tomorrow and Friday.
Kenji: Hm. Well, I have to run to Bible study. Maybe I'll pray for you there. Maybe.
JC: Hm. Well, I'm getting free BSO tickets. Maybe you'll get one. Maybe.

I'm just continually in awe of how blessed I've been to know the people I do. I know I do a poor job at times of letting the friends I have in immediate surroundings know how much I appreciate them -- and Michael, happy my-half-birthday! my vote is for "Kim" -- but it's always easier to know what you have somewhere else than it is to know what you have standing in front of you, twisting the bottom of her T-shirt and calling your name absentmindedly. Here, World; here's a great, big hug from JC, Jr. Good night, all!


(Respondeat Superiors, yes, that is the link I sent you; too bad I can't code to save the left testicle of the albino one-legged jackrabbit! Yes, I just said testicle. No, I don't know why.)

Late As Usual

But what else is new? Volume up, please.

Attention, K-Mart Shoppers

1. Go to Google.com
2. Click on "Images."
3. Type "sketchy" in the search field.
4. Press enter. If you are in Stuart 315, move. If you aren't, pick your nose. (We give you options here at Joplinista.)
5. Go to the second page of results.
6. Scroll three rows down.
7. Look to the right.
8. Say hello to my little friend.

Don't Believe What They Tell You

Every week, it seems, I'm reminded of how glad I am to be at BC Law and appreciative of the random stroke of luck that counts for wisdom in making the decision to attend. It's 7:15 in the morning. The coffee's on. I'm about to make some eggs and--you guessed it--bacon. I'm a bit flustered because I had trouble falling asleep last night. I just checked my email because looking at these checklists and outlines and outlines for my outlines is just making me nervous. Sometime after I turned my computer off for the evening, I got emails from two gentlemen, as follows:

1. Brian Dunphs: "I bought us all [Respondeat Superiors] T'-shirts for good luck." This won't be funny to any non-lawyerly types, but the shirts say, "I own Blackacre."

2. Will Cosmonaut: [quoted, in relevant part, with intro including lovely reference to both his mom and Kirk Cameron]: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. ..Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

BC Law. Because good people are lawyers, too.

The Second Sex Seriously Reconsiders: Law School or Meatloaf?

"If it weren't for feminism, I wouldn't be doing this... I would be home, probably pregnant... I might have gone out and bought a new gravy boat today."

- Tara Slepkow, taking the meatloaf.

This post has been brought to you by Law School, taking a little fire out of the belly every now and again since time immemorial, and by MICHAEL fricking DOUGLAS, STOP TURNING THE LIGHTS IN THIS GODFORSAKEN LIBRARY ON AND OFF FOR MINUTES AT A TIME! I KNOW IT IS TIME TO LEAVE! I KNOW IT! (cough) the letter T.

Post-It Notes on the Fridge

It's almost over, and I can't wait to have real things to talk about again in one more week. Hello, world! I hope you remember how unhorrible I can be when I'm reading books and watching movies and not being a total snot to my friends and family, because I sure do. So here's a list of things. You might wanna see if your name is on it:

Things!
1. Jennie: um, call Mom. And don't be dead. I recognize you're 20 now, but she called me tonight wondering if I'd heard from you. Where are you, Tennessee?! Call your mother! And I love you, and I'm looking forward to next weekend. So really, don't be dead.
2. Patrick: jkljkdjkj. You're gonna get the biggest hug ever when I see you, Spud.
3. Mom: she's not dead. She's just 20. And I'm proud of you.
4. Dad: every time you call, you leave this message: "It's me. Just want you to know we're still thinking of ya. We know you're busy, so call back if you have time. Miss you. Love you. Praying for you. Oh. This is Dad."
5. Dan: get ready.
6. Mike and Mark: happy birthdays!
7. Karly: see #5.
8. Mere mere: je t'aime, maman. What I wouldn't give some days to have you near us all again.
9. Kenji: guess who scored free tickets to the BSO? That's right. Better be nice.
10. BC Parking Nazis: I PAID THAT TICKET.
11. Law School Dramarama: JUST. STOP.
12. This post: Over. Dumb. Don't care. But hi, Dave Grimaaaaaldi. Please do the world a favor and grace us with your online presence in the form of a blogging thingie wherein you will put me to shame. Also, Butterfield. I'm on it.
13. Summer 2004: you were really awesome, Summer 2004, but I'd like to step it up a notch this time around. I'm thinking mini golf, I'm thinking fro yo, I'm thinking making out like junior high kids under the bleachers. Wait, no I'm not. But you all just got grossed out by that image, and I'm pretty okay with that.
14. Peter Choipps: you can reprimand me for that last statement some other time.
15. Oh, poetry and madness and camping under the stars and baked potatoes in the ashes of the fire and Burlington and road trips and the soundtrack of our lives, and kittens and London and subterfuge demanded and clarity and Lake George, a wedding in the mountains and a chance to step foot on a different continent! Movies and movies and movies and more and dodgeball and foursquare and finding all the children I can to babysit and what is with that pesky little clock going tick tick tick! Also, I am buying a piano. The end!

Love in the Time of Con Law

Last night, I fell asleep at 3 a.m. next to a frozen chocolate-covered banana, property book nestled close to my chest.

This morning, I woke up next to my property book, a thawed chocolate-covered banana smooshed to my T-shirt.

Oh, fickle heart.

The Look on Your Face Is Delicate

If you're following along at home, the look of this post has changed about five times over the evening. That should tell you something: yes, it's the kind of night in which an attempt at crafting legal excellence has spiraled downwards (or upwards, depending on how you view the world) into sitting Indian style on my bed trawling through pages of cases and statutes and listening to sad French music on KCRW; and no, I'm not finished with anything yet.

But the original text of the post said the following:

We interrupt this radio broadcast of relative silence to inform certain members who may or may not be hanging about the peripherary that there is such a thing on the Internet as a bootlegged version of Damien Rice singing a "Cannonball" and "Hallelujah" medley and that, circumstances notwithstanding, you should know that it is and, specifically, that it is here. In addition, the live version of "Volcano" they list is particularly devastating and should be downloaded with all deliberate speed.

You give me miles and miles of mountains and I'll
ask for the sea

And then an editor's note added this postscript:

Um, if you're reading this, my closet-reader-Damien-Rice-ice-cream-and-coffee-run-fan (and you know who you are), download everything from the Austin City Limits show, "Lonely Soldier," and "Lay Me Down."

And now I'm listening to/watching Damien Rice and Josh Ritter and the Frames and the Arcade Fire and various others perform on Nic Harcourt's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" and thinking,

things are difficult for a time and then what's difficult becomes what's commonplace. Sometimes that's right, and sometimes that's wrong, and you never know which way it's going to end up. And that's fine. There, I said it. The way I spoke a year ago will inform what I say tomorrow, in two weeks, the next twenty years. Or it won't. We'll either forget or we'll remember. We'll fight and cajole; we'll tease and press and push and pull and ask too much of the other, and sometimes we'll come through. Sometimes we won't. We sing the same songs and we dream the same dreams and we keep on walking when there's a dim threat in the night because what are you going to do if you can't, at some point, turn around and laugh at how redundant fear can be?

So grow sweet on wine and tired French voices, at once world-weary and well-rested. The line between poetry and prose is never far off from where you are, especially if where you are is early in the morning, marathoning through the last few pages of what's been made indelible in your heart: that more than words need white space to be legible; that what isn't there gives, to what is, meaning; and that there is a first word and a good song and a long goodbye, and O, Telemarchus, if you're listening -- it's never easy, is it, growing secrets in the bass line of your favorite refrain, when every song you hear says hello, I'm waiting for you to say well, all of it is madcap and you are the most ridiculous thing, now aren't you. Because you'd be right.

House of Wax: Or, The Evil Dead meets Cabin Fever meets Scream meets your mom, and she's not the mom you remember.

What a bizarre weekend. I spent Friday night in the snack bar studying with Em until 4 in the morning, slept till 11, putzed around a bit, and then decided it'd be a good idea to go see "House of Wax." Why? Because if there's one thing that scares me -- and there is -- it's finding myself in the middle of nowhere in an abandoned town that [attention, Joe Jordan] isn't even on the GPS, can you imagine it? with a pregnant Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods, an ambiguously gay guy, two football heroes/WB stars, and Elisha Cuthbert, or Cubert, or whatever her name is, only to find that the entire town is controlled by murderous former Siamese twins with a penchant for candles. Come on, that's every American's fear, and you know it; and if you know me at all, you know I face my fears head on. Cough.

So to the movie I went with companions in tow, and I do believe it was not a waste of $9. Sure, the whole thing could have used a tree rape a la Sam Raimi's aforementioned masterpiece, The Evil Dead; but Paris Hilton totally took a stake to the head, and if you listened very closely you could almost hear the air escaping from the back of her skull. I really think everyone came away a winner in this one: Krish was happy because there were some scenic shots of Louisiana. Remmington was happy because there was roadkill. (I actually don't know if roadkill makes Remmington happy, but fishing does -- and that's saying something.) Jillian M. was happy because Jillian M. is always happy. Sheridan was happy because Paris Hilton, in the words of Maura, "couldn't emote her way out of a paper bag." Travis was happy because the hero, played by the strangely-formed Chad Michael Murray, was a Republican. We knew this because CM Squared exits a convenience story early on in story, kicks a donation cup out of a homeless guy's hand, and tells him to "get a job." On its own, that's just mean; but then we find that CM Squared's parents have just posted his bail for stealing a car, that he can't hold down a job for more than two weeks, that he lost a football scholarship because of the arrest, and that he's allegedly Elisha Cuthbert's "bad twin." Nothing says "Republican" like Mommy and Daddy covering your overprivileged butt: I almost expected CM Squared to stage an invasion of Iraq in the last ten minutes of the movie.

I don't know if Greg was happy, but what can you do?

For a Dark Castle production, the plot and cinematography were surprisingly superb. Observe:

- The microphone was only visible in six separate frames.
- The script never introduced a plot device that went nowhere...unless you count Paris Hilton mentioning that she was maybe just a little bit pregnant and then never telling her boyfriend and/or the Siamese guy to have mercy for the sake of her baby, or the mysterious significance of a third brother, or the reason the fan belt broke, or the reason there was sexual tension between a brother and sister, or the significance of having one pair of twins kill another, or what happened between 1974 and 2005 that made Bo Sinclair a ragin' Cajun, or why no one convinced Paris to take off her wig for the movie, or what happened to the twins' dog, or what happened to the twins' father, or why you'd run UP the stairs in a house of wax that you knew to be on fire, or why there weren't hotter guys in this movie, seriously.
- All of the major players were there: the token black guy, token hick, token ambiguously gay guy, token jock, token bimbo, token WB actor. Oh, and token Eliza Cuthbert, or Dushku, or whatever her name is.

SPOILER ALERT: Reasons to see this movie are legion. Recommended viewing for future surgeons, Siamese twins contemplating separation, Yankee Candle store managers, sheriff's department of Louisiana, WB starlets, Chad Michael Murray (dude: CHECK YOUR POSTURE), all roadkill, and the American Red Cross, who should be concerned about the poor quality of first aid administered here and its effect on impressionable youth. [Kids, I don't care what your Auntie Paris tells you: if you get shot in the left arm with a crossbow, do not remove the arrow. Instead, pack gauze around it to stabilize the arrow as it's probably the only thing that's keeping you from bleeding to death, keep your arm elevated so blood flows to your heart, get yourself to a hospital, and kill your last victim later.]

Black Crowes and a window that doesn't work and some mountains and a clear sky and an open road. Hello, summer. Did you miss me?

Top Five List of Random People Who Currently Inhabit Warm and Fuzzy Space in My Brain:

1. My grandfather, who still tweaks my ear every time I'm home.
2. Kathleen. Hanging off her couch so that the blood rushed to our heads while wondering aloud which boy would ask her -- she was the popular one, and I didn't mind being second fiddle -- to which school's social event. Stakes so low they were one with the ground, best friends, strawberry ice cream, games of catch in the backyard, watching her be perfection on the basketball court, the Matney Opinion....le sigh.
3. Karly and Aimee (I just saw you, Jana). Yes, they come together. Pancakes and B movies solve any problem so long as these kids are in the room; there's a lot to be said for knowing that it's been over a decade since I had to explain myself to any of these three. Three cheers for the known entity.
4. My dad circa any year I played sports.
5. The Dark Horse: Dr. Fairbrother and his ever-present gift for gab.